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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. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.
Where's that preferred to think of it, Dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice, and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and Aves going on on an actual physical couch together in Los Angeles, California. John, you know what the problem was when Jacques Cousteau and Natalie Porton wanted to get married. What?
But how would they mash their names together into a Portmanteau? Ah! It's a good joke. It's a good joke.
So we were in Los Angeles filming Ask Hank Anything and we decided that we would make a podcast but we're here on this couch. I would love, it would be so cool to do it like this except maybe not with four other people in the room. It would be great to do it like this every week especially if you lived in Indianapolis because then I wouldn't have to leave Indianapolis. Right, I would just be there.
You'd be there all the time. We would do so much work. We'd be like Rhett and Link, you know? Just brothers.
Yeah, they're not brothers but you know what I mean. They basically. I had a dream last night about Rhett and Link that they gave me really good advice and we were just hanging out like the old days and they were like man you got to take it down a notch. I was like thanks Rhett and Link.
I needed to hear that from you guys. If Rhett or Link said I had to take it down a notch I'd be like watch your own business. I'd be like don't talk to me about my notches. I did so defensive when you told him to take him down a notch.
I do, I mean well the reason is sometimes you go out and I'm like why are you doing all this and I'm like I don't know. You can't answer the question. I need to rein it in. Yeah you get defensive because you can't answer the question.
Yeah I do not feel like I am acting in my own best interest right now. Earlier today and we'll get to your question soon but earlier today Hank told me that he has a Hank's channel video that he's very nervous about uploading because he's worried that it's going to offend people. I don't think it's going to offend people. People may disagree with certain portions of it.
And then I was like so don't upload it. Yeah. And you were like but I can't because it's a banger. It's just that people are wrong.
It's the video is right. It's good to be you. It's good to be certain. There's just there's a lack of nuance out there in the world.
No you don't say. On the internet? That's what my friends Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau have told me. Now I don't want to get ahead of your joke but isn't it impossible for Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau to get married because Jacques Cousteau is dead?
Yeah. I think that's one of the problems with the idea. But it's a good joke. Let's answer this question for Bronwyn who writes Dear John and Hank.
What are the vegetables and they sweat like release water in the heat? Is this the same way I sweat? No Bronwyn. No.
No. It's not? I mean because we're what's the same. We're exposed to heat and we're releasing wet.
Do you know that we are among the wettest? Like humans? Yeah. Are among the wettest animals?
Among the wettest of the dry animals. Is that true? We are among the driest of the animals because most animals are wet all completely. They're surrounded by water.
You want to hear my best joke from my comedy sometime tomorrow? Yes. Yes. Pitch me a pitch me a joke cold hank.
Nothing funnier than that. Well it's related. Okay. Give it to me.
So I'm talking about how Neanderthals and humans are related. Was we intramated? Yes. In fact maybe Neanderthals never went extinct.
We just merged with them. Yeah. And then I say we I gotta get it right. Yeah.
He's going to mess up the joke. That's the exact wrong way to start the joke. Is it the wrong word? They are in us.
Yeah. Because we were in them. Okay. That's a good joke.
Or vice versa. Probably both. All right. Well, I mean.
Then I go on to wonder whether all of the human Neanderthal sex was straight. Well, I just want to get ahead of this real quick and tell you that if that's the best joke in your comedy special, I'm concerned. It's the only joke joke. The rest of it is funny.
The only bit on the bump. Yeah. It's the only bit on the bump. It's the only turn of phrase.
Can't wait to hear how it goes. So when you are a vegetable and you sweat, it's not like being a human who sweats. No, but we are we are the sweatiest animal. I think that we are like we might be the sweatiest animal of all of them.
Of all the animals. Because other animals do sweat. Yeah. Yeah.
We're not alone in that. No, but we are covered in sweat. Sweat holes. Inch what they call them.
The technical biological name is called a sweat hole. And we're just loaded with them. They're all over. There is a name, but it's it's some kind of gland.
It's like a pecoran gland. That makes a certain kind of secretion. And there's another one that I can't run the name of. That's the sweat one.
But anyway, we're very sweaty. It's a very intentional process that pumps or gets water across a membrane. It pumps ions across a membrane and draws the water out. But is it a vegetable also just water coming out of the membrane?
