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 complexity 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 PBSEons 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 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. Welcome to Dear Hank and John. Go inside prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions. Give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, back, do you remember somebody asked us a long time ago? They asked us, you guys, how do I throw away a trash can?
Do I just put my trash can inside of my another trash can? Is that how that works? Yeah. And it has taken me this long to realize.
It's probably been more than a year. So you need this long to realize what that person was actually asking us. They were asking us, can you do the can can? Can you do the can can?
Can you put the can inside a can? That's the joke. That's the joke. That's brutal.
I mean, that was, I was excruciating to live through. I don't want to overdrawmatize it or anything, but that was one of the worst things I've had to go through in my life. So I'm still work shopping it. I'm still working on that one.
Maybe maybe next week, I'll come up with like sort of a shining version of it. When I get to the afterlife, St. Peter's gonna be like, I just, you know, you were a mixed bag and I'll be like, I agree wholeheartedly, but I listened to that whole Hank joke. That's the whole thing.
I interrupt the can't get to every time we say Peter, you remember the can't joke. You did not forget that. Let me in buddy. I listen to the can can.
And indeed, all of our listeners, everybody who didn't interrupt in the middle of that joke to boo. This one is a free pass. It's the most good of all the podcasts because it's guaranteed to get you into heaven. Here's a better joke.
This question comes from Jesse writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, Jess, thank you for knowing what I can and cannot do. My fiance recently told me a joke about how scientists were able to weigh rainbows and they found out after weighing these rainbows that they were pretty light. Now see, that is a good joke. Pretty light.
Very good. It got me to thinking, I know that rainbows are like made out of light and that photons have no mass. Well, Jess, you're one step ahead of me. But since you have to have water droplets for rainbows to form, how much would a rainbow weigh if you added up the weight of the water droplets that helped make the rainbow raindrops and photons?
Jess. Well, John, remarkably, the bookie Chopper party decided without telling me or giving me advanced notice or even letting me tell her not to. She did figure this out with real math. So oh boy, so the size of a raindrop is about either to from 0.5 to 4 millimeters in diameter, which is a pretty wide range.
But you will notice that as you are getting hit by raindrops, sometimes they are smaller than other times. So it's difficult to know exactly. The first thing that the bookie has written down, do you technically need more than one raindrop to make a rainbow? But that is all the book you wrote enough because once that was done, that's just that we're throwing that out of the universe.
Do you? I don't know. Probably not. But the question is, how much does a rainbow that you're actually looking at?
How much does that rain go? The average rainbow? Yes. We're not looking for like a single rainbow within a single drop of water.
That's beautiful. That's not what we're trying to handle. We're talking about regular the kind of rainbows that have a pot of gold at the end of them and a box of lucky charms and a leprechaun, those rainbows. So there are probably trillions of those 0.5 to 4 millimeter raindrops in a rainbow, which is a lot of rain.
So John, do you want to know how much a rainbow weighs? I do. We're going to give it to you in elephants because that because it's not going to make any sense otherwise. This is as close as we can get to telling you in a number that makes sense about how much a rainbow weighs in elephants.
7 million. What? Elephants. What?
A rainbow weighs 7 million elephants? By the way, I only want to hear weight in elephant measures from now on period for the rest of my life. When the doctor asks me how much I weigh, I have the way to tell the gods on his truth, which is that I weigh one 33rd of an elephant. We're getting rid of pounds and kilograms.
That whole thing is over. It's elephants only from here on out. It's elephants all the way down. 7 million elephants.
I could not be more surprised. I would have guessed. When you said 7 elephants, I could see a rainbow weighing 7 elephants. 7 million elephants.
Can we go back to light not having masks? Just briefly. That makes more sense than a 7 million elephant rainbow. Wow.
You, by the way, do not weigh one 33rd of an elephant. That's for sure. You may weigh one 66th of an elephant, but I don't know. Well, I don't weigh one 33rd of an elephant.
I don't want to get too particular here because the last thing I want to do is abandon elephants as a way of measuring mass. But I do strongly believe it depends on the elephant. I've seen a lot of elephants. Some of them are significantly bigger than other ones.
We're talking about adult male elephants. Yeah. I have no idea how much they weigh. All I know is that 7 million of them weigh a lot.
