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Dear John and Hank is a podcast where two brothers try to answer your questions, give you a big surprise, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, when Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, he said, I am Buzz Aldrin, first man to walk on the moon, Neil before me. Well, second man to walk on the moon, Neil before me. Well, yeah, but yeah, just the first, aside from Neil before me, I think I don't like to workshop your jokes, but I think it's two revisions away from being a really good dencho.
They're almost there, okay. Speaking of revisions, I am deep, deep in edits for Hollywood ending my new novel that comes out September 22nd and I do not have time to make this podcast, but I'm going to out of respect for you and our listeners, and especially out of respect for one particular listener who I want to mention here at the top of the podcast. You know, Hank, we have a top podcast for teens, top podcast for elderly people, of course, a hit exercise podcast and a hit sleep podcast, but did you know that we have a hit migraine podcast according to Tiffany, right? It's Dear John and Hank.
Since you all have been discussing the different types of hit podcasts, you are, I want to let you know that you're my migraine podcast. Treating my migraines usually involves lying down in the dark room for a while, but I don't want to sleep because I'll totally screw up my sleep schedule. Enter Dear Hank and John, you all hit on just the right balance of silly and serious. Well, thank you, Tiffany.
Sorry about your migraine. Sorry about your migraine, and I'm glad that we don't do a million dollar idea anymore. That probably wouldn't help. No, it's too loud.
It's too loud of a segment. Oh, God, the editing is overwhelming, Hank. It's so it requires such intense concentration. Oh, interesting, because right now in my expert reviews, it's really not that way.
It's just like, scroll, scroll, they have a comment. I read the comment, I change a line. Scroll, scroll, they have a comment. I read the comment, I change a line.
It's great. It's like the best thing I've ever done in the writing experience because it's just like, you, you messed this up, fix it. And I'm like, okay, I just feel like I'm being directed by experts to do something I know how to do. I remember that wonderful feeling when everything is tuberculosis being fact checked.
This is different because a novel, everything has to fit together just so. It's like a thousand piece puzzle. And every time you move a piece, you have to move a bunch of other pieces. And some of those pieces might have been 200 pages ago.
Yeah. And so that's the kind of concentration it requires is like, you have to remember not just as a Tuesday, but also what color is this person's hair and what's their name and what do they want out of life? And are they satisfied with the role that they're playing in my story? Would they say these words?
Would they make this choice? Would they react to the situation? Oh, man. Yeah.
And it's dual, it's dual point of views. So making sure that the point of views, not just are different in terms of voice, but that, you know, they don't, they don't make similar observations or make them in the same way, things like that. It's exhausting. It's fun.
I mean, look, look, this is child's play. I should not complain about my child's play job, but it's, it just requires focus. You're feeling it. I'm feeling it.
I can feel you feeling it. I remember doing multiple points of view and at the end of it being like, I shouldn't say this, but boy, these people are all quite similar to each other. Yeah. I mean, there's only two of them.
So it's a little easier to make them different from each other. Yeah, it was easy to make the space alien different. That was the big, that was easy. Everybody else was all humans.
And I only really know one of those close up. I wish I had a space alien. Yeah. Yeah, that is one of the challenges of writing a novel or indeed participating in any kind of artistic endeavors that it's inherently an attempt to get out of the prison of oneself, which of course, one cannot actually do.
Preach. All right. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. But full disclosure, this entire time we're recording, I'm going to be thinking about my novel.
The other day Sarah, it was like Sunday and Sarah was like, you're thinking about the story, aren't you? And I was like, I'm never not thinking about the story, just so you know. All right. M writes, Dear John and Hank, I just got a tax refund for $1.44 from the US government in the form of a check.
A gross pennies. Of course, it's great. They still made them. Well, I contemplate what to do with my new found wealth.
What should I do with the check after it's deposited? I deposit all my checks with the bank app. And so it feels wrong to throw them away. But like, I'm not going to buy a shredder.
Tax is in Tyrannosaurs. M. What do you do? I don't know.
I'm worried about what I'm doing with my checks, but I want to say. Oh, I keep them. You keep them in like a bag? Basically, I should probably shred them.
You got like a check bag? Is it like a cloth bag with a big dollar sign on the side of it? Yes. I'm rich on the penny bags from the board game in Opalade.
But I don't know. You're told that when you're going camping, you bring it with you and toss it on the fire. Yeah. Once a year, I ceremoniously burn the checks.
