[Dear Hank and John intro music plays]

Hank: Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! 

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

Hank: It's a comedy 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, how are you doing?

John: I'm a little tired, because I've just returned from London -

Hank: Right!

John: Where I was attending an AFC Wimbledon match with ten donors to the Project for Awesome. All of whom - or I think all of whom listen to Dear Hank and John so thank you very much. It was a lovely, lovely 27 hours in London, but I am tired and also I came home like, during daylight savings time. 

Hank: Yeah.

John: Which compounded the tiredness. And also, as you know Hank, daylight savings time makes me extremely angry, because it is the stupidest thing that humans do, which is really saying something. And so I'm in a bit of a mood. How are you?

Hank: Good! I never really understood how bad daylight savings time was until I had a baby.

John: I know! 

Hank: It's so bad! 

John: Well it's even worse if you have a four year old who goes to school - 

Hank: Yeah!

John: - and every morning she's just like, why? Why are we doing this in the dark when I should be asleep? And I'm like, I am completely sympathetic to your issue. 

Hank: It's Benjamin Franklin. Take out a hundred dollar bill and be like, this guy. Or possibly a 50, I'm not sure. 

John: I thinks its a hundred. Aren't they called Benjamins?

Hank: Benjamins. Yes. That is what they're called. And that is for that reason. I don't actually know if it was Benjamin Franklin but I once heard that it was farmers, but I recently asked a farmer friend of mine and they were like, no, we hate it. We absolutely hate daylight savings time. It's terrible. It messes everything up. Especially 'cause we have to get our kids to school! It's not like farmers don't have kids! 

John: I would like to hear somebody make a compelling argument in favor of daylight savings time. It's the stupidest - it just, it infuriates me. 

Hank: Mmm. John -

John: Now I'm - I'm close to the breaking point, Hank. 

Hank: Let's change topic. Do you want to talk about the elephant in the room? 

John: [hissing intake of breath]

Hank: Mostly I just want to know what you think the elephant in the room is right now. Just in general, at any given moment, I'd like to know which elephant you think is in the room.

John: When you say "do you want to talk about the elephant in the room," my first thought every time is, "Putin?"

Hank: [laughs] He's listening! Right now! He wants to know what we think! 

John: Uh, yeah. I mean, you're kidding, but you're also not kidding. What is the elephant in the room? 

Hank: Our six hour episode of Dear Hank and John.

John: Ah yes, of course. We released a six hour episode of Dear Hank and John which included one hour of new content and then five hours of heavily recycled content. [Hank laughs] I would apologize, but instead I'm just gonna say you're welcome.

Hank: You're welcome. And- yeah. I'm not sure - it seems to have happened differently for different podcast players. We don't know what the problem was. It's different lengths, different content. We did nothing different and nothing wrong, and we do not know what happened. If you have some idea what may have happened, please let us know.

John: Obviously we did something wrong, for the record. I don't see it happening to a lot of other podcasts. But we're going to try to make it not happen again -

Hank: Yes.

John: -and if this episode is six and a half hours long then maybe we just need to retire. But in the meantime, Hank, can I read to you a short bit from a longer poem.

Hank: Okay, yes please. 

John: So this is a new poem and it's quite long, and we'll put a link to it on the patreon at patreond.com/dearhankandjohn. You don't have to donate or anything to see all the content, you can just go there. It's a poem by Kaveh Akbar, who's one of my very favorite poets, and he lives in Indiana, which I think is just amazing. He's so good for the Indiana art scene. It's from his poem Forfeiting My Mystique, and this, I think, is just gorgeous. "I wish I was only as cruel as the first time I noticed I was cruel, waving my tiny shadow over a pond to scare the copper minnows." Ah, God. 

Hank: [laughs] That is good! I like that! I like it when they're real short, too. 

John: I know you do. 

Hank: It's easier to pay attention. 

John: "I wish I was only as cruel as the first time I noticed I was cruel" is just so good. God! I mean, he does that several times in this poem, that level of shock and wonder, and, anyway. Everybody should check out Kaveh Akbar. He also has a fantastic Twitter where he's constantly retweeting great poems, so yeah. He's over at @kavehakbar. That's k-a-v-e-h a-k-b-a-r. Hank, should we answer some questions from our listeners? 

Hank: Yes. John, I think that we should. I think that we should do that, and I think that we should do it well. And humorously! 

John: You don't seem ready. You seem to be- 

Hank: I'm so ready. 

John: You seem to be playing for time.

