402: Alfred Australia
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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. As I prefer to think of it, Dear John 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. John, my friend, actually just won Dentist of the Year in Montana. Can you believe that? Congratulations. That's amazing. I was surprised by how small the award was, though. It was a little plaque.

Just a bit, just a bit of plaque. No, it was a little plaque. Just a little plaque. All right, Hank. Usually this is where we would riff a little bit, but I'm not in the mood to riff. I had kind of a rough week. So let's just get to the questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Lydia, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I really need to know this, but what do y'all look like?

Hank, you describe John. John, you describe Hank. Is Lydia – do you think Lydia is not sighted? I have absolutely no clue what y'all look like. My only way of seeing you is blurry pictures on the back of your books. I'm so interested. I've got some news for you. This is the emotional energy that I needed. I just don't – John is right. We can't riff right now. We need to go straight in because it's just not been easy. No, it hasn't been the best week. It's not been easy to be Hank and John lately.

But I but this this is what I need. I need to know that there's a person who just listens to the podcasts and reads the books and doesn't know about the rest of the Internet stuff. Doesn't know about Twitter, doesn't know about Instagram, doesn't know about YouTube. Lydia, stay golden, pony girl. Stay golden. Yeah. I mean, what a normal person would say to you is there's this thing called Google Images and you can type Hank Green into it. But I'm not going to say that because you don't need to add that complexity to your life.

Lydia, you're living our dream. This is not – Reading books, listening to podcasts, not on the social internet. I mean, you've cracked the code, Lydia. Look, look, John, if we wanted that, we could make it happen. So it's not precisely our dream. It is just the dream that we dream sometimes the way that you dream sometimes, you know? Maybe that's how you feel, but I feel like it's my dream and I just haven't been able to achieve it yet. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, Hank, I'm going to describe you. I'm going to close my eyes. I realize that I have aphantasia, so that's not going to work. So instead, I'm going to come back to the webcam. When I close my eyes, I see absolutely nothing. But when I look at the webcam, I see a middle-aged man, white, glasses wearing, curly hair, recent development, the curly hair, as a result of chemotherapy. He

He wears a lot of t-shirts with a shirt over it, which doesn't sound like I'm describing him, but it actually is a description of his face because he has the kind of face that goes along with the person who wears t-shirts with long-sleeved button-down shirts over them. I would say a pleasant, well-balanced face. He has lips on the slightly thicker side. He's got detached earlobes, nose, average height.

eyebrows slightly sparse, but not as sparse as mine, and a nice strong jawline with a good solid chin.

Oh, thanks, John. That sounds about right. Well, I mean, it's not a compliment. It's just a series of observations. I pictured that guy and I was like, I like the look of that guy, as you were saying. Yeah, he's doing okay. Yeah, he's doing all right. All right, I'm closing my eyes and I'm thinking of John. And what I'm seeing in my head right now is Bernard from the movie Mastermind. Well, you're not the first person to make that observation. Do you ever think that maybe they knew that they were just fans? And they were like, let's just start with John Green's face and then...

First off, Bernard from Mastermind hopefully doesn't look that much like me. I'm Googling him now because I can't picture him because I have a Fantasia. Megamind. It's Megamind is the movie. Okay. Thank you. That is helpful. When I typed in Bernard Mastermind, I got a lot of pictures of Bernie Madoff. That guy does kind of look like me. Who am I kidding? I mean, complete with my glasses falling down my nose right now. Yeah, that's your head shape too. Yeah.

It is kind of my head shape, slightly elongated. Yeah. And like a pretty big forehead, big hair. And then like you're like the head goes like in a little bit at the eyes. Yeah. Well, it's mostly because of my glasses. Yeah. The glasses make it look that way. Yeah. Yeah. And then he's got a beard and then one. But he's like Bernard from Megamind, but with a beard and also very briefly once a year, a mustache. Yeah.

That's right. So you can just imagine me with a beard or a mustache, Lydia, whichever you prefer. But the main thing is don't go to Google Images. Don't go to YouTube.com slash Vlogbrothers. Stay golden. Stay right where you are. But do go watch Megamind. Do go watch Megamind. Some people call it the story of my life. We have another question, Hank. It's from James. Wait, I have a question for you, John. It's from Hank. Oh, sure. Yeah. Are you a beard guy now? Like I always sort of assumed when I saw you with a beard that you were working your way toward pizza-mask.

Yeah. But now it just feels like it's all the time. I like to have at least a little bit of grizzle on me, you know, like a 19th century Wild West outlaw.

