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We're dedicating this episode to a longtime listener and nerd fighter named Braden who died of cancer a few weeks ago. A lovely young man by all accounts and a listener to this podcast and we just wanted to say to his family that we're thinking of you and so we wanted to dedicate this episode of the podcast to him. We apologize in advance for how dubious our advice is and how bad the podcast is but apparently Braden found a way to enjoy a real testament to his perseverance and also to all of our listeners for dealing with this subpar crap indeed. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.
Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions give you advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and ASU Wimbledon. John, why can't you eat fried condor because it's a rarity of it I assume? Yeah, that's not legal tenders.
Maybe maybe well maybe maybe why can't you buy something with a fried condor? This is not legal tenders. Is that better? We're working it out everybody.
Welcome to the show. I slept terribly last night. I can tell him your low quality low energy introduction that you didn't sleep with last night because you have a viral video right now and there is nothing worse for one sleep than having a viral video. Hank, at some point we're going to need in the same way that we needed to have an hour long conversation about 2014 at some point we're going to have to have an hour long conversation about Hank's emerging celebrity and whether it is good news.
No, I think probably the conversation that will end up happening if my guess is correct is in 10 years we'll talk about how I fried myself by pressing my face directly against the sun. Yeah, what you saw was me falling from the sky with my melted wax wings and you thought you know what I could do better. I feel like that that's not so bad. There's a lot to recommend falling from the sun.
Look at the wind in his hair. Thanks everybody for listening to that episode. We had a good time doing it and lots of interesting responses to it. Today we're going to go back to old school, Dear John and Hank.
We're going to show that we usually do. If you're new, there's always new people. Is it true that there's like every episode there's like somebody who's never listened to your Hank and John before? And if so, is your name Neil?
Oh, is there a new Neil? Is there a new Neil? There could be. It's not impossible.
There's a beautiful snowstorm outside my shed today. And so if you see me not looking at you Hank, it's because I'm staring at this snowstorm. I love that your shed has so many books in it. That's not usually what sheds have.
So yeah, we're going to go back to the way that we do the show, the the conceit of the show. If you haven't been here before, the conceit of the show is that people ask us questions. And then we do we do three total things. One, we answer questions that are kind of sciency.
We try to give like good signs to answers to answer questions that are a little bit silly and we give silly answers and then very occasionally actually get sincere and we try to do a good job. Right. But but please never think that we're I don't know it's strange because I desperately don't want to do to have people think that we're going to do a good job because yeah, yeah, it's amazing to me how many people write in with serious questions knowing that this is not a serious question podcast, except for occasionally do them. But I also I often feel like you know what serious questions I'd be good at answering are like just about being a YouTuber.
Like I don't I don't know how to date. Well, I actually don't mind answering dating questions. This is the questions that are like, what do I do with my one wild and precious life? I feel like it's slipping out from underneath me that I don't know how to answer because me too, buddy.
Yeah. Hey, let's start off today with a question from Teresa who writes Dear John and hey, here in Houston, Texas, we have St. Arnold's Brewery, which is named after the patron saint of beers. I think to be fair, it's the patron saint of brewers.
I don't know the beer gets the patron saint of beer itself. Is the patron saint like one who gives like a small monthly donation to someone's YouTube channel? We'll get to that. It seems like there are patron saints for many niche categories.
Who decides who can become a patron saint and what can receive a patron? Also, if you could choose a patron saint of science or tuberculosis, who would that be in Y pumpkins and penguins Teresa? So Hank, yes, there is a patron saint of toothache specifically. So not of a person with a toothache, but of people who suffer with toothache, God of toothache itself.
But there's a patron saint that you pray to for intercession when if you're Catholic, when you have a toothache. Now, I'm not Catholic, but I have had some immense chronic mouth pain. And I'm not above saying that I've prayed to Saint Apollonia for intercession on my behalf. So when you pray to a patron saint, the concept is you're not praying to them as a God because there's only one God and that would be a false idol or whatever.
Yeah, they're not pretending to be gods. You're praying to someone who's in heaven who hangs out with God, but also theoretically who knows what it was like to deal with the thing that you've got going on. Is that right? Exactly.
