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 of Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and more 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 have 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 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. Welcome to Dear Hank and John. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions give you the advice and bring you all the least news from both Mars, it's a planet and AFC Wimbledon which is a soccer team.
John, you've been telling me for a long long time that I need to get a last-willing testament. Correct. I'm working on this and finally doing it. I'm caught up on a lot of my work so I went in and I was there and the lawyer comes into the room and he said to me loudly, I'm not saying anything without my lawyer present.
And I said this is a very weird way to start out this conversation. You are the lawyer here. This is also not a criminal proceeding. I'm just a guy, I'm not a cop.
You're the lawyer and he said exactly I'm the lawyer. So give me my lawyer present. The longest setup for the worst joke. No, he wants a lawyer present and so I got a some lapel pins from DFTBA.com.
Let me ask you if you're actually getting your will done or if it was just all a setup for a joke. I am. You are. I am.
I didn't actually haven't gone in yet but I've scheduled a meeting. Oh my god. It's scheduled. It's on a schedule.
Oh my god. It's like I'm trying to tell my 20 year old self why he has to go to the dentist. I mean, I'll also I have to schedule an appointment to see the dentist for clarity. John, what would you have tweeted this week?
Hank, this week I would have tweeted nothing makes me prouder to be an American than winning a World Cup match on two sketchy penalties. The US Women made it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in, I mean, I found the circumstances to be dubious. Other people had a lot of complaints about like different refereeing decisions in the game that weren't about those two penalties and so therefore they thought that America deserved the two relatively soft penalties we received. But then again, when Tottenham fans a few weeks ago were whining about how the penalty that got called that helped Liverpool win the European Championship was soft.
I was like, whatever shut up. So I'm happy to be an American. It's amazing to be drawn that the thing you wanted to tweet about was the soccer game and not that your podcast, the Anthropocene Review was featured on Roman Mars is 99% invisible and in such a complimentary and beautiful manner that has resulted in maybe an unpleasant amount of attention being picked to that part. It has been really overwhelming and exciting and I'm really grateful to everybody at 99% invisible for featuring the Anthropocene Review.
But yeah, like it's still in the top 25 trending podcasts and lots of new listeners, which is almost entirely welcome. And if you listen to DeRanc and John, I definitely want you to listen to the Anthropocene Review. There is nothing more fun in this world than like reading the Anthropocene Review's email because everybody who writes into the Anthropocene Reviewed is I read their emails and I'm like, I like this person. This is a person I would like in real life.
I have to say, I do not always feel that way when reading, for instance, Crash Course comments. Yeah, that should be a new segment on Dear Hank and John Anthropocene Reviewed emails. Oh, I got a great one today. It was somebody suggesting a review air conditioning and they made a phenomenal observation about air conditioning.
His name's Daniel Huck. I'll just read it to you. Most science fiction that considers human life on Mars and visions vast networks of structures and tunnels to protect its human inhabitants from the inhospitable atmosphere. Ironically, to an outsider of the planet Earth, one might already assume that humans were off world settlers because we spend the majority of our time in offices, houses, apartments, schools, libraries, even indoor pools that are air conditioned and between these boxes, we utilize moving boxes called cars and buses to get us to our next resting place.
I mean, yes. Well, this is even more the case in places where it's very cold. Like they build tunnels. I think you can walk through all of downtown Minneapolis without everyone's going outside, because like you have to be able to.
I love that about Minneapolis. And John, that new second reminds me of our new less new segment. Hey, now you're an all star. The second clip of all stars smash mouth and HD shows the waffler wearing the undershirt.
It appears in one oven mitt. He's also got goggles and frosted tips, which let's just be honest with ourselves was never a good decision. He's also wearing a utility belt that has a whisk and has a whisk on it and also a spatula. And he has what is clearly a broken waffle iron that he pushes onto his face.
