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 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 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 Eigen John! Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions. Give you to be his advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. I got a silver plate. I got a silver plate and on Christmas morning I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna tell Katherine that she can stay in bed and I'm gonna go downstairs and make eggs Benedict and I'll bring it up to her on that crystal plate.
So we're gonna say, because there's no plate like chrome for the holidays. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
How are you doing John? I'm good. I took like 17 really intense gulps of late stage Twitter yesterday right before signing off of the service from my verified account for good. It's now being run by our mutual friend, Peyton, who's having a great time with it.
I did see the first tweet that she wrote as me. So for those who don't know, I stopped using Twitter as myself and became the awesome coffee club. Our coffee subscription service for charity. And then you couldn't change your name back because that's not allowed anymore on Twitter.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I can't change my name.
So it's kind of a difficult situation that I was in. But Peyton's first tweet as me is so great. It was, now that John is logged out of this account, you're just screaming your weird opinions at a Harry Styles fan who's dressed up as a coffee company. That's it.
I feel free. I feel like my Twitter is in better hands than it ever has been. The least capable and qualified person to run my Twitter over the last several years has been me. And so finally I've been ousted from the job I was never suited for.
I just during the recording of Delete This, which is my podcast with Katherine, where we talk about my social media use. I deleted Twitter from my phone and I pledged to not use it during until January at the latest or the earliest. And just see how that goes. But immediately I noticed something, John, which is that people continued to have opinions about me.
But I couldn't do anything about it. I just have to let it happen. Well, or you could just not look. And then the opinions that you don't know about.
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. And that and yet. Yes.
Yes. That is the Twitter. None of us want that. Right.
None of us want to be misunderstood. And Twitter, especially right now, constantly misunderstood. Twitter right now seems very eager to misunderstand me. I haven't actually been paying much attention to how it's understanding you.
I'm not in the center of the observable universe. And I'll tell you what, they are not being nice to him. That's so funny. I have no idea what people are saying to you.
But I know what they're saying to me. It's not nice. After the first thing Peyton texted me, which you logged into my account was, Oh, wow, people are not nice to you. Yeah, which I think like she knows more like what gets tweeted at me.
So which means that they treat you worse than they treat me. I don't know. It's okay. People on Twitter are really angry.
And I don't blame them because when I'm on Twitter, I am also really angry. And so I understand why they would feel riled up and suspicious. Because when I'm on Twitter, I also feel riled up and suspicious. I do, however, I just want to say this for the record.
I am not participating in a vast conspiracy to protect certain public health officials from prosecution. I have never phoned an FBI office on the topic. I've never phoned an FBI office hard stop. It's never come up.
So it would be great. It'd be great if I could be excluded from that discourse, that particular discourse. We are going into the end of the year here. I think this is actually our last podcast of 2022 together.
What are your big what? What would you like to make in 2023? I'll go first to give you a little bit of I would like to make abs abs. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to make you abs and I was like, we do that enough.
We're good on ads. I just want to write policy genius ads. And I don't I don't know why they limit me to one a month. It doesn't seem fair.
I love policy genius. And I have a gift for advertising for them. And they only let me write one each month. I'd like to be a full time policy genius ad writer.
No, so you don't want to you want to get into advertising. That's right. I want to become a fitness influencer. I want to become America's leading ab veritizer.
Yeah, that's it. That's my that's what I want to make in 2023. While I was making Twitter in 2022, I want to make an abs in 2023. Do you want to people to be able to see them?
Like you want them to be visible? Or do you want to be in there? No, I don't know. I just want them to do a good job of supporting my torso when it stands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what my abs are good at. I have got some after 10 years of Pilates. Yeah, I know they're in there.
I can't see but I know they're in there. You just sock me in the stomach and no worries. That's great. As long as they're helping hold you up, that's all that matters.
That's right. What do I want to make? I want to I've been thinking about this, John. Yeah.
I've been thinking about the the time that humanity has spent asking what stuff is made out of. It's a really interesting question. And we know quite a bit now and and almost present that knowledge as if it is self-evident. It's not.
You can atoms are so small that you would you don't even believe it. Like you can't. Well, they're also very weird. They're they're small and weird.
They're tiny and they're extremely weird. The fact that there are different ones, they remain made out of other things. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's very weird. It's very weird that they have different numbers of electrons. That's weird.