Hank: This question comes from David, who asks, "Dear Hank and John, my job involves me staring at the same spot for hours on end on the chance that something of interest will happen in that spot." [laughs] I'm very curious. You've made it very vague, but I get it. "Naturally I find myself getting bored pretty quickly and I need to keep my mind occupied by reading books or listening to podcasts, which I am allowed to do. And then I get home and I see my cat lying in the same spot for hours, much of the time awake, doing absolutely nothing and seeming content with that. So I'm curious; why do we need constant mental stimuli? Do animals also get bored? Long live the king, David." 

John: That is a really interesting question. 

Hank: Yeah!

John: And one that I don't know the answer to. But the first question to examine is what the heck does David do for a living? I've got two theories.

Hank: Okay. 

John: One, he guards the Mona Lisa. Like, if you're a regular museum guard, you move from room to room -

Hank: You go around. 

John: - you move from object to object. But if you're in a museum that has like, one painting that is very, very famous, that painting always has, like, a couple of guards. So that's theory one. David is in the Mona Lisa guarding business. And then theory two is that David watches a security camera for a living. 

Hank: Right. Potentially he watches a security camera. Actually, my thought was, like, candy inspector. 

John: Hmmm. 

Hank: Like there's a conveyor belt and there's just candy bars, and you're just making sure that the candy bars look right. 

John: But in that situation would you really be able to read a book, you know? 

Hank: No, I guess not. Yeah. I just assumed that reading a book meant listening to one. 

John: Mona Lisa guard. That's my theory. Hank, do animals get bored? 

Hank: Uh- animals definitely get bored. Yes. And I assume that when animals are sitting there and they look like they're just staring off into the distance and awake and doing nothing that they are doing what we're doing when we do that, which is thinking about stuff!

John: Yeah. I suspect they're thinking, like, you know what I wish I had? A bird. That I could eat. 

Hank: Or like, back when I had a bird. How could I have done that better? 

John: Right.

Hank: Like, that one time I actually got one. 

John: Right.

Hank: Like I'm just sort of replaying that. Which is sort of like what I do with conversations, except with bird death. 

John: Yeah. When I actually think about my thoughts, like when I pause to consider what I'm thinking about in any given moment, it's so astonishingly mundane. [Hank laughs] Almost none of my thoughts are thoughts that I would be at all surprised if you told me a cat has. 

Hank: [laughs loudly] Yeah. 

John: I maybe have one thought that I wouldn't expect a cat to have per day. 

Hank: Yeah I find it very enjoyable to be, like, okay, where am I at now and how did I get here? And I think that it must be similar for animals, where they're just sort of like following the train of thought. But that train of thought requires stimuli in order to have things to think about. And so if your cat did nothing ever then it would not have good things to think about and it would be bored and it would be cruel. But your cats has had things that happened to it that day, whether they are, you know, considered by you to be of interest. And it's thinking about those things. And what happened last week, too, or something. I don't know! It's just thinking about stuff! 

John: Yeah. Yeah!

Hank: It's thinking differently than we think. It doesn't have words and stuff, but it's thinking about stuff. 

John: Yeah, and I think cats -

Hank: And the internal life is an adventurous one! I think that lots of interesting things happen on the inside of peoples' heads. And cats. 

John: Oh yeah, you know that great Eudora Welty quote, right?

Hank: [lightly sarcastic] Of course. Me? I know all the great Eudora  Welty quotes. 

John: "A sheltered life can be a daring life as well, for all serious daring starts from within." 

Hank: Ahh, yes. 

John: It's so good. By the way, if you ever want to read a great essay about writing and reading, Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings is one of my all time favorites. So if you're looking for something to distract you while you're guarding the Mona Lisa, that is definitely one that I recommend. 

John: Alright, this next question comes from Jed, who writes, "Dear John and Hank, I need some advice. I have a very important guest coming over soon and I need to clean my room and in the shortest amount of time possible. However, I haven't successfully cleaned my room in almost 5 years. And it's very bad. My room is small, it does not have a closet in which to hide things, and the walls are plaster so I cannot burn it down. Also, based on my limited knowledge of quantum mechanics, I currently both do and do not have a floor." [John laughs]

Hank: [laughing] Okay? Okay, it's under there somewhere

John: Schrödinger's floor. "My question is, what is your preferred method of cleaning rooms. Any dubious advice is appreciated, Return of the, Jed." 

Hank: Um, there's so many different schools of thought, but I think that it's nice that you can focus on the one room first. 

John: Yes.