Also, his undershirt is covered in waffle burns as is if you look very closely, the back of his neck. And that is our new segment. Hey, now you're an all star. And also, according to our survey monkey results, the last time we will do that, I just wanted you all to see what you're missing out on.
I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody who went to patreon.com slash deerhankajon and heroically and generously explained to Hank what an incredibly bad idea that segment is. I mean, hey, as much as I didn't enjoy listening to your summary of the waffler, I can only imagine how funny that bit would be four years from now when it was still happening every week. Watching it in HD is really, really mind bending. It's just I watched an entire leopard print house, John.
I watched it in HD. I watched the entire video in HD. And I think it would be a really wonderful YouTube series. But like, is it a good use of our one wild and precious life?
Yeah, that's my main concern. Or should we hand it over to like a younger and more promising person who might be able to really just sink their teeth into this great work of 1997 genius? I don't know, John, but it's good. How did they get a leopard print house and put it only in two shots and you basically can't see it?
They definitely had a lot of money. And I know that I know that our patient listeners right now are thinking, I was under the impression this was a bad advice podcast, not a bad smash mouth analysis podcast. But that is the only thing I think about watching the music video. Like these people had stupid, stupid amounts of money to make a music video.
Like they had money that Justin Bieber somehow doesn't have. Like Taylor Swift can't make a music video that is as expensive as Smash Mouth's All-Star. I mean, and the depth of the integration with Mystery Men, the movie that Smash Mouth's All-Star is in no way most associated with. There's no Shrek in this music video.
The Shrek hadn't happened yet. They didn't know about Shrek. They thought that Mystery Men was going to be like the movie that saved Hollywood, you know? Like, and we will move on from this actually, maybe we won't.
I don't know the most amazing thing about the All-Star music video. Oh, there's not just one thing but hit me. According to Wikipedia, somewhere in the All-Star music video is a cameo from NPR legend, Diane Rean. What?
This is also working on IMDb. I cannot find this cameo, and I can't find any other reference to it. So it's possible that it's Wikipedia, you know, graffiti or vandalism or whatever. Yeah, no, this is not a thing.
But that's not a thing. I mean, I'm just saying, if anybody out there is listening and they know the story of how Diane Rean came to be associated with the Smash Mouth All-Star music video, I would be interested to find out. Absolutely. Please, someone.
Our first question comes from Emily who writes, Dear John and Hank, how did they decide that doorbells should go ding-dong since, clearly, Emily? Emily, Emily, when were you born in 2004? You might have been. Well, I mean, you could have various noises being made by chimes.
What do you mean? I mean, that it was a doorbell and the bell went ding-dong as bells do. Yeah, I guess they kind of go ding-dong as bells do. Do you know that ding-dong is two other things, besides being a noise?
Uh, no. It's a silly or foolish person and it's also a food. It's not a food. It's a food.
It's not a food. You can't eat a ding-dong. It's chocolate cake. Ding-dong.
Oh, ding-dongs. I totally forgot about them until just now. Ding-dongs. Hold on.
I gotta Google them to make sure they look like I remember them. Yeah. Oh my God. They were amazing.
They probably still are, I think. Oh, ding-dongs. They were like cupcakes, but the icing was inside. Yeah.
Yeah, I could hit a ding-dong right now. And apparently I can't. They didn't make them for a brief period in 2013, but they're back, John. When I was in high school, I used to crush like that six pack of chocolate covered mini-donguts.
It was like 89 cents and 500 calories. Yeah. Yeah. The calorie per dollar of those mini-donguts might have been the best deal in all of food.
In all of human history, possibly. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's probably even cheaper now because like the price of food per unit of work has never been lower.
I and people say things aren't good in America. Yeah. I would, mama give me two dollars and fifty cents per day for lunch. Yeah.
And I would get a chocolate milk and a fudge round. And that was like the same amount of calories as getting like the two dollar and fifty cents lunch. And then I'd have like one dollar and seventy five cents left over. Which you'd save.
