Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.
Friends have Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS Eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we've become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and Jia. Where's that for Think With Dear John and Hank?
It's a comedy podcast about death where two brothers answer your question, give you these advice and bring you all the news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. How you doing, John? I'm doing well. We're in the same place right now.
We're both in the Zuwa, Montana. Hank right now is opening up one of the 378 pieces of peanut butter taffy we received here at the Missoula offices. Thank you. First of all, do you have a name?
I finished off the road on the package. I don't know who should I? Well, we're very grateful for it and if you could just turn the microphone away and also leave the room because that is the loudest chewing noise I have ever heard in my entire life. I'm really cheery.
Oh my god. I just found out a new fear that I have or a new thing that causes me anxiety and it is the sound of my brother chewing loudly. So I'm doing well. Hank, for the last three weeks, we've been on tour together and I have been engaging in an experiment.
I don't know if you've known about this, but I've been engaging in an experiment called How Poor Does a Hotel Bathtub Have to Be for Me Not to Want to Take a Bath in It. So what are the qualities of a tub? Well, there's cleanliness, obviously. That's probably at the top of the list for me.
And then there's depth and width and length, all of which are important. And of course, in the opinion of America's hotels are important in that more of the means more water wasted. So they try to absolutely minimize the depth, length and height of a bathtub, which is meant that I've taken a lot of baths where I was like, I feel like a big person in a tiny, tiny bathtub. I feel like this is my girl.
Girl, I've been a little ball in the field position on your side just being like, how do I get more of my body under the water? I just barely get my knees wet or my shoulders wet. Never both. It occurs to me that this may be why I don't take baths, because this is what my bathtubs have always been like in my homes.
Oh, no, that's one of the first things that I make sure of. I can't get my knees and my shoulders in at the same time. Oh, well, then what is the point of going on living? Yeah, okay.
Maybe I don't like baths because I've never had a true bath. Oh my god, I imagine being 37 years old and discovering for the first time ever. How good a bathtub be. Hot tubs are not baths.
Hot tubs are filthy. Hot tubs are taking baths with a bunch of people. Do you know? Let's all take a bath together is basically what that means.
What you say when you say let's go do the hot tub? What a weird idea. Let's all go take a bath together. But with pants on, hopefully.
Oh god, I don't want to talk about hot tubs. It's funny for somebody who really loves baths. I really hate hot tubs. I think that's understandable because like the bathwater, you make it go away.
This is my main problem with baths is that I feel like I'm in butt water, because my butt's in the same water that it's like hot butt water. My butt's in a hot tub. It's like ancient butt water. It's like the butt water of potentially thousands of people on different days.
Yeah, that's what I kind of feel about the hotel bathtub. But so far it hasn't dissuaded me. And as you know, I brought bath salts and bath bombs. I do know this.
And so almost every night after the show, I'm enjoying some bath salts and bath bombs. Before we get to the questions from our listeners, we just have to mention one thing really quickly, which is that very soon after this podcast is uploaded, Hank and I will be almost all the tourists sold out except for San Francisco, where Hank and I are going to be on Halloween. It's going to be a Halloween spectacular. There's going to be a costume contest.
Hank and I are going to be extensively costumed. And maybe costume changes. My Halloween costume for the San Francisco show is so freaking good. I don't know what it is.
It's so good. I don't want to brag. It's phenomenal. So if you want to get tickets to see us in San Francisco, you can do that at turtles all the way down book.com.
But you can't get tickets to see us anywhere else. Sorry. Do we have a pleasant tent? Oh, pleasant tent.
Yeah. Also in the San Francisco area, there are also tickets available for that on November 1st or possibly October 30th. I think it's November 1st. But I could be wrong.
Who knows? Point being we're looking forward to the last week of our tour. Yeah. Also looking forward to being back home with our families.
The nice thing about catching the tail end of the tour is that we're good now. We've got it so not. We know what we're doing. I know where all my laugh lines are.
And I might throw a new one in to see how it goes. And as the tour goes, I know I know how to do it best. We're better. I wouldn't say we're good yet.
I think we put together a pretty stellar experience honestly. I walk out of that show and I'm like, we did. It was tight. There was a lot of ups and downs.
Hey, I'm not just trying to sell tickets here. But I am trying to sell tickets. In addition to other things. I love the confidence of my brother and also wish for it.
Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Thank this question comes from Matt who writes, do you hear John and Hank? Why does the AMPM change at 12 instead of one? This makes no sense.
Step over the door. Matt. No step over the door. Matt, why don't you step on the door.
Matt's with the door. Matt's with the door. Matt's with the door. Matt's on it.
