Dear Hank & John - 361: The Murky Passions

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Why can't I sneeze on command? Do young people really not want to work anymore? Does every region have their own secret sodas? When will the Awesome Coffee Club make tea? Could I survive deep underwater if I went down there slowly enough? Why don't people say things are going North? 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 

Sorry, I have just these Hello and welcome to dear hank a John Hank I'm sorry. Yeah, it's just I It sounded like you just sneezed. I did. I'm sorry. It's never normal It's not normal. It's a concern. What happened happened? Give me the back we have to do the intro. How did this occur? It's a catastrophe. I don't know. We were just chatting and then it was time to start the podcast and and something got in there. Oh no. Is it out? I assume so. I think you need to call

Dr. Nevers Nees or Scrooge and find out if you're okay. Should I start the podcast now? Sure. or scrooge and find out if you're okay. Should I start the podcast now? Sure. Hello and welcome to Dear Haga Jon. Who is I prefer to think of it, Dear Jon and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon Jon.

Yeah. It's Valentine's Day this week. I was talking to Oran and I was like I love you buddy And he said I love you to dad and I said that's great. I mean they're an okay band But I was more wanting to know what you thought about me. I love you to dad Oh, I love you to like the edge and what's his face? You thought of the edge first. Yeah, that's great for the edge I'm happy for him. I feel like the other guy, Bono, is his name.

I feel like he gets a lot of the headlines. Yeah. Yeah, did that joke need a little bit more, you two references in it to be understandable? Like I was standing by the Joshua Tree. Yeah, with my side. Well, like he said, I love you too, dad. And I was like, I didn't ask what you thought about Bono.

Oh, I asked what you thought about me. That's something to make you closer. Yeah. I think that the problem might be in the, you know how people talk about a house having good bones? Doesn't have good bones. I think that joke might have had bad bones. Bad bones.

Hahaha. Is something Sarah and I talk about a lot in real estate and houses that somehow just have bad bones and is not what you can do about it. You talk about house bones a lot. That's a little bit strange, John. I don't tend to think much about house bones. I really only care about the bones of one house. I know, but I think it's a great luxury to be in that situation where I've got one. Yeah, and the bones seem fine. Yeah, sometimes the wind blows and the bones talk to me, but look, that's true of my own bones as well. Sure. Especially these days. Yeah. I got anything your bones would've been saying to you lately? Oh, just, um, just that they feel a little worked to the...

Oh, wow. My bones are like, if you could walk around on snow less, that would be great. Mmm, yeah. I took a big fall yesterday. I was running... You did? Along the white river and I took a really significant fall. Oh, running falls our never good. It was one of those falls where I went, I had like five or six steps in that full, wily

coyote thing where your legs are just like moving as fast as they can move. That was so funny. And so there was like, that was such a funny little gate where you can't quite get your feet back under your center of gravity. But there were probably two or three full seconds where I was like, I can save this. I'm gonna save this. And then there was like one second

where I was like, I can't save this, but I have had all of this time to figure out how to fall. So that's good. And I'm gonna do a good job of falling as well as I can. And then I got up and I was like, wow, did you do a bad job of falling? It would have been hard to do worse. Like I got up and my knee was just,

just, I could, I could, when I fall while I'm running, I always get up and immediately start running again because there's so much adrenaline inside of me that I'm just like, and I'm running, I always get up and immediately start running again because there's so much adrenaline inside of me that I'm just like, and I was alone so I was able to sort of like run and like yell it myself and yell at the universe. And I was just like, man, my knee hurts.

I really, I really hope that's sweat. That's like dripping. Yes, your knee just got really sweaty. I really, well, I mean, that hurts a lot. I mean, that hurts a lot. Because it was sort of in a panic, you know? Yeah. And I was like, God, I really hope that sweat now.

I was like, I'm just, I'm not gonna look because it doesn't do any good to look now. Oh, look when I get home. And I got home anyways. It was like, it took me a while to figure out I didn't need to go to the ER because it took me a while to like get everything cleaned up to where I could be. I know that's all right.

Yeah, that's just, yeah. I don't know what's going on there. I literally can't see it. It's under all of the stuff that should be on the inside, being on the outside. Oh, and like, it didn't hurt. Like, I mean, I ran for two more miles after I had this fall.

That's wild. Well, I had to. I was two miles away from home. Well, you could have probably good to go some other way. I probably could have walked. Yeah, I don't know. I could have made a call.

I guess I could have been a bird home that would have been a little weird for me though. I was anyway. And I felt pretty good by the time I got there until I looked at it. it was like the classic kid thing where everything's fine until you see it. And then I started, I was like, oh no, I'm very badly injured.

Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not actually badly injured. I was able to make it to the podcast and everything. That's great. I'm happy to have you here. All able to make it to the podcast and everything. That's great. I'm happy to have you here. All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one about sneezes.

Oh. It's from say I'm who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm currently pretty congested and I'd like to sneeze, but I know that's weird and that sneezing is not normal and shouldn't be condoned. But I have- I have a related question.

Why can't I sneeze on command? If we could sneeze on command, we wouldn't have to worry about doing it at an inappropriate time and we could get all de-conjusted in private. Thanks, Sam. Yeah, you can definitely like you can it's true. I mean, Wait, are you are you about to say that you can sneeze on command because that might be the only thing weirder than a physician saying that sneezing is never normal. You can't, so you can't sneeze. You can't just like sit there and be like, I would like to sneeze now and make yourself sneeze. You can do a number of things that might make you sneeze. I can make myself sneeze just by walking outside on a sunny day, for example.

