407: Concepts of a Bubble
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You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Doris, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the biggest advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know what the mermaid wore to her math class? No. I don't know about this one. An algebra. Oh, I find that problematic. Is it? Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, just – Well, they wear seashell bras, so that's normal. They often wear bras –

made from sea life. I'm not going to acknowledge anything further about the joke, but I should acknowledge that there's quite a lot of work happening upstairs in my home. And so- Some banging may occur. You're going to hear a lot of banging. Maybe. Or maybe not. You never know with these modern setups. That's right. That's very true. That's very true. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Oh, we're going to get right into it? We don't want to talk about the state of things? I don't want to talk about how I'm doing. I want to answer this question from Mel. Okay. Okay.

This first question comes from Mel who writes, hi, is it socially appropriate to cover my ears and go, ah, yes, Mel, it is. Next question. In what circumstance? Does Mel have any more information about this? Oh, yeah. I just think in all circumstances, it's currently allowable to cover your ears and go, ah.

Yeah. I do. This is the one I do. I go, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. He does do that. He's not making that up. Yeah. That's the sound I make. It's almost like a tick. It's usually as a joke. You're like, I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear about it. I genuinely, and I say this with love, can't take on anything else right now, so I don't want to hear about it.

I was writing an email yesterday and I almost put that at the end. I almost was like, and by the way, if you might be coming to me soon with something, just don't. Just let's pause. That one we should pause. Yeah. Yeah.

But I didn't, John. That was heroic of you. That was heroic of you not to confess your current state of affairs. Let's answer this next question from Michelle who writes, Dear John and Hank, where did all the water on Mars go and why did it leave confused and a little bit worried about Earth, Michelle? Ooh, where did all the water on Mars go? Well, Mars has a couple of things not going for it. Earth has a couple of things going for it. We have a magnetic field. That's

That protects us from the radiation from the sun. We have more gravity, which also matters. We're closer to the sun, so the water is more likely to be doing all kinds of weird stuff. Though you might think that it would evaporate more, and it indeed does. But the water on Mars, what we think happened is all the water on surface evaporated.

Uh, on the surface, it was cold, but it can still sublime away because there's no atmosphere there. There's very little stuff in the air. And so the, that low pressure can just suck water vapor off of ice. And then that can be, uh,

I think, over time, ionized and then basically blown away by the solar wind. Wow. So it just got blown away by the wind. Well, not the wind. Not like normal wind. I need you to be clear that this is not like – I understand. It's solar wind. Let me ask you a question about our magnetic field since I just have learned that it's extremely important to our ability to continue being a going concern. Yeah. Yeah.

Is that a forever thing? Are we going to have a magnetic field forever? Magnetic field is a forever thing. There are times when it destabilizes. We're never going to die. We'll always be here. When I say a forever thing, there is an end to the earth and you're well aware of that. But there are also times when the magnetic field can destabilize a little bit, which isn't great. Yeah. Has it destabilized in the last three weeks? No.

Not as far as I know, John. I haven't really been paying attention to the magnetic field news. So that's more of an internal experience than an external one. Related question, since you brought up gravity, has gravity intensified lately? Because I've found it harder and harder to get out of bed. Feeling awful heavy? No, gravity appears to be the same. Really, really difficult to affect. We do blast some earth off of earth at

At a very slow rate. Also, there's always new Earth coming to Earth, which is wild. You know, we get meteorites and space dust. And so that's cool that there's more Earth being added. And we lose Earth mostly not by launching it into space. We do lose a little bit of Earth that way. Mostly we lose Earth by it being just like on Mars, blown away a little bit. But it's just much easier for it to get stripped away on Mars, which used to have a magnetic field.

but then lost it as it cooled. But we won't lose ours.

No, I don't think that there is a manageable timescale on which our magnetic field will go away. Our next question comes from Madison who asks, Dear Hank and John, a lot of my friends dislike Taylor Swift and I'm a huge Swifty. Sometimes they talk about how annoying and terrible her songs are. No. I still want to be friends with these people, but it's a little hard to listen to them disrespect my favorite singer ever. Please help. Not the capital of Wisconsin, Madison. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah. Though I'm sure the capital of Wisconsin is a big Swifty.

Yeah, and probably suffers from other state capitals not getting it, you know? On the list of state capitals that probably is like really with it, despite the fact that a lot of its peers are not, I think Madison's pretty up there. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about the least hip state capital real quick. Gotta be Tulsa. I don't know. It could be Pierre, South Dakota. Good point. What's Maine's?

It's not Portland. It's something weird. Maine. It's not Montpelier because that's Vermont. I mean, Montpelier is cool only because it's in Vermont. Augusta. Augusta. Augusta, Maine, I bet is not a Swifty with its 18,899 people. You know who I don't trust at all is Tallahassee.

