379: Rainbow Moon

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Tickets 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! Doors I prefer to think of the Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers and two questions give you the music, advice on me on all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John.

Can you believe that it is 374 days until Christmas and people already have their Christmas decorations up? Alright I'm going to rewrite the joke. Here's the new joke. Okay.

John, did you know that people already have their Christmas decorations up? Even though it's 374 days until Christmas? Put the punchline at the end. That's my advice.

I'm not a stand-up comic. I don't know. I guess. I have worn that over the years.

I feel like you start them out and they're confused. They're like that's not usually how we talk about time. More than 365. That doesn't exist.

Alright. I don't know. I was really happy with it. But thanks for working it out with me John.

I appreciate it. I'm just trying to work it out. Hey speaking of working things out you might remember in a recent episode of the podcast like a post-cancer episode. You said a cult.

I think there it is sort of a before and after moment. Hank, I don't want to exaggerate it or anything but you did get cancer. And anyway we were we were musing on why Swiss cheese isn't kind of not a good deal because it's got all the holes in it. Yeah.

And you're basically paying for air. You're paying for the holes. All that air. Yes.

Well I don't think I mentioned this to you but about 16,000 people wrote in. And do you know what they said? Jesus sold my weight. Jesus sold my weight.

I don't I don't buy cheese by weight. I buy cheese by slice because I'm having my volume. You buy you're like hey I want that eight inch by eight inch by eight inch cheese. How much is it?

I don't have to do it. Wait. I don't have to wait to tell you how much it is. That's not how it's selling.

I buy cheese by the leader. Weird but I do it. But even if you bought my point is that even if you bought it by the leader it would still be I guess would be liquefied Swiss cheese but it would still be the same issue. It's only if you buy it by by an area.

Yeah. That's what a leader is area leader is a unit of volume. Thank you. It's okay if you don't understand all the different units.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're telling me that a leader is an amount of volume. Yeah man. What else do you think it was?

I thought it was a weight. You know it is directly transferable to a weight as long as it's water. Because like 12 fluid ounces is a weight right? 12 fluid ounces is a volume.

What about 355 milliliter? How can 12 fluid ounces be? No, because 16 fluid ounces is one fluid pound which is definitely a weight. An ounce is a weight.

An ounce is a weight. But I think a fluid ounce is it? Because I think a fluid respectfully you don't sound good. Like if you if you are right it's shocking.

It's shocking to me that a 12 fluid ounces would be an amount of space rather than a weight. Yes 12 fluid ounces is an amount of space. I'm sorry. Ounces if you wanted ounces you could just leave out the fluid.

Fluid ounces is an amount of volume and it is defined by like ounces of water specifically which has a lot of water. Let me ask you a very serious question. The diet doctor pepper that I'm drinking right now which by the way is great. I've noticed that with diet doctor pepper depending on like the air quality heat the moisture level and everything I taste one of the different 23 flavors more profoundly with each doctor pepper.

Okay. Again a lot of plumb on this one anyway. Do you know that that's why they put the bubbles in soda so that they don't have to put as much liquid in there? Well boom.

That's not that's not true. Yeah they put all the bubbles in there so that they don't have to sell you as much soda. It's a scam like the chips and the bags with all the air in the chip bag. I genuinely can't tell if this entire thing is a bit or if you're telling me the truth.

Do you know how they make Swiss cheese? Why that why it's Swiss cheese? Because it's made with whole milk. I know okay Hank is 12 fluid ounces a weight or is it a volume?

Because it's just tell me the H.O.L.E. whole. I understand the joke I am. I am 12.

What else is the unit of volume? So I just need to know where the line is between the bit and not the bit. Okay. Is it when you say 12 fluid ounces is an amount of volume not a weight?

Is that a bit? No. That's true fact. Fluid ounces are a unit of volume.