I guess. But it's not a it's not a biochemically mediated system. It's not an intentionally done thing that has like mechanisms around it. It's getting hot.
And so it is the water is getting energized. And so it's leaving. I don't know if what we do that if you hear that person up. Moving on to the next question.
Lily writes your brother's green yesterday. I was eating outside of Chinese restaurant in London when Jensen Wong, a CEO of Nvidia walked up to me and asked if the food was good. And then if he could sit and eat with me and my friend. What photo attached so I don't sound crazy.
And then to be fair, the photo is attached. But also I will make a note that Jensen Wong makes technology that makes it so that I can't trust that photo. That's a really good point. So how do I know?
That's true. That's true. That's a photo of Jensen Wong hanging out with me. Doesn't mean anything anymore.
I have to zoom in on your shirt. This is some Chinese characters on this tee. Okay. If the Chinese characters on this tee are identical to one on this tee, I'm going to call it.
Okay. It's a real photo. Okay. So I also just trust Lily.
Lily seems inherently trustworthy. But I'm down. I proved it with a photo. It doesn't work anymore.
It's true. We made small talk with him for about an hour about his dinner with the king, my recent graduation and what to see in California. And then we all left. Only on the bus home did I really begin to process.
Our stranger was to have dinner with one of the world's richest men. Yeah. Now all my friends are telling me I should have asked for a job or a large generation to share it. You're the secret to a lifetime of success.
I suppose it is odd that I got from the greatest proximity I ever have to power is free Chinese food. Free food. Brought your dinner. Yeah.
That's pretty nice, Lily. Did you get the nicest thing on the menu? You should have gotten some real expensive. Honestly, don't know how to leverage that.
I feel you must also have odd conversations with people who are kind of from a different planet. What should I do next time a billionaire sits down at my dinner table? Pumpkin's and Penguin's Lily. This is freaking weird.
Jensen Wong, it seems like a weird dude. Well, I mean, here's what I'll say. That's more human than I would have expected. Yeah.
To like make small talk with a stranger for an hour is pretty human. Billionaires are, I have a theory about this. Billionaires are different from us because you have to be a certain kind of person to want to be a billionaire because when you are a billionaire, I've said this to you before Hank, the easiest thing in the world is to become a multi-multi-millionaire. Yeah.
It is an achievable goal. The steps are there. If you're a billionaire, you can become stinking rich and not be a billionaire. You have the best of both worlds.
You can get a chance to just get right out of that line. Be a billionaire seems stressful every time you go out to dinner. You just have Chinese food. Well, that doesn't go away when you give the money away.
Everybody's still like Jensen Wong. Maybe. I think so. You got a quippy and CEO of Nvidia.
That job sounds stressful. Oh boy. Who would want that job? Just hanging out with Trump all the time.
He's like, you're my favorite guy, Jensen Wong. And the King. And the Bat King, whichever King. I'm not sure which King.
I think it's King Charles the second. If I have the King. I mean, that's what it says. Of England?
Where was she? They were in England. Oh, I don't know. Did they say that?
Basically. I thought they were in Hong Kong. No, no, no. They replied that they were in London when they said they were in London.
That was the giveaway. It says that a Chinese restaurant though, so it's to not London. Okay. That's the key.
That's the part that you miss. I guess they do have those other places. So the King, I think, is the King of England. Wow.
Yeah. So Hank, when you interact with billionaires, what you do? I've done. What is your overall approach?
Because I never make a direct ask for charitable donations. I just try to emanate that that should be. Here's the thing. I actually, I think if a billionaire gets all their money to charity, it just creates a new problem, which is that it creates all these like perverse incentives and like it's easy to stomp on work that's working.
Like it's just it's a hard thing to do. There's ways to do one hour conversation. Yeah. There are ways to do it.
There's ways to do it. It doesn't happen in an hour. It doesn't happen in an hour. But you have like a responsibility to do the right thing with the resources you have.
Yeah. And it's tricky. And like they've got a lot of demands on their time. They've gotten into the situation that they're in not unintentionally, you know.
That's I think that's a key insight is that nobody becomes a billionaire by accident. No. No, it's a problem. Babies.
