Dear Hank & John - 352: Self-Serving Sarcophagi (w/ Sarah Urist Green!)

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Who decides how a name is pronounced? What would you preserve for the future? How do I make sure I'm kind? Have you purchased your burial plots yet? What can I do in Indianapolis? How do I impress with rollerblades? Have you considered going to Ireland? John Green and Sarah Urist 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 John and Sarah. Or as I like to call it, Dear Sarah and John. You know what I loved about that Sarah? With the passion you brought to it, holy crap, I almost fell off my chair. Well I can't pretend as if I haven't said that before. You're... I'm bringing... You're bringing a lot. 106.7 Orlando FM radio DJ energy. And I think it's it's overwhelming me. So I'm I like turned it down to balance

you out. What was that couples do, you know, what was that? MPR cooking show delicious dish. Sarah's bringing delicious dish. Yes. This is dear Sarah and John after dark after dinner. That's right. We just had dinner. Now we're having a glass of wine. It's an advice podcast where we offer you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, although in this case, I can promise you neither do be a advice nor news for Mars.

I offer only sincere advice and no news from Mars. Okay, great. So far, we're off to a roaring start. Hank is, it's actually not clear to me what Hank's doing this week. I'm the one with the busy week, but for some reason he can't make the podcast. So we're here. It's Sunday night. It's a lovely evening in Indianapolis.

There's still a bit of snow on the ground. Sarah. Yes. Before we get started. We don't usually do, we don't, we don't usually have special guests on when they have promo to promo, but you actually do have some promo to promo. I do. Which is that you have a new course about art appreciation from Bright Trip.

That's true. And it's great. I don't know if you guys know about Bright Trip, but it's an amazing organization that offers courses on a variety of subject matter, including like travel, photography, how to visit Japan and not feel like an idiot. And I have made a course with them about how to appreciate art. And we filmed it earlier this year in Washington, DC.

And I've been working on it. And I think it's really cool. And I'm gonna be excited to share it. Yeah, so check out Bright Trip, the Art Appreciation Course from Sarah Yerr's to Greene. All right, I think that's all the promo. Usually when Hank is here, I have to do so much promo

because he's like, what about the socks? What about the coffee? Oh, we do have socks and coffee. We do have a light roast coffee now, by the way, awesomecoffeeclub.com. We got a sweet light roast. If you're interested, all the profits go to charity. All right, let's get on to the podcast portion of the podcast. Let's do it.

Let's start with this question from Coco, which is the name of one of our closest friends, kids. Yes. So I don't know if this question is from Coco, but it seems like it could be our Coco. Okay. Let's hear it. The question is, dear John and Sarah, a friend of mine pronounces his name one way while his mother pronounces it differently. Who is right?

My name is not Kau Kau. Coco. Now that makes me think it is our cocoa. Uh, I, I, I, how else? Okay. All right. Um, I, I think the answer to this is both our right. Oh, I think the answer is that the friend is right.

The mother, but no, the friend. Why? Well, okay. Let me offer you a hypothetical. Let's say Henry walks upstairs right now. He's 12 years old. Yes. Walks in this room and says, mom, dad, moving forward, my name is pronounced all-re.

Why? What would you say? Like, I feel like we would have to listen to him. It's his life. It's his name. Yes, okay. Okay. So you're you're you're concluding that the friend knows the the individual's desire. I'm saying if the individual pronounces his own name one way that is definitely the French pronunciation. Okay. Yeah.. The fact that the mom wanted a different pronunciation, like, I'm sorry you imagined a different infant. Well, let's look at it more generously, John. Okay.

What if it's a name that's specific or more specific to a region or a culture, and there's maybe say an Americanized version of it. Oh, do you see what I mean? Then they're both correct. Then they're both correct. You're right. I was trying to get to a firm answer and life is always a little more complicated

than I'd give you credit for. I love the gray. I do. I know you do. Yeah. I just want to stay in the gray. You want to stay in the gray. Not just in terms of the way you look at the world as

every dichotomy is in fact a spectrum that we haven't yet given credit for, but also literally you wear gray every day. I think that might be an exaggeration. I do happen to be wearing gray right now, but so do you. I am. You're wearing two shades of gray. Listen, we've been together for 20 years, okay? Yeah. And also you bought these pants. That's true. You are. You are. You're. You're. You're. You bought both of the gray things that I'm wearing.

So, uh, shut up. Okay. I like gray. I know. Literally metaphorically. I so you know what cocoa? We're gonna live in the gray and Say everyone is potentially right. It's a case-by-case basis I'm just saying if Henry comes up here and says his name is now all re I'm gonna be excited I think you've got to ask the friend What they prefer and go with that. Well, the the friend pronounces the name one way. Right. So that's... You go with the friend. You stick with your friend.