Wow. That's a mind-blower for me. Water. Yeah.
Water. It's heavy. And it just goes up into this guy. Do you know why water goes up in the sky, John?
It's great. I don't. Because water vapor, the gaseous form of water is less dense. It evaporates.
It evaporates into the air. That gas. So all these different gases are in the air. It's mostly nitrogen and oxygen.
Nitrogen. So water vapor is less dense than nitrogen and oxygen. So it floats until it turns back into water again and liquid water again. And then it's heavier and then it falls back down.
And that's how the whole world works without that. None of it would work. Well, the oceans would. The land stuff.
None of it would work. I've been reading this book by Katie Mac, the astrophysicist called The End of Everything Astrophysically Speaking. And it's full of stuff like rainbows, wanks, 7 million elephants, except even more upsetting. And even more weird.
But weirder and more. So weird. And it's going to end. Well, yeah.
Which is even weirder. The thing that I've kind of been surprised some 41 now, and this wasn't weird to me until now, that the universe has a beginning. Like, I don't know why that was never weird to me. Now it's very weird.
I'm like, Oh, so like one day, there was suddenly a bunch of hydrogen. It's weirder than that, because it wasn't on one day, because there really kind of wasn't time before. But like that. Yeah.
And yeah, no time is very weird. I don't want to get into it. But the idea, do you know one of the first ways that we figured out that the universe was had a finite age, like had a beginning? I think so, although you can probably correct me if I'm wrong.
I mean, I think there are several ways that we kind of know the Big Bang probably happened, but wasn't the first that we figured out that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, and that if you run that backwards as you have to, because that's how time works, that eventually you get to an unbelievably dense single particle of everything. Yes. And then, and then weirdly enough, we confirmed that that actually had happened through a number of other experiments. But before that, when we were just sort of thought experimenting about this, people were like, well, if the universe was so it could be one of two things.
Either the universe is infinitely old or infinitely big. It can't be both infinitely big and infinitely old, because if that were the case, the sky would be white at night, the sky would be white at night, because every point would be, and if the universe is infinite, when you look up, in any point, there is something there. You know, it was going to look black, but there is something there. If the universe is infinite, which may very well be, but the light hasn't had a chance to get to you yet.
If it were infinitely big and infinitely old, the light would have had a chance to get to you. So there would be no nighttime, which would be very weird. I mean, it's very weird to consider the possibility that the universe is infinitely big, because we often think of infinity as being a large number, but it is not. It is an idea.
It is boundlessness. And that is not a large number. It's much weirder than the largest number imaginable. I don't know why, but I think it would be weirder for the universe to have a size.
I don't. I, by the way, I've been reading all these books, Hank, because nine years after you first told me that the universe has no edge. I'm trying to write a video about why the universe has no edge. What do you mean to do that?
I need to finally understand it. I'm really excited to see what gets you there because I tried. I have wonderful science communicators who've written brilliant books that are really helping me get there, but I'll tell you what helps me the most is just the idea that the universe might be infinite because infinite things do not have an edge. That makes things more clear for sure.
Yeah. I mean, I just think of it like if like everything is a field, like what, why would a field have an end? Why would it, why would there be a bound on it? And so like the weird thing is that all these fields interact to form stuff and then all that stuff interacts to form planets and all the stuff on the planets interacts to be like, I'm going to be a plant.
Yeah. That is very weird. Yeah. It's the hydrogen to Bluetooth.
That's the weird thing. I think it's trying to understand what the universe is expanding into. That was the biggest problem for me because I'm picturing. Does it make it weirder if it's infinite and expanding?
Is that still? Does that make sense to you? No, no. I mean, of course not.
It shouldn't make sense to anyone. Right? Like that should be weird. Sure.
If you're not a little bit weirded out by the idea that you are living in an infinite universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate, then like, I don't know what to tell you. Like you don't get freaked out easily, I guess. Yes, it is weird to me, but at least like I can grasp it. When people would be like, oh, the universe is like a balloon, it doesn't have an edge.
I would be like, well, first off, balloons have edges. Like, in fact, like that's kind of what a balloon is. It's just an edge. Yeah.
And then secondly, it's got to make that three dimensional. Okay. Anyway, a balloon is three dimensional. No, you got to make the edge of the balloon three dimensional.
