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444: Hank Brown episode artwork

Mar 18, 2026 39 min

444: Hank Brown

from Dear Hank & John

Why are humans not transparent? If you lived on a moon, would you know it? What did cavemen dream about? How does Good Store work with other companies? How do you deal with the grief of having limited time left with your parents? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected] Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly

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Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.

Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and more 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 PBSEons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.

Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

You're as I prefer to think of the Dear John and Hank. It's a comic podcast with two brothers, Raspy, your questions. You do beautiful advice. And bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and day after the women's and John.

Yeah. Do you know who could have 10 liters of gasoline without getting sick? A car? Jerry can.

Go Jerry. Hi, how are you doing? I'm not doing good. I can tell just from your intro.

It was low energy. It was Raspy. I can tell that you're sick, which is weird because we were together yesterday and you were fine. I was fine.

I was fine. I'm on my 24-hour flight home. Yeah, Hank and I had a lot of things went bad on the way home. The first flight got delayed.

I had this rescheduled and then after rescheduling to a much later flight, my last flight got delayed a lot. And we landed in Missoula at 2.22 in the morning after having waken up at like 4.22 in the morning Montana time. Yeah, it was not an easy scheduled flight day for you. I hope it didn't completely ruin the Caribbean vibes that we enjoyed together because I really enjoyed giving me some time to get away and get off of the phone.

Yeah, I really enjoyed you off of your phone off the internet. I thought you did a great job. You were truly detached. It was a beautiful thing to see.

I really also enjoyed how you didn't get me off those Pina coladas, but maybe I should have. Yeah, my immune system is just not up to it. Well, it is true. Maybe that was it.

That now you can drink a little bit. When you first got out of chemo, you couldn't drink it all. You were almost allergic to alcohol and now you can drink a little bit. And I did take advantage of that.

There's nothing on you. I was like the Pina colada smoothie. There's rum in it, but there's also fruit in it. Hank was literally dancing in a waiting pool.

That's how off the clock Hank Green was. I was beautiful to see. That's so beautiful to see regardless. Yeah.

I made me really happy to be with you and Catherine and hope it was a good vacation for you. Sarah also. Sarah also, I mean, it goes without saying that I'm with Sarah all the time. And island Sarah is a different person.

Different lady. Yeah. No, she's she's fairly abusive to me in my lack of having trends, the kind of glasses I need. Oh my God.

Well, she feels passionately for good reason. For good reason that you Hank Green need progressive progressives. You can't name them that way. You can't call them progressives.

You got it. You need progressives so bad. And Sarah started out by just saying you need progressives. And you were like, yeah, yeah, whatever.

As you took off your glasses and held a menu one and a half inches away from your face to read it. Sarah was like, maybe you should get progressives. And you were like, no. And then she took a brilliant strategy.

She said, I think it would increase your productivity. And you worked up and you said, what now? Nothing can increase my productivity, John. I'm a max.

No, no, getting progressives really would increase your productivity because it would make it so that you can read. I have my reading glasses for the computer. Yeah. So as long as I never leave this space, I'm doing great.

Yeah. I'll tell you what on vacation you were diarly and knee. You're not. Sweet.

First person who said it to me. Yeah. I love mine. I thought I was going to take a long time to get used to them.

But for me, it only took like a couple days and now I can read whenever I want. It's beautiful. Wow. That sounds magical.

All right. Let's answer some questions from our beloved listeners here at Dear Hank and John. All right. Let's start with this question from Ren, who writes Dear John and Hank, why are we not transparent?

I know that Melon is probably part of the reason, but they're more to it than that. I thought that blood might be a factor, but those deep see-through fish that have blood too, right, is being transparent. The default stator today evolved specifically to be transparent, which I could see my organs now and then Ren that makes one of us Ren. Well, we certainly have transparent parts of our bodies.

What do you think is the most transparent part of your body, John? Close. Okay. Let me think again, my eyes.

The inside of your eyes. Right. Very transparent. The light goes through it.

It's not empty in there. There's a bunch of stuff. You're in there. Yeah.

Most of me, most of what I consider myself, all the parts of me that aren't the gut bacteria that do half of my thinking are in there. Well, just behind. But yeah, yeah, I can almost see the wheels of my consciousness turning, but not quite, which is probably a blessing. Oh, yeah.