Yeah. Because Hank was the most obsessive like hoarder of money. I guess we're supposed to be celebrating, you know, people who save money and are cautious with money and everything. But all Hank's hoarding of money ever got him was me stealing his money.
Because I needed money. Yeah. Because I was out there spending- Because you were out of money. I was out there spending four or five dollars per lunch when I only had two fifty.
John, before we move on to our next question, I'm sorry that we haven't really answered this one. This is like the special edition where we don't answer any of the questions. I don't know why we got to the particular ding-dong and my doorbell. It dings when you push and it dongs when you let go.
Yeah. It's actually, still has a dinner in there. It's a physical doorbell, which I love. But I don't know why ding and dong.
And I like on a amount of P is very weird. In general, I don't really understand how we know how to make sounds, then spell them out so that we can- it's wild. All right. Hank, let's answer another question.
This next question comes from Samantha who writes, your John and Hank, my co-worker started following me on Instagram recently. He's 40. Oh, no. Like the judgment that's implied by your accusation.
He's 40 and he has kids. Oh, God. And he's very politically conservative. And I'm an avocado loving millennial.
I worry that he will judge me for what I post. I'm sorry. Are you not allowed to like avocados unless you're under the age of 40? First of all, the millennial cutoff, depending on who you ask, is 1980, which means that there are 39-year-old millennials.
So- In and of itself is horrifying. Yeah. Well, I'm one of them. You're not a millennial.
I can tell by looking at you. It's almost as if the entire idea of generations is BS. But anyway, move on. It is.
It's funny. Like when we were growing up, I felt like that was clear until that book by Douglas Copeland Generation X came out. And then all of a sudden I was like, Oh God, I want to be a part of the generation. Oh my God.
That seems so cool and important. I just wanted to be part of something. I wanted to understand myself in historical context. That idea was so helpful to me.
I freaking love avocado toast. Yeah. I mean, so do I. And we are apparently from completely different generations.
So I'm really proud of us for bridging the divide. I worry that this coworker will judge me for what I post, but I don't want to feel like I have to center myself on social media. How do I get my coworker out of my personal life? Likes and follows Samantha.
So the answer to this question, Samantha, is that the way that you get people out of your social media feed is by not having a publicly available social media feed. And if you do keep it public, you just have to live with the possibility that people will follow you. Yeah. This question makes me think two things.
First, this problem that I considered somewhat unique to the fact that I have a large internet following is not at all unique and everybody has it. Exactly. Where it's just like, you are making content for a broad audience of diverse people. And do you want to specify into your niche or do you want to have a broader appeal?
And it's just like, as a normal human being, you should not have to think about that. But here we are. It's 2019 and you do. Yeah.
But the thing is like, you don't really choose unless you keep everything private and let people in one by one. You don't really choose who follows you. That's why I made the Anthropocene Review to Hard to Spell. Like to go back to your joke from earlier.
Like it really is though because I know that I don't get to make that choice. And I want to make stuff that's publicly available. Like I have an urge to do that that goes back as far as I can remember. But I also want to make stuff for people who will really care about it.
And not so much for like anybody who can be like convinced to listen to it or convinced to watch it. And so I really empathize with Samantha because you want people to follow you. You want people to like your posts. You know, it feels good.
It feels affirming. But you don't want people who you don't like to like your posts. Because you don't like them for the wrong reason or to be thinking things about you or to like comment passively aggressively and then like that becomes a huge bummer in your day. And you're right, Hank.
Like we used to think that that was a problem associated with being D list internet celebrities or whatever. But in fact, it's a problem that literally everyone who uses social media in a public way has. Yeah. The other thing that this may be think is that if we look at each other and we say that person is too different for me to share my life with them.
