Dear Hank & John - 365: Some Guy Died in This House

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Are there any liquid planets? What should I know about tuberculosis? Do we eat rocks other than salt? Why do I like crickety leg rubbing? What do I wear to an orchestral Ratatouille event? How do I hide my birthday? Is 100^99 bigger or smaller than 99^100? How do full moons work?  Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

hello and welcome to dear hank and john doors i prefer to think of it dear john and hank it's a podcast for two brothers and see your questions give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both mars and a f c when will them john uh... co-worker of mine uh... ordered me uh... got me a calendar uh... it says it says twenty twenty three dad jokes

but i counted and there's only 365. I think that they got ripped off. That was like two dad jokes in one. It was like, yeah, there's not 2023 of the hand. I didn't really sell it. I feel like, like, oh, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, like the calendar had a bunch of pages ripped out of it. It's a rip off calendar.

You don't see those anymore. You don't see enough 65 day calendars. 65 day rip off calendars. It's true. Yeah. I think that we have like them in the computer now. Back in the day. So I've got so many things on my desk already.

I remember like my parents had a far side. 365 day calendar. That's very specifically. My parents had a far side, 365 day calendar. And they had motivational quotes, one that I really enjoyed. I was like weird words, weird words. Different weird word every day for the whole year. But I love a quotation.

I love an inspirational, pithy quote. As you may know from entirely agree with what I've done with my career. Do you want me to pull up your quotes page? Is that what you're asking for? I know from entirely agree with what I've done with my career. Do you want me to pull up your quotes page? Is that what you're asking for? The John, the reason that the joke, by the way, today is that this is the 365th episode

of Dear Hank and John, as far as I can tell, which means you can listen to a Dear Hank and John every day for a year, and not listen to two. That's right. It's very, very exciting. So most of the quotes on my quote page are things that I said. But only... It's back to myself, everybody.

Only most. I have a few of those, yeah. No, you're most quoted. It's not me. It's not you. But I have one that is always attributed to me. It's been liked over 10,000 times on Goodreads. I did not say it, and I deeply, deeply disagree with it.

Like it bothers me to no end because I really, I kind of take it personally that people think I would say this, which I know I should. What is it, John? It's this. What is it? People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used. John Green looking for Alaska. But of course, that's not in looking for Alaska. And I don't wow. The world is not in chaos because I love Diet, Dr. Pepper.

Like I should, it's fine to love things. Loving things is good. Yeah, you can love things. Yeah. But also love people. Of course. But also, I don't think it is a night. I see, I see why you click on the like button on that one though. It feels like, you know, you're,

but I don't feel, feels good. I just don't think people were created to be loved either. I don't think people were created to be is a correct beginning of a sentence. Yeah. Well, the thing, the thing that also that happens is that characters say things and then you said that they, that you said that thing and I'm like, no, I don't even like that.

Right. He was the bad guy. That's the villain. Don't blame my name next to that. I have one like that where people are like, what's the point if you don't at least try to live an extraordinary life? And I'm like, that's on page four and the entire book is about why he's wrong. Yeah, people are like, yes, yes.

I can tell you up for that grind set. I can see that hustle culture in my veins. Exactly, exactly. You got to boy-boss your way all the way up to the sun. I can see people taking some of the quotes from an absolutely remarkable thing out of context and using them to be like, you gotta, you know, you gotta grind and sacrifice whatever's necessary

for the coming technological revolution. Yeah. Well, hey, who's to say? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's gonna, what's gonna turn out to have been the right way to do it. Maybe in a hundred years people read an absolutely remarkable thing and think all the good guys are the bad guys

and all the bad guys are the good guys. Oh, as long as they're still reading it, John. Yeah, I suppose. All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners. It is a really good book. I was just talking to Henry today about how great those books are and how nobody else has ever helped me understand the internet, the way that those books do.

And the weird thing is, the older the internet gets and the more the internet gets really, really weird and a little scary, the more I'm like, oh, Hank just saw this. He just saw it all coming. It's incredible. Yeah, I mean, when you write about it, when you sit down and you think about it all day for a bunch of days in a row, and you're writing it all down, that helps. But nothing has made me feel more inferior

to my brother than looking at his good reads quote page, and then going to mine. Well, we write different kinds of stuff. You're like, here's like 200,000 likes, and I'm like, 328. Well, 246. And the one with 328. Well, 246. And the one with 328, I didn't write. What's it me?