Well, you never know what they're going to do. No, I mean, Hank and I, I was just in Orlando giving a speech and I got to see my old friends who still live in Orlando and it's such a different city now. It is, yeah. But I still hate it so much. I can't help myself. I have heard that it is almost like less fun.

No, no, no. It's really cool, actually. At least the performing arts center I was at was very cool. I think there's a lot to recommend Orlando. I think it has an MLS team. Okay, yeah, yeah. Look, I live in Indianapolis. I'm not in a position to look down on anybody, right? Like geographically. Orlando doesn't have any topography, but at least it's warm sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that if I was going to have a state capitol watch my child. Yeah. Like, even for like a week. Not Tallahassee, that's for sure. Nuh-uh. I think Madison might be up there. No, not for me. I know Helena wouldn't be. No, not Helena. Helena would do a great job until Helena fell asleep. I might trust Indianapolis. Yeah? Strong, steady –

Is Indianapolis the capital of Indiana? It is. It is. It's a great point of pride for us. They drew a line down the vertical of the state and the horizontal of the state and looked for a river, and there they made Indianapolis. That's amazing. It is a made-from-scratch city entirely because it is in the center of Indiana. Yeah. Missoula had a real reason for being here. Yeah.

What is Missoula's reason for being? It's like where three rivers come together. Oh. You know, that's always useful. Yeah, I mean, Indianapolis has a river and everybody assumed it was navigable, but it turns out it's about six inches deep, so. Yeah. Well, none of our rivers are navigable either, but they are useful for various reasons. We used to be the largest city in the world not on a navigable waterway. And then China happened. And Phoenix. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

So what was the question? Phoenix. Was Phoenix a capital? What's the capital of Arizona? They don't have a capital. They've chosen to do without. They really don't. They were like, I don't know. I don't know. Is this worth it? Don't. Everybody wants to do the same thing. Our capital is the first letter in Arizona. The A. Okay.

Our capital is the idea of dryness. Our capital is the way your nose feels. Yeah, yeah. You know how you have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning in order to exercise outside here in Arizona? That's our capital. That's our capital. The capital of Arizona is sand. I hate sand. It's coarse, gets everywhere. Yeah, yeah. Sand is the most overrated of the major rocks.

I think, yeah. I think for sure. I mean, people love a sand. Yeah. It's like one of the main attractions. They talk about white sand beaches being like above everything else. I mean, I'll tell you. You're just walking on tiny rocks. We have a lot of actual rock beaches in Montana. Those are all of our beaches are real rocks. And I will say, it's terrible. Now, let me push back against something that you just said. What?

Which is that you have beaches. We call them beaches!

You don't have a beach, Hank. And sometimes they are sandy, but they're always mixed together with large rocks. Yeah. Now, that's worse than a beautiful white sand beach in, say, a cocoa beach Florida or whatever. I'm trying to bring back the Floridians. Pebble Beach is famously a pebble beach. Yeah, that's okay. A pebble beach is all right. I'm not saying you can't have a rocky beach. You absolutely can. I'm just saying you can't have one in Montana. Yeah.

Dude would be landlocked. Yeah, we have like river beaches and lake beaches. Oh, okay. Both the major kinds. Madison, you have to tell your friends not to yuck on your yums, man. I don't know. Yeah. It's not their job to tell you that the thing you like sucks. But they're not necessarily saying it to Madison. They're saying it to each other.

And this is, and it's like a strange, it's an important point. It's like a strange cultural signifier too. It's like, like a group of people who likes to be mean about anything. Yeah. That isn't like anything other than, it's not like a danger or like cruelty. It's Taylor Swift. She's just making music. Yeah. She's a human being with opinions, but she's not like trying to, she's just trying to bring people together. Seems like.

I think that is certainly her intention, but then also people are brought together by like being in opposition to stuff. I remember – look, I've never been Taylor Swift, okay? Oh, yeah. But I do remember when people kind of define themselves either by liking my books or by disliking my books, especially young people. You know, it's an important thing when you're young to be able to identify by what you like, but also by what you don't like. Mm-hmm.

And this is something I just had to get used to, that they weren't thinking about me as a person who wrote books. They were thinking about me as a social identifier, that you were either on this side of the camp or you were on that side of the camp. And if you liked John Green books, this meant X and Y and Z about you. And if you didn't like them, this meant A and B and C about you. Yeah, exactly. And that's tricky if you're in that social situation where that's...

Because it's an in-group, out-group identifier. And so if you are one of the people who – you're just like, I don't feel like I can be a part of this group. So what you got to do is you got to do a conversion. You got to get in there. You got to get one of them. You got to get one of them and lock them in a car with you. Yeah. Play Tortured Poets Department start to finish. Just be like, you're going to like one of these songs. Yeah.

