403: Yeah Inflation
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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 and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John. Yeah. My grandma passed. I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

She was my grandma, too. Oh, that's it. We don't need. That's fantastic. They both passed. You did it, John. Your dad joke's the dad joke. Most recently, it was nanny. And that was very sad, especially for mom. But it was also sad for us. Our nanny was a huge force in our lives. She was a force. That's for sure. That's what people say about people who were not always fun to deal with. Well, she was a force.

I mean, listen, she was a lot harder than us, Hank, but she also had to be, right? I don't know what kind of person I would be if I'd had Nanny's childhood. I know that I'd be a lot harder than current me. Yep.

So like I'm a soft-handed nymph compared to Nanny. In part because of her hard work. That's right. That's right. That's right. Nanny was the first person in her family to go to college. She went to the University of Tennessee. She majored in sociology. She was a force. I didn't know that she majored in sociology. I didn't know that sociology existed back then. There's a chance I made it up. First off, I think sociology did exist, but there's a chance I made that up.

She majored in something because she graduated. Or not. Maybe they had majors back then. Who knows? John, can I tell you something I feel? Yeah. I feel like I don't... I'm having a feeling about the internet. Oh, God. I mean...

Hank, do you think that we've spent enough time on this podcast? You know what I don't miss, by the way? Twitter. Don't miss it. I have been cured of my Twitter addiction. Now it turns out it has to get real bad. And also you have to not know how to log in. Oh, yeah, I do try. I do try to log in four or five times a day before being reminded that I can't log in because Rosianna took away my privileges. Yeah.

Hilariously, I can still log on as Leon Muss, but I can't log on as myself. You can only be Leon.

As long as you're Leon while you're Leon, I encourage you to do that every once in a while. No, no, no. I have no interest in it. I'm cured. I'm cured. What were you going to tell me is your broad observation about the internet? So, I mean, first of all, I'll say that we do talk a lot about the internet, but I think that we very much – a large part of our lives is lived on the internet. I think that we care about the way that we care about our states and our cities and our country. Yeah. And –

But yeah, I feel having spent a little bit of time on Blue Sky, I am reminded of what it's like when the platform has less control over me

Yeah. And that's it's actually very different. And I feel much more like much less like I'm playing a game when I am creating content. Like I don't feel like I'm trying to figure out what's going to happen with this piece of the puzzle and this piece and like all the decisions the algorithms are going to make. And I also feel like when I'm just being a person, I'm being I just feel like I have more agency.

Like I'm sort of moving around in the space without being as manipulated. I still think that I'm being manipulated. I think. Right. But there's, there's a freedom to it. You're, you're not posting for the algorithm. You're posting for the people, which is because the algorithm is less present as the algorithm isn't as good. Yeah. And I absolutely agree with you today. I had one of my favorite tweets of all time, which I haven't, the last time I had one of my favorite tweets of all time was like literally 12 or 13 years ago.

Wow. Because I have not enjoyed Twitter in that long. But I was on Blue Sky and you were talking about how in a couple of years, there are going to be a couple hundred years, there will be a lot of things that are like the four humors, the way we used to understand the machinations of the human body as the balance of these four humors, yellow bile, black bile, and the other two. Blood and phlegm. Blood and phlegm. And

And I responded, to be fair, the four humors kind of ruled. I mean, what I wouldn't give to let out some black bile and not be so sad all the time. And I thought that was a great response to you. Yeah.

And it was just like we were talking again. It was like us. Like, it was like what we, what Twitter used to be like for us where we would just kind of have fun together. Yeah. I've had to like relearn some activities like retweeting. You never retweet on Twitter anymore because you just like sort of expect the algorithm to do the work. You don't think anybody's going to be looking at what you post. You think people are going to be looking at what you, the algorithm posts, what the algorithm posts. Yeah.

We are not you're not so much the editor of other people's feeds anymore. And you used to be. That's how Twitter used to work. So it's interesting, but it just it broadly it's waking me up to the fact that so much of my life is controlled by people who are trying to get me to do things, usually so that I will watch ads.

Which are further manipulative. Like the whole goal was manipulation there. But the point is, I'm not really deciding what I think about or how I feel in any given moment when I'm surfing the waves. Yes.