You stick with your friend while maybe also acknowledging that the mother has a perspective that's worth listening to. There we go. Sincereity. Okay, this is gonna be a super sincere, this next question. Do you want me to work on being less sincere? No, I like it. No, I like... Okay. I like your earnestness. I think it's good.

It is reflected well on it is it is something about you that I haven't colonized a little bit on my journey toward becoming more earnest. Okay. And I think that's been great for me. I used to be a snarky little snooker. Snarky snooker. What were those cartoon animals called who lived under the sea in the 1980s? They weren't the... Well, because I was thinking of the octanots. They weren't the shrewtales.

They weren't the shrewtales. Now in the old days, they had the snorkel. Oh, I did not want to. The snooze. The snooze? I was a snarky little snooze. Okay. But I was a snarky little octanot. Okay. But I was a snarky little

lot to not. But I've gotten over it. Okay, let's let's move on. Next question comes from Joelle. Who writes, you might have seen on TikTok that guy who built a sarcophagus for a bag of flaming hot cheetos with the ingredients of flaming hot cheetos and scrimed on the sarcophagus. The intent is for them to be discovered in 100,000 years. It's the latest thing I saw that again confirms that humanity is pretty incredible. If you could, what would you put in a sarcophagus for posterity and why? Momentumory Joelle. If you haven't seen this TikTok, oh, it's so good. You have to find it and watch it. You can just Google it if you're not on TikTok.

What makes it extraordinary, which is the case, I've started to realize, this is how I feel about all art. What makes art really good for me is the quality of bit commitment. Yes. It's the little details, it's how hard you worked on the ridiculously kind of unimportant parts that often shines through.

Yeah. And this sarcophagus was made with tremendous competence and love and commitment and fear. They went all the way. They went all the way making a coffin that contains within it a... How is it? It's cast in resin, a bag of flaming hot cheetahs, cast in resin. Cast in resin. Yeah. And then suspended within this cement sarcophagus that has been... He's attempted to rid it of all bacteria.

Right, right, so that it doesn't get ruined. And he also has suspended it in such a way that it can survive an earthquake. Even if there's like a magnitude 12 earthquake, this sarcophagus will survive, it raises the lovely possibility that in the distant future, whatever comes after us will only find one certain relic of us. Right. And that is bag of flaming hot. So here's my beautiful idea. Okay. Imagine a distant future. Okay. We uncover this sarcophagus of flaming hot Cheeto. Now initially people must will be just like, wow, God, I guess they really into flaming hot cheetos. Right.

Did they worship the Spag of Cheetos? This was their God. Yeah. But then I think eventually they would be like, no, you know, we have flaming hot cheetos from other languages in other places. Okay. And my hope, my dearest dream would be that this flaming hot cheetos becomes a Rosetta stone that we have,

like, it's the way that people of the future learn about English. I see. Maybe there's only the Cyrillic alphabet in the distant future, and they use the Cyrillic ingredients of flaming hot Cheetos to understand what the Latin alphabet meant sound was. So are you imagining a series of these sarcophagi in different languages all over the world?

No, although I think that's a beautiful idea. What I'm imagining is that the rest of Earth is fairly well preserved and North America is an absolute wasteland. Okay, but I don't think I don't think you're answering the question. What would you put in a sarcophagus for posterity? The other version of this is like when Carl Sagan and a bunch of other people got together to design what was going to be on the golden disk. On the golden disk that we were going to send in to space. What it was called.

Maybe aliens would find it. That seems right. The golden record. The golden record. It was something like that. But it was very cool. And they put like earth sounds. Yeah.

Singing different languages. It's very beautiful. Yeah. And they also put like images of humans. It's the golden record. Yeah. Yes. It is a lovely thing.

It's very lovely. You should listen to it if you haven't and I think it's great in general To think about this stuff because it helps us to understand what's important It helps us to try to look at ourselves from the outside You know what I would do Just just thinking about it now, you know, I may have a different answer if I was Say given more time, but I would have an artist create some sort of landscape in it. And that's a recreation to show what our cultures, what our community look like, or even just

our natural world, because who knows what it'll look like. But I definitely would've wanted artists involved who, like, whether it was rendered in delicately cut paper or maybe it includes lots of different materials and minerals and something that would show that would show sort of expertise and care and beauty. That's good. My answer is the fault in our starts. It's a novel. Okay. And I'd like it to be the only novel that people in the future know about because if it's the only novel, if they don't know about Hamlet or Macbeth or Tony Morrison or Jane Austen and it's the only novel. They'll think it's the only novel.