So you're telling the unit of volume the one liter of water weighs exactly 1000 grams or one kilogram. Right but there's bubbles in here. So you're telling me that if I I just want to confirm this if I weighed the diet Dr. Pepper.

Yes. It would weigh less than 12 ounces. No. No because it's a time to work.

Then it's a then it's a measure of weight. I'm sorry but that's literally the definition of a measure of weight is that 12 ounces. You're right. I think it would weigh more than 12 ounces because high fructose corn syrup is heavier than water and that the bubbles are inferential.

The bubbles were a bit the bubbles are not in when before you open the can the bubbles aren't in there. There's no bubbles. The carbon dioxide dissolved in the water like the sugar is dissolved in the water. Everything else is dissolved in the water.

So there's no the bubbles aren't there until you open in and the bubbles come out. I've learned more about soda pop in the last three minutes. Seven and a half minutes. I have an entire podcast.

What? Okay. All right. First of all, there's no bubbles in the Dr.

Pepper until I open it at which point there are magically bubbles because that's just how chemistry works. I can get behind that. Okay. But you're telling me that 12 fluid ounces of diet Dr.

Pepper weighs more than 12 ounces. That's a stunner. That's a shock. Yeah.

And this is as somebody who's consumed quite a lot of diet Dr. Pepper. That might be the biggest surprise since April when you called to tell me that you had cancer. I was coming back from Sierra Leone.

I thought exactly I knew exactly what I was going to do in my life. I was hyper focused on tuberculosis except no, not really. I've got a new I got a new job called CEO of Complexly. I looked it up, John and 12 fluid ounces of soda was about 12.5 ounces.

Unless it's diet soda, in which case it weighs about 12 ounces. Good God. So you get more soda if you get regular soda only by weight, not by volume. I'm so proud of that.

More math or stuff like it is literally more. That's like saying that like, no, it's just denser. It's just literally not more stuff. It's the same amount of stuff denser.

You deliver me a cube of air. Yeah. That's less stuff that if you deliver me a cube of bricks, you agree? It's not less stuff.

It's just less density. There's fewer molecules. There's more molecules in a regular soda than a diet soda. Indeed.

You have identified the nature of density or at least more, not necessarily because there's also your protons and the neutrons. That's actually what the mass is. So there are more protons and neutrons in a regular soda than a diet soda. Correct.

This is a true, definitely true fact and is not a bit. It sounds like a bit. It's also a bit, but it's true too. I genuinely y'all at home listening.

I don't know if it's a bit. I'm going to have to look it up later. Because Hank is using the same tone of voice when he's bidding and when he's not. I know I am.

It's the tea. I had tea, but I think from now on, from now on, wait, from now on, no, just English breakfast. From now on, it's the caffeine I did. I'm going to get, I'm going to start pricing things per molecule.

Like I want to go in or proton. I want to go into the store and instead of being like, this costs this much per ounce. No. I want you to tell me how much it costs per atomic particle.

Well, I certainly need that now that I know that half this stuff that I'm buying by weight, I'm not buying by weight. I'm buying by volume. Yeah. And I buy cheese per slice, people.

So you're telling me that when I buy a gallon of ice cream, I'm not buying a weight of ice cream. And when you buy a gallon of ice cream, you were buying a volume of ice cream. Gallon is a volume. So I buy a gallon of ice cream and I might have, they might have put a bunch of air in there to make it a more airy.

A bunch of air and dip and dots. Well, like, so between ice cream brands, there could be a different amount of ice cream for the same price. And you have no way of knowing that because they're both one gallon. The only way you could know that is if there was what I think we should call proton price transparency.

Proton price transparency PPT future. We're going to have a grocery store, the new good Dutch store grocery store available at your corner market. It has PPT on like every other store in America. It's very confusing.

And no one likes it. The great thing about PPT is that everything seems so inexpensive, right? Like you get so many protons per penny. Like five times 10 to the negative ninth cents per proton.