Sure. They didn't have access to all those, like easy access to razors. That's right. And indeed, neither do I. They're all the way upstairs. I can't do it. Just like the people in the Wild West, I also suffer. As my hair was coming back, I let my beard grow just to see what it'd be like. And I had a little bit of scruff. It looked like, you know, like kind of a crabby little beard.

Not the best beard in the world, but a crappy little beard. And I could not handle the way it felt. No, I like the way it feels. It feels like a little hug from my own face. Oh my God. It feels like I'm constantly being poked. Oh. No, I don't have that experience at all. Now I'm starting to have it since you mentioned it. So itchy. It feels like, yeah, it feels a little itchy, but-

No, I think I am a beard guy. Maybe. I have mixed feelings about it because I liked myself clean shaving when I was younger. But the thing is, I'm not younger. Yeah. I'm older.

I'm older, getting older every day. I think you get like- I guess I'm a beard guy. It's funny. I continue to get more beard as I get older. Like I have more beard now than I did when I was 40. And that's very weird. Like, I'm like, okay, I guess I keep changing. Part of the reason I feel like I can be a beard guy is because when I was in my twenties, I couldn't be a beard guy. Yeah, yeah. I didn't have a connector between my mustache and my beard. I didn't either. Now I do. I got a nice little connector. Uh-huh.

So I'm feeling pretty good on the whole in terms of beard. Yeah. Otherwise mixed, but beard good. Yeah. If you're wondering, if you're young and you're thinking, I want a beard, but I can't grow a beard. Here's how John and I did it. One, we got older. Second, we fought a bear every two weeks for two years. Yep. Not every week. That's too dangerous. My weekly bear fights. Yeah. Yeah.

Some people would say bi-monthly bear fights. I wonder if bi-weekly could mean twice a week, in which case that's real bad. Fortnightly bear fights. Fortnightly bear fights. And not to the death, you know? No, it's a pretty nice bear. He can pull his punches. And indeed, we could pull ours. Yeah. No, I've never killed a bear. You just fight a bear every two weeks, fortnightly. Two weeks, I give a bear a black eye, but you can't really even tell because they're all furry.

Eyes are already black. It's the thing about bears. It's a black bear, not a brown bear. We're not out here trying to get smashed. Yeah. No. We're fighting a bear that weighs like 30 pounds more than I do. Yeah. I love that fight with a black bear because you punch it and then it runs as fast as it can. It's like, why did you do that? That was so rude. That was very mean. I am basically just a squirrel. Yeah. God, I'm just a fat raccoon. Don't be mean to me.

Do you think bears or raccoons would do a better job being the sentient species on Earth? Oh, bears. I think raccoons would have a lot more fun. Oh, yeah. They'd be trouble though. They'd make trash just to eat trash.

You know, I honestly, I bet, I bet a raccoon would vastly prefer a warm cooked meal to trash. Well, we think of them as like trash eaters, but that's because that's the option they have. And they're going in there to get the stuff that's better than like eating French fries out of the trash. I'm sorry. Better than eating acorns. For sure. For sure. That's a great point. And raccoons are smart. I don't know that.

I think it's 50-50 that raccoons become the sentient species after us. If we die tomorrow as a species, and I wouldn't rule it out, I think that raccoons are really well positioned. They're small, but they could get bigger. Like the evolutionary pressures could be on bigger brains. They're smart. They've got those dexterous hands. Oh, yeah. I think they have a good shot. I could see it being chimpanzees, but raccoons are everywhere. There's so many of them, and that gives them a lot of opportunities. Yeah, they've already done the geographic distribution thing. Yeah, yeah.

I think it could be a good run for both chimpanzees and raccoons. So people are always like, oh, like the end of the world is coming. The end of the world is coming. Repent. The time is nigh. And like for us, yeah. Yeah. Not for raccoons. How do we leave a note for the raccoons?

I don't think the podcast is going to make it. So we need to do something. That's a great idea, Hank. We need to make a podcast for raccoons. That's next episode. It's all going to be the raccoons. But send in your raccoon specific questions that you want to communicate to the future of raccoon kind.

I think the main thing we need to tell them is that we did our best and it wasn't very good. We did our – yes. And also if they feel like they're not doing well, that's because it's really hard to be what we are. It's a tough gig. But also learn from us and don't do what we did.

But also do do what we did, do do. Do what we did in the sense that like pursue curiosity and pursue technology, just not unto your own death. And that's a hard line, man. We didn't nail it. And I'm not sure the raccoons will either. Well, look, maybe we did. Maybe we're on the right path, John. Or a path.