And then it's 246. It's been excellent down. I'm really struggling here, John. How's the line that I wrote that you put in an absolute remarkable thing doing? It's it's at 98. It's 98 likes. So it's it's less than halfway down. Oh man. Oh god that's it's it's one of the best lines I've ever written and I can't believe you stole it.

So for those who don't know in an absolute remarkable thing there is this great line. I had a very happy childhood. I just wasn't a very happy child, which is the kind of like, that's everything people were created to be loved and things were created to be used as trying to do, right? Like it's got the symmetry, but it's true. It's accurate. Yeah, it's very true. And it's very, it's not true of me. It was true of you. And it's very true of April. So you just stole it. And we were like, I just stole it. We were like, on a bus or something.

And Hank, it wasn't even like, yeah, we were on tour. It wasn't even like, hey, can I have this? It was like, hey, I'm using this. It works really well here. It wasn't a question. You were just letting me know. Yeah. Well, look, I think I pretty sure that I was like

on the tour bus for Turtles all the way down. You were. Editing an absolutely remarkable thing. Yeah. Well, look, I think I pretty sure that I was like on the tour bus for Turtles all the way down. You were. Editing an absolutely remarkable thing with like a very tight deadline and I had to like be in the bus in the back. Yeah. Like feeling motion sick grinding through this thing. Yeah.

And so you owed me everything at that point and I was, anything you say, Cannon will be used in the book. That's fine. No, I'm all in favor of it. And I do appreciate you going on tour and support of my book for a month. That was very generous of you. And then your book, I think I went on tour with you for like three days.

So. I got that quote though. You got that quote. All right, Hank, I wanted to ask you some questions from our listeners. OK, that's the thing. We're going to begin with this one from Jack, who writes, dear John and Hank, are there any liquid planets? I get that Earth is mostly water on the surface,

but it does have some solid at its core. It seems unfair that solids and gases get planets, but liquids get left out, cut liquid some slack. Jack. This is funny because there's a coffee chain in my town called liquid planet and I was like, yeah, I think there's four. That's the liquid planet in Mizzoula.

Can you have liquid all the way down? Well, you know, that's a good question. I don't think that you can have liquid all the way down because I think just the pressure of that much liquid, if it was a planet, would make some things happen. Also, it'd be really weird for it to be that consistent. I don't know what sorting process would be necessary to have there be just water and not a bunch of other dusty stuff. Mm-hmm. So if the universe is doing that kind of sorting, it's possible, the universe does weird sorting.

But I don't see how that would happen, but there are definitely planets out there that are, the surface is 100% water. No land. And probably no land. Yeah, and like there's no reason why I don't think there's any reason why Earth isn't like that. Except that like continents and an active continental

plate situation are higher up because they're less dense rock. So it's sort of like at the top of the rock of the planet. But there could be more water and all those things could be underwater. I don't know why there wouldn't be more water and we'd just be a water world. Right. That's definitely possible.

And because it is possible, it is 100% probable in the universe this size. Somebody sent me a while back a picture of the world map according to fish that is just like really focused on the oceans and sees land as a sort of, you know, as ancillary. And it was very beautiful to look at. And it did make me think, I hope they don't have to think about us. I hope that most of the time, they don't know about land. I think I hope that this is what their world looks like to them. I think that they definitely have to think about us. Well, of course they have to think about us sometimes, Hank, because we are in inconvenience to them at times. But I'm saying that like, if you are an individual turtle,

I think you might have to not think about people. I think you might be able to have a whole long turtle life without ever once having a thought about a person. I love this map of the world according to fishes so much. I'm looking at it right now. We'll put it on the picture. It is incredibly beautiful. I feel like it could be done in like a more like

science fiction-y type way, or like the beginning, like the map of the, I don't know, middle earth. That's what I was trying to think of. Oh, middle earthy way. Kind of way. Yeah. That would be super cool. But what I love about this map is that it helps me

understand that there are, there are not four oceans and seven continents. No. There is one ocean. No. There is one ocean. And an occasional interruption by areas that the ocean has not yet overtaken. Yeah. For sure. And I also, an interesting thing is that from my understanding of fish, an actual map according to fish would have the continental shelves, which is where most of the fish live. And then there's like these areas of the

ocean that are only for specific fish, uh, and plankton and planktonic things, and fish who are going to take a big risk. Because that open ocean is a whole different vibe. Yeah, there's just, yeah, there's that occasional fish that's just like, hey, I'm setting off in search of the unknown and all the other fish are like, but things are pretty good here. And that one fish is like, yeah. But have you ever thought about,