I was thinking of it would be more like how many protons per dollar? So it would be like 10 to the 73rd proton per dollar. Right. Then you'd look at another thing, I was going to be like 10 to the 72 or six to the 72.

And you'd be like, Oh God, I mean, that's a difference. But is it going to change my life? How much does a proton cost is an amazing title for a video? It is a good I mean, that's that's the kind of video that you'll still make, you know, but I'm over.

Yeah, absolutely make how much is a proton cost and like how much is a proton of gold cost? Very different from how much is a proton of air cost is thankfully air continues to as far as I can tell be mostly free. Yeah, mostly. Well, I mean, this has been an education unlike any other today.

I learned so much about Dr. Pepper about ice cream about protons about their cost about the lack of transparency in the volume business. Yeah, I'm so glad I asked you this thing about Swiss cheese, but I also want to ask you this question for Kimberly, because it's a volume question. Yeah, dear John and Hank, I like Jenga, you know, that game Jenga where you pull out the little pieces of wood and eventually the tower falls over.

Of course I do. Well, I just figured some listeners at home might not, you know, so I wanted to lay the land for them. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's a super simple game.

There's not much to it. Kimberly reports it's fun, but why are some blocks harder to pull than others? Like, aren't they all the same size? Are they not?

What's the weight distribution there? Just how baffled by the gravity of the situation, Kimberly, Kimberly, I'm so glad you asked. It's actually not possible to produce two wooden blocks with the same number of protons. There's never been a block with the same number of protons.

They're like snowflakes. It's, well, you know, it's possible. It's just extremely unlikely. Yeah.

And the thing is, Jenga would have to put a lot like billions of dollars of work into making, you know, nanometer specific cuts. Yeah. Or like, well, you don't want that because they want it to be tricky. So do you know the answer to this?

You just told me the answer. The answer is that the Jenga blocks are different sizes. That's true. But I also do think that it's partly about how you stack.

I think the stack also is never quite perfect. I don't think that's it. Well, I do. I think that if you had, well, imagine, put it in your mind, building your mind the imaginary.

Please be fun for me. For me. That are all exactly the same size and you put the colors on my eyes and I picture something. Do you know what I see?

I'm sorry. I feel bad. I see nothing. And so thank you for making a joke about this thing that I don't have.

I wasn't a joke. I wasn't a joke. I wasn't a joke. I'm going to close my eyes.

There's nothing there. It's described to me what I'm supposed to be seeing and I can maybe make words for it. So they're perfectly cut silver metal Jenga blocks. Yeah, but I know what you mean.

And they can and they slide into each other so tightly that there's not a scene. Like you can like you put the three together. You can't even tell there's three there. It looks as if there's just one block now that's a square and then you lay more down.

They're just going to like they're just like you're going to take one of those out and that that tower will remain exactly as solid as it has always been. In fact, now that I'm saying this, I want to build this Jenga set. Yes. But what I would say, well, first off, I think you're absolutely right that the main thing is that the blocks are different sizes and we can get into that.

But I would say that if you stack differently, like if you stack one so that they aren't perfectly aligned because you're a human being, not a robot. What makes it not perfectly aligned? What do you mean? What makes it not perfectly aligned when you're stacking three blocks on the three of these blocks?

It's going to sit flat on the thing you're putting it on. Yeah, yeah, but you're not going to align these three perfectly next to those three. You're always going to be a little bit off because you're a person who's doing it with person fingers that are notorious for their lack of precision, right? And that's going to slightly redistribute their weight in such a way that one of the three is going to be easier to pull off than the others.

However, it's just the size difference. And I think I'd like to make a perfect Jenga set that has no size difference and see what it's like to play with. The problem is it's going to be very expensive and people love to steal board games because they are risk takers. I've never in my life had someone come over to my I've had people steal lots of things from my house.

I've never in my life had someone come over my house and steal a freaking Jenga game and nor have you. I want people to go on the Nerdfighteria subreddit and answer whether you got the risk taker joke on the first time which John clearly did. Oh, they are risk takers. No, it's not I mean, I get it, but I don't want to indulge it.

