405: Gettin’ Real Real
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You're listening to a Complexly Podcast.

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 dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I, for Christmas, got a brand new monitor. This is a true story. Oh, cool. So you know what my New Year's resolution is? 1080p? 4K, baby! Oh, congratulations. Congratulations.

You're really living the dream. I'm going to take off my ski jacket. It's very loud. I'm glad you're doing that. It's real cold outside and there's also eight inches of snow. So I've been engaging in a uniquely Midwestern tradition called golf cart sledding with my children where I drag them around behind a golf cart.

That's great. I went regular sledding and a uniquely Montanan tradition occurred where everyone kept saying how warm it was. Oh, I love that. No, it's not warm here. It's like 20 degrees. It's plenty cold. It's miserable. It was like 34 and everyone was like, God, it's so warm. Yeah. Not our problem. And plus with the wind whipping through your face when you're golf carting, it really cools the core. I

I bet. It's been a very weird winter here. We just got our first big snow. It had snowed like less than a quarter inch until January. But it is now time to shovel. And I've been shoveling and my back hurts also because I went sledding and that also hurt my back. There's a year at which you stop sledding, but I'm not there yet. You're close though, because I'm there. I'm there.

It's right around the corner. It's like when you start to need bifocals. It's the same age. I don't know. There was a bunch of guys older than me sledding, but they also looked like the kind of guys who do other things besides sledding. Right. Yeah. They're into CrossFit. Yeah, they might CrossFit. They definitely cross country things, whether that's skiing or running or mandolin playing. They looked like they could play a mandolin. Yeah.

Yeah. Now I hear you. I can imagine Montana people who look like they can play a mandolin and like to sled. Very different from the Indiana golf cart sledding crowd. Very different. Yeah.

I think there are foods that I have eaten in the last day that they have not eaten in the last 10 years. Sure. And probably vice versa. Should we do the McElroy Brothers thing where we give the year a special name or should we leave that to our esteemed colleagues? It's so good. It's my favorite episode of the year. I just listened. The new one just came out. I haven't heard it yet. It's great. I think we should go with 2020 vibes. Yeah.

We're just going to steal like their second one down? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of their most obvious ones. One of the ones that they dismiss immediately. They discard immediately. Yeah. Because they have to get to fungalore, who I do love. And I want there to be a whole series of fungalore graphic novels, but I guess we're beyond fungalore now. 2020 Knives is another interesting one. Did they discard it?

To consider. Uh-huh. 2020 vibes, though. What about just 2020 knife? What I like about 2020 vibes is that it's evoking the vibes of 2020, the best year ever. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Right. 2020 vibes sounds like, ah, we're going to vibe. And then you listen to it a little more closely and you're like, oh no. We're going to vibe. Oh, I don't want the 2020 vibes. No. Those are some of the worst vibes. Do you have any New Year's resolutions? This is our first question. It's from Ed. Yeah. And Ed, by the way, writes in all capital letters. Not with anything else, but just with his name. So I guess his name is Ed. Ed.

Dear John and Hank, time is a funny construct. No, no, no, no, no. You have to read it the way Ed wrote it. Dear John and Hank. No, he didn't. Nothing else is in capital letters. Just Ed. Okay. Dear John and Hank, time is a funny construct. As we wrap up another year, I'm curious what steps you're taking heading into a new one. How do you organize or plan for the many things you want to do in the coming year? I always feel like I have more interest and time to pursue them. You two seem similar, except much better at executing your pursuits. Resolution revolution, Ed.

Maybe his name is just erectile dysfunction and he shortened it. Maybe. Maybe. Or it could be Eric Dyson. Eric Dyson, the famous son of Freeman Dyson.

No, I think Eric Dyson is a – Michael Eric Dyson is an academic. Ah, he's the vacuum guy. Oh, okay. No, he's not the vacuum guy. He's a completely different person. He's a Baptist minister and radio host and professor at Vanderbilt. Oh, that's a lot of things. He also has many interests. I bet he also plays the mandolin and eats good for you food. First off, don't curse. You got to come up with something else. And I bet he's in great shape.