And that is distressing to me. It makes me feel like a dolphin in both the good ways and the smart and the bad ways. The smart ways and the dumb ways is what I was going to say, because it's like I'm smart in the sense that I'm a dolphin. And so I'm fairly smart. But all I'm actually doing is surfing the waves. Yeah, yeah. I can't surf on a place where there's no waves.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just flying. I'm just living. I, I, I'm, I'm literally surfacing and going under and surfacing and going under. It's a good metaphor because like, it's more fun. It's more dangerous. You can only do it in certain areas. And that's where people congregate in those areas. But actually maybe there's like a lot more joy and peace to be found in spots that aren't so tumultuous. Right. And, uh,

And and like you can't surf the waves if there are no waves. But like maybe I should be sailing instead of surfing. Hank, I'm just going to tell you how I feel about blue sky right now, which is how I felt about Tumblr in 2011. And if I learned one thing from Tumblr, it's that everything is going to work out just fine.

Yeah, this is going to go great. It's the Trojan horse. It's the Trojan horse meme where it's just like, it's like, here's a social media platform that's actually good. And then inside of it, it's like everything you fear will be here in 18 months. All of the stuff you don't like is also in here, but we won't let you know about it for 18 months.

I wonder if like on my deathbed, I'm going to be like, you know, the weirdest and least pleasant thing that ever happened to me was Tumblr. I wouldn't be surprised. Well, I mean, that would have meant I had a pretty good wife. Yeah, no, I mean, I think I hope I hope. Yeah, I will say like you getting cancer was very bad for me, but it wasn't as bad as Tumblr. Well, yeah, I mean, it turned out OK.

I think it could have been worse. Tumblr turned out okay, too. Tumblr turned out fine in the end. It was what foul dust trailed in the wake of Tumblr that temporarily aborted my interest in the short-winded elations of man. To borrow a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald that I've butchered, let's answer this question from Keegan, who writes, Dear John and Hank,

When I make loose leaf black tea, especially the delicious, incredibly good, I'm not kidding, tea available at Keats & Co. and at Good Store, a place for holiday shopping needs and many self-care joys. Keegan, I love you. Wow. Wow. This is the wave I want to be surfing.

Speaking of advertisements, why write them when Keegan writes them so well for us? But yeah, go to good.store for all your holiday gifting needs. Keegan recommends it. Anyway, Keegan says, when I make loose leaf black tea, I often steep it twice before disposing the leaves. If I drink a cup of tea, then make and drink another cup of tea using the same leaves. Am I ingesting twice the caffeine or does most of all the caffeine work?

leach out into the first cup of tea. What a great question. And then what a great sign off. You reap what you steep, Keegan. It depends. Well, always you're going to have more caffeine in the first cup. I actually have done a fair amount of research on this because I became obsessed with tea. And so I know the answer to this question without even having to look it up. So there's a bunch of stuff in tea and they are all different amounts of soluble in water.

So there's a compound called L-theanine, which is maybe or maybe not responsible for actually mitigating some of the effects of caffeine. So it takes it kind of maybe takes the edge off of the caffeine a little bit.

and it dampens anxiety maybe a little bit. No, no, no. I don't want that. I like, I like it when I just drink coffee and tea and I feel anxious. And then the solution to it is to drink more caffeine. And there's more L-theanine in green tea than in black tea, but there is in both. And, uh,

L-theanine is extremely soluble in water. So it's in the tea within seconds of putting some tea into hot water. Caffeine is less soluble in water. And so it comes out more slowly, which is why you want to steep for three to five minutes to get all of it out.

And then there's also all the flavors and there's a billion of them. Even in a pure black tea with nothing else in it, there's so many different compounds that your nose can smell and your tongue can taste. And those are different from tea to tea, but-

I've made this more complicated than I need to because most of the caffeine is going to get out in the first three minutes. Almost all of the L-theanine is. And so your second cup is going to be a less caffeinated and it's going to have more of the stuff that comes out slowest, which is like the more bitter tannins from the tea. So it's probably going to want to put a little more sugar in that second steep.

I steep the tea twice, too, because Sarah and I usually make both of our cups in the morning with the same tea. And I don't have it. It tastes good to me. I mean, I don't have the incredibly sophisticated palate that you apparently have where you can taste billions of different flavonoids. Like, I can only taste the 23 flavors that are available in Diet Dr. Pepper at one time. More than that is wasted upon me. Yeah. Yeah.

23 is the right number of flavors. You want a prime number of flavors. That's what Dr. Charles Alderton was thinking back in the day. Anyway, point being, it's interesting to know that it's a little less caffeinated, but it's also got a little bit less of that juice that makes you less anxious and takes the edge off the caffeine. I assume coffee has none of that juice based on my response. That is correct. Yeah, that makes sense. Because when I drink coffee, I do not feel like anything's taken the edge off. I feel not good at all.