I'm sorry. That's implausible. We've said some weird crap in this podcast, but that's the weirdest thing you've ever said. I did comedy last night. And the show I'm trying to build right now is making a case that humans aren't bad. And so I got up there and I told a couple of jokes. And then I was like, I'd like to do a hot take for you right now. And I don't know how we're all going to feel about it, but I'd like to make the case that people aren't bad.

And there was like one person in the room who was like, woo. And then everybody else was like, this is not why we came to the comedy show tonight. Yeah. Yeah. I really think that people don't want to hear that people aren't bad right now. There's too much. There's too much bad. But there's a lot of no, there's a lot of bad. And the bad is super real. And so it's hard to balance that because when.

The bad is super real. It's hard to focus on the good as well. Can I just ask you this question from James? I'm sorry. I'm going into a dark head space and I don't like it. I don't want to go there. That's not why I make this podcast. I make this podcast to hang out with my brother and talk about James's concerns about Australia. Okay. James writes, good day, John and Hank.

I think that I said that wrong. Hank, can you actually read this one? Yes. It says, good day, Hank and John. No, that's not right. It's like that, but it's more good day. Oh, you want me to do an Australian accent? I just want you to read it the way that James would say it.

I thought you hated when I do accents. I just want you to – well, first off, I've never heard your Australian. For all I know, it could be brilliant. I think that the reason you never heard it is I may not have one at all. I've worked on it, but I don't think that I've – okay. That's better. But it's been years. If you're workshopping it, that's even more exciting. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Good night, John and Hank.

That's not bad. I'm from the great faraway nation of Australia, and I'm British immediately. That was pretty good. That wasn't that bad. After this recent US election, I've been thinking about just how much our Australians know about the USA. It's quite a lot. We get most of our entertainment and news and social media from you guys. But to be honest, it doesn't seem very reciprocal.

On the internet, it seems like most Americans know very little about us at all. But I want to set the record straight. What do you guys think about us? Are we just a nation of Steve Irwins to you? Do you think about us at all? Mangoes and marsupials, James. P.S. Hank better not do his awful Australian accent while reading this, I swear. You jerk.

You knew that was there, didn't you? I read the question in advance, Hank. I had an advantage over you. Well, importantly, you pronounced Australia wrong. It's called – not Australians. It's called Shryans. Shryans. All right. What do we know about Australia? Hank, who is the prime minister of Australia? Who's their Donald Trump? Uh –

Definitely don't know. You want to try male or female? I'm pretty sure it's a guy. That's correct. I also don't know his name, but I know that his initials are AA. It's like Albert Australia or something. His name is very much like that. It's like Alfred Amiable or –

Yeah, I think it's just Alfred Australia. How could they not elect him, man? Yeah. Because it's in his name. That's the comedy bit I did last night about how it matters a lot what your name is when you're running for office. And when you start thinking you might run for office, you need to change your name from Pete Buttigieg to something that doesn't feel like a spelling lesson. Yeah.

Let me tell you his actual name. Okay. Because it's basically Arthur Australia. It's Anthony Albanese. Anthony Albanese. I was on the right track. If you'd given me a million years, if I was the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, I would have eventually gotten to Anthony Albanese. Anthony Norman Albanese. What else do you know about Australia, Hank? I don't.

The impression I have of Australia is there's a bunch of people who are – there's like a creative vibe I get from it. There's a lot of creative professionals. Sure, sure. A lot of great writers from Australia like Marcus Zusak. Housing is very expensive. That's another thing that Australians seem to talk about a lot on the internet. It's very hard. It's like they have a housing crisis that's like ours but even worse.

There's a lot of – one thing that Americans think about Australia a lot is that it's dangerous. We think about, oh, there's got to be big spiders and there's big snakes and all the most dangerous animals are from there. One thing we don't know that I think that I have incorporated into my understanding of Australia but I don't think most people have is that it is huge –

and empty and that there's very, there's a very large area of Australia that does not have anything or much, much of anything in it. And then there's a small area that has almost all of the people. And, uh, but over, but on the whole, it is much bigger than you think it is. Yeah. Okay. One thing I know about Australia is that it has universal healthcare. Okay. And they speak English. Yep. There's, it's a funny English, but it's English. Uh-huh.

It's an English colony. They probably have the queen on their money, question mark? They have the queen on the money, for sure, for sure. They're still in the Commonwealth. I think – and I think that in general, I feel like Australia is significantly more progressive than the United States, although these days, that's quite a low bar to jump over. Yeah, though I think that it has some things that maybe you could make the other argument. Like I don't think – Sure, of course. I'm sure they have a populist movement –

Anthony Albanese, I know, is from the Labor Party, for instance, whose name I just learned. We haven't elected a Labor Party member or a leader from the equivalent party ever.

