401: Goodreads Therapy
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I've long been a fan of Roman sundials, not so much for their ability to keep time, but for their darkly humorous inscriptions, which tended to be reminders that time is short and death is, you know, coming for us all. "'Life is but a passing shadow,' one read. "'Time flies,' read another. "'The hour is late. "'An hour passes slowly, but the years quickly. "'Time devours all things.'"

And then there's my personal favorite: "The last hour is hidden, so we must watch them all." And that, my friends, is why there's life insurance. Because you may not know the hour, but you can know a measure of security for your loved ones. And with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage.

Thank you.

To get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save, that's PolicyGenius.com. PolicyGenius. One of these hours will be your last. That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial. You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John in Darkness. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you DBS advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know that they also had an election in Sweden and the CEO of IKEA won? Did he? Yeah, he's still assembling his cabinet, though. Oh, takes a while. Famously takes a while. Yeah.

If he wants to have a real good argument, I suggest that he try it out with his spouse. I could. For a second, I was like, where is IKEA from? Is Sweden right? Sweden's right, I think. Okay. It's got Swedish vibes anyway. They have got the meatballs there. They got the meatballs. That's a confirmation. They don't have meatballs in Norway. Norway hasn't even heard about meatballs yet. Nordish meatballs? No, that's not a thing.

Wait, you call people from Norway Nordish? What are they called? Norwegian? I guess. I mean, you can call them Nordish if you want. They are from the great Nord. Well, that's right. It's called Nord, the North. And also it's Swedish meatballs. They're not Swiegians. What's a Swiegian?

It would be what they were called if it was like Norwegians. Oh, okay. I got it. I got it. I got it. Wouldn't they also then have to include the other one, Finland? Finwegians. Finwegians. Finwegians. Finwegius meatballs sound delicious. I'm glad that we're talking about something –

Stupid. Are Swedish Swiss? No, Switzerland is Swiss. Oh, okay. Of course. Swedish people are Swedes. That's a typical American problem there. So just to clarify, people from Denmark are Danish, people from Switzerland are Swiss, people from Finland are Finnish, and people from Norway are Norwegian. Do you know what Finnish meatballs are? No.

What? Already done. Do you know what Swiss meatballs are? What? They got holes in them. Okay, let's do the podcast. It's the little things that bring me joy right now. Like the idea of Swiss meatballs. I bet they have meatballs in Switzerland. There's a hundred percent chance. Oh, for sure. There's no way that like the idea of circular meat hasn't reached Switzerland. Yeah, you just ball it up. It's like, oh, this is like a sausage, but way easier. Yeah.

I feel like it was a hell of a point by the Swedish people to try to take ownership over the concept of meatballs. All right, Hank, our first question speaks to contemporary culture in a deep and profound way without addressing politics specifically. And it's from Allie who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are people on Goodreads so angry? Potentially an ally, but always an ally.

Allie. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this. I didn't – first of all, didn't realize people on Goodreads are particularly angry. I've read my Goodreads reviews of my books. Some of them are certainly angrier than I would expect them to be. You're more likely to get upvoted –

You're more likely to get upvoted for a low star review than a high star review a lot of times, especially if it's a really good low star review, for lack of a better term. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like entertaining. The number one one on an absolutely remarkable thing for a long time, it may still be, is one that was just like another YouTuber book.

And it was just, it was like, it really like, it was bad. It was, I found it to be intolerable. I was like, this is a terrible take, but if you hadn't read the book, I could see how it would land well.

Well, it is another YouTuber book. It is. Yeah. You're right. Most of the people doing the upvoting haven't read the book. So I think that's another factor, right? Like they're looking to see if they should read the book. And in many cases, when I'm looking at Goodreads reviews, I'm partly looking for reasons not to read the book because I already have plenty of books. Yeah.

And so if somebody offers me an easy way, like another YouTuber book, I'll be like, all right, I got it. Oh man, it's still there. It's still on top, John. Well, you know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let's read our top Goodreads reviews. What a good idea for today. I just want to, it's so snarky. All right, here's the top review for the Anthropocene Reviewed. It's going to be way better than mine, but okay. It is way better. It's actually very, very, very flattering. Ah.