But but secondly, the balloon, I know what the balloon is expanding into. It's expanding into Earth. Like it's expanding into space. It's expanding into air.
And so I had what I've eventually had to do is put away all of these analogies that people tried to create for me because they just aren't that helpful. Like, it isn't like a balloon. It isn't like a slinky. It isn't it's an infinite universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate.
And we can only see so much of it, not because there is only so much to see, but because there is only so much to see from where we are. Right. That is what has gotten me there. In so far as I arrived there, it's so weird.
It's so weird. So weird. So weird. The universe is astonishing.
And like we are there like humans, like the whole universe is extremely weird. Galaxies are weird. But humans on a planet looking at cosmic background radiation to know how old the universe is. Yeah.
Very weird. It's so good. So encouraging. It's so good.
It's so good. Speaking of the universe, John, we have a question from Nick who asks, Dear Hank and John, where's Voyager heading? No, is it still out there? Is it going any place in specific or is it just going?
And that has been chirried, Nick. I don't know what that one is. I don't either. Can I tell you what I think the answer is?
And then you tell me what the actual answer is? Sure. I think the answer is that the Voyager space capsule is going away. That is that is correct.
You've hit on it. Do you have anything more than away? Yeah, like further and further away from us. Yeah.
It's not actually going because I don't think it's actually going toward anything. I think the main thing that's going is away. It's like when I moved to Alaska, I was at a breakfast place and a waitress said to me, there's only two kinds of people who come to Alaska, people who are running to something and people who are running from something, which kind are you? And I was like, I think I'm like the Voyager space capsule.
I'm running away. Yes. Well, that is correct. It is especially correct in as much as like, so we didn't intend for the Voyager spacecraft to have a trajectory, really.
The point was, we got to get it. We got to study a bunch of the solar system. And then once it's done, it's not where it's not coming back. Like it's going to be headed quickly outward because outward was where all of the planets were.
So it went quickly outward. And so the Voyager spacecrafts continue to go quickly outward. And so they're both going in different directions, they're going different directions in space. The weird thing is that they are both going to arrive kind ofish somewhere in about 40,000 years, but different places, which is weird.
So Voyager 2 will be a little less than two light years away from a star in 40,000 years. That will not be helpful to anyone. It's like it's really headed to anything. It's also not very close to a far away from a star, which is not close.
But here's the really weird one. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will be 1.7 light years away from a star. It doesn't matter what star you can look this up. But the weird thing is that at that point 40,000 years from now, the star that Voyager will be two light years away from will be the closest star to Earth.
Oh, but isn't currently because it's currently Alpha Centauri, which will have moved away. But that star will be despite the fact that it's going to be the closest star to Earth, we won't be able to see it with a naked eye because it's a very dim star. It's a main sequence star that just has just does not have a bright magnitude. And so even if you were sitting on Voyager at 1.7 light years away from that star, you could barely see it.
Well, that's where Voyager's heading. That's how much space there is that like they've calculated the closest thing they're going to get to in the next 40,000 years. And it's a star and basically won't be able to see it. I have to disagree with your premise that in 40,000 years, the Voyager space capsules will be somewhere because what you just told me is that they will both be over a light year away from the nearest meaningful thing.
And like, yeah, but that's a lot closer than they already know. But it isn't close, right? Like the Sun is seven light minutes away from me right now. And I sometimes get cold.
Like not close to be a light year away from something. Not at all. The Sun is. Yeah, the Sun is very close.
Interestingly, and looking at this, I discovered that the closest star that we have been to in the latter that we will be to is going to happen in 1200 years or 1300 years. And we will be quite close to that star. We will be point one, six light years away. That's pretty close.
So so closer than Voyager and Voyager will not be that close to that star. Voyager will be farther away than we are. This is not going to anything. It's just going from it's like me moving to Alaska.
If only we threw Voyager at that star, but no, we didn't. Okay. So I feel like if we want to plan on another stellar mission, though, that's the candidate. It's it's not going to be that far away.
It's just that the mission is going to take 2000 years, which like, okay, let's think long term, okay? I'm okay with it. I'm okay with thinking medium term on this one. Let's wait until we've got some speedier spaceships.