We don't have a party that's as left-wing in the United States as the Labor Party is in Australia. Like we don't have a Medicaid for all party in the United States. We sure don't. The other thing I know is that they have a lot of coal, but they are becoming a greener nation, but they are still exporting all of the coal and that's contentious. A lot of great artists in Australia. They're all extremely attractive. Yeah.

They do tend to be attractive across the line. It's true. They're attractive and tanned and on surfboards. I remember the first time I met Marcus Zusak, the author of The Book Thief, and I just remember thinking, my God, that man is so good looking. There's the guy Troy Hunt. He's an Australian guy who's like an information security guy. Ooh.

Oh, I don't know who that guy is, but I know who Troy Sivan is. Yeah, Troy Sivan, also not Australian, but also attractive. He lives in Australia. Troy lives in Australia. I'll bet you a million dollars. But he's from South Africa. Did I make that up? Troy Sivan is an Australian singer, songwriter, and actor. Okay, well, but he was – weirdly enough, I know that he was born in South Africa. Yeah.

Well, you can say that, but he was born in Perth. Nope. He was born in South Africa. Dang it. How did you know that about Troy Sivan? I don't know. What a thing to know. He is Australian though. I feel like I know Troy better than you do. I should be the one who knows that Troy is from-

That's probably true. I really like Troy's music, though. I always have. I always thought he was a really interesting guy. Really talented. Oh, look, his picture on his Wikipedia, his second picture on his Wikipedia is him at the Paper Towns premiere. Look at that. He's at the Paper Towns premiere. Aw. He was so young. The third one is him at VidCon.

Oh my gosh, he was even younger in 2014. We got to get some newer pictures of Troye Sivan on his Wikipedia page. It's weird, man. I feel like we're responsible for two thirds of Troye Sivan's pictures on Wikipedia. Yeah. We're just power brokers, John. Well, you said it, not me. And when you said it, it made my stomach turn a little bit. I bet it did.

But yeah, Troy Hunt is a very attractive Australian who I follow on Twitter to help me understand when there are bad things that happen in passwords on the internet. What? Like when somebody gets hacked and a bunch of passwords get leaked. He runs an website called Have I Been Pwned, which helps you know if your passwords are...

owned by hackers. The musician Troy Sivan made a website called Have You Been Pwned? No, Troy Hunt, who is also Australian and also attractive. I'm sorry. I didn't know that they could have two Troys in one country. They got multiple Troys. Wow. That's the other thing I thought about Australia is that their population is about 12. What do you think the population of Australia is saying? Guess without Googling. Guess without Googling. All right. All right. Let's do it. This is great. This is great. I think the population of Australia, I'm going to go 80%.

80 million people. First off, that was never going to be the case. What do you mean? Second off, you're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Well, did you look it up? Well, yes, but I wish that I had it down. No, you didn't say first. That's not fair. Well, okay. I'll just throw out a number. Now everybody thinks I'm dummy and doesn't think you're dummy. I'll throw out a guess. I'll throw out a guess. 26.64 million in 2023. That's my guess. Okay.

With a gross domestic product of 1.724 trillion. So we're talking about a per capita GDP of about $64,711. That would be my guess if I had to make a guess. Well, it's 64,711.77 cents. Oh, sorry. I don't have very good vision when I don't have my bifocals on. They have way fewer people than Canada. They have fewer people than California. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, yeah. I think they have fewer people than Florida, which is frankly embarrassing. Well- About the same. About the same. All right. It's like the Florida of the entire ocean. Hank, you should never say that kind of thing about Australia. We're allowed to make fun of Florida. We grew up there. Okay? So we suffered. We can make the jokes. We can make the jokes. And maybe it's better now. Doesn't seem to be.

I'll tell you what, not statistically, it's not. I feel like, frankly, Florida is in danger of entering that territory that Alabama was in when I was a student there in the 1990s, where people would often say that the state motto of Alabama was, thank God for Mississippi, because Alabama was 49th in everything. Yeah.

Anyway, that's not to dig at anybody who lives in Florida except for their governor. Hank, what's our next question? This comes from Megan who asks, hi, Hank and John. There's not currently a cure for cancer, but we have treatments that help. And from what I understand, some people after treatment have no more cancer cells. Is that not a cure? I'm definitely not a doctor, so I apologize if I got anything wrong about this. Pumpkins and penguins, Megan. Yeah.

Yeah. So we do have cures for cancers. We just don't have a cure for all cancer. Yeah. Because cancer isn't really one disease. It's a lot, a lot, a lot of diseases. Yeah. And it's also different in every person. Like in a way, we don't have a cure for...

anything because if you are in a specific situation, you can be killed by the common cold. Right. We don't have a cure for staph infections because some people get the kind of staph infections that don't respond well to our existing toolkit of antibiotics. Yeah, but we have a cure for... But many people with staph infections are cured by their own immune systems. And others are cured by fancy antibiotics like this guy. Like that? Over and over again. Well...