maybe there's weightlessness up there? That fish is looking out at the open ocean and says to its friend, what's the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? I saw it on John Greed's wiki, goodreads page. It's like cold. It really moved me. Sharked immediate. Exactly. Because you didn't read the rest of the novel. You had to read the rest of the book, face. Okay, you can't decontextualize quotes like that and expect them to guide you through life,

even though that's what I did for the first 25 years of my life, fish. I also had to learn that lesson, fish. Yeah. But at least I didn't get eaten by a shark. Not yet. What question are we answering right now? We answered it. This next question comes from Whitney who writes,

Dear John and Hank, I live in Wyoming, I own cats, I enjoy audiobooks and I haven't been to the dentist since 2019. Is there anything that I should know about tuberculosis that you suspect I might not already know? Bacteria and antibiotics, Whitney, Whitney? Thank you so much for your question. There's so many people just turned off the podcast. I'm gonna find a way to reach it.

You know what I'm doing, John? I've got to. If you're going to make something with this tuberculosis knowledge, you don't want to, you don't want to completely, you're going to have to create a break to it. So you're, you're wetting people's appetite now, but you got to get them hungry again. No, disagree. Here's one thing you might not know about tuberculosis. Such was the incredible romanticization of tuberculosis in the early 19th century. That after, after four of her sisters had died of tuberculosis, the great novelist Charlotte Bronte wrote in a letter, I am aware that consumption is an attractive melody.

Like, and then when she wrote about someone dying of consumption in Jane Eyre, she talked about the death being painless and being beautiful, even though she had to have known that the true story of death from consumption is much more complicated than that, and much more horrifying, which just speaks to how profoundly our stories about the world shape our understanding of the world. I feel a little bit this way about people giving me massages.

Mm, like there's like very soft music playing and everybody seems to think that it's great, but I always, it always hurts a lot. And I don't know why, and I feel worse afterward. That's not just like dying of consumption, but I get your point. That actually comes from Kayla who asks, Dear Hank, a John, I was cooking the other day

and adding some salt to my food. And I started to think about how salt is just a rock. Yeah. Why is it that we eat this one specific rock, but no other rocks? Are there other rocks that we eat that I don't know about? This rock is sodium tasty. Oh, that's good.

Kayla, I didn't get it until I read it. Sodium. Yep. Did she? Yeah, I got it. Okay. I got it. It's almost a curse word. Uh word. It's such an important rock.

And it is a, so another rock that we eat is ice, which we usually eat in its lava form. So a melted rock, which is wild. And that's the main rock that we consume is melted ice. Yeah. Melting sodium is actually weirdly salt has one of the highest melting points. Where I just just say a very high melting point. So if you ate melted sodium, you would be in a whole lot of trouble. But we need a bunch of different minerals to exist. We got to get that calcium. Iron. It's kind of a rock. Iron is rocky.

Potassium, very important. Can't live without potassium. That's also kind of a rock. Yeah. So you have a bunch of these things. But sodium chloride is exceptionally important because our bodies run, like our sort of neurology runs on pumping sodium ions around, also potassium ions. So we need to consume a lot of sodium, which is why we crave that mineral, and we do indeed crave that mineral. And our just, you know, bags of living chemistry that

were that evolved on a planet that had sodium and potassium and calcium and iron available and utilized those things in making our bodies work. So, wild and great. Yeah. And yummy. It's very strange to think. And our appetites exist to get the things we need

into our bodies. Hmm, I mean, usually, but I also have appetite. It's messed up. It's messed up to get things into my body that I don't need. That, I don't know if everybody knows that when we start to do mic check, John always sings the McDonald's theme. I do.

Every time it makes me want McDonald's, and I'm like, it's works so well. Yeah. I am not in control of anything. The loudest noise I know how to make into this microphone is ba da ba ba ba. And if I can pull that off without peaking that I know that I'm gonna be good for the rest of the episode. But yeah. How does I just say check check like a normal person. Well and then let's finish the story Hank. You say check check like a normal person well and then let's finish the story Hank you say check check like a normal person then you say hello and welcome to dear hanka john you say oh no i peaked very paked i was way too

loud i got to turn it down as you just did the bottom up up up offing every time we could save 30 seconds a pod maybe we could have more pod for the people all right this next question comes from nola who writes dear john and hank why do I always want to rub my feet together under the blanket, it's like a little cricket. I know I can't be the only one who does this and I can't help it, it just feels so good. It makes my brain wrinkle smile, comfy and cozy Nola. I don't know Nola, but I do this too.

