Dear Hank & John - 351: Sphere the Atmos

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Why is it harder to wake up during inclement weather? How do I explain gravity to a 3-year-old? Do magnets ever stop magneting? Do I weigh less on a mountain? What's the difference between an -ology and an -onomy? Where should I get my next tattoo? What's the tattoo-getting etiquette?  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. Doors I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give it you be as advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, you know how to make an octopus laugh? I don't. You got to give him 10 tickles. Because of 10 tickles and 10 tickles. Cause of 10 tentacles and 10 tickles.

Yeah, I don't actually giving octopus an octopus tentacles. Doesn't actually help it because it's already got a bunch, but right. Well, it's still, it's still funny. No, it's not, but you've identified why it's not funny, which I feel like is the first step. Which is it. It's not, it doesn't work the first step. It only works one way. Yes.

For the joke to be good, it has to work two ways, but I would argue that for the joke to be good, it has to not fundamentally be upon. That's the one. I definitely agree with it. It's just a difference in world view. Yeah, well, we're doing it, everybody's themselves, as Catherine says.

I've been thinking about octopodes, octopi, octopuses, because you and I were just talking Hank about how humanity is the only known species so far in the history of Earth to be like, you know what, maybe we should stop going for more, right? Like every species is constantly. Not like a unit, just for clarity. No, no, but

but definitely individuals. Yeah, and like that we are concerned about the implications of us going for more, which at least from what we have observed is not something that can be said about deer or raccoons or cyanobacteria. Yeah, yeah. No, it definitely seems like there's a pretty big pressure toward like evolution, you know, the genes that get passed on are the ones that get passed on. So if you don't have a drive to do that, then your traits don't get passed on. That's how it works. Yeah, and there's some fundamental desire that I don't think we all the time understand

or think about to not just make more of ourselves but to make to create out of the materials of the universe something which did not exist before as William Faulkner put it. But then we started talking about how, actually it's possible that we aren't the only species to have ever been like hold up. This may have gotten a little bit out of control. And that maybe like there was a group of cephalopods who had a whole octopus civilization.

Right. Well, and I think like this like this this this fascinates me because if it's like on the bottom of the ocean, we wouldn't know. It was long enough to go. We wouldn't know. How would we know? Especially if a lot of their monumental monument making, yeah, assuming that they were even into monumental monument making. A lot of that could have been things that were intentionally made to be temporary. It could have been that that was part of their world view.

Or maybe they're like built out of shells, and so we just like find a bunch of shells and we're like, yeah, a bunch of shells. Right, right. And we come up with some explanation for why the tides did it, but no, it was the octopus civilization. It seems like to me that that's the only plausible one.

Like I think if dinosaurs had had like government and democracy and stuff, we would have found some of their voting stations. But I feel like, right, octopus has maybe got away with having a civilization. And then I can total, like having seen a few octopus in my life, I can totally imagine a situation where like they would get together and they would be like, you know what? Things have gotten pretty crazy here. So a lot of hands. The wars and the specialization of labor.

Whenever octopus Twitter was, they were like, this is a bad idea. We made this octopus Twitter where we just yell at each other and then we let the most powerful octopus in the world become the sole owner of octopus Twitter. And like maybe we just, maybe this whole thing with radical, structural inequality is the wrong path forward and we need to just maybe this whole thing with radical structural inequality is the wrong path forward and we need to just chill out and be octopus is again.

And it does like it does seem like that like that makes sense because they seem smarter than they need to be. Oh yeah. Like an octopus just seem smarter than it needs to be. So it's like, it's like they decided one day, how about instead we all live for two years, we're pretty happy the whole time We play a bit we chill out and mostly we just sort of zone Right like how about like the way that humans feel when they're playing like level 7 on Tetris

Is the way that we should feel all the time all the time that's Like what if instead of inventing a Tetris, we just had that vibe overall. And then one octopus was like, but I like the fact that we can keep the sharks out of the town. And they're like, Steve, you're gonna have to go. We outvoted you your food now.

