Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.
Friends of Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
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Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Yours, I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, giving you advice and bringing you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, have you ever done that thing where you turn your camera on but you actually turned it off and then you turn it off and then you try to film something and then you turn it off and then you get like a 20 minute video of just your feet?
I've done this, yes. That's some pretty good footage though. Hold on, I have to unzip my jacket. So if you're watching this on the Patreon, if you subscribe to our Patreon, you can get a video version.
You can see John's on the Bingham's jacket. You can see me on the jacket but otherwise you just have to sort of, it's like a radio play, you know? Yeah. You just got to believe that I'm doing it.
You got to wear an ACB in cap. He's wearing it as he wore his AFC Wimbledon cap. He unzipped his jacket to show a sort of off-green sweatshirt underneath and also a blue checked button down. That's a lot of layers, John, you okay in there?
Yeah, it's a little cold today. But you look ridiculous. What are you talking about? You're making fun of me.
You're wearing a pizza John shirt with a vest over it. I know I'm a reverse-marnie McFly-ing by which I mean the vest is blue instead of red. The reverse-marnie McFly, I'm about to do the reverse-paddington traveling from England to Peru but first we've got to answer some questions from our listeners. What's different from a reverse-poo everyone?
What's a reverse-poo? That's where you were just wearing pants and no shirt. What? Pooh Bear wears a mask.
I was imagining a reverse-poop and I was like I can't imagine such a thing. It's where you put it back in. It's eating as a reverse-poop. I guess so.
But the reverse-winnie the pooh to be clear is where you're at. I was the other famous talking bear. It's where you wear a shirt but no pants? No, that's the pooh.
That's pooh-bearing. Okay, so that's where you wear pants but no shirt. Yeah, that's the reverse-pooh which is just like fairly normal for dudes. Yeah, as long as you don't expect to get service in 7-Eleven.
That's right. No shirts, no shoes, no service. And if you have, they don't like good footage there. All right, everybody, let's do the questions.
So dumb. That was the tightest intro we've ever had. His first question comes from Becca who writes, Dear John and Hank, but really only John and Hank. Go to patreon.com.
You can get the video version. You can see our delighted faces as we talk about all of this stuff. My close friend is not believe that everything is tuberculosis despite all the examples I've given him. He is and always has been obsessed with sharks and he does not think TB can be related to sharks at all.
Can you help me out trying to blow a friend's mind here? Becca. Hey, can I try? Can I try?
You go first. Sharks cannot get tuberculosis, but did I start out good? No. Contourculosus?
Yeah. Oh my god. Do they get it from eating seals? So there's so much that sharks don't get, right?
Like there's so many diseases. Sharks are famously sort of semi-immune to many diseases, but one disease they are not immune from. What? Is tuberculosis.
No. There is aquatic tuberculosis that mostly happens in fish tanks. Mostly happens in human-maintained fish tanks, but sharks can get it and sharks do get tuberculosis. So there, I've already connected it.
It wasn't even hard. Can I get it? Can I get tuberculosis? Can you get tuberculosis from a shark?
It's unlikely. It's possible though. Yeah. I'd have to be really up close and personal a lot.
You're saying? Maybe I'd have to drink it's aquarium water? Yeah, Hank, you can get tuberculosis from sharks inside your aquarium because this disease is zoonotic and can be passed to humans through open wounds. So if you have an aquarium and you've got a chance of fish tuberculosis in there, do not play with your fish when you have an open wound.
Additionally, one thing that I know sharks are related to open wounds. They can make those happen themselves. That's a great point. They're kind of in the open wound business.
They open wounds. That's one of the main thing they do. What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm mostly bite.
That's sort of a biter. Some chewing, but I'm most known for the biting. They don't chew. Sharks don't chew.
They don't chew. They bite and they swallow. Wow. Wow.
It occurs to me that if you ask really any non-human animal what it does for a living, it's every simple. It's biting and swallowing. Yeah. Biting, swallowing, I bite.
I chew. I chew. I chew in the case of dogs. Yeah.
That's sort of what they do. Yeah, dogs actually have a job. Yeah. Like most animals are doing, are like working for themselves, but dogs do work for people.
And so do people. Yeah. People and dogs and cats work for each other. And everything else works for itself.