I mean, every time. I mean, every time. Not reliably. Reliably. Also, if you like just snort some black pepper, you will sneeze every time. But this was a taskmaster task, which I loved, where they had to sneeze, and everyone failed at it, except for the person who just straight up snorted black pepper. And they sneezed. They sneezed. Man, it was not, it did not look like a pleasant situation.

Yeah, it's interesting like not to make this about tuberculosis, but that is my inclination in every conversation these days. It's interesting that in all of the talk about humoral flows and making sure that, you know, the right amount of blood wouldn't flim and whatnot were coming out of the body or going into the body or whatever, that there wasn't that much focus on sneezing. Like, why did we waste all this energy on bloodletting with leeches when we could have been making people snort black pepper to get some of those sneezes out? It seems like a missed opportunity to me.

I mean, they probably did that. I don't know. I mean, I feel like if that was a common treatment, Hank, I would know about it. I know about rubbing buzzard fat onto your chest. I know about drinking human milk, which was a common tuberculosis treatment. Oh, wow. All right. Here's like, in my research on the thing that I'm working on right now, here was a common tuberculosis treatment. Oh, wow. All right. Here's a, in my research on the thing that I'm working on right now, here's a weird one.

So for 99.9% of human history, we knew that if we stopped breathing, we would die immediately. Yeah. Everybody knew that. That was well known. And we had no idea why. And people didn't think about it. Like we spent, you spend your whole life breathing and never stopping and then you stop when you die. And then it's to sort of like,

yeah, that's the thing. So much so that the word respiration contains within it the word spirit or soul and the word inspiration means to breathe in and the word expire means to stop breathing. That's great. I'm going to use that. Please don't. Please don't. It's in my tuberculosis thing.

There is a little overlap. And so we've got to be... Can I read to you a passage from the infirmities of genius from 1833? Okay. This was in an era when instead of being imagined as being kind of like mentally ill artists were imagined as being very physically sickly. Oh, okay, weird.

It's part of the romanticization of tuberculosis, you know, Charlotte Bronte, even as she was suffering from tuberculosis and both of her sisters had died from her writing that she was aware that tuberculosis is an attractive malady. There's just a ton of that. But anyway, the thing from the infirmities of genius is illustrated is so good. And it's about authors, Hank, and we're both authors. So I thought that you would like this. There's a there's a description of the the authorial personality Which features

eccentricities of thought and action Waywardness, p-vishness, erasibility, mis-entropy, murky passions and a thousand indescribable idiosyncrasies and I read that and I was like Shut up and a thousand indescribable idiosyncrasies. And I read that and I was like, hmm, shut up. That's none of your business. What do you know? What do you know? Infermities of genius illustrated from 1833,

shut your mouth. I don't talk to you like that. Give me the last three again. I think the most important ones are their waywardness, their p-visioness, their erasibility, mis-enthroppy, murky passions, and thousand indescribable idiosyncrasies. Merky passions is great.

Merky passions is great. You only think of a passion as being potentially murky, but then now that you've said it, I'm like, yeah. I feel like in the 19th century, one of the biggest fears was a murky, but then now that you've said it, I'm like, yeah. I feel like in the 19th century, one of the biggest fears was a murky passion. Like, oh boy, I don't want to have a kid with a murky passion. Right. Yeah, that's a potential catastrophe. For one thing, they're going to definitely get tuberculosis. I want them to have a fire in his heart and a light in his eyes.

Well, that was the other thing, right, is that people would be like, well, we all know that farmers have this natural fire within them, because that's how they say warm in the cold weather. This isn't, John. It comes back all the, like, it's always true. Never attribute to anything what could be attributed to class. Yes. Oh, I mean, that is so true. And by the way, there were,

to inequality and injustice. Yeah, never attribute to race, what can be attributed to racism, never attribute to class, what can be attributed to classism. Yeah, this was a common problem. And also, there were lots of people who are pointing out that this was a common problem. And also, like, there were lots of people who are pointing out that it was a problem, right? So there were lots of people, for instance, there were lots of African-American physicians

saying, actually, I think, because at the time it was believed by kind of white society that black people couldn't get tuberculosis. And there were lots of African-American doctors. That would be a thing at the time who were like, yeah, no, lots of people are getting tuberculosis. We're pretty positive, pretty sure of it. And with the farming thing, there were lots of people who were like, yeah, I mean, I know a couple farmers

who got consumptive. And I know a lot more like consumptive people who were told by their doctors to go be farmers who just don't seem to have gotten better. Yeah. So it's just so much of it is about who you listen to and making sure that you listen broadly. Yes. And that's not that's not easy. It's not easy. We have a natural desire not to listen broadly. So I get it, but it leads to a lot of catastrophes like this one from Elizabeth. Sorry, I don't know how to transition. So I get it, but it leads to a lot of catastrophes. Like this one from Elizabeth, sorry, I don't know how to transition. So I just made one that didn't make any sense.