Not like because I'm worried about what they might think or because I'm worried that they might judge me then like the world closes down and we don't we don't understand people as fully if they are like the more different from us people are the less likely we are to have an opportunity to understand them better. And so in that way, it's almost like I want people who are different for me to follow me so that they like see a different way of living a different perspective and like how other people do it. And I like hopefully just being different doesn't necessarily come with a judgment. I think that it's much more likely to come along when you're being presented with something that's a little like, you know, outside of your norm to be like, why is that happening and analyze it and think about it.
But I also think it's important that we see other ways in which people live and see those as like different but not worse. Yeah. But the complicated thing about it is that sometimes that can feel unsafe, especially when it's entering into your real life. Like what if this person starts talking at work about your social media feed in ways that end up like damaging your performance reviews or in ways that you know, like make your boss treat you differently or whatever.
It's so complicated. And also like not everybody goes into those, you know, experiences with the same level of power. And I think that's another complicated part of it. So yeah, I wish I had good advice.
I don't know how to navigate this, which is why I quit. It's also why I have stopped following my employees on Instagram. I did that for a while. And now I'm like, I almost, maybe I should just unfollow the people I already followed.
Because like, obviously, I'm a more important part of their followership than the average person. Yeah, you never want to be like the person who's in the back of somebody's head when they're posting something. Right. I remember when Ashton Kutcher first followed me on Twitter back in like 2011 or whatever.
Yeah, every single time I would post anything to Twitter or like I'd be writing a tweet and I'd be thinking, Oh my God, Ashton Kutcher is gonna see this Ashton Kutcher is gonna see this tweet. Whatever I put in this box, Ashton Kutcher will literally have to look at. And God, thinking about caring what Ashton Kutcher thinks about me, that is such a 2010 thing. Not for me, man.
I still care what Ashton Kutcher thinks about me. I don't want to actually think negatively about me. That guy, I think it was an early investor in vitamin water. Yeah, I mean, Ashton Kutcher is one of the richest actors in the world, according to wealth gorilla.com.
According to the same website that identifies my net worth as being 100 times greater than it is. According, according to the same website that says Diane Reem is in Smechmill. Oh God, this next question comes from Kase who writes, you're John and Hank, but mostly Hank, you recently mentioned that you were wearing button up jeans. Why?
Aren't they definitively worse than zip up jeans? Yes. That's why I want to go to this question. Yeah.
No, I think this is a great question. Don't they take longer to put on? Didn't we invent the zipper so that we as a species could move past buttoned jeans? I mean, yes, yes.
First of all, one, I don't like how much you're thinking about my jeans. I don't even remember mentioning this. I don't remember you mentioning it either. Stop thinking about my fly.
But you do seem like the kind of guy who would have button up jeans. Here's the situation. I do not care at all the situation, re my fly. I care that my pants fit and I'm going to take a number of pants into the dressing room.
And I'm going to buy the ones that fit. And if they have a button fly, I'm going to be like, fine, what I want more than anything in the world right now is to not be shopping for pants. And so I'm going to end the pants shopping as soon as possible. It is one of the more unpleasant things that I do in my life shopping for pants.
Yeah, I don't like it. I would give it like one and a half stars. I would I would genuinely rather go to the doctor for vaccines than go shopping for pants. Well, that's because it like for some reason, like I'll try on two pairs, the same pant in the same size and they'll fit different.
I'm like, what's happening? I'm so confused. It's like 34 or 36 or 32. Like I wear all of those sizes.
Yeah, I don't have time for this. All right. So hey, could I just had a sidebar while y'all weren't listening where I said that I felt like we were sounding a little entitled and like our problems were just kind of like seemed out of touch with the pants thing. And then Hank pointed out to me that like probably most people do buy pants.
Yeah, no, I mean, I don't for clarity. I stopped buying pants ages ago. I'm not serving my trees. Bring me pants.
Oh my god. We've answered like two questions. We should move on. Okay, Kendra asked dear John and Hank, how do you write and feel like you're writing something original that's never been said before?
