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 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 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. Yours I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be advised and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AF's to Wimbledon.
John, do you know why Tesla's cost so much? Why Hank? Because they charge a lot. Mm, they do.
That's a great observation. Thank you. I'm shocked genuinely that you didn't tell a sock-based dad joke on a kettle-pound. There was a time crunch.
Just days from now is it's the most important holiday, third most important holiday in all of Third Fiterio. The awesome socks club. Hank, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the awesome socks club before we answer questions from our listeners because I'm just going to tell you the truth. When you told me that you were starting a sock subscription where 100% of the proceeds would go to charity, I said, I believe I can quote myself directly.
I said, that sounds like a good niche product. A pair of socks is emailed to you every month. The socks have a wonderful- Oh, we don't email. That would be amazing if we emailed you the socks.
But you three-D print them at home. No, a pair of socks is mailed to you directly to your house every month and all of the proceeds, not some, not like we said to pair of socks to people who need 100% of the proceeds go to charity. When you told me this idea, I was like, it's a good idea. It's not a great idea.
In fact, I believe that I literally said, it's not a million-dollar idea, but it's a good idea. It's so close to it being a million-dollar idea now, John. It is close. It's close.
It's close. We've raised, I think we've donated $700,000. We have donated $700,000 to help reduce maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone and strengthen the healthcare system in Sierra Leone through the Awesome Socks Club. It is incredible.
I was wrong. I love being wrong about your ideas. And in three days, awesomesocks.club will begin taking subscriptions again, but only for a 10-day period. So just while you're thinking about it, just go to awesomesocks.club right now and sign up for the email alert when the subscription is open because they're only open for 10 days.
And I really want Hank's million-dollar idea to actually be a million-dollar idea. So go sign up. All proceeds go to charity. It's incredible.
Hank and the team at DFTBA have accomplished through the Awesome Socks Club. And by the way, Hank, I have a broken foot right now. I have no idea. I really talked about it.
We don't have to get into the details, but I'm wearing a boot. And usually that would mean that my fashion levels are reduced. It's the natural state of things when you're wearing a boot, except my fashion levels are actually improved because I get to wear an awesome Socks Club. Socks every day.
And people are like, dang, forget about the boot. Where'd you get those socks? I do get a lot of compliments on the socks. Oh, yeah.
No, I'm like, I'm sorry, the club is only open for like 10 days a year. It's an unusual club. But we do this to minimize the amount of returns that we have inventory risk is what they call it. Yes, inventory risk.
So sign up for awesomesocks.club. Now, you go there. There's a banner at the top. You click on the banner and then you click on the email when available link.
And we'll let you know when it's available. You could be the first person to get this year's awesome Socks Club. I'm so excited about getting my more awesome socks. It really is.
I know. It's a little monthly joy in my life. It's such a little delight. Yeah.
I was totally surprised by him. I was so wrong. I would say I've never been that wrong, but actually I'm that wrong often. This was not just a hankering idea.
There was a lot of different inputs to this idea at DFTBA. And we did want to have a Nerdfighter sock subscription. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.
And that went away. And we just decided to sort of change the vibe a lot when we launched awesome socks. With a lot of input from a lot of great people at DFTBA. So thank you to all of them.
And I love it. So, thank you to everybody who's who's a member now. The biggest compliment though that you have given me about these socks, John. And I know we're talking about socks that no one can get right now.
Is that like you're really you're like picky about stuff like maybe a little too picky sometimes where I'm like, all right, mister, everything like it has to be just John Green's way. And you got the socks and you're like, you know, like, I like these socks a lot. And I like that made me feel very good that we got my favorite socks now. I will say that was the most backhanded compliment in response to a compliment I have ever received.
You're a very big guy. I like I'll tell you what I like the socks less than I did 12 seconds ago. That's for sure. But I do like the socks a lot.
They're my favorite socks. They're my go to number one socks and my drawer. I also like that because they're they're they're different patterns, but they're the same sock. I can mix a match.