That's how I deal with it. But everybody's got a different way. I write to deposit it really big on the front of it. And then I rip it up and put it in the trash.
Oh, that's good. I like that. That's fine. That's fine.
That's fine. I don't know. I should know. No, no, no, take this out because I feel like people can figure out my account numbers.
What should I be doing? Not if you're not if you do a good job tearing it up, but also people shouldn't be going through your trash, Hank. Well, if people are going through your trash, we've got another problem. This didn't used to be a problem because you used to deposit the checks and they'd be in the bank.
Bring them to the bank. And they'd have that. Now I have the check. Okay.
What should I do with my checks after I stamp it with deposited, right? Deposited on it in ink or shredded. Okay, I'm doing good. I'm doing the right thing.
Yeah, you're fine. I'm not worried about you. I am hell of a word about M who only got a buck 44 from the federal government for tax refund. Although I guess that means you paid like approximately the right amount of taxes.
So in that sense, it's a good outcome. Apparently, you should keep the check until it clears because you don't want to lose one gross of pennies. That's right. Well, I keep the check until it clears.
And then I'm just like, ah, why throw away these checks? And then I wait a year and I put them in my rich old penny bags bag and I burn them. I like that idea. That's my way.
Everybody's got a different way. I'm yeah, you know, paper's valuable. So maybe wouldn't it be like the baller move to have one of your bathrooms to just wallpaper it in your checks? I did once frame a check in the old days when you could.
Yeah, when framing a check was included, basically not depositing it. I received an 87 cent check from the screen actors guild from my cut scene from the fault in our stars. And I framed that. I, yeah, I receive a fair amount of royalty checks.
Now that I've like done things, Mr. Fancy fans over here with a fair amount of royalty check. And this would be a great thing to wallpaper your bathroom with because they're all for like $2. It's just sort of a hilarious, you know, just deposit your $2.
And it just got like, you got to show what everybody would. I bet like TV writers, oh my god, they got to be getting 200 checks and they still come in checks. Like nobody went to a direct deposit. They still come in checks.
Drop that direct deposit. Now, SAG only sends you, they send you a royalty statement and you only get money if it's over a dollar. So like, it's like 14 cents, I think, for every every every six months or so is what I make from the fault in our stars movie that I got cut from, because I'm in the DVD extras. And that means that it takes like X number of years before I get to a dollar and they send me a dollar for all those people still buying DVDs.
John, we should get back at the DVDs. Oh yeah, physical media should make a return. What's the new DVD though? Maybe there's a thing that's like a DVD, but it's not a DVD, a laser disc.
It's even bigger than a DVD. An 8-track. It's even bigger than a laser disc. Yeah, or it's I want it to be as like a crystal.
I want it to be like a little diamond that I buy and it's like in a on like a ring pop situation. Yeah, we got to figure out how to get physical media really bizarre. We need to get into the music. You actually hallucinate the film.
Yes. So you like it's a Twilight Ringpomp and you lick the Twilight Ringpomp and you see all of Twilight, but it comes to you like a dream. People in the future will be like, can you believe that they watch these things on screens instead of just licking their ring pops? Having the movie play behind their eyelids, whether they want it or not.
You can't stop. Once you lick that ring pop, you will be watching Twilight. You're being supervised by a robot to make sure you don't injure yourself pretending to be a spider monkey. Have you seen Twilight because based on that particular detail, I feel like you haven't.
I have the piece that sticks out the most to me is when Edward says to bell a hold on tight spider monkey, which is not like a name he has for her. He says it once. Yeah, but there's no spider monkeys in the movie. It's just the line of dialogue.
No, she's pretending to be a spider monkey by holding on to him like a spider monkey. Yeah. And that's what I would do. I would pretend to hold on to Edward and then we would careen through the canopy of the Pacific Northwest.
Oh, so you're imagining that it would be sort of a first person film from Bella's perspective. Oh heck yes. And it would be far more detailed. Yeah, it would have to be some real choice scenes at it.
Well, there would still be all those pregnant pauses where they're just staring at each other. That's my favorite part of the movie. Somebody can get a lot of that. And it's like 14 minutes long.
And then in the third movie, there's actual pregnant pauses. Hey, it would be unpleasant to live through. But you know, we all got to know. Yeah, I was going to say in the third movie, you're going to get pregnant and not just pregnant, but pregnant with a special kind of baby, special kind of baby that's going to kill you.