Yeah. And it's yes. It's very strange. And figuring that out.
If you pitched that to somebody 5000 years ago, they would have been like, I don't know. That doesn't that seems a little counterintuitive to me. Well, yeah. I mostly thought that there was solid stuff.
There was wind or air and there was liquid which was water and then there was fire, which also seemed like a thing. Or maybe there was energy or maybe there's like metal versus wood. Sometimes people thought anyway, I think that the I think that we spend too much time sort of being told that there are atoms and not enough time being confronting the reality that there was no moment when we realized there were atoms. There were lots of people who argued for a long time and try and interrogated their beliefs every way they could or their ideas until one day everybody was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's atoms. But nobody noticed that day. It was a thing that occurred, but no one noticed it because it happened gradually. And then we sort of retroactively say, ah, we figured it out on this day when really we didn't.
We just kept arguing until we stopped arguing. Right. We treat it as an event, but it's only an event in retrospect in the experience of it. It was a process.
And so if you can can introduce people to that process, that historical process that led to us understanding or having at least some understanding of what stuff is made out of, you can actually help people understand what stuff is made out of on a deeper level. I think that's a really cool project. I think that would be a great thing for you to make in 2023. I'm going to make an I'm going to make an ad, but you do that.
I also think it's valuable as we live through science continuing to progress, which really happened a lot in the last few years. And I just have noticed a lot of ways that we did that badly because it was because we had been sort of pitched a certain idea of what science is that isn't accurate, you know, yeah, it's it's accurate to say we're in a process. We're in a process. But man, do people love an event.
Yeah, almost everything is a process, but people love an event. It's like how almost everything is a spectrum, but people love a binary people. People just love the idea that it can all be distilled down to zeros and ones. And I don't blame them.
Wouldn't that be lovely? Alas and a lack. Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one from Catherine who writes, here's John and Hank, do a quirk of scheduling every once in a while. I spend a couple hours working in a closed library by myself.
By the way, have you noticed that I'm a little more present today? Does it feel like I'm here in a way that I haven't been here in the last few weeks? You know, I didn't notice that much, honestly, but I'm glad I'm glad I'm back, baby. I'm here.
The TV is not even on. Of course I have work to do, but I feel like the opportunity should be taken advantage of being alone in this closed library while it's available. Any and I'll do these advice in general shenanigans are welcome. Brian, prejudice, Catherine.
John, I think that the like number one thing, first, I gotta make sure there's no security cameras that I got to record me, but I do desperately want to just run around screaming. I think that it deserves it. I think that the walls need a little bit of noise. Yeah.
And there's the whole thing where like, yes, yes, and also it's going to feel good for you, Catherine, like screaming in a large space that you're alone in feels so much better than you think it will. I remember I used to have to work sometimes. I wouldn't say I had to work. I used to volunteer to work over Christmas.
Like somebody had to be in the offices and most people had kids and stuff when I worked at Bookless Magazine. And so I would volunteer to be there that week between Christmas and New Year's, especially like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. And I would be utterly alone inside this building, just like doing the bare minimum, Catherine. I mean, I don't know if they can retroactively dock my pay, but I would say that I was quite quitting way before quiet quitting my Christmas Eve.
And so I just be in the office on Christmas Eve, making sure that nothing went wrong, making sure that like, you know, the printers did all the things that they were supposed to do that day, maybe laying out the last version or whatever. But like most of the day, I was just like walking around being like, I survived a zombie apocalypse. Like I am in a post-apocalyptic world where the entire building belongs solely to me. And just that feeling was quite joyful.
That's pretty cool. I have two suggestions for Catherine. I think that you should buy, you should try and buy a lot of small things. So there's like, you can go on eBay and look for just like, if you can get like $20 of like little, like plastic babies or something, something like that.
Not plastic babies, literally anything else. I think there's a plastic babies thing. Oh, there is. I'm just opposed to it.
Okay. Well, we get like some some Pokemon maybe people got too many Pokemon. They're going to sell a bunch of money. Love it.
Inexpensive way. Love it. And then let the Pokemon live in the library. Oh, yes.
People find when I bring them to the desk, you say, Oh, that's yours now. And or you could put it back. It's found you as much as you found it. If you don't want it, you can put it back, you leave it for the next person, but it wants a home and maybe you're that home.