Good for you. I'll read you my first one-star review if you want. Those are always bangers. Those are the only ones I'm interested in. The solid 1% of people who really hated it? Yeah. So they can take up all the space in your head? It's from Deborah who writes, this is a collection of personal essays by John Green in which he basically just ponders humanity and rambles endlessly about arbitrary topics like scratch and sniff stickers, air conditioning, and the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. What's to give one star to, Deborah? That book sounds awesome. Yeah.

It's pretentious with a sparse sprinkling of insight here and there. Again, you've described my favorite book. I found myself thinking, who cares, multiple times throughout the book. You're welcome, Debra. You're welcome. Well,

Well, here's the number one review, and it is a one-star review, and I'm sure it's resulted in a solid 2% decrease in the overall sales of the book. This one guy, Tucker, who says, a conversation between me and my publisher. Publisher, so Hank, you want to write a book? Hank, yes, my brother wrote a bunch, which means that I can too. Publisher, what do you want it to be about? Hank, I want it to be about aliens. Publisher, so like the fifth wave? Hank, kind of, but let's remove all the violent parts. It's nothing like

the fifth wave. It could not be more different from the fifth wave. I mean, that is the most ludicrous. Like that's a person who's only ever read two books. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but they've only ever read your book and the fifth wave and they compared those two books. I've read the fifth wave. I reviewed the fifth wave. You, Hank, did not write the fifth wave. Publisher, it goes on for a long time.

I think we got the picture. I bet there's some solid one-star reviews of The Fault in Our Stars. Oh, yeah. The very first review is a one-star review. Of The Fault in Our Stars? Yeah. Wild. This is good. This is therapy. Writing, cheesy, emotionless, terrible. Want to hear some favorite quotes of mine? Why compare your thoughts to stars and constellations? It doesn't make any sense. Wow.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. How uninteresting. That's the thing about pain it demands to be felt. Yeah, that's the thing about chocolate. It demands to be eaten. What? That's no, no, no. In a very different way does chocolate demand to be eaten than pain demands to be felt.

Yeah, actually, like you can not eat chocolate. That's one of the defining characteristics of chocolate. That's a great example of why pain demands to be felt is a great sentence because chocolate doesn't actually demand to be eaten. It asks. It asks, but it can just sit there. It wants to be eaten. Whereas pain, you can't not –

Well, to be fair, the person who wrote this was probably angry and didn't like the book. And that's okay. And then they had to write-

It's the people who upvote it. That's true. It's true. Here's the thing. The truth of why Goodreads is angry is the same reason why Twitter is angry, is the same reason why Reddit is angry, is the same reason why Facebook is angry. It's not unique to Goodreads. And we're having a good laugh here slash a therapy session. Yeah.

There is a structural problem with the social internet that rewards anger and outrage and horror and disgust over nuance. And that is reflected on Goodreads as it is everywhere on the internet. What if it's not – so I don't think it's just the internet. I think it's any media and it is –

Has it always been thus? But I think that right now we have very few defense mechanisms when it comes to sort of like seeing the parts of our brain being manipulated by the internet because like it's so new and we don't have social features for it. But like it has always been thus. I do think that it is like – It has always been thus and that's a great point. But I think that it is now like that at the speed of light.

So it's always been thus in the sense that like when I reviewed books for book lists, I reviewed hundreds and hundreds of books for book lists. And when I reviewed books for them, the books that I didn't like always got like flattering letters. People would be like, what a great review. And it would just be me like –

Kind of snarking on a book. And because there's something enjoyable about a takedown. There's something lovely about it, especially the more something is revered, the more the takedown of it is pleasant to us. And so that's another factor here. I think you're right that it's always been thus and like that's always been a thing.

But you haven't read me the first one-star review of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. I can't. By the way, these are two of my favorite books. You can't do it. I'll do it for you if you don't watch out. This one is too – it feels too true. Oh, no. Yeah. What? First off, that book has a 4.7 overall rating on Amazon. I know. I know. I know. People love it. I know. And it's the top reviews are all five stars. Oh, yes. Five, four, three, four, three, four.