He seems like he's in reasonable good shape. Saxophone. I want to play the saxophone. I want to play the saxophone. I want to play the drums. There's so many things that I want to do, but none of those are my New Year's resolution. My New Year's resolution is 4K. No. 4K? What's that mean? Are you joking right now? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Stop cursing. We're going to bleep that one. It's a family-friendly podcast. I don't – it's not hard to not curse. We're going to bleep the whole thing. It's not even going to have any noise on the either end. Okay. All right. Good.

I agree, and I will work hard to not. John, I- That's Hank's first New Year's resolution is to curse less on the podcast, so we don't have to make tuna bleep stuff. Which I really have effed up. Oren says effed sometimes, and I'm like, that's also not allowed. Yeah, it's right on the line. Yeah. Like, I don't mind if my 14-year-old son says it, but I mind it if Oren says it. Yeah. Yeah, he's not-

He can't bust that out in the classroom. I'll tell you, speaking of busting it out, when Alice went to the Olivia Rodrigo concert with me, Olivia Rodrigo has some bad words, or I shouldn't say bad words, naughty words in her music, of course. Yes. And Alice belted it, belted it fearlessly. It was beautiful to see. Yeah. That's totally appropriate, I think.

Hank and I are not nearly as good at doing all the things that we do as we seem like we are.

We do not have things nearly under the level of control that we appear to have things under. We are in a constant battle to keep our heads above water and we are really stressed out all the time. And I feel like it's a disservice to our community to pretend otherwise. I agree. But I don't really know how to do it. Part of me wants to – even for the teams –

Like for the people who work with us, I feel like that, like I want to keep up the illusion. Right. But I, you know, I, well, let's get real. Maybe 20, maybe our first, maybe it's 2020. Less. Less.

Oh, this is actually the title of a script I've written. It's called How to Do Less with Less. And I will probably finish that and bust that out sometime soon. But maybe our first episode of the year is the one where we get real, real. So here's my real, real situation, if it's okay for me to get real, real, which is that I am- Get real.

I'm now in basically the peak season for relapse if I'm going to relapse, which is not like a calm thing. I remember when I first finished treatment, I was really worried that I still had cancer. And I like talked about that with my doctor and he was like, oh, if you relapse, it's not going to be now. It's going to be in like a year and a half.

And so you're going to be really worried right now because you've just gone through it and you're very close to the trauma and all. He's a great doctor. But a year and a half from now is when you're like, I need to see you. You need to be taking care of yourself. And part of that is because it takes a little while for the cells to duplicate to the point where they're detectable. But part of it is just that it's like...

Little things go wrong over time. And so if like little things go wrong, then any microscopic cancer that might have been there can have some chances to come back. And he was also – one of the things he said was try to not be too stressed out because that's one of the chief risk factors for relapse. I love it when people tell me not to stress out and then tell me, hey, in 18 months you might get cancer. But don't worry about it because that would make it more likely that you're going to get cancer again. But do –

do know that if you're going to get it, you're going to get it

You're going to get it. But I was a lot better at controlling my stress right afterward because like, one, I looked really sick. So no one bothered me about anything. I felt like I was, you know, I had already taken care of like the big worry in my life. Yeah. And so like that was the big worry in my life. And all the other, you know, all the other contexts that I exist inside of that contain worries were minimized and were not very present in my mind. Yeah.

And now a year and a half later, as I have like, and like, you know, from, from here, it doesn't like disappear after a year and a half. It just sort of slowly tapers off until at five years, you're at roughly the background rates or like actually like 10 times the background rate, but low enough that they call you, call you cured. And, and so like, I'm like sitting in bed being stressed out about work,

But then being stressed out that I'm stressed out because I'm worried that I'm like increasing my chances of relapse at the moment when my chances of relapse are highest. And I'm like, oh, like last night I had this moment where I was like sitting in bed and I felt a lot better when I had the thought, you know what's more important? And like everybody agrees.

Is that you take, is that like you survive is that you don't have to do more cancer treatment. Like I probably would survive more. Like I probably would, even if I relapsed, it probably would be able to cure me, but I would have lifelong disability from the treatment. I'd have to get a bone marrow transplant. And that's just like,

Like you never recover all the way from a bone marrow transplant. And so like, I just really don't want that. And I like really like myself and I think that I should like be around to help with stuff. And I'm like, and if I can just like stay in the mindset where I'm like, okay, like I have to take care of me right now and like, I will do all the stuff I'm good at, but like, I can't be scared anymore.