And it's a little less weird. That that's that's a bridge too far for me. Hank, I do want to answer questions from our listeners once again, that's awesome socks club. But before we answer questions from our listeners, there's been a big development in the field of could John beat X in hand to hand all right, which is that TJ wrote in to say, dear John and Hank, John, I love you very much.
It's a little too much TJ. But thank you. But a 20 pound you could never win a fight with a house cat. There is no possibility.
I'm not convinced that current you could win a fight with a house cat. Imagine fighting at your current size against a cougar. That's 125 pounds. That's a pretty close approximation to a scaled house cat of 10 pounds.
Cougars can easily grab an adult sheep and leap over a six foot fence with the sheep in its mouth. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you could defeat that kind of cat? Have you even fought your own house cat? Sure.
If you had a baseball bat, you could win. But if you're just walking around the yard and it decides to surprise you, you are going to have some serious issues and you outweigh it by 190 pounds. I love cats, but I know my place TJ. Wow.
I still think you could beat up a cat, John. I'm on team, John. I think 20 pound me could beat up a 10 pound cat. But again, as we talked about before, I don't think I'd have to use my fists.
I think I could use my powers of persuasion. I do you do have very strong powers of persuasion, John. I can say this as a person who has been persuaded by you a number of times. However, you have an unable to persuade me to get off Twitter, which is where you are spending most of your powers of persuasion these days.
Not really. I mean, I, I, I'm not telling you not to tweet. I'm telling you to reduce the number of tweets that you send by 60%. And by the way, so is Catherine.
So is everybody. I got to say, John, half your replies are people saying, Oh, what if you tweeted a little less? What do I only tweet when I'm drunk? What if that's a new rule?
I mean, I feel like, it feels like those ones are better. Like, then you might start drinking more and I don't want that. I love that you're like a classic moderate drinker, like you're one to two units. And that's it.
Oh, gosh, at a time, certainly not per day, just for clarity. No, no, no, like you, you, you max out at two units per occurrence. Yeah. Yeah.
Unless, unless it's a very special occasion. I don't, I've seen you have three units only once or twice and you were flying under a table. I mean, with Vi, from Vi, you know, I remember your situation. No, I remember your bachelor party.
Oh, no, that was that as the drunkest I've ever been. You probably had four units at your bachelor party. And I thought you were going to bar for like the last four hours of the party. I think I had more than that.
That wasn't counting well. You know, that's that that's this is a legit deer, ink and john tip. Always know how many drinks you've had. Yeah, yeah.
No, keep track of your units. I'm a big believer in that. I know exactly how many units I had that evening and believe you me, it was more than four that evening ended for me at like three 30 in the morning in a VFW bar at the very back of it. And I was just playing a slot machine.
I was playing like a nimble slot machine for like two hours. And I looked at my watch and I was like, Oh, I'm tired because it's six in the morning. Yeah. I've been playing the slots since four.
It turns out this gambling stuff is pretty addictive. Really, they can really hook you in. I was like $60. Yeah, I was in the basement of the double front chicken one time and I decided to play like a nickel poker on a video machine and I sat down and I on my first nickel, $120.
And you know, my first thought was, if I bet a dollar, I would have a thousand four thousand so bad, whatever the big number. That's how they get you. That's how they get you. It is programs to make me like I feel like your programs to make me win when I'm when I like sit down and spend one nickel so that I start playing for a dollar.
Well, one of the observations that my best friend Chris made to me that I think is just so deeply true is that it is much better to lose it a casino than it is to win because if you win, you start to think that you're always going to win. Yes. How many people have been saved by losing? I mean, I've never won any to casino.
So that's I have no data points as far as the anecdotal data goes, you cannot win the casino. Yeah, I'm over 400 so far, but I look forward to trying again. I will say like, I as you know Hank, like one of my great character weaknesses is how much I enjoy going to a casino and pretending to be someone who I'm not losing $100. Yeah, like I wear clothes that I would never wear in real life and I talk to strangers, which I never do in real life.