Yeah. I don't care about the bottom of my shoes touching other people's bottoms with their shoes. No. It's not like a hot tub situation.
No. It's really kind of the opposite of a hot tub situation. Like I have like three layers of protection between me and the the door. The door.
Matt's not getting to my toes. And even if it does, like what do I care what my feet are experiencing? They're gross anyway. I'm not going to put them on my mouth.
Oh, unless you're a baby. So we have to cut that Nick. Nick's in the room for the first time ever. Nick's in the room.
So now when I say we have to cut that Nick, I'm actually speaking to Nick. Yeah. Nick, we have to cut that. Keep it.
Keep all of this. All right. So I looked this up and then I forgot. Yeah.
Great. Which I've done many different times. So it just be basically like AM means before noon and PM means after noon. And so or yeah.
Yeah. Yep. So with a switch from PM to AM happens when it becomes before noon. Yeah.
Right. And so it is before it is after midnight and before noon at 1201. And the important thing to note is that in everywhere else, that's not midnight. It's it is it's midnight, but it's not 12.
It's zero. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
They always talk about 0800 hours or zero dark 30. Oh, dark 30 being the 30 minutes after midnight. Zero day time 30. I'm not I'm gonna level it.
I'm not in the military. The day 30 doesn't sound like a thing I think it's called zero dark 30 and zero bright 30. That's my guess. Zero 30.
Yeah. So it's just like, Hey, everybody, we're gonna meet for the big rate at zero bright 30. Zero dark 30 is a very late or very early time of day. What is the time between midnight and dawn?
Apparently, according to the online slang dictionary dot com. Oh, yeah, I'm great. The the poor man's urban or half an hour past midnight. That seems more like it's your dark 30 is half an hour past midnight.
What's half an hour past noon? Is it just 12 30? That's what it is. It's 12 30 because they're not zero day 30.
That's a 24 hour calendar. So that's that's what it is. It's a calendar. Yeah, it's a calendar.
Hang a 24 hour calendar. It's a calendar. We move you on to the next question. Do you have the new Apple eye calendar?
Yeah, it's great. I tell I get my I actually make that mistake frequently when I'm setting my alarm because we've had to get up at weird hours on this tour and I always hit calendar and I'm like, where's my alarm clock? So actually, yes, that is true. This question comes from it's your turn to ask a question.
This question comes from our listener Greta who asks Dear Hank and John, my best friend and I have our first class of the day together and she is a forgetful person. I am this person, by the way, almost every day she asks me for a pen to borrow. I don't know why I never brought pens to school, but I am this person, which is fine with me. But then throughout the class, she chews on it.
No, I'm not this person. No, your friend Greta is no longer your friend Greta. This person is not your friend Greta. I think I've done this before.
I'm a shoot on someone else's pen. Well, I am an in-veterate pen. You were I was in college and high school. Of course, I no longer own or use pens except Sharpies.
I sponsored this whole tour, by the way, I've been signing with the Sharpies, I mean, 96 free Sharpies because I guess they don't listen to the pod. And the whole tour I've been signing with my green Sharpies that say John Green's number one marker and in almost every city a bookseller is like, did you get personalized Sharpies made? And I'm like, I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse that I got personalized Sharpies sent to me. Yeah, like, yeah.
I asked for personalized Sharpies. I didn't ask for them in so many words, but I did add reply Sharpie and just let them know that I was a big customer. You are a big customer. So Greta goes on to say, what am I supposed to do when she gives me the pen back?
Take the slobber pen or just let her keep it? Yeah, let her keep it. She has now claimed she might as well Pete on it. Like, this is her pen now.
Is that how you claim ownership over your pens? I have a drawer and I just pee in there a little every morning. These are mine. I think takes the same approach to ownership as dogs do.
I mean, how else do you mark your turf, man? It's legal. It's like blockchain. It's better than blockchain being on stuff.
Greta, here's the answer to your question. When the person hands you back to chew pen, you look them dead in the eye and you say, I would like you to keep that pen and remember to bring it back tomorrow and remember to bring it back every day for the rest of class or Greta buys for $1.50 of like 25 pens. And then just has a pen supply for her friend and just says like, you know, hey, we're buds and I just want to keep this in my bag and this is already earmarked and I've lost these pens. And if the friend gives the pen back, you say you keep it and they're like, oh, I insist that you take this thing that I might as well have Pete on, you just throw it, bring a Ziploc, place it in like it's an evidence bag.