All the time. And worried all the time. Right. Yeah. And so, like, I just have to – there's like a letting go almost. That's – it's not just like letting go of the work. It's letting go of the – like my feeling that if something breaks, that that's my responsibility. And if something breaks irreparably, that that's the end of the world. Right. Because what's the end of the world is –

Like, you know, I don't want to be disabled by a bone marrow transplant. I don't want to die of cancer. Like those are sort of like bigger deals to my like ability to have, I mean, no one, I don't need to convince anybody, but I like do need to convince myself. Yeah. And that's the hard part. I don't want you to just not die of cancer. Interestingly, I want you to not die of any cause. And it's, you know, the way you have lived your life is,

Somewhat frenetically. Somewhat frenetically. And you have sought stress in many ways. Now, you've sought stress for – there's two things going on, right? Which is that you used to not feel stress the way that you feel it now. Before cancer, you felt stress differently. I can tell that from a distance. Yeah. I have had bad moments and hard, stressful moments, but I have not had any that have felt the way that it has felt.

Right. Recovery. Yeah. And it's felt that way pretty often since recovery. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is that you're not as young as you used to be. You're 45 years old. You're 10 years from a reasonable time at which reasonable people retire if they're lucky. Yeah, I guess. People retire at 55. Do they do that? Why would they do that? Yeah.

I'm going to do it. So just so you're prepared, just so you're prepared that this podcast is going to be called Dear John and Hank for like three years, and then it's going to be called Dear Hank. Hello and welcome to me. Today we're going to talk about-

I'm going to talk about my feelings. Yeah, it's January 1st. John's going to join us for this special episode where we talk about our feelings. I think both those things are happening at the same time. I also think that work as we understand it is very big. I mean, we're talking about not just the work of trying to support these two different businesses that have a total of 120 or 130 employees, but

We're also talking about work in the sense of trying to support Nerdfighteria, the community that actually matters the most to us, probably out of everything that we do and that enables so much of what we do. And we're talking about the work of making podcasts and video blogs and, you know, writing books and doing the things that we do, you know, to support our families. And we're talking about when we talk about work.

We're also talking about a lot of how we live our lives because that's just not that separate from work. When people ask me, how many hours a week do you work? I'm like, I don't even know how to answer that question because I don't know where the line is. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. I also really enjoy a lot of it. Yeah, of course. I'll be sitting in bed doing research on how viruses first evolved. Does that work? Is that work? Is that just my interest? I would be doing that anyway. I'm interested in that regardless. I do think it's interesting, by the way, that DNA viruses evolve separately from RNA viruses and that DNA viruses, if I'm not mistaken, from what I read that you wrote, that DNA viruses chose to become less complex. Yeah.

They chose to abandon life as we know it and become viruses. Now, I know you're going to say they didn't choose it, John. It just happened because of evolutionary imperatives, John. But they chose it. They were like, I don't like the complexity of my bacteriological life. I will become a virus. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I had the thought this morning and I – I will become literally less alive. This is just a hypothesis that I don't know if anyone has had and there isn't any research on it. Whether or not a DNA virus might be descended from a contagious cancer because of course I'm writing this cancer book and so I'm thinking a lot about –

Cancer in every single frame that every time anything comes up, I'm like- Everything is cancer. Could it have started out? Could a virus have started out as a contagious cancer and then sort of like slowly- Well, probably not, by the way. I don't think that this- This is not- There are several hypotheses of how viruses first evolved.

And one of them is that they were like an early form of life that is just like a different piece on the tree of life. And now you can argue about whether viruses are alive or not. But the leading theory, I think, is that it's just sort of a piece of our genomes or our DNA or RNA that sort of like got out and figured out how to replicate itself.

But the thing about contagious cancers is that they start out with the genome of the organism that they first arose in. And then they slowly shed a tremendous amount of – because they don't need – if it evolves from a dog, it doesn't need to have fur genes. It just needs to have replicate genes and survive genes and recruit blood vessel genes. But it –

So probably, but like, I mean, that's the stuff. I will always do that work and I'm so happy to do it. Right. Well, and maybe this is what it's about in the end, Hank, is that like we've set up a lot of complicated systems and processes that enable not just us to do that work, but lots of other people to also do similar work. Right, and to have much bigger impact.

than we can alone. Absolutely. Right. Like good store has raised more money for partners in health than we could ever raise alone complexly and crash course have done much more for education than we could ever do alone. Like all of that stuff is, is true at the same time. Um, all that stuff is adding to your stress and I'm, I'm, I'm concerned about it. And so I think that

I think that 2025 should be the year of 2020-less. 2020 alive. 2020 alive. 2020...