Yeah. Or just like one song over and over again. You got to get a good introduction Taylor song. Yeah. All too well. You just got to force it. You just got to make somebody love something they don't love. That's how it works. So here's my counter argument. I don't actually think they don't love Taylor Swift. Yeah, of course. I think they don't love the fan community around Taylor Swift. I think they don't love – They don't identify with the vibes. They probably find aspects of Taylor Swift's public presence unnoticed.

annoying or overbearing. There's an awful lot of Taylor Swift to not like any of it. But... That's what I would say, is that like...

I mean, Taylor Swift's a great songwriter, objectively. It's like you can not like Billy Joel, but Billy Joel's a great songwriter. Yeah. Anyway, we're moving on. Madison, you have our condolences. Yeah, I think that that's the main thing. It just sounds hard. Yeah, that doesn't sound easy. Sounds annoying, honestly, is how it sounds to me. Hank, I've got this question from Vivian that's going to absolutely blow your mind. Okay. And I don't think you have an answer for it. I think Mr. Science Man is going to be stumped. Okay, okay.

Hello, Vivian writes. I've recently noticed that in the soap dispensers at my school, all the bubbles are the exact same size. I'm not used to seeing uniform bubbles, so I was wondering why this happens, or for that matter, why bubbles in other solutions are often different sizes. I've attached a soap bubble picture for your reference, and this is a picture of Purell Healthy Soap.

And if you zoom in, all the bubbles are the same dang size. And I don't mean like similar size. I mean they look to be uniform, like bubble wrap. Oh, I know exactly why this is happening. I don't believe you. I do. So this is not the bubbles that are being formed as the soap is being dispensed, which is what I thought. This is bubbles that have formed on the surface of the Purell bubble.

dispenser. And when I say I know exactly why this is happening, of course, I do not know, but I have a strong theory. And it is that these bubbles are not forming on the surface spontaneously. There is a leak in the soap dispenser somewhere, or when it is used, a little bit of air gets let into the soap dispenser. And it's the same amount every time. And it's always the same amount of air every time.

It's the same amount of air every time. Yeah. So there's like some way that air is being introduced to the soap bulb, to the soap holder that is above the soap dispenser. And that way that it's being introduced is being introduced. And I'm sure that there's like a different amount of atoms in each one, but it's very consistent. Yeah.

I just had a pretty good idea, I think. Okay. I think I had a million dollar idea. I think I had a business idea. I have, I had like three today, so hit me. Oh my God. It's time for a million dollar idea. Another million dollar idea. Hey. Oh man. They made us stop doing that because people kept waking up.

We had a segment years ago where I'd introduce a million-dollar idea, but people didn't like it because it was too obnoxious. No, people like it when we're nice and calm, but still funny. But not so funny that they can't fall asleep. This is basically one of those weird sleep podcasts. Tell me if you're a weird sleep podcast listener. By the way, when I said weird sleep podcast, I didn't mean that disparagingly. I am myself a weird sleep podcast listener.

But here's my million dollar idea. I think it's so beautiful, the idea that the same bubble is made each time, that it's the same size of a bubble. And I love the idea of being able to sell such bubbles that are the exact same size as all the other bubbles. But this is why it's a million dollar idea. You sell the bubble, but you don't actually like send anybody a bubble because then it would burst, of course, right? Like, so you just, you sell the concept of the bubble. Right.

Almost like how you buy a star, but you didn't really buy a star because stars aren't for sale. Stars don't know about private property. But you can buy a star in the Milky Way galaxy for like 50 bucks or whatever, and that's a million-dollar idea. Why not be able to buy a bubble that exists for only a transient moment in time? I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm talking about buying a bubble that's the same size as all the other bubbles.

And you own that bubble. Like an NFT? But by the time the bubble would get to you, it would have disappeared anyway. So you never actually get sent anything, but you still owned the bubble. It's not quite an NFT for the record. That's a bad idea. Maybe it's non-fungible in that every bubble is different, but it's a non-fungible...

Yeah. It's an NFT and the T stands for temporary. It's a non-fungible temporary token, but you don't actually get a token. It's a non-fungible ephemeral. It's actually an NFT, a non-fungible ephemerality, an NFE. A non-fungible ephemerality. Yeah. What do you think? I like this. We should sell them during the Project for Awesome, which just happened.

I think the Project for Awesome is over as this is being aired. Yes, it is. Well, that was a great answer to the Purell question, Hank. I was expecting that to take longer. But it reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by Purell Soap. Purell Soap, when there's a slight leak in the soap, it leads to – yeah, it's a real sponsor. That's a real company. Thanks for all your financial support and your, frankly, emotional support. Yeah.