That part's definitely invisible. Yeah. Nobody's nobody's found it. They keep looking and they don't find it.

No, you can't move it off. You can't remove it with a tweezer. That's the thing about consciousness. You can remove it with propofol or just going to bed.

It's true. Well, you don't know by going to bed. You still have dreams, but with propofol, it's like it's a different thing. Yeah, that's true.

It's not different guys. Why aren't we trying to take why aren't we trying to? It's just the stuff that light does. And I will point out that everything's a little bit transparent.

You know, you put like a one one atom thick sheet of something down. Yeah, shine some light through that. Sure. There's there's space there.

There's a bunch of space between all the nuclei famously, but we're not transparent in the sense that I can't see my pancreas right now. Right. Yeah. But if you had a bright enough light, well, in some ways, I mean, not to get too specific, but isn't that what a CT scan is?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, it's more of a more energetic kind of light with a different size wavelength. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

But it's really we're transparent to x-rays partially, partially. But you know, it absorbs some but not all of them. You know, I'd be interested to actually know how many visible light photons. I don't I guess it would be zero.

Like it would get to zero. Like there isn't a number that would get through all the way the pancreas you mean. Yeah, all the way to the other side. Right.

But certainly there is if you like shine a flashlight up your hand, you know, comes out that side. It comes out the other side. So I guess, theoretically, you had a bright enough light. Some of it would come out the other side of your trunk.

Yeah. I'm curious. And now I feel like there may be a thing I didn't think to search it beforehand, because I was like, you build the world's brightest light. Oh, I wanted to see through a man.

Like intuitively, I feel like if you if you held a bright enough light up to a man, his back would glow. That's what it feels like. Intuitively, it feels that way. But I feel like it might kill him.

Yeah, that's certainly possible. Yeah. I mean, there's there's pieces of a light that don't do any absorbing that don't absorb at all, but they do bounce they would bounce around the box. So it would be like a straight through shot.

You remember in the old days when doctors would get anxious about doing a clinical trial? So they would just test it on themselves and their mistress who was named Hedwig. Yeah. That's what that's what you should do with a really bright light, huh?

Yeah, I just I don't trust I feel like if you're passionate enough to learn about this, Ren, I feel like you're gonna have to shine that light on yourself. Take your first burn child. No. They do it again sometimes too.

That's true. They do it to their kids as well. And again, to their mistresses who are incredibly truly named Hedwig. As she was named for her wig and where she wears it.

Let's move on to this next question from M who writes, your brother's green, if there was life on our moon or really any moon for that matter, would the inhabitants of that moon know they were on a moon of a planet or would the moon's planet be the moon's moon? Moon's and more moon's M? Oh, so Hank, if we like, eventually we would have figured this out, right? Yeah.

Yeah. But I don't think Cougars would have figured it out. I don't think Bobcats would have figured it out. I don't think any of the major cats would have known.

They wouldn't even figure it out. That the thing in the sky was maybe a thing. We're the first creature to think that the thing in the sky is a thing. I don't know.

I think so. God, we're so underrated as a species. It's very weird. Now there might be somebody who's gonna come and be like, no, actually dolphins know that the thing in the sky is a thing.

It's very possible. But we're so weird. They don't know what's keeping the stars apart though. We are very weird as a species.

We have incredibly hard and collaborated across time and space for millennia now to figure out a lot of weird stuff. And the more we learn, the more we realize that all of that is not a function of the individual but of the connections between the individuals. Yeah. And the great thing about being a person is that you don't just collaborate with the people you share the world with.

You can also collaborate with people who died 500 years ago or 2000 years ago or whatever. Like this is a our ability to pass along and share information across time and space and death is truly impressive to me. Absolutely. Well, John, just a quick question.

Do you think that it's possible that the all of the connections between humans could be like all of the connections between the neurons in a brain and it could have like a kind of super consciousness that exists that we are unaware of were one super consciousness. And the great thing about that super consciousness is that it doesn't need to poop. It doesn't. It needs to poop a lot though.

It's either doesn't or it's always pooping. One of the two. It's like a camel with water like it just it just poops once every three weeks. Because it's made up of all the people.

No, it's not it's made up of all the each of its each of its neurons is poop. One of them is always pooping. At least, you know, that's kind of comforting next time you poop. You can think I'm not alone in this endeavor.