Tithe? 10% of all your wealth to charity? I mean, I'm probably going to hit that, yeah. Okay. Attempt to. 2020 tithe. 2020 tithe. All right. 2020 less, 2020 tithe. That's it. Those are our goals, Ed. Oh, 2020 live. It's the year where we get that shape.

It is the year where I'm going to be in front of more people than I've been in front of in many, many, many years because I will be traveling nonstop. I have over 100 days of travel this year, Hank. In fact, when this podcast comes out, I will have announced my tour for Everything is Tuberculosis, which is taking me all over. Well, then just do it.

All over the United States. You don't say that you will have. You can do it now. All right. Hold on. Hold on. This question comes from Hank. John, where are you going to go on tour during your Everything is Tuberculosis tour that you were doing, unfortunately, without me because I got an amazing opportunity that I cannot yet talk about?

I'm going to be in Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm going to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in New York, New York, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Washington, District of Columbia, in Atlanta, Georgia, in Iowa City, Iowa, in St. Louis, Missouri, in lovely Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas, Boulder, Colorado, San Mateo, California, and Seattle, Washington State. And then you're not doing anything in California? Brave. I said San Mateo, California. Oh, you did? That doesn't count.

I'm not doing anything in Los Angeles. They don't care about TV there. They don't care. I thought you said TV, and I was like, they care very much about TV. They care a lot about TV. No, I don't know why I'm not going to LA this tour, except that that is plenty. That is so many stops. Yeah, LA is far away, and they got a lot of me in the last couple of years, so. Yeah, that's true. I am going, I will be doing many more events than just these events, in fact. Oh, are you? I will be doing...

I will be visiting Harvard. I will be visiting lots of – Colby College in Maine. I'm going all over the place, Hank. It's a nonstop adventure. So 2020 live for John. 2020 live, baby. Yeah. 2020 in person. 2020 live in person. Yeah. I'm pretty nervous about all this travel. Speaking of my resolutions and my anxieties, not as intense as your anxieties, I mean –

But I haven't been very well. Ed, the truth is we're not doing great. It's very hard for me to not laugh because I'm just trying to shed it, but it is true. It's true. It's true and it's funny. It can be both. It's allowed to be both. When I tell Ed I'm not doing great, it's allowed to be both. Yeah, okay.

Oh, Ed, I don't know how to do more while also retaining one's sanity, Ed. I'll be honest with you. Yeah, well, here's what I'll say also is that I – this is my resolution, which I talked about in my Valkbrothers video, is that I want to spend more time with people who I have deeper relationships with and less time with people who I have weird sort of internet-mediated two-way but, you know –

Through screen relationships with. Sure. Not that I don't like sort of like the those relationships and find them valuable, but I there's a lot of people who I like actually really like really like me. I think trust that like who like get me in a different way. It's not about my work.

Yeah. No, I mean, Hank, I think I had to grapple with this. You're becoming the green brother to bait, right? Like Mark Cuban just baited you on Blue Sky, which is an achievement for anybody. Mildly. Mildly. Mild baiting, but like he went out of his way to type your username into Blue Sky. It's weird. He doesn't even follow me. No, but he thinks about you. Apparently. And that's who you're becoming, right? Like you're becoming – and I was that – I know what that's like because I was that brother. Yeah.

And I got baited and I, you know, had to use the social internet with a certain amount of armor on.

And it's exhausting. And I feel like that – like to a lesser extent so far and hopefully it will stay that way. But like you're becoming that. Like you're becoming somebody that people both like look up to and admire. And when lots of people look up to you and admire you, you also become sort of a punching bag for another group of people. Yeah.