I'm a big fan of your product. This podcast is also brought to you by da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da

And this podcast is brought to you by the A in Arizona. It's the capital of Arizona. Yeah. It's Phoenix. You know what I just realized? There's two A's in Arizona. You don't know which one. Oh, you can't find out. They actually do it on both sides because it looks like a valley between mountains. It's like Schrodinger's capital, you know? Could be either of them. Could be both. Could be neither. I almost choked.

It wasn't even a good joke, but I appreciate that I almost took you out. Because it starts with the same noise as cat. 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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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, let's get to this question from Sarah, who says, hello, brothers. This question has been weighing on my mind off and on for several years now. Why don't people who are offered bribes just take the bribe and not do the corruption?

I get it might be a moral issue, but is it illegal to just take a bribe and not do the corruption? What's the briber going to do? Tell someone? I would look this up, but I have a job where there's a not impossible chance that someone could offer me a bribe. And I don't want that coming up in my search history lest I be accused and not even get 50 bucks out of it. Hoping I can give you some Sarah Tonin. Oh, Sarah, I need it. Yeah. Boy, you know...

I'm not really sure how bribes work. Have you ever been bribed, John, or attempted to be bribed? Have you ever bribed? No. No, I've never – well, I think the Russian government technically attempted to bribe us, but we didn't really get the memo. Yeah, we missed out on it. They might yet come knocking.

They might, but they were more trying to bribe us with – like they were more trying to get us to be quiet about certain issues that are important to the Russian government. Just by more threatening us. Yeah. Yeah. It was more of a threat than a bribe. I've never been bribed that I can think of. I don't think I've ever been bribed. But then again, would I confess to it? Good point. You know? Good point. So there's two reasons you get bribed, right? One is to do something, right?

And then if you don't do the thing, generally the person who's bribed you has some kind of power as well, right? Like the power to shoot you or the power to get you in trouble or whatever. Yeah, they are sometimes criminals. The other thing is that like bribery – I would argue they're always criminals. I mean, yes. In some circumstances, in some places in the world, bribery is like part of the –

of some systems. Cost of doing business. You just do it. And oftentimes the sort of bribe and the result of the bribe happen very close to each other. So like kind of immediately. It's like I need to be able to do this thing. And they're like, okay, yes, and you've got to do this thing. That does not tend to be how it works in the US. There is an amount of like- No, here the bribes are at much larger scale. They are. Yeah.

Many fewer, but larger amounts. I don't even know if there are that many fewer. I don't know. A friend from the Global South told me once that they thought building permits were just like very advanced forms of bribes. And they – if you don't – if you aren't careful –

So I imagine there's an amount of like repeat business is valuable to the bribe taker. Oh, yeah. That's good. If you don't actually do the thing, then it's not going to come back. Like maybe for like a building permit being a good example, like –

You're not going to know to bribe the guy unless he's taken some bribes before. Right. You're not going to do it if you didn't actually make the building permit happen faster. You're not going to go in for your second bribe unless the first bribe goes according to plan. That's right.

And so if you're like a corrupt inspector or whatever, you've got to get a reputation. And part of how you get the reputation is by doing the corruption. You have to do the S. I like it. I like it.

We're really thinking this through. Really thinking it through. It's a capitalist enterprise, bribes. And so if the person doesn't make the money, you didn't actually provide the value. So you kind of have to actually do the thing in order to be worth the bribe. What would anyone even bribe me about? You know, like I'm going to bribe you – I thought about like what people – To make you say – I'll give you an example. I'm going to bribe you to make you say that you like Carl's Jr. burgers even though you don't. And that's called a brand deal. Yeah.

That exists. Yeah. I was thinking about people who have like wanted me to promote them as individuals before. But again, that's a brand deal. Yeah. It's a little different. I guess a brand deal that isn't disclosed is just a bribe. Okay.

A brand deal that isn't disclosed is just a bribe. That's right. You take the money, you do the corruption, and you don't reveal that you did the corruption. Yeah. I mean, especially with politics. There are brand deals, which we do not, for clarity, take. Nor has anyone ever even offered us one, which makes me think – I've been offered one. Oh, okay. I've never had one offered to me. Yeah.

Yeah, I was offered one. I was offered to do a TikTok for a

candidate for high office, not president, but significant office. And it was a brand deal. They were going to pay me. And I was like, the vibes feel off. Not only do I not want you to give me money for this, I would prefer you just never do that ever. Yeah. But it's not illegal. It's not illegal. It's like buying an advertisement. It's the same thing as buying an advertisement. I know. How did we get into this business? Yeah.