So is this this lady Apollonia? Yeah. Did she was she like tortured to death with tooth stuff? Well, Hank, I hate to inform you that she was indeed tortured to death with tooth stuff.
Specifically, she had all of her teeth crushed by pinchers. Oh, no, that sounds horrible. The Catholic Saint Canon is the worst Pokémon. Yeah, so it's like if Squirtle was also like a perp like forever impaled upon something like that, it really feels that way.
Are they not all of them? Certainly not all of them died terribly, right? No, no, not all of them, but a lot of them. There are a lot of martyrs because the thing about being a saint is that it's much easier to get there if you're martyred.
Otherwise, you got to go the mother Teresa route of like being perfect or holding life or near perfect. I guess nobody's perfect only Jesus, but you know what I mean. So there's a patron saint for everything. I mean, I'm sure there's a patron saint for writers.
Let me look it up real quick. You think Jesus ever lost his temper or like made a YouTube video just because just to feel something? No, I don't. Yeah, so we got the Saint Francis to sales.
He's the patron saint of writers, the Catholic press, the Deaf, journalists, and education in adulthood. So the way that patron sainthood works is that you don't decide who becomes a saint, right? The church decides that. But patronage is a kind of a complicated like a lot of the how are structures really.
patronage is a complicated relationship between like official proclamation and popular devotion. Like popular devotion is really what gets you there. Like Saint Apollonia is considered the patron saint of people living with toothaches because that's what she's been considered for a long time. And a lot of people have found comfort in whatever in praying toward her.
I don't know the exact phrasing. All the Catholics are going to be so mad at me, Hank. I'm worried the Catholic theologians are going to come for me and I fear them. So you only get this this canon if you're Catholic.
There's no like a Piscopalian patron saint? There are Episcopalian saints, but it's not nearly as big of a deal. And there are not like saints in the Methodist or Lutheran church. Usually I think gotcha.
Because a lot of Protestants see this as like false idol worship, like you're basically worshiping Saint Apollonia. And you can't worship anyone but God. I have great news about the patron saint of science. There's a real guy named Albert.
Saint Albert the Great was great. All of a called Albertus Magnus. You know how he died? How did he die?
Of old age. He was in the dreams late 80s. That's the dream. He got to be a saint and he died theoretically just like the same stuff that you and I are going to die of.
Well, the patron saint of tuberculosis is Saint Teresa of Lissu who of course died of tuberculosis. But that was the true of most of the saints. Yeah. The ones who didn't die of torture probably mostly died of tuberculosis.
A lot of them did for sure. For sure. It was 24 though. That's no good.
That's pretty early. When did that happen? She was the pamper daughter of a mother who wanted to be a saint and a father who wanted to be a monk. That sounds like a D1 baby in the making.
If ever there was one. There's a lot of them. And I guess because if you make it like one every few years, it's been a lot of years. I want to see a graph of St.
Inks. When were saints made? Are they like how far in retrospective were they? So like when was the saint operating versus and when were they finally made a saint?
Was there like, I bet there was like a really big peak at some point. There was like some point where they were like, we need a bunch of saints. We're like, we're doing the same thing. Well, there was a lot of modernism early on.
And so you got a lot of early ones like the other patron saint of tuberculosis, St. Pantaleon who died at the age of 28, presumably of tuberculosis. But he's also the patron saint of physicians midwives livestock. I didn't know that you could be a patron saint of an animal, but apparently you can't.
And this is my favorite Hank, Helper for crying children. He's not the patron saint of crying children. He's just, oh no, he's the patron saint of Helper's for crying children. I think he's the patron saint of when your child won't stop crying.
I wonder which one of these like which one of the patron saints gets the most prayers, you know? He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome and he converted to Christianity, St. Pantaleon. He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome.
And then he became a Christian, which obviously was dangerous. When the emperor Diocletetian, and I'm reading this from catholic.org by the way, began his persecution, Pantaleon at once gave away everything he owned to the poor, imagine Hank. Not long afterwards, he was accused of being a Christian. Imagine, imagine if that is a Christian.