Give me 10 tickles. That was like the ceremony that was immediately preceded. The renegade octopus is being thrown outside the city walls to be eaten immediately by sharks. Yeah. Steve, the renegade octopus would have to stand at the gates and then 10 friends and 10 enemies would each give him a tickle. And they would open up the gate and like shoot him out into the shoot him out into the regular ocean where the sharks await. Yeah.

Because you know, they had their own, that's the thing. Like they had their own immorality. They had their own structural horrors. You know, of course, they had their own ways of, of, of like kicking people out of the community to be more radical. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it, but just by virtue of having morality, they also had evil, unjust structures. And eventually, they were like, hey, instead of reforming these structures and trying to make them better, which by the way, I think is the right call for humans.

Just to be clear. Maybe the octopuses were like, oh God, let's just, you know what, let's just be octopuses again. Yeah, they figured out a switch to open their brains where they're just like feeling okay. And that's possible. That's the way. Yeah, like once a year without our knowing it,

the switch flips and they all meet somewhere in the ocean and they vote about whether to continue to be octopuses or whether to have a civilization again. I think it's better that way. Simplization's the wrong word, but you know what I mean. It's better that way. Like there's no doubt in my mind that all this is made up, so it might as well that might be that should be the thing. For sure, because I think that's a really good move. He, do they even have to get together or do they have some kind of like, they just like sink their tentacles into the soil

and they can communicate through. Yeah, they do it telepathically. Battery or something. Right, they do it, right, they do it through like fungal networks, like how trees talk. And so they're like, oh, it's May 14th, time to, time to the big vote. I vote to continue being an octopus and not living in a city.

And then, but like every year, like, it's getting more 50-50 because they're looking at us and they're like, we're gonna have to do something about these people. Right. Exactly. They're like swimming down and looking at us. They're starting to be a problem. They made a Netflix documentary about it. Yeah. Now, a bunch more are doing it

because they like this Netflix documentary. Yeah, the Octopuses are like, they're finding out our big secret. And so maybe we need to move to cities again. And then there will be the great rivalry between the humans and the Octopuses and humans will finally, finally be united. That's right. Because there will be a common enemy. Yeah. Yeah. Come, they're fairly big

and quite strong. So we'll see how we do. They got me. They could, they could take us, they could take us. They've been around a lot longer than we have. I mean, they're a hundred percent muscle like they just are, they don't even have bones. It's all muscle. I Think it can be kind of great if we agreed that the oceans were gonna be for them and the land and the fresh water Was gonna be for us and we were like starting now We can only eat things from the land and the fresh water because our octopus overlords have taken control of the oceans I mean and for I know too much about how where calories come from to think that would be an easy transition, but I think we could do it eventually. Good party. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

John, this first question is from Anne who asks, dear Hank and John, why is it harder to wake up on days that are cold, rainy, or dark? It's like my body can sense that the weather is gray and says, no thanks before I'm even conscious and fights to say asleep. Why is that? Can I blame science, greens and gables, and? Thank you. And we're mammals.

Yeah, we are. It's so hard to remember this on a minute-by-minute basis. I know. So weird. But we are mammals. It's so weird. We are so much more like kangaroos than we are like computers. We are mammals. It's so hard. We are so much more like kangaroos than we are like computers.

We are mammals. So we do mammal stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like we put, we put recently killed plant and animal matter into our mouth holes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we use,

that's how we go on. We use the slow fire of burning it inside of us to listen to podcasts. Yes, and so when we wake up and it's cold or rainy or dark, it's like when a fox wakes up and it's cold or rainy or dark There's a part of the fox that's like I'd rather not Well, and it's probably might be better to just rather not if it's if there's no other drive Like if you're not currently having a biological need to definitely it's cold and rainy and dark stay in. That's going to be right. It's going to be expensive metabolically to deal with that.

Exactly. So it's a value calculation that your mammal body is making that mammal wise, it's going to be more work than it usually would be to deal with this cold and rain and dark. And later, it may not be cold or rainy or dark. And so you may be able to get the same good stuff, the same recently deceased plant and animal matter into your mouth hole, without having to do the extra work of being cold and wet. That's right. And there's also it is biochemical when it comes to light detection specifically. If it's warm in your house, you probably don't know what's, well, I do. I know it's cold outside, when it's cold outside, I can feel it coming through the walls. It's cold in Montana.