I have to get a lot of antibiotics because I get a lot of staph infections. I don't know. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun. They just love you. So in that way, that's a great point that we do have – like we cure many cancers. There are many cancers that have no cure, especially ones that are later stage. Right. And so that's another thing that like a cancer –

It's like a different disease at stage three than at stage one, which is why they do the stages because it requires a totally different set of –

treatment and how you think about it when it's at a later stage. And it's not just that it is a more advanced disease. It's literally that it's different. Like cancers, when they metastasize, so if a solid tumor metastasizes, it's because it changed. And when it metastasizes, that provides a number of advantages to it. One, it's in a bunch of different places. And so it's harder to just like cut it out. Two,

As a cancer evolves in the place where it first formed, it only has one set of pressures on it. And so it sort of maintains some amount of pressure.

like similarity to itself. And then if it moves from, you know, from the breast to the lung or from the kidney to the brain, it's in a new environment. And so that new cancer colony in a different area of the body is going to be super different from the cancer colony in another area of the body, which means that the treatments, like one set of treatment isn't going to work as well on one of the colonies than another because it's literally genetically different.

No, that's interesting. They just keep evolving as they move around the body. I don't think I fully understood that, but that's really both interesting and kind of scary. No, yeah. Writing this book is very much that. It's like, wow, this is fascinating and terrifying.

Yeah. I love how interesting this is, as long as I don't have to consider it as a thing that actually happens to people. I am very excited for this book, Hank, that you are supposedly writing and that I have read, to be fair. So I know you're writing it, but I'm just excited to see where it goes and what happens with it when it comes out. Yeah. It's going to be a while, I think.

All right, Hank, we have another question from Sylvie who writes, hi, my name is Sylvie. I'm 11 years old and my question is that I have too many books. I collect graphic novels, but now I have too many and I don't want to give them away. What shall I do? Pumpkins and penguins, Sylvie. Sylvie, you got to give them away. Oh, right. Or alternate, you create a lending library. Like with your fellow school kids or whatever? With your fellow nerds, I assume. Well, Hank-

I think that Sylvie's parents had Sylvie write this email to us in the hopes that we would say exactly that. Like, oh, you got to give them away, Sylvie. Nothing lasts forever. You got to let go. If you love something, let it go and let it have another life with another person. No, Sylvie. Hoard your books. That's my advice.

Keep all your books. The books that I have from when I was a child are absolute treasures to me. And I can't get rid of any of them. And I beg my kids to read them and they don't. And yet I still can't get rid of them. Hoard, hoard, hold on to them, Sylvie. Hold on to every single last one of them. Cling to them as if they were life rafts and you were in a vast and empty ocean. Yeah.

Sylvie will be the dragon of the book world, just poised atop a mountain of graphic novels, glistening claws, teeth dripping with ink.

Just murdering anyone who approaches. That's right, Sylvie. That's what we're dreaming for you. Is that one day you'll have a vast adult library that goes all the way up from when you were reading like Cat Kid Comic Club all the way until you started reading, I don't know, Watchmen and Mouse. Mm-hmm.

And you'll have the greatest graphic novel collection on earth. But no one shall approach. There'll be zines in there.

Tons of zines. From all corners of the earth. Sylvie, when you're 16, you're going to get so into zines. There's going to be weird manga. The kind that's not even that interesting. Where bad stuff is happening to people, but not in any kind of unusual way. Just the everyday misfortunes. Yeah. I've read a couple of those and I'm like, why am I doing this?

That actually reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the Everyday Misfortunes. The Everyday Misfortunes, they're right around the corner. This podcast is also brought to you by Sylvie's Horde. Sylvie's Horde, stay back. No, do not approach. None shall enter. None shall leave. If you come in, you cannot go away. I will turn you into books. This podcast is also brought to you by Troye Sivan. Troye Sivan.

He's handsome. This podcast is also brought to you by the state of Florida. The state of Florida just sort of wiggling off at the bottom there. I think an alternate name for the state of Florida is Florida. There's less and less of it each year. So we're going to have to learn to share, right? Right. Right? Right. Sell their houses to who, Ben?

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We got another question from Scott who writes, Dear John and Hank, what's the difference between a business that gives 100% of its profit away and a nonprofit? Best, Scott. What a good question that we had to figure out the answer to on the fly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also have been asked this question before, but as far as I can understand it, Scott,

A business that gives 100% of its profit to charity funds good work and charity does good work. This took me a while to figure out. I was like, why can't we just turn Good Store into a charity?