If you let's not fill it. I actually haven't seen the third movie. I just know. I just know these things.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a problem. This is one of my big issues is that like way more people have opinions on books like Twilight and the Fault in the Stars than it actually read those books. We're seeing this a little bit now with there's always like some kind of like drama in the world of publishing, but the books that generate all the drama don't necessarily sell that well. It's just like a vehicle for discourse.
Yeah. And then people have the discourse and the book doesn't actually get read. What a terrible thing to have like a Fault in our Stars level discourse without Fault in our Stars level sales. Totally.
It would be like deep misery. Because like there was a lot of discourse around the Fault in our Stars, some of which I found annoying, but at least 30 million people bought that book. Yeah, which nobody gets these days. If you're part of the discourse, that doesn't mean that you're selling even 10,000 copies.
It just means that discourse has picked you up for whatever reason. And usually when the discourse picks you up, it's to be dismissive of you or your work. And therefore you don't have to read it because you can just have an opinion without reading. Yeah.
Uh huh. Oh boy. But you can watch somebody have their opinion about what they read. Anyway, you do want to read Hollywood ending the new book from John Green coming out in September.
It's John's first book in nine years, not novel first novel in nine years. He's been doing this whole time. He's been writing books that weren't Hollywood ending and then getting up on them this whole time. Well, I also wrote a lot of Hollywood ending in the period when I was also writing other books that I gave up on.
What was the initial title slash frame of Hollywood ending? The junket. Yeah. Okay.
It was called the junket and it was entirely about the lead-up to the premiere, not about the movie at all. And I've decided that I'm so, so joyless that I needed some movie in there. As they say, as the kids say these days, I don't think I would suck on that ring pop. All right, John, this next question comes from June who asks Dear Hank and John have recently gotten my blood tested.
My doctor told me I had vitamin D deficiency. I'm from California. I moved to Washington state last year. Thus, I have not seen the sun in many weeks and this got me wondering how vitamin D works.
How is it that I go into the sun and I hit my skin and the levels of the vitamin in my blood go up the sun is month June. Oh, that's lovely. I've also been wondering this, Hank, because I have to take a vitamin D supplement now. Yeah, me too.
But I would rather just get five minutes of sunshine per day, which seems to be enough. I have, I don't know what the actual timing is. I did not let that up. But I did look up the mechanism.
All right. Walk me through the mechanism. How does my skin turn sunlight into a vitamin that lives in my blood? So there is already a molecule in your blood.
It's called 7D hydrochogastoral. God, they got to work on these names. I mean, it says what it is, I promise. And UVB, so this specific wavelengths of UV light, can turn that into vitamin D three.
So the sun does not like eject you with vitamin D is triggering a chemical reaction in your skin that makes this precursor form of vitamin D and then the vitamin D three goes into your bloodstream, then goes to your liver and there it is converted into 25 hydroxy vitamin D. And that's the main circulating form of vitamin D. So there are like others, but when you take vitamin D, you're usually taking one of one of these various molecules. I think a lot of times you take the precursor and then it just gets converted.
The and it's weird. So this is a strange thing. Most animals that you run into don't do this. Like imagine a cat, for example, when does that sun touch a cat?
Never. They're covered in hair. So they get their vitamin D. Some animals get their vitamin D from eating things that make vitamin D and some animals make it themselves.
So we have lost the ability to make vitamin D, but we could like, we, you know, we couldn't, you can't be, but like, there's no physiological reason, like chemical reason why a body can't make vitamin D and indeed many animals do make vitamin D, but we don't. And so we, because it, it happens naturally when you're out in the sun and all of our ancestors spent enough time in the sun that we got it, but now we're always wearing clothes. We're always inside. We're protecting ourselves from the harmful effects of the sun, which are many.
And then we don't get this. And so we have to take a supplement, which is, I think probably a pretty good trade off. I, so I was never a believer in supplements. And my doctor was like, um, you have a little vitamin D and I was like, well, just get out of the sun morning.
She was like, no, you won't. I know you like you're an inside cat. And so she was right. And eventually, I was like, well, take the vitamin D supplement.
My vitamin D is not going to go up because supplements are BS. And she was like, well, your vitamin D will go up because supplements are BS if you don't have low vitamin D, but you do also have low vitamin B12. And I started taking them and it worked. If you feel better?
Well, I don't know if I felt better, but my numbers went up. The lab, the lab says that I'm fine. I have, I have had to fight to get my vitamin D levels up because I'm not really, I have not been good at taking the pills every day. But, but interestingly, vitamin D, there's like debate over whether it's technically a vitamin, which I use.