Except for ants. And these. That's a great point, Hank. These have weird jobs.
What do you do? Oh, I'm a soldier. What do you do? Oh, I'm a worker.
This is actually pretty difficult jobs. Pretty common jobs. That's one of the two of the most common jobs throughout history. Yeah.
Yeah. Those are big ones. All right. Let's go on.
I'm a queen. Very uncommon job, but also most true for most piece. Yeah. We play more B queens than there are human queens.
Even if you, okay, video title, have there been more human queens than there are currently B queens? No. If you answer that question, I'm pretty sure. We have another question.
It's from Kalman who writes Dear John and Hank as someone who generally keeps up with their criteria, I've heard about these really awesome laundry and cleaning supplies from EcoGeek from previous Dear Hank and John Pods. I remember sponsorships from other similar products, Earth Breeze for one, but not trying to make this an ad for them. I appreciate that, Kalman. We don't give free promo unless it's for EcoGeek, our incredible cleaning supplies company.
If you're watching the video version, I'm holding up a bunch of those very products. Why create your own line of these products rather than continuing sponsorships with these other companies or partnering with them in some way or another? Pumpkins and Penguins, Kalman, you can pronounce it however you like. Thank God.
Kalman, I really appreciate your generosity on that front. The way that advertisements work is that they pay us and then they make more money than we make. Right. Because otherwise they wouldn't pay us.
So the amount of money they get spent by people listening to our podcast is lower than the amount of money that we get paid to run an advertisement for that product. And so one, better for us to take that money and then give it to charity. We don't get to keep that money the way that we did with advertisements, but that's not the highest priority for us. I got terrible news for you real quick.
We also don't get to keep the money that we get from advertisements because it goes to complexity. That's a kind of keeping the money. Okay. It's diverting into different important things that we care a lot about.
And then second, we haven't created these products ourselves. We picked people we really wanted to work with who we thought were doing a really good job. So we get to have more control over it that way. And I like that.
And we get to have a deeper relationship with those people so that if we want to do a specific product, we can work with them and help them. Maybe fund a new product. We haven't done that yet, but we're interested in it. And then also, it gets to be part of our broader effort at good.store to create a place where you buy things that you would typically buy from any place for that are high quality that are vetted by us and that are and then all the profit goes to charity.
So that is the that is the whole shebang of that I appreciate you asking. And it is actually like way long term better for the number of dollars going to Partners in Health than if we just took an advertisement and donated that money to Partners in Health. Yeah, it means building more systems, but we also have a great team of people who help us build those systems. So that's why we're able to do it relatively efficiently.
And yeah, and plus we get free advertising like right now, we can go to good.store and look up eco-geek cleaning supplies. Look at that free advertising free advertising and you did that kind of advertizing. Thank you. Thank you, Colin.
We appreciate you. Also, I have this whole group of people who worked just on helping YouTubers sell stuff. And that seems like a business that was going to continue being commodified and the margins were going to get thinner and thinner until we couldn't compete anymore. And I really wanted those people to still have jobs.
Yeah, so this store exists for many good reasons. Yeah, we're really, we're really proud of it. And it's done some amazing good in the world, including donating over $10 million to reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. Pretty incredible what Hank has built.
Yeah, that awesome team of people. Yeah. And thanks everybody who has subscribed. Check it out.
Good.store. All right. Hank, I got to ask you this question from Michelle. Dear John and Hank, I have a three year old daughter who will not stop asking me where she existed before I was pregnant with her.
All the answers I've given her so far must not be sufficient because she has not stopped asking. I've tried the following. I don't know. No one knows.
Maybe you were part of the universe. You were a tiny egg in my body. I've run out of ideas. Do you have answers that might satisfy her curiosity philosophically perplexed Michelle?
I'm not only this one to you because my question, I mean, I have a fairly simple answer. Well, I think that you can predict. I think your answer is you tell me what you think my answer is going to be. I think your answer is going to be you were exactly where you'll be after death.
Yeah, except I don't actually think that that's true because I think after death, where you are is in other people's minds. He's on a journey of meaning. A journey of meaning. A journey of meaning.
Before birth. There isn't a you that specifically in other people's minds. There's an idea of what might be, but there isn't a specific you. But I think that before birth, so my two answers are, you were nowhere you didn't exist.