Next question comes from Jason. I just want to confirm, by the way, that I was 100% right. Yes. And you with all of your fancy calculations were 100% wrong.
Voyager is going nowhere fast. It is going from not to next question comes from Jason, who writes, Dear John and Hank, what does it mean to 86 something? And where does that come from? Jason, by the way, Rosie Anna, our producer, left a note that said she's British.
And you have to note that said, I always thought Americans were saying the letter A, the letter D, the number six, AD six, like C three P.O. or something. It's the number 86. And have you heard this before?
Like, if you say you're going to 86 someone, it's a way of saying you're going to murder them. Or if you say like something got 86, it means that we got rid of it or we just it's been canceled. So the short answer to your question, Jason, is that nobody knows where 86 came from. There are a number of series in the 1920s when the term first emerged.
There was a lot of rhyming in English, a lot of like slang rhymes that were especially popular in the UK, but you also saw them in the US. And so it may have been rhyming slang for the term nicks, which means like get rid of it. Also, this is my favorite potential version. It may have been that when you were a bartender and because it was largely used in the hospitality business in the beginning, it may have been that when you were a bartender and you 86 someone, it basically meant you were like, you can't have any real liquor anymore.
You're too drunk. We're cutting you down to 86 proof alcohol, which by the way is still 43% alcohol. So plenty, which is also, I think the major vote against that. Like, if you're really trying to cut someone off, I'm not sure that you like head to the 86 proof stuff.
But there's also the possibility that it was soda jerks slang. So like there were all these in the 1920s, there were all these drug stores that had soda fountains where you could get ice cold soda drinks. And there were lots of codes like code 13 meant that your boss was nearby code 81 meant a glass of water and code 86 supposedly meant like we're all out of it. We don't have any of that.
So those are the kind of leading, leading votes, at least so far as I know, but none of them are confirmed because even slang that emerged just 100 years ago is already shrouded in mystery. Well, that continue to happen or have we written stuff down too much? Well, I think like there's actually to me like a huge purpose in, for example, Know Your Meme, which is sort of like a meme history source. I do think, but even then like a lot of this stuff is somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Like if you read the Know Your Meme articles about even memes from like 15 years ago, there's a lot of ambiguity already. So no, I think it'll continue. I think it'll always be part of the human story. I think you're right.
Like even today, there are lots of things that people say that I have no idea where it's come from and I sheesh. Oh gosh. Yeah, sheesh. Oh, Lord.
The other day, the other day, I think you're old as much as like this stuff continuing to happen. I know. And it's always like, you never see it coming. You know, we're done.
We're done with the news slang, right? We must be. We come up with all the words we need and then know we have it because we did not have a word for sheesh. Oh, Lord.
Oh God. All right. Ang, what's the answer to the science question? This one comes from Emmy who writes, Dear John and Hank, since potassium is radioactive and I have potassium inside of my body, could I say that I am technically radioactive and are there other decaying elements inside of me as well?
Sincerely, Emmy. You know, I'm not entirely sure if there are other decaying elements. I mean, I bet that there are, but potassium is I think the big one. And and yes, you are radioactive, not worryingly so.
If you sleep next to someone for eight hours, scientists have calculated this, you will receive 1.5 bananas of radiation. Hold on, Hank, before we go any further, how many elephants is that? Like, probably like probably like 100, just guessing. You get 100 elephants of radiation.
What happens if you sleep next to an elephant? How close are you? I don't know. I don't know how much potassium elephants have.
I feel like we might be at the very outer edge of even dubious conjecture at this point. No, elephant's got plenty of potassium. It's necessary for so much of our neurovengy. So elephant's got potassium.
If you sleep in the arms of an elephant, you will get 100 bananas of radiation. I've said it now and I will not take it back. It's true. Because I feel like it is.
It might not be true. Just to be clear, Hank is guessing and he is probably guessing wrongly. And I cannot wait for someone to write in with some highly skilled calculation of how many bananas of elephants of radiation come from sleeping next to an elephant. But anyway, Hank, mostly I'm reminded that today's podcast is brought to you by radioactive elephants, radioactive elephants burning bright.
It's also brought to you by pretty light. It's what rainbows are. Actually, they're not they're not light at all. They're pretty light.
They're nice. They're light that's nice to look at, though. It kills the joke because they're so heavy. You do die.