I can make that joke as a Christian. He was given the choice of denying his faith or being put to death, then no torture could force him to deny his faith. So there you go. Man, I tell you what Christianity doesn't seem like it's in a really weird spot right now.
Having a weird moment. A lot of disagreement about what the gospels say. There's a line in the gospels. One time I was at church and the person giving the homily was like, everybody wants to take the Bible literally except when it comes to this line about how it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven when suddenly all the rich people become experts in figurative language.
There I was some podcast person. I was listening to a podcast and they said that there was like 3,000 mentions of the like wealth injustice being bad in the Bible. And somehow that's like the main thing that is ignored. And then they try to tease out any real thing about the hot button issues of like today's society.
Right. Yeah. Like there's no mention of any of the hot button issues, but there is mention of the last being first and the meek inheriting the earth. And also there's mention of wherever you see the poor or imprisoned or those who can't afford clothing, you see me, i.e.
God. Yeah. It's a time to get around. It's a good way to get around.
By the way, I am also getting around it. Okay. Like I'm not casting aspersions. I'm throwing I'm throwing stones absolutely from within my glass house.
I need to pray to the patron saint of hypocrisy. Hold on. Hold on. It was Hippocrates.
No. No, I couldn't find one, but I did find a patron saint of rabies. Oh, tuber. What?
Tuber. Say tuber. That does sound a little bit like a Pokemon. Do they have trading cards?
Do they have stats? What are the stats? I used to keep part of St. Padre Pio in my wallet for consolation and good luck given to me by my Jewish mentor Eileen Cooper.
And he is the patron saint of Pio. I think he actually is the patron saint of Pio. What's that? Is that a place?
I think it's a place. Oh, let me look it up. Hold on. Oh, no, it's derived from from Pius.
Oh, that makes sense. He's a pious guy. He had the stigmata. And what is the stigmata?
That's where you get blood coming out of your hands or your wrists in mimicking Christ suffering. Gotcha. This next question comes from Talia who asks. Oh, we're moving on.
I thought we were only like one third of the way into patron saints. No, no, no. We're all the way through patron saints. All right.
Let's move on. Talia asks, do we all get eaten? So logically, the answer would probably be yes to decomposition of dead bodies. But what about cremation?
Do we still get eaten or will nothing go near ashes or does getting eaten by fire count? And if people die in the ocean, then the body will get eaten away by the water. But does that count as being eaten? Talia.
I have so many answers to this question. Yeah. First of all, people who get buried at sea often get eaten like more so than most people. Right.
Faster and more aggressively than most people. And more of a way that feels and looks like eating, you know, things with teeth that are doing the actual eating. Now that, of course, does not always happen. But commonly, the human body is made of food and upsettingly.
Yeah, there's something I really can't get behind. And that's my brain being edible. I just can't. I can't.
I can't support it. I'm opposed to it. I'm opposed to it. But do you get eaten if your ashes?
You don't really get you can kind of get eaten if your ashes. Now, the main thing is that you don't get metabolized if your ashes because metabolizing something like turning it into fuel for your body is like just doing fire to it, but in a controlled way, such the same reactions and like the sort of down at the root of them and fire has already been done with so has done the eating. But but the book he was looking into this, there's this thing where people will scatter ashes and they'll be like, these ashes will be good for the plants and then they'll be taken up in the plants. But here's the thing about human ashes, they're bad for plants.
They're alkaline. So they're like, you know, the opposite of basic. They can back and damage plants. So if you do too much, like if you pour it, like there's some areas that like a bunch of people scatter ashes in the same area and then the plants all stop growing.
Oh my God. So there's a company that creates a supplement that you could add to your ashes that makes them good for plants. Of course, you could go and I've got some problems with the the with the sort of pitch of Let Your Love Grow, which is this company. I've got some scientific nits I could pick.
But it's a fine idea. Basically, I think probably the majority of what it does is it adds some acid to it so that it becomes more neutral and then they're not and then it becomes like a thing and absolutely the minerals from the ashes can be taken up in the plants. But that's not really, I wouldn't call that necessarily eating. It's like taking a vitamin or like what you do to salt more than what you do to chicken.