Yeah, no, I'm probably there. Thanks always with you. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't want to get turned into an AI assistant after you die where people can keep talking to you. But I do. But only when you poop. I do not want to be turned into an AI after I die.

Like that is terrifying to me. It's bad enough to be stuck inside of a body being stuck inside of a computer would be worse. Yeah. No, I'm into it.

Hank Green is going to die, but Hank Brown will live forever. Okay. All right. Great.

Great. Such a stupid joke, but it's so effective on me. Not as effective as it was on you. I mean, no, I did.

I did. I was I had it loaded up for like for like a full 15 seconds beforehand. Like many of my poops. Hey, how advanced would moon moon people have to be to recognize that they're on a moon, not on the earth and that they're in fact orbiting a planet and get excited about the potential of that planet.

So like, how long will it take you? Well, here's an interesting thing about Europa because the life there would happen in the subs are for social. And so they would never know they would never know about a world outside of their world. The the thickness of the ice above them is too thick.

It would feel like the ground beneath their feet. They might eventually create like ground penetrating radar and be like, after a long way of being very hard, the roof stops. Where after a long way of being very hard, the ground doesn't. It goes all the way through to the other side, but the roof stops.

You guys, I think we might be on a ball in a ball. Right. They might figure out that they're in a ball, but there's no way they would figure out that they're in a ball that's orbiting a ball that's orbiting another ball that's orbiting another ball that's orbiting the center all the way through it, which is very advanced technology. It makes me think we don't have yet.

It makes me think that we are both very lucky to be on the surface of a planet. Very probably very unusual. And also that there must be countless ways in which we are in the deep sea of Europa and cannot see X, Y or Z. We cannot know because we cannot know what we cannot know.

I know that's a style I actually feel about consciousness. I feel like that that information is very available and very understandable, but but like simply we cannot reach it because we cannot see the ground for what it is or the ceiling or whatever. All right. So if you were on the moon, just take it away from consciousness.

So we're doing surface stuff now. We're on our moon. If you're on our moon, if you're on our moon, you can totally figure it out. It is it is extremely valuable.

It would not be the first thing that occurred to you. But if you got into the science game, you were doing a lot of transmission of information between each other and you were making your data available and you were trying to disprove each other, you'd figure it out on the order of after like that system started, you figured out on the order for a couple hundred years. Okay. So you would figure it out pretty fast once you were able to share information.

Yeah. But I feel like opening that point. Like, oh, yeah, it's very hard. Look, it took us yeah, 275,000 years and we've only been doing it for like 400, 500 years.

What do you think most of that was? Mostly it was hanging out, Hank. Mostly it was hanging out needing. Mostly it was making culture.

Yeah. Yeah. I have very different ways of making culture. So we had like, communities that enslaved people and we had other communities that were extremely egalitarian and we had all kinds of different communities.

But what we didn't have was a system for sharing information across time and space like we do now with writing and reading. Yeah. I think more than that. Here's my pet theory.

Okay. That the 275,000 years is what we needed to to go from no language to language and that at any point in that time, there would have been a thing that we would recognize as communication, but it would be much different from language, but it would be taking steps toward it the whole time. I think that we deeply underestimate how complex talking is. I don't disagree with that, except that I think we were talking pretty early on.

And my other question is for the fact that we were talking pretty early on is we were making art. We were making art 40,000 years ago. It was pretty good. Pretty good art.

I think that you can communicate with and I think that there's like versions of talking that are different from what we're doing now and less good. And I also think that you can make art without talking. So what you're saying is talking art is a kind of talking for clarity. Beowulf is not as good as the fault in our stars because it was really when language wasn't as good.

The only thing Beowulf has going forward is being first. Like, a lot of brothers. I mean, like Timothy Chalamet trouble. Yes.

Yes. You are going to get into Timothy Chalamet. Nobody watches ballet level trouble. Your Oscar campaign has been doomed by a single misstep green.

Yes, you're going to get in trouble. I mean, first off clearly, you've never read Beowulf. I have read Beowulf. And secondly, I just don't agree that language didn't get good until 500 years ago.

I just don't agree with that. No, I mean, 50,000 to 100,000. Okay. It's just like throughout the process, it's taken a long time.

Yeah. Well, in language must have evolved separately in separate places in separate ways. It wasn't a binary. It wasn't like we flipped a switch and suddenly there was language.