Dear Hank and John, I'm fresh off a young people, just don't want to work these days conversation. And I'm really tired and discouraged. How do you recommend addressing these comments in a way that helps people, especially older people, have a little more compassion for the struggles of the younger generation? Paychecks and provisions, Elizabeth. Well, there's a lot of research that says that data doesn't help in difficult conversations, but I think that this is one that is not yet hot enough

for it to have gotten there. And I think that data can help in this situation. Yeah. And so there that data can help in this situation. Yeah. And so there's some pretty easy comparisons you can make between the sort of like minimum wage earned in 1980 and the cost of a house or the average income in the cost of a house. And you sort of say like the cost of a house

would be like five yearly salaries and now it's 10 or now it's 15 or 20. I don't know what the exact stat is. But to have one of those in your back pocket is always nice. And also that the another piece of very clear, reliable piece of data that people understand pretty well is that the unemployment rate is as low as it has ever been. So if people don't want to work, what why are they all working? Yeah, I mean, that's a good one. The one that I the one that I like to use is

just so I can be clear when was it that young people like to work? And what the person will say is inevitably when they were young. Yeah. Is when people like to work. And then what I like to say is it's interesting that you should mention the year 1978 because in the year 1978, the US's labor force participation rate was lower than it is now. So I guess people didn't like to work that much in 1978 because fewer of them worked. Yeah, I think that this conversation hasn't gotten so heated and isn't sort of like tied into people's identity as much. But yeah, I mean, it's very easy to have like a, to have, you know, like, and when we're older, we're going to think that we worked really hard when we were young and that people aren't working

as much in the future. The young people then also won't be working hard, or we won't think that they are. It's just going to be a thing, it's always been a thing. But I think that luckily, this is an issue that isn't that tied in, I mean, it may be for some people, but isn't that tied into sort of like the heated topics of the day, which actually is space to just allow the data to tell the story and keep in keeping track of this stuff. And like, to tell the story. And to say, I don't know. Keep in keeping track of this stuff and like, here's the situation.

And so if you're having an experience, that might be that one person. And that certainly, it's, and I think it's pretty harmful to be attributing to an entire group of people something that you noticed one time. Yeah, or something that you heard about on the news, which I think is actually what it's usually about. I think it's usually about the great resignation as a concept, right? Like as an abstract idea.

Which is more of like a thing that happened because we got a good word for it than that actually happened. Yeah. Or, I mean, I think there's some legitimacy to the idea that a lot of people moved around in the way of an earth shattering, social order upending pandemic started to think differently about their priorities. That's certainly true. Imagining that as primarily being about the way that people participate in the labor force is another example of a problematic way of thinking about human value. Yep.

This next question comes from Hannah who asks, dear Hengen John, John mentioned ale eight, the ginger ale from Kentucky. Yeah. And the last episode of dear Hengen John. Yeah. And Heng said that Dear Hangin' John. Yeah. And Hank said that no one had heard of it. As a Kentuckyan, I had no idea that people didn't know about Al 8. It has been a staple of my household for years, but my question is, does every region have

delicious secret sodas? Amateur soda, kind of sore, Hannah. No! No, it really doesn't. Some do. Al 8. There's a couple. Al 8 is not just a Kentucky thing.

It's also a climbing thing. Like I was at a climbing gym over the weekend with my kid. And several people came up to me and were like, Hey, I love that you mentioned L.A. on the podcast. And I was like, yeah. I do. Yeah. So it's all so weird.

But that speaks, I think, to this emerging way of understanding regionalism, which is not geographic, but affinity-based. So climbers have their own soda, and Kentucky has its own soda. And I think that's interesting. But no, most regions do not have their own special soda. There was a special kind of Dr. Pepper in Denton, Texas until like 20 years ago, maybe. And it wasn't that different from regular Dr. Pepper. It was just-

Like a little bit of a different one. What's the one that RC Cole, that's the one that was all around for a while. But RC Cole was not really regional, is it? I mean, maybe, yeah, but like a big, big, was regional, maybe. Mountain Dew was regional. It was, Mountain Dew was very much regional to the South. And then there's things like, I don't know how to say it, is it Rabina, the Scottish one? Yeah.

Remember, like we did a show in Scotland and like people threw Rabina onto the stage? No, that was iron brew. Oh, that's what it is. What's Rabina? Is that also a Scotland? Rabina. It was Rabina.

Iron Brew. And was it? Yeah, was it in Scotland? That was Scotland, yes. Okay. Yeah, I didn't love the Iron Brew. I feel bad because I like it. No, it made my taste buds think,

I can see this, but it made my body think no. Yeah, my body was out. I'm feeling some things. Hey, I like it was like my muscles didn't like it. Like my muscles got crampy. I think it was just too much caffeine for me, maybe. I don't know that it even has caffeine. has caffeine. Rabina is a real thing. It's a berry flavored, and it's from the United Kingdom, has British origin. Iron brew has quinine, the anti-malarium medication. It's got a flavor that isn't bad when mixed with sugar.

Sure, yeah, it's sort of tonic-y. Well, there you go. I can't really think of any other regional sodas though. Not ones that are particularly good, at least that I've ever had. I've never seen this before. There's like micro-brew kinds of sodas now. Like, you've got like the fancy root beers

that are just made in your town, but there's something to the like, there was the era when sodas were originally created and then like Coke and Pepsi won, and then they bought up all the other ones, and then they're the Coca-Cola companies, but there were a few that sort of held on. Yeah.