I think that that's a fairly cut and dried answer. But then I have another answer, which is that you currently don't exist. You're just a bunch of stories that one part of your brain is telling to one other part of your brain. Yeah, no, that's something you should say to a three year old.
That's not going to cause any issues. I don't like it's simplifying for me, but I guess I'm not three. I think if I were three and somebody said, hey, so the bad news is that you didn't exist before you were born. But the good news is he still really don't exist.
I don't know that I would be particularly comforted. So you remember what it was like when you were one? Yeah, you don't. That's because that you was already dead.
They're long gone. I, first off, all three year olds think they can remember being one and they can remember being born. Or in things you can remember every moment of his life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It takes until you're like 16 when you're like, all right, some of that stuff's pretty fuzzy back there actually. I would answer the question differently than saying you don't exist to a three year old. I think I would say before you were born, you were the idea of the hope of your existence. You were the hope of your existence and that hope was in your parents and that hope was in the world.
It just wasn't made manifest until you were born. That's lovely. I also don't know the three year olds totally going to grasp that. I think the problem here is that self is a difficult one for a three year old.
Well, and for a 47 year old. Yeah, yeah, easier, I'd say, but still mostly ungrappled with. I don't know, the days when I actually am paying attention to what myself is are tough days around here. It's true.
And you don't have to. One of the things that I've learned from therapy is that you don't have to like fix everything. Yeah, you have to love like ways of dealing with it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like, like, yeah, like sometimes like you glue a cup back together. It's still got cracks in it. Right.
Right. That's beautiful. Thank you. And then there's that Japanese one where they emphasize that cracks with gold and the gold is the most precious part of the broken cup.
That's right. Whatever that's called. I think it's called Oracle. I think it's called Golden Crack Up.
Yeah, but in Japanese, but in Japanese, this next question comes from Kat who has steer Hank and John empires rise and empires fall. Okay. All right. Specifically, I'm referring to my feelings about building our own social media apps.
Oh, great. Okay. Oh, thank God. Yeah.
I'm handling the withdrawals from following my boycott of Twitter better than I expected. But man, I have full moon fear of missing out on memes. And blue sky just isn't appeasing that even though it seems like all the pieces are there. Why doesn't it feel like that app is quote unquote online?
Craving Taylor Swift discourse, Kat, great point. It doesn't. It feels like blue sky has not woken up to the reality that it is its own thing. And it feels like all of the things that go really big on blue sky are in opposition to some other thing.
How's that give me an example. I need a new kind of look at like every tweet that was posted on blue sky in the last day that has like over 10,000 likes. They are 100% about billionaires. Broadly billionaires are Donald Trump.
Right. They are about the. I like the distinction that you made their Hank. Well, the truth is Donald Trump is now a billionaire again.
And I need everyone to know that that is the case because he's using his powers, the president to become very wealthy, which is what despots do. Yeah. Empires rise and empires fall. Empires rise and empires fall.
What goes up must come down. That's what Isaac Newton told us. Yes. I'm not sure that actually Isaac.
That's funny you should say that Hank because you're always criticizing me for applying scientific principles to social sciences. You're always like any time. I do not like that. It's John gets on his high horse and he starts talking about how energy is not created or destroyed.
It makes me cringe and then you just went and did it. I just want to call that out. You just went and get it. It's true.
But for different reasons. All right. Exactly. It's true.
But for different reasons. That's fine. So it is true that the memes are not as good on blue sky as they are on Twitter. Here's what I'll say about that though.
If you mix blue sky and tumbler and this is a dangerous cocktail. Don't give me wrong. Take it from somebody who knows about this dangerous tumbler cocktails. That's how you that's how you make a middle school volcano science project.
Or alternately or alternately like an ever clear based mixed drink. Right. Like it's a serious. It's a serious thing that you're encountering.
It's no small matter. But if you mix tumbler and blue sky in the right way, I find that it does replace Twitter effectively. But like is it any healthier for you? I'm not convinced.
Yeah. I bet there's a bunch of Taylor Swift discourse on tumbler. Oh yeah. Yeah.