But we also have very sophisticated light detection systems that you don't necessarily even need your eyes to be open for, but also you probably have your eyes open a little bit before you technically wake all the way up. And so you're getting that feedback. So during the dark months that we certainly have at these latitudes where I am, your body knows, your body knows when the sun is coming up.

And there's a thing called the super chiasmatic nuclei. It's in the hypothalamus. I've got a response to those. Too light. That goes through the retina and it uses that to figure out what your body should be doing sleep-wise. So I guess a real, if it's a part of your brain that's connected to your eye receptors. Yeah. Wild. That is pretty wild. And it's called the superchiasmatic nuclei, which that's a great name. Usually, yeah, biologists are so notoriously bad at naming things, but that is a really high quality name. It's hard to forget. Do octopuses have one of those hank? I imagine they don't, because they aren't as light-sensitive as we are.

Their brains, well, also, their brains are very different, so. So this is one of the coolest things about octopus. This is a very complicated brains that evolved entirely separately from ours. Like the nearest common ancestor of a cephalopod and a mammal was very deep and did not have a big brain. So their brains are super different, so I will be very surprised if they had any analog structure. Cool. Well, this next question comes from Sophie who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm a preschool

teacher. And recently, one of my students asked, why if I jump, I come back down, but if I hold my arm up, it stays up. I tried to explain gravity to a three-year-old, but thought it was a pretty profound question that you could answer gravity and existential dread, Sophie. It's interesting that like, putting my arm up, it doesn't have like it's gonna come down on its own. So there's the question of why I come back down, which is very complicated and weird and has to do with the curvature of space time. But then there's the question of why my body doesn't really have to work to keep my arm

up, even though it definitely is working, but I do not notice that work. Wait, if you hold your arm directly out from your shoulder, out to my shoulder, it wants to fall like crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're saying like if you make the straight up, the field goal was good. Yeah, or I'm like, Mrs. Johnson, raising your hand to ask a question.

Now what I would have this three year old do is I would say, well, let's see about that three year old put that hand up and Call me in an hour I I raked about eight thousand pounds of leaves yesterday. So I'm already feeling it. Yeah, I it will eventually Start to want to return to equilibrium But even then there there's the... But you're just sort of keeping that balanced up there, more than holding it up there.

It's like a broom on your fingertip, you know? Yeah, it's balanced. Yeah, but I don't think that we need to think about it primarily as gravity if we're trying to explain it to three-year-olds. I don't think we need to talk about the curvature of space time. But it is a weird idea, right? Because then why is it relatively little work to stand up or to sit down rather than lying down?

It doesn't feel like effort to be seated for most people most of the time. Especially preschoolers who are tiny and don't have a lot of body to move around. And they have a massive amount of energy relative to their mass, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Like Sonic the Hedgehog is based on a three year old. And I think that the answer is muscles. So I wouldn't talk about gravity or space time.

I would talk about muscles and how muscles do work. And you are holding that up, but when you jump there, there's nothing to hold you up. Exactly. Yeah. You are holding your arm up. You are holding yourself up when you stand, but when you jump, there's nothing touching the ground to hold you up.

Does that work for a three-year-old? I think so, yeah. I think so. touching the ground to hold you up. Does that work for a three year old? I think so, yeah. I think so. I haven't had a three year old in so long, jeez. I know. Yeah, I mean, it's been, it's been, it's been a while even for me.

Oh, this next question comes from Jay, John. I loved this one, and it was hard to get to the bottom of. Dear Hank and John, do magnets ever stop magneting? Pumpkins and penguins J. So I'm not sure, but here's something that I did not realize, and I figured out while researching this question, is that all natural magnets. So most magnets you'll deal with are created intentionally by people.

Right. So like an Eudemium magnet, so the magnet you stick out with the black background, that's just like a film. That's an artificially induced magnet created by humans, doing human stuff. But there are natural magnets, you know, this because like before we could do that,

there were like compasses that used load stones that were magnetite, a mineral that is magnetic. And that was recognized fairly early on because it's super weird and very magical. Right. Like, that must have felt very much like magic to be fair, not to quote the insane clown policy, but magnets still feel a little magical to me if they do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have not really gotten there.