That reminds me, Hank, that the patient's saying, if you know directors is Joseph of arrhythmia. Arhythmia? Like arrhythmia? Arhythmia.
Arhim, arrh, arrh, arrhythia. I'm not sure Hank. Are you saying Joseph of arrhythia? Jesus is dad?
You know Joseph of arrhythia. Jesus is dad. Wow. I didn't know he was a saint.
He's a saint. I mean, he did do a pretty good job when Mary was like, hey, I'm pregnant with God's baby. Yeah, he was like pretty chill about it. I think so.
He had a cool hat, at least in this photo. Yeah, I don't know that that's a photo, by the way. He is. You know who else he is the patron saint of?
No one. No one. Just the general directors. The stepdad of God just got funeral directors and undertakers.
That's everybody. But it makes sense because he was the one who requested Jesus's body from Pontius Pilate and so that it could be properly buried or I guess entombed. Oh, that's kind of nice. Well, it's sad.
It's a sad story. That is the thing about your story. It's like all bummer. God came down to earth and everybody was like, actually, let's kill him.
Yeah, he was rejected. It's a bit of a story. I mean, so he remains. That's not the end, by the way.
Yeah, it does keep going. But like that's a bummer. Like I don't like I want to think that humanity would be a little more chill about God coming down to earth. That's like when Henry was three years old and we watched a movie called Big Bird Comes Home and he got really upset when Big Bird left home.
And I was like, well, Henry, the movie is called Big Bird Comes Home. I got a good feeling about how this is all going to work out. But he wouldn't watch till the end because he was too upset. That's how you are with the Jesus story.
He stopped when he dies and you're like, this is terrible. What are we up to? That wasn't even that wasn't even like a nice way of doing it. No, certainly not.
All right. Enough theology. We're moving on. People don't come here for that.
People come here for reasons that are unclear to me. Joy asks, Dear John and Hank, how do flames decide where to go? Not in terms of what burns, but the shapes the flames make as they flicker upwards. I'm staring at the fire in my fireplace right now and trying to determine if there's a pattern.
There's some level of consistency in back and forth flames smaller and larger flames and swirls, but no true pattern that I can determine. Do flames have patterns or are they just random, just feeling warm and content, joy. Oh, that's kind of a nice little moment for all. Yeah.
Yeah. Let's just pretend that we're by the fire. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you about fluid dynamics, which is I mean, are you going to tell me that fire is actually a fluid because that seems like the kind of thing you would tell me.
What fire is very is like, it's more of a phenomenon of an experiential phenomenon rather than a physical one is what I can tell you about fire. So like, what you see as fire is a bunch of different things all happening at the same time. But one of them is that there's a bunch of like heat being produced. And so when heat is produced, the air molecules like bump around more and they get farther apart when they're farther apart, they become less dense, and when they're less dense, they get pushed up by gravity, because it's the opposite thing that's happening.
It's like a helium balloon, basically. And as that happens, lots of air is like doing lots of weird stuff. So it's rushing into take the place of that air that is moving upward, and fluid dynamics is extremely complicated because it's made of trillions of atoms and molecules, mostly molecules. It turns out that those molecules are made of atoms.
And so they're bumping around, they're moving around the sticks, they're moving through your house, and there's never really any moment where all of the molecules are moving the same way as they were just a moment ago. And they will always be moving slightly differently. And also the shape of the fire is changing, the amount of energy being produced is changing very slightly. The air currents in the room have an effect on this or outdoors or wherever you are.
All of this matters. And so fire kind of, I feel like, will never look exactly the same in one moment as it did in the last. But certainly there can be patterns. And also you can do things that will actually structure fire.
So candles are built to control fire and put the fire into a structured shape so that it doesn't get chaotic and waste a bunch of wax. Well, the patron saint of fire prevention is Catherine of Sienna from the 14th century. I don't want to know how she died. Actually, she died of a stroke.
I looked up while you were throttling on. Oh, god. This is our the poem, man. What's the patron saint of Dear Hank and John?
We don't get to choose tuberculosis and science. That's a real thing. Yeah, I could choose the patron saint of Dear Hank and John. Yeah.
Dolly Parton. Sure. That's a good one. Kesha.