Babies? Babies? Babies? Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think that should be possible. I'm just gonna say it. I don't want to sound like too anti-billionaire.
No, no, no. I'm bear with you. I don't think there should be baby billionaires. I don't think there should be baby billionaires.
You might even make the case there shouldn't be billionaires. But I know for a fact there shouldn't be tiny little newborn baby. Yeah. You shouldn't like your head's half out and it's like, it just happens.
That's what happened. Pachang! You're the seventh richest person in the world, baby. Before right now you were just a, you were just a baby.
But now? No, no, you're very well. You're a Walton, baby. You're a Walton.
What would you have done if you were Lily? I think Lily had the way out. No, I think you do exactly what Lily did. Like Jensen Huang isn't gonna, because he sat next to you, give you a hundred thousand dollars.
Or a job. I mean, unless you're like, are a chip designer. Are you a chip designer? That would, Nvidia does.
I've always wondered. Yeah, they don't even make chips. What do they do? They, they draw them.
Is that true? Uh huh. They draw them? Yeah, they like do the design of the chip.
So like how the chip, and look, I don't. I mean, we're getting outside of our every expertise. Yeah, I used to think that they made the chips, but they don't. There's a separate company that makes the chips.
They just like send to the chip companies what they like the chips to look like it do. So, Nvidia is an artist company. Yeah, they're a bunch of, they're just a bunch of artists. Yeah.
Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool.
Cool. So that's, so we agree that Lily handled it well. Yeah. How do you handle it when you are with someone who lives on a different planet?
Um, I had a experience recently where I was, I knew that we were at Complexly, we were pitching a foundation that is run by a billionaire's foundation. Yeah. And I was just doing my thing. Like I was given the presentation I was giving, and then I found out after the fact that the guy was in the room.
I didn't know because I wasn't in the room. It was like a zoom meeting with the camera on the wall. There was like 15 people in the room. Yeah.
And I was, yeah, I was like, that's probably the best. Yeah. That I just didn't know. Right.
The best thing is to treat people like they're normal people. Unless you really want them to know that they are doing the wrong, like a bad thing. But if you're not asking for money, that's not really the vibe I'm trying to give off. That's right.
Did it work by the way? I think so. I think so. It's a little bit down the road.
And in general, what I do is set the golf ball on the tee in the meeting. And then afterward, that's when you try to hit the golf ball. You send them to ask. I see it.
But here's what I want to also talk about. Last night I was, my Cavi was, had been driving in LA for like 50 years. Right. And so I asked him, like, what are your weird camp driver stories?
Which you take away. And he just unloaded on me with some weird camp stories of people he's driven around over the years. And you know what occurred to me in the midst of those is that like I could be way weirder. Oh yeah.
I mean, I agree. And it's important to remember that like whatever it is that you said to the Cavi that you like think about at night. The Cavi doesn't think about you because there's so many weirder people. There's weirder things.
And like, and it almost made me kind of want to be a little weirder. No. I asked him, like, what are his best fairs? And he gave me stories like every one of them was sued.
I asked for best. And he gave me weird. Right. And I'm like, I guess it's just the ones that are the best stories.
Right. And so part of me is like, I should probably be a little weirder. Yeah, to be a best fair. But you have to understand that being a best fair and being a worst fair are precious.
So close. And different for different cab drivers. That is a thin, thin line. Oh yeah.
So you got to be careful there. But I'm not going to be. I know you're going to be weird. I'm going to get in the cab and I'm going to get in the front seat.
And I sit next to him and be like Rhett McLaughlin told me to take it down, a notch in my dream. So I'm taking up three notches in your cab. That's just the energy that I've ever wanted to say. After a long day at work.
You know who Red is right from YouTube? You know who Red of And Link. All right. We got another question from Abby who writes, do you're John and Hank, how do I feel saying in a world where it feels like everything I see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda?
Oh, Abby, every time you see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda. I like to think of myself as a well-read person who does their research, but I'm struggling right now to find the truth and the see of disinformation. I'm too tired to think of a sign off Abby. Now I know you have important feelings here, Hank, because you feel like the trust in institutions and in trustworthy people is undermined by the structures of the internet.