We're done. We did it. I got three in. We're done.

Wikipedia reports the blocks have small random variations so as to create imperfections in the stacking process to make the game more challenging. I actually think it makes the game less challenging. It's intentionally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you just like slal- like some of them are just like you can blow them out.

Yeah. Well, so there you go. It's intentional, but I still think that how we stack matters. I believe that we cannot remove the human element from Jenga and the stacking nor where try the stacking is where inevitably we create our own imperfections.

That's going to be John's perspective on this and I'm going to let him have it. This next question comes from Sarah and Carter who asked your handker John if the rock of the moon was a different color. Would it be as bright? Like if the moon was black or pink with the moonlight look different to us?

Need to know various emojis, pumpkins and spice penguins. There are a Carter. Spiced. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. You spice the pumpkins maybe. You cut the penguins.

I don't like penguins. I'm concerned about the penguins. Yeah. Oh man, did I tell you about the dream I had about a gigantic penguin who abducted a baby?

You did. I think maybe you mentioned it on the podcast. No, that was a pelican. Oh, yeah, right.

It was a pelican. Did you have another bird affecting a baby dream? Yeah, and they were stuck underneath the ice together. And I had to say and the penguin.

Yeah, but he kept it warm and so everybody lived. Wow. It was intense. I don't know that I guys.

I had a pole ax. It was one of those things where like I didn't have anything and then suddenly I did, you know, like I was like, oh, thank God I got this gigantic axe. Yeah, that's nice that your subconscious delivered you like a way out of the anxiety rather than just like ramping it up over and over again, which is sometimes what it seems to want to do. Is that what you're having a pole ax?

But now you don't have to pull out a rubber. Is that what yours is doing at the moment? Not really. No, but it certainly has in the past.

The pole ax would be a good tool for getting a baby out of ice. I don't know what a pole ax is exactly. I just had kind of a regular axe, but it was is it called a mace when on one side it's got that sort of hammer thing on the other side of its an axe? Because that's what this was.

Sure. Yeah, maybe just a big heavy ball on one side. A pole axis like an ax on a pole with a ball. I would never have guessed that.

Next you'll tell me that 12 fluid ounces of Dr. Pepper just happened to weigh 12 ounces. It's so weird. It's very strange that 12 fluid ounces of Dr.

Pepper weighs 12 ounces. And that 12 fluid ounces of Dr. Pepper weighs 12 ounces. It's all very nice.

Well, it's not the protons. I'm making this podcast I can't talk about yet. And in the podcast I can't talk about yet. We talk about protons and I'll tell you what protons are an astonishment.

Yeah, right. Right. Right. Can you believe it?

The more you zoom into the proton, the weirder it gets. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay, Hank.

We didn't answer the question. What was the question? What would the world be like if the moon was a different color? So the moon is, I think, a little bit.

So if you had like white on one side and black on the other, like whitest white, black is black, the color of the moon would be closer to black than white. So it looks like a white to us when we look at it because it's like on the background of like perfect blackness and also being hit by an awful lot of sunlight. So the stuff that's the light that being shined back and makes it look like it's lighter than it is. So if it were white, the moon would be so bright.

So right. How bright? Like a writer. Could we work at night?

Would we have developed a completely different civilization? You know, that's a great question. And also not like not like at all unthinkable in terms of how moons can be like there are ice moons of other planets. So we could theoretically have an ice moon and if we're bigger and made of ice, we'll be very bright in the sky and I could totally see the times when there is a full moon and the moon is out that it would be totally workable to be outside doing stuff.

Wow. That's cool. I never thought about that. That's great as it is at present.

You look that up. Or you do the math? Yeah, no, I did the math. Thank you.

And that's all and it would be, you know, if it were twice as big, that would probably not just be twice as much light. I probably increase as a square. So it would be eight times is bright. Wow.