They're gonna like the Bible. There's going to be like, this is incredible. Wait, but if you were going to pick any of your books, you would pick the Fault in Our Stars because if you if you did the Anthropocene Reviewed and they were able to understand English, then they could learn so much more about our world. Well, it's good to know what you think is my best book. Well, no, I'm not saying it's your best. I'm saying I would choose the Anthropocene Reviewed

because I feel like it contains more information about our culture. Maybe, but I feel like it wouldn't work as the only nonfiction book. Or is it think the fault their stories would work as the only book? Work a fiction? Yeah. I've people be like, oh, wow, this guy made up the only story.

I wouldn't actually do that, of course. It would be terrible. If I would put, I would put beloved in there with a great God's spear. I would go back to Cheetos in another language. Cheetos in another language it is. Yeah, I do for Cheetos and Danish, I guess. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

When we were in London, I don't know if you saw it, but when we were at the Science Museum, there was this exhibit that was the first ever known effort at data visualization, which was like over a hundred years ago, and it was a piece of poster board that basically correlated the average salary to child mortality. Oh, interesting. I did not see this. One of the things that I would put in the sarcophagus would be a graph explaining that beginning in 1990 humans worked together to reduce the risk of

mortality among our most vulnerable members, young children, by over 50% in 30 years. Yeah. And then, because I think that's the thing I'm proud of this stuff. Are you trying to make up for saying that you wanted it to be your book? Oh no, no, just to be clear, this graph would be inside the fault of our stars. It would be right in the middle of it. Okay. Yeah, that's how you keep it flat, so. Yeah.

Well, maybe we could go in together and then my book, You Are an Artist, could be in there too. Yes. I love it. And I want the idea of calling the Flamin' Hot Cheetos guy and saying, hey, we'd like to commission you to create a very self-serving, unfunny, uninteresting, sarcophagus, which only serves our own narrow interests. Can you do that? Are you available for that kind of work or are you more looking to make a Flamin' hot Cheetos content. Yeah. That same person, by the way, I'm interested in this person

because I feel like their work is really the first place where I've seen full meme culture start to infect the art world. Like that work seemed to me like proper contemporary art that is also a meme. It's also a joke. And I think that will happen more. Well, there's also a history and art of sort of performance or action, like incorporating the process into the art and then, you know, maybe in the gallery, you don't have the sarcophagus, but you have the record of it happening.

You know, like you have some sort of visualization like the TikTok that's in the gallery that shows you what happened. Like the creation of spiral jetty or a viroberates myth and more. Right, but spiral jetty seems to me fundamentally less absurd Right. Yeah. Right. But spiral jetty seems to me fundamentally less absurd than. Yeah. So I'm interested in the sort of revival of absurdism that, you know, going back to

data, just ideas about art and how art will be elevated that we sort of return to that. And we can sort of see, I feel like through the Flamé Hot Cheetos sarcophagus, we can sort of see how thrilling and new and exciting the Duchamp must have been to his time. You know what, I wanna know. I wanna know what everyone else who's listening to this would put in their sarcophagus. Well, that's gonna be a lot of email, Sarah.

I'm going to need you to check the email for the next few days. No promises. Okay. All right. Let's move on to another question. This one comes from Daphne, who writes, I am 15 years old and every now and again, I feel like I'm a bad person. Sometimes the things people say get on my nerves and I feel like I have no right to be

annoyed about it. How can I tell if I'm a bad person or if I'm just a teenager who hasn't yet mellowed out? How can I ensure that I grow up to be a kind person and a positive presence? Do be as advice appreciated. Daphne. Oh, Daphne. Getting annoyed at other people never goes away. No, you're not going to mellow out of that one. No, you learn to, hopefully you learn to let it bother you less. Don't let the bastards get you down. Yeah.

You know? There's definitely an element of that, but I also think that it's normal to be annoyed by people. And it's also, I think maybe as you get older, the thing that you hope to be able to do is to say, oh, I find that really annoying. And I'm sure there are things that other people find annoying about me.

You mean say it to yourself. Say it to yourself, totally. Yes, yes, Sarah. Thank you. Hello, person. I find your bandier. I find you sexually annoying. And it's not your fault.

It's just like the tone of your voice is unbearable to me. When you laugh, I can't stand it. Don't say that, Daphne. No, say it to yourself. I mean, I think... Or maybe even think like, huh, I wonder why it is that this person saying again to yourself only, I wonder why this person is bothering me so much. Yeah. And then maybe it will say something to you like, oh, I need to, I need to cultivate new friendships. Maybe that or I need to maybe I'm in a bad mood.

Or maybe everyone is a little bit annoying. And many people we can love anyway. I remember my religion professor, Don Rogan, who was a great mentor to me, told me once, and it took me years to realize that he was talking about me directly. He told me once, you know, the things that annoy you about other people or the things that annoy other people about you. And I feel that very helpful. I don't, I don't necessarily agree with that. Really?