It was it's like languages changing, not just in form, but in functionality. Yeah, for sure. Language is still changing in functionality. But I don't think that language is quite as important as you think it is.

I do think that it's very, very important. I think it's one of the great gifts that we have as a species. And I think that the fault in a story is better than Beowulf to crash my own Oscars campaign. We care about what's in a trash can.

What's the next question? I mean, a thousand dollars cash if you win an Oscar and give that as your acceptance speech. And that's where this one's going. All right.

We're going to stay on prehistory, Hank. By the way, linguists who are the people I fear the most in the world. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With our going to an absolute field day with your totally unjustified theory about language.

Well, I don't know. I'd be interested to hear their thoughts. But I do appreciate you pointing out that it's totally unjustified. Well, you don't want to walk away thinking I'm an expert on this topic.

Thank you. I'm a man with a cold. There you go. All right.

My lack of sleep. This question comes from Stella who says, you're John and Hank have been pondering an important question. We have all different dreams and situations that we dream about. What do you think cavemen dreamt about?

Did they dream about hunting decorating their caves, fire? What new fun painting they were going to put on their walls? I genuinely don't know. I think you guys have the answer.

Thanks, King, sincerely Stella. First off, Stella, the first thing I'd say is that we have to remember that what we see of the life of prehistoric humans is inevitably biased as us toward thinking about what they were doing. But they may have been doing lots of things that just happened to decay other than painting. Right?

Oh, yeah. There was a lot of things they were definitely making rope. They were making huge parfits. They were cordage.

There was a ton of braiding of various objects. Very useful tool. That's another one. I think they would dream about what they did during the day.

And also, I think they would dream about their kids being safe or not safe. You know what I bet they had? I bet they had dreams about their teeth falling out just like we do. Oh boy.

Yeah, that's definitely deep down in there. Yeah, that's pretty rooted. That's pretty, pretty yummy. Yeah, rooted.

Yeah. Not as good as Hank Brown, but it's not terrible. I feel like I have those dreams. Like I would have dreams about my teeth falling out.

Even if I'd never heard of a tooth falling out. Yep. I agree with you. I think there are some weird, I mean, there's some weird stuff in the wiring that goes all the way down.

Yeah. You can't grab it with a tweezer, but it's there. It's in there. It's in the connections.

Yeah, that's what I love so much about your book and absolutely remarkable thing when everyone had the same dream on the same night. Oh, that was good. That was such a cool moment. That was like one of those brain expanding moments for me.

I'm glad that you also enjoyed it. We're obviously in our eyes, celebrate myself and I sing myself there. I feel like I need to go back to the yellow or my inhibitions. I feel like I need to go back to the previous question and make it clear that I do not actually think the father starts this thing.

Somebody like cut it up and be like this jerk. Look, Beowulf is way better than the books around it than the Fault in Our Stars is than the books around it. Yeah, agreed. But I just think that we can do more now.

There's a look. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I need to give Beowulf a second chance.

I mean, in old English, it's almost unreadable. But that doesn't mean that language didn't exist or wasn't rich or wasn't complex. That's not what I said. Okay.

All right. All right. I think we have more complicated ideas now than we did back then. Well, it depends on when you define back then.

If you define back then as a hundred thousand years ago, I agree. No, I mean, five thousand years ago, I don't even read all. Okay. And I think that the huge body better know what the moon was.

They didn't know what the moon was, but they knew what love was, not to get too cheesy about it. They knew what they knew all kinds of complex ideas about interhuman relations. And they knew all kinds of, you know, like they had a fear. They knew about it.

Yeah. They knew about the big grief. They knew about all the big stuff. And they knew about, you know, that we have obligations to ourselves and to our families and to our communities that are sometimes in conflict.

And they knew about honor and sacrifice. And they knew about all the stuff that we do. They just didn't know about the moon, which is okay. Whatever I'm saying, if Beowulf didn't exist, hear me out, John.

If Beowulf didn't exist and wrote it now, would it be a critical success? Well, no, of course not. Although I will follow that up by saying that my friend Paige Lewis has just written a non-binary epic called Canon, C-A-N-O-N that is an epic, like is Beowulfian in certain respects and is brilliant, because it's not attempting to recreate a thousand years ago. It's its own thing.