And they were like, because it doesn't do charity stuff. Right. It does selling tea and coffee and soap and undies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, there is like a fuzzy line there where, you know, like the arts community center in Missoula puts on shows. Like they have comedians come into town and that helps to fund the-

the community center, but that's not like, that's like what a comedy club does. And a comedy club is a business. And so they have to like, but the way that they do that is that the shows are run by,

an external organization that then pays for the space and that money goes to the budget of the comedy club or of the community center. And that, you know, like, but like the majority of the work that they do is they help, they like provide services for all the people of Missoula to like learn how to do art and hang out and,

And so they're doing that work, whereas the majority of the work that Goodstore does is just selling. It's like e-commerce. That's all. That's really all we do. And then we give all that money away. So we have to pay taxes. Like a big thing there is like what you what you don't want is for a company to pretend that they're not a company. So they don't have to pay taxes. And Goodstore still has to pay taxes.

That's the important thing to understand. That's the big difference is the tax exempt status. But we set up Good Store, which by the way, you can visit good.store and solve all your holiday needs. But we set up Good Store with the idea of funding in a long-term open-ended way that

health care systems. And so the idea is to provide recurring, ongoing, long-term revenue to those health care systems. And it's going great so far. We've raised $1.25 million this year, but I think we'll probably get to $1.5 million before the year is over. That's my hope anyway. Yeah. Which is a little smaller than last year. And we are, you know, like the

balance of that. And I think that the big reason is that I didn't do the cancer socks, which was a huge thing last year that I did during chemo. But I think that like the other parts of the business are growing and that it's definitely sustainable and cool. And we just have to figure out the right way. We have to figure out how to get it bigger. Yeah. Well, I mean, I also want to figure out how to not have it be smaller because that's always hard when a business is smaller one year than it was the other.

We have to make it bigger specifically so that it doesn't become smaller. Yeah. Which we have a bunch of ideas for, but like we don't know if they're going to work.

Yeah, and we've struggled to scale Goodstore at the rate that we thought we could scale it. We've struggled to scale it outside of Nerdfighteria. So one of the reasons we're giving away less money this year is because we spent money on paid advertising, which is becoming a better investment for us over time, but started out as a pretty- It's pretty hard. Yeah. Pretty hard. A lot of money per customer acquisition, as they say. Yeah, we have a significant CAC. That's the customer acquisition cost, to be clear. Yeah.

I try not to ever use those words, those shortened words. They're terrible. It's so bad. But anyway, we're making progress on the CAC front and we're also making progress on other fronts. So we're hopeful that Good Store – and Good Store has had a pretty good holiday season, which I have to say is a massive relief. Yeah. But we could still have a better holiday season if you go to Good Dots store today. I forgot that we can do that. There's so much good stuff.

That's one of the reasons I think we're – there's a lot of stuff that's sort of selling itself at the moment. Yeah. The coffee and tea especially have such – and the soap all have such high customer retention because people get it and it's really good and they like it and so they keep getting it. All right, Hank. We have to answer one more question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. This question is from Carmen who writes, hello, Green Brothers. I'll cut right to the chase. In episode 400 at 13 minutes, 17 seconds, while talking about a dead author, Hank says, well, he's dead. So he's the same age as all the other dead people. Isn't that how it works? Yeah.

And is that how it works? You become an ageless object in the form of a body for the rest of eternity? Or are you frozen at the age you died? Or do you age continuously as time goes on? Time is weird and I'm afraid of dying. Ticking time bomb. Carmen. Ooh. I think I'm right. All the dead people are the same age. Yeah. I think that's right. Are they zero or are they some like – No, they're not an age on our –

On our spectrum. Yeah. They're a different age. It's not like a number. It's a different thing. But I do think – I think of them and I know that you're not going to like this. But there's 120 billion people of whom about 112 billion are dead. Uh-huh. There's like – what does that mean? Like about 22 dead people for each of us living people? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And they – I think of it as them –

I mean, we inherited their world on every level, right? Yep. Even though the majority of them died before the age of 15 years old, they still contributed through their love and being loved to the world that we share now. Like they loved us up into the world, like literally and figuratively. And I think of them as like kind of trying to hold us together. Yeah. You know how I think of them, John? I think of them as all- What?

As a bunch of femurs? I thought you said beavers. And I was like, no, but that's awesome. Maybe I should. Yeah. Just building dams for us. I just want to imagine all the dead people as beavers, like the cutest beavers. That is a little weird when I think of my grandma as a beaver. Just 112 billion beavers just playing in the stream of time. How do you seriously think of them? I think of them as all of the words.