I don't. I think there can be more than one reason. You don't find it annoying when people are like a little pretentious. I'm going to try not to be. I'm trying not to be annoyed by you right now. No, I mean, I think, sure, I think that's one way that one can feel annoyance is recognizing something that bothers you about yourself. But do I think that's the only way to be annoyed?

No. Yeah. No, Professor Rogan was great at Pithy Quotes that don't always hold up to careful scrutiny. A little bit like Fitzgerald, the king of that. There are no second acts in American lives. What a great line. If only it were true. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, your family tends to annoy you. Right. And that's because they know you well and often know exactly how to needle you. I think that's part of it. I also think it's when you're weak at anyone all the time. There are going to be things that annoy you. The challenge and opportunity is to love people anyway, or to find ways through it. So I don't think you're a bad person. No, you're not a bad person, Daphne.

Or feeling annoyance doesn't make you a bad person. I don't think... No, you're not a bad person, Daphne. Well, feeling annoyance doesn't make you a bad person. I also think that worrying that you might be a bad person is perhaps a good sign that you, that, yeah, that you're, you're being thoughtful, that you're considering, you're considering others, you're like trying to be a good person. But to Sarah's earlier point about living in the gray, I think the vast majority of us are not dichotomously good or bad. I think we all contain the capacity for terrible cruelty and we all contain the capacity for compassion and care. And at times we will feed different parts of those selves and we will get different results when we do.

Right. All right, Sarah. This is a huge question. Okay. And I saved it for right before the sponsors so that I can, so that we're not joking. Okay. There's not a funny question. All right. It's a question from Mason.

Dear Sarah and John, have you purchased your plots in Crown Hill Cemetery? I remember my grandparents give them to each other one year as gifts. They took my sister and me to see them before they were in use. And I must admit it was a strange day. Happy estate planning, Mason. We have not. We have not. We have not. We got a cold call email. The long time ago. Eight or nine years ago from Crown Hill Cemetery from like a very nice

salesperson there who was like, are you interested in this spot on the hill because it's available? And I was like, that seems like a lot of money to pay for a spot on a hill. Right. For my corpse. Right. I mean, I guess I could say it just hasn't been a priority for us. We haven't had any major health scares or anything like that. I feel like we'll work it out. It's the great thing about burial is that you can work it out after it. You know, like, so we know, we both know the broad outlines of what the other wants. We both have living wills. We both have all that stuff. We haven't like purchased pots because I also, I mean, are we really ready with potentially 70 or 80 years left

to live in your case, in my case, somewhat less? Are we really ready to commit to Indian apolis for eternity? Well, we won't experience being there. You know, I don't know, I don't know what happens down there. Haven't you seen our town? Well, yeah, I mean, it wasn't that long ago that I, it was my, it was my wish to not die here. Oh, yeah. I'm very sad. But I've had a big turn about it. Yeah, Sarah was like, I'm, anyway, it's the way I feel about Florida. Right. I'm sure I've told this story on the podcast before, one time, Hank and I were in Orlando,

and I had a serious health scare. I had to go to the hospital and Hank came like, he like rushed to the ER and was like taking care of me and just hanging out with me and chatting and everything and the doctor came in and was like we got to take we got to keep you overnight and I was like listen doctor if there is a 1% chance I am going to die I need you to get me in an ambulance and drive me to Georgia because I am not dying in Orlando. Well, if you, you know, never say never a kind of thing. Just know if I do die in Orlando, it wasn't your wishes. Please, please play the following audio. John

Green desperately regrets becoming deceased in Orlando, Florida, his hometown. There you go. It's official. But I know, I know because I've studied a lot of the lives of artists. And people have second and third acts. Artists, non-artists alike. And Georgia O'Keefe found herself and her artistic voice later in life, living in New Mexico. And if she had chosen at an earlier time in life, she would have chosen differently. So I think personally, I'd rather allow for natural evolution and not sort of make that decision now. I'll tell you what, I would make the decision now if Crown Hill agreed to my stated wishes of having 500 tons of soil piled atop the body body of James Whitcomerily at the top of the hill,

and then I would be buried directly above him. Oh, God. Poor James Whitcomerily. Sure, he was a nice man. Yeah, John doesn't really mean that. He thinks it's funny. He thinks it's funny. So if it's... First off, it is funny. The author of Little Orphan any. You want to overshadow anyone who comes to. I don't want to overshadow, he's here. I want to literally be buried on top of him. Okay. All right.