Oh, I do. I know you do. I do. You're right.
You're right. You're also wrong. Okay. Because this was always the case.
There was always a motive and an agenda. Every newspaper had a motive and an agenda. It had a motive in terms of whose op-eds it published and whose agent. Every CBS evening news had a motive or an agenda.
There was never a time without motives. We all have things driving us. Yeah, exactly. The free will exists.
Well, Abby did not actually ask about that, but that's more of a hand-green question. That's like under all of it. It's like everybody's got all these choices. I'm like, are they?
Well, okay. All right. Let's try to go one layer up. I'm not a kid.
You freak. And maybe just talk about Abby's particular question, which is how do you find the truth and a see of disinformation? I mean, we can look at a situation and be like, okay, well, the news isn't going to publish a story unless a bunch of people want to read it. So why would I believe that the news is telling the truth when I know that they're just trying to get people to read stuff?
Right. Like when we look at layers of incentives, if there's a person on Instagram who's brand new to getting attention on the internet, they might actually, too, the average person, seem like their motives are more pure, but actually they're not. They have the same incentives to get people to look at the stuff that they're making. And they also might have fewer guardrails as well.
They probably have way fewer guardrails, especially because it doesn't really matter to them. They don't know how close they are to getting something wrong and having their reputation ruined. And also, their reputation won't really get ruined if they get something wrong because they're just a person. Whereas structures, like a newspaper, the CDC's website, the BBC, SciShow, like things that have things to protect, they have this incentive to not mess up because people take it really seriously when they do mess up.
But they will still mess up. But they will still mess up. Because that's the nature of being made out of humans. Yeah.
But I think that there are institutions that have stronger incentives to not mess up. And so we should look at the institutions that have strong incentives to not mess up. And then when they're like slow or they're not focused on the same things that everybody else is focused on, maybe it's because they have an incentive to be a little more stodgy. The only thing I'd say about this thing is that you can't trust the CDC's website the way that you could trust the CDC's website five years ago.
Oh yeah, now. There are ways that the CDC's website is actually unreliable. And so if the institutions that are the sort of paragons of reliability, the place that you tell people to go to get information you trust are not trustworthy, I understand Abby's question. Oh, I understand the question.
It's so hard. It's really hard. This probably isn't Abby's problem. But like in general, we have right now a much easier time trusting individuals than we do trusting institutions.
And I think that individuals are actually usually worse. I know that that's the case for me. Like, I know that I when I make a video, like I should catch this more flack than I do, but they work much harder on fact checking than I do. Right.
And I'm like, this is like really disappointing for me. This is like kind of scary that like it's so much easier for individuals than for groups of people when groups of people do a better job and like not perfect, like mess surely mess up. Yes. But you know, I don't know.
Well, it's a good question. Abby, we don't have a good answer. How about this question from Amy who writes, dear John, can you please tell my 12 year old son to stop listening to you under the covers and go to sleep? No one listens to mom, Amy.
What's your go to bedtime song, John? Amy, I wish I could do that, but I can't because I don't want your kid to bed. Amy, I wish I could do that. But I can't.
But I can't. But I can't. What's next one? Because I need your son to listen to my podcast.
Listen to my podcast. I'm podcast. I'm all here's the end because that's why I get paid. How do you think I cover myself and those deer hank and John riches with your 12 year old son's ear attention?
Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Amy's 12 year old son, the literal source of all income for the podcast. Rock out under the covers. I hope that it's not freaking out too much over here with the various existential dreads. Yeah, this podcast is also brought to you by seagrass.
I don't know why. It just felt right. Listen, apropos of absolutely nothing. No, it wasn't a call back in any way.
And of course today's podcast is brought to you by the CEO of NVIDIA, the CEO of NVIDIA, having Panaconda with the King. And this podcast is brought to you by my cam driver who's been driving around Los Angeles since 1976. He did not use the GPS. He took me right to my hotel.
I just told him the name of it and he went to it. It was amazing and he's retiring this Christmas. Well, congratulations to him. Yeah.
Are you gonna retire? Never. When I'm his age, he was 80. I was like, my God, man.
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See you website for more details. All right this question comes from Catherine who writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently gave up social media. No bragging Catherine. Classic Catherine Bragg recently gave up social media and and I've taken just growing through Wikipedia what a great solution.