I think I know people who are in it enough that they're like, oh yeah, no, that's just a normal phenomenon. I'm like, I can't push these two things together. They fight. It's invisible. As weird as there is an invisible power that's keeping these things apart.

Yeah. But in order for a natural magnet to form, I was like, does that happen naturally? Like what it just like, do these atoms line up in a way that the spins of their electrons blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And no, it happens because they form in our magnetic field of the Earth. So the Earth was the magnet that induced the magnetism in the load stone, in the iron, so that it has a magnetic,

it carries basically the Earth's magnetic field kind of. Like the field induced the dipole, it induced it to have a direction to its magnetic field. And so if it was on a planet that didn't have a magnetic field, there would be no natural magnets. Whoa. And that, so like that says to me, that maybe like just the random jostlings and energy of not being an absolute zero might eventually mean, once it's taken out of the presence of

the Earth's magnetic field, that probably over the very long scheme of billions of years of, or hundreds of billions of years of the future of the universe, probably a natural magnet or any magnet would lose its magnetism. But I'm not sure. I couldn't figure it out. Wow. But we're talking about very large timescales. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For sure. It's not something that would happen. Unless you intentionally did it, what you can do in a number of ways. Could you get rid of the Earth's magnetic field on purpose? No, not yet. We cannot do that. And I think we are a long way away

from having the power to do that. Great. Let's never learn how to do that. You can potentially create a kind of artificial magnetic field for another planet. It would be like an external device that would sit between the sun and the planet, and that would sort of block the solar radiation. But that's definitely within like sort of imaginable human technology, whereas stopping the Earth's core from doing stuff is not it within human imaginable human technology Be easier to pull at the planet up. It feels like

Well speaking of all that I have a related question sciencey from John who writes to your John and Hank Do I weigh less on a mountain my engineering friends and I have been arguing about this for 30 minutes help Mowals and mountains John Yeah, yeah, you do, right? You have to. Yeah. And the higher the mountain, the less you weigh, right? Yeah.

And then if you had a mountain, like if you had a theoretical mountain that went all the way into outer space, I think actually you'd have a big problem. Now that I think about it, you'd have a, you'd have a big problem. Now that I think about it, you'd have a... You'd have a doubt about the issue. The issue would be air.

Right, but also like if you had a piece of the planet that pierced the atmosphere, wouldn't that be a problem? Um, no. Wait, whoa, whoa, you could have a planet where almost all the planet has an atmosphere. But then if you climb up a really, really, really tall mountain, you are in space.

Yeah. Are you sure that sounds wrong? Yeah. Because it doesn't the atmosphere, definitionally, sphere the atmos. It's, I don't know what the atmos is. But it definitely spheres the center of the earth. So it spheres the center of the body.

Whoa. It does not like head up on over whatever there is. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's why the air pressure is much less at the top of Mount Everest than at Seala. You're telling me that it's higher up in the Atmo. You're telling me that the atmosphere is not actually an atmosphere for Earth's surface. It's an atmosphere for Earth's core. Yeah, I guess.

Whoa. It's that, yeah. Seriously? Well, it's subject to the exact same reason as you weigh less at the top of the mountain. You are being, the atmosphere falls like any water would, falls into a pool at the lowest point it can. You're telling me that I could build a spire, a tower of babble, if you will. It goes all the way to the moon.

Well, okay, sure. It just as a hypothetical. To the moon's orbit. Let's say to the moon's orbit, because we create a problem with the moon moving around otherwise. Right, if it went to the moon that it. Let's say to the moon's orbit, because we create a problem with the moon moving around otherwise. Right, if it went to the moon, it would rotate around Earth and it would have to move.

It would have to move. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be an issue. But you're telling me that I could build from the surface of Earth, a tower that went to the moon's orbit, and this would not in any way affect the atmosphere. It would not really pierce the atmosphere because the atmosphere isn't piercible as such. Right, yeah.