So I told you up to you. Yeah. And the only way you can you could probably do this if you're not alone in the library, it's easier to do if you're alone in the library. Otherwise, you're going to be really sneaking around and like, it's like you're shoplifting, but you're doing the opposite.
Second, I don't know when people are going to come in, but I do want to do an experiment on those people. So what I would do if I was alone in the library, but people are going to show up soon is I would I would once a week do a different scent, like the smell of oranges or vanilla and just sort of spray it around. And then everybody comes in and there and like you see what people notice what they mentioned to you. Well, I like so as a very nasally sensitive person, I feel like that's too much.
Just got some extremely low levels like cutting oranges. If you're releasing a scent out into a public library, I would argue that's a form of attacking the other patrons of the library. You like the Pokemon though? But I love the idea of the Pokemon or related figurines or I was thinking Nerf darts would be funny like to imply that there was some kind of grand to Nerf war that occurred, but it was like decades ago.
So it's just like somehow we're still taking off the Nerf darts from the great Nerf war of 1982. Yeah, you can get 65 many Pokemon for $20 plus $5 shipping on eBay right now. Well, there you go. I mean, that's not right number.
I see it's a little expensive, but like that cheap. No, I wanted it to be cheap. I bet if it was babies, it'd be cheaper. Oh, Hank, what?
I can get you an entire Noah's Ark worth of small plastic animals for $12.95. We're talking and it's brand new 54 brand new pieces, mini jungle animals, realistic, wild vinyl, plastic animal learning, party favors, toys for boys, girls, kids, toddlers, four small animals, playset cupcake, toddler man, these names of products on Amazon are really getting out of control. Well, how about this one, John? Mini Babies, 200 pieces, one inch mini plastic babies for baby shower, ice cube, game, tiny babies, baby party favorite supplies decorations for $13.99.
Okay, the word baby in there. One, two, three, four, five times. You are definitely getting this one first. Yeah.
Okay, I mean, I like it, but, um, babies, babies, babies, babies, if this baby starts showing up in the library, people are going to be so freaked out. I like it, Hank, but not as much as I like 150 pieces mini resin duck miniature figures, micro fairy garden landscape, aquarium dollhouse ornament, potted plants, decoration DIY slime charms for Christmas birthday party 100 yellow plus 50 multi color rubber duckies for $11.99. I think for a $19.99 though, you can get jumping smile, popper, spring launcher, choice bouncy party favors for kids, unique mini toys, party supplies and goodie bag stuffers, 24 figurines in a beautiful display box fit as stocking stuffers. How can chat GPT be so good in those descriptions be so bad?
Because these, these people know what they're doing more than chat GPT does for sure. I mean, by the way, you're welcome for solving all of your Christmas needs people. Just head on, head on to Amazon and get 26 pack mini animal plush choice set cute small stuff animal keychain set goodie bag fillers carnival prizes for kids assortment kid Valentine gifts, Easter egg party filter filter party, Easter egg filter party favors. What's the word?
A filter in there. Yeah. So I think I was trying to make sure that it filters out the bad results. It's in the system.
Yeah. I'm sure there's a reason it's there. I do feel like we should venture that we have actual great Christmas presents available that aren't from like the lowest rung of Amazon, which is itself the lowest rung of e-commerce. We have, for instance, a subscription to the awesome coffee club at awesome coffee club.com with 100% of the proceeds going to support lower maternal mortality in Sierra Leone.
So you gotta say you gotta say you gotta say awesome coffee, coffee from the coffee. Awesome. Coffee for part of favors for for dad Christmas present birthday present every every present good for filter Easter egg coffee. Thank you.
That was much better. I hope to learn a lot more from you in 2023 about writing advertising. I don't know why you're writing about why I don't know why you're writing about what stuff is made of when you could be writing the true opus of our time how to write ads, fun birthday party, happy kids, children, toddlers, four year olds, eight year olds, mini games, Barbie dolls. John, this next question comes from anonymous who asks Dear Hank and John, how fast do we make pee?
So fast. I'll tell you why I know that it's fast. Yeah. And this is what they call good science.
If I drink if I drink 32 ounces of Gatorade, yeah, I need to be in like 12 minutes. I think we make the in 12 minutes. If we make pee pretty dang fast, John, in a water can be absorbed through your stomach in as fast as five minutes. And then it is in your and then it's in your blood and then your your kidneys immediately taking that blood.
