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, did you know that I broke my hand during high school rollerblading? But you wouldn't think I'd be so surprised about it.

John: Why's that?

Hank: I don't know, it's just really hard to grasp. 

John: Oh my god. That was terrible. That feels like one you wrote yourself, not one that you got from a list of dad jokes.

Hank: [laughs] It was a combination, I was inspired by a joke I saw elsewhere.

John: I'm, [chuckles] I didn't laugh but I did make a slightly derisive smiling sound.

Hank: [laughs] So, so I'll put that on the list of good ones then.

John: No.

Hank: A success was achieved. 

John:Hank do you want to know some good news this week?

Hank: I always do.

John: The eight-episode Hulu adaptation of Looking For Alaska has cast its lead actors, Charlie Plummer and Kristine Froseth, and they're both such lovely, lovely people. I talked to them both on the phone and they could not have been nicer, and I'm just, it's been a long thirteen years [Hank chuckles] but I am so, so grateful that these young people are going to be part of the Looking For Alaska story, 

Hank: Alright.

John: I'm really psyched.

Hank: Well I guess, my book is out now so I guess we'll see it on, comin' to the big or small screen sometime in the mid 2030s. 

John: Yeah, as if there'll be humans then.

Hank: [laughs] That's great news John, thanks for the, for bringin' it back down, okay. 

John: [laughs loudly]

Hank: I did break my hand while rollerblading in high school though.

John: Yeah I know, I know.

Hank: Okay. [laughs]

John: You want to talk about a sport that has not aged well?

Hank: Yeah, it's kinda disappointing, I wish that I saw more rollerblading. Montana is particularly a bad place to rollerblade, one because it's lots of hills, and two because we're really bad at infrastructure.

John: Right, there's not a ton of like, real smooth sidewalks. 

Hank: No, no, all the sidewalks are over a hundred years old and the freeze-thaw cycles do wreak havoc on anything uh, solid. 

John: That's, that's uh, that's the kind of high quality [chuckles] informational content that people come to Dear Hank and John for. 

[Hank and John laugh]

Hank: Do you want to know what it's like to rollerblade in Missoula, Montana? [John laughs] We've got information for you!

John: Hey do you want to hear about a sport that uh, [Hank laughs] last existed before you were born?

Hank: People still rollerblade, you're gonna alienate all our rollerblade listeners.

John: Oh I assume this is all for Nick. Not for, [Hank laughs] not for the pod. Alright Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners. 

Hank: That sounds like not a terrible idea. This first question comes from Morgan, who asks, "Dear Hank and John, does milk expire when it's inside a cow? Pumpkins and Penguins, Morgan."

John: Oh Morgan, I think that you [Hank laughs] might've been misinformed about the way that milking works.

Hank: Milk- yeah, the way that milk works, I mean-

John: It would expire when it's inside of a cow, I guess, but the cow would expire first. 

Hank: Uh, well in and of, in the way that like, that like a cow, like a, inside of a dead cow, the milk would expire, is that what you're saying? 'Cause that is true.

John: I'm saying that if a cow died, with milk inside of it, that milk would not be permanently drinkable.

Hank: [laughs] Yeah that sounds, that sounds right.

John: You know why Morgan? You know why Morgan? Because nothing lasts forever. Not even cold November rain, not even the human species, not even milk. 

Hank: Not even milk inside of a cow. Uh, yeah--

John: Hank, do you ever pause to consider how incredibly weird it is that adult humans drink the milk of a different mammal?

Hank: I don't think it's that weird John. I don't think it's that weird.

John: Well there is no other species that drinks the milk of a different animal into adulthood. 

Hank: Name another species that does any of the stuff we do!

John: Oh I can name a number of other species that whisper, I've recently reviewed it on The Anthropocene Reviewed. There's a monkey that whispers, raccoons whisper. 

Hank: Oh, that's lovely. But John there are, there are butterflies that drink the tears of other animals, like, we, it's, there's always somebody that does something. And lots of vampiric species that drink blood, including humans, humans drink the blood of animals, [John makes skeptic sound] or eat it if we mix it into harder stuff, um--

John: Personally I only, I only try to do that in an emergency. [Hank and John chuckle] 

Hank: Yeah well I, I think that--

John: But I know, I know there's a lot of different ways to be a person.

Hank: Yeah. Absolutely! I do, I think that if you look at anything from the wide lens it's like, oh that's very stra-- I find it very strange that humans come out of other humans, and that every human did that. I think that that's weird! But it's very normal.

John: It's like the weirdest matryoshka doll possible. [Hank laughs] Like you open up one matryoshka doll and inside of it is a matryoshka doll that was born from the larger matryoshka doll.

Hank: Yeah. I hadn't really thought of it in that way, but here we are. All, all, inside of our nesting doll of the human species going all the way back to like, ultimately, like single-celled organisms. So it's pretty weird John! It's pretty weird. What are we talking about?

John: Hank, does milk expire when it's inside a cow? 

Hank: No. No? No. 

John: No.

Hank: I'm not really an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure no.

John: I'm gonna lean toward no but I do know that with contemporary, uh, dairy farming practices it can quite bad for a cow not to milk them.

Hank: Yes, and also like I, I think that we sometimes think about milk as like a thing that, like it gets, like it fills up the sack and then it just sits there?

Hank: It doesn't just sit there it actually like is continually replenished by like, new fluids coming in and coming out of the, of the milk. So, it's like almost always fresh because it's always being refresh-ened inside the cow. Or whatever mammal. 

John: Great, I think we've covered it. [Hank laughs] This next question comes from Stephanie who writes, "Dear John and Hank, I work at an office with a lot of other people, and one of the hazards of my job is that those people have babies. [Hank makes intrigued sound] I do not have a baby,"

Hank: Baby hazard.

John: "But I have not spent a lot of time around babies, and I have not spent a lot of time around people who spend time around babies. I know that when people have children they like to talk about them and it's nice to hear how happy they get when people do talk about their kids, but because of my extremely limited knowledge of babies, I never have any idea what questions to ask. Like is it weird to ask if a five month old has teeth? Can they eat a chicken nugget yet?"

[Hank and John laugh loudly]

Hank: That's a good question. Has it had a chicken nugget?! Wait wait wait, I need to know, has it had a chicken nugget? I can go get a chicken nugget, can I be its first chicken nugget? [John still laughing] I can't imagine being a human on Earth without having a chicken nugget, and that baby is one of those. 

John: [Finishes laughing] Imagine that you're telling a nice anecdote about your five month old baby, and Stephanie says, "Oh that's a great story. Hey has your kid had a chicken nugget yet?" [Hank chuckles] And you're like, "No, I mean, no they're not allowed to eat solid food, and also, no."

Hank: I mean, oh. Chicken nuggets are so good though. Orin had his first fish sticks last night. 

John: "Can they talk when they're five months old?" That's another one of Stephanie's questions. [Hank laughs] "I want to learn more about these babies, but I can't without basically asking, 'what tricks does it do?' "

[Hank and John laugh loudly]

Hank: I mean that is kinda the thing that you do. You are basically asking, what new tricks does your human pet do? 

John: Right. 

Hank: Can it, like does it have, does it have a weird bone coming out of its mouth?