And I love coffee. That's the problem. But I've been drinking more tea, both because Keats & Co. is genuinely very good and because I am trying to take the edge off a little bit. So I have one big cup of coffee in the morning. It's called a Red Eye. It's coffee with a shot of espresso in it. Oh, my God.

I use the Keats & Co coffee for that. It's very good, the dark roast. And then I have tea throughout the day, which is much better for me than just if I keep drinking coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Oh, wow. You're a coffee drinker all day. I do not do that. I had one big cup of tea this morning where I did a double batch in like a big cup.

And that was too much, it turns out. I was not feeling right. But I made some mistakes on social media, so there was that, at least. Tell me about your mistakes on social media, or do you save that for your other podcast, Delete This? I jumped in. I went on Twitter because I wanted to tweet about Twitter to Twitter. I know. And I immediately saw tweets where I was like, I have to argue about...

No, Hank, you jumped in on Twitter. I did. And then I went back to blue sky and I was like going on Twitter is like walking down the stairs into a fight club. But except that would be the case if I ever did it. But I'm not saying I do because you don't talk about the fight club. I can't believe you. What what arguments did you get involved in? Were they Trumpy?

They were actually – they were political. They were about politics. But I don't – there was also an Elon Musk argument that I jumped into. Did the people you disagree with come around to your position and apologize to you? One of them did.

Oh, God. That's not what we need. I know. We don't need Hank empowered. It worked. Well, this one wasn't really an argument. Well, first I wrote a snarky tweet and then I deleted it and then I wrote a nicer one. And then he was like, yes, you're kind of right about that. Okay. So, but like, yeah, you're right. I shouldn't be doing that. But I also tweeted some true all out snark. I just accomplish so little. I know.

I know. But it feeds the algorithm. And it makes you feel like a dolphin. This isn't from this morning, but this person was tweeting about how wind turbines aren't actually good for the environment because they aren't carbon neutral. And I said, it's okay to admit that you don't know what words mean. So that's the kind of thing you should not tweet. That does nothing. I'm embarrassed. Nothing good makes everything. Well, if you're embarrassed by you shouldn't share it. Um,

You're out here talking about Fight Club and I don't like it. Let's answer another question. It comes from Seth who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm 24. I came from the generation of students raised with a lot of crash course. Seth, that generation continues. Yeah. I don't want to brag. It's all a brag.

Just because you're not in school doesn't mean the kids in school are currently. We're still at it, Seth. But thank you. And he says thank you. Seth says thank you. I learned a lot, but one of the main images that stuck with me was your This Machine Kills Fascist laptop sticker. It was the first one I bought from my computer several years ago.

And now getting a new laptop recently, I questioned whether I should get another sticker. Yikes. I'm a massive believer in an open internet and informed public, which is why the message really stuck with me back then. That's also why I had it on my computer, Seth. Now I'm not sure if our machines are still doing their job of killing fascists. What do you think the relationship is between machines and fascism? Has it changed in the last 10 years? Thanks for all that you do. Pumpkins and penguins, Seth.

Can I add like a separate additional question on top of that question? Yeah. I mean, let me just answer the question, which is that I love to sell goods at DFTBA.com, but I cannot bring myself to recommend that sticker in 2024. Yeah. Despite, despite my clear bias toward the company that prints them. Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, it's very weird. Uh,

That now that sticker feels very political in a way that it did not back then. Like you were not actually trying to be like, I'm going to, I'm trying to just like help you understand who to vote for. No, it was just like fascism bad. Well, I mean, I stand by that. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's been – that's just a sign of how much things have changed in that time. And I worry so much about Crash Course becoming politicized. Yeah, me too. Like I see folks grabbing stuff out of Crash Course and being like, look at what the liberals are teaching your children out of context. Right.

The like the thought that like PragerU becomes like an official part of state curricula in the US and like I feel like there is an absolute chance that in the next four years Crash Course becomes explicitly not allowed in some places. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. It's a worry. It's a worry. It keeps you up at night. And like, and like me being political on Maine makes that worse, you know? And so part of me is like, I just want to like, I should just get out so that I can leave the good in place. But of course I, I cannot stop myself from doing this stuff. No, I've noticed that about you. Maybe I can, maybe I'll be able to someday if I, if I ever do, that's why, well, that's part of why. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a,