It's like toss it in the trash. That's a way of making it absolutely clear. You bring a Ziploc and you take the pen from your friend and you place it in the Ziploc and then you write out a little tag like the date and you place that and you zip it up right in front of her or him. I don't know.
You didn't mention the gender of this person. Then when they go visit you in your dorm room eventually, you have this like huge frame collection of all the side of all the side of the daily. Yeah, it's like a sports room where they have like every one of the home runs from that year just like tacking tacked up. But instead it's all of a sports room, a locker room, I think it's the place I was thinking.
That's called a sports room. You know how sometimes people like when their baby gets the first haircut, they keep a people lock the hair from the first haircut. I don't know. I was wondering how to haircut.
Yeah. No, no, no. So we did that. But one time I was visiting somebody.
I'm not going to name them for reasons that will become obvious. And I went into the bathroom and I noticed that they had a huge collection of locks of hair and I found out that they had saved a lock of hair from every haircut their child had ever gotten until the age of 18. Were they like separately bagged or were they just like in a pile? No, they were framed.
Oh, each individual one, each individual one with a date below the frame. And I was like until I came outside and I was like, hey, in the room, it's the guest bathroom. I wasn't like the only bathroom in the home. It was the guest bathroom.
And so I was like, and they also had a really good art collection. So I thought maybe like maybe it's art. Maybe it's art. And I went in.
So I was like, hey, who made the piece of the hair with the hair? Is that with art? And they said, oh, no, that's our kid's hair. And I was like, oh, yeah, no, of course.
That's normal. That's like my friend Greta has a pen collection of two pens. It's very similar. Do one of the most probably the most embarrassing thing about me.
Oh, yeah. All right. So you guys didn't hear the most embarrassing thing because I decided it was too embarrassing for the pod. I made a kind of a team decision actually not because Hank was concerned about how embarrassing was but because it's so embarrassing for me as somebody who loves Hank.
So it's one of those things where like sometimes you need somebody to come in and care about you enough to say no. So instead, I'm just going to tell you the second most embarrassing thing about Hank for a little bit of context. So you can understand how embarrassing the thing you'll never hear about is the second most embarrassing thing about Hank is that for about 18 months, you fake the British accent. That's not entirely true.
It's entirely true. It was like a Canadian British accent. But it was like if a British person moved to Minnesota when they turned seven. He only spoke in that accent and we would be like Hank, we notice.
It doesn't sound like yourself and he'd be like, but whatever do you mean? So the second most embarrassing thing about my brother, this next question comes from Thomas and you'll never guess why I wanted to ask it as I read it. You're John and Hank. I pre-ordered John's new book with the goal of giving it to my girlfriend for Christmas.
She doesn't usually read that much but she's a huge fan of your book so I decided to grab a signed edition as soon as I could. I normally have a hard time picking out gifts for her which is why I decided to buy her a gift so early this year. Fast forward to this morning when the book arrives in my mailbox, I decided to message one of her friends to try and go verdly dissuade her from buying herself a copy and her friend told me that my girlfriend just this morning went out to the local bookstore and got a copy of Turtles All The Way Down but she didn't buy it for herself. She got it to give me at Christmas.
So now I know that we're both got each other the same thing for Christmas. My question is should I get her something different or is it okay to exchange copies of the exact same book? It is not just okay. It is adorable.
Thomas, how would you fail to notice how incredibly cute this is? It'll be like, and you're like, wow, this feels familiar. Continue. P.S.
is it okay to read a book that you're planning on giving us a gift? That's the better question because absolutely yes, exchange the gift and pretend like you didn't know and it'll be cute. Yeah, I really pretend that you didn't know. Sometimes when you're some, I think some relationship dynamics dictate that you have to eventually reveal that you knew, but some relationship dynamics don't.
I don't know how it works for you, Thomas, but is it okay to read a book that you're planning on giving us a gift? I think yes, as long as you read it very gently, read it gently and maybe also say, I read this. Right, and I love it. And I'd like to talk to you about it.
I hope you loved it by the way, Thomas. I read this and I loved it. It was perfect and it says, got to start review from the library journal of children. I found myself agreeing with the Guardian that it might be a new classic.
Right, so, yeah, but I think it's okay to read a book. What I don't think is okay to read a book that you give as a gift and I've had someone do this for me before. They thought it was like Sweden romantic and I thought it was a little bit presumptuous was to read the book before giving it to me and to highlight their favorite passages. It's kind of sweet in a way, but in another way, it affects my read in a way that I don't necessarily like, I don't know, that's interesting.