Hank: But the first thing you do, hundred percent absolutely what you need to do first is go to Target or your box store of choice and buy containers that can fit in places in your room. Like, under your bed containers, potentially like foot of the bed trunk-like things.

John: Mmhmm.

Hank: You can get these things fairly inexpensively whether it's like the plastic, basically gigantic Tupperwares, or like a piece of furniture that might just look like a piece of furniture but it's hollow and you can throw stuff that you don't want to throw away into them. Two. Get a garbage bag and throw things away. I just cleaned my office because I have a fancy guest coming to my office for an interview soon and I needed to make this place look really great and I did it in about two hours, and I did it largely with the help of a bag of trash bags.

John: Yeah. I think throwing stuff away is key. I just want to point out though, Hank, that Jed has already done the first and most important part of my strategy for cleaning rooms, which first is to wait five years. 

Hank: Right. And also, before you get started, ask someone who literally cannot respond to you for at least a week. 

John: That is a great strategy as well. I clean rooms very rarely but when I do I clean them intensely. So I first try to get all of the clothing that is on the floor off the floor. 

Hank: Oh, yeah.

John: And either into a washing machine or into the pile that says this is going to Goodwill or into the pile that says this is going to be turned into rags for cleaning projects I will never actually undergo. 

Hank: Mmhmm.

John: Then the second thing that I will try to do is get all of the other stuff off of the floor. I think your container suggestion is a good one but you don't necessarily have to go to the container store or anything fancy. You can just put stuff in cardboard boxes that you mark with - you know, you just write down what's in it, and then if you don't open that cardboard box for like six months, that tells you that you're good to just throw that box away. It doesn't matter what's in it. You haven't needed it for six months. You'll never need it again. Then the last thing that I do is vacuum, because -

Hank: Right.

John: I'm assuming that you have a carpeted room, Jed. Although you may not know, given how you don't even know if you have a floor. The thing about vacuuming is that even if a room is not perfectly clean, if it has those vacuum marks, people think it's clean.

Hank: [laughs] Yeah. In fact, Don't even turn the vacuum on. Just like, run the vacuum over the carpet -

John: Totally.

Hank: Make the marks. 

John: Right. You just need the marks I think, actually, you do have to have the vacuum on for those marks to really show, but run that vacuum five minutes before this very special guest comes over and they're going to walk into your room and they're going to think, "oh wow, this is a person who values cleanliness." And then eventually, over time, you'll disappoint them. 

Hank: [laughs] They will think, "this person respects me and my authority." 

John: That's right. 

Hank: It's like rolling out the red carpet except it's just the vacuum lines. 

John: [laughing] That's right!

Hank: We rolled out the vacuum lines for you. You know that you are a respected guest!

John: That's right, if any of you ever have me over to your house, I expect vacuum lines everywhere. 

Hank: [laughs] On the walls -

John: [laughs] Oh my gosh, Hank. I recently was in a house that had fuzzy walls, and I could not get over it. What a brilliant idea! Carpeted walls! That's the future!

Hank: No, oh god! I just feel like- I like, I understand carpet. I'm surrounded by it right now in my office. It is a good and useful invention. But it does feel like it increases the surface area of my living space by several orders of magnitude. I probably shouldn't bring this up to the whole world but the in betweens of the in between of the carpet tufts, I'm just like, what's in there? I'm never gonna know! There's just no way for me to know, 'cause it's too much surface area. This is a thing I know about lungs and intestines, that if you want to hide things, to increase surface area, the material of a carpet is the best way to do it and that just means so much mores space for stuff to live on. I'm not like a germaphobe, I'm not like, freaked out too much by it, but it does seem to me an impossible substance to actually clean.

John: I have to say, I followed a lot of what you were talking about but I felt like the sudden unexpected arrival of lungs and large intestines was interesting.

Hank: Basically your large intestine is a carpet. It's carpeted. 

John: Yep, there you go.

Hank: That's all I'm gonna say. That's all of it.

John: Your body's carpet. 

John: Our next question comes from Adam, who writes "Dear John and Hank, when we eventually discover life on another planet but it's not what we would call intelligent- like it's microbial or something, then what? How do you compute a sum?, Adam." That's good, Adam. That's a great name - specific signoff. You add them. 

Hank: Oh, I didn't even get it until you said it out loud!

John: Ad'em. 

Hank: First of all, that's extremely exciting. Secondly, that's probably what will happen. 

John: We're not going to encounter aliens. 