Kesha is good. I think I'm not completely up to date on Kesha. Hank, Kesha could not be a saint. I don't know.
I'm outside my room with expertise. Did it did? So for clarity, I assume some saints did some did some naughty stuff at some point. All saints did naughty things, right?
That's the nature of being a few minutes. Yeah, you're sinful. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think that that's okay. Sure. Well, we'll have to decide between Dolly Parton and Kesha another time. Yeah, we also probably should choose a dead person.
Isn't that one of the requirements? Great point, Hank. Really, really good point. You do have to be deceased to be a saint.
Yeah. Okay. Charles Darwin. That's my proposal.
Charles Darwin because he appeals to you for his science stuff and me because of his chronic stomach problems. So you can intercede to him and say, oh, please, Charles Darwin, help me with his science problem. And I can be like, Charles Darwin, I can't stop puking and neither could you. My belly aches.
Oh, love Charles Darwin's chronic stomach problems. Yeah. Yeah. He was always gone to the hot tubs to deal with it.
Yeah. Well, that's how they did it back in the day. All right. We got another question from Kate.
He writes, Hey, pals, my two year old asked how trees don't fall over. He was confused because his towers always get smaller as they go up at trees have huge branches. I explained that he can't see the strong roots under the ground and I showed him diagrams and such, but he's not convinced. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm convinced either.
I need more science help kindly Kate. Yeah, there's a bunch of different things going on here. One is that the roots are often bigger than the tree itself or the top part. Right.
The roots extend like out often beyond the crown of the tree or whatever. Yeah. And unlike the crown of the tree, they can actually like intermingle with the roots of other plants. So grounds don't tend to intermingle for actually somewhat mysterious reasons.
Yeah. But I was just thinking because occasionally you'll hear the sound in a windstorm of tree branches rubbing up against each other from other trees, but very rarely, you would think it would be a cacophony. And usually it's the same tree that's rubbing up. Yeah, they respect each other's space, which is very weird, very weird.
But their roots can intermingle certainly with lots of different plants. And so this has a very stabilizing effect on the ground. So if you just had a tree with a bunch of like big, thick roots going into sand, this would not be particularly stable. And in fact, there are sandy places where trees are more likely to fall over because sand doesn't find stuff together as well.
And like trees that are adapted to grow and sand to do it differently. But one of the things that is sort of an underrated phenomenon here is that it isn't that really the big branches that do the majority or the big roots that do the majority of this work. There's like a tap root that's doing a lot of that. So it's like sticking straight down into the ground.
And then there's like a lot of little tiny fingers. They're all doing the absorption of the water and the nutrients. That is very important for the life of the tree. But because they create so much surface area, these very delicate little rootlets actually do a lot of grabbing in a way that like you can kind of imagine like a chameleon's finger works by just having a ton of surface area that gets into every little nook and cranny.
Or if you imagine a sponge, like if you stick like a couple of like chopsticks in there, you can kind of just pull them out. But if you imagine like a billion spikes come out from inside of the chopstick, they would then be stuck into the sponge. Wow. That makes sense.
I mean, that's kind of beautiful to think about that. Like underneath us all the time, there is this web of life that we don't see that holds up trees and other. It reminds me actually that of the patron saint of tree teas between popes and frankish emperor is Petronia. What did you say tree teas?
Yeah, the tree is between the popes and frankish embers in particular, Petronia. Petronia does. If you need, there's no patronie research, there's many people here, and a frankish emperor. You've better be halves free and like crazy to petronia for intercession.
There's no patron saint of lumber or something. Totally in the same, gummare. That sounds like a Pokemon. It's actually Gummaris, which is even more Pokemon like Gummaris.
I think it might be Gummaris. I'm also Gummari. Actually, importantly I should now say that this podcast is brought to you by chopsticks that have a bunch of spikes sticking out from them. The chopsticks that suddenly explode with spikes makes it easier to pick stuff up, I guess.
Yeah, for sure. Today's podcast is of course also brought to you by John the Apostle, the patron saint of lithographers. Oh my God, he's got a website open. And this podcast is brought to you by Kesha.