And I sometimes affect accents and I like and pretend like when people ask me about my backstory, I'm always like, what's it going to be tonight? Well, this is amazing. And then they're like, because you look so much like John Green. And you're like, that's all the time.
My name's Pierre Green. Pierre Weld. I was commulsive. How you say?
See you sitting there. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm an engineer. I know that's about computers. I worked on the space station.
Yeah. No, I mean, it's actually it's actually worse than that, to be honest with you. I'm off it with Sarah and Sarah will be like sitting next to me and just like glancing at me like, wait, what? That's not true.
We're from Oregon. Here's the situation. I'm not here to make a long lasting friend. I'm here to I'm here to have them and me have an experience and that experience is gonna be based in reality.
We're in a casino. Like if it was based in reality, no one would be here. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I'm in a miniature version of Venice. Like nobody, nothing inside here is real or rational. Yeah. Yeah.
On the other hand, I'm so committed to the idea of winning that the first time I ever went up in a casino, I walked out. I was like, I was there. I beat the casino. That has nothing on me.
Hank played the game in the casino with the worst odds and he won a $20 bet. He won $20. And then he was like, I'm good. Yeah.
And I was like, why would I keep doing this? I haven't even settled in yet. Like it was a record the elevators to like the first thing you hit when you come off the elevator. Yeah.
Of course. It has very bad odds. So they want you to play that game. It was when I understood.
Yeah. And so I played that. It was casino war. But it was just a game war.
It was just a game war. Hey, turns over a cart. The dealer turns over a cart. Yeah.
Every card is higher wins. But if it's a tie, the dealer wins. Yeah. It's the dumbest.
It's very bad. Yeah. But not only that. It's dumb.
Like there's no there's nothing to it. Well, I understood it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And I remember like Hank turned over a king, turned over a nine and got a $20 chip and he just walked away. And I was like, well, that is a different approach. I was like, what else do people do here in Vegas?
Why did you have your bachelor party in Las Vegas? That's a very typical. Oh, God. Yeah.
I mean, we had a good time. But only because I was with my friends and you know, because I mean, we had a couple of good dinners. I don't know. Yeah.
I don't know. It's not. I'll tell you what, it's not do a lot of Vegasy stuff. I don't think I've been back in the interview.
Oh, I was back for like a conference for work or something. But yeah, no, when I go to a casino, it's always the one in French, like Indiana, which is just just call it. Oh, I love the call. There's a place called French Lick.
What's what's the Lick? And what's French French? French Lick, Indiana is where Larry Bird is from one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And yes, is he French?
I don't think so. It used to be like a hot springs kind of healing capital like Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to go there sometimes and it sort of had that reputation. Sure. And then it fell on hard times like all places like that and became a gambling mecca.
But only for a very only for people in Indiana. So it's I love French Lick, man. I'm that's why I had my 40th birthday party. Sarah's like, where do you want to go anywhere on Earth?
And I was like, I think I want to go to French Lick boy. Sarah's like, okay, well, close. We can have a we can have a nice time. If you ever want to meet John Green's alter ego Pierre Verde, head on over to French Lick in Indiana.
I mean, after COVID, I'm not not going to French Lick right now. The area has rich mineral sources, John. Yeah, I know rich mineral sources. And those are the Lick and it was first settled by French people.
There you go. Yeah, Pierre's on hiatus until until this whole global pandemic thing is well and truly over. I can't wait to meet him. This first question was there a question?
No, I don't know how we got there. This question goes from a Lisa writes Dear John and Hank, do some atomic particles have color depends on what you mean. Yeah, I mean, I wanted to ask this question because I don't know the answer. Do they?
They don't right? They do not so they don't have color in the in the traditional like in order to have a color certain photons wavelengths of photons have to be absorbed and certain photons have to be reflected. That requires a molecular structure. They were an atomic structure.