So some of that some of that water you drink is in your bladder within I'd say at least within 10 minutes for sure. Wow. Wow. But I also, um, you pee about 2000 at most, you pee 2000 milliliters per day.
If you so that would be if you're drinking two liters a day, you probably are producing about two liters of P a day. Um, and they actually sometimes doctors want to make sure that you're producing the right amount of pee and they will have you collect all of the pee in a day to make sure that you're doing it, doing all the good peeing. And so 2000 liters in a day, that's going to give you an average of how much you can, how much pee you can make per minute. But if you drink more than two two liters a day, which is probably not gonna be a little tricky.
You can really, I think you should really crank out some pee. And I, I, from what I can tell, no one has ever done research on like, how fast the kidneys can make, like is it, I imagine like a sponge, like if I squeezed it, it just like I'm pouring out, like how fast could it, if it had to? And I know that somebody must know this, but I couldn't find it in my research. Well, I feel like there's no way that I drink more than two liters of water a day.
And I'm including diet, Dr. Pepper in water as you should. So basically the diet, Dr. Pepper that I've been drinking during this podcast, some of this probably already in my bladder.
Yeah, great. I think so. Yes. Beautiful.
Pretty amazing. I mean, it's a beautiful thing that we have access to our bodies. I want to go to the 2023 with a sense of collaboration between myself and my body as if we are working together for the same goals, which I think that broadly we are. Not only a sense of collaboration, perhaps if I could take it a step further, what about if we go into 2023 with a sense of integration into our bodies that ourselves and our bodies are inextricable from one another?
I believe it is that too far for you, but I don't know if I can believe it in my soul. I have been, I've been, I've been a culturated too much. Wow. Hey, Green, emerging from 2022 with a belief in the soul.
What a journey he's been on. I don't know that that's what I said. That's literally what you said. I don't know if I believe it in my soul and you can't believe something in your soul unless you have a soul.
Yeah, you know what I mean. This next question comes from Diva, who writes, Dear John and Hank, is Hank on a journey of meaning? No, that's not the question. I love that I said that you're on a journey of meaning and now everyone else thinks that you're on a journey of a very specific kind of meaning and I'm just leaning into it, man.
I was walking through the hallway at school and I heard a girl saying, can a horse and a dinosaur have children? And my immediate thought was yes, of course, but now I'm not so sure. I mean, for Diva, was your immediate thought was yes, of course. Okay, can we have a horse, a sword or a dine, a dine horse?
Not afraid of brain eating amoeba diva? Well, first off, someone, someone, someone thinks they're wrong with this. First of all, you need to be terrified of brain eating amoeba diva. It should be the first thing you worry about when you wake up and the last thing you worry about before you go to sleep.
How you're doing in school does not matter if a brain eating amoeba comes for you. Whether or not your friends really like you, they do, doesn't matter if a brain eating amoeba comes for you. Oh, God, I'm so scared of brain eating amoeba. Here's a couple reasons why a horse and a dinosaur can't have a baby diva.
Yeah, biggest reason. I don't want to handle this delicately because I know little kids listen to the podcast, but the biggest reason is that they did not live at the same time. Well, I mean, that seems like something that all people of all ages should be well aware of. Well, I don't know.
I mean, nobody's born knowing anything, but yeah, that's true. I'm not worried about that knowledge getting out is all. Yeah, you can't, but if we can make a dinosaur, something that doesn't exist can't have a child with something that does exist. Is that accurate?
Yes, I think so. I guess it depends on the definition of some of your words, but things with the soul and we have babies with things with the soul. So oh my God. So, there's a bunch of problems, but they're definitely, they're so far apart, even if they did exist at the same time, they're very far apart genetically and would not be it'd be like a horse trying to have a baby with an ostrich.
It's for a turtle. Maybe closer to an ostrich, honestly. Yeah, I know that ostriches are technically dinosaurs, but what I'm saying, like, because all the like birds are what's left of dinosaurs, isn't that basically right? Yeah.