Today's podcast is also brought to you by the universe, the universe, no edge since 16 billion years ago. And also the five gases brought to you by Gliese 445, Gliese 445. It's the star that Voyager and also our son will be close to in about 40,000 years, not very close, just to be right. Like, no, I agree, not very close.
Okay, running from something, not running to anything. Yeah, Voyager, just grow up and learn that in life, you need to make positive choices as well as negative ones. You need to decide what you're going to as well as what you're running from Voyager. And that's what that's that I learned on the key night, but it's love Alaska the hardest way.
Good luck, Voyager. We also have a lovely project for us a message from Kate Coomann from Detroit to Matt Coomann. My husband Matt was a nerd fighter to his core. He watched every video read every book, listened to every podcast, even to the point that it was annoying.
Matt died of cancer in September of 2020, so this message is in honor of him. Be grateful for every second you have, fight for what you believe in. And if you love someone, tell them. And of course, DFTBA.
Kate, that is so lovely and such a wonderful way to honor your husband's memory and thank you for sharing that with us. And also, I know how annoying it can be when somebody won't shut up about how much they love something. So thanks for loving him anyway. And thank you for sharing that.
This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought 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 can 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.
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 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 Dear Hank.
Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash Dear Hank 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 bow 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 Dear Hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too that's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Dear Hank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash Dear Hank. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor. Imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 p.m and that 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 smokey barbecue chicken breasts with potato mashed 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 baromunji 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, perhaps cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring. Head to factor meals.com slash deer hank 50 off and use the code deerhank50off 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. John this next question comes from Jade who asks deerhank and John.
A couple days ago I watched the movie in the Heights at a theater with my cousins. It was very good and since I liked the movie when it ended I clapped. My cousin immediately told me to stop and said people don't do that which brought me to the question is it normal to clap at the end of movies? I hope it says normal is sneezing.
Jade. Yeah. I there's been I've been in movie theaters where there's been clapping at the end but it's definitely been the exception in my experience. The movie has to be good which most movies aren't you know.
Well I don't know about that to me like the clapping I tend to experience movie theaters is for movies that people have been waiting a long time for and that are like part like you know at the end of like Phantom Menace everyone clapped because it was like ah the star wars is back. It's very exciting and they're like you know sometimes you hear clapping when like a big bad gets gotten. Right at the end of the movie but people are like whoo and that always I'm like wow that's you really into it okay you're going for it. I think it's nice.
I think it's a nice communal moment and I'm a big fan of nonverbal communal moments like where we make sounds together but we don't have to like spit all over each other and that's one of the reasons I like applause. I think it's great. I'm 100% in favor of it. I what because to me like not clapping is just a form of like not being enthusiastic and like usually you're not clapping for precisely the reason that Jade's cousin cited which is like it's so embarrassing.
It's like yeah it's not done. It's not it's not a good I also clap when there's a rough landing on an airplane though. I'm one of those people who like you got this thing down in this thunderstorm and you are going to hear it from me. If there's anybody you're going to hear from it's going to be John Green.
God I can't remember flying. Yeah vaguely. Yeah. That was a strange thing that I did for years and years and years that it turned out I didn't have to do.
I would like to. I mean I have to say I don't see any upsides to the pandemic but I don't miss I don't miss flying. I think I flew enough. I a little bit I don't miss flying at all and I almost feel like a spell has been broken because I was so obsessed with getting you know like platinum or diamond medallion status every year.
Really I never I didn't ever think about that at least. I mean I had to obsess about it because like it was the way that I gamified the fact that I had to fly 60 times a year. Yeah. And then like the spell broke and now they email me and they're like we're going to extend your medallion status.
I'm like I'm not interested. Like whatever hold you hat on me is gone. That I want you that I cared about now seems very silly. I don't want your literal or your figurative peanuts.
Like I'm good. I like being sort of a ground based phenomenon most of the time. Yeah. So so Jade I think you should just tell your cousin listen I'm being unironically enthusiastic which is a resource in short supply in this world and I will thank you not to judge me.
John this reminds me I would really like some tea berry ice cream or or checker berry ice cream. This is a flavor of ice cream that we only have in America and that we don't have anywhere near me. So if anybody knows where I could get checker berry ice cream delivered to me in Missoula, Montana, please let me know. It's hard to get frozen stuff.