I'm writing a story and I'm filled with this fear that everything I have to say about my characters and their lives and everything has already been said by other authors. How do you move fast this and just write Kendra? I feel like Lewis Carroll thought that this was a problem. And so he was like, a flippa-doon.
I'm like, oh my god, I'm sorry. I went to another spiral into the wobbly pain. And I'm like, dude, it's okay to like write some words people have written before. I actually think that there's nothing new under the sun, including Lewis Carroll.
Like Lewis Carroll didn't invent nonsense words. Look, there is, I think I've said this before, but there is a measure of hubris involved in walking into a bookstore and thinking like what this place needs is another book. Yeah, you're never going to be saying anything that's entirely new. Yeah, but you'd actually be surprised, Kendra, if you like Google a phrase that you've written, like a five or six word phrase, you'd be surprised how few of them have ever appeared before, at least according to Google.
And there's a lot, there's a lot of written fiction on the internet, a lot, probably more than there is in your given bookstore, definitely more than yours in your given bookstore. And that's like, that definitely says something. I think also, John and I have explored the idea of reading books that are like 100 years old, that were very popular in America 100 years ago, and maybe like making some kind of content around that process of reading like the top book in America from 1906 or something. And what we found is like culture and society has changed so much that a lot of that stuff isn't relatable.
It's not fun to read. And it's, you know, like it's just like it understands the universe very differently than we do. And so sometimes I feel like there are all these beautiful classic novels and like, why are we creating more stuff? But what we know now is different.
How society is different? What like who people are? People are different now, like they are different things and we imagine ourselves differently than we used to. And so we need voices from the present and in some ways from the future, like younger people now, to me kind of seem like they're from the future.
Like they are going to grow up and be adults that are different from how adults are now. And like, you know, 25 year olds are going to be 45 someday and they're just going to be different than today's 45 year olds. So like, we need new voices. We need new books.
And I love, like it turns out that I really love reading stuff that was written in the last couple years. I think that there's nothing like it. Yeah, I think there's a lot of value in reading books from 100 or 200 or 500 years ago, especially books that aren't widely read today. Like I just get a feeling of specialness when I read them.
But I think we desperately need to hear from the voices of now and the voices of tomorrow. The people who are coming of age now have things to say about coming of age that I can't possibly say about it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the weird things about, you know, having now a career that's 15 years old is that I have books that are 15 years old and read very much like 2005 to me, you know, like they read like historical fiction and that has a purpose.
I think I hope it has a use for people. And I hope the books can stay in front for a while and be helpful to whomever they can be helpful to. But we need the voices of the present. Absolutely.
Hank, have you ever Googled something to make sure that you're not plagiarizing it? Yes, yes, I have. But I've done that. And I've also Googled things to be like, how often has this joke been made?
Oh, I think it's also important. I remember I wrote a line when I was writing The Fault in Our Stars and I was like, I'm pretty sure this is stolen. It was love is keeping the promise anyway. And I was like, there's no way that's original.
But I Googled it. And I was like, I guess it's mine. I guess I did that. Yeah, you write all kinds of lines like that where I'm like, did John Green didn't write this?
That's too good. He's a doof. But if you really want to solve this problem, just put in some nonsense words, just go to his carol on that page. Yeah, which reminds me that John of course this podcast is brought to you by Bander Snatch.
Just Bander Snatch it. That's Nike's new thing. They're saying that. Today's podcast is also brought to you by advice podcast that answer only three questions.
Advice podcast that answer only three questions. The future. It's the future. Well, I mean, we're walking in some well-dropped footsteps.
Actually, when we look at certain other brother-based advice podcasts, this podcast is also brought to you by the Waffler. He's here to waffle your face, but mostly his own for some reason and also the back of his neck. We also have a project for awesome message from Charlie. Thank you for donating to the project for awesome Charlie.
Charlie writes, Hi, pass. Charlie future you doesn't have anyone he wants to shout out here. So he thought he would just write past you a letter specifically fourth grade you to fourth grade Charlie. Currently, you're having a hard time in school.