Somebody criticizing the cover, which fair enough, although I like the cover for the record. I talked to a marketer recently and he was like, I loved your book so much and you named them so poorly. And I was like, okay, thanks. Oh, it's somebody who loved the first book and didn't like the second book. It's boring. This book took me about a month to read. Nice slave books. But this one I could barely get through 15 pages at a time. Fair enough. I mean, I think it's so – like the voice is very similar, but –

To the voice of the first novel. Yeah, no, I know. I don't agree with that. I respectfully disagree. But yeah. But that's at least like – It's the experience they had. That is at least a thoughtful take. Yeah. That's a thoughtful one-star take. It is the experience they had, unlike Tucker, who appears to have not tried hard. Yeah, well, or like went into it ungenerously because here is the truth of any book in any media, right? Yeah.

We need the reader or the viewer or the listener or whatever to be generous, to bring their whole self to it. And that's asking a ton. And a lot of times you can't bring your whole self to a book because you're feeling snarky and angry and you're disgusted with the world. And so like that seeps into your reading experience. I bet also that like you may maybe sort of like get a reputation for doing the snarky Goodreads reviews for a little while, you know? And you're good at it. If you're good at writing snarky Goodreads reviews, you're good at it. Yeah. Yeah.

So I do think that there is a human nature thing to like looking at the takedown and being like, oh, I got to upvote that.

Especially when it's of – like, and I get it. Like, I also – I knew going in that I was, you know, I was going to be seen as a YouTuber writing a book. I wasn't like, John, you wrote books before you were a YouTuber. Right. Right. But even so, I'm often seen as a YouTuber who writes books because people don't know that I wrote books before I was a YouTuber. That's funny. Yeah.

Which is fair. I mean, I'm fine with it. At this point, you are a YouTuber who writes books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like writing – nothing slows me down quite like YouTubing. So I want to be known as a YouTuber who writes books. Otherwise, I'm wasting a bunch of my time on YouTube. If I'm an author who YouTubes, then I'm real slow. I'm going – I'm definitely doing everything backwards. I do love making a YouTube video though, John.

I do too. I do too. But I don't know. It just like – it does – I don't know. I've been thinking a lot and this video hopefully will be out by the time this podcast comes out. But I've just been thinking a lot about how the current – like how any big change in media and like the – and how human communication works –

has an inevitable backlash against kind of everything, you know, just like any, anything that is perceived to have power or anything that is perceived to be a threat. Yeah. And, and whenever technology democratizes power,

There is a anti-intellectual, anti-institution response to it that we've seen, you know, going back to the invention of the printing press that we are experiencing now. And I'm not enjoying it very much. As a member of the intellectual class, I don't like it.

I don't really think of myself – As an effete liberal, this is annoying to me. I'm not a college professor. I'm not a member of the intellectual elite. I'm a dad in Indianapolis. As a soft-handed man in his basement with his art collection. Well, I mean, I guess guilty. Do you want me to talk about the Anmulé piece behind me?

I got some new art recently, but it's not in this room. It's the viral hippo, the viral pygmy hippo, but being piloted as a submarine by other viral baby hippos. It's just very good. That sounds great, man. You and I have different tastes in art, it sounds like, but I'm glad that we both find stuff that meets our needs. Yeah, it's the same person who did Beanie Sanferbs. Oh, I love Beanie Sanferbs. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. I love that you're buying art. It makes me so happy to hear. I always say this, but like art does not have to be expensive. It does not have to be fancy. It only has to bring you joy. Yeah, no, I mean, Sophie's work is brings me great joy. It is not very expensive. It's sort of I think it's in the hundreds, you know? Yeah.

But the just – Which is expensive, just to be clear. Yeah, but it's not – yeah, I think that there's much more expensive art. But it's not like buying a Warhol or something. And the –

But so much joy. So much joy. Yeah. And I guess art doesn't have to only bring you joy. It can also bring you curiosity or interest or intrigue. But if it brings you something, whatever it brings you, that allows you to keep coming back to it and experience richness from it, living with it for years, then that is good art. That's the definition of good art. Good art doesn't have to be valuable to the market.

And also, if you love art, you should let the artists know that you love it because their top goods review probably is mean.

Probably so. Anyway, thanks, Ali, for giving us that opportunity to work through some of our Goodreads-related trauma. All authors have some. And I apologize to the people who gave my books one-star reviews on a couple levels. First off, that I disagreed with your review so vehemently. And secondly, I apologize because I'm sorry that you had to buy a book you didn't like. I feel guilty. I hope you like my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, more signed copies available wherever books are sold. Nice.