But turtles give off more of a dinosaur vibe. I feel like, and I know we're not trying to get too deep into soul discussion, but I feel like turtles have way more of a dinosaur soul than say an ostrich does. Well, I feel like the thing to look at is the DNA. And I mean, it's interesting to think about like what, and I don't know that a lot of research has actually been done on this, but like what are the things that actually make it not possible for different species to have the lines?
Yeah, because it is fuzzy. They're lines and tigers can have babies, but they're not fertile. But polar bears and grizzly bears can have babies and they are fertile. You get a perfectly fertile grower bear is what they call them.
They do exist. Coyotes and German shepherds. In fact, there's one in my backyard. Do you want to know the weirdest version of this?
This is a sort of a science digression. But there's a there's several species of South American, South American salender. I don't know how many. Let's say eight or 10.
And each of them can interbreed with each other and they're sort of geographically distributed from the north to the south. But the ones from the very far south cannot interbreed from the ones with the ones from the very far north, because they're too different. But each of the steps in between, they can all interbreed so that the ones all the ones with a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than for the babies. But all the way, if you go from the very far south to the very far north, you can't anymore.
So super weird. So Diba, it actually is really complicated. And we can't be totally sure, but we're pretty sure dinosaurs and horses could not make a dinoce. Yeah, I don't want to get into like the physical how it would happen.
But it seems like that's a relatively genetically, I don't think genetically it would be very challenging. Yes. We have a question from David that's critically important for us to answer. Hank David writes, Dear John and Hank, I received an offer for a job in the United Kingdom.
I'm from the US. Congratulations, David, in advance on your health care. It's a good job. It pays well.
And they're happy to sponsor me for immigration. I'm excited and a bit nervous, but there is a problem. Hank, without reading the question, can you guess what the problem is? Hmm.
It doesn't have to do with what it would have to do with love, John. The problem is love. The problem is way more serious than that, unfortunately. The problem is that the job is in Milton Keynes.
If I moved to Milton Keynes, why become a fan of the franchise? Can I still wear my Wimbledon scarf available now at dftba.com? David really wrote that good job, David. Nothing rhymes with comma David.
I wouldn't wear my Wimbledon scarf, David. I might keep that one in the dresser for really something. Really? Is it not going to deal?
Is it not going to wear it? Yeah. Is there worries? I would have a little bit of a worry wearing it.
I definitely think you go to a sports game. There's always fans of the other team. It's not like that, Hank. It's really not like that.
Okay. It's really not like that. Like just when you're walking around town, can you not wear it? Could you go to a game where it's AFC, Milton versus Milton Keynes and wear your AFC, Milton and scarf there?
In the Milton Keynes section? No, you could not. But in the stadium, you could. If you are in the Wimbledon section of the stadium, which has a police escort that brings them in and out of the stadium.
Yes. Yeah. Oh boy. I don't know how I thought that this was all fun and games.
It feels less fun and games now. Well, Hank, I don't want to rehash the history here, but they stole a community's football club, the institution itself. Well, but then they're probably of the Wimbledon could be mad at Milton Keynes, but they shouldn't be mean to us back. Oh, I think you're confused about Milton Keynes fans.
I am. They like and they choose to identify with that. Like that. They're like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why they always sing because they're officially known as MK Don's.
Okay. They have nothing to do with Wimbledon. And that's why they always sing at the games. We're keeping the Don's keeping the Don's and that's just the very thought that's that's the beginning of the songs, not the end of them.
Yeah. Don't wear your scarf is what we're getting. I mean, the truth is David 99% of people aren't going to care that you're wearing a scarf. But the 1% of people might not be that great to hang out with anyway.
So don't don't wear the scarf, but you don't have become a MK fan. That's not a that's not a card. Don't do it yourself off before you said. I've learned something.
I really appreciate that. Yeah. You can take the job. I mean, I will say and I'm a little biased on this front, David, but ask yourself as possible for you to live outside the city limits of Milton Keynes.
It can't be that big. It can't be hard to commute in. Just take the train, man. That's very small.
Oh, it just got official city status like a year ago. Just went to Bletchley. Yeah, we've been beautiful Bletchley or Gefert English place names. You just cannot make them up Bletchley.
So cool. Grimsby. Who names who's sitting in a town like one big old squad who's like who's sitting in a pub? You know, the town's just getting started and it's the six families who are in the town and one lady says to another, what do you think we should call it?