It would affect the atmosphere and then it would create like winds would current around it. Like when winds blow across it, it would create currents like a mountain does. You know, it like, Right, but it wouldn't like have any kind of catastrophic impact on the existence of the atmosphere. I poke a hole in the bubble of, man, I mean, the movie Space Balls fundamentally

lied to me in a way that I didn't know until just now, like I so assumed that it was correct. I thought that it was a documentary, Hank. Oh, God. I'm really astonished to know that you can pierce the atmosphere and nothing bad happens. You could grow a mountain and I intend to now. Yeah. Well, there's a theoretical idea for efficient space travel called the space elevator that is that. It's just a big tower, basically, that goes up to a body that orbits the Earth

and connects the planet to that, and then you sort of like get out of the gravity well that way. Well, and just by climbing the tether. Well, and it's a real idea that people think maybe someday would happen. I don't think it would, because if it broke and fell, and as you may have heard, what goes up does come down. On the way down, it would do so much damage. Like maybe, it's just like building a doomsday device.

It's very fun and theory, but thinking about what would go wrong if it did go wrong, I don't like. Well, Hank, you love to spoil parties with your big, what if it went wrong ideas? And I'll tell you what, Hank, nobody ever became a centibillionaire by imagining what the negative implications of their technology proposals were.

Okay? Nobody ever became a capitalist God king by worrying about the potential pitfalls. Good point, John. I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop worrying. Yeah. How I learned to stop worrying and love the space of it. How I learned to stop worrying.

Yeah. This is Christian Givertom Zoli who asks, dear Hank and John, what's the difference between anology and anonomy? Astrology and astronomy are two very different things with astro, but they are changed by their suffix. My hypothesis is that anology was artsy, anonomy was sciencey, but what about like all the otherologies?

And then there's also graphy and metri, the list goes on and on. This has been tearing me up for a week, please help sincerely. And Zoe meet again. Oh, that's good. Okay, sure. All right, yeah. I was on, I wasn't on board until I set it out loud.

Graphy is pretty easy. It's a writing-y. So a biography is a writing-y bio, and an autobiography is... Yeah, I guess geography. Yep. Geograph is like, got a write down the earth. geography is a writing by bio and an autobiography is. Geography, Geograph is like got to write down the earth. Yep, got to draw it. It's writing the earth and autobiography

is writing the autobi. I don't know aboutonomy andology. Do you know? Yeah. Apparently the metric actually is to measure. Oh. So geometry is measuring the geos. Yeah, apparently the metri actually is to measure. So geometry is measuring the GAs. Yeah, so astronomy, it's interesting

because astrology and astronomy literally are the opposite of what they should be. So astrology is the study of astro, stars, and astronomy is the naming of astro stars. And astrology is the naming of stars. And astronomy is... The studying of stars. The studying of stars, which is backwards. It's precisely the opposite of what it should be,

but language is bad and messy. Yeah, but that's good to know that there is a different word for the study of something than for the naming of something. So actually, I would be very interested in, so if you took the word biography, and then you made it about the naming of the bio, what would that be? That would be bionemy, right? I looked it up and it's actually, like,'s, this says that it is in fact the management

or measurement of the said field of study. Oh, okay. I was wrong. I always thought I was naming. I like naming a lot better. Me too. But I was going to say, I don't actually want to write a biography of a disease or of a person, the stuff that I'm writing right now.

I want to write a biology of the person or the subject. And then I realized that biology is actually already taken. It's already been occupied. Very much so. That's space. Yeah, that's interesting that there's's already been occupied. Very much so. That space. Yeah, that's interesting that there's like that, that a biography and a biology are really different. Yeah, but actually what I am interested in

is not telling, writing down the story of something, but like finding ways to name things that haven't been named effectively, at least in my opinion. Like that's really for me what all writing is, is trying to name or give form or structure to stuff that doesn't easily lend itself to form and structure. And that would be great if there were some word that I could use for my understanding of what

I'm trying to do with writing, but biology is taken so I give up. What about autobiology? Do you think I can make autobiology, the art of writing memoir? Autobiology is just medicine. It's like human anatomy. Yeah, how pretentious would it be if I wrote an autobiography and titled it something colon an autobiology.