So if it's eight times is if it's eight times is bright. I mean, I'm not good at multiplying magnitudes of light just to stay the obvious. But I think it's certainly on a full moon. Oh, yeah.

Two or three times is bright. You could do most things. I mean, like you can do a lot with just a full moon as it's now you got to remember clouds. You got to remember clouds.

You got to remember clouds. So clouds would be brighter. Clouds would all yeah. No, for sure.

So you would look up and see. How far? Yeah. And you know what else?

You know what else you wouldn't see as much of as stars. Certainly not on a moonlit night. Yeah. Not on a cloudy night either.

Just to state the obvious. We're so good at podcasting. We're so good. I mean, Jesus Christ.

How does this podcast fly under the radar? Heck, I don't understand, you know, it's like it's like a 2007 when we would call each other and we had like a hundred YouTube subscribers and we'd be like, this is good, right? Like we're pretty good at this. I think we're good.

But here's what I want to know. Ken, could you spray paint the moon so that it's a bunch of different colors, but and they only and they show up at like different times. So like when it's a half moon, like the like you stripe the moon up. Yes.

You have like a blue quarter and you have a purple quarter and green quarter and yellow quarter and then when they're all lit up, then it's like, oh, look at that big beautiful colorful moon and all those colors get together. But like as it goes through the phases, you get different colors of moon. That'll piss off the homophobes rainbow moon. We'll show them.

The moon has gone woke. But it's best that it just happens rather than exactly. Exactly. If it just happened one day, if the moon actually did go woke and and all the people were like, this is not what got intended, even though it doesn't appear that God did it.

We don't know how else it could have gotten done, but we're pretty sure it was the elites at the universities. Seems like something. Seems like something that professors would do. Yeah, exactly.

Like all the scholars of 18th century German literature got together and made the moon woke. I knew it was coming. I love this, Hank. This is a great idea.

This is the best idea you've ever had. I think that we should invest all of humanity's available resources in making a rainbow moon. Yeah, the blue moon is when it's like once it comes out once at twice in one month. Yeah, the woke moon is when it comes out at all.

I thought you said you were done with the pond. Oh, we've got a really important question from Dana who writes, dear John and Hank, I recall you discussing Hank's journey of meaning this time last year. Remember when you were on a journey of meaning? We didn't know.

Yeah. Was it the cancer talking? Was the cancer on a journey of meaning? A journey of meaning to be discovered?

And who knows? Given the everything way to refer to it, Dana, the everything is a good way to refer to it. I was wondering, how's that journey of meaning going? Dana, Dana.

How was your journey of meaning going, Hank? I remember. So I was recently did the Nerdfighteria census analysis, which you could find on Hank's channel. And I was reading through people's comments, and there were a lot of comments that were like, I'm worried about Hank's health.

Oh, oh, like, this was last year. Yeah, for like January. You were just giving off vibes. Oh, I'm really worried about it.

I was working so hard. I was. And I am again. Like, it's not as hard.

No, and also not as stressful. Like the work that I've been doing lately has been mostly very fun. And there are people who are doing a lot of stressful things on my behalf, which I appreciate. Yeah, the journey of meaning is weird, and it's complicated a little bit by mortality, but it's also complicated quite a lot by mortality, actually.

Well, it's more complicated by mortality than it once was. Right. Is what I mean. Yeah.

But like, I think that it's also just complicated by reality. I think it's very, it continues to be very complicated to be a person. And much more so than I thought when I started. Yeah.

So my journey of meaning. Let me put it to you this way. Have you entered a place of worship in the last year? I think that every place can be a place of worship.

Great answer. Okay. I've entered nature. Oh, this is the kind of journey of meaning that you're on.

You're on a journey of connection to nature, which by the way, I also am. That's like, I'm reading all the sacred nature literature now. I'm deep into it. It's good stuff.