You're dyslexic, ADHD, completely illiterate and behind grade level for most subjects. People are telling your parents that you're not college bound. Well, they're wrong. I'm here to tell you that by high school, not only will you be able to read, you'll be reading two books a week every week.
And when you graduate high school, you will go to college at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Jesus Charlie, you may be crying. That's lovely. Well, I mean, yeah, a little bit of tears, but also I'm very worried about the timeline.
You know, you don't want to give too much information to your past self because they might mess it up. I'm not worried. Hank, how can you get worried about that instead of crying? God, that's just so lovely.
Yeah, I mean, we're so clearly from different generations, John. It's true. No millennials were moved by that. That was super Gen X of you.
Oh, it was very, that is lovely. Congratulations and we wish you all the best. Next year, please donate to the Project Ross and get him. This episode of Dear Hank and John's Bronte is brought to you by Shopify.
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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. It also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate.
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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 dftba.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 slash DearHank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. One thing I love about summary is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed.
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And write another letter updating us on how things are going. John, I got other questions from Jordan who asks, Dear Hank and John, I was recently listening to the Bill Nye the Science Guy podcast and something terrible happened. He was talking about how all things come from other things and that the atoms in every person were once in something else. I have so many particles inside of me and I realize that there must be some electron in my body that might once have been in a pigeon.
I find this incredibly upsetting. What are the odds that I am part pigeon? Pooping pigeons, Jordan, 100%. You're a hundred percent.
You're a hundred percent part pigeon. I'm sorry. Not only are you part pigeon, you're part star, you're part everything. There's nothing you're not.
That's the weird thing, Jordan. There's nothing you're not. That's very John Green. On the cellular ecellular, all life comes from life.
All cells come from cells. All the atoms that are inside of you are recycled. And by the way, we'll be recycled after when you go on to live your second of 1000 lives. I have just gone to look and John, no one has ever said the sentence.
There's nothing you're not on the internet. Well, it's a nice line. You can have it the way that you took probably the best line I've ever written and put it in an absolutely remarkable thing. I asked your permission.
And I gave it, but I felt obligated. And I still think about that line as being probably that I wonder if it is the top quoted line. It's not. But the top quoted line in my book was stolen.
And I didn't think anybody was going to think I wrote it. It's a common internet phrase. What is it? Behold the field in which I grow my **** and see that it is barren.
Jordan, I have further news. Someone once told me that the nature of atoms, like the number of atoms that you breathe in and a single breath is so large that they have distributed throughout the entire world in a matter of not a very long time. And so the last breath that Julius Caesar breathed after he was stabbed, that breath is by all of us right now. Like each breath we take in has atoms from that breath, which is beautiful, but also means that we are constantly breathing Einstein's farts as well.
That is astonishing. That is, I mean, if that's true, that's mind blowing. By the way, I had a very happy childhood. I just wasn't a very happy child is the seventh most liked quote from an absolutely remarkable thing.
You got in there. You did okay. I think I beat you. One of one of the things I actually wrote is above you on there somewhere.
Yeah, I kind of missed my calling as a person who writes greeting card aphorisms. I mean, the thing is that April had a very happy childhood, but she wasn't a very happy child. And there was like, it was really necessary for people to understand that. Yeah.
And it was just so perfect. Yeah, it's a good one. Is the number two one at least something I wrote? Yeah, it's definitely something you wrote.
Well, I'm glad that I wrote at least one of the top quotes from the Goodreads, an absolutely remarkable thing quotes pitch. Hey, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I just want to ask one last question from Amber, because I do not know the answer to this and I'm very curious. Dear John and Hank, I translated a sentence from Spanish on Duolingo recently. There was a cartoon drawing of an astronaut and the sentence translated to I only saw one star, which by the way is a beautiful line.
I found that extremely funny because it made me picture astronauts as disappointed or angry or maybe even jaded. But then I got to think about it. And when I see pictures of the moon or watch a spacewalk or whatever, you don't really see stars. Why is that?