My latest deep dive has been the Florin Fano of the Myocene epoch. Epoch. Epoch. I kind of went halfway between.
That's you know I don't know. I noticed that various epochs have different lengths of time and it got me thinking how did we decide how long each earth eon era period epoch etc is. Who chose all the geological time scales cut off and why? On creative sign off Catherine.
Now Hank this is something I know a little bit about. Yeah because if turns out that if you really want to piss off geologists you should call your book the Anthropocene reviewed. And you should say that the Anthropocene is the geologic term for a current historical moment. They don't like that.
I don't like it. I think that there's a good chance that we are at a transition and that this will be a new. That is certainly my contention. Yeah.
I'm not a geologist. There's one thing I've learned from the geologists that I'm not. So the answer to the question like who chose these things and why? Here's the answer.
Yeah. People and for a good reason. Well the answer is people right. There is like a literal group of geologists who decide these things.
Oh yes and they had a vote on whether we're in the Anthropocene and they're like not yet. That doesn't count. Not yet. That's not a thing.
Maybe soon. I mean these transitions usually are thousands of years between the epochs. Right. And so it would be ridiculous to call us in a new one when it's only just begun.
Well the thing is the Holocene is not that old. Oh okay. And they're like you can't start a new one. So we're currently according to the geologists in the Holocene.
Yeah. Which started at the end of the last night. So it's only like 12,000 years ago. Right.
Well maybe they were wrong about that one. That's my contention. That one should be. They should just bump that one up.
Rename the whole thing the Anthropocene. Because we were doing we were doing a significant intervention in landscape 12,000 years ago. Oh yeah. We were doing.
When you hunted woolly mammoths to extinction. What are the what are the contention for the start of the Anthropocene. Because there's this one that I have thought of that's like a real weird one. I think one is the explosion of the first nuclear bomb.
Oh okay sure. Because that's a moment that had some real geologic impact. You know a lot of things floating around these days have a little more radiation in them. That's one I've heard a bunch of them.
I think it would feel like you could do it at a number of different points when it's like oh we're having a big impact now. The thing about the radiation is it's going to be very visible. Right. In the geologic record.
So the answer to why is that there are always these big changes. There are big changes. Big changes. Like the comet was a big change.
Remember that big comet? Like it was yesterday. Yeah. Well I mean geologically it sort of was.
Not that long ago. Not only 250 million years ago. What was it? No 64 million years ago?
Yeah 65 to 66. Functionally yesterday. Yeah. You know what I think about sometimes.
You know at the end of the Ice Age when the glaciers were retreating and there were these giant lakes. Yeah. Glacial lakes. Like my town was under a big lake.
Yeah. There would be these ice dam breaks where these giant lakes like the size of the Great Lakes would suddenly outflow to the ocean. Wow. And they would be you know you like see a huge boulders that were carried down by these ice flows that are like still standing there to this day.
And I think about that people because this is like happened regularly. It happened like every few hundred years. Right. And so they just like have set up their lives.
And then suddenly just like a wall of water and like every like every one they knew. And all of their collective memories are all gone. Yeah. Or if anybody survived they would be like if like a small community survived they would like tell tell that story for hundreds of years.
And be like this weirdest thing happened. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I think about.
I think about the little stand of forest behind my house near my house that has been there for since the last Ice Age. 12,000 years. Continuous forest. Just doing forest stuff.
All of it would still be forest. Except most of it is Indianapolis and McDonald's. Well I think McDonald's is also Indianapolis. Well my point is that most of it is McDonald's.
Oh that particular stand is mostly McDonald's now. Yeah. Oh. And it's a Crown Liquor's as well.
Okay. It's got a liquor store Domino's Pizza. Pizzer at Pet Store next to like a Christian bookshop. No that's a deep cut.
Yeah. It's a reference to a story I wrote in high school that nobody listened to the podcast is read. No I can't. I don't know.
No. The only copies have been burned. It only exists inside Hank's memory. It was called Rosenthal Square.
It was about a mini mall where there was a Christian bookstore next and they were all squatters remember. Yeah. It was a Christian bookstore that was next to a pet store. I don't think I knew what a squatter was.