I go back and forth on where our responsibilities lie. Believe me, I am tortured by it. But I think the larger question of does the machine kill or – by which I mean discourage. The actual question. Fascism. I am not convinced the machine –

discourages fascism. In fact, I think the machine, the machine can be a tool of fascism. And that is why I don't have the sticker on my laptop anymore. Yeah. The, um, it could be, it could be that your individual machine and just, it's just this, the true of guitars as well. Like you can, there's lots of propaganda music. Sure. Of course. Nationalist propaganda music. But,

But my point – yeah, that's true. So the sticker came from Woody Guthrie's guitar that had this Machine Kills Fascist painted on it back in the day. And obviously Woody Guthrie and I don't line up politically 100 percent, but there's some overlap in that Venn diagram I think it's safe to say. But I used to believe so much that an open internet would solve –

Totalitarianism, that it would create democracy on its own without any kind of assistance, that it would create strong –

governments with strong social safety nets. And I was so wrong. I was like so fascinatingly, completely wrong. And it's so weird. I was also very wrong. We were, everyone was all wrong together and we all had this like tremendous amount of optimism. And then like, now that we're here, I'm like, oh, this makes so much sense that this would be exactly what would happen.

I guess I still don't understand how we got here. And it doesn't seem obvious to me. And maybe that's the issue is that I'm still like, wait a second. This was good. Yeah. I'm positive. It was good. And now I'm quite positive that it's

Kind of not. Yeah. I mean, mechanistically, like each individual step on the path, I don't really understand. I don't understand how we could have done it better. But I do feel like when you revolutionize media, when you make information more accessible, it is very unusual for that not to head off, at least in a populist direction. And, you know, populism often is part of

nationalist movements that degrade faith institutions and increase faith and strongmen so like from from that perspective like from a historical context perspective right yeah okay this makes sense i don't know why i don't know why no one thought to themselves oh every other time there was a new media that made information cheaper and more accessible and um

and more and like gave over the ability to broadcast to more people it was a it took a while for everybody to sort of wake up from the spell yeah boy and like waking up from the spell really sucks yeah at least it has in the past i hope we have a cheaper way to wake up from the spell than uh yeah they they had after the printing press and the radio no those were expensive i

Those were expensive. But, you know, now we... So one of the... This is my new frame. And I've just sort of alluded to this in the beginning of the episode. But I'm just like, well, I want people to think about... Or I want me to think about and I want, like, to be upset about the ways in which these systems manipulate people. And including me. And...

And just to like point and be like, like I tweeted about this and people were like, well, how does Twitter manipulate you? And I'm like, oh my, I mean, here's some like obvious ways. Well, actually one way is responding. How does Twitter manipulate you? Which is a classic bait.

For a Hank response, right? I guess. That's a response that leads to a response. But that's that person manipulating me, which is fine. Like, I think that I think it's OK for people to try and get like, like change people's minds and.

But those are but those those kind of gotcha posts are always going to be shown to more people precisely because they're gotcha posts. And then you feel obligated to respond to them, which which encourages more kinds of gotcha posts. So, like, right. To me, that's an example of how the algorithm works in the first place. But but in a good situation in that case is that the argument is very clear. Like there's lots of examples we've all experienced directly of Twitter manipulating us. So can we talk about.

inflation? I don't know what that means. We used to say, yeah, somebody would say something and you wanted to agree with it and you'd say, yeah, but now I've noticed that you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll say it seven times in a row. What's wrong with me? What's going on? Don't point it out. Don't point it out. Yeah.

Is that the algorithm working? Did the algorithm do that? Who did that to me? Who gave me yeah inflation? The other inflation I've seen lately, Hank, is I used to say 100%. 100%. I agree with you 100%. And now John only exclusively says hundo P. No. I say 1,000%. 1,000%. Wow. I agree with you 1,000%. I heard someone the other day, I won't name names. 1,000 P? A colleague of ours. A colleague of ours say –

I hear you and I agree a hundred thousand percent. And I was like, that's too many percent. It's too much. Can't handle it. Yeah. I, I, Hundo thousand. Okay.

You can't agree with me. You can agree with me a thousand percent because I understand that that is classic exaggeration, right? You get to a hundred thousand percent, you've gone all the way around the circle. And now I don't, I don't actually think you care anymore. Now I think this is absurdist. I don't even think you agree with me. I think that if you agreed with me, you would say Hundo P.

A hundred. That's very specific. A hundred thousand. Maybe they were just like a hundred percent. Then they were like, no, no, no. No, it's got to be more than that. It's got a hundred thousand percent. Yeah. But yeah, I'm saying yeah a lot. I'm saying yeah more than I used to. And I want to watch out for it. So I just want to call out the inflation. Okay. Yep. And yep.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Some of the things I'll say include agreed, and I hear you, and heard chef. Heard chef. What else? What else do we got, Josh?