Yeah. I can only suppose that it's good for you, and so your body wants you to do it. It's kind of like, I don't know why. It's like, it's like for you, and so your body wants you to do it. I don't know why. It's like how you want salt. Must be. Yeah, it's like how you want salt. Heck believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds

where everything that we want to do in any moment is the right thing. And I, that is not my experience of being alive. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I rubbed my feet together as a way of trying to like self-destruct. Actually, it's like that they're going to be like a report on like like rock 101. Yeah. And they're like doctors have released a new study that says people who rub their feet together under the blanket like a little cricket are actually have stiff arteries and are going to self-destruct in any moment.

Stop doing that. That's right. There's a paper out in the journal of feet rubbies. That's right. That's the leading night time foot rubby expert reports, that rubbing your feet together like a little cricket is associated with drawing 30 years younger than regular people. We can't prove that it's causative and not correlative, but we have noticed that everybody who rubs their feet together like a little

cricket is a miserable empty soul. I, there's never been a person who's done it who didn't eventually die. That's true. It's true. It is associated with a 100% death rate. I do it because it feels nice and sometimes I think it's funny. It's funny that you say like a little cricket. No, but because sometimes I think like, did I get this from cricket? I think like, did I get this from Crickets? Like, if we take them common ancestor, if we take it back far enough, is there like some common ancestor that was like,

ah, the only relief, the only thing that helps me fall asleep in this terrifying world of 120 million years ago, is rubbing my little feet together like a little Cricket. And that's why we do it. Can I say to everybody like next time somebody asks you what your favorite word is, let it be in consideration cricket. What a cute word. It's a great word. It's so great. It's the noise they make, but it's also just totally on its own, it's just fantastic.

There's gotta be so many brand names that like so many brands named Cricket because it's just such a good, cute name. Right, it's an onomatopoeia that is actually a good word, which almost all of them are, right? Like, like, is not a great word. Is not a great word, but cricket. Cricket.

Cricket. I think it's the, I think it's the, it's the concept. It's right. It's the cut and the toe. Cricket. Yeah. Cricket.

Yeah. It's great. It's great. Language is awesome. High-quality work whoever did, whoever did cricket. Thank you. I've just added just the word cricket to your goodreads quote page. Thanks.

Cricket. Hank, I agree. I could say that. An absolutely remarkable thing. And the things I said. It's important to attribute it to a book incorrectly because that makes it seem real. Yeah, yeah. People are like, I'm not reading that whole thing.

Just to find this. Just next question comes from Paige who asks, Hello, brothers. The symphony in my town is doing a performance where they play the movie Ratatouille and have an orchestra play a accompanying music. I have five friends flying into town to see it because we have over committed to the bit.

Wow. What should I wear to said event? It's an orchestra, so my first thought is fancy, but it's also Pixar's Ratatouille, have over committed to the bit. What should I wear to said event? It's an orchestra, so my first thought is fancy, but it's also Pixar's Ratatouille, which makes me feel like I should maybe dress as a chef. Dubious fashion advice, appreciated page. Page, you cannot wear a big tall chef's hat

with a rat under it. No. The whole time. You have to take it off so that people behind you can have a good view of the movie Ratatouille. But. But if no one has a rat at the show, I will be disappointed.

So I think you dress fancy, okay? Here's what I would do. I think you dress fancy and of course part of dressing really fancy is wearing a hat. Okay? Like, is it? Oh yeah.

I mean, like a fancy hat, not like a ball cap or a chef's hat, like a, you know, like a fancy person hat with like feathers and stuff. Okay. Gotcha. And and a really maybe a wide brim, not tall, but it's got some width. And I do think that you have a rat underneath the hat. I do think that I think that that, I think that's the bit. I think that's the bit is that there's a rat in there. So I think that you need, I think that the rat's going to need to be in more places than just one.

So you all have to bring a little cage for the little rat. No. But it's not that hard. You have to bring a little cage for the little rat. But it's not that hard. You've got to know somebody who's got a rat. You got to let that rat be free, Hank. That's the whole point. Don't let the rat free at the Symphony Orchestra is a lesson that I have learned thus far in my life.