Sure. I bet it's better than Beowulf. Well, I had to put it on page. You want me to blurb it?

You want me to blurb it? I had a better time reading it. That is for sure. But that is not the same thing as being better.

Which reminds me, John, that this book is brought to you by Canon by Paige Lewis. It's better than Beowulf. Okay. Well, I mean, it is really good.

Y'all have to read it. I don't think it's out yet, so I think we're prematurely celebrating it. But we'll get back to it when it comes up, too. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Hank's Linguistics.

Hank's Linguistics. Questionable. And this podcast is brought to you by Cottage. Cottage.

It literally tied the world together. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by a transparent skin, transparent skin, a nightmare of its own making. Yeah, just shine that light. You know who's invisible?

Who? Hank Brown. Well, he's invisible for now. But maybe Elon Musk will make him a body fan.

Maybe he'll walk around and talk to you while you poop. No, he has to stay in the bathroom. He's a little guy and he's on the shelf. He's like, elf on the shelf.

But he's an AI that can be with you while you poop. He's not like, there's no room for any form. You can't be alone of being alone with your thoughts for even three seconds in the future. He's also, he's gonna be great for your anxiety because he'll smell the poop and he'll be like, that smells so healthy.

Oh, that's good. He's gonna be a diagnostic tool. He's very relaxing. He's very chill.

Though, when he does say, actually, I think I need to go to the doctor. That will be pretty freaky. Yeah, but you know, you need to go to the doctor. Yeah.

This episode of your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me. And that is what Shopify makes easier. When you start with Shopify, the tools, to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one.

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All right, let's answer this question from Melissa. He writes, you're John and Hank, I'm a fan of good.store. I'm a fan of you Melissa. Recently I've been getting sun-based and soap from y'all and I had to thaw the other day while using it in the shower with the products that are awesome socks which you make in-house.

All the proceeds go to your work with partners and help but with products like sun-based and soap that are partnerships with other companies. How does that work? Are those groups making money off the partnership? Does that generate less money for the projects it's fundraising for?

How does it all work? Socks and soaps subscriptions. Melissa, well first off, Melissa, thank you for subscribing to both our socks and our soap. All the profit goes to charity but to be clear, that's all our profit.

Yeah, well, all but to be clear to be clear, some days in soap is our brand. We invented it. We invented some days in soap. We do work with a company in Montana that makes soap.

In the same way that we don't actually have a sock construction machine that makes socks. So yeah, there's a company in Montana that's run by a friend of mine. He didn't used to run it. He only recently became the CEO and he was one of the first people I met in town because I went volunteered at the nonprofit that he worked at.

So old Bud, good to have another reason to talk to him sometimes. But there are actually products that are like for our eco-friendly cleaning product line. So Meliora is a company that is not ours. Sheets, Sondry Club is a company that is not ours.

And we basically buy their wholesale price. We negotiate the lowest wholesale price. We can figure out how to negotiate. And so that still super works.

And you might even notice that those products are quite inexpensive even though we're buying wholesale and selling them retail. Yeah. So we have multiple business strategies for each of our different businesses. But what it boils down to is that we don't do something unless the margins are good enough to raise money for partners in health or in the case of eco-geek products to quality refal clients.

So basically, we're just trying to run ourselves like a normal business. You always got a little bit of margin. And that margin is going to go to your owners and our owners don't get the money. Our owners are essentially, I mean, this is how I think about it.

Our owners are fragile communities and ecosystems, not shareholders. And that's great because shareholders get plenty of profit. So basically, here's what the deal is. I have a brother who could talk a dog off a meat wagon, right?

Like Hank could sell anything to anyone. That's not true. And I sell good products. Yep.

And I try and sell a bad product. You can't. But you can sell a lot of good products. And I try very hard to orient that ability to sell to talk a dog off a meat wagon toward partners in health.

That is my personal goal in life is to just distract Hank in the direction of P.I.H. All right, Hank, it's time to take one of those typical deer-hankin-john turns toward the bummers. Oh boy. This next email is from Nicole who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm writing after the bummers episode and I realize I may have messed up my timing because he's already done bummers.

I'm 41 and my dad is about a year into losing his memory. It's painful. He's not himself anymore. I keep finding myself trying to be grateful that I've had him in my life as long as I have.