I don't know, man. I have a lot of regrets. We should have CGP graded and made like one video every two years that doesn't have our face in it about postal codes. Oh, God. I mean, some days, but then other days, I'm glad that we have the thing that we have. I love my job and I love our community, but I do not love the broader like

social network of influencers. Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah, it's fair. And it used to be that like I liked most of the people I met from this world. And now I'm like, oh, yeah. Well, for one thing, we're in our 40s and they're all 12. So you shouldn't like them. I can still enjoy hanging out with all kinds of different people.

No, but like I have different values from like most 23-year-olds. Of course I do. Yes, yes. Like I have different values from my 23-year-old self. Very different values actually. But there is something to be said for the fact that like early YouTube, it was just like the audience was different because it was people who were like early adopters of a technology, which both selected for –

People who are more likely to have like educated parents because they had high speed internet before anyone else. Right. And also like, we're more likely to be like, I'd like to experience a social situation in which I am alone. Right. And now there's just like a, a lot of, uh,

Yeah, now it's everybody. But what I'd say is that it's very easy to nostalgia size the early internet and like the early internet had a lot of problems. It had all the same problems that the current internet does. It just had a very different scale. It does not have all the same. It's just on a different scale. It absolutely had like – it absolutely had political extremization and like polarization and all that stuff. But at a point, a difference in scale does become a difference in kind.

Well, I mean, the scale is very, very different, right? Yeah. Like, yeah. It used to be that there were 42 people who worked at YouTube and I knew all of them. Yeah. And there was a 0% chance that any of them were going to be in the Oval Office making policy pronouncements. And that's no longer the case. Yeah.

Okay. There was a question that touched on this. Do you want to do that one? Sure, if you want to. It's from Nicole who asks, hi to both greens. In light of certain events, I'm really questioning the platforms I use. I used to feel like at the end of the day, matters of social media weren't worth stressing about on a personal level, but-

I was wrong. So my question is, do we continue to use platforms owned by oligarchs in hopes of fighting misinformation? Or do we take our, quote, liberal beliefs to, quote, safer spaces like blue sky? I found so many creators and small businesses that I love interacting through Instagram, but it doesn't feel right to be there anymore. Any and all thoughts appreciated. Stressed and depressed. Nicole.

Yeah, I mean, there's two schools of thought here, or there's many schools of thought. There's the Daniel Biss school of thought, my friend, the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, who maintains that when you bring your bucket of clean water to the toxic soup of the internet and you tell yourself that you are going to make –

Yes. Because your water is getting mixed in with the piss and vinegar of the larger thing. I'm not sure that I think – and I might be wrong about this.

But I'm not sure that I feel that way necessarily about Instagram. So is Instagram a bad place to be because it has a negative overall effect on society? Or is Instagram a bad place to be because I just don't want to enrich the people who own Instagram? And those are two very different questions to me. I think it's pretty difficult to...

Look, if you can go to good.store right now, you can have the rare commercial experience where you're not enriching a billionaire. But that's a pretty rare experience. Well, I don't think it's necessarily that it's like – You can get – I understand that not all billionaires are the same. There was – yeah. There was a time when it felt like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg, who knows? And now it's like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg does whatever he wants to get more power. Well, he's just – he's a moth that flies to the light of power, which is the least interesting thing that you can be in this world. Yeah.

But boy, is that all of them. Yeah. Well, I don't think you can get that much power unless you're a moth that flies to the light of power for the sake of itself rather than considering why you would want power. Because if you consider why you would want power, it turns out you don't want an infinite amount of it. Yep. And so the people who accrue a near infinite amount of it are the people who don't think very hard about why they want it so much, but instead are too busy focused on trying to get it. That's my theory anyway. Yeah.

I guess like my counter argument to you, Hank, is that like, yes, there are big differences. You know, there's a difference between somebody who spends $100 billion trying to alleviate poverty and somebody who spends $0 trying to alleviate poverty. And there's a very important difference. We should celebrate those differences where we see them, I think. Yeah. I just think that it's really hard, like –

I don't know who the owner of Blue Sky is going to end up being. I don't know what Blue Sky is going to end up doing in the world. I empowered Twitter hugely at a time in my life where I thought Twitter was basically a net positive for humanity. And I could never have foreseen the Twitter of today, which is a – in the best case scenario, a toxic soup fueled entirely by –

obscene advertising, like literally obscene. That's what it's become. And so that's not what I thought I was empowering when I empowered it. I think – I mean, I go back and forth on this, but I still think that there are benefits to being in a space where

with like-minded people. I do not think that the internet exists to try to convince other people that they're wrong. I just don't. I don't think it works at that. I don't think it's good at that. I don't think in 280 character bits, we can argue our way into a more just or equitable society. I just don't because I've been there for 20 years and I've seen it get worse, not better.