And that's exhausting. It's exhausting both to be like wrongly imagined as more than human, as like some great, you know, 10 out of 10 human being. And it's exhausting to be treated and imagined as trash. Like they're both exhausting. And so I think it's a great idea to spend more time with people who know you in real life and know you as who you are and-

spend less time engaging. Right, which is why me and my buddy Mark Cuban are going to go to a bunch of basketball games together. I think that'd be great. I think that'd be great. I'm going to Dallas, so hopefully Mark Cuban will be there in the audience for Everything is Tuberculosis. I'd love to get him. I don't see why not. Mark, if you're listening. He's showing up in my mentions. I'd love to get you an advanced reader's copy of Everything is Tuberculosis. I think it'll really open your eyes. I do. I have his email address, but so does everyone. Yeah, I'm not going to email him. That's a...

That's not a good use of my one wild and precious life. Yeah, no, I agree. But if he would like to do tuberculosis advocacy work, we can point him in many of the right directions. We can. We can. I just met – while I was sledding, I met a couple of people who just arrived back –

in America from working in Lesotho on tuberculosis stuff. And I was like, my brother tells me all about Lesotho all the time. Yeah. It's the world capital of tuberculosis, unfortunately. I will say it's also one of the world capitals of innovation around tuberculosis. Like the head of PIH, Lesotho has launched this incredible app that is tracking software and also like

that is able to, you know, every case of TB that's identified, it's able to keep track of that person. And like, I mean, not like literally like with geolocators, but like make sure that they're able to, you know, take their medicine and like have the support that they need, that their close contacts were offered preventative care, all that stuff. And it's incredible.

Now, with AI chest x-rays that are reviewed by a radiologist that are pretty reliable, it's really changing what's possible in TB diagnosis. I don't know. Yes, it's the center of tuberculosis suffering in the world, but it's also one of the centers of innovation around TB, which is often the case. I think that part of the story sometimes gets ignored. Yeah.

That's really putting it on its head for me. Thank you. 20 Simplified. 20 Simplified. 20 Simplified. 20 Simplified. 20 Simplified. Yes. I was also thinking maybe like 2020 Dive, a year where I try to go to more dive bars. Oh, yeah. Like real life interactions when drinking instead of just drinking and looking at the internet. Does that sound healthy?

Not according to the Surgeon General. This next question comes from Missy who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are my hands clappier when they're freshly lotioned than when they're dry? That is to say the clap is louder and crisper than drier hands would produce. Hank, I wanted to read this question because I knew that we were going to forget to clap at the beginning of the podcast so they can sync the audio. We won't get it. Okay. So we got to clap now. Okay.

Okay. And you'll notice that dry hand clap. I'll put that in the show notes. Oh, terrible. It didn't whack a certain – let's do it again. No. No. It's okay. They're dry. They're real dry right now. I got to put some chapstick on them.

One of the reasons mine sounded okay was because my hands are sweaty, because my palms are sweaty, because we've been talking real talk and that always makes me anxious. Nervous, yeah. What about 20-20 endives? 20-20-20-20-20-endive? Yeah, you know, the food. 20-jump-jive-and-whale-sky-and-swing-his-back.

I like it. I like – you've been predicting a resurgence of ska over and over again in the last few weeks. You've mentioned this to me like three or four separate times. I predicted a resurgence in ska in 2016. So I wouldn't go with my thoughts on this. It's like how I've predicted a recession every year for the last 14 consecutive years. I mean that's – it's got to happen eventually, right? Right.

No, I mean, apparently not. I'm going to stop predicting a recession as of right now. 2020, John no longer predicts a recession. Oh, that's going to go great. It's going to go great. We have such a great track record of predicting large geopolitical events accurately on this podcast. I know. I know. Like when we said that out of all the future outcomes in the history of the world, there were only two in which Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's embarrassing. But really for America rather than for us. I think it's embarrassing the one time when like in February of 2020, and this wasn't on the regular podcast. I think this was on This Week in Stuff. I said that my biggest concern at the moment was that this whole coronavirus thing might affect Liverpool's ability to win the title. Oh, God. I do, yeah.

That turns out to have been a little off tone. Yeah, yeah. I was underestimating the size of the catastrophe. Hank, why are hands clappier when they're freshly lotioned? There's got to be, I think, I don't, well, here's the situation. I don't actually know why when you bring your hands together and quickly they make a noise. Why does clapping happen? So we have to start there. Why does clapping happen?

Because I just brought my hands together and nothing happened. Faster. And then it's a totally different sound if I clasp my hands as if I'm holding my hands instead of just do prayer hands. Yeah. Why is all of this happening? I assume it's because air is being quickly forced. I don't know. Yeah. How does clapping work? I don't actually know. So – Sounds great. No, I think all those were bad, but okay. Okay.