Yeah. No, I mean, one of the things that that so here's a thing about cancer is that it is, it is you deciding to not be you anymore. And so the cells start to instead of, because all you like, this is the thing. You're like, I don't know, probably around 50 to 75 trillion cells, John.

I don't know exactly how many protons you have, but you got a lot of cells. And they're all working together all the time to do you, to be like BU. Yeah. And that's like one of the greatest acts of cooperation of all time.

Like you are a colony of cells. And for bacteria, they are also cells and they are, they also communicate with you. I know. And so like, though they're part of you.

Not just in some ways. Like they are fundamentally inextricably. They have me. Yeah.

Well, I mean, like the thing about yourselves is you can't extract some of them from you. You could extract your microbiome and still be you, I think. You could not prepare long. Well, it seems you get a new one.

Yes. Unless you live in a sterile spot. You could, you know, you can lose a hand and you're still you. Like you can lose a big...

Lose a few blood cells. Yeah. You can just think... It's not this morning.

Of yourself and still be you. You're constantly consuming your own cells and swallowing them and digesting them, which is wild. Yep. And so the, so this...

Tremend, like, and for like half of the history of life on earth, it was just single celled organisms. Yeah. So then it was a cooperation within an organism. And they were like...

Because there was only one cell. Started to team up and like do things with each other. And like the part where we are eight billion colonies, each of like 50 to 100 trillion cells. Right.

Each of those cells replicating billions of times. Yeah. And it works at all? No, it's miraculous.

What? Yeah. Like, like what? But then, but then there's this small colony of cells in your lymph that's like, I don't want to be him anymore.

Yeah. Well, they just start to evolve back in sort of a single celled way. Where they're like, I'd rather, you know, like if I can make more of me, there will be more of me. They're not making a decision, obviously.

But like, there's like any trait that allows them to make more of themselves will be more present in the cellular population. Because they can make more of themselves. And then you end up with them evolving to sort of evade all of the systems that are designed to not let them do that. Because of course, they just want to realize that would happen all the time.

And so they're just sort of doing what you would expect them to do. Which is following the rules of natural selection. And which is just, you know, things that make more of themselves, there are more of them. And then like, they just start evolving to figure out how to keep living, which includes evolving to evade treatment and to evade all of the systems your body has to control them.

And it's like such a tricky little guy to fight. But the thing that makes me like, and you know, that seems like an inevitability, and it turns out that it is pretty much an inevitability of multicellular life. But the thing that like makes me much more weird about the whole thing is that like, thinking about it that way, I don't know, like of course consciousness, big question mark, nobody knows what it is, is it an illusion, am I conscious at all? Do I exist between like in the spaces between my thoughts and the examination of those thoughts?

Like where am I in that chain? And like all of it actually, the reason it's here, and like we could like different perspectives on this, but this is my perspective, the reason it's here is that it helps pass the traits on. Like I am imbued with once because once are a trait that increases the odds of a thing making more of itself. And if it's able to make more of itself, there will be more of it.

That's what I am. But what that has added up to is a creature capable of like, not just, you know, making hats and computers and stuff, but like society and love and music and all and podcasts and stuff, like words, like all the beauty and the art. Yeah. Well, that's not.

And the interaction between the individual cell colonies, like you're a big cell colony and I am, and then there's like eight billion others. Yeah. And we all like do a whole earth together. Yeah.

That stuff made love and love is very real and very powerful and very, very strange. It's so strange that we don't think about how strange it is, because if we did, I think we would be like in a blind panic the whole time. Well, I'll tell you what, understanding that cancer is basically the most natural thing in the world to have happened to a multi-cell organism is a little bit blindingly panicking. But yeah, it's good that we have lots of systems to stop it.

Yeah. Some naturally selected for and some human built. And I think that's also something that I find really lovely about us is that, you know, we participate and are made out of biological systems, but we also create and participate in and reform and restructure all the time these human built systems. Yeah.