And are like just hanging out being eight ale. And that's weird. Yeah. Whatever. And IBC root root beer and notably also Dr. Pepper Dr. Pepper is also remained free and it has it's still free It's it's the Kering Dr. Pepper company, which I think is the funniest thing in the world so good That's that's a very weird thing to have happened. I know I know I know I think what's I think what's funniest about it is that

what's funniest about it is that Dr. Pepper didn't buy Keryg quite the opposite. Keryg bought Dr. Pepper. They were like, we want that. Which is hilarious. We want that. Keryg existed for like 45 days before it bought Dr. Pepper. It's like A.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L.L. hilarious. We want that. It's cur- Currie existed for like 45 days before it bought Dr. Pepper. It's like A.L. line time Warner.

Wouldn't, if Dr. Pepper wanted to get bought, wouldn't one of the soda companies have bought them? That's very weird to me. I maybe Currie wanted to get purchased by Coca-Cola and so they were like, we're gonna get Dr. Pepper and then Coca-Cola was gonna have to get the whole thing. Well, so before, just so they were like, we're gonna get Dr. Pepper and then Coca-Cola is gonna have to get the whole thing. Well, so before, just so you know Hank,

before Dr. Pepper was the Kareg Dr. Pepper group, it was of course the Dr. Pepper Snapple group. Did something happen? No, it was, so Dr. Pepper, before being bought by K Curryg was bought by... Snapple. Snapple. Remember when Snapple was a big deal?

It was a big deal. Yeah. And so inside of the Curryg, Dr. Pepper, Snapple, group, we have a huge number of brands from Squirt. You remember Squirt? Uh-huh. They still got that to Mott's Apple Sauce. What?

To Hawaii's? That's not even a drink. To Hawaii and Punch. To RC Cola. What? Yep. They're coming for you Coca Cola and Canada Dry. Canada Dry.

Any minor soda that feels like early 20th century big red Sun kissed oh All of these are part of the Dr. Pepper Snapple group Schweps Yeah, you who also very sort of early Been around. I love a you who I B.C. Oh and the science that science stuff. I never tried that, but I see it at the gas station. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. It really is. It's one of the. John, we're going to, we have to make a company

that gets bought by Kureg Dr. Pepper. This is our new goal. Well, and it's going to be fiber supplement. No, we already have two companies, right? Like why don't we just sell one of them to the Korean Dr. Pepper Snapple Group? Yeah, it's gonna be you guys ever, you guys thought about educational content at all. Yeah, get into the educational media industry. Have I told the story on the podcast of my catastrophic interaction with the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group? I think I know how to do. I forgot. I had a meeting with Dr. Pepper. They were very excited to meet with me as a

celebrity Dr. Pepper fan. I were like, we can't wait for this meeting and all of your ideas about how we could deepen our relationship. And I was like, I also can't wait for this meeting. I've never been so nervous in my life. Get on the call. And within like four minutes, I've given them 17 ideas. I'm like Hank Green delivering new ideas. I've got a new idea every five seconds. Each of them weirder than the last. Because I said, listen, I do have some ideas,

but they're all weird. And Dr. Pepper was like, we're so excited about all your ideas. And we, the weirder, the better. And then I told them my ideas and they were like, whoa. Those are all way, yeah, you've taught you how to tell me about this. I love this though.

This is exactly what happened with me in Metamusel. I know, I know. They were like, no, you don't understand Hank. No one is like you. Like your audience, you've got all of them. You've already got every single person who's that weird. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right.

So they just want you to voice over the commercials and I'm like, well, that's not interesting at all. Then I'm just the spokesperson for a sugar water company. Like, yeah, that's not funny. You know what's funny? You know what's funny? Is spending $10 million get AFC Wimbledon promoted and in every single interview, no matter where, every single time, every single player has to mention Dr. Pepper. That's hilarious. It's especially funny since Dr. Pepper isn't even a very strong brand in the United Kingdom. That is cool. This is not a good idea.

And you're like, but it's so funny. Do you agree at least that it's very funny? It is a good idea. Like it is so worth $10 million. Like Dr. Pepper spends $10 million on like a Super Bowl ad. It's so worth $10 million for Dr. Pepper to be in the hilarious position of like supporting

a football team entirely because every single interview, the players have to say thank you to Dr. Pepper. Like that is so funny. The super cut that they make on TikTok of every ASC Wimbledon player, thanking Dr. Pepper, it's gold. It's gold. It's a $10 million idea. No doubt. And it gets AFC Wimbledon up to the third tier of English football. Everybody wins. I don't know.

They might understand their business better than you do, but I don't know. Maybe not. I've got another idea real quick. I just want to pitch it to you. You actually pitched that idea to them for the AFC Wimbledon thing. Yeah, that's a hilarious idea. Okay. Can I tell you one of the other pitched that idea to them for the AFC one of them thing. Yeah, that's a hilarious idea

Okay, can I tell you one of the other things that I pitched them? I think I've talked before about how I really thought Dr. Pepper should sponsor humanity's relationship with the moon Okay, but that wasn't my best idea last one my best idea was that the spokesperson for Dr. Pepper should be Henry the seventh of England and for Dr. Pepper should be Henry VII of England. And yeah, I can see this. And he would like... That's more normal. He would just be like, listen, I live in the 1500s. I'm the richest, most powerful person in the world. And all I want is what I can't have,

which is Dr. Pepper. I mean, it's like, it's the pleasure. I cannot know the joy of an artificial taste, utterly artificial, radically artificial, some would argue, an anti-natural taste, which is the other thing I kept trying to sell them on. Stop trying to act like Dr. Pepper tastes

like anything of this world and lean into its radical artificiality. Yep, this is just chemicals. That's what people love. It's gonna be Dr. Pepper, just chemicals. Just chemicals, chemicals, by the way, that Henry VII would have started wars to be able to taste. Chemicals that would have been unimaginable to our forebears.