I think we've answered this question. By the way, I recently at your request wrote out some stuff about what, about if I died. Yeah. And. And this is not for any specific reason. Oh, yeah, no. It's mostly because, because I've worked with artists and artists of states, it's always amazing when an artist has clearly written out what their hopes and wishes

are for their work after they're gone. It's super helpful to those who are put in charge of managing their property and creative life. Yeah. And that's why I send in the document that I want copies of the fall in our stars to be buried in a thousand sarcophagus around the earth. I know you did that. No, but one of the things I said was that I would like use scissors to like cut out or

like before anyone else read it. I would like alter it and be like, no, that never happened. No, but what I did, what I did say was please know that the James Whitcombe Riley bit is a joke. I would not like to be buried on the hill, bury me at the bottom in the valley with the people. The people, of course, being four vice presidents. Right. And US president Benjamin Harrison. Sarah, all of this reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Crown Hill Cemetery,

Crown Hill Cemetery, legitimately the best account on Twitter, which I've realized is not saying much, but what? I mean, they're keeping me on Twitter just their account, just keeping me on Twitter. It's incredible. They have a new dead person every single day and they know so much about their lives. That's great. Yeah, this podcast is brought to you by Crown Hill Cemetery. Their slogan is like us on Facebook. For like 15 years their sign had one of those like replaceable text like a Wendy's like a Wendy's. Yeah. Where you put up the text ever two for one. Yeah.

Yeah. Burr or whatever. Yeah. Frosties. For going with Wendy. Really good specific Wendy's. And then but it bears said like us on Facebook. And I passed it every day on my way to work. And it was just, there's something so beautiful from the years of 2007 to like two years ago. To the pandemic. To the pandemic.

There was something so beautiful. About this cemetery having on its sign, Crown Hill Cemetery, like us on Facebook. Like us on Facebook. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. It is a beautiful place to go. Oh, it's incredible. I mean, I talk about it all the time.

It's one of my favorite places in Indianapolis. Unfortunately, somebody just got in a car accident and hit that sign. Yeah, they got to get a new one. And so they got to get a new one. Today's podcast is additionally sponsored by Flaming Hot Cheetos. Flaming Hot Cheetos, the only relic of humanity's fall. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Daphne. Daphne, who is a good person.

We also have a project for awesome message to read from now to Clara, not Clara. I hope I did that right Clara. As we approach 10 years of friendship, I wanna say how deeply grateful I am to have you in my life. Whatever you're going through, whatever either of us ends up, I always want to hear from you.

Our connection is deeply important to me and I am so honored to have a best friend like you. Thank you for being here with me. I love you. Not a part of the message, but thank you, Hank and John. I've been a nerd fighter for 11 years now, and it's such a wonderful part of my life. Lots of love to you both as well. No, thank you for that lovely message to Clara. Lucky Clara. Lucky Clara. All right, Sarah, we've already answered this question. Okay. We're still going to ask it. It's from J.C. who writes, dear John and Hank and Sarah.

I recently moved Indianapolis from out of state. I'm trying to explore the city. So far, I've visited the loom at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as well as the Uranus Fudge Factory off of I-69. Two ends of one bizarre spectrum. Tell me, what else am I missing? Hooters and hay rides, J.C. J.C.

You got to go to Crown Hill Semiteir. It's incredible. You want all the way up to the top of that hill. And that's where you see James Whitcomerily. But if you look up right now, you can see the sky, but not for long, JC, not for long. Someday you'll see me. You've got to go to the Museum of Medical History. Oh, that's a good one.

That's a very good one. That's a weird one. Yeah. It's small and weird and specific. Yeah, off putting, but in a good way. That's a weird one. Yeah. It's small and weird. And specific. Yeah. Off-putting, but in a good way, I think. A lot of medical devices. Yeah.

Yep. You've got to go for a hike or a trail run at Fort Benjamin Harrison. Yeah. I tried to think of the things that I didn't discover until later on. I love Fort Benjamin Harrison. Eagle Creek State Park is one of the largest urban parks in the world. Now, I know what you're going to think when you go there, Jay-C, this is not an urban park. It's true. But Indianapolis is geographically a very large city and the swallowed Eagle Creek

State Park. And it's a great park. Yeah. I don't think it's called Eagle Creek State Park. I think it's just called Eagle Creek Park. But it's a great park. Yeah. I don't think it's called Eagle Creek State Park. I think it's just called Eagle Creek Park, but it's great. What else? There are good bagels here. Oh, the bagel fare. The bagel fare who's signed out front just reads. Bagels. But they're like real, their bagels made the right way.