I'm not afraid to get in some promo. Don't ever be afraid. He's signing like mad, everyone. Like mad. I am looking right now at 29,300 signed sheets of paper. That's good. You're doing 100? I'm doing 100. You're almost at 30%.

Long way to go. What's our next question? This next question comes from Jess, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I just emailed the good people at Good.Store about this, but I figured I'd ask you as well. My partner, Peter, and I are hoping to add a coffee subscription from the delicious Kitson Co. Coffee and Tea Company, available at Good.Store. You know how to get your question read. To our wedding registry so that we may enjoy delicious coffee. Congratulations, Jess. Yes.

Every morning while supporting efforts to fight tuberculosis in Lesotho. I was wondering if you are planning to add a way for people to gift a subscription for a set period of time. Thank you for all that you do. Coffee and Quandary's Jess. We don't have a way right now, and we probably won't for this Christmas, but I think that...

We've got some ideas about how this is going to work in the future, and I'm pretty sure that there will be options like that soon. But this holiday season, while we're in self-promo mode, Good.Store has everything that you need for the holidays, for gift giving, whether it's for your wedding registry or anything else.

We've got sock bundles. We've got coffee bundles. We've got tea bundles. We've got bundles that involve tea and socks. You've got to check it out at good.store. We've also got amazing soap, like artisanal, really wonderful skin-nourishing soap. Good.store. And there's a coupon code. If you use save10, you can save 10% off any order under $50. Uh,

Or over $50. And with Save20, you can get 20% off any order over $100. And we got like lots of ways to get up to $100 to do a lot of your Christmas shopping all in one place. And all the profit goes to make the world a better place. Or shopping for other holidays. It's true. I do tend to say Christmas.

Yeah. No, I'm part of the war on Christmas, Hank. You're an atheist, so you're allowed to say Christmas. But as a Christian, I think I have to say that there's lots of other winter holidays. All right. This next question comes from Sarah, who writes, Dear John and Hank,

And Rosianna notes there have been several questions about this. I'm excited to read Everything is Tuberculosis, available for pre-order now. Y'all really do all the promo for us. However, I don't do well with descriptions of blood, guts, and or medical procedures. So I was wondering if you would recommend this book to somebody who's interested in the history, social justice, and public health spaces, but it's a little squeamish. Pumpkins and penguins, Sarah. Sarah, you have nothing to worry about. I am also very squeamish.

If there is anything – like the only thing that I put – there was a squeamish paragraph in the book, but I cut it and I replaced it with the sentence, surgery was generally fatal. So now you know what that's like.

Why get into it when I can just say surgery was generally fatal back in the day? Yeah, I had a moment like that when I was writing – while I've been writing my book about cancer where I got feedback from Catherine that was like, you can't put that in. That's too bad. Yeah. It's a little more squeamish than everything is tuberculosis, but it's still not that squeamish, your cancer book. Yeah. In any way, that's not available for pre-order, so why are we even talking about it? There's some squishy bits, but there's not – like the thing – yeah, I took out a thing that was just like –

I wanted to make it clear how bad cancer has always been. And it used to be worse. It is still real, real, real bad if you don't get treatment. Yes, it's extremely bad if there is no treatment available.

Yeah. It is also bad no matter what. I was just talking with a friend about you having cancer. Me too. He was like, it's so weird that Hank had cancer. And I was like, I know. That's what everyone says to me is that it's weird. And I'm like, yeah. No, it is. It was weird. That's one word for it. I don't know if he experienced it as weird. I did. It was weird from the outside. No, there were definitely moments where I was like, this is happening? Question mark? This –

I, that seems wrong. And now, even now I have that where I'll have a moment where I'll be like, God, last year felt like, just like, feels like it was hard for some reason. It didn't get as much done as I would have liked to. Why do I have this sense of last year just being really hard? Yeah. Yeah. It's weird how the mind works.

It is weird, especially how we remember pain and trauma and how we call it to mind but also can't. It's very strange. Yeah, and also that our bodies continue to carry around the history because I now have a bunch of problems I didn't have before. I know. And also I have problems that I used to have that I don't have, which is wild. I know. It's a whole new body. Not a whole new body, but it's definitely different.