And so there are these problems that we don't know how to solve because they're not human built system problems. And we look at them and we're like, oh boy, we better put a lot of resources and try and solve those problems. And that's really important, right? Like that's why we have chemotherapy.

But then there are also these human built system problems, which are the ones that I tend to be obsessed with for whatever reason where like we know how to fix them. We could fix them, you know, like getting chemotherapy to everyone is one example, right? Like the difference between inventing chemotherapy and making chemotherapy available to some people and then making chemotherapy available to all people. Those are all huge leaps that require a kind of innovation.

Like we put a lot of emphasis on the kind of innovation that leads to the discovery, but not that much emphasis on the innovation that leads to availability and access. And that's something I really, it's I find frustrating about us, but it's also something I kind of love about us that like we can do that. We can do a bit better jobs of distributing what we've learned together. And when we do that, it's great.

Like that's great. That's how we figured out, you know, what's keeping the stars apart, not just how your cancer would say we figured out like, why, why my brain knows that it's going to make a fist before I make a fist. And the and how it can be wrong, like you can fool it. But yeah, it also like it has felt more to me, like our inability to enact the world that is more just is a cellular problem.

Oh, that's interesting. Like we are what we are and we are still trying to figure out how to be it. And it's so like it's so hard to fight it like to fight against or to like to see progress. We're not all the time.

We do we do. But like, and that's like that's the wonderful thing. But like you can't it, you know, it's taken so long to get from the part where the, you know, the instinct and you know, we're all like this, like the first round of empathy is toward our family is into what the people we have the closest relationships with. And like to like to like expanding that circle of empathy, it requires tools.

It requires innovation. Like we have to create cultural innovation to be able to do that. Yeah, I would almost say that it requires a journey of meaning. And we are all on one, even if we don't know, that's right.

That's what I've been trying to tell you for years is that you were always on a journey of meaning. You're just kind of rejected the idea. Well, it's because you kept saying it like it was religious, John. Well, I'm sorry.

I was that was that was my mistake. It is religious, but that's that's either here nor there. I still can't let that go. But like, you know, like I would argue that like nature, you know, nature religions or still religions, like religions aren't theistic or or inherently supernatural, in my opinion.

But but I just think it was weird timing in that way. But it has both in the way you've responded to it as a sort of biomedical problem by using it as an opportunity to educate people, to talk to people. And that has the social effect of destigmatizing the experience. But also in the way you've that you've talked about the the non biomedical parts of it, the mental health parts, the psychosocial parts, I just think it's been really helpful for a lot of people.

And it's I just you've taken who you are and what you do in your natural curiosity and just applied it to this horrific thing. And I don't think I would have done that. I think I would have I think I would have gotten off the internet. So it's just something I really admire about you.

I did the only thing I know who I knew how to do. That's what people kept being like, you're doing this a very interesting way. And I'm like, I'm just I don't know what else to do. It's all I know how to do.

Yeah. Well, this reminds me that today's podcast actually brought to you by Hank's journey of meaning. Hank's journey of meaning, available now at good.store. The podcast also brought to you by proton price transparency.

No, what you're paying for. What you're paying for is protons. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Hank's billion dollar Jenga set. It's it's perfect.

It's perfect. It's so cool. I want I really do want it. That's a great idea.

It sounds very expensive. We have to make them small. And also the podcast is brought to you by the woke moon. What moon?

Keep coming out. It comes out every month. I just like, Hey, I'm fine with you being woke moon. Okay, but stop bringing it up.

You have to bring it up all the time. Jeez. You have to keep coming out. It feels like every 28 days.

It's like, here I am. Like you have some kind of cycle. We also got a project for awesome message from Charlotte to Madeline. Dear Madeline, remember, Pug, our context quotes aside.

I'm so proud that you're my sister. You lead by example, carrying deeply adding humor to the mundane and not take a BS from anyone, as said in summer wars among the plethora of painful things in this world hunger and loneliness must surely be two of the worst. But thanks to you, I haven't known either. I love you dearly, Charlotte.