They're super delicious. Oh, it's hard to get bagels that good in New York. They're at $86, they're like by the target at $86 in Westfield. That's honestly, if you go to, I don't know, with some JC, I've only lived in Indiana for 16 years. I don't know where anything is, okay. What else? What about, I like how we're like, hey, what should we do in the city that you've lived in for 16

years? And our answer is go for a walk, eat some bagels, and walk around the cemetery. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. What else? What about, um, if you go up to like fishers, you can go on a one day trip, a canoe trip on the White River, which Sarah doesn't love just because of the GRD. I wouldn't recommend this. I thought it was really fun. There's lots of great cycling. Yeah.

I mean, Indianapolis is notably flat. And now's the time. So it's quite a pleasant place to cycle. J.C. have you thought about walking into a corn field and just eating some feed corn and being like, wow, this is what cowsie is not that good. That's a fun thing you can do in Indianapolis that you can't do in a lot of places. You can go to the can can cinema and brass or you have an art cinema now, the can can. That has good food too. you can go to the idol? Oh, this is the weirdest coolest thing in fountain square. There's this

interesting little garden called the idol and it is basically a theater for watching the intersection of two gigantic interstates. And it is weird and beautiful and very specific. You should do that. There is nothing anywhere on earth like the idol. And the person who made it, who's mostly responsible for it, is a true Indianapolis original. And when I thought of it because he also helped start the can-can. responsible for it is a true Indianapolis original.

Oh, and I thought of it because he also helped start the camp camp. Right. Yeah. Fastening again. You know, you're, Jay, see the important thing is that you're going to be okay. Yeah. Indian Alps is a great, great city. And it gets better. The longer you're here and the more people you meet and the more people you know who can tell you the best bagel places and so forth. Right. All right, we have another question from Mariah who writes, dear John and Hank, I recently bought rollerblades. Now, my friends like to go rollerblading and I've

never gone with them because I don't know how, but I am practicing and over the next couple of months, I intend to get very good so that when I visit my friends over new years, I can join them. Just with your, as with your surprise, Fiddle or dilemma, for many years ago, what is the best way to go about surprising my friends with my new roller-weighting skills? All I want for Christmas is mad skill, Mariah. Ooh, I have an idea. What is it? I have an idea too. You go first. My idea is great. Well, then I'll go first because I don't know how good my idea is.

Okay. So you get good. You get good. Yeah. Um, you figure out your rollerblading persona. So like you figure out what kind of an outfit you're going to wear. Do you go like 80s, Jane Fonda? Right. So whatever it is, is it more of a 75?

Or do you go like hard golf? Or 90s, you could go hard on the 90s, because that's really when it was born out the world leading. Punk rock 90s, or you could go Nirvana 90s, you could go brunch. Okay, or you can disregard all of those ideas and find your own rollerblading persona.

And then, and like some like walk out music kind of thing, like you got to figure along with that, like what kind of music goes along with your persona. And then, once you figure that out, you before you see them, you make a TikTok or a video. Okay. That is like showcasing your rollerblading persona and skills, and that way you can sort of control it.

Yeah. Because I'm a little bit worried since you still knew that you're gonna like... Maybe two months isn't enough. Maybe two months isn't enough. I'm worried about that too. And if you can sort of control the sharing of it. Right. To really highlight your skills. Yeah. It'll put less pressure on the in-person reveal. Right. I like that. What I really like about it though is the really leaning in to your rollerblading persona, giving as much time to developing

who is rollerblade Mariah, as opposed to just who is Mariah, as you give to the rollerblading itself. So for every hour you spend learning rollerblading, you also need to spend one hour learning who rollerblade Mariah is. That's right. So what's the reveal? The only thing I know about roller blade Mariah. Because I'm obviously not Mariah. Yeah. But I do know one thing about roller blade Mariah, which is that roller blade Mariah does not listen to music via AirPods or via headphones. Rover Blade Mariah listens to music via it coming out. Oh, I was going to go boom box. Right. Some form of boom box. It has it comes out.

Can you just gesture to run your midsection? This is where I was picturing the boom box. I was picturing sort of, no, I was picturing, boom box. I was picturing, no, I was picturing. You know what I was picturing, Sarah? I was picturing a fanny pack that contains with init a mini boom box. And so it feels like the music is emanating from your fanny pack. A speaker. A speaker, if you will.

A mini boom box. It's sort of, what if you shrunk a boom box down to being a single speaker? A Bluetooth speaker. If you will. Okay, imagine a technology thatunk a boom box down to being a single speaker? A Bluetooth speaker. If you will. Okay, imagine a technology that turned a boom box. That made it progressively smaller. And there wasn't a radio, but via some kind of magic,

it was connected to your phone, which via some kind of magic wasn't connected to a wall. Okay. Okay, that's what I'm picturing. Rollerblade Mariah definitely listens to music. Does the require 17D battery? She does, absolutely does. Rollerblade Mariah only listens to music

that everyone around Rollerblade Mariah also has to listen to. The party goes where Mariah goes. And that's all I know for sure. Okay. I think that it might be better. But you think the friend reveal should all be not recorded, just like. Here's what I love about an in-person reveal. Yeah.