I ship of Theseus the whole thing. I replaced every molecule during chemo. It's a whole new body. It's a whole new you, except to me it's a very recognizable version of you. Yeah, no. But to get to the point. Can we do it? What am I? Can we? What am I?

Is that a question for the pod? Well, one of the things that I noticed during cancer was when sort of looking more directly at my mortality is that a lot of the me's that have existed in the past are already dead. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. And there's no bringing them back. No, they're gone, gone. I can't, there's so much of my life I do not remember the majority of it. Not just that, but even if you, whatever you do remember, you can't return to that self, right? Like you can't, it's the old problem of like, you go back to your high school, but the problem is that the high school is still there, but you aren't. Yeah. I don't even know if my high school is still there, John.

I suspect it is. My middle school isn't. They knocked that book out. Don't take this the wrong way, but Florida isn't exactly like carving up with new school buildings right now. You're right. It is there. I did check recently. I went there. I went there on my book tour. Oh, yeah. Oh, that was weird. It was weird. I was with you. Everything had changed. Like all the doors were in different places. It was very disorienting. I just remember like I got within like 500 yards of that place and my armpits started sweating like crazy and I never even went to school there. Yeah.

Oh, man. The last time I went back to my old high school, I ran into a friend of mine from high school who was walking her dog on campus because it's this like big sprawling boarding school campus. And she said the most profound thing to me. She said, this place saved my life. And then she paused and said, and also it did a lot of other things. And I was like, yes.

Yeah. That's it. I've been waiting for somebody to explain my relationship with high school, and it's just been explained. A lot of other things. A lot of other things as well. Which reminds me that this podcast is actually brought to you by a lot of other things. Yeah. Additionally, today's podcast is brought to you by One Star Goodreads Reviews. One Star Goodreads Reviews. They will be read by the author. Especially the top-ranked one.

Oh, I've read all of them. I sort by one star so that I can read all the one star ones. I'm not interested in the five star ones. They're not true. They're just being polite. They're just being polite. They're not telling me the secret truth that I'm worthless. And anyway, the funny thing about one star Goodreads reviews is that they're not trying to tell you that you are worthless as an author. They're just trying to say that they didn't like your work. But I'm conflating that, which is unfair of me personally.

Yeah. What else is this podcast brought to you by? This podcast is also brought to you by Good.Store. It's actually brought to you by Good.Store. The coupon code SAVE10. Save one zero to get 10% off any order over $50 and save two zero for 20% off any order over $100. Good.Store. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by the new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. If you can do it, I can do it too. Ha ha ha.

I've long been a fan of Roman sundials, not so much for their ability to keep time, but for their darkly humorous inscriptions, which tended to be reminders that time is short and death is, you know, coming for us all. "'Life is but a passing shadow,' one read. "'Time flies,' read another. "'The hour is late. "'An hour passes slowly, but the years quickly. "'Time devours all things.'

And then there's my personal favorite: The last hour is hidden, so we must watch them all. And that, my friends, is why there's life insurance. Because you may not know the hour, but you can know a measure of security for your loved ones. And with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage.

Thank you.

To get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save, that's policygenius.com. Policy Genius. One of these hours will be your last. That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial.

I've long been a fan of Roman sundials, not so much for their ability to keep time, but for their darkly humorous inscriptions, which tended to be reminders that time is short and death is, you know, coming for us all. Life is but a passing shadow, one read. Time flies, read another. The hour is late. An hour passes slowly, but the years quickly.

Time devours all things. And then there's my personal favorite. The last hour is hidden, so we must watch them all.

And that, my friends, is why there's life insurance. Because you may not know the hour, but you can know a measure of security for your loved ones. And with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams.

Policy Genius allows you to compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for free with no hidden fees. And even if you have life insurance through work, it may not protect all your family's needs or follow you if you change jobs. So secure your family's tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today. Head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com.

That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial.

All right, Hank. We got another question from Zinnia who writes, hi, John and Hank. I'm eight years old and I'm sending this from my mom's account with her permission. In school, we have been learning about photosynthesis and my teacher said that trees suck the chlorophyll from the leaves into their trunks during the autumn so they can survive the winter. This is why the leaves turn colors and fall off. I think leaves are responsible for releasing oxygen too. Does this mean there's less oxygen in the air during fall and winter? How do we breathe without leaves? Not a tree, but named for a plant, Zinnia.