Hmm. All the words together. I think of them, I think of the words, and I think...

These words were not made by any person. Like the words that we use were not made – like no one word was made by any one person. No, a couple were. Except for Shakespeare. Shakespeare's got a bunch of them to his name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But other than that – But then we like – we took those and we kept on messing around with them, even Shakespeare words. Right. And we will continue to mess around with them. And the thing that is communication and the –

tremendous number of words that we get in all of the different languages that then get shared between languages is how we do the thing that is the most human thing, which is put ideas into each other's heads and put stories into each other's heads. And so without, and like there was a time when there weren't very many words and so we were less good at that. And now there's just like more and more words.

Well, there's both more words and there's fewer words in the sense that there are fewer languages. That's true. In my communication, I just think about the ghost of all of the people and all of the things that I say. Yeah. I didn't come up with these words.

No, they brought the language to you and then you inherited it and did what you could with it and added your little bit. It's a little bit like the world's largest ball of paint, right? Everybody gets to add their own layer and your layer affects the next layer, but it's not like your layer is by any means the last or most important layer. Yeah. And I extra like this because like words aren't a thing that exists. They're just like breath. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, that brings me to AFC Wimbledon news. America's favorite fourth-tier English soccer team, which is made ultimately out of language, just like the rest of us. And ideas.

AFC Wimbledon played Accrington Stanley during the week, Hank. I was actually at the Partners in Health Board of Trustees meeting and rather heroically chose not to stream the match during that meeting. And then I was feeling really good about that decision in the 75th minute because we were down 2-0. And I get little updates on my phone, so I would glance down at my phone and see, oh, God, we've given up another goal. Mm-hmm.

And I was like, well, what a perfect game not to watch. And then in the 89th minute, Alistair Smith scored a goal. And I was like, well, but probably not, right? And then in the last kick of the game, 97 minutes in, James Tilly with an outside-the-box banger, 2-2 draw, beautiful come-from-behind tie. The second most glorious result of them all, Hank.

A draw. That's right. We tied Accrington Stanley. We're currently eighth in the League Two table, but we still have a game in hand. So theoretically, we could be good enough to get into the playoffs if we were to win that extra game that we have. And I don't know. I mean, it's only about a third of the way through the season, but we look good. Yeah.

Well, I feel like a third of the way through the season is a weird time to be talking about the playoffs. Am I confused? I know, but I can't resist myself. I can't hold back and hope. Hope is the thing that –

uh, Springs Eternal. I, I've been signing my name over and over again, as you may know, uh, during these live streams over at John's channel. That's you. And we're taking all the money and giving it that we get from like super chats and member memberships and everything and giving it to AFC Wimbledon's players fund. Okay. And, uh,

I got to call the director of football for AFC Wimbledon, Craig Cope, and tell him that in January, he's going to get to buy, I don't know, at least two-thirds of a player as a result of this ridiculous project. That's wild. Yeah. I cannot believe that. And he was like, are you serious? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, I'll tell you what, I've worked at a lot of football clubs and that just doesn't happen elsewhere. Yeah.

Oh, man. I was talking to my Uber driver when I was in California. And he was, you know, been in America for a few years. And he was telling me his impressions of America. And he said, one thing about America is that there are a lot of rich people. And I was like, yeah, it's weird. It's true. Yeah. It's like not most of us, but there's a lot of them. Yeah. They're out there.

What does that have to do with me? I would – are you saying that –

We got to find them for AFC Wimbledon and also Partners in Health. Mostly for reducing the burden of maternal mortality in the world. Not mostly for fourth tier English soccer, but I did decide I wanted to have one silly project this year. Yeah. And that's the silly project. And it's been really fun. Good. I believe it. It looks really fun. And I'm happy. You can check it out at youtube.com slash I don't know. Just go to YouTube and type in John's channel.

That you're not going to have a hard time finding it unless...

You're that person who's never seen us before. In which case, don't do it. Lydia, I believe her name is. Lydia, stay off of YouTube. What's the news from Mars? In news from Mars, Curiosity in its 12th year traveling across the surface of Mars has just sent us a 360 view of the area that it is with all these broken puzzle pieces of rocks that are just very cool and weird. And it has also found some of these weird objects

pure sulfur rocks that we have been... I think that Perseverance... I'm not entirely sure. I should have done more research here. But I think that Perseverance found similar rocks when they got crushed and then it could see them behind them.