Yeah they all none of them had leases or anything. It was an abandoned mini mall that they'd turned into a commercial enterprise. It's pretty funny. You could bring it back.
I'll tell you what I never abandoned an idea all the way. Yeah I used to have this idea for a story for here that's a sequel, a sequel to a book that doesn't exist. Yeah. And these characters like the characters like survive the book and enter our world.
And I can't let go of that even though I know it's not a very good idea. Well I mean it is a very good idea. That's the problem. Right.
It's a good idea that I can't execute. It's just so much idea. There's so much idea in that idea. There's too much idea in it.
It's like vampires in high school. Great idea. Almost too much of an idea. That works every time.
No. What do you mean? As far as I'm concerned it only worked once. Twilight Buffy Buffy works twice.
Some people call it the poor man's twilight. Anyway let's move on to the story from Sophie who writes Dear John and Hank. When were chairs invented? We mostly have been sitting on rocks and logs and lizard times but when were chairs?
Yeah there weren't any lizards sitting on chairs. That's for sure. We must have been sitting on rocks and lizard. I mean to be fair lizards do sit on rocks.
Yeah. Yeah. Since lizard times. When were chairs as we know them today invented?
When does a structure you've decided to sit on become a chair? Oh no. We're not going to go there. We're not going to go there.
Pumpkin's sitting penguin Sophie. Yeah. So Hank this is wild. It wasn't until the 1950s.
It's true. They did not do chairs. We actually had an atomic bomb before we were chair. Yeah.
Yeah. All those atomic scientists they all sat on rocks. Like warm rocks. Like lizards.
They all had hemorrhoids because their dyes were so bad. Is that true? They sat on warm rocks. Wow.
Fascinating. That's not true. Sophie. Not a case you weren't sure.
The first I actually don't, I can't confirm or deny whether the hemorrhoids think it's real. Yeah. They didn't. I don't think they wrote about that.
No it wasn't covered in how to make an atomic bomb or whatever. The Christopher Nolan movie. Oppenheimer Oppenheimer. I love you called that the Christopher Nolan movie.
I can't remember what it was called. Not the Oppenheimer movie. Somewhere Robert Oppenheimer is absolutely spinning in his grave. That man needed nothing more than for you to know his name and you didn't know his name.
Yeah. It's the only thing he wanted out of the world. Yeah. And you don't get it.
Not from the wizard man warm rock center. So 4,500 years ago we have evidence of chairs. What? Did you Google this?
Yeah. I don't believe him. I did. I don't believe him.
You could Google it while I talk about it. I looked this up. 4,500 years ago we have evidence of chairs in ancient Egypt. But interestingly, chairs have been invented independently of each other several times.
So the Aztecs had chairs. The Egyptians had chairs. The Northern Europeans had chairs separate from the Egyptian chairs. Frustratingly this is correct.
No, I don't. I don't. You're doing the work out here. I'm out here doing the work.
Answering Sophie's question like the proper podcast which I totally am. So convergently evolving into chairs. Same thing with agriculture. Oh yeah.
The other two happened so often. We're repeatedly many different times in many different places. Fabric too. Fabric as well.
Oh man. And all these are weird. Humans are super weird. Let's answer this question.
Why do we make the chairs? Why do we need chairs? We couldn't squatting hard. Yeah.
Sitting is better. Sitting is better than standing. Yeah, but like just sitting on the ground. You want a nice comfortable sit.
That's why we invented chairs. And it's been a great invention. We're in a room right now with three different people who are sitting in chairs. 4.
I can't see the fourth. I don't know. Oh yeah. There's a surprise fifth person emerged from the ether.
It's dark back there. It's big lights. As for what makes a chair chair. There's a Michael Stevens Vsauce video about this.
And you can be like, oh, it turns out chairs don't exist. Well, nothing exists if you dig deep enough. Well, it's not just that they don't exist. It's that there isn't a definition for a chair that works.
Well neither is there a definition for a sandwich that works. Exactly. That's why we have hot dogs and debates. Yes.
Words, man. Categories are problematic. They're really just there to be useful. And they feel like they're there to be definitive, but they're just there for when they're useful.