It is. Yeah. I think that the did I tell you when I had a post go viral on tumbler. I said to Sarah, I had a post go viral on tumbler and Sarah said what did all 12 people on tumbler like it?
Oh, it's a it's a vibrant little place. It is a vibrant place. I got like 10,000 likes on that on that that tumbel tumbled on the ice March. Kill and Caesar.
I recently went to a little viral on tumbler with with but it wasn't me. It was somebody else talking about a take that I once had. Oh, that's like 16,000 likes or something. No, it's that sounds fun.
Yeah, it was fine. I do not like going viral. I think that going viral is a great phrase because it implies a disease correctly. It's the memes.
They are amazing. How do you get the memes? So on tumbler, I cosplay as an unpaid social media intern for Keetah Co the coffee and tea company that good store runs and that works really well for me because then whenever people are like, Oh, I hate John Green in my ass box, I'll be like, Oh, I'm sorry, you must be confused. I'm not John Green.
I'm an unpaid social media intern for a coffee and tea company. That works very well. That's great. That is a solution to your problem and it's never going to it's never going to be a problem ever again.
You did it. Yeah, no, I'm sure that I will never regret going back to tumbler. As indeed, I never regretted going on tumbler for the first time, which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by tumbler. Tumbler somehow still a thing.
And this podcast is also brought to you by the reverse poo bear. That's just what that's just like guys at the beach. Yeah, it is. It is a little bit.
It is a little bit. Today's podcast is also of course brought to you by the reverse tigger. The reverse tigger, it's where you jump on your head. This podcast is also brought to you by the reverse eor which is where you're always happy all the time and your tail is stuck to your head.
Did I tell you I did an episode of the happiness lab with Laurie Santos, the amazing podcast, the happiness lab, which is all about the science of happiness and how we can be happier. And Laurie Santos was like, you're a bit of an expert on happiness. Like she follows her work really closely. She's been a nerdfighter for a long time.
And she was like, you're a bit of an expert on happiness. You and Hank both are. And I was like, tell that to my wife. I'm a bit of an expert on happiness.
Okay, I got to listen to this. Well, it's just because we're eorze, Hank, but you're less of an eor than I am. You're more of a tigger. And of course, finally, today's podcast is brought to you by the happiness lab.
Have the happiness lab. Shout out Dr. Laurie Santos. All right.
This episode of your Hank and John 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 deerhank.
Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank. 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.
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This episode of Deerhank and John is brought to you by Factor. Imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly, but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and that you did not eat lunch. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna get meal delivery that's gonna cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you gonna go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts?
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See website for more details. John, we got another question from Kaylee. She asks Dear John and Hank, I'm upset that this podcast is seen as a sleep podcast. This is my Tuesday workout podcast.
The 50 minutes just goes perfect for my Tuesday specific workout workout. Best wishes Kaylee. I am John Scott. That's the exact tempo of Kaylee's workout.
I'm just that's what your heart sounds like right now. Okay, like is your pushing your going your in your not movie. I'm gonna start doing that. When I do the elliptical, I'm gonna start singing elliptical.
Ahiptical elliptical, a elliptical elliptical. punch punch punch punch punch punch punch And And then kettlebell kettlebell kettlebell jog, jog, jog, jog, run punch, jog, punch kettlebell. This is the world's hardest workout. Push up, push up, push up, push up, push up, plank, plank, plank.
Keto. We got it. This is a workout podcast. This is definitely as much, this is both a sleep podcast and a workout podcast because what it is at its core Kaley is a banter podcast and banter podcast is all things, all people at all times.
Yeah, we banter. We really are a banter podcast, aren't we? Yeah. And also we're an optimizer podcast.
You have to wake up and if you are not outside in the sunshine within 30 seconds, you are not going to have an optimal life. You're going to have a sub-optimal life. You need to get sunshine on, ideally, the butt. No, that's incorrect, Hank.
And you know that's incorrect. The science says that you've got to reverse poo it. You've got to go outside and you've got to be wearing pants, but no shirt. And you've got to let that torso get all that natural sunlight and soak in all that vitamin D.
I don't know, John. If you put it under your legs, that doesn't do any good. I think you've got to reverse, reverse poo it where the shirt is only on your head and you're blind and naked everywhere else. The shirt's wrapped around your head so you're blindfolded.