Yeah. I mean, so the way that it works, and I'm going to give you secret insight that you will not get until you go to college, Zinnia. Wow. Which is that the amount of oxygen in the air is actually really well balanced and does not tend to go up or down that much in any given moment. Because what happens is the trees suck carbon out of the air.

And they build themselves out of it. So trees are largely made of carbon molecules. And they build themselves out of that carbon. And then the carbon in the air is connected to oxygen. So they keep the carbon and they let the oxygen go. But when the trees fall down and they rot or burn, that carbon gets re-released naturally.

And the oxygen from the atmosphere either rots or burns that wood, recombines with that carbon and gets released as carbon dioxide. So there's this constant cycle going on. And the actual sort of like stable amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is because of the very rare circumstances where the carbon doesn't get re-released.

And that happens either when stuff gets buried so deep that the oxygen can't get to it, like the carbon and the oxygen can't meet up again, or if it ends up at the bottom of the ocean and there the oxygen also can't reach it. So those rare circumstances are the only reason why we have an excess amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. And that allows all animals to exist. Wow. That's pretty mind blowing. Yeah.

Now, is there anything that we could do to mess with this incredibly complicated, sweet, sweet balance that nature has managed to achieve, resulting in there being too much, for instance, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Yeah, but that actually doesn't result in there being not enough oxygen in the atmosphere, interestingly. Oh. So what does happen is that in the past, old carbon got buried and didn't get access to oxygen. And so it stayed there and it turned into coal mostly, but also another thing. Right.

And we burn them combining oxygen, and then that creates more CO2 than we have previously had. And CO2 is opaque to infrared light. So certain wavelengths of light get blocked by it. It gets absorbed like a black T-shirt on a summer day, and that increases the temperature of the atmosphere and of the planet.

But that doesn't actually- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yes. So the amount of oxygen is pretty steady right now? The thing is that the amount of carbon dioxide is extremely low. So adding a little bit has basically doubled the amount, whereas the amount of oxygen is extremely high. So taking a little bit out hasn't really had any effect on- Got it. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful to understand. I have one last question related to this. Okay.

None of this has addressed Zinnia's question. What was the question? Oh, there is a little bit less oxygen at some times of the year and a lot more carbon dioxide. Is it because the leaves turn colors and fall off? It is because the plant isn't doing photosynthesis. Oh. And also as they – Because the leaves turn color and fell off. As the leaves rot, as they get broken down by funguses and microbes and stuff, that results in oxygen combining and creating CO2.

There's two things that blow my mind about this. First, that trees are made mostly out of air. They're mostly made out of processed air. Absolutely bizarre. And that implies, of course, that air is a thing and not just a thing.

Like air is made of stuff. Air is a soup. It's just a very thin soup. It's a pretty thin soup and thicker than you realize when you're driving at 70 miles an hour down the road. But the weirdest thing about air being a thing is that we didn't figure it out until like after America existed. Yeah.

Yeah, well, why would we? It doesn't make any sense that air would be a thing. It makes sense that air would be the opposite of a thing because you can't smell it. Well, I guess, but if you stop breathing, you die immediately. So that makes me think that air is definitely something because if I don't put it into me, I die faster than any other way. Also, now that I think about it, you do smell it.

A little bit, sometimes. Yeah. No, I mean, that's what smell is, is scent that traveled through the air into your nose or wherever. I don't know how they thought about scent back in the day. I don't know what the natural historians, the original scientists- But yeah, it's fascinating they didn't know that air was made out of stuff. But then on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis, I don't think about the fact that air is made out of stuff. I assume air to be kind of the opposite of a thing.

Yeah. And when I do think about the fact that air is made out of stuff, you know what I mostly think about? I think about the fact that air is alive. It is alive with bacteria, but especially alive with viruses. And I am inhaling thousands of them with every breath and they just don't happen to be viruses that make me sick. Yeah. That doesn't, that doesn't tend to enter the brain for me. Um,

Oh, really? Yeah. Well, I recommend thinking about it as often as you can. I wonder how many viruses get lifted high enough in the atmosphere that they could... They're pretty heavy compared to most molecules. So I doubt they could get pushed out of the earth. It makes me wonder. How many viruses do I inhale a day? Well, I mean, that's going to be a...