Chemicals that all those people, the 93 billion people, now I'm really getting into it, Hank, the 93 billion people who came before us but are no longer here, who built the world in the hopes that one day their great-grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren could live in a world where for 50 cents, you can taste something that is not of this planet. That's what Henry VII would say in my Dr. Pepper. You could write some killer Dr. Pepper ads that I think would maybe alienate a fair amount of the Dr. Pepper audience, but I don't know. Maybe not.

That's you to be there concern. That's you to be there concern. I love that though. I do now I am sort of like very deeply grateful for my ability to have a La Croix, you know. Well, don't tell that to the Dr. Pepper Snaple group or they're gonna pick up La Croix? No, no worries.

Snap them up. No, they gotta wait till La Croix on the down part of its wave. That's where the Dr. Pepper Snaple Curric group jumps in. La Croix is already owned by the National Beverage Corporation. Well, I mean, you don't think that the Dr. Pepper Curric Snaple group could add another name to its name.

Yeah. Well, yeah, the only big brands that NBC has are La Croix, Shasta, and Fago. But they do have this, John. They're NASDAQ ticker. They're NASDAQ ticker is F.I.Z.Z. This is... That's good. Whoever did that, that's the greatest asset. Nasdaq ticker is F-I-Z-Z. Fizz. That's good. Whoever did that, that's the greatest asset of them.

Yeah, Fizz. Fizz. I love that. They also own a brand called Ripit. Hahahaha. So like their Mountain Dew competitor, they like monster energy drink is called RIP it. Yeah, fully half, it's RIP it energy fuel.

It's not how it works. Fully half of their brands are red on Wikipedia. Like they like RED, they do not have a link. I don't know. They're like, if you want to write a story about Ritz the soft drink drink you can if you want. Nobody has written that article yet. One of the brands owned by Dr. Pepper is called Desha Blue.

Oh, fancy. All right. Okay. We're supposed to answer questions in this podcast, thank not pitch, I'll put your concepts to Dr. Pepper. All right, Hank, this question comes from anonymous. You're right, so I heard you're now offering de-caf coffee if you have some coffee club.

That's cool, but when are you gonna make tea? Ooh, I don't know. I don't know. I love tea so much. I do too, I love tea. I wanna make tea, but you got the loose leaf. You got the pre-bagged. You've got the people who like their camomile, people who like their black tea. There's really just, there's three kinds of teas, John. Okay. There's green tea. There's black tea. Yeah. And there's like all the weird things that people are up to. Okay.

all the weird things that people are up to. Okay. All right, so you have three types of tea. One green tea, one black tea, and one, and we call it a weird tea that represents what people are up to, which is maybe like a different tea every month. That's like a herbal tea. Maybe, that's actually kind of, that's not what I was thinking.

I feel like you just had that idea right then and it was really good. That's actually really good. Cause like if you like something with roe booze in it, you don't wanna have the same tea every day. Whereas I like black tea and I would like to have the same tea every day. Okay, all right, so we've got.

But if you got a bunch of like flowers in your tea, then you don't want the same tea every day, you want a bunch of weird stuff. You want a tea at the month club. All right. So then we've got three products, but we don't have three products because we gotta go bagged and unbagged, right?

We gotta go loose and bagged. So we've got six products. That's a lot of work. And I don't know if we have, do we have 2,000 customers for each of those six products? That's not, I don't know, man. I think that we've, I think there's a different, I think there's a different path

that we have to start looking at here. I think it's starting up a bunch of clubs. We can't, eventually, it's just, we can't be doing everything as a different club. Right. Gotta find a, I forgot to find a different way. If we're gonna keep trying to add things to satisfy people's needs for quality products with trusted supply chains that have positive impacts on the world and donate all their

profit to charity. Yeah. It gets the size of the idea. It gets pretty, pretty fast and that's intimidating to me. And so I'm just going to go straight to the sponsors, which is the awesome coffee club's decaf, the awesome coffee club at awesomecoffeeclub.com. Now we have decaf. It's not really a joke sponsor.

It's kind of a real one. This podcast is also brought to you by all of the people who are going to come for me for the way I pronounced Roy Boos, which I'm sure is not pronounced like that. But I've never heard it spoken. I've only seen it on the T's. I've always thought that it was rhombus. But thank you to all of those people who are going to come for me for my pronunciation of Rolibus.

And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the Dr. Pepper, Curric National Beverage Corporation Company, Limited Liability Corporation. Fizz. The best deal on the stock market. And finally, this podcast brought you by Snorting Black Pepper. Snorting Black Pepper, you are in charge of when you sneeze. Don't let your body tell you. Don't let it go. What's up?

You own that body. That's not. It doesn't own you. Don't let big sneeze tell you where and how to sneeze the awesome black pepper snorten club at awesome black pepper snorten club dot com What it the URL is available You can't buy Hank dot com but you can't buy awesome black pepper snorten club. God can we talk about what happened to Hank.com? That's incredible. I mean, I really feel like I don't like to make myself the hero, but I killed Hank.com all by myself. You're not the hero.