But I'm not sure it's that helpful. How have you both dealt with grief at different stages of your life? Do you ever grapple with the limited number of weekends you have left with your parents? I often hear you speak about how much time you have left on earth, but I worry more about how much time I have left with my loved ones.

A nickel for your thoughts, Nicole. Oh, isn't that a stab? I sometimes I feel like I am more worried about me than my own experiences. What do you mean?

I'm just worried about the continuity of self rather than what that will actually bring. Like your own death or the death of people you love? I'm worried about me dying. I'm not worried about the limited amount of experience I have left and optimizing for it.

I'm certainly not worried about optimizing for it because I think a huge part of being in relation with people is just doing nothing. This is one of the great lies. We have to have quality time and I'm like, quality time is quality time. You don't have to put a qualifier on that.

It's all good. It's all quality. Yeah, it is quantity time is underrated. I think and I say that as somebody who traveled 110 days last year and missed a lot of quantity time and has some regrets about it.

I do think about the fact that I only have a limited amount of time left with my parents. I mean, they're older and my wife's parents are also older. That will be a very painful time in my life when it comes. I'm sorry that you're going through this.

My friend Luna, who's now 16, my best friend's kid, has lost two grandparents to dementia. She told me once with dementia, you do a lot of your grieving in advance. I think that's true because you lose a person piece by piece instead of all at once. That's really hard.

But then there is also the final grief, which remains, I think, super intense. There's no easy way to go through this stuff. I think the way to go through it is not alone. I'm a big supporter of the Alzheimer's Foundation here in the US because they do such a great job with support groups.

Nicole, if you can, I'd look into the opportunity to be with other caregivers because caregiving is sacred work, but it's also really, really hard work. Being able to talk through that with other people who know the experience from the inside is pretty valuable in my experience. This is interesting because I've looked at what various cancer charities do as I've gotten more versed in that world. It's so important that it isn't just about someday, we will beat this thing.

It's also very much about right now, we are living with this thing. Yeah. That's true for tuberculosis, too, man. TB support groups can be so important in having a patient advocate or a survivor advocate who knows the experience and knows how to navigate the system.

Studies show that just dramatically increases not just the quality of life after tuberculosis, but also the experience of going through it because cancer, any serious life altering disease, can be so stigmatizing in addition to everything else. People say dumb crap and they are dismissive of your experience or they tell you that you just need to take hypermectin or they tell you whatever they tell you and that is its own form of exhausting. What just happened? It's neat.

Oh, well, that was a normal. Am I bad? I don't know. I think one of the great wins of this podcast was having a thing that happens to people, not like every day, but many days.

Yeah. If we could have enough of it, you think about the podcast every time. I'll look out at the world after sneezing and be like, what the hell was that? I think about Dr.

Never Sneeze or Scrooge all the time because it can't be that that was only one person he spoke to, right? So like Dr. Never Sneeze or Scrooge has been telling thousands of patients over dozens of years. I never sneezing as normal.

It's a little bad. It's a weird thing to be able to do if it's not normal. Yeah. Anyway, Nicole, we wish you all the best and it's such a hard thing to go through and I hope that you don't have to go through it alone.

Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and ASU Wimbledon, I have to let you know something which is that we received about a million emails from our elderly listeners. Turns out we have many elderly listeners. Gillian, for instance, wrote and said, you are a top podcast for the elderly. I'm 78.

I've listened since the Roman Mars ran an episode of Dear Hank and John Lennon, I'm 100% invisible. They're both enjoying it. It's my favorite podcast. Everyone else becomes predictable over time and I stop listening.

I don't have a question. Thank you, pumpkins and penguins. Gillian or Gillian. I pronounce it like my aunt pronounces it, but you could pronounce it Gillian, which is fine.

We also got a great email from Royce that talked me out of ever going skiing again. Royce said in the latest episode of the pod, you talked about skiing and snowboarding. I say this from personal experience, you are right to fear it. Royce broke their collarbone in seven different places.

Royce is bionic now. Well, snowboarding and says, I strongly recommend you both take your and so I haven't done it again, mindset do it. And so I will never do it again unless you end up with a lifelong thing to deal with. Yeah.

Man, I tell you what. I have to tell you how Royce signs off here. Okay. You do not have to ski or snowboard, especially as middle age men who aren't comma like comma in the Olympics.