Kesha, not the patron saint of Dear Hank and John, because she is alive. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by little Saint Cards of Padre Pio, little Saint Cards of Padre Pio in my wallet until I no longer had a wallet because now you don't need a wallet. Oh, oh no. And now you have to just have like a screenshot of him in your phone roll somewhere in your photo reel.
Next time I upload like a carousel on Instagram, I'm going to make the last picture of Padre Pio with no explanation. Oh, he's the last one's Padre Pio. It just means father Pius. Jeez.
Yeah, brag. Brag. He was a very pious man. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.
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Head to factormeals.com slash deer hank 50 off and use the code deerhank50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box. With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Alright, let's answer this question from Reed who writes a deerjon in Hank but mostly Hank why isn't your hair curly anymore?
What happened and how does the same person's hair change between straight and curly like a book? Read. I don't know and more than that neither do we. So I've certainly looked into this but we're at the stage of understanding how curly hair works.
We kind of understand how it works when people's hair is always curly and it is weird that sometimes when you have chemotherapy or hair comes back curly and it is weird that then it will eventually maybe sometimes but not always go back to being straight again. And why this happens? We've just got what we call hypotheses and we haven't really done much work testing those hypotheses because in cancer research there's a bunch of money to spend on stuff that matters more than that. Which is almost everything.
I do feel like there's a way to figure this out. So the big leading hypotheses are one your cells grow back unevenly because they sort of died off or they've gone into dormancy and they like emerged from dormancy unevenly. And so when they emerge unevenly they like literally form curls and waves and stuff. Right, right.
So like one piece of the hair follicle will be making more hair than another piece. And then there's another idea that so curly hair we know is created when the hair follicle is more at an angle to the scalp and rather than straight up and down. And so there's an idea that hair follicle gets empty. Like does it have anything in there?
It sort of like changes shape a little bit and then after a while the hair growing through it it physically changes the shape of the hair follicle. But I don't know which of those two things it is and it may be a third thing or an effect of both of those things together or. Wow. But it initially came back not just curly but very fine.
So I had like baby hair at first. It was curly, it was fine and it was sort of mahogany. It was like a different color. It was a different color.
It was kind of Auburn. Yeah. I remember when I first started seeing videos of you with your new hair thinking it doesn't even look like Hank. It looks like somebody like cosplaying Hank.
Yeah. And now like I go. And now it looks exactly like you used to look. Yeah.
I go weird. I look at the Hank with the curly hair and I feel weird about him. Yeah. You know what he looks like?
He looks like all of our cousins. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you came back with our cousins hair.
The first time my hair follicles grew hair for the first time I also had curly hair for a while. You had curly hair when you were a little kid and then mom's theory and I don't think this stands up to scrutiny. Sorry if you're listening mom. But mom's theory is that when you got scarlet fever your hair stopped being curly.
Good day. I don't know. Or I don't also start about curly and now straight. He didn't get scarlet fever.
Do people still get scarlet fever? I don't hear about scarlet fever anymore. Do we fix that one? I don't know.
I'm not an expert. I didn't write a book about scarlet fever. Google it and I'll find out who the patron saint of scarlet fever is. Scarlet fever is making a comeback.
Of course it is. It became rare because of antibiotics. Oh, yeah. So it's treatable but it still happens.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't find a patron saint of scarlet fever unfortunately. Oh god it was bad. I did not enjoy scarlet fever.
Yeah, you were really sick. I remember. I'm suggesting that we've taken on… You talked about this in a vlogbrothers video recently, that we've just taken on this assumption that I'm the sick one and you're the healthy one. Even though you did have scarlet fever and cancer.
Yeah. And also all certain clitis. And also all certain clitis. And all certain clitis.
And all certain clitis. You had chronic health conditions. But I've seen sickly. I come across as sickly.
I communicate a certain fragility of my constitution. I've got a certain sturdiness, you know. Keep in mind. You do have a sturdiness about you that I just don't have.
It's okay. I think we're equally physically sturdy but it's not about the physics. No. you out with me so bad.
Yeah, I know. Oh, that would suck. Whatever happens happens. Well, that's one way to think of it, but my way of thinking about it is that I like to think of what would be better.