It sounds like clapping. What I'm trying to understand is what's physically happening. What's physically happening? It's true if I hit my face, too. Like, this is the sound of me smacking my face. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. It happens when you hit anything.

It happens when you hit a table, not just when you hit skin. So it's got nothing to do with skin. What it's got to do is something with the force. It's force. It's force equaling mass times acceleration. Is it a friction thing? I don't actually know why the sound wave gets produced though. Hank and I were never great at physics. No. Waves are not my favorite, honestly. I don't love a wave. Optics and –

I get stressed out by the fact that the waves are going in all directions. Yeah. Like that means that they're potentially trying to go through me. I don't like sound waves trying to go through me. That's none of their business. What's going on inside of me? Well, they're bouncing off and they do a little bit of... A little bit of them is getting a little bit inside of me. Yeah, you could absorb a bit of a sound wave. Don't like it. Especially in your ears. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to do all the listening.

I guess I don't mind that part. What I don't like is the idea that it's getting into my internal organs. I don't like anything that gets into my torso, my belly region. That's what stresses me out. Just imagine it like – The part below, above my hips, but below my ribs, that part feels very vulnerable. It is. To sound waves and other. Yeah. Imagine it just like whatever's making the sound. Yeah. Like me, maybe. Just giving you belly slaps. What?

I don't like belly slaps. I don't like any form of belly touches. No, it's like a good belly touch. This is like a real, like an actual touching of your belly. Missy, in our next episode, we are going to go so deep into how clapping works, you won't even believe it. But we need to Boki to do some research for us. Boki did? Look at this. It said, I just don't know what to say. I'm struggling to find a good answer.

I assume it's something about acoustics and water. See? It feels like when – so it feels like there's less ways to escape for the air. Your hands are more powerful. When your hands are wet or lotioned up, I think they have fewer gaps and that traps air more. But again, I don't know why clapping makes a noise at all.

Yeah. Or why when one thing runs into another thing, it makes a noise. Like if like a baseball bat hits a fence post, I get why that makes a noise because the metal or the wood is vibrating. But I don't feel like my hands are vibrating. They are though. I can feel it when I clap. Come on, everybody. A little clap. Come on, everybody. Come on, give a little clap. You're kind of dressed like Tommy Shrigley right now. Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah.

I feel like Tommy Strigley. Sometimes I like to invest $100,000 and turn it into $16,000. $16,000.

It's one of my favorite jokes. For those of you who don't know, we're referencing a show on Dropout. And it's one of my favorite jokes of all time. It's a guy really confidently saying, I took that $100,000, I invested it, and I turned it into $16,000. I can't even say it without laughing. It's such a perfect joke. He almost couldn't say it without laughing. It's such a perfect joke because I'm so tired of hearing people say, like, all I needed was a $100,000 head start. And then I took that $100,000, I invested it, I became a millionaire. You can also see the joke happen halfway through the sentence. Yeah.

Like he didn't know where he was going when he started. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is magical. That's something that I love about improv comedy is the idea of like you get to witness the birth of the thing. Yeah. You put your foot out over the cliff and hope that there's a break under there. Actually, that is my advice to Ed is just start. Like sometimes you just need to start. And I've been thinking about that because like I've been in planning mode for

around everything is tuberculosis because the book's coming out and that means planning a book tour and planning all this other stuff. And I just want to start. I feel like sometimes you just got to start. You just got to go. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of, a lot of stress I have is because things like when things like decisions can't get made, like everything slow down and you can't just start a thing. Right. That, that,

I think that everybody struggles with that. It's no fun for anybody. Yeah. But in my personal life, I could totally do that. But I can't. I also, I personally can't start because when would that fit in?

Yeah, you're struggling right now. I can't create a new obligation, you know? No, not a new permanent obligation. You can maybe create a new short-term obligation. Yeah. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by long-term ongoing obligations. Long-term ongoing obligations, like this podcast. Yeah, yeah. Which, I'm glad to have this one, but I don't need a new one. This podcast is also brought to you by Tommy Shrigley. Tommy Shrigley, get that protein powder, boy. Yeah.