And we find this very interesting because here on Earth, oftentimes these like crystals of pure sulfur come from hot springs and hot springs. Hot springs are where life comes from. Are a very lifey kind of place. Yeah. Got a lot of different ways for life to happen in hot springs. You got a lot of energy gradients. You got a lot of chemical gradients going on. You got a lot of water, obviously. It would be under the ground, right? What? Yeah.

It would be under the ground, right? The life? Yeah. Could be. Or it could be at the vent. So if it was in a lake-

And the hot spring was under the water or in an ocean, like a hydrothermal vent situation? No, I'm saying today. Today's life on Mars. Oh, today's life on Mars. Look, it's possible. There's still geologic heat. There's still – like the most recent eruption of Olympus Mons was a long time ago, but not like billions of years ago. So there's still magma and lava and heat and like stuff going around inside of Mars. It just is a lot more –

stacked, like a lot more sort of locked in than US. It doesn't have, than us. It doesn't have plate technology. Than the US. Also than the US, both. We have Yellowstone, I guess. It's pretty weird that I said the US when I meant Earth.

And then I tried to pass it off that I was just spelling us. Yeah. It wouldn't seem that weird to that Australian guy. So if you dug into – but we think if you dig into Mars, there's liquid water underneath the surface, right? Or do we not think that? Yeah. There are areas where we think there's liquid water under the surface, yeah. And if those areas are near –

hot vents or vents of some kind. There could still be life. Yeah. There could still definitely be life. Like that's the number one place where there would be life. That is the number one place on earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. That would be the number one place there would be life. Dude, can you imagine like you're up in like the Mars polar regions or whatever, and it's ice and you're like digging down like an ice fisherman? This is how I imagine it happening. I know this is not how it actually happens. You're digging down like an ice fisherman and you get like

three feet down and there's some liquid water and you drop in your fishing pole and you bring out a freaking Martian fish.

That's not what we're talking about. I don't think that we're talking about fish things. We don't know. We don't know what's down there. We don't know. We don't know. What we see in – look, you're right. But what we see, it would be like not – obviously not as big of news, but it would be very big news if it was just –

Well, microbes. And that is much more likely. Though I'm telling you, these ice moons that have these giant subsurface oceans, I'm like, there's got to be some big sea monsters down there.

But maybe not. Maybe not, but maybe. Maybe. This is so exciting to me, the idea that we're not even alone in the solar system, let alone in the universe. Yeah. I mean, ice moons are particularly weird because there's just no way to know for a long time. Like, that's just – Well, it's going to take us a while to get there. Yeah. And then to get through the ice is like more than we've ever dug on Earth. Right. Right. But – I think. Yeah.

But we're working on ways. We got a new way of digging holes on Earth that's very exciting. Do we really? Is this a joke? No. Are you setting me up for like a dad's joke where you're like, da-dum-bum? No.

No, the – there's a lot of excitement around geothermal power right now. And so they're trying to think of different ways to get to the heat that's down there. And one way that I think is pretty outlandish but is real is that instead of sending a drill down, which is pretty fast but requires you to swap the drills out all the time because the drill bit gets – and it takes forever to get the drill bit up and then put it back in. And then you – so like that's the thing that slows down drilling. Yeah.

Instead of using a drill bit, you use a laser and you just you just like with a huge amount of electricity, just burn away the ground. And then the ground becomes gas and it just flows up out of the hole. So it's slower per minute. The thing is in the ground, but you can potentially go way deeper and you never have to replace the drill head.

So if that's a technology that actually gets on a learning curve and gets way cheaper over time and we sort of figure out how to do it well with a compact solution, that's the kind of thing you could send to Enceladus and drill through the ice. But also there's the problem of do we want to – Getting there. Getting there. Do we want to do that? Do we want to upset an ecosystem that might be down there? How do you do that in a way that's ethical? Yeah.

Also, what happens when you blow through it? Does it just like create a volcano that then you can actually explore through, et cetera? I'm just going to tell you right now, if we can do it, we're going to do it. And we're going to find a way to justify it. Not to be too negative on humans, but like, I mean, raccoons would do the same thing if you gave them a space program, but we're going to find a way to justify it if we can do it. Oh man, raccoons would be so much better at space than us because they're little. Yeah.

I know. This is your main contention about what's wrong with humans is that we're too physically large. That's why raccoons are going to do so much better than us. Like they're going to be way more reckless, but they're going to have a smaller impact per raccoon. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I for one welcome our raccoon overlords and I'm grateful to you for potting with me here at the tail end of the human era. They're also so much cuter than us.

I don't know about that. You can email us at hankandjohn at gmail.com. Thank you to everybody who sends us your questions. We do find them extremely enjoyable. This episode is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It was mixed by Joseph Tudemadish. 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 returning from maternity leave is Tabuki 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.