Keep going. Okay. I just – I needed to get you off of Twitter and I felt like, yeah, inflation was my only path. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's happening. It's happening. All right. We got another question from Lennox who writes, Dear John and Hank, my 11-year-old daughter recently had brain surgery. So she's home from school recovering and very bored and asking a lot of questions. Here's a selection of just a few of those questions and we'd love it if you could answer one.

Two of the questions, Hank, are were Starlings around when you were a kid and when did Starlings show up in America? Oh, well, Starlings were around when I was a kid. In fact, there were many of them. So many. So many. Yeah.

Yeah. But if, uh, if we were born in like the 1870s, then there wouldn't have been starlings around when we were kids. Cause a group of a hundred European starlings were released in central park in the 1890s. Uh,

by some people who wanted America to have all the birds that Shakespeare ever mentioned. That's a real story. Now, wait a second. Wait a second. Yes. I have spent an inordinate amount of time, Lennox, researching this question. Oh, no. Is it not a real story?

So it may be a real story. Okay.

And I think there was another independent group of starlings that was released in the Northwest. Yeah. I do not doubt that starlings would have got here one way or the other, but, but, but not most starlings trace back to that group of most starlings in the U S trace back to that group from that were released from in central park. So that's real. The Shakespeare thing. I've never been able to confirm with a contemporaneous source.

And I have looked into it because that would be an incredible fact. Yeah. That's an incredible story. And it's actually a beautiful novel, right? Like one mad dreamer of an ornithologist who thinks that he is doing the birds of the world a favor by giving this beautiful bird a new place to live. And then it becomes the most beautiful.

It becomes so invasive that they don't even call it the European starling anymore on Wikipedia. They now call it the common starling. Wow. Can I tell you the last sentence of the common starling article on Wikipedia? Yes. It's about starling meat. Even when correctly prepared, it may still be seen as an acquired taste. Wow.

Oh, my God. That's a great one. That's great. That's a sentence right out of Shakespeare. I mean, that's like as good as sentences get. And it's right there in Wikipedia. Someone wrote that for free. All right. I'm going to try to view the version of this history and find out who wrote that sentence. You know, the other thing you need to know, Lennox, a group of starlings is called a

murmuration of starlings. I believe that is the name for any large flock of birds that does that thing. That thing where they like become these beautiful shapes. Look like they somehow are intentionally making weird blobby shapes in the sky. It's beautiful. Yeah. Hank, the sentence goes back to the earliest versions of

Of the Starling Wikipedia page. I'm telling you that this has been in the Wikipedia article for at least 10 years when the Wikipedia article was much shorter. But everybody who's edited the Wikipedia article for all time has been like, well, we can't take that sentence out because it is a great work of art. I'm very biased toward like really good sentences. Is there a source for that?

It doesn't. Yeah, there are three sources. Okay. Well, if there are three sources, then I tell you there's been an argument about it in the talk page. I'm sure somebody was like, hey, this might not be true, to which everyone else said, well, it doesn't matter if it's true. It's an incredibly beautiful sentence.

One thing I know about almost every sentence on Wikipedia, especially a page like Starlings, which I'm sure has been gone over a lot of times, is that every sentence has been fought over. There has been a fight about all of it. And I have to say, I find it very beautiful that we live in this world where Wikipedia is very good, despite being full of disagreement. Yeah.

Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Wikipedia. Wikipedia, out of Discord comes Concord. Ooh, if only. Was that too... Maybe I've been... You've been on Twitter. I've been on Blue Sky. That's the difference, vibe-wise. This podcast is also brought to you by the foul dust that trailed in the wake of Tumblr. The foul dust that trailed in the wake of Tumblr. Foul. Stinky dust.

All right, I think I can get the line right now. Let me close my eyes and get it. Tumblr turned out all right in the end. It was what preyed on Tumblr, what foul dust trailed in the wake of its dreams that temporarily aborted my interest in the short-winded elations and something of men. I was close. I was close. You're doing great. Today's podcast, of course, is also brought to you by John's Obsessive Search for which Wikipedia user...

wrote that beautiful sentence. I've currently narrowed it down to sometime in 2011. Wow.