Hank we have another question is from Catherine and it's a very interesting question that I do not know the answer to. Okay. She writes Dear John and Hank are human brains like a blob that wrinkled into folds that look like thick strings or are they strings that eventually formed into a blob? Oh God.
Like could you unravel a brain by pulling one end of the brain string? Okay. Not an abundance of just one Catherine. I think and there may be some developmental biologists who will correct me on this but I'm pretty sure that the brain originally forms as a solid blob and then the wrinkles fold into that blob over the course of the field of development and that is not well I know it is not it's not like a string of brain that then gets bigger and then like runs up against itself which I understand I think that but that is cool.
It'd be very cool if the brain was like sort of like a head intestine. That's not how thoughts work. They started they started the thought place and then they sort of get shot out into your mouth. Yeah.
First you eat some sort of input and then at the end of it like you poop out of thought. If only every thought or a poop I think we would be appropriately humbled. Yeah. Right.
Just be like oh gosh I just had a thought. Usually don't have it until like nine in the morning but yeah today I had a thought at eight thirty. I just in general I want my own mind to know that they are not all bangers. That's right.
Yeah. That's a great question though. I mean it's a fascinating thought experiment but yeah it's more blobby than it is in Destiny unfortunately. Yeah.
We have another question from Vi who writes Dear John and Hank in John's book The Anthropocene Reviewed, available now wherever you buy books. He uses the phrase not unkindly saying and hey this is about there's a moment in the book where I write about like when I signed my name 250,000 times there would be the occasional signature like one out of every 10 or 12,000 but I would feel like really captured the essence of my signature and looked really good and I was really proud of and I write about this in the book and I say that Sarah will nod politely and look carefully at this near perfect signature for a while before saying not unkindly it looks exactly like all the others which is true. For some reason my brain completely stumbled at the phrase not unkindly. What does that mean?
I assume he doesn't mean kindly because then he would have used that word. Does it mean somewhere between kindly and unkindly but isn't that just saying something normally? Why does the English language have such ambiguous phrases? Just some guy Vi?
Well okay let me see you wrote it so you know the answer but I as a reader here's how I interpret that. If you if you just said she said it looks exactly like all the others I would probably assume a certain amount of like snark in that sentence because because like it is a dumb thing that you're doing but but there but Sarah is being empathetic toward your you know over analysis here because you're doing a thing a lot and so it's when you're doing a thing a lot you can't help but think a lot about it and so Sarah is being thoughtful in her comments and attempting to say a thing that could easily sound unkind in a not unkind way. Yeah I think that's very close to it. I mean so this is a double negative and double negatives are supposed to not happen in English but in fact we use them all the time and we use them in a lot of different ways sometimes we use them to emphasize a positive there's all kinds of different double negatives but in this case you sometimes use a double negative because you're trying to cut something a little bit.
You're trying to find a place between kindly that isn't quite kindly that's a little funny that's got a little bit of snark but that still has some generosity about it and that is not unkindly and so and the other thing that a phrase like that does that I like the reason that I chose it there and why I like it sometimes is that it can also cause that pause like you know you read it and it doesn't feel as smooth as a river rock right like it's a little bit of a jagged edge and that that pauses you when you're reading and there in that little like section between two commas you pause enough that the joke that comes after it is funnier hopefully so like if you can if you can stop someone right before the joke the joke is often reads to me better so that's the other reason for it but double negatives have so many purposes in English and like triple negatives also have multiple purposes a lot of times that it can be it's definitely a dangerous game to play and I thought about it a lot when I was writing that sentence I remember thinking about it because I was like you know this is uh I know what I'm trying to do here but you never know like if it's going to be communicated perfectly so yeah it's it's not an uncommon I just did it actually but it's not an uncommon it's not an uncommon trick in English I certainly didn't invent it but I've always been pretty fond of it. John let's do one more question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon it's from Rachel who asks Dear Hank and John I'm trying to figure out what career I want in the future my dream job would be one where I could read fiction novels all day since both of y'all have written books I was wondering out of all the people who help in making your books who reads the book as part of their job slaying dragons and saving princes Rachel that's an interesting question who reads who was like I mean people the wild thing is that the reading of the book almost doesn't seem like it counts toward the work like they almost always do that like not during