We're going to sell so many dropout subscriptions. I mean, I'm happy to. And people are going to feel so good about their choices. But then you can go watch my comedy special. You can watch Tommy Strickland's Very Important People and you can watch me talk about cancer for an hour. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Soundwaves. Soundwaves, they're tickling your belly. I feel bad now. And this podcast is also brought to you by Cancer Treatment. Without it, we'd be in a different situation. We would be. We would be.

probably not be making the pod. I don't know, man. I'd do it up until the end. I know you would, but I would insist upon having private conversations that we record and release later. Oh, wow. Posthumous podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. 2020 not alive. Don't love it. Much prefer 2025. 20 post alive.

No. No. God. It's so dark in here. It's hard to see right now. 2020 thrive. 2020 thrive, Hank. 2020 thrive. Yeah. 20 simplify. 2020 simplify is the one. 20 simplify is the one. All right.

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.

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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.'"

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

Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, Hank, we need to read this email from Alex who writes, Dear John and Hank, Curiosity Science Team collaborator here. Hank, we always have to remember that people from NASA do listen to this podcast. I know. And I have to remember that people from AFC Wimbledon also listen to this podcast and they listen to it differently from how most people listen to it. You know, like they're waiting for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Yeah. And then sometimes they get their feelings hurt.

Um, this person, Alex, Alex did it, but sometimes like somebody will reach out to me from AFC Wimbledon and be like, listen, okay, we make substitutions when we think it's the right time to make substitutions. We're doing our best. Oh God. I just like, I wish we could all remember that, that no one is actually trying to talk to people when they talk to people, you know, like oftentimes I get, I see like, see something on the internet about me and I'm like, they're not, they don't want me to see that. That's not what they're trying to do.

They are not inviting me into this space. But the weird thing is they tag you and then when you reply, they're like, what? You weren't invited. And I'm like, well, then don't tag me. Yeah.

This person is lovely. This has nothing to do with getting baited on the internet. It is always very exciting when you mention something that Curiosity has done in Mars news because one, Curiosity sometimes feels like the forgotten child and two, it's fun to be more like, oh, I remember when we did that observation. So to clarify, Hank, it was Curiosity that's been finding all the elemental sulfur including that time when we drove over that rock as well as other sulfate minerals. I should mention now that I'm not a geologist. I'm on the environmental science team.

I don't actually know as much about what Percy is up to with regard to mineralogy, but that was a curiosity mission. I'd also like to fulfill the email contract and request some dubious advice. I'm in the latter half of my PhD and I had to take a course for the first time since basically 2019.

And in the course, I discovered that I feel absolutely terrible about myself when I get a bad grade. I know there are things I'm good at and I know the whole concept of tests and grades is stupid, but I still somehow in the year of our word, 2024, feel worthless when I fail a midterm, which is a very undergrad feeling. How long am I going to have to deal with this? Forever, Alex. Forever. There will be things that you can't even get a grade on that you will give yourself a bad grade on. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know why. I mean, I hope that you find a different path than that. I do too, but I haven't. Have you? Oh, no. Oh, no. I give myself grades all the time and I fail. I get Ds constantly. Yeah. I'm a worse student. Wait, I was a bad student in high school and college. I am a much worse student in adulthood. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're – there's –

Yeah. I don't think you are, but I'm thinking about myself. And like, I oftentimes I'm like, boy, there had to have been a better way to do that. Because I think of you as a straight A student and in adulthood. And like, I'm always like, I'm always talking to my therapist about how I'm a low functioning person. And I just have to accept that and accept that I can't do everything my brother can do. Yeah.

All right. I'm super sorry about that. Unless you think that it's only Ed who thinks that you're an overachiever. Oh, God. You even speed ran cancer. I did do it pretty quick. Yeah, I got lucky. Not quick enough. No, I think that it's about as quick as chemo can go, though. Yeah. So that's great. All right, Hank. What's the news from Mars today?

Make it about curiosity for Alex's sake. I can't quite. I wasn't ready for that. Maybe next time. This perseverance, though. Oh, boy. Oh, Alex, I'm sorry. Oh, God. Well, it isn't. So it's not really perseverance news. But the goal, there was a goal that perseverance would bottle up all of these samples. And then we'd send a sample return mission to pick them up and bring them back home.

So that we could have some pieces of Mars here on Earth that had never passed through the atmosphere as a meteorite. So we do have pieces of Mars here on Earth, but they've all gone through the atmosphere at various times and burned up a little bit. And that makes them less useful for doing science too. And so we'd love to bring these back in a sample return mission.