Every day you breathe in over 100 million viruses. Yeah, you're not going to have a good scale for how many that is though. That sounds like a lot. That's a lot, Hank. I don't need to know. It's 100 million. The fact that I don't get sick out of any of those 100 million viruses most days is miraculous to me. Well, most viruses aren't human pathogens.

You're telling me if they were, I would have 100 million of them in my body every day. But it is still – it is weird that you inhale 100 million viruses a day. That is objectively weird. If you told that to somebody from the 18th century, they would be like, what now? They'd be like, what is a virus? Yeah, and then they would be like, are viruses alive? And you would be like, well, that's complicated. And they would be like, the idea of being alive is complicated? And you'd be like, yeah. Yeah. Turns out once you get low, everything turns into a fuzzy line. Yeah.

That's what that song Get Low by Flo Rida is about. I believe that is correct. Yeah. What is the chorus of that song? Shorty had them apple bottom jeans and the boots with the fur. And that's about... The boots with the fur are about the fuzziness of the lines between things. Like, is it boot or is it...

air at that point. Let's answer this question from Ben before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Ben writes, I really like hearing Hank talk about trees like a lot. I figured this is on topic. We have the episode for you. I just read in a textbook that Ponderosa pines can't reproduce without wildfires, which seems a little far-fetched to me. Is it true? Can you explain the process that makes these fires necessary for their reproduction? Never currently am, Ben. That's good, Ben. That's good. So when there is a fire –

It's a good time to be a seed.

So that's why this happened. So there is an evolutionary pressure towards only releasing your seed from a pine cone when there is a fire, because otherwise most of the seeds will not be able to get any sunlight. So if they only pop out right when there's a fire in an area where there are frequent wildfires, which a lot of the Mountain West is like this, then the seed will only release when there's a fire. And that means bloop,

Suddenly, all of the seeds all at once get to try it out at the moment when there's actually space in the canopy for sunlight to reach them. If you're just doing it all the time, then you're wasting those seeds because there's no way any sunlight is going to get down there because it's a crowded little business in a forest and it takes hard work to become a big old tree. Wow. Yeah.

So yes, that is the case. I don't know if there's never been a ponderosa pine tree that grew without a fire. That does seem maybe a little bit far-fetched to me, but the cones are designed to release their seeds when there is a fire. Wow. Fascinating. Designed. Evolved to. Well-

Two schools of thought, and you're apparently part of one of them that surprises me. All right, Hank, it's time to get to the all-important news from Mars and ASU Wimbledon, beginning with the news from ASU Wimbledon. Wait, wait, wait. I have to add a correction. Okay. I actually looked deeper into this, and it looks like ponderosa pines aren't actually particularly like this. There's lots of pine trees that are like lodgepole pines, but ponderosa pines tend to release their seeds with other environmental triggers besides fire. Oh. Correction. Oh, so-

So that was just – you corrected yourself mid-podcast. Well, I was like, I got to check that. And I did. Oh, okay. While you were talking about something. I was talking about AFC Wimbledon, which is when you usually do your fact-checking. And fair enough. America's favorite fourth-tier English soccer team lost 1-0 to Grimsby Town over the weekend. But before that, we played, of all teams, Milton Keynes in the first round of the FA Cup. Nice.

The FA Cup being, of course, a win-or-go-home knockout competition that involves all the teams in England and is separate from the league campaign. And in that game, we won 2-0. And not only did we win, but also Milton Keynes got a red card. And who should get that red card but our former player, Connor Lemon High Evans, who left...

Our team for their team, thereby becoming a villain of the highest order. It's a heel turn for the ages. And he got a red card. And we were delighted to see him sulk off the field in appropriate misery. It's our first win at the Stadium MK.

the quietest place on earth, some would say, in a number of years. And I am very excited about it. So yes, we lost 1-0 to Grimsby. We lost 3-2 to Port Vale. We're only 13th in the league. We don't look likely to make the playoffs. But we've already beaten Milton Keynes twice this season, and it's only November. All right. You're just going to keep doing that. It feels like a success, Hank, every time we beat the franchise. Was it very sort of red card centric, that win? Yeah.