Hank: Right. So, the Earth was that for like half of the amount of time there's been life on earth, so billions of years it was just microbes, and it was a stinky gross sludgy slimy place full of one-celled things, and if I could go back and look at earth back then, as long as I had -

John: Just like my intestines. 

Hank: [laughs] Just a carpet. As long as I had an environment suit and a way to get out, yeah, do it. I want to know about that weird old life and what we know from fossils is a lot but it's certainly not anything like what we would know if we were able to examine it directly. And I think that we would do our best to study it in a noninvasive way. I don't think that it would be particularly useful. Maybe it would be, maybe we'd find a way to like, dehydrate the whole thing and be like, now you're fuel. But probably not. And the main thing that we would find is the other ways in which life evolves. Because we kind of only have the one way that life was created here on Earth, as far as we know, and to have a second data point would be infinitely valuable and fascinating to see the evolutionary history of another ecosystem. 

John: Yeah, I agree. I would prefer any alien life to be single celled because if it's much more complex than just microbial life, I think it will be more complex than us, and then I think it will treat us the way that we would treat microbial life. 

Hank: Well here's something to keep in mind, John, that the vast majority of humans are killed by microbes. 

John: Oh, believe me, I am aware. 

Hank: So be worried about microbes.

John: Oh -

Hank: Just 'cause they're little and don't think much of us and don't think at all doesn't mean they won't kill the heck out of our entire species if they get a chance. 

John: I am very worried about microbes. Yes, that's my number, pffff, four worry, I would say? It's definitely in my top 10. I spend a lot of time worrying about microbes. They are everywhere. 

Hank: Yeah, and mostly they're just fine, and not doing much. But I've read a couple of books in which humans in alien ecosystems end up infected and it's an interesting thought process, because of course the way that microbes on Earth exist is that they have co-evolved with our immune systems and so they have to figure out ways to overcome our immune systems and most of them can't even start to try to do that, which is why so many microbes are just sort of a positive part of our bodies. But on another planet, there are sort of two schools of thought. One is that none of these microbes would have any idea how our immune system works and so they would not be able to hurt us at all. The other is, it's so different, it's so deeply, deeply different that our immune system would have no idea what to do and the microbe would just consume us like food. 

John: Mm. That's always been how I wanted to go out. 

Hank: This next question comes from Stephanie who asks "Dear Hank and John, my name is Stephanie and I'm a student at the University of California Santa Cruz. The dining halls at my university only allow you take one piece of fruit or one dessert to go. To help enforce this policy there are signs posted something to the effect of "Stealing food hurts everyone." Is this true? Does taking snacks impact the cost of operations and therefore the cost of attendance at the university? I imagine that the answer would be yes if the food was going to waste and being take in large quantities, but when I take something it's usually because I didn't have the time to take something and eat it. However, I don't know if this is for sure the norm. Banana slugs! Stephanie." 

John: Do you know why Stephanie signed off "banana slugs?" 

Hank: Because that's the mascot of the University of Santa Cruz - or California at Santa Cruz?

John: That is correct, yeah. They have an amazing seal for the university. I don't know that this is their official seal, but it just says "U.C. Santa Cru" and then there's a banana slug reading a book and the book just says, "Plato." So I assume that it's -

Hank: [laughs] It's a good old one. 

John: I mean I assume it's the dialogues but it's not stated outright. I think that this is a dumb rule. 

Hank: I don't know- so here's my perspective, John. As with everything in life- as with every dumb rule that I find annoying, it exists because someone was doing the wrong thing and they knew it. 

John: Right. 

Hank: So someone was taking like eighty desserts and taking them back to their room and hoarding them, and not even -

John: Or selling them. 

Hank: Or selling them, or doing something. Like, finding some way to game the system in a way that was like, fine, we have to start a rule now. 

John: Right there was somebody with like, essentially an apple store, but not where they sold iMacs. Where they sold actual apples out of their dorm room that they stole from the cafeteria and then the government of the school had to be like, "oh, God, I guess we have to make a rule."

Hank: Yeah.

John: But the short answer, Stephanie, is that as long as you are violating the letter of this law but not the spirit of the law, I think it's fine, because the truth is, you pay a lot of money to go to college and the reason that college is expensive is not because of apples. 

Hank: No, I would not say that it's the apples. And I would not say that it's whatever the desserts are. And I feel a little bit slighted that I don't know what the desserts are. I can't really remember what we had at my college cafeteria but I don't think that we had good desserts. We did have fruits, though, and I never ate those because that's ridiculous. Who's eating fruit in college? 