Yeah. And like the question is, would it have just gotten, would it, would it have gotten worse faster if people weren't doing the marketplace of ideas version of yelling at each other and, and seeing what works, but like, I don't know. The tools are so powerful that I don't know how to live in a world where they become less powerful. They're just like very, they're very, they're designed to be,

be addictive and compelling. Whichever new one comes out, whatever its ownership structure, it's only going to work if it's addictive. Right. Yes. It cannot compete. Because we already have really addictive ones. So it has to be more addictive. Yeah. It has to be better at capturing and fracturing your attention than whatever came before it. Or our defense mechanisms somehow have to kick in and be like, ugh.

That's how I feel on threads where I'm like, I just found myself watching a video of a person spinning a top on a weird table for a long time. Like a Beyblade?

Yeah, but it was like a Beyblade, but it wasn't a Beyblade. Oh, okay. Because I'll watch competitive Beyblading all day and I have no apologies, no regrets. It was more boring than that. And almost like a lot of the content is –

so intentionally trying to lead me to keep watching for one more second. Yeah. There's this guy who makes these videos that are like, he like does stencils on walls in his house. It's like, you know, he makes cool stuff, but the way that it works is that he's always almost showing you what it looks like, but stopping you from seeing it. And I'm like,

this is manipulative. Like, like, and, and the, but the only reason it's on my feed is because it's manipulative. Right. Ultimately, it's not his fault. It's the fault of the algorithms that are incentivizing him to make something that will keep me watching, but not because I'm enjoying it because I just want to just show me the thing. And, uh,

And do eventually... Because this is how I have felt. I'm on Blue Sky and I'm like, this feels a little bit better because it doesn't feel as much like something that is just trying to suck me dry. It feels like it has a lighter grip on me, which makes me feel better using it. And does that...

There's this great video that I watched recently. I can't remember the name of the creator. And she was talking about how she broke her social media addiction. And it was by just deciding to never use anything that went on forever. So anything that kept going forever was not allowed. Yeah. And that's everything.

Like that's, that's almost like there's that thing happened where it used to be that like your feed would eventually be at the end of it. But like, that's the first thing they got rid of. Right. And, and so that's the thing that she's like, I will like, I've created a bunch of systems so that I can go to my favorite subreddits without them infinite scrolling. And I can do like, yeah.

You know, I go to Wikipedia and I like read the top Wikipedia article of the day. I don't read anything that doesn't have a bottom. The New York Times has a bottom. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's great advice. I can't follow it because I'm addicted to the internet. It's also, yeah, at the moment it's our jobs. I'm addicted to the scroll. I'm addicted to the swipe. Yeah. But – So there's – I mean there's so many different things to consider. There's like the impact that the actual value you bring has, which is ultimately very small on an individual level. There's the impact of like the cultural change, which is I think much bigger and something I worry a lot about. And then there's the impact on you as a person. Like –

And I think that if there is – that you have to consider the value being brought to you as well as the value that you individually bring. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of times, if you consider the value brought to you carefully, you come to the conclusion that there's not that much value. It actually can be negative. Yeah. Technology is really good at solving the problems that technology creates, right? It's a little bit like alcohol in that respect. And the issue with that, in my experience, is that like, say you're lonely. Well, there's like a solution to loneliness in your pocket or a solution to boredom in your pocket that is...

unbelievably good at solving for boredom and loneliness, right? Like the best thing ever, the best invention in the history of it, except that it makes loneliness worse. Yeah. I mean, people actually report less loneliness now, even though they spend more time alone.

And I think like experience a deeper kind of loneliness that's much more problematic for their overall mental health. They do not experience less depression. They experience less – they report less loneliness. Yeah. And I'm sure like I always wanted to write for the Anthropocene Review to review of boredom. That was going to begin – boredom was –

Because boredom doesn't exist anymore unless you live in a world without social media. Like you do not have to – I don't have to be bored walking up the stairs. I can load Instagram and like walk up the stairs with entertainment at my – in my hand. And then – and that's – and your ankle pays the price. Yeah.

My ankle pays the price. It's a beautiful metaphor that I still haven't fully recovered from. John twisted his ankle going down the stairs. Were you looking at your phone? I was going up the stairs, actually. It was more humiliating. Oh, that is hard to do. And I was looking at my phone, of course. What else are you going to look at? The inside of your own brain? I usually just put a podcast on for the stairs. Yeah, sometimes I'll listen to the rest of history or something while walking up the stairs. But I need something, Hank. I can't make it all the way up the stairs with nothing. Yeah, there's the whole stairs. Yeah.