I think you have to. I agree with you. Man. I agree with you. Man, I agree with you in terms of like what's like the wrong thing. You don't want to yell fire in a crowded theater kind of thing, but like I think that the symphony has to know what it's getting into. I mean, they're right. Well, if the, if the, like really, honestly, it should be directed like the, the little maestro. The con just. Like the little myestro.

The conjustra. Definitely be a small rat. What's that movie that I watched all of, even though it was 17 hours long? I don't know what you're talking about. The, does it have a little myestro? Hank and I have had a conversation offline and upon further reflection, even though this is a dubious

advice podcast, we would like to state for the record that you should not bring a living, uncaged rat to a symphonic event of any kind, including a playing of the music from the movie Ratatouille. And the movie Ratatouille. This sounds like a great thing. I would love to go to this. And I'm very happy for all of you.

I hope that you have a fantastic time. All right, I think we have another question from Katie who writes, dear John and Hank, how do I politely decline telling people my birthday? I don't want people making assumptions about me based on my astrological sign, because frankly, I don't buy that stuff, but when people ask, I can't think of a respectful way of telling them that I don't trust them with that information. Probably a Leo or a Gemini, but I'm not telling you Katie. or a Gemini, but I'm not telling you Katie. You first, you got to say, you got to say,

so do you just want to know what my sign is? And then they say, oh yeah, I was wondering what your sign was. And you say, I'm not going to tell you my birthday. Well, in that case, I'm definitely not telling you, no, you got to, what's the thing? So there's a bunch of constellations that aren't in the zodiac.

So pick one of those. Be like, I'm an Orion. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, and they'll be like, what? And they'll be like, yeah. I'm the little Dipper.

It's like it's a, it's a c, I'm a cusper. Yeah, I'm a little Dipper. And little Dipper's like me like, we tend And little dippers like me, we tend to just, we tend to dip, you know? You tend to hear a lot about it. No, yeah. No, we just kinda, we tend to have, I'll be honest with you, we like to ghost people, you know?

Like one day you'll just never hear from me again. I'm a little dipper. I'm a little dipper. Yeah, I'm a, there is something weird about it, right? Because I would find it problematic. If somebody asked me, like, when is your birthday? And I said, what my birthday was, and they were like, oh, the 17th day of Pentecost, or

whatever. And then they were like, and as somebody who was born during Lent, this means that, and that means this. And I'd be like, well, no, I'm really, that's not really my belief system. But I think, and then they're like, I have noticed a thing that if you don't believe in astrology,

people feel it as an attack. I am not attempting to attack, but people often feel it that way. Right. And I don't know what to do about that. It is an awkward situation. I tend to think if people are asking about my birthday, they wanna know when to buy me a present

or come over for a party. Yeah. Or who's gonna go first in the game that we're playing. Because it's like, whose birthday's up next? Right, right, right. Is like the most common reason I am asked when my birthday is. Yeah, I would feel like you just say your birthday. Although there is something weird about it, right?

Like nobody would ask you what your social security number is. But I would just, if it were me, because I'm a people pleaser, I would say, I'll tell you my birthday. And then if they started to be like, well, you know what that means about you, I would say like respectfully, I don't think it means much.

That's not a, that's very, I would never do that. I'm more of a people pleaser than you then, because I'd be like, oh, interesting. Did you know about frogs? And I would change the subject carefully and quickly. The, I think, here's my suggestion. I have two. One, find out about a bunch of people who are born in the same day as you. They have to be pretty good. It's different from each other.

That's good. And then, and then just be like, the same day as Jacques Cousteau, which I think is mine. Uh, or second, find another calendar that's not the one we use. Yes. And tell them your birthday in that count. Yes. Or make up a calendar that's just your calendar. That's a 13 month calendar with one extra day at the end of the year. Or beginning of the year. New Year's day does not, it's not in part of a month. And you name them months yourself and you create, and you tell them, I'm born on the, I'm born on the, the eighth of Mauritius. It's just named after countries. My favorite ones. Is there a way that we could do that? Yeah. Like,

Is there a way that we could do that? Yeah. Like, I make a new calendar. I think that our greatest, like, I think we've done some good work, Hank. I think we've done some bad work. I think that our, you know, contributions are mixed. But I think if we ever wanted to do something truly extraordinary for humanity. It would be to make a 13 month year with 28 days in each of those 13 months. And one day a year, that's full purge. No, no, it's opposite of that. I know. I know. That's the one extra year is like, you can't turn your lights on and

you're like got candles and everybody has to read books. It's the global day of interconnectedness and joy that we all agree upon. It's the only shared human holiday. I love this idea, right? Like everybody gets their own holidays. It doesn't take away Christmas. It doesn't take away any holidays. It's just that we have this one holiday that's for all of us, which is the last day of the year the 365th day It's so beautiful It's it's and then twice a year you get to have or every four years you get to have I really think it might Address some of our biggest problems. I don't want to overstate it But I think having a holiday that all humans share might fix. I don't want to say everything, some things, and everything.