You obviously are not anything, but the villain. The villain, eh? I like that even more. You killed Hank. You killed Hank.com. So I don't know what's going on with Hank.com right now. All we know is that Hank and I made some good old fashioned fun of the world's greatest website, Hank.com. And the creator of Hank.com seems to have taken down the website in response, which is devastating. Devastating.

Yeah. Because it was a great website and it couldn't have been, oh my God, it couldn't have been the cost of hosting because that website is four kilobytes big. Well, a good deal. It didn't go down for a little while. And nothing bad would happen.

Oh, yeah. I feel bad. I hope Hank, of Hank.com doesn't hate me now. I hope that we're still on good terms, but I could not afford the price that he wanted to charge me to buy it. Oh, well, I looked at the price and I also didn't afford it.

And I can afford a lot of things. Yeah, I was like, I was like, this is a great joke. It's not a six figure joke. You know, like me buying Hank.com and then banning you from using it is hilarious. That's a great joke. It can't cause, it's a great thing.

It can't have a comma. Exactly, it can't, it can have, it can have a comma. It can. That joke. That's a four, it can have a comma. That's. That joke. That's a four. It can have a comma. That's a $4,000 joke. I would pay $4,000 for that joke, knowing that I could probably get it.

$4,000 back by selling hang.com to some other hang. Yeah. Oh my God. To have had hang.com. We also have a project for awesome message. This is from mom and dad and Baton Rouge to Oliver. What do you call an extraterrestrial kangaroo? A Mars soupy all.

This was the first joke that you ever wrote and what comedy gold we've greatly enjoyed. Your prolific works of short stories and screenplays over the last several years. And we are very proud of the writer you are becoming. Keep asking questions actively listening and finding humor and empathy everywhere.

High school's gonna be great. Mom and dad. Mars Super, that's good. Mars Super, it is good. That's the kind of energy I want you to bring every week. That's my bad. I should, I should console Oliver. You should.

You should. Ha ha ha. This question comes from Jim who asks, do you hang a John in your recent video about the deep sea exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium? You mentioned that creatures don't need to be stored at the same pressure as the deep sea because if they're brought up slowly enough,

they're able to adjust. Does that work the opposite way? If I were in a submarine and it ruptured, would it quickly, I would be in a lot of trouble. But if I went down real slow, would I be okay and could I survive assuming I have enough oxygen? What a gem.

Great. That's good. Gem, no. Don't do that. We got a couple of problems, specifically the air that's inside of us. So you gotta have air couple of problems, specifically the air that's inside of us. So you got to have air inside of you, which is why in like some science fiction, they breathe in like a liquid breathable thing, and that would allow for your lungs to get the

oxygen breathing this liquid thing without air, which is very compressible. Oh, what's that move? Air can squeeze very tightly. It's the abyss. And that's real. We can make breathable liquids now. And we've tested them for various situations where people's lungs are damaged, actually, more in hospital situations where their lungs are damaged and having them be in a liquid could actually be therapeutic. But it turns out that while people can survive and be fine, it doesn't seem to have much therapeutic value.

Yet, I don't know. It's a script that is maybe in the works in SciShow, and so we've been looking at it. But the big problem is that air is compressible, and so anything that would have air in it would get squished. Now you also do want to go down very slowly when you're going to any depth because there's nitrogen in your blood. There's often times nitrogen in the air that you're breathing, though sometimes you can have scuba tinks that don't have nitrogen, and that can dissolve, and the higher pressures will dissolve more nitrogen in your blood, and then as you come up,

the pressure decreases, and that nitrogen will no longer have a force dissolving it in your blood, and it will create bubbles, and then you have the bends, where you have air in your blood vessels, which is very bad. But that's a separate problem from,

you cannot go to a certain depth in the ocean because you have gas inside of you and that gas will compress to the point where you no longer will be able to breathe. So, let's try to avoid that party, Jim. Yes, it's neat, though. And the fish and jellyfish and stuff that they have at the Monterey Bay into the deep exhibit are all animals that don't have gas inside of them. Because there, and there are deep sea animals that do have gas inside of them and you cannot bring them up. Interesting.

All right, we have another question from Ori who writes, dear John and Hank, my ten-year-old daughter, Ori is a new nerd-fighter and has the following question for you. If people say things are going south when something bad happens, why don't they say things are going north when something good happens? Ori and Rachel. I think we've got to get rid of this whole idea that south is down and north is up. As you know, Hank, I think we need to just do a way with it. I think we need to start saying going north when things are going south and going south when

things are going north. I think we need to... Well, there when things are going south and going south when things are going north. I think we need to... Well, there is a way in which that makes sense. Actually, are you ready to get your mind blown? Yes. The North Pole is a South Pole. What what? So the Accompus needle is the North part of a magnet,

is the part that points north. And the North part of a magnet is the part that points north. And the north part of a magnet points to is attracted to the south pole of another magnet. And the earth is a giant magnet because it has got lots of stuff flowing around on the inside. So the earth is a giant magnet. And the and the north compass needle points to what is a north compass needle point to the South Pole, a South Pole, but it's pointing north pole. We know it in North Pole is a South Pole.