All right, Hank, we're going to transition into the week's news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, but we're going to transition with a question from Shelby, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know you sung the praises of the Wimbledon commentators in the past, but today is my first day watching a game on Don's TV, and I must say I was not disappointed. They're delightful and made the viewing experience very enjoyable. Now, Hank, one of the commentators, this guy Mikey T, he's one of those people who has a perfect memory. Okay. Okay.

So he remembers every game Wimbledon have ever played, both Wimbledon FC going back to 1887 or whatever, and AFC Wimbledon starting in 2002. And so he'll be like, of course, on April 11th in 2004, we were playing Charlton Town and we won 4-1 with goals from this person, this person, this person, and this person. And he can do that for any day, forever. That's wild.

Shelby also says, I also must say I was not disappointed by Joe Louis's thighs. One can only wonder-

Whoever asked Ben. One can only wonder why he opts to wear his shorts like that. What a guy. Although if I had footballer thighs, I too would bear them more often. Question. I understand why we don't like the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes, obviously. But what is their problem with us? Their manager and players seem filled with malice for AFC Wimbledon. But like, why? It's not like we stole their team. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

What a fantastic metaphor for the whole situation. I know. I thought you might like that. I thought you might find that internet relevant. Yeah. You do something mean to someone and then it makes you hate them more because they hate you for it. You're like, I didn't even mean to make you mad. Why are you so mad at me? Yeah. Why are you being – all I ever did was not want to lose my football club.

Yeah. Well, I have a story, which is I once watched – so I used to live in a house that was like three houses on one lot and were all run by the same landlord. And my landlord came over one day. He was doing yard work.

And the guy who rented the back house, my landlord asked him, he's like, hey, did you pull up those flowers that were in the back? And he was like, you mean the weeds? And my landlord was like, no, the flower. Because my landlord used to live in this house for a clarity. He's like, no, the flowers. And the guy was like, I pulled up some weeds. And my landlord said, well, those were the flowers that my wife and I planted from the seeds that were thrown at our wedding. And the guy said, well, now you're making me feel bad.

You've told me that story so many times before, but it never stops being good because the villain is, of course, perceives themselves as the hero, as one must, right? Like as one inevitably does. And so if you're in Milton Keynes, you see this football club that everybody has a soft spot for, that everybody's always making fun of you about, and you hate them because you hate them, because they're so self-satisfied, because they're –

Because honestly, probably partly because they've been so successful and you haven't been. When this all happened back in 2002, Milton Keynes were in the third tier of English football. 24 years later, they're in the fourth tier of English football. They haven't had a good run. We went from the ninth tier to the fourth tier. So we've had a really good run. So maybe that's part of it. But I also think there's an element of my enemy is my enemy.

Yeah. Oh, of course. There's no such thing as like a one-sided rivalry in sports. Yeah. Generally, if someone hates you, there's a little part of you that hates them back and you don't even know why. Sure. Like there was a little part of me that hated the kids on Tumblr in 2014 who hated me, even though like they were just kids. Yeah. They're fine. Well, also a rivalry at some point.

Yeah. You want that. You want a rivalry. You want a rivalry. I think you probably want it to be slightly less intense than the rivalry between Wimbledon and Milton Keynes. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, I would like that. I can't see how it can get less intense because the feeling on our side is that they shouldn't exist. Yeah. Well, that's – yeah. Now that is – now we're getting into some real – real – real –

Deep, high-conflict territory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a conflict that's hard to resolve. Anyway, Wimbledon played yesterday, Hank, as we're recording this, and they won 3-0 against Crew Alexandria, which again seems like a made-up place. Yeah. Well, they're a rowing team, so they're not very good. Yeah.

Well, I felt – I have to say I felt a little bit bad for Crew Alexandria. They got a red card in like the 30th minute that was also a penalty and it was maybe the softest red card I've ever seen. And I'm saying that as a Wimbledon fan. That's how I felt in the first half – like the first like play of the Super Bowl was like a total botched call on the Eagles. And I was like, oh, come on. Like this is the Super Bowl and the Eagles were like, no, it's no big deal. We'll figure it out.

Yeah, I was going to say the Eagles turned out – they were able to overcome that obstacle just fine. Unfortunately for crew, they were not able to overcome the obstacle and we scored three goals, one from our captain Jake Reeves and then a third goal from the great Matty Stephens who's now scored 19 goals this season. Matty Stephens – So we had a goal before the penalty?