I'll say it. How are we going to do it, though, Hank? It's such a better system. Well, so there's only one way that I know of. And also at the same time, we could introduce metric time. So instead of 24 hours, you have 10 hours, instead of 60 minutes, you have 100, much easier, much simpler. By the way, they tried to do this during the French Revolution and it went real bad.

I just remembered. Yeah, yeah. But keep going. And then, and also we could make sure we get rid of all the feet because they're stupid. And the inches and the, and this, and the 30 seconds of an inch. And I don't know why we're doing that. And the only, here's how you do it. I don't know if you know, is you have to become the only person with power.

Yeah. And it's really easy to do that. And it definitely never results in the game of thrones in which you either win or die. No, no, no. I so I don't think that is the only way that change gets made. And I don't think that you think that either. And I understand that that is generally how calendars have been formed in the past. But I don't think that is the only way to make change.

You've got to go from the bottom up. You can do bottom up change. Absolutely. Things change from the bottom up all the time. Often, usually, when the world gets more just, it's bottom up change, not top down change. And what I am proposing is a, and maybe this isn't the most important global movement in 2023. Now that I'm saying it out loud, I'm starting to realize that like maybe if we're gonna

organize all of our shared energies around one thing, it maybe shouldn't be the 13 month year, but I'm imagining a global movement to say, we need to stop carbon emissions and December. That's my, that's my pitch. Well, we also get to read in the months so that they line up with their names. So October would be the eighth month.

Yeah. Instead of being the tenth month, October's the only one we're keeping. We're great. October's the only one we're keeping. Okay. That's everybody's sending suggestions for month names. Yes.

That's the one. Of course, we've got a name. Name these months. Name the month. Before we convince eight million eight billion people that this is what we should focus our resources on. We need a bunch of new because we need 13 months. Yeah and the other problem and I will say this upfront that if you're birthday like when we create the new calendar your birthday is going to be on the same day every year. So if you're a Wednesday

birthday that's forever. If you're're a Wednesday birthday, that's forever. If you're a Friday or Saturday birthday, that's forever. And you just get to be, you just get to live a slightly better life than everybody else because you were a Saturday birthday. Right. That is true. And that is, I mean, that is a problem, but I think it's not a big enough problem to make up for the deficiencies of our current calendar,

which reminds me that today's podcast is in fact brought to you by Hank and John's 13 month calendar, the one change we want to make in the world. So I guess it's also brought to you by rubbing your feet together like a little cricket. It feels very nice and does result in a hundred percent chance of death. Yeah. But then again, so does eating salt or not eating salt. Two strategies for maintaining a little bit of chemistry while you can. And also this podcast is brought to you by the similarities between getting a massage

and dying of consumption. Probably not worth having mentioned. Probably. I thought I actually thought we were going to ask Tuneer to cut that, but I guess we're keeping it in now. John, this next question comes from Iris who asks, dear Hengen John, and I saw a problem on TikTok earlier today. Now it's bedtime and I can't sleep because I'm trying to figure out, figure it out and I can't find the words to Google it. Is 100 to the power of 99 bigger or smaller than 99 to the power of 100? I'm a humanities major, Iris. Oh boy. I mean, I also

that's going to take me to the very edge of my talents. Yeah. Okay. Well, first off, is there an answer? Because I'm not going to go through all this mental gymnastics if there's no answer. Yeah, there's an answer. Okay. If there's a sense size, after I do all this work, I'm going to be super annoyed. Not. No.

So there's an answer. Also, I'm just letting you know, Iris, you can literally just type that into Google and it will there's an answer. Also, I'm just letting you know, Iris, you can literally just type that into Google and it will give you an answer. Oh! So you don't have to, you don't have to find the words to Google it, just type 99 Carrot 100 and it will tell you. But also, it tends to be that when it's the power, the power is much more important than anything else.

So 99 to the power of 100 is going to be bigger because... It's going to have 100 zeros after it and 100 to the power of 99 is only going to have 99 zeros after it. It's going to actually, I think it's going to have more... I think it's going to have 199 zeros after it, which is wild, but yeah. No. Yeah? No. Yeah. No. Yeah.