Yeah. And I think we can all agree that younger brothers are just better equipped for that kind of business. Yeah. Yeah.
I, you know, I just don't want to have to do the thing where I stand up in the church and you don't have to do that if you don't want to. I know, but like I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
Do it. I don't want to do it. Yeah. You feel an obligation to do it, but it doesn't seem like it would be fun.
Look, John, maybe we won't die. This is like the guy's are working on it. You know, they're really, they're really figuring some stuff out, putting young people blood into them. Nobody tried that before.
Literally, really thousands of years ago. We're doing the Jit vampire stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
They're doing, you know, trans-ylvanian prints, activities over there. Catherine the Great things. Yeah, maybe we won't die. That would be a, but then that would also be a bad outcome.
Yeah. I'll eulogize you when they upload you to the computer. I'll be like, oh God. You was a great, magical form.
That would actually be the worst outcome. I think I've made this very clear. But to me, the only thing worse than dying would be being stuck as an artificial intelligence, or like being having my consciousness uploaded or whatever. I would not enjoy that at all as much as I...
I am going to try... I'm going to turn you in that my brain is made out of meat. I do not like the idea of my brain being made out of ones and zeros. Yeah, yeah.
Instead, I'm going to turn you into a non-conscious chatbot that keeps making videos with me. It wouldn't be the hard. No, no, no. I feel like we're not that far away.
I mean, God knows there's plenty of my voice on the internet to cut around to make... I won't tell people. Yeah. Don't do that.
You wouldn't even have to do AI. Heather, all of the things we've already said. Yeah. People have done that occasionally, like edited together, like things to make it sound like I said something I didn't say.
But now with AI, you don't even have to go through all that hella but you can just tell an AI to make John Green say something horrible. Yeah. It's great. The horrors.
Yeah, I mean, that's just really the tip of the horror of iceberg. So we don't have to get into all that stuff. All right, Hank, before we get to the L-important news from Mars and S.E. And I want to ask you this question from Caitlyn, which I genuinely don't know the answer to.
Dear John and Hank, how come when doctors need to take blood out of us, they poke us in the inside of the elbow, but when they need to put something into our bloodstream, they poke us in the wrist. Your fellow walking blood bag, Caitlyn. Oh, Caitlyn. I remember when I was first in Missoula trying to get a job.
There was a lot of phlebotomist jobs. Sure. And there were higher phlebotomists and I thought, should I get trained up to be a vain poker? And I could not bring myself.
I was like way too scary. Can we just acknowledge before we go on that the difference between an average phlebotomist and an excellent phlebotomist is almost incalculable? Like, there is a, like when you get an excellent phlebotomist, it's game-changing. It's like nothing ever, it does nothing happens.
It's painless. It's like nothing ever happened. Well, I will say, having got poked. Not just a ton of times in my life, but sometimes by the same people, sometimes the same.
Like I think that there's like nerves involved and sometimes they just hit in slightly the wrong spot and it hurts more. But there is like a, I have also been poked in situations where a vein was missed or it went through the vein and like, so I've had lots of blood draws in my life. And I looked into this and I don't think that this is how it works. So I don't, I in fact do not think that they have like one spot where they do it to put things in you in one spot for taking things out.
But if they want to put something in you that might be like not great if it leaks out, they really want to put it in the inside of the elbow because that vein is sturdier. It's thicker. And so that's like your, that's oftentimes the preferred place. But sometimes they want to go into the hand one, those veins are really accessible.
Like they're right there on the surface. They're easy to see there. So those are good ones. It can also allow for some greater freedom of movement for you, the patient.
If you're in the hand versus, you know, sort of like not being up, not wanting to close your arm. And as long as they take it down, it's pretty fine. But like it really often does come down to like what, what looks the best right now for this specific circumstance? Oh.
And with chemotherapy, they have actually moved to not doing it into like direct into the arm at all, they used to, but because those drugs can be so bad if they slip out of the vein, even a little bit, then they install a like catheter that goes straight into one of the big thick veins in your chest that then they can poke into through what they call a port. And that port you had installed, I remember you had a surgery to get that word put in. Yeah. Yeah.