Well, my name's Bigel and your name is swad. Maybe we should call it Bigel swad. I don't know. It's for now.
It's for now. Do you think people in big old swad and games you could get there? Do you think people in Bigel swad like no? You know what I mean?
Like do people in Grimsby no or do they just say like I live in Grimsby the way I used to say like I live in 86 and ditch without ever thinking about it. And then people would be like ditch. And I'd be like, yeah, no, ditch road. You've never been on the road.
You know what I'm talking about, ditch. It just becomes part of your vocabulary. And I assume if you live in Bigel swad, it doesn't seem like a weird place. No, I'm sure it doesn't seem like a place where hobbits live.
Yeah. Oh, God, that reminds me actually, that's any podcast is brought to you by Bigel swad England, Bigel swad England. It's happening up the Bigels up the Bigels. I just so chuffed as they would say this podcast is also brought to you by the Dinors.
The Dinors. Thank you of a team. It's not possible, but yet. Bigel swad does have a team, by the way, Bigel swad FC.
They play in the seventh tier of English football. And if Milton Keynes wanted to have a team, they could have just taken Bigel swad FC and risen them up through the ranks like Wimbledon had to after our team was stolen from us. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Hank Soul. Hank Soul, he denies that it exists, but then often refers to it.
And as my guest is brought to you by 54 pieces, mini bear toy, 4.7 inch mini plush bear soft tiny bear doll stuff, tiny bear 14 girls, boys, adults, DIY keychain birthday wedding Christmas party favors. It's really hard. It's such a it's just it's just such a good brand name, you know. We also have a project for awesome message to read from Jessica from Minnesota to Hank John and Nerdfighteria.
I'm so proud to have been part of this community for the past decade. I've learned so much about the world and myself because of it. Thank you to each and every one of you for creating a space for growth and truth. I can't wait for the next decade.
DFTBA. Oh, thank you so much. So nice. Thank you, Jessica.
And thanks for donating to the P4A. 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 like 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 dftv.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark. When you build a Shopify, you're building with tools that already work at every scale.
All you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest. You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash Dear Hank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash Dear Hank. With new subscription only, while supplies last until September 27th, 2026.
See you website for more details. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed. My kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to Quince.
I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from Quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints. In fact sometimes I could compliment 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.
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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?
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Head to factormills.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 you website for more details. John, I just got a giant clock. I'd say.
Oh yeah. I'd say it's a dad joke. No, it's a little more than three feet long. It's currently got the wrong time on it but I got it so I could have a count down to the product for awesome.
I count down during the project for awesome. It's so big. Oh, nice. That's cool.
I'm excited for this year's P4A. I've been making a lot of pottery. Ooh, that's smart. Yeah.
P4A pottery. I've been doing a lot of angler fish art. That's great too. I'm almost done.
The problem is I can only do it at the end of the day because the paint that I'm using kind of needs to be a little loopy. So I can't. I was like, I'm going to air out overnight. You got like a 60 minute window before you need to get out of there.
Yeah. Yeah. All right, Nick, I have a question that's about one of your areas of interest but I find interesting. It's from Madison who writes, Dear John and Nick, I know you said that the water on Mars is not drinkable but do you think I could drink it through a life straw?
Really thirsty? Madison. This is a great question. So for those who don't know a life straw, I could stick a life straw into the White River, which as far as I know is the dirtiest body of water possible and drink the water through the life straw and I would be okay because it filters out all of the toxins and parasites and whatnots.
So could you drink Martian water through a life straw? No. You're not worried about. You're not worried about parasites.
You are worried about toxins and the life straw will not filter out a bunch of stuff that could be pretty dangerous for you. Like lead, like you can't, I stick it in the ocean and drink it because it's going to have just as much salt. It was like little sodium and chloride ions that make up the saltiness of water. They're so tiny they're just going to go right through.
And same for the stuff on Mars. We're talking about dangerous perchlorate salts. I don't think a life straw would filter out but you can. I just want to be clear.
You can absolutely distill Martian water and drink it. You just have to boil off the water, leave all of the whatever behind just the same way that you would distill seawater and be able to drink it. So it would sort of be a desalination plant where you boil the water, the water goes up as water vapor and that is pure distilled sweet, sweet water and then all the gross stuff is just like literally left behind to solids. Yep.