So pretentious. Very bad. It's so pretentious. So can I tell you something? It's so cringe. The other day, I almost tweeted and then I didn't because that's the right way to do it, that I was hoping somebody could coin a term that would be grand schemism. Because of this thing that you said in a video a while ago

that we, that like in the grand scheme of things blah, blah, blah, but we do not live in the grand scheme of things. And grand schemism being the sort of tendency of the powerful to think more about what will be and the sort of imagined future that they, that may or may not happen and less about the current problems that are not being interfaced with. Right. And that would be grand schemeism, which I love that.

I don't know why you didn't tweet that. I think that's lovely. I think that so much. Well, did I, yeah. I mean, I do know why you didn't tweet it. and I think that every tweet you don't tweet is a good decision period hard stop No other thoughts about that, but I do think that the and I I understand the fascination with grand schemeism and I understand the importance of it even of trying to think about the grand scheme of things. But when grand schemeism consumes the reality of present tense injustice and suffering, I'm not as convinced by it.

Yeah. Like there's a sort of grand schemeism that holds that the main work we should be doing is toward alleviating future suffering. And I understand the argument, and I think it's an interesting argument. I just also think that when we encounter suffering in the present and we do, we should respond. Yeah, I have a couple, I have a couple of feelings about this. One is that it may be that the, the, the best way to alleviate future

suffering is to interface with present sufferers. I think that is very long in the case that, that, that seems kind of given and like it's, it might be a little unusual for, for there to be situations where the opposite is the case. Right. Right. There are situations where the opposite is the case, for sure. Yeah, but I think that it's easy to pretend

like you found one and so don't bother me with all of this complexity of dealing with things. But I also think that it's really important for the stability of the world, like in general, for us to be interfacing with current suffering. Like if we just sort of say, like, don't worry, your grandchildren will be fine.

That's not good. That's not gonna help actually solve the problem and get people on board to solve the problem. Don't worry, we're doing everything we can to make the world better for your grandchildren is. Yeah, when someone's 20, you know? Right. And maybe I think there are times and places where that can be a compelling argument. But I think for me, it makes sense to look at where the incentives align, just on a practical

human level, where does addressing present tense suffering also lead to generational improvements. And I think there are plenty of those places for me. So I don't, yeah, I don't want grand schemeism to like I, I, I think it adds something important to the conversation that we need to pay attention to and listen to. I also think that that's why I, because like when I, when I wrote it, it just seemed like it was snarking off. And like as if grand schemeism was something to be entirely discounted. Yeah, well, I think the big risk with,

it's so hard not to have things sound like that. That's true. That's true. Especially also when you're boiling them down to a term, you know, it's almost like, it would only ever catch on if it was a way to deride others. Right, like the term manic pixie dream girl or, you know, all those like ways of, uh, ways of simplifying complexity are always kind of exciting to us because we're like,

finally, here is a framework through which I can understand everything. And also, um, dislike the people I dislike. Right. Yes. I have my may have my previous biases confirmed. Yeah. Can you please present me with a way for me to dislike the people I dislike? I will totally retweet that. And is there any way that along the way,

I can feel less like I have personal changes that I need to make in my own life to make the world suck less. Yeah, yeah, totally. Which I am more guilty of than almost anyone. I love somebody explaining away my evil. Please make it okay for me to make the decisions I want to make, please. Right. It's a lot of it. And like, that's what it is what we want. And so I, you know, I at least know that a lot of the decisions I make are the ones I shouldn't be

making. So at least there's that. Right. One step at a time, I guess. Yeah. This next version comes from Emma who asks, dear Hank and John, where should I get my next tattoo? Oh, fine. Thanks for having me. The tattoo club. I'd love your advice. This will be my fourth tattoo. I have one on the left side of my stomach, one on my right lower calf, one on my right inner arm. Where should my fourth one be? If it helps, it's of a mushroom and a gumnut. M, what the heck is a gumnut?

