John: Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. 
Hank: Good Morning, John. I'm also here. 
John: It's a reunion video where two brothers talk to you about God.
Hank: We went to see a stand-up comedian last night and she... one of the hypotheticals was what would you do if you were God for fifteen minutes. 
John: Yeah
Hank: And you said, "That's what our video should be about," during the intermission. 
John: I did wait for the intermission. 
Hank: Yeah.
 John: You made it sound like I was like, "Shut up, stand-up comedian, I've got an idea!" I know what I would do in my first three seconds."
Hank: I know what you would do. 
John: I would eliminate tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. 
Hank: All infectious diseases? 
John: Pretty much, although I might leave a little bit of the common cold. 
Hank: Just for ... like a...
John: Just so people have a memory of what it used to be like to be sick. But I would eliminate all serious infectious diseases, even though it would be catastrophic for my new book, "Everything is Tuberculosis." I'd have to update it really fast. 
Hank: Yeah. Aging is no longer a thing.
John: You're going full vampire? You're going full "Twilight?" 
Hank: Yeah, I feel like you hit thirty, and that's what you're gonna be. 
John: No, no, I like aging. 
Hank: I don't know, well...
John: I don't wanna get rid of aging. 
Hank You... okay, well, you can age, but...
John: I wanna get rid of aging at some point. You age until you get to your full handsomeness at forty-seven. 
Hank: I'm worried about unintended consequences
John: Yeah.
Hank: but I do have an obvious answer that solves so many problems very quickly. 
John: Great, I love it. 
Hank: Which is that the maximum...like a tall person, you'll be like "That person is so tall!"... should be four feet tall. 
John: Oh! Because then we consume fewer resources,
Hank: Yes.
John: we're easier to ship around on airplanes, 
Hank: Oh, so easy! Cars would be smaller. We could fit so many more people on roads. The price of houses would come way down. Any new building would be...
John: People would be like, "Six-foot ceilings! What am I gonna do with all the space?" 
Hank: There would be enough of everything for everyone immediately. 
John: Everybody is four feet tall. 
Hank: No. Four feet is tall. 
John: So a lot of people are three-six. 
Hank: Yeah.
John: Three-three. 
Hank: Uh-huh, even three-three. It's between three and four. And four-foot four people are like basketball players. 
John: Right, right. And it wouldn't be bad for basketball because we would just adjust the hoops accordingly. 
Hank: So many more people could go to the games! A third of the consumption. 
John: Fewer cells, so you'd probably live longer. 
Hank: You'd get less cancer. Like a chihuahua lives longer than a mastiff. 
John: How are we gonna bring about world peace in fifteen minutes as god? 
Hank: Well if everyone were four feet tall [Both laugh] I don't think that would fix the wars. 
John: Uh, no. Hank had a proposal for this last night which I thought was pretty brilliant, which was that if you hurt someone, it hurts you. 
Hank: The exact same amount. Like it just feels the same. And Sarah was like, "If you kill someone, do you die?" and I was like, "No, It just hurts really bad."
John: Forever. It's like chronic pain. 
Hank: What if I say, "Hey, you go kill that person."
John: Then you get MORE pain 
Hank: Ok
John: Or at least as much pain 
Hank: But what if I didn't really mean it? Well, that's not... well, you will quickly learn not to mess around with such talk. 
Hank: [laughing] Ok. Yeah. Or, you know, I'm god, and I know if you meant it. 
John: But I'm only God for fifteen minutes, so I've got to set up a system of rules...
Hank: a system that knows whether you mean it. Here's my worry. What if I... because in the future world where there is no aging and you only die of like falling off of a ladder, what if I hire someone to like clean my gutters for me and he falls off the ladder and then I have to experience the pain because that was my fault. 
John: And the guilt. Then I think you've just gotta get rid of death. 
Hank: Ok. And pain. No pain! That's a problem.
John: Unless you cause other people pain. 
Hank: But you can't.
John: Oh, boy. See, now we're getting in the weeds. 
Hank: We've ended war because now you can't kill anybody. 
John: You're not allowed to hurt anybody. 
Hank: Or put them in prison. 
John: Oh, yeah, you definitely cant...yeah
Hank: Well, now, that's a problem
John: And you're not allowed to do anything bad. You're not allowed to be naughty. 
Hank: Not allowed to be naughty. Any naughty, even financial naughty - pain. 
John: [concerned sigh]
Hank: [laughing]
John: I'm starting to worry about this.
Hank: I know.
John: I'm starting to think that actually being God would be kind of hard.
Hank: So hard. 
John: I'm reminded of the...
Hank: FOUR FEET TALL.
John: You've decided that this is the hill you're gonna die on. 
Hank: I just think we're way too big. 
John: Not like world peace, not eliminating infectious disease. You're like, "Just shrink us down." 
Hank: Once you start thinking about it, you, like, look at a meal, and you're like, "This is so much food."
John: For the record, and I don't mean to get preachy, but this way of thinking about God as inherently omnipotent and capable of moving all the chess pieces around is not the only way to think about God, just for the record. 
Hank: Yeah, the "Warriors" books.
John: No. There's also...
Hank: Are you gonna keep that in?
John: I will. There's also the Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote, "God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which God is with us to help us."
Hank: Which is very similar to the situation in the "Warriors" books, where StarClan, they are there to guide the cats in the forest, but they cannot control what happens to the cats in the forest. 
John: Hank
Hank: John
John: I'm glad that we're not God. I think we would be bad at it. And it's a reminder that people who do really, like, want to be God or want to be dictators generally are not qualified for the job inherently because wanting that is weird. 
Hank: Yeah, I think the people who want that are just, like, incapable of having an idea that is as good as "four foot tall should be tall." 
John: Yeah, I mean...
Hank: And actually, maybe I would be good at it. 
John: Oh, Jesus Christ. 
Hank: [laughing]
John: I'll see you on Friday.