Correct. That would be cool. I would love, I have no desire to go to Mars. None.
Westing. There is no amount of money you could pay to go to Mars but I would love to drink the first glass of Martian water. Wow. I feel like they're putting yourself way up on a pedestal there.
You can't. This is got to have somebody else. You got to have a better choice. Well, of course, I don't think that I'm qualified to drink the first glass of Martian water.
I'm not imagining a world where people fly to Mars, capture a little bit of Martian water, fly back to Earth and then distill it and hand it to me, Hank. I'm not Louis XIV. I'm just proposing a hypothetical in which I would be willing to do that in a way that I would not be willing to, for instance, go to Mars. Well, it's going to be physically identical to distilled water anywhere else.
So, I could just pretend next time I'm in any map of it. If you want. John, I want you to taste this. It tastes exactly like distilled Martian water.
We have to use distilled water when we make our secret family hot sauce and I don't like it. I don't like the way it tastes. It definitely has a different taste. Yeah, but it is essential for hot sauce making.
So, if you believe it, if you say, like I'm not trying to discount your opinion, which is what that sounded like, I didn't, I would not have known that. Well, because if you're going to ferment stuff for a long time, you can't have any weird dishes. Okay, you can't have anything in there. You want to make sure it's real muffin.
Yeah. This is making me hungry. Well, I'm going to have for lunch. What do I have after this?
I don't know, but we're sending you some of our hot sauce for Christmas. So, hopefully you'll enjoy it. It's called societal collapses in the air. Oh my gosh, you guys are adorable.
It's something that Timothy Chalamet said during a press interview. It's a Timothy Chalamet quote. John, this next question comes from Tyler who asks, Dear Hank and John, I was listening to your podcast and Hank said something truly terrible and you moved right on like it was nothing. He said that the sun is incredibly loud.
We just can't hear it because sound doesn't travel through empty space. So, is the sun just up there silently screaming for all eternity? Well, what have you added to my anxious mind? Screaming internally over the sun's silent screams, Tyler.
That's beautiful. Great sign off. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's shot in at us.
Yeah, apparently, if the solar system were full of atmospheric pressure air, we could hear the sun from from here, 93 million miles away or whatever. Wow. I mean, that's a big hypothetical. Right.
It would immediately cause a huge problem. We would probably have a problem. Yeah. That's a huge amount of mass.
It doesn't seem like airway very much, but like a solar system full of it, you'd be adding a lot of mass to the sun. And the earth would experience a great deal of friction as it moved through the its orbit, which would cause us to slow down and fall into the sun, which would be pretty much the end for everything except the atoms. But the end would be very loud. Yeah, we sold out about a hundred decibels, which, you know, it was tolerable.
Very loud, but not the worst thing that would be happening to me in that moment. You know, like, I wouldn't be like, Oh, God, the noise. Yeah, I would be like, Oh, God, the collapsing into the sun, the heat, I think would be a bigger problem. The vibes would be way off.
And I think the sound would be an afterthought. I'm not actually sure if the sound would be in a in like a pitch we could hear, it might be like really low pitched. So we wouldn't be able to hear it, but I'm not sure. So it'd just be sort of a faint rump, like, the other thing I like about this is on the other like during the nighttime, it would be quiet.
Oh, yeah, wild. Yeah, that is wild. That would be that would be really weird. But I'm sure life could get used to it.
If like during the day, all the time it was just like, we just can't talk is too out of time. And then, yeah, and we would probably be nocturnal, you know, sleep through the loud part. Yeah. And then, and then when we were like trying to get our kids to sleep before the sun came up, we would play them white noise machines that were like, Oh, I'm very fond of this idea.
I want you to include it in a science fiction. It makes me really happy to be good. You can't have a medium for the travel through. I mean, it's basically that is it.
That's what we experience now, except that we interpret it as light as like, we see it with our eyes rather than our ears. If the sun is constantly screaming at us now, just with photons. All right, that blew my mind a little bit. So you're saying that the photons are not that different from sound waves because they can they kind of function as waves.
And so, the sun is screaming. It's light at us, except when it's not. Yeah, the sun is screaming. It's light at us all the time.
And then the earth spins around and it's dark and we can't, it's a kind of silence. It's ice. It's ice. It's just I silence.
It's nice. It might be a little too cheesy. It might be a little too on the nose to use it in a novel. Yeah.