John: I would estimate that I ate five hundred pounds of Lucky Charms in college. I ate Lucky Charms at every meal. 

Hank: And like two fruits. Two whole fruits.

John: No, I mean I didn't get scurvy, because I was eating Lucky Charms, which is fortified with vitamin C, I didn't need to eat fruit. 

Hank: Yes, zero fruits. I probably had two fruits in college. 

John: I would estimate that I - I mean, I'm not a person who chooses to eat fruits and vegetables, just ever. [Hank laughs] Hard stop. 

Hank: The question is, do you count the filling in the poptart? 'Cause in that case I probably ate a bunch of fruits. 

John: Oh, God, I ate a lot of poptarts in college. I recently had a poptart, Hank, and I used to just eat them raw. Right?

Hank: Mmhmm!

John: I wouldn't toast them, I would just eat them.

Hank: Sure. Of course, yeah.

John: I recently had a poptart - when I was finishing Turtles All the Way Down I spent five days alone. Not recommended. [Hank laughs] And part of that I didn't leave the little building that I was in almost the whole time and so I had to eat kind of whatever was there and I ate a poptart and it was so - and I apologize if in the future Poptart sponsors this podcast, because I will absolutely shill for them - but the poptart I ate in Michigan while I was finishing Turtles all the Way Down, it was so bad that even though there was no other food, I was like, "eh, I'll wait till tomorrow to eat." 

Hank: I disagree with you. I still love poptarts. 

John: Oh, God they're awful. I mean, they taste highly processed. And this is coming from someone- I like to eat food in bar form. I would be very happy to eat exclusively bars for the rest of my life. Zone bars, noted Dear Hank and John sponsor Rx Bars, which I do genuinely love, Power Bars. There's a character in the Douglas Copeland novel  Microserfs who at a certain point in the novel becomes extremely stressed out and closes his door and will only eat food that can be slid under the door. 

Hank: Mmhmm. 

John: I would do very well only eating food that can be slid under a door, because I love a good flat food. From garlic naan to Zone bars, I like a good flat food. I would be fine with that. But poptarts are disgusting. 

Hank: Mm. I like them. Maybe you didn't have a good flavor. 

John: No! I had the strawberry frosted flavor, the kind that I ate all the time in college. 

Hank: Yeah, I don't love the frosted. It's a little bit like if you sugar coated sugar. 

John: Right. 

Hank: It seems unnecessary to have turned it all the way into a sweet tart. But I do like the non-frosted strawberry still, and we very occasionally will buy those. But in college I bought them so regularly that I was - and for a year of time there was a happy face on the side of the poptart box - 

John: Mmhmm. 

Hank: Just like a yellow happy face, and I had a whole - my wall was covered in these yellow happy faces because like, I guess I wanted to prove -

John: [laughs] You wanted the world to know.

Hank: - what an aficionado I was. Like the level of enthusiasm I had for poptarts. 

John: I love that. That's brilliant. It's like how some people in college have huge collections of beer cans and you're like, "yes, that's very impressive. I see that you've drunk a lot of beers." But it's for poptarts. While we're on this topic, you know one other thing that hasn't held up for me that I loved in college? Taco Bell. 

Hank: Oh, I - wow, I mean like, I just guess I haven't grown up, 'cause I go to Taco Bell like once or twice a week. 

John: Really? 

Hank: Yeah. 

John: I mean I'm lucky if I can eat out at all once or twice a week. That's impressive to me. 

Hank: I don't know that I would call Taco Bell eating out. 

John: Oh, I absolutely would. I mean, any place that is not my home where I eat dinner with my children is eating out. Absolutely!

Hank: Oh I'm not- Orin is never there. No one - I'm always by myself when I go to Taco Bell. Taco Bell is exclusively a "I am starving and on the way somewhere" food, but I like it. 

John: Alright, I think it's great. I think it's great, Hank.

John: That reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Taco Bell. Taco Bell! Hank loves it! 

Hank: It's on the way! This podcast is also brought to you by guarding the Mona Lisa. Your eyeballs are gonna fall out of your head but at least you got this podcast! 

John: To listen to. That's true. And of course today's podcast is also brought to you by banana slugs. Banana slugs! The leading mascot slug in American universities, I believe. 

Hank: Probably the leading slug. And this podcast is additionally brought to you by a fruit. The one fruit that you ate while in college. 

John: We also have a real sponsor today.

Hank: We do. 

John: It's our friends at Audible! You