So you can't it cannot happen with subatomic particles because the actual thing that makes the color happens at a atomic not subatomic level. However, however, there are there is a such thing as color charge, which is nothing to do with color. So in that way, they do have color. They have color charge.
What? What? What do you mean it has nothing to do with color? I would like to read you what Richard Feynman had to say about color charge.
He said the idiot physicists unable to come up with any wonderful Greek words anymore. Call this type of polarization by the unfortunate name of color, which has nothing to do with color in the normal sense. He was not pulling any punches. He I completely agree with him.
We just couldn't come up with another word because like we found out all these different properties of subatomic particles and we had to name them based on something. And so like, some time particles have spin, which is a thing that has, you know, like a momentum similar to what spin would have, but is not really spinning and we have color, which is a property that has that exists. I don't know, maybe on a spectrum. I don't understand it well enough, but there's several different colors, but maybe it's like, somebody might say that something is like colored by violence or colored by well, it's like there were, it's like there were three different things.
So instead of being like a one or two thing, there were three and so I think it was like, well, it's red, green and blue them. Oh, I see. So they really just created color where none exists. Yes.
Yes. And Feynman was like you idiot physicists, literally, he called them a physics. Yeah, that seems a little, that seems a little aggressive to me. Like they could have been bad.
That could have been something. It's confusing. Yeah. Well, what would you have picked?
I don't know. I think I probably would have had a consult with my friend who works on the French space station Pierre. I feel like he'd be more qualified to me. I might have used a B and C.
Yeah, like exactly that kind of thing. Yeah. Like letter charge, letter. Yeah.
Something that means no, that it's not actually a thing. Right. Yeah. You get the idea that it's not what we're saying it is.
That reminds me a little bit of the first time that I ever encountered algebra when I was, I think in seventh or sixth grade and the teacher like wrote on the board like X plus six equals nine, what is X? And I was like a letter. X is a letter. Why are we introducing English into our math?
Yeah. Yeah. But you got, you got there eventually. You figured it out.
I still wish it had been something a little more abstract than a letter because it still bothers me. Like when I see an X and a Y axis, I always think like, no, they aren't. They're not, they're not X and Y axes. They're up and down and left and right axes.
Yeah. All right. That's my, that's my criticism of the idiot mathematicians, even though my suggestion literally came from their idea. All right.
What was the, what question did we answer? Have we answered a question? Yeah. We answered the question about whether some particle have color now you asked.
No, before that was there was no argue before that. I don't know how we got no idea how we got to casinos. None. We were talking about the awesome socks club.
I tried to transition into talking about something else. I don't remember something about drinks. Yeah. We were talking about the awesome socks.
Was that not a conversation? Was that not a question? No, we were talking about it. No, it was.
It wasn't. It was because we were telling somebody not to, not to drink. No, I was telling you not to use Twitter so much, which like you brought up out of nowhere in the middle of the conference. So it really, really didn't.
Okay. It's just a fun conversation. So just to recap, we've answered one question. Let's try to answer a second one.
Okay. This one's from do it. I believe it. Listen from Madison who writes, you're trying to take, I realized I used my phone like a pacifier.
Oh, God. No, that's going to, that's definitely got to put it in rice. That's a problem. Oh, no, no, I'm not concerned about that.
Although now that you mentioned it, it is not a good pacifier. Madison, I feel like a pacifier would be a much better pacifier. I said, Oh, God, because I just realized that I use my phone like a pacifier. All the times that like when my kids were little and I would be like, I don't know how to solve your problems.
All right. Here's a pacifier. Oh, I use my phone like that for yourself or on your children, for myself, when I am upset. I probably do that too.
And I need distraction when I am seeking, you know, a living, not feel the kind of background anguish that seems to accompany a lot of human life. I'm like, Oh, I think I'll look at TikTok. Yeah, I really did an update on my phone. And I was really upset because it was taking so long and I couldn't use it.
I literally could have thrown a temper tantrum. How do I lessen my dependency on my phone? Madison, you have come to the wrong place. I could tell you what I would do if I had the self control to do it, which is, which is you have to increase your dependency on other things.