Why don't you see like tons of stars like you do in the night sky, not jaded, but caught in Amber? That's good. I do. I know the actual answer to this question, John.
What is it? So the sun is very bright for them. And it hits the thing that you are standing on in the case of the moon missions. The astronauts were in perpetual daylight.
And so the surface of the moon was lit up extremely brightly. And when you take a photograph, and this is also the case when you're like looking at spacewalks on the space station, you know, like when you're seeing things, you're seeing that sun hit the side of the space station or the astronaut themselves. And in photography, when one thing is very well lit up, you will not see dimmer things because it's, you know, cameras aren't good at that. So they take, you know, short shutter speed photographs so that the foreground isn't over exposed.
So you weren't able to see the stars. But if you were an astronaut standing on the moon or if you're an astronaut looking out of the window of the international space station, you do see good stars. So is it like as good as on Earth or even better? It's better.
Yeah. Well, that kind of makes me want to go to space. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's one reason to want to go to space. But I knowing you think that probably doesn't outweigh the negatives.
Just in your particular case. Yeah, I don't want to go. I don't want to go. It just seems super stressful.
Yeah. I mean, so like there's all the like practical reasons I'm kind of like, if you on space, like weightlessness seems really uncomfortable. Your blood pressure is always very strange. Your face gets puffy.
You're kind of nauseous the whole time. And then there's like, the you might die. And that's the one that really turns it off for me. Yeah, I would not mind weightless ness.
That seems fun. It's the other stuff that is beyond terrifying. But before we get to the news from Mars saying, can I share with you the news from AFC Wimbledon? Oh, yeah, hit me.
AFC Wimbledon had signed in the last week to count him to new players, which is very exciting. We might be losing Joe Pickett, who was responsible for, I think, a majority of our goals, a season between his goals and his assists. So that's a little bit worrisome. Well, that's very bad.
Yeah. I think that we would get a good transfer fee for him. It's just not clear who we would then be able to purchase. So definitely worrisome.
But whatever, it'll work out. We have a goalkeeper, which is encouraging. He is 20 year old Nathan Trott. He is on loan from West Ham.
He seems like he's really good. He is also very, very young. I am old. But when I watched an interview with Nathan Trott, I was like, Oh my gosh, this boy, he looks well, he's 20.
And I am old. That was my main thought. It was just kept over and over in my head. How did this happen?
I grow old. I grow old. You're a professional footballer and you were born when I was 25 years old. Exactly.
You know, I had my current job when this person was a baby. We have also signed a 24 year old Adam Roscoe. I know three things about Adam Roscoe, Hank. One, he has a master's degree as well as a bachelor's degree from university.
Two, he played for his university team in Wales, Cardiff Metropolitan University, FC, until like four days ago. And three, he looks like a character in a 1940s noir movie. Very handsome, great jawline, a jawline for the ages. I mean, if you Google him, Hank, you'll know what I mean.
Oh, yeah, I'm looking at him right now. I definitely feel as if it would not be too surprised if I was committing some kind of felonies in the 40s that he would come in and arrest me immediately. And I would be grateful. You know, honestly, I think this life of crime is no good.
So welcome Adam Roscoe and Nathan Trott and please God, Joe Pickett, stay please God. Oh, God, please Joe Pickett. All right. What's the news for Mars?
Actually, I think I don't the news for Mars and it's my it's mind blowing. Yeah, it's definitely big. And it's it is a surprise. So this week in Mars news, the Curiosity River has found more methane.
Methane has been like this weird ongoing mystery for Mars for a few reasons. Methane might be a sign of life. Is there a big reason why it matters? It's not a guarantee.
If there is methane, there are also some geological processes that can release methane. But on Earth, methane is mostly produced by microbes. So this is it's wild. And the weird thing is like we landed Curiosity on Mars and we were like, okay, look for methane immediately.