Yeah. So we need the South Pole of the giant earth magnet. So you're right. But also everything's subjective and there is no up and down. The sores just do not have a tougher body. I feel bad for Ori having to tell them the big news that there is no up or down or left and right except in so far as you're observing it as you are. And that matters.

So your left is left of you, but it's not left. Well, the weird thing is that we extend this out to the whole rest of the solar system and so like we've got a top of earth and also we've decided that there's a top of Jupiter. And there's a top of the Sun. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, that's why that Jupiter storm is always in the same place, even though it's not. It is always in the same place, but whether it's up or down is in our minds. Yes. Yes, the part of the planet, because it is in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, I think. Just so. Yeah, just below. And so I think that we sort of think of it as being like on the bottom half of Jupiter. But the weird thing is that there is,

so the solar system and Earth does have like two sides. There is like, it's a flat thing. So just like a piece of paper. There's one side and there's another side. And it seems like you can't have us like sides without having one be the top side. Ori, we don't know the answer to your question. Is this a problem with my brain?

We don't, that got too deep for me, Ori. I got kinda, I started to feel a little vertigo. Sorry, you're kinda upside down. Hank, before we get to the news from Mars and AFC, we'll then I just want to say one thing about two or two things, one about a number of emails that we received. So my first novel looking for Alaska came out almost 20 years ago and it's recently been targeted for removal from a lot of high school English, curricula, and also from school libraries. And the most extreme example of this so far is that a parent filed a police report

saying that a teacher who'd made this book available had committed a crime, a felony, by distributing them seen material to children, and which would also make me guilty of a felony, creating that obscene material for children. And it's a very weird time in my life, professionally. It is weird to have this happening with a book that's 20 years old and has been very generously received over the years. It's just a strange situation, but I do appreciate your kind words about it. And the main thing is that I am not the main character of those stories. The teachers and librarians whose careers are affected are the main characters. And so if this is happening in your community and there are ways that you can

support those teachers and librarians, that would be the kindest thing that you could do for me. I just think in addition to being, you know, like I can get really hot about this, it seems very extreme to me, but it also seems like ridiculous. It seems, well, I mean, it's ridiculous. It seems like people have gotten really disconnected from reality. And not a lot of people, but people who have support and have community around this stuff. And it's, it's, like, I don't, like, the fact that we have to take it seriously as wild and of course we do, but it also like, it should be said that it's just very silly. Like these people, and like it comes like it's the same with the freaking M&Ms

being part of the discourse. It's just ridiculous. People are like are not connected to things that actually matter. No, it's definitely silly, but it does really matter when a teacher is forced out of their classroom for three weeks and is subjected to multiple interrogations in a police department related to making books available to kids. So we do have to take it seriously because of that, because it's affecting real people's real professional

and personal lives in such intense ways. But it's obviously ludicrous. I mean, I've read Looking for Alaska, not recently, but it's not just to state the obvious, like it's not pornography, and like nobody who reads it would conclude otherwise, you know, like period, period. Yeah. And so, you know, taking it to that extreme where you're subjecting somebody to potentially, you know, catastrophic consequences for making a book available is, yeah, it's ridiculous,

but it's also kind of terrifying. There's something about our moment where the ridiculous and the terrifying are have intertwined in some ways. Speaking of the ridiculous, several people have written in as well Hank to talk about 16 weeks to glory. My idea for a streaming show, it wouldn't stream on Netflix, it would stream on Dropout or something, in which you and I train hardcore for 16 weeks,

16 weeks to glory, and at the end of it, we box each other. And lots of people have said that they don't like that idea. Almost universe. Yeah, like me, for example. You don't like that idea. Our spouses don't like that idea. And for that matter, our community doesn't like that idea. The only person who likes that idea

is the guy who was book-less boxing reviewer in 2003. But Josh was written in to say, 16 weeks to go, is of course a phenomenal idea. You need a goal, a glory that is as funny as boxing, but not as violent and dangerous. The answer is the world's largest obstacle course, and I am interested.

I also like it, like, because partly because an obstacle course the obstacles can be anything. They could be anything. It could be they can be chess. Whoa, did we just think of chess the same time? How did that happen? I don't even know the rules. I don't even know how the game really either.

Why did we talk about chess at the same moment? And like they could it could like, you have to... The game of chess has to end. So you don't have to win. It just has to end. You have to... Yes. You have to play both sides and you have to get to a resolution.

Right? Oh my god, that sounds miserable. It is very possible, by the way, that I would end up drawing myself. I would like, after 45 minutes, I would be like, well, I guess it's a tie. Yeah, the end game, I'm just not strong in the end game. It just told me how the king moves, Jesus. Yeah, it could be, so it could be a mix of physical obstacles

and psychosocial and emotional obstacles, like maybe Oh, emotional obstacles. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to like stand there while your friends compliment you. Yes. Or it's very awkward. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you gotta say like three things sincerely about yourself that you've learned that you love during the 16 weeks. Oh, that's great. That's how about this one. You have to say on adjective, and we're not telling you which adjective it is. I love it.

I love it. Just the back to the other idea that we have that was bad. How? Okay. Okay. We have to name a US president, smaller group. Name a US president, but we, it's one of them, but we're not going one of them, but

we're not going to tell you which one. I mean, it is like, Millard, Phil Moore. No, the great thing about that is that like, if you know the obstacles in advance, you can train on them, right? So like, you're trying to, I think some of them should be surprised. Okay. I love the idea of like training on the fastest chess resolution. Oh, are you trained on the how to say the president's most quickly?