Yeah. And you're just running around in a circle that's really trying to get the shirt off? Yeah, yeah. This is how you optimize because that's really good for your core and your balance.
And you do want to optimize your life because if you spend your entire life optimizing your life at the end of it, you will not die. Well, but here's what's going to happen, John. It'll just feel like you're doing something that's worth it because being alive is the thing. And you're just like, I just want to feel like I'm doing something that's worth it.
Yeah, and the thing that's worth it. And nothing can feel that gap inside of me because I've decided apparently that social responsibility just isn't for me. No Hank, that's not optimized. Thinking about other people and empathy isn't optimized.
I just did a real quick zip to take I have that's broader and I don't really want to get deeper into it. But that is a big ask. Let's not get deeper into it. Okay, remember when you were talking that you were going to go on that muscle bad podcast and I talked to you out of it because I'm a freaking hero?
Yeah, you did do that. I didn't do it. Oh, thank God. All right, let's move on to another question.
But thank you for letting us be your workout podcast. We really appreciate that. I just want to be clear. I do think that workouts are good.
And it is important to be healthy. And yeah, move your body. Move your body around. It does feel good.
Of course, move your, nobody's saying don't move your body. We're grateful that we're a workout podcast, Hank. Why wouldn't that? Absolutely.
Correct. Why would people interpret that any other way? I don't know. This is the thing, John, the internet interprets you in all kinds of ways you don't intend.
Sometimes people are not generous in their interpretation, but usually that's on them, not on you. All right. Sometimes it is on you. It's complicated.
I could do better. We all could, my man. We all could. This next question comes from Elena who writes here, John and Hank, what do you mean that when you break a bone and they put a cast on it, the bone heals?
How does the bone heal? Does it regenerate? Do the broken parts kiss and make up? Just a little confused, Elena.
Yeah, basically they kiss and make up. They basically kiss and make up. I mean, that's essentially what happens. They grow back together.
But do you know, Hank, what? That my grandfather in law invented a compound called BMP that makes bones kiss and make up faster than they naturally do. He invented a compound? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's famous for it.
He also wrote the bone article in the World Book Encyclopedia. Whoa, I didn't know people wrote that. I figured that was just sort of bestowed on the world by God. I don't know.
Yeah, it's not. No, God doesn't write the encyclopedia. What do people do? That's very cool.
It's called BMP. Yeah, BMP. You can look up your wrist BMP and find out all about that. So yeah, bones, I don't know.
This is like a wild thing. But when you break a bone, it bleeds. Because there's blood vessels in there. There's living cells inside of your bone.
If you break a bone in the bone, it does a part where it's bleeding. And there's like the, it has to form clots that it has to repair. And that's going to bring up a lot of inflammation, which is going to bring certain kinds of cells to help with the healing. And then there's like a temporary patch phase.
And then there's a part where the bone cells, which are constantly rebuilding your bones, like they're living things. I know that we think of them as like dead things, because there are dead bones that you can see, whereas a lot of the rest of the body doesn't last as long. But they are living things. And the cells that come in that are constantly repairing and strengthening and rebuilding bone come in.
And they rejoin the bone. You can see, if you want to go and look on the internet, you can see like what a repaired bone break looks like and a bone from a person who has subsequently died. Which is- And it's really cool. To be clear, all of us eventually.
Yes. See, I'm such an E-word. Hey, I can't help myself. Look, that doesn't have to be bad news.
We're all going to die. It is kind of bad news. It's not something that I like revel in, yeah. Yeah, I don't look forward to it.
I like this world. I mean, I'm grateful to be here with the rest of you. Some of you recently asked what I want to live forever. And like they have yotted it and made all of the things, like you're going to be like, you're not going to be in pain, you're going to be relatively youthful, you're going to be able to continue to enjoy things.
And also you don't have to live forever. Like you just can. And I'm like, yeah, no, I wouldn't do that. But I currently don't want to die.
Why would I take away the future measability to probably want to die? Oh, not me, man. Surprising number of people who are like, no, I just want to be able to have the natural way of it going go. Yeah, I don't think I'm supposed to be here for a little bit going to go.
And I don't want to do that. But then don't. If you can make the choice, be like, OK, I'm done. OK, I'm into that.