Imagine rollerblade Mariah rolls up and looks really nervous and uncertain, except for the fact that rollerblade Mariah looks more like a professional rollerblader in 1997 than any person has ever looked. But like on the actual rollerblades, it's like super uncomfortable and like seems to be almost falling over and it's like all shivery and shaky and then the music kicks in and it's a fake. I see. And suddenly rollerblade Mariah is going like one leg out in the air with the karate kick and rollerblade mariah is going backwards and doing some like dance moves, roll rollerblade. Like a pool shark. Like a pool shark. Like Paul Newman in that movie. The movie loses the first game. Turns it around. Yes. Yeah. So like, so you, you, where I, you come out, you stumble.

Maybe you fall. Maybe you fall. You're wearing all of your pants. You're definitely wearing all of your pants. You've got the, you've got the risk of, you've got the risk of. Oh, you definitely have the risk of. You've got the helmet. You've got it all and you're, and your wobbly, you fall.

And then you've got somebody helping you who turns on your special music that you have choreographed. Yes. A series of moves to. And it's like I have the tiger or something. And you just shoot off down the rollerblading run. Yes. So you've got two options here. They're both really good. Control freak over here with pre record. John would just go live. Yeah. There's the doors between wanting to control everything and just having a deep, deep belief in yourself. Yes. Unwarranted, especially. Good luck. Oh, Mariah, this is exciting. We're so excited for you. Yeah. All right, Tara. Before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC, Wimmelden,

I want to let you in on an email that we received from an 11-year-old named Mina, possibly Mina. I'm not very good at that stuff. Probably Mina. Who writes, dear John Hank, my name is Mina, I'm 11 years old. My mom listens to your podcast, and yesterday, well, I don't know, walk, I heard it for the first time. And in the episode, a question was asked about where one could go that would be the furthest away from any venomous

creature. And you said, I slipped. I would like to propose an alternative English speaking country, Ireland, where I live. Legend has it that St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes in Ireland. And we do not have scorpions or tarantulas. We do have a false widow spider, but their bite is like a bee sting. It's not a big deal. We don't have mosquitoes, but we do have midges usually found around lakes. Their bite is a bit itchy, but nothing like a mosquito bite. I think that my country would be a great alternative to Iceland. I hope you agree, pumpkins and penguins mean it, Meena. I agree. And I wanted to read this to Sarah.

Yeah. Because I think Sarah also agrees. Well, and unlike you, I have been to Ireland. I have been to Ireland, you know. You have? Yes. I performed in Dumblin with my brother in 2012. We haven't been together.

You've never been together. And you haven't really explored Ireland. I don't need to explore Ireland to know that they speak English. It's where my ancestors are from, and it's in the European Union. That's all you need. Yeah, Sarah. The bar is pretty low. Oh, I'm sorry. Here are a few other facts about Ireland. Yeah. They have universal access. This is going to blow your mind to healthcare. Yeah. It's going to be good.

You are. You can walk into an doctor's office and receive healthcare. I like Ireland. Yeah. I just, I don't believe in the geographical cure. I know. Well, I don't believe in the geographical cure either, but what I will say, Mina, unless you're like fleeing oppression.

Is that my great grandparents? Left Ireland for America in search of a better life. Yeah, I actually, I don't think I would honor them. I take it back. By leaving America for Ireland in search of a better life. John, John, I have to amend my previous statement. I don't believe in the geographical cure to like specific personal problems. Right, right, like you're geographical cure to like specific personal problems.

Right, right. Like you're unhappy. Yeah. I need to move to California to start fresh or whatever. Right. Because wherever you go, there you are. I can't stop eating flaming hot cheetos. So I'll move to Colorado.

And I'll never, you're going to find them. You're going to still find flaming hot cheetos. But if you, if they're very good reasons to move and a lot of people have to move and the, a lot of those are very legitimate geographical cures. Yeah, yeah, totally. The point is, Meena, we agree with you. Strains. I know it's beautiful and great.

No, I know you're only a leaven. Yes. Meena, and I don't want to put too much pressure on you. But if you could get us a passport, we would we haven't applied. We'd be open to it. You know, that's all I'm saying. If you can get us a passport, we've got an open mind. Yeah. I think it was my great great grandparents that came over from Ireland because I'm like one generation too far to get an Irish passport that way. Yeah. But.