No, we had the penalty, then another goal from Matty Stevens and a goal from Jake Reeves. So it was a good performance, but all three of those goals came against 10 men. So maybe not that impressive. However, Wimbledon are up to fourth place in the League Two table. I got to see Wimbledon beat Bradford City last

A couple of weeks ago, I was in England with my friends. I wanted to take my closest friends from Indianapolis to England and show them the magic of AFC Wimbledon, and they really loved it. We got to hang out with Marcus Brown, the guy we helped sign, and also with Joe Lewis, another guy I helped sign. And we got to hang out with Jake Reeves, the captain of the football club. So it was a really fun time. I got to meet with the manager, and AFC Wimbledon even brought me a bottle of champagne, which I appreciated and drank.

Well, it's tight up at the top of the table, John. Very tight. I'm looking at the points. Very tight. It's within three for the top nine teams, except for Walsall, who's in the lead, despite the fact that they have not won a game in the last five games.

No, Walsall haven't been playing very well, but they had such a big lead that it doesn't seem to matter much. Are they a recent arrival into this league? They're a big club. There's no reason why Walsall shouldn't be in League One, but we'll see. We still have a game in hand over most of the teams around us. I feel really good about this season. It feels special. This feels like a special group of players. Most of all, I'm relieved not to be worrying about relegation. Yeah.

But yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's 16 games left to play. So a lot can happen in 16 games. But I've definitely got my tickets on April 18th in case something special happens. John, you know how you solve the rivalry with MK? How? You just eliminate them. To the point that they're not even within two leagues of you.

That is the hope. And then you don't have to worry about all that tension. We don't ever have to play them again. Wouldn't that be lovely? Indeed, if we get promoted this season, we won't have to play them next season because they're not going to get promoted because they aren't having a very good season. So-

How do they like them apples? In the news from Mars, let's talk about water, as we discussed from a question earlier. Two recent exciting results about Mars' water. The first is that scientists found evidence for clay materials on Mars' surface. Clay, probably one of the most underrated of the rocks.

Scientists think that there was once a large body of water in the northern part of Mars, which is now mostly eroded, low-lying plains. The top half of Mars is...

like much lower down than the, like in elevation. But there are also like mounds in that area and looking at data from different orbiters, scientists have been able to identify these layers of clay materials, which would have formed when there was running water mixing with the rocks.

The second thing comes from Curiosity, which found – this is a rover. I feel like I had to explain that, but maybe I did. Which found two sets of ancient wave ripples on Mars' surface in the Gale Crater. The ripples are evidence that there was some kind of standing water in the area. And they're a bit under two inches apart and around a quarter inch high. And based on those measurements, scientists can actually calculate –

that they are the result of an ancient lake that would have been about 6.5 feet deep in that area, wouldn't have been able to tell you that we can figure that out by looking at ancient ripples in sand. Does this mean potentially that when we go to Mars, as we inevitably will before 2028, does this mean that when we go to Mars, we will potentially be able to throw pots from Martian clay? I bet we could.

Not just throw pots. I think that one of the things people really want to do is build buildings with it because you need to figure that out. You need to be able to have structures and you don't want to have to bring them all with you. Yeah. So we could build some clay homes that probably have pretty good radiation protection. That is also important, yes. The thing about living on Mars is that it's going to be very underground probably. Yeah. Well, the other thing about living on Mars is that it's not going to be something I have to worry about. Yeah.

That's right. I think that there's a couple of things I know about Mars that I feel like everyone ignores that just makes it way, way worse. Which are? I think the radiation. People don't think a ton about the radiation. But then secondly, the sort of chemical composition of the dust, which isn't just rock. It also has some stuff in it that is biologically active in humans and can cause all kinds of problems. Yeah.

And if you can't keep the dust out and the dust is poisonous, that's bad. Yeah. It just – it feels like we've got a great planet. Like it's hard to overstate how good Earth is for us. Almost as if –

We evolved for this air. And if the trick – if what you really want to do is find life, Europa is probably a better bet anyway. You really think so? Yeah. Wow. I mean certainly in terms of like currently existing life. But like there's like active hydrothermal vents in the liquid water ocean on Europa as we believe. Wow. So – Well, Europa is really far away to be fair. Yeah.

And also that active hydrothermal vent is under 30 kilometers of ice, which is not easy to get through. But sometimes it spews itself up onto the surface and then you can study that stuff. Yeah. I'll tell you later about how we think that maybe I'll do it in the Patreon live stream we're about to do about how we might be able to discover signs of life, if not life.

Quite soon, actually, on Europa. But we need to go make that Patreon live stream for our patrons. So we've got to go. Thank you for potting with me, Hank. And thanks to everybody for listening. The capital of Arizona is an A, but we can't say which A.

That's right. Hey, y'all, if you want to email us your questions, we don't have a podcast without that. It's HankandJohn at gmail.com. Thank you to everybody who sent some in. This podcast is edited by Linus Ovenhouse. 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. Don't forget to be awesome.

Bye.