It was very yellow card centric. I would say there was a fair amount of tackling going on. Okay. We don't like them. Like, it's not like a, it's not a joke. Like our players are told to not like them. They go harder than they would normally. Yeah. Yeah. A lot. Yeah.

Yeah. And they celebrate – the way they celebrate – like the way they celebrated the first goal was epic trolling. Like I think it was Matty Stevens and he just like held his arms out in front of the smattering of Milton Keynes fans who filled that three-quarters empty stadium.

And he just like held his hands out and just like listened to the abuse being flooded his way and just smiled. Well, John, in news from Mars, I don't know if you know this, but one of the chief proponents for getting to Mars very fast is now basically going to be president of the United States. So that's great for everybody, right? Yeah.

Can we double the bet? Is there some way that I can get more money by people not making it to Mars by 2028? In other Mars news, so we know that the Ingenuity helicopter did a ton of missions. It did over 70 missions. It was all over that planet. And one of the things that it did, because it could, is it flew over to the place where the thing that lowered the –

actual rover onto the planet, uh, went and crashed after successfully lowering the rover. And it went over there and it took pictures of it. And those pictures, we got some of them, but now they have like time to send more. And we, so like, uh, there's just really great pictures of the crash site with the parachute stretched out behind it. And, uh,

I mean, it's very weird to see wreckage on an alien planet. And that wreckage, because Mars is geologically stable and not at all geologically active, it will be there and also further away from the sun than us. It will be there for a very long time, just being proof that we were here. Yeah. It's nice to think that two million years from now,

sentient raccoons might make their way to Mars and be like, oh my God, guys. Yeah. Have we got some news? We haven't found life on Mars, but we have found humans. Yeah. They went to Mars. Maybe they know a little bit about us, but they didn't realize that we were that good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll be super impressed. They'll be like, it's incredible that this species that went all the way to Mars then collectively- Yeah.

ended itself so spectacularly. And then they'll learn from our mistakes and they will become the great civilization that takes over the galaxy. Yeah. From your lips to God's ears, buddy. We got to hope, Hank. And one way that we hope now is in other species becoming the dominant species. John's been having a not great

I had a rough couple of weeks, guys, if I'm being honest with you. I don't think that either of us have been doing super great. Doing that good. But I feel like I've been winning the Suffering Olympics for the last 10 days or so. Yeah, that's for sure. Not to brag. But here we are, and I'm glad to be with you. Thanks for potting with us. I'm only winning the Suffering Olympics in comparison to Hank, just to be clear. I'm not winning them overall. Yeah.

Good, John. Make sure that you know that your words count. It's a two-person Olympics. I either have gold or silver, and right now I have gold. But next week, I'm sure, Hank, we'll get gold again. Yeah. I've had the We're Here newsletter last week. I wrote about- You wrote so beautifully in the We're Here newsletter. It was one of my favorite pieces of writing that you've ever done. Oh, thanks. Well, the one after that, I wrote about how-

I constantly, because of the structure of the internet, I'm like on the lookout for some like a way I could make someone mad.

Oh, interesting. Like I can't talk about raking the leaves without like making an excuse for why I'm raking the leaves because some people think you shouldn't rake leaves. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand what you mean. And so like when I said that I'm winning the Suffering Olympics, I immediately corrected myself because somebody is going to write it and be like, in fact, you are not winning the Suffering Olympics, which to be fair is true. Yeah. I feel like we have been so trained by the top reviews on Goodreads.

that we are incapable of ever just freaking talking without also being scared. I can't even fully criticize the reviews I don't like on Goodreads because I feel bad for the people who wrote them who are probably nice people who didn't expect to be in the situation that they ended up in. Yeah, for sure. I did a video where I analyzed a bunch of bad takes on Twitter and at the end of it, I was like, I really should have blocked out those people's names. You should have.

All right, Hank, thanks for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. And more importantly, thanks to everybody for listening generously. We do really appreciate it. And we recognize that it makes a big difference in the experience of the podcast, not just for its listeners, but also for its creators. Yes, which then has loops back around. And again, if you haven't gone, it's good.store and the coupon codes are save10 and save20. This is a podcast.

It's edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. It's just Gunnarolla. Everyone thinks that his name is The Great Gunnarolla.