And then I had a, so that one I was asleep for, but then when they take the port out, you're just awake and they just take it out. Oh, I would be such a bad full bottomist tank that I have almost passed out from this conversation. Yeah. And what I'll say, having had it done a ton, I will occasionally have a new full bottomist and I'm like, my friend, I'm the perfect person for you to practice on.
Like I've had it go every possible way. And it's like, I know what it's like for it to go all of the different ways. And I had a person who recently, they were like, I can't see your vein, but I can feel it. And I've never put a needle into it.
And I never put a needle into a vein that I can feel, but not see. And I was like, girl, do it. Like, I like, if you mess up, like this matters me, not at all. And she's like, yeah, I'm not going to do it though.
You're Hank Green. Right. And it's like double pressure. That's why you don't want to become more famous, Hank, because then all your phobotumists will be panicked when they try to find a vein.
Yeah. Oh, shout out to blood donors. And indeed, also to their patrons, St. Our Lady of the Thorns.
Oh my God. It's just a lot of leak. It's just a lot of leak and going on with the thorns. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess that's maybe how they got there. All right. It's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC. What's the news from Mars this week?
In news from Mars. There's a bunch of like bomber Mars news. We didn't find that orbiter. That's why I heard that.
It's gone. We didn't find that orbiter. And also, it seems to be well and truly the case that Mars sample return is dead. So the idea was Rover picks up, put it in little vials, and then later we pick those vials up and we bring them home and then we can figure out whether all kinds of stuff.
But I was about to say whether there was life on Mars, which is something that we actually probably could potentially tell from a Mars sample return mission. Certainly not a high chance of it happening. But yeah, it's just got too expensive and we're prioritizing other things as a nation. That's the understatement of the week.
We're prioritizing other things as a nation. Yeah, we've decided to spend our money in other ways. Worse ways. Yeah.
And that big a fan of Mars sample return missions. He's not. No, I am. I think it'd be really cool to have a piece of Mars on Earth from meteorites and everything.
But I think it'd be really cool to be able to bring back something from Mars and examine it. And I know that the science that we could do, it's one thing to do science for millions of miles away. It's another thing to do science up close and it'd be game-changing. And it's very frustrating that it's been cancelled.
Yeah, it's expensive. It's expensive. The costs went up to about $11 billion into that, I'd say. Just get a billionaire to pay for it.
I even know one who's interested in Mars. But he's not interested in Mars for sample return. He's interested in Mars for the planet he could be king of. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, different goals. Well, the news from AC Whimblesen isn't much better. AFC Whimblesen have won only one of their last 11 league games.
It's not going great. However, there is one of these silly, kind of somewhat unimportant cup competitions that are all sort of knockout competitions where you either. It's not an important cup. It's called the Virtu Trophy.
And it might as well be called the Unimportant Cup. However, we did beat West Ham United's children. They fielded they fielded an under-21 team. And we beat them.
And now we are in the final eight of that trophy. And if we make it to the final, we would play a game at Wembley, which would be really cool. And also frankly, kind of lucrative, which we need because we have no money because we got knocked out of the other cup competitions early. So we didn't get to play a Chelsea or Manchester United or whatever.
And so getting to the final of that competition would be meaningful. And now it's clear that we're trying. Like we put out our best 11 against West Ham's kids and we beat them for two. The two goals we gave up were not great though.
I actually wasn't that impressed with our performance against West Ham's children. I felt like maybe when you're playing actual teenagers, you should maybe do a little bit better. But at any rate, we won. And that's good news.
Overall, AFC1 will be currently right in the middle of the table, 13th out of 24 teams. We would take that at the end of the season. We do have a negative six goal differential, which reveals that we lose a lot of games by multiple goals. But yeah, I don't know Hank.
It's as long as we get to 52 points and we stay up, the season is a tremendous success. And we're on pace to get there. Yeah, you've got 50. We've got 31.
Oh. But we have 22 games left in which to get the remaining 21. Okay. We only have to win five points for a tie.
You get a point for a tie. We have to win five or six more games to stay up. Gotcha. Let's do that.
Yeah. That's simple. John tried so I'm going to London for a work thing. And John tried so hard to make it into an AFC Wimbledon trip.