working hours. Yeah yeah so I think like the obvious people the first people are your editor yeah who reads the book a lot of drafts after draft after draft and then there's the copy editor who's true and copy editors will be unafraid to correct me if I'm wrong here I believe usually read the book a couple times yeah and that's when I don't know what it's like to read as a copy editor I would think that it would you know you just you have to be paying such close attention to grammar yeah like you have to think about the phrase not unkindly a lot and different things like it all the time and so I don't know if it's as enjoyable as like reading for pleasure is. I'd be interested to hear that because I can't imagine yeah because it you know copy editors also do continuity work and they do fact checking work so like you know like you know they know they will they will check to see so different so for example grammar see theater the last word in the grammar see theater and the official name of the grammar see theater is spelled like it is in British English but like I didn't know that and so my copy editor like looked up how grammar see theater the business name is spelled because in that situation it would be so like like stuff like that where you don't even think of it as it's not grammar it's just like that is a the name of the business and you know Mary Beth was making sure that that was like correct you know there's like there's like timeline stuff they do a ton of different things but all of that makes me feel like you would have me thinking so much about the sort of structure of the book the process of the book that it would be hard to enjoy the book as a story yeah it's very detailed oriented work but also super important work and yeah so you could do that also the publicist often not always but usually reads the books certainly my publicist always reads the book at least Marshall yeah I think publicists read a lot of books for sure yeah and then librarians and book sellers read a lot of books and I think your right hand can often isn't treated as part of their job but it is certainly a profession where I mean the best read people I've ever known are almost all librarians or booksellers yeah there's certainly a profession that attracts people who love to read love to talk about books love to think critically about books yeah is there anybody else who reads every book I can't think of anybody I mean I guess like at publishers like sales rep's rebooks and you know generally books like pretty much everybody who works in publishing has to like books on some level yeah because if they didn't there are other there are better businesses you know like if you if all you want is to be a publicist you're gonna go work for Nike yeah and I mean editors also like the other thing is that in that world you have friends who are working in that world and so like my editor reads a lot of the books of other editors so while Maya has read my books 10 20 times and probably is pretty done with them she reads other editors but work and she you know like to learn from their process and just to support them and to be excited about their work and so that's also in the world of publishing like your friends are working on books and you it's part of how you support your friends and feel connected to them is by reading whatever they're working on right very true so it's also agents agents probably a lot of people are not thinking of Rachel agents read a lot of books agents read a lot of books they read a lot of like first 10 pages of books but they also read a lot of books so yeah there are lots of jobs out there that involve reading books and we hope you find what Rachel whoo hank before we get to the news from Mars and ASEW and I just want to read a couple response emails we got one from Ali who wrote Dear John and Hank in a recent episode of the podcast you just discussed how pulling out a book in public is like asking to have a meat cute in real life that's not what we said it is it is it is a little bit what we said we we said that that happening the first day of homeroom right is is not is is a is definitely people are trying to express something with the book that they have chosen let me get to the point of the email when I was in college I wanted to get a cute guy to join the book study I was in so I walked by his dorm room reading the book he saw me he noticed the book he joined the book study and now we're married with an adorable toddler and we watch every one of those video cuddled up on our couch together DFTBA Ali and Tommy so it sometimes works Hank Wow wow it has worked some other people wrote in to say when I'm reading a book in public I am demonstrably asking to not be talked to thank you that's very true you're right you're right it was we got we yes but hey there's look it's human interaction is complicated and sometimes it's going to go one way and sometimes it's going to go another way and that that is amazing and I love that that worked and I love love John Sarah also wrote in to say that they just listened to episode 51 which is like seven years ago in which we have a discussion about what to say when someone knocks on the bathroom door while you were inside and then Sarah's suggestion of what Sarah says when people knock on the bathroom door is so good that even five years later I have to share it with you I wanted to share my go-to response which is to yell come back with a warrant Oh my god so good especially a public but public but more public the better you're gonna have to walk fast that person come out yeah when you walk out after saying come out with a warrant you do the thing where you like point at your eyes and then you point at