I think that that that's a little bit like a mix tape to me, so you're not just giving the book now. You're saying like, this is about me in some way. So, like this book, I'm giving you this book and it's something that I've kind of curated and created for you. Right, I guess maybe it's just that this breakup didn't go that well and now I'm biased by that experience.
Yeah, I think that they're both both good and bad things to that. And I think that that would be that is sort of, to me, more acceptable if it's something like if it's a classic or if it's like yeah, turtles all the way down according to the Guardian. New modern classic. Yeah, yeah, this next question is available bookstores everywhere, by the way.
You know, I went to the book store and the airport in Minneapolis and it wasn't in the front display and I was like, I went to the people and I was like, where's Turtle all the way down? They're like, well, it's in Best Hours in YA and I was like, well, just two places? That's all you got. It should be out.
Like, I should have to trip over them to get to this door. Come on. Dan Brown's all up in this business. Where's my brother?
And then the person who I talked to was like, great show last night, by the way. She got me to sign the guest book and she was a fan. Very nice person. That's probably didn't need to get like hard charged about turtles all the way down placement, which I suspect probably also wasn't her call.
Really her call. This next question comes from Paige, who asks, dear Hank and John, I have a deep burning question that has plagued me. Why have we not evolved to withstand a greater amount of heat in our bodies, specifically our mouths? The planet's climate is changing and has been for millions of years.
So shouldn't I be able to drink a pumpkin spice latte at 140 degrees Fahrenheit without burning my taste buds off? Ow, Paige. Sounds like Paige just have a moment right here. You need to email us there, hang it.
Yeah, well, I mean, here's my suspicion and correct me if I'm wrong Hank, evolution is pretty slow and also tends to focus on like major survival concerns. Right. Pumpkin spice latte is pretty new. Also, not a major survival concern.
No, maybe in the future. It's just going to be like the way the PSL graph has been going. It does seem like in a number of like maybe two or three years, that will be all the food in the fall. I didn't know what the PSL graph was, but then I figured it out for context.
It's the pumpkin spice latte graph. Latte graph. Latte graph. Mother of God.
It's the pumpkin spice latte graph. I mean, that's the new she sells seashells by the seashells. Good discretious. Yeah, but you know, we actually are better at eating hot food.
Like our mouths are better at handling heat than like our hands are, than other skin places. Oh, which is probably an evolutionary thing because if it's good enough for the hands, it's definitely good enough for the mouth. Yeah, that's part of it. And also like when we started cooking food, like you put a lot of hot stuff in your mouth and you don't want that to be a source of like infection.
So mouth sells grow, grow back very fast. So when you burn your mouth, like heals much faster than if you burn your skin. So a little something there. I'm not concerned about, okay, I have a question.
I have a related question about this. It's about to a Torah. Okay. It's only tangentially related.
Have you ever given it to a Torah, pumpkin spice latte? Because that sounds interesting. Not yet. I mean, but so many experiments are still waiting to be done on the world's to a Torah.
Here's my question. To a Torah, one of the oldest terrestrial vertebrates still around their body forms haven't changed much in 150 million years, but they have this incredibly fast rate of molecular evolution. Like the what's it called? They mutate a lot.
They're sells mutate a lot, which makes some people think that maybe sells used to mutate a lot more than they do now, but makes other people not think that. Here's my question. Since they have this really high metabolic evolution rate, or since they have this high since they have this really high molecular evolution rate compared to most newer animals, why haven't their bodies changed? I mean, so you can kind of think of this a little bit like if you get to the bottom of a well, you might not be the deepest you can get in the well, but to get to another place to get deeper, you have to get all the way back out of the well and go down a different hole.
So to a Torah might have sort of gotten to as good as they can get without sort of like starting over a lot. So like it definitely like they are pretty close to as good as they can get for you know, the strategies that they're using. Right, but they're not great, I have to say, at most things. Yeah, like two or three are really good at living for a long time and it hanging around on earth for 150 million years and literally the only two things that really go that.
The other thing is like evolution is spurred by a lot of different things and like differentiation is spurred by a lot of different things and that can be like you need evolutionary pressure. So if there isn't a lot of evolutionary pressure forcing them to adapt, then they probably might not adapt very much like they might just sort of like keep all of the things that are working for them working and that's the main goal of being a to a Torah. And also you don't because to a Torah are sort of they were just in one place just on the mainland of New Zealand and surrounding islands, then you know, like there wasn't a lot of separation of the species to let them sort of explore different paths. Thanks, Hank.
That's helpful. And also helpful to readers of Turtle's All the Way Down maneuver. If you want to learn more about to a Torah, Turtle's All the Way Down available in two different places at the Minneapolis bookstore at the airport. Which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by John Green's new but Turtle's All the Way Down.