And it found none. And then later it detected like a significant spike. So there was none. And then suddenly there was some since then scientists working on the Curiosity project have been able to see that there are seasons in the levels of methane in Mars's atmosphere.
There's peaks in the summer and lower amounts in the winter. But that background level of methane also has spikes in it. And so we see these spikes and so far they have been relatively mild spikes. But then to add to the mystery, got an orbiter that's testing like from space looking to see if they could detect methane on the planet and finding none ever, which makes the scientists think that if Curiosity isn't wrong about what it's detecting, that the methane is somehow being destroyed or broken down in the lower atmosphere before it gets to the places where the trace gas orbiter could actually interpret it.
But so that's like the background. Most recent spike in methane is the largest spike that Curiosity has ever measured like significantly. It's 21 parts per billion, which is not a lot. But it's easy a lot.
It's three times larger than any other spike it's ever measured. The one that it measured in 2013 being the next largest one that was seven parts per billion. So it's significantly different. And this is all coming like as we're hearing it.
So this isn't like they did crunch the numbers and they published a paper and they got a peer reviewed. This is like this happened and we heard about it and now we're talking about it. So it hasn't been verified. It hasn't been peer reviewed.
This is all new information that kind of got leaked a little bit but like is a big deal. And like the New York Times got the emails that like internal scientists were sending being like, holy crap, what is this? 21 parts per billion is a wild spike. And there seems to be some kind of methane cycle on Mars.
And whether that cycle includes some kind of biological participant or whether it's just something that's happening on the interior of the planet. But it definitely seems like methane is being produced now actively, actively more at some times than at other times, which indicates for lack of a better term change. Yeah. And that could just be seasonal.
It could just be that like, you know, you have like pockets of methane that get formed underground and then the CO2 ice on top of it, you know, sublimbs away. And so the methane can be released during some some seasons and like depending on how close you are to one of those pockets or how big the pocket was, you might get a spike like this. But yeah, we have no idea how the methane is being produced under the surface of the planet. Like, that's weird.
Like we don't know how that would happen. Exactly. So the betting money, and I know that you're a scientist and you care about peer review, but I'm just saying if I were laying a bet right now, after this news, the bet I would weigh is that there is some kind of, I don't even know if you call it life, right? Like, I've been thinking the more I think about it, the more I think that we think of life as a dichotomy, as a yes or no thing, but in fact, it is kind of a continuum, like our virus is alive, kind of like our computer viruses alive.
No, but like, yeah, and so we have imagined that there is life and not life, that there are live planets and dead planets, and that may have been an oversimplification. Yeah, I'm saying, if I had betting money right now, I would put the betting money on either Curiosity brought some life to Mars or there's something like life on Mars. Yeah, Curiosity could not have brought enough life to Mars for it to have produced that level of betting. Unless it was the kind of life that like, it turned out like, loved Mars, the way that Starlings loved America.
That would be a really unusual circumstance considering the factors at play. I don't know, I wouldn't make a bet. I still, I would lay odds against it being a biological process right now. I mean, I feel like we should that bet like hopefully we'll live to see it settled, but I I'm on the other side of that bet, and I'll bet you one American dollar, which I stole from you in 1984.
All right, we got to go record our Patreon only podcast as we can. Ryan's over at patreon.com slash deer hankton john, which you can check out. But thank you for popping with me. Thank you for popping with me, John.
Thank you everybody who has still got our survey at patreon.com slash your hankton john. You can fill that survey out whether or not you are a patron, but thanks for everybody for letting me know that you don't want to hear all about Smash Mouse All Star. Seriously, thank you. The survey is still open.
So if you want to throw your vote in, there's a really, really deep gap you need to overcome. It's not going to shrink up for your most recent installment. I thought it was great. All right.
This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna-Medis, produced by Rosie Anna Hall's Rojas and shared at Gibson, our head of community and communications is Victoria Banjorno. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.