Like you have to have the like you have to develop all of the sub routines for like what to do when there isn't that sub routine, which is such an easy one, right? You know, put pickup and look at the pretty thing. It's shiny and pretty and beautiful and it has contains all the world's information. So so it's pretty enticing.
It also contains all of the world's misinformation for the record, not all of it, but most of the world's misinformation. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I mean, that's like saying like, yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah, it contains infinite content.
It does. And it's so alluring. Yeah, it's easy to forget that, yeah, yeah, and it's just so alluring. Yeah.
But the most alluring thing about it is that once you do a lot, it's just like this habit routine that runs in your brain and it's like, I don't I'm not doing anything right now, might as well check on Instagram. And that is a difficult thing to interrupt and to replace with something else. But I think it's really good to have diverse routines if we can develop them. It's hard.
But and and you know, another one would be like, oh, I'm I don't have anything to do right now. So I will eat, which is a thing that I I can have a problem with sometimes where I just like, oh, I'm like snacking, but only because I didn't have something to do right now. And I didn't want to like be staring at my phone. So a better one would be like a book that I might want to be reading a better one would be a drawing that I'm working on or a journal that I'm journaling in or something like that.
What drawing are you working on? Well, Catherine draws I was drawing from I was drawing from her experience. Not mine. Okay.
Yeah, I think that's good advice. Madison, what I love about your question is that it acknowledges the size of the problem. And I think a lot of us are minimizing the problem. A lot of us are saying, well, I can stop using my phone anytime I want.
I don't have to be on Twitter or TikTok. And like I've experienced my own life that it is actually very, very hard to resist those for me, at least to resist those temptations in any kind of long term or systematic way. And really for me to do it, I have to make it impossible. Yeah, I have to make it impossible to use.
Because if it is possible to use, even if it is difficult, I will use it like for a while, I had this block on my computer where I had to like solve an algebra problem in order to get on Twitter. And all it did was make me good at algebra again. Well, that's not nothing. Yeah, no, I mean, it's not without a benefit.
But like the point is that I was willing to do math, the thing I hate most in the world, in order to access these, you know, private companies that will give me little dopamine rushes in a semi randomized way. John, this next question comes from Anna Luisa who asks, steer Hank and John, I want to start making my own kampucha. So I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to do that. But one thing has kept me awake.
So many things good day. What would happen if I just took a big bite out of the scoby, the microbial culture, I've yet to acquire mine. And I'm learning that I won't have the self control to not eat it. Thank you, Anna Luisa.
John, you know what scoby is? Yes, do you know what it stands for? Because I was sometimes I think people don't realize it's an acronym. It stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.
So Oh, God, I'm sorry, I can't get over the question. I know I remember it. I just had forgotten it. And now I'm now I'm like seeing only in tunnel vision.
I will say this for myself. I may not have a lot of self control, but I 100% have the self control not to go by kampucha scoby. Yeah, I mean, call me Mr. Willpower because no problem.
So so the bokei researched this and it is it is apparently perfectly edible, which makes sense because it's in your kampucha. So it should be a better be because it's touching it. I do remember the first time you ever heard about kampucha, John? Oh, yeah, I mean, it's something that Sarah drinks and I can't I understand that I drink and eat things that are slathered in microbes all day.
And I understand that kampucha is delicious and has lots of nutrition and whatever. It's just that I can't it's not for me. I can't do it. I can't do it.
There's some things you can do and some things you can't do. And that's one of the things I can't do. So I was in my friends apartment in maybe 2004. So before like kampucha was a thing you could get in grocery stores.
And yeah, and like I was in an environmental studies master's program. So it was pretty, you know, crunchy fans of the earth kinds of vibes. Sure. And of nature and naturalness and that kind of thing.