This podcast is also brought to you by L-theanine. L-theanine, it may or may not somewhat dampen the effects of the caffeine in your tea, and it comes out real fast. So if you want less caffeinated tea, you can steep for less time. And it's available at good.store, where we have Keats & Co coffee and tea, and we have sun-based and soap. We got awesome socks, and you can do all your holiday shopping in one place. And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Yanflation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Yeah, 100,000 times yeah. So listen, when was the last time you needed to go to the doctor but pushed it off? I know that for me, it was two weeks ago when I severely sprained my ankle while signing my name over and over again. It's a long story, but I should have gone to the doctor and I didn't.

because I'm disorganized and I'm too busy and it'll heal on its own and et cetera, et cetera. We all know the excuses, but now you don't have any excuses because you've got ZocDoc, a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors.

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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 pass.

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Policy genius, one of these hours will be your last. That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial. All right, Hank, let's answer another question. This one comes from Annabeth who writes, Dear John and Hank, I love the little chocolate parfait desserts that you can buy from Costco, but as a result, I have a couple dozen of the cute little glass cups they come in and I don't want to throw them away, but they're taking up a lot of space in the cupboard. What should I do with all these little glasses?

Any suggestions, super welcome. Problems and parfaits, Annabeth. The problem isn't that you have too many. It's that you don't have enough. I agree. You don't have a collection yet. Soon you'll have a collection. Yeah. But then you'll figure out how to like make clothes out of them. No, I think the other thing, the other thing that makes me think, I don't think that's a good idea. This is a parfait dress.

The other thing that makes me think is that maybe you should use them as like little wine glasses. And when people come over to your house, just be like, this is how we drink wine at my house in little tiny parfait glasses. You could make them into candles. Maybe you could get really into candle making. I don't know how little these things are, but they seem like they'd be good candles. Also, you can paint them into very like just a variety of ladybugs. Yes. Ladybug. Ladybug art.

I think the key is to make some kind of art out of them that you then sell for just more than the par phase cost. So you're in a revenue positive situation. Hank and I love to make businesses out of things that are not good business ideas, but I think this might be our best idea yet.

I don't know about taking, taking supplies from Costco and turning them into art. That's just slightly more valuable than the supply from Costco. I actually don't know how, how big these I'm trying to find them, but I can't, I can't tell. They look bigger than I was expecting them to be. And if this is just a cup, you take them to a thrift store, they're cups, but it might be like these ones in which case that's just, that's just waiting to become a candle. A lot of these are just waiting to be candles. Yeah.

I'm looking at them too. And I'm seeing candles. I'm seeing candles in your future that you sell for $1 more than the parfait is cost. Here's the situation. If you can eat enough parfait, we can make like a bunch of candles that we can sell at good.store. Oh, that's just what we need. We need to start a parfait candle business. Yeah.

One that's like really supply limited. It's just like so hard to get. It's just like, you need to eat more. Perfect. People want to buy the candles. We're calling anaphylaxis up.

We've got a supply and demand problem. We're calling Annabeth. We're begging her to eat parfaits. Annabeth's doing the best that she can, but it's not enough. We're selling parfait candles. We're getting the parfaits. I'm forcing the parfaits upon my children. I'm making it a family business. Suddenly, I'm a family vlogger, but for parfait cups, it's bad. You're just doing live streams. Yeah.

You're counting every bite like you're Mr. Beast. 100,000 in five. And then after I finish a parfait on live stream, I sell that particular parfait cup candle to one particular person who's viewing it. Oh, yes. Yes. And they're like 500 bucks a piece. That's right. That's right. Because you saw me eat it. If you saw me eat it, then it's 500 bucks. That's the deal. You got to pay extra if you want to see me eat your parfait cup candle. And you draw a spiral on it.

And be like, I put my anxiety in this candle. Now you can burn it and feel the anxiety yourself. We have a special kind of candle that gives you anxiety. It's like opposite candles. Opposite candle. It's got – everybody is talking about aromatherapy that makes you calm, that makes you wealthy, that makes you whatever. We've got aromatherapy that makes you feel real anxious. Yeah.

It's like you ever wake up in the morning and get one of those emails. It's like that anxious. Yeah. First thing you're not even dressed yet. You haven't brushed your teeth and you got that email. They always have those like cute little names too. It can be like the first email of the day was a bad one. That's the name of the candle. First email of the day was a bad one. I love it.

They're coming to good.store shortly. They will be Panic Wicks. Panic Wicks. It's a new brand. We got Keats & Co., we got Sunvase & Soap, and we got Panic Wicks, the candles that make you anxious. Flicker of doom. Flicker of doom. Yes, exactly. Rumination Rosemary. Yeah. Like, you know, it's got some fragrance to it, but boy, does it make you worried. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think we solved your parfait problem. You're welcome. Yeah. I didn't expect that to go where it went.