No, I don't know. It's complicated. Would you have a house if you're late? Yeah.
Oh, not me. I don't want to see that much change. I know it's already been quite a lot. It's been a surprising amount.
I'm feeling it more now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I feel to change. I think that we've already experienced the last major technological revolution that I'm just never going to get on board with.
Now you will, Hank, because you're the kind of person who gets on board with things and continues to grow and everything and adulthood. But not me. I'm done. I hit the age of 47 and I'm like a brick wall.
Yeah, I don't know that I'm going to be on the next social media app. Like the next TikTok, I think I just might take a pass. But like, that's me now. That's like you saying that you're not going to sign your next book.
You say it every time. Yeah. I have been thinking about how I could sign a 100,000 copies of my next book by just stretching it out more. Oh, it'll just yeah, yeah, yeah, just not having it.
Yeah, just like a book come out six months later than it normally would. Yeah, do you like a thousand a day instead of three thousand? We'll just start signing this tip in sheets now. You've got to write another book.
I'd like to. But that's contingent upon my staying alive and everything. Stray, I think that you're OK. Let me know if you have any worries about that.
I have constant non-stop overwhelming worries about that. Thank you for asking. OK. This next question comes from Eleanor who asks, I'm going to hear John and Hank, why are most envelopes the size they are?
In order to fit a normal sheet of A4 paper into a regular envelope, you have to fold the paper into thirds, which could be rather difficult to do. Why don't we use taller envelopes so we only have to fold the paper in half? This has been plaguing me for years. Not Mrs.
Rigby, Eleanor. That's a good question. I have a guess. I have a guess too.
My guess is as a person who electro-jogs, you have a guess? No, my guess is not electro-jog related, but that's interesting. My guess is that it fit into some kind of early slot. Right.
So if you have a situation where you have to have a lot of slots in a small space, you can go deep, but you don't want to go higher. So you want the square, the box to have the smallest possible area, but the largest possible volume. And so in that situation, you want something that's deep and relatively small. Interesting.
So that's an interesting guess. I like that guess. It's not that old. No, interesting.
The window envelope was invented in 1901. Well, that's the window envelope. And that's with the hole in it. So you don't have to put the address on the outside.
Oh, OK. Yeah, I know you're right. The envelope. That makes more sense.
I was like, how do they get away with it? What the hell were they doing? Yeah. You can tell envelope is old because the word for it is envelop.
Yes. What you're going to do with your letter? I will envelop it. Yes.
That's not something someone in 1901 would have said. There are a lot of different sizes of envelopes. And they seem to vary a lot based on whether you live in China, Japan, internationally, or in North America. And there are a number of different lengths and measures of envelopes.
And some of it seems to be because of the size of a personal check. Oh, OK. Here, my other thought was, have you ever, so like you pull together a bunch of cards, right? Just a bunch of playing cards.
Yeah. And then you have to sort them so that they're flat again. And that's kind of annoying, right? If they were only a little bit different, if the proportions was like one to one point one, that would be extremely hard.
Right. And if the proportions were two to one, it'd be easier. And if the proportions were three to one, then it would be easier. And that was my thought that it was like you just got a bunch of them.
It's a lot easier to sort them to be flat if they have a longer ratio. But that might just be like a side benefit. Yeah. Yeah, I bet that there's somebody out there who's going to answer this question for us.
And we'll get back to you next week. But in the meantime, that's our best guess. The other thing is what I'll say is it's not that hard to fold three times versus one. And I kind of like it.
I kind of like nice. Well, it's only two folds, actually, instead of one. So it's twice as many folds. But you're right.
It's not that bad. Yeah. And people just have one more time. Oh, yeah.
No, back then, there was so much time to fold. OK. Well, like writing a letter with your ink quill and then like scattering some stuff on it to absorb the ink so that it wouldn't smear doing that every line. Yeah.
The folding part of the letter was that was like, I did it. I'm going to do all this feels good. I finally finished this letter that took me two hours to write an hour just like send. The folding was the joy.
That was when you felt that was when you felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Right. And now you just click on the Google auto auto created message that you most prefer and click on send. And then the person replies with their Google auto created message that they then click on send.
Yeah. It's really. It's really. It fires rise and empires fall, buddy.