Really? 190, yeah. All right, I'm out. Um, I, you know, you can understand that something is beautiful and not understand it. That's- There's also literally a YouTube video that is called comparing 100 to the power of 99 and 99 to the power of 100. I'm starting to think that you didn't try. Iris?

Or maybe they just typed it into chat GPT and chat GPT gave them a very confident incorrect answer. It's very bad at math. That's one thing, it's very bad at. Hey Hank, yes. How do moons work? You got this question from Duval that I realized I don't know the answer to.

Duval writes, dear John and Hank, I don't know how moons work. If it's not a full moon where I am, could I take a jet to where it is a full moon? No, right? Right. Okay. So it's not a full moon anywhere.

It's not a full moon, it's full moon for everybody at the same time. Just like our new calendar. I know that the moon isn't, well, we can't really handle the moon. Oh, I know the calendar's not gonna be involved in the lunar month. I know we can't get into that stuff. We are gonna have a solar month calendar,

not a lunar month calendar. That's not for us. That's not for us. It's good, it's good. It's good. It's good. It's nothing wrong with a lunar month. I'm a 100% in favor of lunar month calendars. It's just that our 13 month calendar

is gonna be a solar calendar. The world's calendar is gonna be a solar calendar. Yeah. Oh, it's so weird to have both the moon and the sun. It's great. What a convenient thing. The moon is very confusing, I will say, because it's like it's up there going around us

while we're going around another thing and we're spinning at the same time. It's very confusing. It's a reason why you don't understand. It's because people who do this professionally still sometimes get their brain tied up about it. But the moon is the same phase all the time for everyone. I can tell you that.

Is there any other things you'd like to know about the moon? It is very weird that the moon is spinning around us while we are spinning around the sun. While the sun is spinning around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which is itself like moving relative to other. It is very, very know, like, Alexi, which is itself like moving relative to other, it is very, very weird, right?

Like, I feel quite still right now. And the way motion works, the way space and time work, when you zoom way out, I do not like it. I don't like it at all. It's not intuitive. No, it's not just that it's not intuitive. It's a little freaky outy. You know what I mean? It's a little like,

whoah, maybe I should stand or the covers. Yeah, I've kind of gotten, at this point in my life, I've kind of gotten comfortable with the universe and our place in it. In a weird way. Not having. Which now that I've said that,

it makes it sound like that way. Not have it. Which now that I've said that, it makes me sound like that's can't be true. But I feel like maybe I like a little bit have. But. That's great, man. All this information is relatively new. Yeah. You know, we didn't know that galaxies existed

until quite recently. And the idea that there's stars outside of our galaxy, also very new information. And then the part where they were like, oh, it's not just like a few. That's all, that's all, pretty new. Yeah. So as far as humanity goes,

and it's a lot to deal with. So I'm not surprised that we haven't gotten good at handling it yet. Yeah. I mean, one human lifetime ago, we didn't have like electricity in the house that I'm in, yeah, right now. Yeah, a long human lifetime.

There was no refrigerator because there couldn't be a refrigerator. Yeah. That's weird. That's weird, man. Some guy died in this house. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha That's where it goes. He was a gardener. Oh actually, he was a land landscaper. Oh, he was a hundred he was a hundred years old He was born a dreamer. Was he just visiting? No, he lived here and he died here died upstairs Yeah, be word for him to be just visiting a hundred year years old. You probably don't visit a lot. It would be

Yeah, no, he was in really into like cut flowers. And now he's dead. So thanks for coming to my party. What's the news from Mars? I'll go first. Hank, as you may be aware, AFC Wimbledon is more likely to lose a game from a winning position than any other team in professional soccer. Wow. Our last five games, we have gone one nil up in all of them and we have lost four of them and the other one we tied. We cannot win a game. We cannot hold a lead. I do not know what is happening. It is extremely frustrating.

We have this incredible new player, Ali Al-Hamedi. He is a, came to the United Kingdom as a refugee from Iraq. His father was a political prisoner and he has an incredible life story and he is an absolute star. I mean, he is incredible. I'm so excited about him. He keeps scoring goals. The only problem is that every time he scores a goal, we give up two. And so we can't win any games. And it's very frustrating. So. You know what I hear when I hear stuff like that, John, is that it has to be some component of luck. Because going up doesn't make it likely that you will go down.