Couldn't you apply and get some like, authors passport? I don't know. That seems like a mean of problem more than a Johnnie football. I feel like mean is on it now. Yeah. Mean is gonna get to work.

Great. Thanks, mean. Thank you. All right, Sarah. You already know the news for the AFC, Wibble Dinn, because you can't escape it living in this house. But it's true. Here's a fact you may not know.

AFC Wimbledon on Tuesday, they beat the top team in league two, wait and orient. Top of the table. They've really been doing so much better since we went to a match. So much better since we went to a match. Yeah. In fact, they have now not lost a game in seven games. Wow.

Do you know what all seven of those games had in common? Tell me. I did not tweet during any of them. When A, C, Wimbledon play and I tweet during the game. They lose. They have one two games drawn for and lost six when AFC Wimbledon play and I do not tweet they are literally Undefeated this is at the point now where it's not just statistically significant

It's starting to seem like at some point correlation is causation. Like at some point, it's true. I was ruining the team by tweeting, and now I have addressed that issue, and the team is co-hearing. I'm actually really impressed that we got this far into this podcast recording without talking about Twitter. And here we are.

It's here. It's happening now. I mean, if you think it's hard to be married to me in re Twitter, imagine Catherine. I know. I know. I feel for her. AFC Wimbledon after beating Layton Orient 2Nil, and it was the best performance I have seen from Wimbledon in years. It was unbearable. The late Norean fans were furious. They were like throwing flaming flares onto the, on the, flaming flares. I told you, onto the pitch, they were so angry.

It was incredible. And we, that's going to be my band now. Flaming flares. That's a good name. We were absolutely unbearable to play against. We made the second half so boring, so long. Remember when we watched that game against the Sun United? Remember how boring Sutton made that second half after this chord, the goal.

It was like that. And late and orient top of the table hated every second of it. I loved it. Then we went and played Salford City away over the weekend and we tied Neil, Neil. And again, we were unbearable to play against lots of fouls, lots of breaking up the play. Just tough committed. There's this 20 year old kid who plays full Mac for us. Jack Curry, who's played for Wimbledon since he was 11. And I love watching him play. He just pours his heart out. It's incredible.

I just, right now I am in love again with AFC Wimbledon. I have fallen in love a new, and AFC Wimbledon are now Sarah in third place. Wow. Among all the teams in the bottom half of the table. Okay. Okay. Okay, all right, that was good. So we don't have Mars News this week

because Hank's not here, but we're gonna have a new segment, a Sarah specific segment called What's happening in the pottery studio? What is happening in the pottery studio? So the most interesting thing that happened in the past week is that John is taking pottery with me right now. And I messed up what I was doing.

And I sort of squished it because the fun of throwing pottery on the wheels that you mess up. And you go like, you can kind of like squidge it and try to rectify the clay to use later. And John was like, stop, stop, stop. That's cool, I like it. It was so beautiful. And I was like, all right, all right. So I took the little squidge. And then I realized that after I cut it off the wheel,

it looks like garlic. It looked like a garlic clove. It looked like a garlic clove. And so then I took it home and let it dry a little bit and then I carved it like a garlic clove. It looked like a garlic clove. And so then I took it home and let it dry a little bit and then I carved it into a garlic clove. Yeah. And now I'm waiting to get it back from the kiln and I'm very excited about my little garlic.

So I have to thank you, John. You're welcome. It's very cool. And there's going to be a little hollow space in there. Yeah. Which I always love. I loved closed vessels where we have to imagine what the hollow space inside must be like. There does have to be a hole.

I did have to poke a hole. Don't ruin it for me. Well, I was informed that it would explode. So it doesn't have to be like a huge hole. So it's just a pin perk on the bottom. Hmm. Okay, all right. Well, we'll see. Unless it might have exploded in the kill.

I might have to fill that in with a little bit of clay just for my own, just for my own joy of imagining what must be going on within spaces we cannot see. Okay, all right. Thanks for potting with me. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. This is fun. Everybody check out BrightTrip. RightTrip.com. BrightTrip.com. Great. And look up my course. How to

appreciate art. It's a really great gift for yourself or for somebody in your life. And it's not all the kind of usual stuff about like the golden ratio or like composition or movements or things like that. It's like actually about how to feel comfortable around art and how to talk about art and make the most of your experience, no matter what kind of art you're looking at. So check that out at Breaktrip.com. Thank you to Sarah for co-hosting the podcast. Thanks to Tuna Mettish for editing it. Tuna, as always, great job.

Sorry that I'm not better at this. Thanks to Rosiana Hoss Rohoss, our producer, also to Brooke Shotwell, the Boke Chakravardi, who is our editorial help, although not on this one, because there's no science stuff. But still, thank you to Bokey. And the music that you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola.

And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. you