What's a gumnut? It's some kind of... Feels like it could go in multiple directions, that's all. It's the hardwoody fruit of trees of the genus Eucalyptus. Oh. There's something called a snuggle pot and a cuddle pie. Oh. They're the gumnut babies of author May Gibbs.

Oh. So, Grant, I'm going to look up snuggle pot now, and I bet I'm going to be delighted. I am looking up gumnuts right now, and I am already delighted that they are adorable. They are, I think, my favorite hard and woody fruits that I've ever come across. Yeah, well, actually snuggle pot and coddle pie, I have to say, a little bit and freaked out by. I thought it was gonna be 100% great, and in fact, they're kind of terrifying.

Oh, yeah, they don't, at least from the book that I'm looking at, they don't really seem to have pupils. They seem to have those dead ghost deaths. Yeah, there are, there are pupils are white, and they apparently, they don't really seem to have pupils. They seem to have those dead ghost deaths. Yeah, their pupils are white, and they apparently, they don't seem to be capable of closing their eyes. You know, in the old days, yeah, children can get a routine. Children's entertainment was just sort of

naturally horrifying. The presumption was children know the secrets, but we can't tell them the secrets. They just have to sit there with the deep knowledge of them. And that led to all kinds of weird stories. Like you go back and you read those Hans Christian Andersen stories and you're like, oh wow, yikes.

Yeah, yikes. We're really telling children the secrets. And he's like, he's like, I don't want to read that. I don't know, don't do that. These gungut babies look to me, well, they have this like perpetual surprise in their faces. Yeah. And it's sort of a horrified surprise.

It's sort of like you told them, like they just found out that the, not only is human life temporary, but the, but earth and our solar system are also temporary. And they're like, that's the look. Oh my god. Yeah. Anyway, maybe have a good evening. Eventually, there'll be like, there'll be like, I even temperature throughout the entire universe. Nothing will ever change again. We call it no forward and no backward.

We call it heat death. We call it heat death. Because it's like the final death after all the... That's the exact faith. After all the other deaths happen. It's the last one. The last death. Yeah.

We should probably call it that actually. It's a ways off, come nut babies. But you know. But eventually there will be no one left to remember that you existed. The good news is by the time the heat death of the universe comes gumnut babies will be long gone. You've got nothing to worry about yourselves unless you are hoping for there to be some vestige of you in the future, which there won't be. Thank you for coming to our party. Anyway, I'm hoping it's not Snuggle Pot that you're getting to tattoo of.

I'm kind of hoping it is. Snuggle Pot. Either way, either way. I think actually it's grand, and I want to see a picture. I think that you don't answer the question because I know you got a tattoo. You didn't tell me that you got a tattoo. I had to discover it for myself,

which was a little bit disappointing that you didn't manage it. Well, I wasn't sure what the etiquette was. I think that this is actually a great question. It's from Hank, who asks, how, like, when you're like middle-aged, what's the, or anytime? what's the tattoo telling etiquette? Do you like say, hey mom, just so you know I'm at the tattoo

parlor and I'm gonna permanently, no. No, but here's when you could have mentioned it, is when I said, hey, how's your trip with your buddies to Florida go? And you said, good. You could have been like, good, I got a tattoo. You didn't, you just said, good. What I said, I told you that I had a really good, I did tell you, I got a tattoo. You didn't, you just said good. What I said, I told you that I had a really good, I did tell you I had a great time, it

was very relaxing, we had a wonderful time, but I maybe was like, and we all went and got magic tattooed. I think that would have been the time to mention that you got to match it, but I also think it's fine for me to just find out by looking at your arm, I think that's fine. It was a great TikTok. I think that we should say where we think this tattoo should go on three, okay? Okay. One, two, three, four.

It's just, what did you say? Yours is probably better. Do you say four arm? Four head. Four. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I just think it'd be so funny to have these snuggle bunnies right there, like almost as a third eye.

I'm all about, like, I think tattoos on arms are great because they're easy to show off. Right. And I just like an arm with some tattoos on it. I love an arm with some tattoos, it just looks real good. I mean, I like upper arm. I like back. I love a back. I like back.