I'm so glad that we've made human communication so efficient because that's really what it needed. Yeah. No, that's what was missing. All right.
We got a question from Maxank. This one's for you. It says, Dear John and Hank, please tell me about neutron stars. How big are they?
How dense? Why are they dreams and democracy? Max. Oh, thanks.
Thanks for asking. My son is fairly obsessed with neutron stars. He loves pulsars and so which are kind of neutron star. And so we are talking about it all the time.
They are the leftovers from a certain type of supernova and all the sort of like the collapse of the supernova is so intense that it forces all of the protons and electrons to annihilate each other, I think, until they become a neutron. Is that right? I'm not sure. You want to ask you a different question?
I think that's right. I just look, I just checked that it is right. Okay. So they're not very big.
So they're like, they are the leftover core of a star. But when you're just packing neutrons together, so as you probably know, atoms are almost entirely empty space. They seem very heavy to us, but in fact, they're just puffy balls and but neutron stars are just neutrons and they don't have any of that puff. So they are small, but they are extremely dense.
Like if you had a teaspoon, it would weigh six billion tons. So that's like the size of like the weight of a mountain and a teaspoon because there's so much space in atoms. So how? So neutron stars are often like the mass like they're like 15, like 10 to 15 miles across, but the mass of like the sun.
So they're like the size of New York City, but the mass of the sun. Yeah. Whoa. It might be what's the mass of a neutron star mass of?
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's right.
Geez. Um, but, uh, and they're out there and they're basically they could, like if the star had been bigger, they might have become a black hole, but it's not not big enough. So they're neutron stars and then like there's weird ways in which they can actually emit light or more like infrared radiation. So usually like in the radio spectrum.
So we can see them. You can see them with your eyes, but we can see them radio telescopes. And we first spotted them. They're like, what the heck's going on?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back it up. You can't see them with your eyes. I mean, I, if there was like light shining on them, you could see them. Okay.
Okay. So they're, they're, they're, they're, they're physically visible. Yeah. Okay.
All right. But you need to shine light on them to see them, but they do emit radio waves. Yeah. That's a very, very strong magnetic fields as well.
Um, yeah, called magnetars. Yeah. People say that about me too, actually, that you have a very strong magnetic field. I'm just kind of, I just have that inherent charisma.
There is the riz, if you will. You don't have to say all those syllables, John. Sorry. I just have that riz.
It's 2025. You've got sigma riz and you don't have to be afraid to say it. I am terribly, terribly afraid to say it. And I'm also afraid that you've said it.
This, this morning I was watching a video about a paper, a published scientific paper next to my son and he was watching it with me and he turned to me. And instead of discussing this scientific paper, he said, what's a sigma mean? And I was like, Oh, no. I was like, I don't know what sigma means, son.
That's for you to tell me. You have to go to school, figure out what sigma means and then tell me. Yeah, it's interesting. My son does not use any of that slang with me, but yeah, or with us in our family, but I would have been using it with his friends.
Oh, she's not like he wouldn't say sigma riz. I mean, I think like that's a joke. Like I think I think young people say that as a way of making fun of old people rather than a thing that they would. It's irony.
It's the extension of irony into every facet of everything. Yes, exactly. Like irony also has to invade slang as part of ironies taking over our overall discourse. But it does fascinate me that he has a different language.
And this is true for all teenagers, I think, a different language when talking to his friends than when talking to his family. Yeah, it's wild man. Having a teenager is the best. And yeah, anyway, hey, hang before we get to the on board news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, which actually this week is very important because we're recording the podcast.
That's what we're recording this podcast. I'm sitting next to a suitcase that I will immediately upon finishing the podcast take with me to London. I wanted to give a quick update, so a little bit of a good news update actually for once from Chris, dear John and Hank, at the time of writing this email, John mentioned the magic paste made with peanut butter from Georgia in the latest episode. More importantly, the people who helped make the pace of loss their jobs and contracts and many of those paces were sitting in warehouses where malnourished people live overseas, who should have been receiving them.
And all of that is true, except I come bearing good news. I know the episodes are prerecorded, but the magic paste is back. The contracts with USA will be instated. The workers are back at their jobs and the awesome magical peanut butter paste is once again being sent to those in need.