Never do. Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we should answer one more question from our listeners. Okay, I would like to do that. That's from Aaliyah. And I thought this was an important one to read because it reflects an opinion that I have that I've been nervous to share with you. And so I really appreciate Aaliyah reaching out and expressing this so succinctly. Dear John and Hank, I would like to say in defense of hard pretzels that Hank is incorrect. Hard pretzels are a top three snack food any day of the week.

Also, fun fact, did you know that the play Annie debuted at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut as a nutmegger? I have taken many a field trip to this theater, and it is absolutely one of my favorite things to tell a group of nine-year-olds. Now, I do not know what a nutmegger is, and I do not wish to find out. Also, I think you need to know that Leah's name specific sign-off is epic. Sincerely, Leah.

Oh, great. Can I tell you what I've decided about hard pretzels? They're delicious, man. They're my favorites. They're like nanny. They are a force. They're a force. And if you had had a childhood like a hard pretzel, you would also...

be a hard pretzel. I mean, I guess I did have a childhood like a hard pretzel because I love hard pretzels. But those hard pretzels, they worked so hard so that we could have a warm, soft pretzel at Auntie Annie's today or whatever that place is called. Listen, man, if there's, of course, a soft pretzel is better than a hard pretzel. The issue is you can't walk into a gas station and walk out with a bag of soft pretzels.

And so if you can't get a soft pretzel, hard pretzels, that's why Leah helpfully said it's a top three snack food because number one is soft pretzels. Number two, Doritos. Number three, hard pretzels. I think that hard pretzels are a top 100 snack food.

I like them. I'm just – I appreciate Leah pointing out what I didn't have the courage to point out. Look, I'm not saying that I didn't like Nanny. Good. Because mom listens to this podcast.

And I think Uncle Mike does sometimes, too. Oh, yeah. That is terrifying. I know. I know. I hate the fact that Uncle Mike sometimes says that. Well, Uncle Mike says so few unnecessary words and we say so many. We say so many words. We're just like truly opposite Uncle Mike's. You know who has never engaged in, yeah, inflation in his entire life? It's Uncle Mike.

Yeah, I don't know. Uncle Mike probably has said yeah fewer times in his life than we have in this podcast. In this podcast, absolutely. Totally agree. 100%. 1000%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like Uncle Mike, instead of saying yeah, he might go, hmm. Yeah. You're not even sure if he's actually yeah-ing?

But it wasn't a no. It's not total agreement, but it's also not disagreement. And he will. He'll give a good nod. I mean, I don't think Uncle Mike – and it's not that Uncle Mike doesn't speak. Uncle Mike speaks when it's necessary. That's right. Unlike us. Exactly. We speak nonstop all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whether there's any –

interest in the we'd be spewing hey you can't say that lennox is listening i'm sorry okay i'll get i'll get bleeped all right the news from afc wimbledon is good good uh afc wimbledon won a football game we beat tranmere rovers the rovers who crossed the mirror

Tranmere Rovers plying their trade in the north of England. We were only able to bring 150 fans up there on a Tuesday night, but those 150 fans were treated to a show as Matty Stevens and Omar Bugil, our two forward players, both scored. Omar Bugil scored on a fascinating kind of header that looked like an accident. Yeah.

Well, it was kind of a header. It might have been. He got hit in the head with a soccer ball. It looked to me like he got hit in the head with a soccer ball and the ball dribbled into the goal. But then when I watched it again, I was like, dang, dang, dang. Did he do that on purpose? So maybe he did it on purpose. Matty Stevens had a nice goal as well. And AFC Wimbledon, having played most or all of their games in hand, depending on your perspective. So now we've played about as many games as the other teams around us. We're in seventh place, which is the last playoff spot right now.

So we are in the playoffs if the season were to end tomorrow, which it won't. There's still 30 games left. That's a lot more. It's a lot more games. It's a lot of opportunities to move up in the playoff spots. Did I tell you that thanks to my live streams at John's channel, we're going to be able to support the purchase of a player in January? So that should help a little bit. You told me three quarters of a player, so...

Well, I said support the purchase of a player. See, that's three quarters of a player. That was a necessary word. Somewhere more than half and less than all of a player, unless they're really young, in which case maybe all of them.

We'll see. We'll see what Craig Cope is cooking up, the director of football over at AFC Wimbledon. But great to see the boys in seventh place after 16 games. That is huge. This weekend taking on Dagenham and Redbridge. Dagenred in the FA Cup.