But I also think that this is a decision about your body. It's true. That you should not make for you. I think that, I think that you should think about your particular body and your particular relationship with it where you would like seeing the tattoo because you will be the main person who sees it. Or where you would like to feel its existence if that's what it is. And then go from there. My mind feels very lonely. I have this one tattoo. Do you want to get another one now? It feels like it needs friends. Are you thinking about getting another one? It's, I feel like I've got ideas,

but I just want to let it, what things happen, you know? Yeah. No, I think that's great. I support you 100% unless you want to get one of these snuggle bunny tattoos. That would worry me a little bit. I thought they were going to be so cute. Their names were very cute. Anyway, that reminds me that today's podcast

is brought to you by Snuggle Bunnies. Snuggle Bunnies, celebrating their centenary. In 2019, according to this website, I just found. This podcast is also brought to you by magnets. Magnets either created by humans or by the earth. That's all the magnets. And today's podcast is brought to you by Cold Rainy and Dark Mornings. They're not fun for mammals and you're a mammal. And this podcast is brought to you by Octopus Twitter. Octopus

Twitter shut down over 200 million years ago. Over the loud complaints of the world's largest octopus who was like, hey, if you delete octopus Twitter, it's going to be so much value for me. You're going to be removing so much value from my gigantic octopus life. But all of your descendants were much, much happier. We also have a project for awesome message from Emma and Jacksonville to Rachel.

Dear Rachel, congrats on graduating from law school. You are a brilliant and kind friend and the world is better for you being here. I cannot wait to visit you and I apologize for not getting you an actual card, but I figured this would make up for it. I'm looking forward to fighting the Mice with you for many years to come. The correct plural of Mice is Mice. According to this project, why are they fighting mooses? Who knows?

Well, I think they're fighting moose to be fair, which is the plural of moose. Nope, they're fighting meese. All right, Hank, so my computer stopped recording, and therefore you missed some gold people of the internet. I was really hard on Hank. We got half of gold. People of the internet. I was really hard on Hank. We got half of it.

We got my part. I was really hard on Hank for recently losing some gold and that I just lost some solid gold. It was, we had some high quality gold, but instead we're going to do the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon so I can go pick up my children from school. I'll start. The news from AFC Wimbledon is that we still have not lost a game since I visited. I don't know if it's about me, but we haven't lost

a game. That said, we did tie one one in the FA Cup, which you'll recall, Hank, is a cup competition. It's a knockout competition. It's separate from the league campaign. We played Weymouth, who apply their trade way down in the sixth tier of English football. And we tied them, which means we have to play them again in a week. And I mean, it was not a great tie for us. They had more shots than we did, more possessions, more corner kicks in almost every way they were the better team. And that's not good because they're in the sixth tier of English football

and we should be comfortably outplaying them. So it's a little alarming as ties go, but it is still a continuation of the undefeated since John watched us lose streak. This big and Mars news, Mars's crust might be a little more complex than we thought. We used to think that Mars's crust was like a just a uniform basalt. So that's like a igneous rock that was part of an ocean of magma that coated the planet until it all cooled down into the crust. But researchers studying data from the Mars reconnaissance orbiter have found that the crust in the southern hemisphere of Mars has felled spar, which is usually found in silica

rich lava, as opposed to basaltic flows. And that means that the crust might not have been formed by the cooling of one giant ocean of magma. Instead, it might have formed in multiple different phases. That's going to take a lot more work to figure out what exactly is going on with Mars' crust. Also, the Insight Lander, I think probably just sent us its last photo. It's ending up, it's a beautiful little photo, and you can go look at it by searching for a last-insight lander photo, because it did its thing and didn't get what a lot of

Mars missions get, which is way longer life than they're planned for, but did do a lot of its work. Well, Godspeed to a real one. That's right. That's right. John, thank you for making a podcast with me. Thank you to everybody for sending your questions to hankinjonnajimil.com.

This podcast is edited by Joseph Tinnum Eddish. It's produced by Rosie Anna Halz-Rohaus. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. Our editorial assistant is Debukoki Trockervardi. The music you're hearing now is by the Greek Gonna Rolla and as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.