Hank: Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John!

John: Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

H: 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, it's Katherine's birthday today—

J: Yeah.

H: —as this podcast is coming out—

J: Right.

H: —and she asked for a Pixar movie about a young boy and an old man who become friends, and they take a huge adventure all over the world, with balloons and talking dogs—

J: Yeah.

H: —and et cetera, and I just—I just couldn't get it for her.

J: Why not?

["Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley starts to play]

J: Why am I getting rickrolled?

H: [singing] Bum-ba-dum-bum, bum-bum, bum-ba-dum-bamp, cause I'm never gonna give her up—

J: [laughs]

H: —never gonna give her up, I'm never gonna give her up, she can't have Up! [stops singing] That's my joke!

J: That was good, that was good, I—

H: I worked on it for a while.

J: Yeah, and I appreciate—I always appreciate a rickroll. I especially appreciate a rickroll that I truly do not see coming.

H: [laughs]

J: In addition to being Katherine's birthday—and I think it's important to say, Hank that when I talk to Katherine about her birthday, she was very clear with me about what she actually wanted for her birthday—

H: Mhm.

J: —which was for every living American to order The Anthropocene Reviewed book which comes out tomorrow.

H: [laughing] Whoa! Oh gosh that's also true. 

J: Yeah. So she was just like, you know what, I don't want anything for me. Just make sure that everybody gives someone they care about in their lives—

H: Mhm.

J: —the new nonfiction book The Anthropocene Reviewed, available everywhere books are sold as of tomorrow. You can't get an unsigned copy because there aren't any.

H: You can't. You can't. I got mine. It is a signed copy. It's a beautiful book too, and fun!

J: Thanks! Yeah it's—

H: —I mean, it's not always fun, of course. Smallpox and all that—

J: This—what I've been talking about it—if my voice sounds a little thin it's because I've been doing nine straight hours of radio interviews—

H: Mhm.

J: But when I've been talking about it, I inevitably like, emphasize what I want the book to be? But like, I don't talk about the fact that it's funny?

H: Hm!

J: And I'm a little worried that people are going to like read this book—

H: Right,

J: —and be like—

H: Yeah.

J: —this book is kinda funny.

H: [laughs]

J: But yeah it's supposed to be funny.

H: Or also they like, won't realize, and they'll be like, "I don't want that in my life." Uhh—

J: They'll be like—

H: —yeah.

J: Yeah—I don't—it's a weird book. 

H: It's a weird book, yeah.

J: I hope you like it. It comes out tomorrow.

H: I always had that same problem, where I'd always end up talking about all the serious parts of the book and then I'd be like, but—

J: Right. But it's a romp.

H: —it's an adventure story, and it's a romp—

J: Yeah.

H: —and everybody's nice. Not everybody's nice.

J: Yeah, that's one of the things about your books that makes it really hard to talk about because like, it is about the social internet and the complexities of navigating internet fame, and those are big, weighty subjects—

H: Yeah.

J: —that are treated in a big, weighty way?

H: Right.

J: But the book is also really really fun? And I guess the reason it's important to me to point that out is that like, I am not interested in books that are not fun. Like yeah, I want to cry. I want to be moved. I want to feel something. I want to think big thoughts.

H: Right.

J: But like, it had better be fun because I—

H: [laughs]

J: Like, this is—this is hard. This is really hard. And—

H: You don't mean books, you mean life.

J: I mean life.

H: Yeah.

J: And I do not need, like, another assignment right now. Right?

H: Yeah, well and I mean, it's interesting. Like obviously your books also are not always considered to be fun. That's not like their first adjective people use. But they are fun! That's one of the things that's like, the main thing that you forget about them when you're done with them.

J: Yeah, well I don't want it to feel like an assignment or a responsibility or an obligation or any of that—

H: Yeah.

J: —like, reading should be pleasurable. And we've a little bit, like lost this I think?

H: Yeah.

J: Because now we associate reading books with this like, classy, sophisticated activity or whatever?

H: Yeah.