I think it's like, you could definitely, not, it could definitely be like a problem with the team that a lot of goals get scored against you. Yeah, but I think that there's a... But the order in which those goals are scored. I think there's a problem inside the heads. I think there is a problem in the mind. I think that they know that over the last three seasons, we are much more likely to lose a game that we were we score first than we are to win a game. And I think

that's in their heads. No. So I think that it's a I mean, I mean, I'm not positive, but that's what I think. I think it's like, I know, I mean, look, it happens to me when I watch the games. Like I see Aliell comedy score and I'm like, Oh, no, anything but that. Wait, just wait until they get one goal and then you can score. That only ends one way. So it's been a difficult run for us. Four straight losses, a draw before that, not quite creeping toward relegation,

but I don't like where we are in 15th place with a negative four-goal differential after 36 games. So yeah, it's been a little frustrating. I do get to go to a game this weekend in London, which I'm really excited about. I always love seeing AFC Wimbledon, so that'll be a joy for me. But yeah, just a little bit worrisome. I will say there is a bit of good news, which is that the women's team, since Rosiana and I started sponsoring them on behalf of Partners in Health, the women's team is undefeated, and has suddenly shot up to the top of the league. They are currently, they just beat Cambridge United and they are currently just barely top of the league. It's incredible. 32 points after 13 games, hashtag United are in second place. And so we've had five straight victories. And if we keep this run going, we have a real chance of

promotion to be a third tier side next season, which would be really exciting. All right. That, I mean, that seems almost likely with all of those wins. Yeah. So far so good. Well, this weekend Mars news. So the high rise camera, which is on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took some pictures of some really cool, weird, nearly perfect circle dunes. And as I was saying, weirdly enough earlier in this episode, the universe does sort things. So, you know, the solar winds do this, where it might blow stuff around a solar system

and you get different qualities of planets at different distances from a star. And rivers will do this, where it, you know, sediment will be picked up by different speeds of rivers and dropped out by it when the river slowed down. And so you can get, like, suddenly, just huge accumulations of specific grain sizes of sand. And that also happens on Mars. So if you look at the photos, which you can find pretty easily, and they were released by the University of Arizona, the dunes look kind of like black bulbs coming off Mars's surface, and they, a little bit asymmetric in a way that suggests that the wind is blowing

in a specific direction, southward. And they are part of an ongoing study to see how frost melts when winter ends on Mars, and this is one of the 60 sites that high rise is currently monitoring for that study. So, it's really kind of pretty and weird, quite otherworldly looking sand dunes, which is convenient because they are on another world. Yeah, that is just mind-blowing. I like this new framework you're using of, this is how the universe sorts things sometimes. Instead of like, it's weird.

Yeah, that, instead of, you know, like looking for an explanation when we don't yet have one totally to be like, well, you know. It definitely happens. The universe is weird. And we've seen this before, so you don't have to freak out about it. No, freak out. It does look a little bit like, I don't know, reminds me of spider's eyes.

Yeah. There's something crop circlely about it. Mm-hmm. It's cool. All right, Hank. Well, thank you for plotting with me. We're off to record our Patreon only podcast this weekend's stuff over at patreon.com slash deerhank and john, which you can join. I just, I just went to the Patreon Hankank for one dollar a month it's not that expensive i do you get the what the bad i don't know if you get the thing maybe we should raise the price i i don't think that you get the the this week and stuff for a dollar maybe uh... yeah we've got a real problem which is that it doesn't show that one

oh until you click only shhh shows the top three i think think we should fix that. So we've probably just changed that. Yes, yes. So we're gonna try to fix our Patreon. But anyway. I haven't thought about it. Patreon.com slash deerhankajon. If you want to listen to this, we can stuff it's $5 a month.

And I'd like to tell you that it's worth it. But actually, the thing that is worth it is the monthly check-ins with our community. It does really fun. Yeah, a lot of people show up for that. So thanks to everybody who showed up for that. Before we finish this up John and I were talking I'm actually recording this afterward he's not here anymore are you John see not there we were talking about whether we wanted to try and make a

map according to fish piece of merchandise so we've decided to make both a decal and a coffee mug with the map according to fish. That we're gonna get put up real quick at dftba.com. We can only make a hundred of each of those things, so that's how many there will be, and if they sell out, then they sell out. So if you would like a world according to fish map on your mug, go to dftba.com. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Edish. It's produced by Rosiana Halz-Rohas. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shottwell. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravardi. 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.