Yeah, I don't. I have so many friends who have plates in their collarbones because of mountain biking. But I'm like, why would I mountain bike? I've seen what it does.

It seems to have a 100% collarbone break record. Yeah. Well, we are middle age men who aren't comma like comma in the Olympics. That is worth bearing in mind as we age.

Gosh, thank you to our elderly listeners. I hope that you enjoyed Hank Brown as much as the 10 year olds. All right. It's time for the news from A.C.

Wimbledon. I can't say this with enough joy. A.F.C. Wimbledon have won a game again.

They're good again. We're good again. We're good again. I mean, I don't know if we're good again, exactly.

But we're we tied Mansfield Town 2, 2. We beat Bradford City 3, 1. And then we beat Northampton Town 1, 0. And so A.F.C.

Wimbledon are now not safe, but we only need to win two of our last 12 games. That's doable. That's doable, especially with this recent record. If you I mean, it's two, we're in 14th place right now, dead mid table.

If we win two games out of our last 12, we're basically guaranteed to stay up. I will say I took a cheeky little peek at the top of the table yesterday. And we're only nine points out of fifth. So okay.

I mean, could we go to the playoffs? No, no, but keep but keep that in your sights. Because remember, there's a reason why those teams down at the bottom are not going to be down there. You don't even worry about that.

You need to be headed for the top. That's right. That's why I'm saying boys. Are you listen boys?

I know you listen, fellas, Marcus Isaac. I know you're listening. The they've been playing great in general. And I've been really happy with the quality of the football.

We did play Northampton town who were down in 23rd place. And as we were playing them, I, and their fans were booing them, I was like, yeah, I mean, they are bad. Like, you know, like, lead one football in general isn't great. So it can be hard to differentiate between the good teams and the bad teams.

But like, when we were playing them, I was like, they're pretty bad. And when we were playing Cardiff City, who were in second place, I was like, they're pretty good. So there's some there's some races. This is actually different.

Yeah. Well, John, news from Mars scientists have finally done the thing that we have been waiting for them to do. Oh, they have figured out what happens to Tardigrade's on Mars. Ooh, how do you know how do they know what happens to Tardigrade's on Mars?

Well, we do all this like creation of synthetic Martian dirt, uh, regolith. Yeah, we call it regolith because it's dead. And, uh, and so that's what other planets that don't have life in them will call their dirt. And, uh, and so they got samples from the Curiosity rover.

They've like looked at this stuff. They'd be like, no, what it looks like, what it's made of ish. And so they made it. And then they added Tardigrades to it to see if they would tolerate the simulated Martian soil.

Yes. Despite their hearty reputation, the Tardigrades did not do great. Oh, really? Yeah, they died.

Yeah, yeah. Within two days of being in one of the soils, uh, and this is, I think, with water added to them, the Tardigrades stopped being active. But when the scientists rinsed the soil with water, freshly added Tardigrades tolerated, tolerated the soil a lot better. So they had to get a bunch of the stuff out of it that's in there.

And so there is probably something in the soil that needs to be washed out before you use it, which makes sense because Martian soil really bad for you. Mark Watney definitely would have died. Mark Watney definitely would have died. Yeah, that's your position.

Oh, for sure. Because of the grossness of the soil, even though even though, like, even though the potatoes never would have grown in the first place. The potatoes would not have grown. Yeah.

I see. Yeah. I see. I know that.

We did not know that we did not know this one. They when they wrote the book. So I give them a pass. All right.

So he's in the clear. Yeah. All right. Well, Hank, it has been an absolute joy to podcast with you despite your illness, which it always is.

Sorry for making gross noises sometimes during this one. You guys know that's all right. People understand. Especially because I have your ear.

I know all the gross noises you guys make. I'm there on your bathroom shelf. No, God. I mean, someone someday is going to use this podcast as I listen, you wanted it to create a marketable product.

Yeah, he wanted it to happen. And like, we don't have to pay his descendants for it. Yeah. We're making his roots come to the science fact.

Every switch he can science fact. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right.

Thank you for providing with me. Thanks everybody for listening. This podcast is edited by Linus Ovenhaus where mixed by Joseph Tuna Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

We're produced by Rosie Annalas Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is the both of Chark Party and the music you're hearing now and it's getting the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. Finally, as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

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This episode is 39 minutes long.

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This episode was published on March 18, 2026.

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