Yeah. I silence as a phrase is a little bit. If you had a curse word in it, it would be great. Yes.
That's true. You often need to cut things with it with a GD. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Totally. If you put a GD in there, it'd be something that a fun little character could say. Right.
Probably not a human. You know, yeah. Somebody's got a pretty different experience. They'd be like, Oh, you talk about I silence.
Yeah. GD. We got that. Yeah.
I don't know what that is. All right. It's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first.
I'll tell you what, from AFC Wimbledon's perspective, when they found out that I wasn't going to be tweeting at all anymore, they were like, Oh, we crap. This is great news. I were like, Oh, I'm so relieved. So, AFC Wimbledon traveled to Swindon Town over the weekend.
I used to play FIFA as the Swindon Town Swoodly Pooper. So, it was a little bit of the John Green plays FIFA Derby. And I'll tell you what, those 500 hardy Wimbledon fans who traveled up to Swindon in a world of bad trains and frozen tundra were treated to an absolutely devastatingly boring nil-nail draw. I mean, I love a nil-nail draw.
Now, according to the stats, AFC Wimbledon had six shots on target and Swindon Town had one. I didn't see any of those six shots on target. I guess I went to the bathroom during all of them. But yeah, we got it was boring.
I don't even know what else to say about it. But the ability to have a boring game, I think represents real progress. It's great. It's another one with no red X on it.
Exactly. So, for much of the early part of the season, I felt like we couldn't get a boring game to save our lives. And now we're really getting some. And so, it's only a point, but it's a point away from home.
And now 21 games into the season, almost halfway through the season, AFC Wimbledon are up in 12th place. And there's kind of two ways of looking at our season. One way of looking at our season is that we're actually only three points away from being in the playoffs. So, now there's a lot of teams above us, but they're all very tightly packed between fourth place and 12th place.
There's actually only four points separating all eight of those teams. And so, a lot could still happen if you look up the table. And then if you look down the table, which of course is what I do because I'm a nervous little Nelly, we are 16 points above relegation. And when I went to the AFC Wimbledon game against Sutton United, I think we were only three points above relegation.
So, it's a pretty dramatic turnaround. I'm not going to say that we're anywhere close to safe because we're not. There's a long way to go in the season. But I will say both Colchester and Gillingham or Gillingham, nobody knows how to pronounce it.
Look horrible. Like real, real bad. So, we only have to be better than those two teams to avoid relegation. That appears at least at this point to me to be likely.
And up in 12th place, not that far off the kind of top half of the table, pretty, I'm feeling pretty good. Yeah. I mean, that's great. If you start doing well, maybe you could convince me to invest.
I'll bear that in mind. I want to. Can I quickly get a commitment from you? No, definitely not.
I want to. I have this weekend, which was very fun. My college in my town, the University of Utah now has a hockey team. So, we went to the game.
And I had just a fantastic time. But I did forget that it was a university event. And thus, the moment I walked in, I was. There's angry.
There's a lot of people who watch my TikToks. Yeah. And who are not sure if I am me or you. Well, there are so many people in Indianapolis who think that I'm you.
It's incredible. I have to say, and I don't even know how to handle it at this point because more than half the time I get recognized, somebody says, are you Hank Green? And I just. Oh my god.
This is news to me because it's the exact opposite for me. I'll hear them. I'll walk by and I'll be like, that was John Green. Someone will say.
Yeah. I don't know how to get the word out. Now, with Nerdfighteria, with Dear Hank and John listeners, this is not an issue. But with the like broader like TikTok YouTube shorts viewing audience, it is a real issue.
I don't know what's very confusing. But I did eventually find my seat and it was great. And I enjoyed the hockey game very much. And it made me feel like, oh, yes, sports is fun.
But I did find myself saying a lot of the time, as people behind me were like, yeah, get him. I was like, all right. Everybody settle down out there. Let's be good to each other.
We don't want to pedal these. Those are bad. None of these people are bad. Everybody has good intentions.
Y'all are into the exact same stuff. Like you had very similar upbringings as my guests, considering you all play hockey very well. Exactly. Exactly.
You probably played for some of the youth teams. You know these people. You know these boys. This week in Mars news though, Perseverance has collected its first samples of Martian Regolith, which is like the loose.