And my friend like busted out of her closet a jar with like a big like two gallon jar with one of those big lids, you know, like can barely get your hand around the whole thing. So like it wasn't like a it felt very industrial. It wasn't like a like some like a setup where I felt like there was a lot of thought had gone into it. But it was just like, you know, you open it and like my my perspective is if it hisses when you open it, you throw it away, like, it's like because there's something growing in there and it hissed because it's you know it's carbonated and it's like the microbes are producing gases.
And then like just like poured it in a cup in the past the cup around like that's how people drank kampucha back then. And so I had some and I was like, I did not like that. Like it wasn't cold. It was in a jar in a closet.
And I don't know if like now there may be a little more sweetened or more flavored, but it just tasted like bubbly vinegar water to me. And I don't like vinegar, especially a lot. Anyway, and so I didn't have another kampucha for a long, long time. And then I had one that like is a bottled kind and I was like, oh, I see, they've made this more palatable experience.
But my experience from watching my friend, make kampucha is it seems like it's a fine hobby. But I as a chemist, and like that seems dangerous. It seems dangerous because like you don't know what like microbe might get introduced there and it's gonna spoil your kampucha. Like you'll probably notice if your kampucha is spoiled, but still like that that gives me the wrong vibes.
And then also like any time you have a big glass thing with a lot of pressure building up inside of it, that's physically potentially problematic. I get out. I'll just be careful. Follow all the proper precautions.
Don't explode a jar in your closet. The answer to your question is yes, by the way, it is it is edible. Yes, it is edible and contains many of the same health benefits of kampucha itself. And I know that because I just read it on the internet, which is the most trustworthy, just just Google things.
And the first answer is always correct. I just I just googled can kampucha explode. And the answer is yes, it can. Yeah, I mean, you got you got to be careful with anything though.
Hank, any, any harm, he comes with his risks, it's true. There are people who jump off mountains. And I'd write I think probably that the healthier option would be making a delicious microbial brullaton, which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by eating the scoby. I just wanted to say that phrase one more time.
Just sink your teeth on in this podcast is also brought to you by the French Space Station is well, very, very little known space station that's up there doing its great work. Thanks, Pierre for all his hard work on the French space station. I was going to try to do a French accent where I say it wasn't easy, but I can't because the actual accent I do at a casino is my natural southern accent. But anyway, today's podcast is brought to you by casino war, casino war.
Number one, and only casino game. Hank green has ever played. And the podcast is also brought to you, of course, by the awesome socks club, awesome socks dot club. Again, that's awesome socks dot club.
It opens on November 5th and it's only open for 10 days. So sign up as fast as you can. We also have a project crossing message from Imu from New Jersey to Divina. Well, I told you that if you wouldn't help me write this Dear Hank and John personal message by the deadline that I would just use it to publicly declare my love for you.
So Divina, the deadline is coming gone and now the whole world knows how much I love you love love love there. Take that. That's great. It's a high quality project for awesome donation message.
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Head to factor meals.com slash Dear Hank 50 off and use the code Dear Hank 50 off 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. Hank, let's try a serious question. We've got a number of emails lately along these lines and this one is from a young person who wrote us to say Dear John and Hank, what do people do when you learn that your parent might lose their job?
How do I make this point in their life better for them? Pumpkins and Penguins Anonymous. So when we were kids, our dad did switch careers and it was a little bit of a, I remember it as scary. I don't know how you remember it, Hank, but I remember it as Oh yeah.
Definitely being. It was the first time when I was like aware that my parents were people and had problems and like and that they might need me and it was really scary for me to like see mom and dad be upset. And also like not know, you know, like that uncertainty. Yeah, and I think that's what this question is, right?
Because like a lot of like when we're really young our parents sort of insulate us from uncertainty. You know, if we're lucky, I think and insulate us from instability and insecurity. And then at some point you realize like, Oh, there are people too. And they're going through hard times, scary times.
And you're not fully insulated from it. I think the most important thing like I come at this question now from the perspective of a parent and the most important thing that any parent wants is to know that their kid is okay. And you know, that's all I want. Yeah, and I want to have a job so that my kids are okay.