their eyes and then you point at your eyes again then you just walk right walk right back to the your table at the restaurant and you're like I you heard me yeah that's that's right it's watching you if somebody yelled if I knocked on the bathroom door you want to talk about a meat cute that results in marriage cake if I knock on a bathroom door and somebody says come back with a warrant when they leave that bathroom I'm gonna like hand them a business card and say can we be friends oh god I don't know I don't know a business card but that's what I would do if I did have a business card Hank let's talk about the news from ours and Aussie Wimbledon okay how's Aussie Wimbledon doing Jan oh my god so good two amazing things happen this week first and most importantly we on my birthday August 24th thanks for my gift by the way Hank you didn't get me anything on my birthday August 24th Aussie Wimbledon played horribly I mean mawful terribly yeah in a second round care about cup tie you'll remember there are all these knock out competitions I care about cup you have a cup and yet despite playing horribly we won the game with essentially the last kick of the game Anthony Hart again who's been with AFC Wimbledon since he was 10 years old or 12 or something scored the score the winning goal and that meant that we got to be in the third round of the care about cup and we could have drawn any of the teams anywhere in England but we didn't draw just any team we drew Arsenal away and they play in like a 60,000 seed stadium and it is going to be so much money and it is I mean it's a dream it's a dream come true it's like it's like winning an actual lottery they pick a ball out of yeah a machine and you get paired with Arsenal away from home at a stadium that seats all these people it's very expensive to go there all Arsenal fans please go to the third round FA Cup care about cup tie against AFC Wimbledon please pay full price for your ticket I'm very excited it's a huge deal for Wimbledon it's really really good it does not matter here it does not matter if we win the game it just matters that we got that lucky draw well I mean if we won the game that's a big hit you're not gonna win that game we're not gonna win that game Arsenal are terrible this year but we're not we're not gonna win the game yeah maybe no no I can't you know me I can't give up hope and then over the weekend AFC Wimbledon went to Ipswich Town Ipswich Town most notable for having signed the very same Joe Pigot who just left us oh and they were expected to be one of the best teams this year they certainly have one of the highest budgets and they're kind of like picked by everybody to be promotion favorites but not so much on that day they did score two bowls very quickly at the beginning of the second half and I was very frustrated and upset and I was like I can't believe it but then we came back and we drew to two this is the second time that we've come from two goals down to tie a game and the tying goal was scored again on the last kick of the game in the last second of stoppage time by Jack Rudoney who is also Ben with Wimbledon since he was a little kid his mom is a huge Wimbledon fan and it's just awesome it was I it was great we do need to stop tying games and start winning a couple but yeah even so it was a joy to watch AFC Wimbledon five games into the league one season are in 15th place and stop the count I would be very happy to end it right there well 15th would be awesome that's cool I love I love tying good teams oh yeah it's great now we just need to beat some bad teams yeah this week in Mars news so perseverance is of course attempting to persevere after it lost its sample so I drilled that hole right and then looked up picked up the sample and there was nothing in the sample tube so it is headed on over to a different area that's gonna have better rocks actually harder rocks so what they think about what's turning it does is they just turn to the dust yeah right um so they are headed to a set area some rocks that have withstanding some like a lot of erosion over the years and they'll be able to hold up to the drilling a little bit better and they're going for a rock that they've named real shit sure why not because it's just like a nice looking rock and they're gonna drill and take that sample they're adding another step to the sampling procedure well they were they like actually like take a picture of the tube to make sure there's something in there before they stow it away yeah good ball and and the yeah so and they're adding an extra step where they're gonna take a picture of the tube so that we'll actually know if there's something in there and I have every confidence that it's going to work I'm excited we're gonna get a rock we're gonna have two rocks and then we're gonna shake them up see see what they're made out of see what's in there see what's in there it's gonna be cool I hope we can do it I feel like it's pretty hard to get a rock into a test tube on earth you know what I mean like yeah if you ask what are the dynamics robots to do that they would be like oh this is gonna be this is gonna take a while John thank you for making a podcast with me it's been a pleasure if you want to send us your questions we're at Hank and John at gmail.com we don't have a podcast if you don't have questions so thank you very much for having them this podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Metis it's produced by Rosie Annalas Rojas our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom our editorial assistant is Debukie Tropper-Vardy the music is hearing now and it begins the podcast by The Great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome