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 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 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. And welcome to Dear Hank and John! Nor does I prefer to think of it near John and Hank.
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a nice advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know that you humans actually eat more bananas than monkeys? I'm not that surprised. There are so many of us.
Well also, we don't actually eat that many monkeys. I like it. I like it because it's got a level of grammatical ambiguity and it emphasizes how stupid English is. So it's a winner to me.
Absolutely what he wants. It's a winner to me. Oh Lord. Oh Hank.
Yeah John. So for all the people who aren't our FBI agents listening to our phone calls Hank and I just had a far-ranging 45-minute conversation about the world's ills and especially the world's ills as they relate to us. Yeah. Well of course.
That's the most important people. My conclusion John is that it would be really really cool if we bought Twitter and shut it down. Like that would be like a big move. That would be a mover and shake a big move.
Yeah. I mean here's the bad news. We don't have 1% of 1% of the money that would require. But we do have 1% of like 0.05% of the money that would require.
And so all we need is like a million other people. I don't want to do if we're gonna do that. Let's make AFC Wimbledon the best football team in the history of the world. Like if it's instead of investing all of our time and attention on Twitter, we invested all of our time and attention into AFC Wimbledon.
AFC Wimbledon would rocket out of League two next season. My main complaint is that so many people, good people who think that they are acting right by themselves and their families in the world are not giving AFC Wimbledon money to increase their playing budget. Well, here's an interesting thought, John. What if instead of convincing like millions of people to give AFC Wimbledon money, you just convince like 20 very good soccer players to give AFC Wimbledon their talent?
Could you make the case to Mosala? Because you'd be like, oh, I'm John Green. I write moving pros. I can make people understand things that are very complicated very efficiently.
And I am going to convince you that you no longer need to do what you're doing for Wimbledon? No, Liverpool? Yeah. And then instead you could do it for Wimbledon.
Well, I'm not going to do that to Mosala because I need him to play for Liverpool. Okay. One of the other ones then. Yeah, sure.
Like one of the ones on Manchester City, for instance, I'd like to get rid of all of those ones. Yeah, is Will Power on that team? No, he's an Indy car driver. I was close though.
I was close. I'm not sure. I'm not sure Will Power would do great in fourth-tier English soccer, but he's a very good race car driver. It seems like there's probably some transferable skills.
Yeah, I mean, quick reaction time. It's a great name. Will Power? It is a great name.
Yeah. I think he's 42 years old, which is another reason he might not be amazing in the professional soccer capacity. But he's a very nice guy. I've spoken to him a few times.
Oh, why? As nice as you're already working on him. You're working on him. Hang on.
He helps by Twitter. So Hank, listen, I have a proposal for you. And before I state it, just remember that a lot of times when you hear something for the first time, you feel defensive, right? Like, that's just a human.
I don't think this is going to be the first time I'm going to have heard this, but I would like to. I would like you to go two weeks, 14 days, not without tweeting, but without mentioning Twitter. You could tweet all you want. Just don't tweet about Twitter or make you two videos about Twitter or make TikToks about Twitter.
I'm saying one of my main areas of expertise. Well, yeah, I have a whole podcast about Twitter. I'm going to edit it right after we record this. Yeah, we all know that you are really into Twitter.
I'm going to propose a two-week hiatus from talking about Twitter. It's telling that I would rather have a two-week hiatus from Twitter than a two-week hiatus from talking about Twitter. Yeah, of course. What does that mean?
I don't know, but I think that it's something you need to surprise you. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me. And I think you need to look deep into yourself and try to understand what the obsession, not with tweeting, but with tweeting about Twitter, is about.
I think it's, I think it's important, but I might be wrong. I'm often told by people who don't spend any time on Twitter that I'm wrong about that. Well, of course, like I said, I knew the moment I mentioned it that you would become a little bit defensive because of course, it gives me something to think about. That's for sure.
Well, I'm glad I talk about just dogs. Here's the thing, Hank. I think that if you ban yourself from talking about Twitter, you may discover that you have other insights about the nature of the world. I also think that, like, I think you are a little too focused on Twitter as a shorthand for the social internet, when Twitter is just the shorthand for the worst parts of the social internet.
Sure, sure. Anyway, Hank, let's answer some questions beginning with this wonderful question entitled profound art assignment related mortification from Sarah who writes, Dear John and Hank, at the beginning of the pandemic, I read Sarah Green's book, You Are An Artist, and I really liked the fake fire assignment. So I made a bunch of fake flyers. This is an assignment created by an artist named Nathaniel Russell.
It's been very good for my mental health, and I love making my fake fires. However, they have just caused my most profound mortification. I was updating my friends on my latest crabbed theme flyer, and I accidentally sent a picture to a random boy I knew in high school. And this is a pretty weird fire.
My conundrum is, I have not spoken to this boy in quite a long time. Do I like follow up and try to explain the flyer? Do I pretend it never happened? Is two years long enough to forget this so that when we go to our class reunion, I won't have to explain to this man why I sent him a picture of a crab holding a purse entitled Crabulous.
By the way, Sarah sent the image in question. We'll put it on the picture on it, patreon.com slash beer, Hank and John, but it is it's crabulous. That's the only word for it. It's a it's a it's a fabulous crab.
And and this random boy from high school has received a fabulous crab from Sarah with no context. What do you think? I have a couple of thoughts. One, I love that it was very easy to look this up in the inbox because only one person has sent us an email containing the word crabulous.
And that is cool. And also a little bit of a shame. So I just want to let everybody know that I'm up for more. Second, the only thing to do is to go harder, right?
Like we agree on this. Not on this one guy, on everyone. Risky. You text everyone you know, crab stuff, because we don't do enough work maintaining our social connections.
And I think that if I got a crab from a person that I knew four or five years ago and I hadn't talked to in a while, I would be really happy. I'd be like, Oh, that person. And I would probably I think that you get a fair number of positive responses and maybe have deeper relationships with more people, which I think is one of the main things that we need more in our world. Also, it's very rare that I get an email that one does not expect a reply and two asks absolutely nothing of me, except pure pleasure.
So sending people crabulous style entertainment via email seems to me like wonderful, especially if the only words in the email are please do not reply. John, I'm starting a new social media app. It's called Crabulous. It's a CrabUld.us.
And it would be Crabello.us, which is really good. It's really good. It's really like, why is it called Crabello? It's called Crabulous.
Well, I'll be well, you can just send crabs to people. And this is how we heal the nation. All right, we have to it's Crabulous. So it actually would be Crabulo.us.
Not a couple of eyes are particularly good speller. Crabulo.us. And this is a phenomenal idea. The best part about it, Hank, is that once you get obsessed with Crabulo.us, you'll completely stop talking about Twitter, which would be wonderful.
And the best, best part will be in like six or seven years when Crabulo.us has become a tremendous force for evil in the world due to all kinds of unexpected unintended consequences and outcomes that we couldn't possibly have perceived when we started our Crab distribution image website. And when Crabulo.us is like, is the Twitter of its moment? And everyone is like, I hate Crabulo so much. And you'll be giving interviews on podcasts where you're like, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning.
I do nothing but drink green tea until one o'clock in the morning whereupon I have a 17,000 calorie meal and then I sleep for 45 minutes. And I've been doing that every day for seven years. And I don't understand what this problem is. Everything's going great.
I don't know what anybody's talking about. Yes, I can also be the CEO of a bunch of other companies. Why would that be an issue? I've got infinite powers in it.
I'm good. Who's talking about Twitter now? I'm not talking about Twitter. I'm talking about Crabulo.us and you and the huge.
Hank and Crabulo. And I and then I have the power to push the button. Yes. And will?
Yes. The best, best, best thing about Crabulo.us is that after it has that hockey stick growth rise, after it's valued at tens of billions of dollars, after it becomes a force for social evil. That is when Hank Green, heroingly, turns off Crabulo.us and says enough. Enough.
Enough. And you pass out billions of dollars just for the pure pleasure of turning it off. I love it. I love that idea.
Hank. This is it's a double way to do it. Crabulo.we. Yeah.
Yeah. I can't wait for you to be like, listen, Vine is dead. However, Crabulo.tv is where you now go for all your live streaming services. We've got middle-out compression.
You've never seen ever seen a streaming video like Crabulo.tv has. It's all crabs. All right. Well, if anybody knows how to, this is the only feature that Crabulo.us needs.
It needs to be able to import my address book somehow. I don't know if I'm on my phone. That seems to be a thing apps can do. And then it needs to be able to like, let me pick the ones I want to send crabs to.
That sounds like a really easy app. Crabulo.us, even we can't refer to it as crab ewis because it's attempting to call it Crabulo.us. Crabulo is a great name. I'm sure it's available.
I might make our coffee company called Crabulo Coffee. I really liked it. It's a little bit too close to crap for a coffee. I feel like no, it's crab.
Crab, you low coffee. People will be like, well, that sounds fancy. Crabulo. Yeah.
It's from the Mariana Islands. Is that a place? Sure. Yeah, probably.
Update. Hank has just spent $11.27 to buy Crabulo.us. Crabulo. Oh, I'm sorry.
Did I mispronounce it? Is it not Crabulo.us? It's Crabulo? Crabulo.
Yes. I just had to choose what the purpose of the website was. Is it educational, government, personal, nonprofit, or for profit? I'm going to call that it.
It's for profit, Hank. Are you kidding? We're going to become billionaires off the thing. Hopefully we can change that in the future because I did register it as personal.
Because at the moment, that's how it feels. Oh, great. Feels very personal. Great.
Yeah. Yeah. Twitter never becomes Twitter if the original domain registration had been for personal reasons. I like it.
So you've decided that the emphasis is definitely on the second syllable. Crabulo. Not Crabulo. Not U.S.
Crabulo. Crabolo. No. Crabolo.
It's a general. Crabulo. Crabulo. It's almost like you could see how Jared Leto would say it in the House of Gucci.
Crabulo. Hank. Hank. This is a podcast where we answer questions.
You need to answer some. This is from Stephanie who writes, Dear John and Hank, our recently saw an article that said plants can grow in lunar soil. This must only be because the soil is here on Earth with a proper amount of light and water and atmosphere. But what if we created a huge terrarium on the moon and we slowly opened it so that atmosphere was created and then plants just kept growing there?
Could that happen? Best wishes, Stephanie? It could. It could.
Look, they probably wouldn't happen exactly that way. And there's also like, I don't think that they just put plants in lunar soil and we're like, all right, good done. I think there's some additives that you need to do, but certainly doable could build a terrarium. And then you'd have the problem of like you sort of let the gases out, but the gases have to be coming from somewhere else.
You have to be bringing like, there has to be some kind of like source for nitrogen. There's some kind of source for carbon and carbon dioxide and oxygen. But you could imagine that a plant could do this. And then you like vent it a little bit at a time.
And then you have a lot of these terrariums. And then the plants are doing a lot of the work, maybe some like human activities doing some of the work and you're filling the moon up with atmosphere. Just like lots of different techniques to bring enough atmosphere to the moon. Now you've got a problem long term, which you need a lot of atmosphere for the moon because it doesn't have a lot of gravity to keep it down.
So you actually need more atmosphere per moon to have a breathable atmosphere. So that because it's going to be a big, big, fluffy atmosphere, because there isn't as much gravity to pull it down. And then you have another problem, which is that because it's so high up, it's easier for it to get like pushed away by the solar wind. So you have to replenish it more frequently, but it's completely technically feasible.
There's nothing to say that this isn't possible. It is just difficult and easier probably to build a lot of domes that you fill up rather than trying to fill up a big fluffy atmosphere all the way around the moon. Well, well, I'm not going either way. I mean, you know what I want to do on the moon?
Swimming. I think it'd be really weird to swim in low gravity. Yeah, I mean, that would be cool. That's what I do.
I feel like it'd be so fun to splash and jump into the pool. I want to go swimming on the moon. Is that too much to ask? This is how you end up not being able to shut down creboolo is because you need a money to put on the moon.
Now he's just replacing a word with another word and that doesn't count as not talking about the word. So you know, you can't be like man, I find the 280 character limit on creboos frustrating. I'm talking about in the future when our new crab app is super popular and we need to shut it down because it's causing harm to the world. But we can't because I need to save money to build a swimming pool on the moon.
Right. And Hank will be like, I'm so close to finally having it all, finally having what I want out of this world, which is to swim on the moon. I'm so close. And once I've swum on the moon, John, I'll finally be complete and I can stop yearning.
I can stop reaching ceaselessly being born back into the past. That's right. That's that's right, John. I'm just one moon swim away from finally being at peace.
But unfortunately, we do have to put our noses to the grinds phone for another 20 years so that I can finally feel complete. Yeah, maybe somebody else can do that. And then I can go swim in their moon pool. This next question comes from Pablo because I'm the only one asking questions today.
Dear John and Hank, where the heck did the phrase run of the mill come from? It makes no sense to me. Is the object running from the mill or to the mill? Surely it's not running of the mill.
What even is a mill? Here's your run of the mill sign off pumpkins and penguins, Pablo. Do you know the answer to this question, John, or do you want to mess about? Do you know the answer to the question?
Well, then let's mess about. Yeah, you know what a mill is. I know what a mill is like I assume that it's like a textile mill and I assume that the run of the mill is like the average, you know, it's not like the first piece made in the run, not the last piece made in the run when the yarn's gotten whatever. It's right in the middle.
That's my guess. It's close. It is actually just whatever the mill made. So if you run a textile mill, apparently, there are some textiles that come off that are, you know, grade A and some that are grade B and some that are like grade F and they're going to be all mixed together and they're going to and this is less the case now.
But back in the day, there were just going to be like some defects, some mistakes, some looser weaves or some dye that was bad. And so you have like the grade A stuff that's perfect and you got to sell that to your top to your clients and then you have your like grade F stuff that's like you're going to make it into potato sacks or whatever. And so in this case, if you get the run of the mill, you just buy whatever the mill made that day and then you you separate it out yourself and you get grade A through grade F and then you deal with it yourself. Yeah.
And you don't know how much of what you're going to get, but like maybe you don't really care that much. So just give me that. I like it. So there you go, Pablo.
There's your answer. It's a little disappointing to me that there's such a clear answer. I was hoping that it was going to lead to a credulous style. I can't even say crabulous anymore.
I forgot the underlying word. Anyway, back to that question about crabs. You just got to send everybody a crab and we want to make a tool to help you do that. But it's probably going to take a while.
One thing you should know about crabulous is that it is 25 bucks a month. I was thinking, how would it work? Is it like per send? Do you like pay?
Do you like have to double click on the little app button and send us five bucks to send everybody in your address book a crab or how do you monetize? Because I think it's cost money. No, yeah, I think it's we will both design and send a crab to all of your friends. Right.
If you pay us $20. Yeah. Okay. And tomorrow you can log back in and get a new crab sent to all your friends for $20 and so on forever.
It's just $20 a day. That's not that much. I don't know the exact way to monetize a tank. But if I've learned one thing from previous social internet experiences, it's that you don't have to monetize it.
All you have to do is gather a lot of attention and then convince venture capitalists that one day you'll be able to monetize it. Yeah. And sell it before they realize. Right.
This next question comes from Drew who asks, Dear Hank and John, my understanding is that humans are covered in microbial life inside and out. And my understanding that these bacteria are at least in some cases pretty important. Presumably, they do not yet inhabit Mars. So my question is, if humans go to Mars and spend a substantial amount of time there, will they have to be really careful about not overusing things like hand sanitizer or soap to maintain their healthy microbiome?
I know that any humans who go to Mars will inevitably bring their bacteria with them. But would there be a risk of like running out of bacteria because the bacteria come from Earth, the bacteria who are about to die, so lute you drew. We have the opposite problem of this, which is that the bacteria will grow out of control. Yeah.
Like, so like on the space station, for example, like we don't have any problems with like not there being not enough bacteria, but we do have problems with like mold growing where it should not grow. It being a little stinky all the time and needing to be careful about where water is so that you don't get weird life happening. But bigger than that, when we send stuff to Mars, we are really careful to not bring microbes with it. And that's almost impossible.
But like, we're very careful to minimize that because good mess up your readings of data. You don't want to like measure life on Mars and be like, we found life on Mars and be like, ah, sorry, that was E. coli from my ham sandwich. And you also don't want to contaminate it generally.
Like, you don't want to like mess with the existing biosphere that might exist on Mars, which it probably doesn't. But like, you wouldn't want to mess with it if it did. But when we go, we're gonna mess with it. We are full.
We are big bags of life, dirty, dirty humans. We cannot sterilize ourselves. We are going to bring life to Mars and not just ourselves. And that's a concern for those those first missions and enough of the concern that a lot of people sort of advocate like not doing it until we better know what's what's up with Mars.
And I understand. Leon Musk is one such person. I mean, Leon Musk, my friend Leon has been very outspoken in his belief that we need to carefully consider all the bacteriological implications of sending humans to Mars at least until 2027. That's, you know, his motto is, let's spend five years looking at this and then make the decision.
It does seem, and I'm not, I'm not certain about this, but it does seem like Leon Musk is winning that argument at the moment. It does not seem like humans are going to be able to rush to Mars quite as quickly as maybe they had hoped a few years ago. And I, for one, think that's great news. It's great news for whatever Martian ecosystem may or may not exist.
That said, do you want to know the fact I don't I'm over the fact that half of ourselves are bacterial and that like when we think of ourselves and our wants and our will, we're thinking about all of that in conversation and consultation with billions of organisms, some of them human, most of them microbiological. I'm over all of that. The one thing I'm not overhang is that one time you told me that on average, as best we can tell, sometimes the average human has more cells that belong to them than they have bacterial cells inside of their bodies and other times they don't. And what decides that is primarily how recently the person has pooped.
Yeah. So you like drop like you drop right back up like I'm mostly me at a particular moment. And it is a particular moment. Now you can also make the case that the digestive system is not the inside of the body, in which case you're always almost all you, you know, very everybody says that everybody says, oh, the digestive system is not the inside of the body, but it obviously is like certainly does affect it.
You know, like if you get if you have a problem, if you're problem with your stomach, you have a problem. If the tube doesn't to but you die. So like it does. It is very sort of intrinsic.
It's hard to argue that it's outside of my body when my body is so deeply dependent upon it. Yeah. The tube got a tube, which reminds me, John, this podcast is brought to you by the tube that goes all the way through the tube in you a plus. Do the rest of the sponsors, I have to tell you something incredible.
I learned something I just read this book, The Woman Beneath the Skin. It is by a German historian about an 18th century German doctor was recommended to me by one of the women who worked on Crash Course European history. I loved this book. It's bonkers.
It's all about like how medicine was practiced in 18th century Germany, especially when it came to women. Yeah. And okay. So this doctor who was a well respected 18th century doctor, he has this whole epic paragraph where he speculates about what happens when a person like say like you're a sewer or whatever, you're, you know, that's the work that you do and you accidentally swallow a pin.
Yeah. What do you think happens when you swallow a pin? I don't know. It sounds bad.
Okay. Let me give you a different example. What do you think happens if you swallow a penny or a tiny piece of corn? I think that without without doing it.
Because we all know what happens. Yeah. Do we? Well, yeah.
Do we? So you swallow it and then it goes through your body and then it comes out the tube. Comes out the other end of the tube. That's what you think happens.
Yeah. Because just like it's on a water slide. This guy has this epic paragraph where he's like, who knows where it's going to come out? It might come out between the toes, might come out in a knee abscess, might come out through the belly button.
He told, he said he said, I heard one time somebody said that they swallowed a pin and it came out of their eye. Who knows? What happens when you swallow something? This is how different the concept of the body was.
How do you never had corn? Well, actually, there's a pretty good chance he had it. This was a piece of insight. I think we got it.
Once corn came to the once we had the Columbian exchange. That's right. That's right. Anyway, today's podcast is also brought to you by Johann Storch.
What happens when you swallow something since 1719? That's why I guess of course it's also brought to you by the moon pool. The moon pool. We will build it.
We will build it. It's like Mark Twain with his printing press. Like, why did Hank go broke? Moon pool?
Moon? We just couldn't give up on that dream of that moon. It would be so cool. I mean, it would be fine.
I don't know. It would be like a seven out of ten. Do you think I could swim up out of a moon pool and then they get all the way out of the water and then crash back down like a dolphin? I'd be like a good reaching whale.
Yeah, maybe. But let me submit that you could also have that experience on earth. No, I'd be like, I'd go like way up. I'm crashing down.
I just know. I'd like hire a helicopter. No, have the helicopter fly 10 feet over the sea and jump into the sea. And it's the same experience.
I actually had to do it. Potentially fatal. I had to do it. Really stupid.
It's all the same thing. You go underwater and then you go down as far as you can swim. And then you have like a compressed air canister and you fill up something really big and then it becomes a big buoyant thing and then it pulls you out and you let go of it the last second because you're going so fast and you just go, whoo. I pay for that.
For me. That's all about the timing. I pay 2999 for that. Well, that's significantly less expensive than building a moon pool.
I would almost be willing to like have one of those custom made for you if you would stop obsessing so much over crappulow.us if you catch my drift. I don't think these things are related to each other. We got to get through the sponsors, John. Fine.
Fine. Last sponsor. It's crebulo.us. $20 a day.
What about you? We're going to heal the world. It's $20 a day. It's $600 a month.
It's better to say $20 a day. And what serves you to provide for $20 a day? Oh, we send out crab emails. Oh, to your users.
No, to their friends. I don't know, John. It's $600 a month. But you know, there are those ridiculous things that rich people spend money on, you know, like where they like spend all the money just to have the ridiculous thing.
You know, like what is ultimately what is a supercar except for crebulo.us? Yes, you can get a grab and it proves your status. Right. Yes.
Oh, I wonder if there's any way we could make these crebulo's less fungible. Maybe entirely entirely unfungible. Some of them to a billion dollar idea. That's definitely going to keep being a thing.
We also have a project for awesome message. We're all over the place today. Actually, we're not. We're not.
We're just in one place. We just keep going. Keep going back to that village that we started in. We also have a project for awesome message from Alison Martin from Madison, Wisconsin to Ben Anderson.
Thanks for introducing me to this community years ago. I've been shaped by and grown so much from being a nerdfighter and I owe it all to you. I miss you and look forward to our next random adventure. Also, shout out to my other nerdfighter friends, Lily, Gina, and Kristen.
Thank you for being yourselves and striving to be the best version of who that is. Thank you, Alison. And I don't know how to say thank you in any way other than to offer you a 30% discount at crebulo.us right now. That's right.
For only $400 a month, Alison, you can have access to all of crebulo.us's features, including less fungible tokens, not entirely unfungible and LFTs and access to the moon pool if and when we build it, which we totally will. Don't worry. Yeah, it's got to be at our event. We're going to give people when they are disappointed by our event, we're going to give them 30 minutes in the moon pool.
That's such a good idea, Hank, to say, listen, when we get to a $4 billion valuation and we will, we will build a moon pool. Yeah. This episode of Your 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 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. 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. So that's why I'm wearing quince this summer. You can make your summer wardrobe easier by going going to quince.com slash deer hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.
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John, this question comes from Rebecca who asks, deerhank and John, while watching my dog after she gets up from the floor, I had a thought. Does snakes ever have to stretch? Surpents and stretches, Rebecca, 11. Rebecca, thank you for your question.
I thought about this a lot and then I got halfway through and I thought, started thinking about it wrong. So here's what happened. You said do snakes ever have to stretch and I thought about that. I really did.
But then I started thinking about whether they scratch and I thought you were asking whether they scratch and then I got really obsessed with the fact that like if you're a snake and you have an itch anywhere on your body, it's like having an itch right in the middle of your back. Great observation. They can't scratch. They have nothing to scratch with.
Hey, what a hard life. I feel like I have to rub it on stuff. I feel like I hate to interrupt you, but I feel like I have to tell you something. What?
I just got my. So once a day I get a notification from a social network. It's the only social network that I use regularly and I am I am the oldest user. Do you know what it is?
What your notification is? Yes. No, it's you don't know what the social network is. I know what the social network is.
What is it? It's dicta. No, it's not. Oh, it's be real.
Oh, you got it. Yeah, I couldn't get be real because I felt too old. None of my friends are going to sign up for be real. So I wasn't really listening to you because I only have two minutes once I get the notification and it's supposed to be real.
So I be he's being real right now. I had to be real in that moment. You know, Hank, like that's how it is. Who do you be real with?
Sarah. Sarah, she's my only be real friend. Oh, that's cute. Yeah.
All right. You're entirely forgiven and I love it. Yeah. Yeah.
It's just a way that Sarah and I can show each other pictures every day. Isn't that how the kids use it? I have no idea because I have assumed that no one I know uses be real. It's pretty great.
Now I feel like I should get it. So I can be real. I'll send you an invite. I've thought that I would really like all of my friends to be on be real because it's just nice to know what everybody's up to.
But it's definitely a real life thing. It's not like, you know, like I can't see being famous on be real, but for me, that's one of the charms of it. I bet somebody could figure it out. You think there's going to be real celebrities?
Yeah. Well, you know what I think there will be. I think there will be be crab celebrities. Mine you.
Once a day, you get a notification. You have to find a crab within two minutes and photograph it. Those are the rules. No, you just have to pretend to be a crab and you have to do a good job.
Once a day, stop what you're doing wherever you are. The reason I got be real, by the way, is I was speaking at a college. I was speaking to like 15 people. And all at once, all 15 of them got something in their pockets, pulled out their pockets, and immediately took a photograph.
And I was like, what just happened? That was very weird. It was a little bit scary, all. And they were like, it's be real.
You got to get it. And I was like, okay. And then I showed it to Sarah. And we really enjoy it together.
Nice to you. Sorry. I wasn't so long story short, I didn't listen to the question. Two snakes.
Shrek. And we don't, I think they definitely do because I see them stretch. I see them. Maybe they don't stretch because they're uncomfortable, but I see them reaching for a place they have not yet gotten to, which is what I think of as stretch.
Very much as a stretch. Apparently, we don't, of course, the minds of snakes are unknowable, unfortunately. However, there are, there is evidence that if you put a snake in a container where it cannot move its body to full length or be able to, I don't know exactly what the thing is, but you can have a container too small where a snake isn't able to stretch in the way that a snake naturally would be able to, and it is bad for the snake. So in that way, yes, snakes not only do stretch, they need to, that's the only answer I could come up with for you, Rebecca.
But I spent almost all of my time thinking about whether they scratch, which is not what you asked. But before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we've answered so many questions, but let's answer just one more. It's been a real mess today. This question comes from Hillary.
I'm sorry to everybody who asked a question this week. We'll try to do better next week. Hillary writes, Dear John and Hank, I spend a lot of time listening to podcast, and I've noticed that sometimes the host will say something like, let's take a break, and then there's a little ditty that plays for three to ten seconds, and they return and then continue the podcast. Hold on, Hillary.
I'm really sorry about this, but let's take a break. And we're back. Thank you for your patience, Hillary. Lots of podcast-like ad breaks, but is there a purpose for this sort of short music break?
Not Clinton, Duff, or Swank Hillary? I'm curious if John knows the answer to this question. I have, there are multiple answers depending on what podcast we're talking about. It's almost always one thing.
If it's a real podcast, yes, but a lot of podcasts are ported from radio. Like if it's fresh air, it's sometimes pausing for station identification or pausing for ad breaks on the radio that don't exist on the podcast. But it is almost always, correct me if I'm wrong, Hank, whatever it's called, dynamic advertising, who did he who's? Yes, exactly.
It's dynamic advertising, who did he who's where some people are getting ads, but you are not. Right. Right now, there isn't because no one bought it. Yeah.
So what it really means, Hillary, is that you are not a desirable consumer. And that's on you, Hillary. You should reflect. Every time you don't hear an advertisement, you should reflect, what am I doing wrong that's preventing me from being marketed to?
And this is interesting because I used to say on tangents, I'd say, and now we're going to pause for an ad and we'll be right back. But now, but they're like, you can't say that because sometimes there's no ads here, so you have to say, we're going to take a short break, we'll be right back. And in the studio, what we do in that situation is we say, we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. And then I'm like, welcome back everybody.
There's no pause. Of course not. We don't go get a drink. No.
Yeah. Yeah. It is one of those I also did not know about dynamic advertising, who do the who's until quite recently. And so on the old episodes of the Anthropocene Reviewed, I will say, like, and now a word from our sponsor.
And often there is no word from our sponsor because nobody wants to advertise the Hillary. It's just a little bit of noise, a little bit of song. And on doing it, John, we don't do that because we don't have to because we do the fake ads, which we did before way before we had ads. And so we just like slotted in after the fake ads.
And it feels naturalish. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's nice to our sponsors for today. Whoever they may be. Yes. I mean, but let's face it, they're probably policy genius.
So thanks to them. Yeah. Only you listening. No, who advertised to you today?
Yeah, we'd like to know. All right. Hank, there's news from Nancy Wimbledon. There's proper news.
All right. I have a manager. All right. All right.
All right. He is a young man. He has a lot of hair. He has an exceptional amount of hair.
And I would say like a 930 PM shadow. Like enough scruff that you're like, well that's something, but not a beard. And he does have a name. His name is so much better than any name you've ever heard.
It's Johnny Jackson. Johnny Jackson's not bad. Johnny Jackson. That's the only way I'm going to be referring to him from now on.
He's AFC Wimbledon's new manager coming to us from Charlton Athletic. He is an athletic person himself. He looks fit and trim and his name is Johnny Jackson. How do you say Johnny Jackson with an English accent?
Don't answer. Don't answer. Don't answer. I just don't answer.
It depends on which kind of English I want. God, I was offended. Somewhere Oliver is not getting a second bowl of soup. What?
The way that you just did was like a seventh grader performing Oliver Twist. Well, Johnny Jackson is a new BBC voice. He's the new manager of AFC Wimbledon. He started his career at Top of Hutsburgh.
And after a series of loan spells, whatever that may be, he ended up at Colchester United. A real champion there. And there's other names of places. There's Preston North End, Hull City.
So, Tranmere Rovers, Jettinum Town, and Southern United. South and... South and... At Knox County, in 2009, they say 2009 sometimes.
Jackson signs for Knox County, signing a free contract on an undisclosed fee. Wow, he's got quite a story career, John. Goes all the way through, he's not got his update about AFC Wimbledon yet. We might have to type that within ourselves.
So, two things, first off, there are moments when that accent is so good, which makes the other moments so distressing. That makes me, that really lifted my spirits. I'm glad, because there are moments when I'm like, oh, that sounds just like the BBC. And then there are other moments where I'm like, whoof, he didn't hit that note.
So, but I really, I think what is so distressing about it is the percentage of time it's good. If it was always bad, those flat notes would become routine, but as they're so interspersed, that you're like, oh God, every time. God, Jesus, what the hell, how did that happen? Secondly, I just like to remind everybody listening to this podcast that for over a year of my life, Hank talked that way all the time.
Don't have to bring it up. Well, you did, I said, I wonder how you say it's demon in an exact sense. Don't do it. And then you did it.
And so, that's the cost of talking in English accent that I get to remind everybody that you faked an English accent for over a year. What is the news from Mars? Well, I'm excited about Johnny Jackson. Johnny Jackson, and the news from Mars this week, researchers have found evidence that suggests that Mars had liquid water flowing on it as recently as probably after 700 million years ago, which is a long time ago, but Mars is old.
So, scientists are pretty dang sure that Mars had liquid water 3 billion years ago, which is a much longer time than 700 million, though like an easy multiple away. So, for clarity. So while the ongoing epoch that we are inside of now has been colder and drier compared to that ancient watery period, researchers from the National Space Science Center in the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been studying data generated by their Zhurong rover. So, that's the thing that's going on right now.
And we're starting to get papers out of that. And that's what one of this is. And they've been using its spectrometers and cameras to study rocks and the scientists found that some of those rocks have water molecules in them, forming what are called hydrated minerals. So, it's not like water, but it's water molecules among minerals.
And they also found duric rust, which is a type of hard crust that's formed by minerals that are deposited by water. And on Mars, they would have needed a lot of water coming from groundwater or melting subsurface ice for that to happen. So, based on what they observed the scientists estimated that these features could be as young as 700 million years old, meaning that there was water relatively recently. So, Well, long time ago, dinosaurs 65 million years ago, 700 million as a lot more.
But that will be a long time for the liquid water on a planet from 3 billion to 700 million years ago. And also kind of unlucky that like, we didn't, we weren't around for it. Yeah, we missed the window. That's most of the time.