Right. And so like the there are in times of uncertainty, there are like, you know, there are things that change. And I think that that's the the main thing is to know that like everyone's on board to get through the problem in what in the way like to solve the problem or to move through it in whatever ways are going to be necessary. And that that's not like the hope is to not introduce too much shame or or a feeling of like, you know, that your parent is letting you down like that you understand that this isn't them letting them letting you down.
That's probably what they need to feel the most. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, ultimately, when you're a kid, your job is to be a kid, like your job isn't to take care of your parents, your job is to be a kid. And that's you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
But I think if you can if you feel like you're in a position to say, I love you, and my love for you is not contingent upon your work. And we I want to do anything I can to support you through this. That's a great thing to hear. And it's nice to have that reassurance.
Yeah. I'm sorry, you're going through such a hard time though. And I'm sorry, so many people are. This is really quite a tough time.
Yeah, this is super weird. And I hope that it gets better soon. Well, man, John, this next question comes from Tina who asks Dear Hank and John, when did museums become a thing? Like, did people whose houses are now museums once go to museums themselves?
That'd be pretty meta. Pumpkin's and penguins, Tina, but John, let me know if this is true. Okay. Because it feels like something you would know.
I imagine what happened is some rich person was like, I cannot feel the whole of worth. And so I'm going to acquire as many weird things as I can that feel valuable. And I'm gonna put them in my home. And then people are gonna come over to my home, and they're gonna be like, look at all this cool stuff you have acquired.
And I feel good about that. And then I'm gonna die. And then I'm gonna be like, somebody should have this, and so I'm gonna give it and my money to a place that will then house it and show it off in perpetuity. That sounds to me like how a museum got started.
That is part of how museums got started. There were also these things called cabinets of curiosities that people would pay to go see, you know, so like you would pay to go see a cabinet of curiosities. It was halfway between a sort of carnival and a contemporary museum. So you'd sort of have a quasi historical thing, but you'd also be looking at dragon bones.
And so that's kind of the other strain that went into the creation of the contemporary museum. But it is very like when we were kids, Hank, we grew up very near this botanical garden and museum called Lou Gardens. And Lou, the house that you could like walk through and that they were guided tours of and you would, it was just a guy's house. It was a rich person's house.
There was nothing else to it. It was just a rich person who left their house to a charity that then you walk through this rich person's house and you're like, this is where this rich person made dinner and this is where this rich person wrote their memos and like, this is where this rich person slept. And like, I remember like doing tours of the house and just being like, huh, it's it's kind of cool. It's a person's house.
It's kind of cool to see how people lived in the 1880s in Florida. Oh, it wasn't an easy place even to be very rich. But why is this here? I understand why the gardens are there.
You know, like I understand why they're botanical gardens and everything. But I was always a little confused about the house part. And there is definitely an aspect. I mean, I think this is something that people who work in museums and people who are interested in museum studies are really grappling with right now, which is that there is a big aspect of the museum in general that is troubling by contemporary standards, both in terms of like how objects and artifacts get acquired, which artifacts are treated as art, which artifacts are treated as sort of like exotic and therefore art, even if they aren't art in their original context.
Right. And not only that, there's also the element of like these semi-private museums. Museums that as you say, Hank, are basically a rich person who collected a bunch of art and then got a huge tax break by giving that art quote unquote away while still getting to like walk through the museum of their own construction every time they want to. It's complicated.
And like the relationship between extractive capitalism and museums and kind of the quote unquote art world in general is I think difficult for a lot of people to navigate including me. Hear that, John. Do you know where the word museum comes from? I don't.
It was a school. Oh, it was it was the big university in Alexandria. It was called the Museo. Oh.
And so it's like, I love. Yeah, that's nice. I still look. Yes, it's right.
It's from the muses. So like, yeah, the inspirational guy. I still like, I still love going to museums. I love going, and I especially love free museums that are available to everyone.