Oh my god, this is the last week Hank I will make us fly turtles all the way down relentlessly on the pod. Yeah, we got to start doing pod con right after that. We really get to sell the pod con tickets. It's gonna be a freaking great time to get genders on the website now.
Sorry, that's not a sponsor. That's for next week. Pod con calm. A great place for my new book.
It's very confusing. This podcast is also brought to you by my fake Minnesotan British accent. Why? I'm so glad the internet didn't exist and there are no videos of that.
That's a great point, Hank. It could be so much worse because I'm sure as bad as I remember it being, I'm sure it was worse in real life. Today's podcast is also brought to you by our San Francisco show and our pleasantant show. Actual things that are actually happening that we would love to see you people from California at.
And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Slobber Pen Evidence bags. They're just Ziploc bags, but they're available and you can put your Slobber pens in them and nail them to the wall and have a hall of fame with Slobber pens. Or just or just do that and people like they'll come to your bathroom and be like, why are there a bunch of pens and Ziploc bags in your bathroom? And you'll be like, it's art.
This episode of your Hank and John's Bronte is brought up to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes easier. When you start with Shopify, the tools, to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one.
You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing and it also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate. Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet.
It's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks. Returning customers can check out with a single click. That means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody. That stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing.
You're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work. You're not wondering whether customers can get through the process. Shopify handles that foundation so you can focus on the thing that you're actually trying to do. It's really kind of amazing to me that Shopify is a tool that works from the first day your store launches when you're just starting to get customers all the way up to being the size of good.store or dftv.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark.
When you build a Shopify, you're building with tools that already work at every scale. All you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest. You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash DearHank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com with new subscription only.
While supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed.
My kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to quince. I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints. In fact sometimes I get compliments about it. I was at the airport a couple days ago.
I often find myself in airports and someone said I like your shirt and I said thanks. It's from quince. Quince is 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable, easy to throw on and the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34. Their teas are soft enough to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when those summer nights cool down.
So that's why I'm wearing quince this summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash DearHank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash DearHank for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash DearHank.
You love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do? Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts. Those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge.
You can get smoky barbecue chicken breast with potato mash, cream corn and peppers. You can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice peel off broccoli and carrots. This has the fiber I need, it has the protein I need and it has the deliciousness I need. What about garlic herb roasted baromunty with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce.
I don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious. What about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema. A delicious high fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for. Any of those can be ready in two minutes.
Fresh, never frozen, over 100 rotating weekly meals including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian, Factor shops, Preps, Cooks and Delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring. Head to factormeals.com slash DearHank50off and use the code DearHank50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box. With new subscription only, while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details.
This next question comes from Kyle who writes Dear Green Brothers. I always love it when you shill for yourselves on the pod. It's a true question Hank. You highlighted it.
It helps me to keep up with all the amazing new things you're both doing. What product or service are you making or providing that you haven't shilled for on the pod? I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to hear about it only for a while.
Kyle, that's a great sign off. Yeah. Also Kyle knows how to get this question on the pod. I know.
Hey, by the way, could you like anybody wants to write a question and be like, this is your chance to talk about a thing you need to tell people about. There is something. What? Pizza miss.
It's pizza miss. The most magical time of the year. Every year for two weeks Hank and I make a video every week, day back and forth to each other like we did back in 2007. And it's a celebration of love and brotherhood and also e-commerce.
You can go to dmtv.com and there's a bunch of pizza miss merch that's only available during pizza miss and after this will never be available again every year. There's different pizza miss stuff. This year we've got lots of amazing pizza miss items available at dftv.com. So there you go, Kyle.
Just when you thought we couldn't self show anymore, it turned out I found yet another level. This next question comes from Anjali who asks Dear Hank and John. I'm in a public health class in college right now and we recently learned about the influenza vaccines and apparently they're made inside of chicken eggs. I was shocked but willing to go along until my professor asked us what would happen during an apocalypse?
What if a flu pandemic broke out during the apocalypse? Would we try to make a vaccine? Is there a supply of emergency chickens for this situation? Concerned about our world supply of emergency chickens among other things and jolly.
I don't think that's our biggest concern. Like the apocalypse, like the flu pandemic after the apocalypse, I'm like no, no, this is a legitimate concern because once all the, I think about this a lot but like once all the like primary health facilities sort of break apart and vaccines are part of that but there's lots of other things as well like sanitation especially. Yeah, there will be like huge global pandemics that are a big problem. In fact, we already see this to an extent in places where there's a big breakdown of the social and political order like in Yemen right now, there's probably in the end the cholera outbreak in Yemen will probably be the largest cholera outbreak in many decades and it's not because we don't have a vaccine for cholera, we do.
It's not because cholera isn't preventable, it is. It's because we aren't using, you know, because we can't get in there to do all the things we need to do. And also that like we as a global community have chosen not to devote the resources that would be necessary to do the things that we would have to do. So I am actually worried about that.
I think that's what we're doing. Yeah, yeah, I mean my concern isn't the supply of chickens. I think that will probably keep chickens around. Yeah, it turns out that they're not hard to maintain the way that we're currently doing it.
Maybe I am concerned that like you don't just need a chicken and an egg to make a vaccine, you need a laboratory and you need production facilities. Those are the things that I'm worried about. Yeah, you need electricity, you need running water. Yeah, you need a lot of things that we might struggle to have.
Here's the thing though, Anjali, if things start to break down like that, we're going so far down like things are going to get so bad that I think Hank's probably right that on the list of like, on the list of like worries, that's the thing about doomsday prepping Anjali, you can only do so much of it because the truth is it's going to be awful. And even if you live, it's going to suck. Thanks for listening. I'm so glad I pulled that question out, John.
I don't know what I'm saying. I mean, like, you don't have anything else to say either. I mean, it's yeah, it would be very, very bad. This is like, I just stability is so important and we take it for granted so much.
Stability is so underrated, political and social stability. Like we need change. We need to change progressively and actively and continue the change in making the world a more fair and equitable place. But we also need not have a civil war.
Like in both, like we do desperately need political change and I completely agree with you. Like the world is deeply unfair and we must make it less unfair. We must make the world more just and that is like the, I think the calling of humans. But we also cannot afford to have a complete breakdown of the political stability of Earth because if that happens, it would be devastating to human populations and most devastating to the most vulnerable human populations.
So be nice to each other. And also fight, fight, fight, fight, fight to make your government take climate change seriously. I got another question for you, Hank. I'm glad that we can cut that out of the way.
We've been all over the place. I mean, this has been an adventure. Where even are we? Yeah.
It's at AMRPM. It's zero bright 30. This question goes from Garnet. He writes, Dear John and Hank, my boyfriend and I are planning to become engaged in this winter.
We've already agreed to marry each other, but we want family there for the actual proposal. It's a secret. Are we engaged? Either this engagement is like a secret snake.
We've already have it, but nobody knows. Or it's like a secret fiddle recital. We know it won't happen, but it hasn't happened yet. Those are two deep, deep cut, deer-hacking John jokes.
So thank you, Garnet, for listening so closely to the pod. Please help us solve this riddle of Schrodinger's engagement, butts, butts, butts, Garnet. Oh, that's another callback to a great callback. Do not a deer-hacking John joke.
Yeah. All right. Here's the thing, Hank. Is this more of a situation where you have made a commitment to get so good at the violin that you are going to have a violin recital for your family and surprise them?
Or is this more like a thing where you already own something but you haven't announced to the world that you own it? Yeah. Is it a secret snaker? Is it a secret violin recital?
Right. I think it's a secret violin recital. I agree. Because, and this is a general thing with proposals that like you it almost seems like it's a proposal.
I'm making this proposal. And so on some level, I wanted to be surprised, but also I don't want it to be a surprise, because I don't want you to be like, all right, I have, you know, three seconds to decide whether or not I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to have that conversation a number of times in a number of ways and discuss a number of different things before it's like, here's the diamond. Right.
Or not diamond. Sapphire from Montana. Is that what you got? No, I got my great grandmother's ring.
Oh, you didn't get that one. I'll be saving money. She said she came. This dead woman came to my mother in a dream and told her to give me the ring.
So that's, I can't say no to that. And Hank's response was, thanks for saving me 500 bucks, which is what he would have spent on a ring. Anyway, moving on. Yeah, I don't think you're engaged because I think part of being engaged maybe is being known to your family.
Like to me, that's part of the process. By the way, I don't think you have to get engaged. I think you can just get married if you want to. Also, the great thing about that is you never have to say the word fiancee ever.
God, I hate that word so much. I don't like, I'm fine. I just hate, I hated using it. I had to think, this is my fiancee, Catherine.
I'm like, I have to have this intermediate word that I'm going to use for six months. And if I say girlfriend, people are going to get mad at me. Yeah, or just, yeah, it's an awkward and we used to say partner. Yeah.
But even that is awkward. Yeah. Because they're like, so you're in business together. What do you say?
No, but then it's more like, well, are you married or not married and what? Yeah, why would it get into a whole conversation? I have a new answer to this question. Hank, I've thought about it more.
And my new answer is that you are engaged literally when you both agree that you are engaged and not until then. Okay, that is my definition of engagement. And this next question comes from Jennifer who asks, dear Hank and John, if telescopes work using mirrors, does that mean it's possible that outer space is full of vampires? Jennifer.
Great question, Jennifer. A couple of things. I don't know. You feel about this, Hank, but I don't think vampires are real.
I don't think that you could just say something like that as if it's known because outer space could be full of vampires. It could be. It could be. It could be.
I mean, to be clear, we don't just we don't just detect space with mirrors. There are other ways we do it. But the question is, would vampires be detected but through any of those means? Like, are they sort of the ambient temperature of space?
Do they like block background radiation? I mean, I don't really like, the fact that you can't see them in a mirror, like, it makes me think that there's something very weird about vampires on the scale of like weird, the way that dark matter is weird. Like, we don't understand how that works. Like, how could something be visible in one like, like something can't be visible standing there, but not when the light happens to be reflected off a mirror.
It doesn't make any sense. So I'm thinking vampires are dark matter. It's a theory. I was going to go in a different direction with this question.
The thing this question may be think of is how incredibly hard it is to prove a negative? Like, if somebody says you're a communist and then you say, well, no, I'm actually not. I'm not a communist. And they're like, well, prove it.
That becomes very difficult. Like, it becomes very difficult to prove like, that's one of the great like political strategies of the 2017 Twitter driven political discourse is the, you make a wild accusation. And then everyone's like, well, no, that doesn't make any sense. But then you can keep finding data that makes it so that the accusation isn't completely refuted, so that it is not quite yet irrefutable.
And that is a little bit like vampires in space. So when we see ourselves, I would say when we see ourselves in situations, either where we are making accusations or looking into accusations, consider the possibility that it might be a vampires in space question. But like, the thing that you're trying to disprove or prove, is it a vampires in space moment is my question. That's what I would ask you to hold on to.
Oh, I'm think I'm very discouraged about the political discourse in the United States right now. I know that I've said that a few times in the last year, but I am more discouraged than I have been at any point. I think ever in my whole life, it's very worrisome to me. Vampires in space.
I feel like we occasionally, I'll have this moment where I'm like, oh my Lord, we are monkeys with guns. Like we have been given a tool that we do not understand and we have not figured it out yet. And it is dangerous. Yeah, the social internet is totally a monkeys with guns situation, where like we don't even understand the consequences of it.
So like we keep pulling the trigger and things keep dying and we keep being like, why did that happen? Like we don't understand what the trigger does yet, you know? It's not only monkeys with guns, it's more like ant eaters with guns or something. Like our artworks with guns.
That's what it is because like, it's like, you don't like, at least monkeys could make the connection between a trigger to a trigger to a dead end. I understand that this is a gun. Right. Right.
One of the stuff they die. Right. And we're just like, oh man, stuff's got real weird in here. Everything's so weird.
Everything's worse now. I don't understand. But it's like a gun where the sound of firing the gun gives you a little, a little rush of dopamine, a little hint of dopamine in the reward center of your brain. And because we're artworks with guns, we're like, man, I love that sound.
So you just keep firing the gun and you're like, God, this sound is great. There are a few artworks in the world right now, but I love this sound. I want to keep making it. And then you're like, man, why are my friends dying?
I love this sound. Give me more of the sound. Now that I'm lonely here because all my friends are dead, I need more of the sound. I need it more than ever.
Give me the sound. Oh, I hate this. I hate this metaphor so much. Oh my God.
Thank you. It's not hold upon a metaphor for the social internet that might just have changed my whole life. It might be that I have to get off the internet because now I realize that I'm just an art barque with a gun. I don't even know how you're pulling the trigger.
I don't have fingers. They don't have the trigger either. We have no idea what we're doing. And with that noted, let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
Okay, John, the news from Mars is great news on my cheeks hurt due to smiling into the face of doom. But the Curiosity River is drill. It drills into some rocks and you can get rock powder and you can find out not just what's on the surface of the rock but also what's inside of the rock. This is a useful tool that broke.
It's hard to drill on other planets. And I think it's something to do with a stabilizer. So the drill itself is okay, but the thing that stabilizes it so they can go in and knock it stuck broke. And so they have been working for a long time on how to maybe get the drill to work despite the fact that the drill doesn't work.