Wow, that was lovely. That was great. Charlotte, you're a good writer. Madeline, you're a good sister.

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The trunk way. I don't know. I know how much space it takes up because I can look at it and see how much space it takes up but I don't know how much it weighs and this is a fundamental issue. It turns out Julia because knowing how big something is does not tell you how much stuff, how many protons are in it.

Yeah. And I learned that today, Julia, so I'm a little obsessed with it. You look at elephant and you're like that seems awful big. It's moving real slow because of how heavy it is.

If it probably if it stood on your fridge, your fridge would break. I don't think it would. You don't think it would? No.

I think my fridge would break if I've grown African boelella and stepped on it. Well, first off, you're saying like I think my fridge might break if the world's largest elephant stood on it, which is not the average elephant. Secondly, I still don't think it would. I think your fridge would hold up just fine.

In fact, I need to test this immediately. Where is the nearest elephant? It's at the Indianapolis Zoo. It has to be.

And so the challenge actually isn't getting an elephant. The challenge is getting a refrigerator into the elephant enclosure, which I suspect will make me the enemy of certain music keepers. Yeah, you're like, look, I'm John Green. Do you know who I am?

I have a hit podcast. I have a podcast and we need to know. We need to know. And also we're going to, I used to have you have followers on a website called Twitter.

Can you remember Twitter? I was on it and I was big. No, I would say, have you heard of Apple podcasts, the app? Have you ever been on their top charts?

Have you ever gone to the society and culture section? Have you ever scrolled down to number 173? That's me. That's me.

That's who I am someday. I'm going to die. I'm going to bury me on top of the guy who's on top of the hill. That's who I am.

And I'm going to be buried inside of that elephant. I don't know how we're going to make it happen, but it might be today because I'm here to make mistakes. Did I tell you that I made that joke to somebody who worked at Crown Hill and it bombed? Oh, no.

Everything jokes are context-dependent. And I was like, yeah, I always just want to be buried right on top of James McConriley here at the very top of Crown Hill just so that I could be the writer on top of all the other writers in Indianapolis. And they were like, no, that's just, that's not going to happen. James McConriley is here at the top of Crown Hill.

He wrote Little Orphan Annie. Yeah, they're used to feeling weird requests from rich guys. That's what that tells me. That's true.

They're like, we would make that work if we could. Right. Yeah. It's not really.

It has to be buried just below. But you can have a mausoleum with a weird leprechaun stained glass window in the back. That's true. But I'll tell you what, I have abs.

If I'm not getting buried above James McConriley, I have no interest being on that hill. I've got no interest being like 30 feet below James McConriley. No. Give me the chief of the valley.

Oh, man. I didn't think- What could you ask at the beginning of Vlogbrothers? I thought I definitely wanted to be turned into ashes and sprinkled into a river. But recently I did have reason to write down what I wanted to do, things to- wanted to be done with my dead body.

And I was like, I want a headstone. Yeah. Well, that's- Well, first off, that is also exactly what I say. I say, I don't really care.

I just- I do want a headstone though because I found it very helpful to be able to visit like my relative's headstones. Like it's something that I just like doing and I don't know. I like cleaning them up and everything. But it's- I did think like when you got diagnosed with cancer, I did think like, well, I mean, you know, I put all that work into getting him to sign a will.

And now I bet he's like super motivated to make sure it's all buttoned up. Yeah. Will's all set, John. I bet.

I bet. I'm glad. Sorry about the circumstances. I'm all good.

I don't- If you're not- I don't think I've said it on Vlogbrothers. And like, look, I don't know what you guys listen to. But I just had my follow-up pet scan. I remain cancer free.

I've got about two years of mild risk of relapse followed by three years of very low risk of relapse followed by, ideally several more decades of basically zero risk of relapse. Right. Right. So this was a very good scan.