Hell yeah. Well, in news from Mars, one thing you know is that we can't study any Martian rocks because they're on Mars. That's right, because we can't get them back. That's wrong, because we can study Martian rocks because sometimes they come to Earth. They get blown off by asteroids or by meteorites that hit the surface of Mars, and then they go into space, and then some of them land on Earth. We have Martian rocks, which is really cool. So we can study the pieces of Mars that are on Earth and

With great – with much more detail than we can study the pieces of Mars that are on Mars. Sure. Even though we have giant roving labs there that are not humans. Oh, yes. But so – Although I would argue that all of the rovers currently on Mars dream of being human. I wouldn't argue that. Well, we have different ways of thinking about this stuff. That's the two of us. Yes.

There's a famous Martian meteorite that is often called Black Beauty. It is officially called NWA 7034. And it has a bunch of different stuff going on in it. But one of the things that it has is zircon. And zircon is a big deal because it's very hard. And also we can tell...

Because there's a bunch of reasons. I'm not going to get into it, but it's very cool. There's a way that we can tell how old Zircon is. And this Zircon is around four and a half billion years old. So that's real old. That's like age of the solar system old. So it's a really old piece of rock. Whoa. Older than I think maybe any rock on Earth that we've ever found.

But that's not that unusual for Mars, which has a lot less geologic turnover. But there was a weird pattern. And I'm not going to pretend like I understand this. There's a weird pattern in the Zircon. It's called oscillatory zoning. And that's...

I hate giving you a term without explaining it, but I do not understand it. But there is a reason why this kind of pattern in the Zircon could not have been created unless there were some very specific circumstances that include water and magma. So this is... It appears to be proof that this Martian meteorite was created in a circumstance that was like...

what they call magmatic hydrothermal systems. So like there's both magma and there's water and it's like a hydrothermal vent basically, or it's like a underwater volcano. So there's,

There's hot and there's wet. And that is a very good combination for chemistry to happen. And life is an advanced form of chemistry. That's right. It's a very weird form of chemistry. There's some people who are trying to get to the bottom of the kind of chemistry that life is. And I find this very cool and fascinating. But it does feel out of my reach in terms of actually understanding it. Yeah, that's pretty mind-blowing, though. I would like to...

Wow. Yeah. I mean, it just makes me think that the universe a few hundred million years ago or the solar system a few hundred million years ago must have been very interesting in ways that we can only distantly glimpse. Yeah. But though we can see it, thanks to the fact that a lot of rocks outside of Earth are pretty old.

Yeah. But like that's that's seeing, but it's not the same thing as seeing, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you got to do a lot of science to be able to see. Yeah, it's amazing the extent to which we can catch glimpses of the past and of...

I think if I could go into the past, like I think if I had a time machine, I wouldn't go to like the 1960s like they did in Back to the Future or whatever. I would go to like 400 million years ago. Yeah. You know one reason why you'd love that, John? This is going to be huge for you. So few viruses. No human pathogens. None. Well, yeah. I guess I could be the first person to spread them. That'd be kind of fun.

There wouldn't be people to spread them to. I know. I'd like cough and a shark somewhere would be like, is that... Do I have the balloon? Smallpox? What's this? No. I guess you don't carry the smallpox virus, luckily. Um...

I mean, if I do, the whole world's in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, viruses have to evolve to infect people. And because there wouldn't be anybody who's anything like you back then, there would be nothing to infect you. There might be some parasites that'd be able to get you just how they could get anything else. But yeah, malaria, maybe still back then. Right. Right. I don't think there were mosquitoes 400 million years ago.

That's a good point. You're talking earlier. I want to go early. Yeah, that's a long time. I want to go like where we just got ferns. You know, it's a fern planet with a lot of water life and I want to bring my scuba gear. Yeah, you're right. Mosquitoes were 200 million years ago. That's yeah. 400 million. There wasn't much around back then. God, I would love to predate the mosquito just for a day.

Yeah. Was there life? Was there like plants yet on land? There was life. There was life. There was life. Yes. I don't I don't know if there was plants. There were plants. There were I think there were ferns. Yeah, there were. I don't think there were like big trees yet, but there were ferns, ferns and sharks just starting to be trees.

I mean, that's perfect. Like early. I want to go to early tree days where the trees are like, like the way that we feel now where they're like, man, we're new. We are messing this place up. Somebody eat our oxygen. Let's figure this out. We have we have done it. We have done a weird thing.

That's a good summary of humans. We have done a weird. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. Thank you for emailing us your questions at hankandjohn at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. 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.