And Mars had planned the sample return mission to cost like $3 billion, which is sort of an acceptably large number. Large, but something we could do. But then we hit a rough spot when some other reports found that the project was more complicated than we thought and was going to cost like $11 billion, which as you might know, is a lot more than $3 billion. Right.

Sure, $8 billion more. Yeah, it's more than three times, almost four times as much money. And one report said that even if we did do it, it would be like 2040 until the samples were back on Earth. And that is also a long time from now. So since those reports, people have been wondering what we're going to do about that. And there is tomorrow as we're recording this, but it will already have happened when the podcast comes out.

There will be a press conference where we'll try and hopefully resolve this. And they're going to talk about how – they're going to update basically their sample return project and figure out what it might look like and how they might do it. Meanwhile, China is planning to launch its own sample return mission in 2028 with the goal to return samples in 2031. So that would be embarrassing. Well, can't they just pick up our samples? I mean, is there some –

I don't know. Yeah, probably. Probably. Not to dismiss geopolitics out of hand. I understand that that's real. Yeah. So Perseverance has left the vials all sort of in a line over a long stretch of land. And I don't actually know this, but my guess is that the sample return mission that China is planning just sort of grabs them from one place and takes back off.

I mean, it would definitely be a land and take off immediately if it was that fast. Okay. But it's also like very strange because they sort of planned this perseverance dropping tubes thing without having planned how they're actually going to pick them up and get them home. And there's got to be a way. But hopefully when you're listening to this, you can Google it and see what NASA said. All right.

Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is really good. AFC Wimbledon had their festive holiday fixtures, which is where you play like three games in about seven or eight days. And they tied one game and won both of the other ones, putting them up briefly into second place in the League Two table, which is an automatic promotion spot.

But then their last game of the festive fixture period was supposed to be yesterday, January 5th. But unfortunately, our old friend Frozen Pitch came to town. That's right, Hank.

Just as waterlogged pitch has been AFC Wimbledon's constant nemesis since earlier in the year when there was a flooding at Plough Lane, frozen pitch came home to roost in the form of Fleetwood FC's pitch becoming frozen, thereby making it impossible to play the game. So now we are in fifth place, but only because we've played one fewer game than all of our competitors. So AFC Wimbledon look like they might have a special season.

And I'm pretty excited about that. And I think next week or the week after, I'll get to make another exciting announcement about the rest of AFC Wimbledon season. But we're not quite there yet. I will remind you, however, that the January transfer window is open, which means new players can sign for AFC Wimbledon only during this month of January. But usually that's bad, right? Usually it means we lose all our best players. Yeah. Yeah.

But you're telling me that might not be the case? What if we didn't lose all of our best players? How would that be? It might be fun. It might mean that in the second half of the year, we're not bad. But don't all the other clubs want to recruit all your good players? Well –

Certainly. Yes. But we have good, solid contracts. We've got a great group of guys. And you're doing well. So maybe they just want to be on a team that's doing well. Maybe instead of signing for a third-tier English soccer team, you can just become a third-tier English soccer team. Oh. So those players are thinking instead of moving up by changing teams, I just move up with this team. Teams would just move up by being good. Yeah.

Oh, wow. That's a different vibe. Different vibe. Different vibe. That's very exciting. Well, it's been an exciting season so far and we wait to see what happens in the second half. That's what we'll do. Hank, it's a pleasure to pod with you. Thank you for making the time. I know it's not easy. Thank you.

Oh, well, it's my favorite. I love it. And I'm glad to be friends with you. Same. I mean, I don't really think of us as friends, but same. Well, I was thinking I might want to spend more time with my friends. Oh, okay. Yeah. Then I'll take it. Then I'll take it. I once said to Alice that we were friends and she said, we're not friends. We're father and daughter. It's a completely different relationship. Oh, man. Oren and I are friends to the point where like we need to maybe be a little less...

I used to be friends with Alice. Yeah. I used to be friends with Alice, but you know, she's moved on. I would never go to an Olivia Rodrigo concert with someone I'm not friends with. I'm sorry. Oh no, that's, that I feel the same way. And I really enjoyed the Olivia Rodrigo concert. It was super fun.

John, this podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedisch. 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. ♪