And they are doing it. They've figured out a way, they think, and they're testing it right now to drill on Mars again. It's been, I think, almost a year or more than a year that they haven't been able to drill. And they're basically using some parts of the rover that were not meant to be used to do this to get the drill bit to go in but have it so that they're measuring the pressure so that it's not confused about its connection to the side of the rock as it enters the rock and anything pushing to the side of that could make it so that the drill would get stuck and then they'd stop to break the drill bit and they would definitely not be able to drill anything on Mars anymore.
And that way that new drilling technique is going to allow them to start drilling on Mars again, see what's on the inside of some new rocks. Now that they're on a different part of the side of Mount Sharp, they are sort of moved up the lake bed some more and they can find out more about this wonderful lake bed. And they've been doing this, I'm basically using a like a version of curiosity that's here on Earth. So it's basically one like just a mock up of the exact thing and they can do a bunch of tests.
And I love seeing like the scientists pictures of scientists with the, you know, the model curiosity on Earth because you're like that thing's freaking huge. You forget how huge it is. And then and then also was like how did that scientist get to Mars? Because you're just seeing it on Mars.
But I love that like they have to go in and look at the problems and think okay well so how would I solve that problem if I couldn't touch it? Yeah. You know, like how would I do with this problem if it were millions of miles away and had to fix itself? Yeah.
They did it. Yeah engineers are amazing. Speaking of amazing, that's actually not a very good transition into the AFC one. It's all amazing as you know, there's different kinds of things are amazingly worrisome.
AFC Wimbledon after winning two league games lost one to the lowest team in the table, which was very it's very worrisome. Yeah. And at this point AFC Wimbledon are not currently in the relegation zone. They are have 15 points after 15 games, but they are only one place away.
They are in 20th and places 21 through 24 in league one. I'll go down to league two of more concern. AFC Wimbledon's leading striker, Questi Opio, Opio. I don't know how to say his name.
I apologize. Has had a hamstring injury for a while and it looks like he has had a setback and is going to miss an additional couple weeks. Neil Arty the manager of AFC Wimbledon said if we weren't creating chances and our stats were low, then we would have real cause for concern. Let me submit that we do have real cause for concern as our stats are.
I would argue low-ish. I mean 15 games, nine goals. Not great. Not great.
Fewest goals in the league. Not, I would say our stats are low-ish. But you know. So how long is this hamstring injury even happening?
Is this part of the reason why there aren't a lot of goals or is like your league striker, but he's never scored a goal before. He had a few games and he didn't score much. But he only had a few games before he got injured. The truth is that we are now one-third of the way into the season.
It is going to be a very, it's going to be one of those years where it's going to be difficult. And the second season in a new league is usually harder than the first season. And it's going to be hard to stay in league one. But I believe that AFC Wimbledon can do it.
It's just instead of rooting for them to make the playoffs, we're going to be rooting for them to narrowly avoid the drop. And that's going to be the kind of year it is. All right. I'm sorry, John.
That's okay. We're just going to get points where we can find them, Hank. It's going to be okay. Don't panic.
Speaking of not panicking, do you want to look at this picture of Artvark fingers? Mm. Yeah. Oh, Artvark is good.
Totally shoot a gun. Yeah. I mean, those are, we'll put those on the Patreon.com slash do your Hank and John. If you want to get a good look at Artvark fingers, I'm crushing it on the pronunciation today.
All right. Also, if you go to Patreon, you can get our semi-weekly, short, patron-only podcast This Week in Ryan's. This Week in Ryan's. Which I don't know if we're going to be able to do today, hopefully.
Yeah, we're going to do it. All right. I'm ready. I got a Ryan already for us.
Okay. What do we learn today? We learned that don't chew on your friends' things. We learned that Hank and John have many things currently available from dftba.com.
Also, Artvark's show in San Francisco, to my new book Turtles all the way down. We learned all those things. We also learned that you should keep a lock of your child's hair, the first haircut, but not every haircut. And of course, we learned that the second most embarrassing thing about Hank is that for about a year he had a fake British attitude.
It's not learned the most embarrassing thing about Hank, which probably is the right call considering the face that Nick made when we talked about it. I think Nick's going to keep that one in the vault for if he ever needs. Just a raise. Just needs a favor.
All right. Thank you for potty with me and thanks everybody for listening. This podcast is produced by Rosie Anna Hoss and Sheridan Gibson, our social media and community manager is Victoria Bonjourno. It's edited by Nicholas Jenkins who is watching us.
Hey Nick, he was there the whole time. Yeah. So I'm giggling at things. Our music is by the great Gunerola.
Thank you again for listening and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.