Yeah. Yeah. And maybe it's not, maybe it's not alphabetical. Maybe it's not chronological. Like maybe, maybe what you actually have to do is say the president's with the shortest names first. Oh, I got an idea for a great obstacle. Okay. Something impressive that the other person

doesn't know about you. So we have to like create a skill that we didn't have before 16 weeks to glory. Right. Where you have to like play the star-spangled banner on the flute. Yeah, you've got to be peeing with the violin. You've got to be Pia with the violin. You've got to have a secret snake handling skill that you haven't told anybody about. That's a separate old joke. And that one... The secret snake. That one is not like you got to race through all of these. That one maybe would be crap. Yeah, you know, some of the points. Well, I actually think they like Hank learning to play the flute was less impressive than John wording out of Charmacobra.

All right. That's great, John. I love to fantasize about the things that we definitely can't do any time soon. I don't know, man. I feel like if we just kind of collectively agree to clear the decks and prioritize our physical, psychological, and intellectual wellbeing in 16 weeks to glory, I feel like good things could happen.

The world's weirdest, it doesn't have to be the longest obstacle course, because there's all those like mud run races. Oh yeah, I was thinking it's the world's weirdest, it doesn't have to be the longest obstacle course because there's all those like mud, those like mud run races. Oh yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking it's the world's the weirdest. The world's longest inflatable obstacle course, not not any mud races. There should be an inflatable obstacle course portion. Yeah, exactly, but it shouldn't all be inflatable obstacle course and it should and and and it should be some kind of point system where a lot of it's timed, but not all of it. Right. Yeah. So like there are points where the timer stops and then you like get time to do something. Right. It's like the I did a rod. Like you've got to,

you have to take some rest for your it's. It's a multi day obstacle course. It's like a three day, 16 hours a day obstacle course. Great. This is such a funny idea and like it would honestly not be a bad Netflix show. I mean, I agree. I think that is probably the funniest idea we're gonna get because like it allows for a lot of different funny ideas. Yeah.

Could we just go to wherever they film wipe out? And have that be part of it? Just assume that it's like still there, but sort of in a slightly decayed way. Like, yeah, part of the opposite, of course, is up to 20 years. You have to break into the wipe out course. Obstacle one. Make your way into the wipe out zone. Oh, man, we have to pick a lock. I'm in trouble.

If we've got to pick a lock, I actually, I retire. Not going to be me. I'm not going to wait in the pit of a lock. I've seen that lock picking lawyer guy do it. It looks very easy. Oh, yeah, it does look easy when he does it. All right, hey, it's time easy when he does it. All right, it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. The news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon lost

a football game, but I have to say we want I watched the game and we looked we're up against the best team in the league late and orient. We looked now they have had two losses in their last five game. So they're not like on a tear or anything. I thought we looked pretty good. I thought we were a little unlucky to lose. I was very frustrated that we didn't finish a couple chances. And being frustrated about losing to the top team is a reason we could sign, I think. So the most important, the headline remains,

AFC Wimbledon 15 points clear of relegation with 18 games to go. We probably need like four more wins in those 18 games in order to stay up. So I feel pretty good about that. I feel like we can do that. Seems like that happened. And so be hard to lose all of them.

Well, tell that to us last season. You did lose a lot in a row. Yeah, we didn't win a game for like 283 days. Yeah. So anything's possible, but we're in 12th place with 18 games to go. Looking pretty good. All right. Well, in Mars News, a curiosity rover has found a meteorite,

which the team has named Kakao. It's about a foot wide. It's a big meteorite. It's a big chunk and it's standing out a lot from its surroundings because it is made of metal. It's mainly made of iron and nickel. And so it is like gray, almost shiny, like it's a big lump of metal. The team released a photo of it, which is really pretty.

You can see all of it's like grooves and pits, which are called regma-glips. When the regma-glips form when cacao was going through Mars's atmosphere and the hot gas melted the rock as it came through the atmosphere. Yes. You thought Hank's pronunciation of roibus was bad. I mean, I don't know. I definitely know roibus was wrong, but regma gliptozy might have got right. We don't know how long since it's been since that meteorite arrived on Mars. It's one of a few meteorites that the rover has found

since landing in 2012, including the 2016 golf ball size meteorite that was named Egrach. And it's easier to find meteorites on Mars. I like to cow a lot more than I like Egrach. I feel like they really stepped up their game between Egrach and Kekal. They realized that people were paying attention. Yeah.

So it's easier to find meteorites on the surface of Mars because there's not as much stuff happening. There's not like water flowing around and there's not as much geology. Just like it's easier to find meteorites when you're on Earth, the easiest place to find meteorites is Antarctica because not a lot of waterfalls there. The snow falls very slowly. It's basically a desert and also it's very white.

So anything that you find there, how do you get there somehow? So if it's there, it's probably a meteorite, which is wild. Or human trash. It could also be human trash. It could be both. It could be a meteorite I didn't want anymore. John, thanks for making a podcast with me.

As always, we're off to record our Patreon only podcast this week in stuff, which you can find at patreon.com slash deer hankin' John, where we're going to talk about things that made us happy this week, hopefully. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Metash. It's produced by Rosie on Halls-Rohas. Our Communications Coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chauk-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast,

is by the great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. you