And I love going to see art. And I love that there are these places that preserve art for us. But I also think we got to grapple with the complicated parts. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. And you know, because of Sarah's line of work here, pretty aware of that. And also, I think that, you know, the conversations start out small and then they get bigger and bigger until we actually kind of really do as a society change the way that we think and act. Yep.
That is how it tends to happen. Yeah. You know, and so I think there are encouraging changes happening in the world of museums, but I also think there's a ways to go. Hank, speaking of beautiful objects, let's turn our attention to football, specifically America's favorite third tier English soccer team, AFC Wimbledon, which lost their most recent game, but it was like a game that we were expected to lose.
We lost the highlights that came up on my YouTube app, my YouTube page. And I was like, Oh, I was not a game where I felt like we were there was a chance of victory. No, we weren't in that one. I think that's safe to say we were we were not meaningfully involved in that.
I was impressed that we didn't give up a bowl in the first half. But before that, we played at Lincoln City and we won one nil, a game memorable for a couple reasons. First off, because it was our first week game this season where we did not give up a bowl out of 14 games. So that's good.
That's really encouraging. And secondly, because we won a game without first coming from behind, which I don't think we previously done all season. So we're still in 14th place, now almost a quarter of the way into the league one season. And 14th place would be an amazing result.
Unfortunately, our injury woes continue. And especially in central defense, things are getting a little, a little thin. So who knows what the next few games will bring? Will Nightingale are long time, long serving central defender who's been with the club since he was 11 years old is out for at least three more months.
And so it's going to be a tough run of games here in the next few weeks. And we'll just have to see how we do we do have our first round FA Cup game coming up. And this is one of the knockout competitions, the biggest knockout competition. And we will be playing a team from I think the seventh tier of English football.
And they have a great name. It's Geisley, or possibly Hughes, usually. I don't have great French. Just never.
So funny. Pierre's French is so good. Mine is so bad. And the last thing I want to say is that our women's team played their first round FA Cup game.
It was their first game at Plow Lane, which is really exciting. 1500 people were there, which is awesome. And they won seven to one. So they are moving on to the second round of the FA Cup where they will play Millwall, which is a much different challenge than we had in the first round.
But our women's team looks great this year. And I think they have every opportunity to win. And I'm really excited. Well, good.
I'm looking forward to some good goals from all the Wambles, John, in Mars news. So finally, we get to know more of what it sounds like on Mars. Yes. It's like a super high scientific priority.
But so NASA has created a resource. If you go to Mars dot NASA dot gov slash Mars 2020, you can listen to some of the sounds that have been recorded by the microphones. Now, they have helped scientists learn some things about Mars and learn about like changes in the atmosphere and stuff. But mostly it's like we could put a microphone on this and why wouldn't we?
But also they have, you know, I like on Mars gravity is different. And so like, yeah, you can type in like how much you weigh and then find out like how much you would weigh on Mars. Right. Well, that's also kind of true of sound.
So like sounds a thing on Mars would sound different than if it were on Earth. So you can take stuff like birds or trucks backing up or like the noise of a city. And you can put them through a system that makes it as sound as if it was happening on Mars. And you can use this like interactive tool there where you can listen to what it would sound like different things would sound like if they were on Mars.
And that that sound changes based on mostly the pressure. So there's just less air molecules to bounce into each other. So that makes it quieter, but also cuts out certain wavelengths of sound. And then and also it's colder.
So that can also affect how sound travels. So if you want to find out about that, you can go to Mars.nasa.gov slash Mars 2020. One more time, please. Give me that.
You want to one more time. It's Mars.nasa.gov slash Mars 2020. Thank you. I'm going now.
I'm excited to find out. I'm excited to find out. I'm going to sound on Mars. I'm going to show the kids will love that.
That'll be so cool to share with them. Well, well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to record our Patreon only podcast at patreon.com slash deer hank and john.
It's called this weekend stuff. It's short and not very good. You should check it out. Patreon.com slash deer hank and john is by gaffes edited by Joseph tuna-mettish.
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