Very weird. What is it instead? It might be, it's like kind of more like a hormone. So, so like vitamin C, for example, is like very quintessential vitamin.
It is a necessary chemical to make collagen, I think, which is why when you get scurvy, what's happening is all of your collagen is breaking down because you can't repair or create new collagen. I think that this is right. I have, this is like information that I have last looked at like more than a month ago. So, fact check me.
But, but I think vitamin D is more like sort of just a carrier of information and it like activates certain things in certain places. Like maybe feels more of a hormonal role than like a, like a catalytic role. It's not like used as much in the process of chemical reactions. It is more carrying is more like a delivery mechanism for information throughout the body.
I, after your summary of that, have no idea what a vitamin is and not only that, I don't want to learn. I don't know. There's some things I don't want to be curious about. Some things I'm never going to know or have an opinion about and now one of them is whether vitamin D is in fact a vitamin.
I'm never going to have an opinion about that. You probably should. I know, I should it. I should it.
It's like, I should. There, it doesn't mean it's not important. No, it means that I trust other people to have better opinions than I ever will. I feel the same way about the Super Mario Odyssey movie.
It's not that I have, it's not that I, I don't think that it's important to have opinions on the Super Mario Odyssey movie. It's just that I in particular don't want to have those opinions. I don't trust myself. I don't feel like I'm invested enough in the Super Mario universe in order to have a really deeply informed opinion.
And also, if I have an opinion on every single thing, then I don't, then I don't do a good job of digging D like I have a lot of opinions about tuberculosis, but that's because I'm deeply informed about tuberculosis. I don't have an opinion on what a vitamin D is a vitamin. I got to tell you, as you've been talking, I've been more and more convinced that vitamin D isn't a vitamin in particular, because the idea of a vitamin is that it's a thing that your body needs to function normally that you can't get naturally and you can get it. Well, like that you, that you have to consume in order to get into your body.
You don't consume vitamin D. Your body does kind of make it. No, you consume sunshine. The fact that it requires UVB to me is like, well, yeah, but like all of my molecules require that I breathe oxygen.
All right. I'm about to require external outputs, but this isn't, it's not that chemical that's the external output. You're so passionate about this, I find myself coming to an opinion and it's the opinion office at yours. I take back my previous perspective that I don't have opinions instead.
I do want to participate in vitamin D discourse. Not only that, I want to take the provocative take that you are consuming something when you take vitamin D and the thing that you're consuming is sunshine. And that isn't the same thing as consuming oxygen, although that is also a form of consumption, because sunshine is external to our atmosphere. It's essential, but it's external in the same way that like consuming broccoli to get your vitamin A is essential, but external.
All right. I disagree, but I still know the whole Hank, that's not how fighting on the internet works. You got mad. I got mad and now you get more mad.
You don't deescalate. I disagree with you and I no longer want to be your brother. Damn, go end of the podcast. Cancel the whole affair.
Cancel the whole affair. Everything's over everybody. We're done. We're done.
It reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Dear Hank and John, Dear Hank and John 2016 to 2026, RIP. It's my guest is also brought to you by one, Gross of pennies. One Gross of pennies. Good luck from the government.
Today's podcast is also brought to you by rich uncle Pennybags, rich uncle Pennybags, not just the star of an opoly, also the way that John deals with his deposited checks and it's my guest is brought to you by Hollywood ending. You could buy it now or you could wait for it to come out on Ring Pop. No, no, you can't wait. You got to buy it now.
Illusion of scarcity. There's only so many signed copies in the world. Okay, can you order it now? Is it orderable now?
Yeah. Oh, it's orderable now. Yeah. Wherever you get books delivered in September.
Yeah. Pay now get in September. It's a classic bargain. It's cheaper if you use your tax return.
It's only 28 bucks after your tax return. This episode of Dear 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 it easier.
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You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deer hank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deer hank. With new subscription only, while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details.
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See website for more details. All right, let's answer this question from Anya who writes deerhank I wear two matching teardrop shaped necklaces every day. They are Cree Nation jewelry. One is gold and houses question mark my paternal papa and the other is silver and houses question mark my maternal grandpa.
They passed two months apart a few years ago and I've worn the necklace essence. The problem sometimes people compliment them. How am I supposed to respond to this? Do I simply say thank you?
There is usually that is usually my go to but I feel like I should explain. Is there a concise way to say these are my dead grandpas without sounding like crazy person grandpas and grave dirt on you? That's got to be a case by case situation. Yeah, if you're like at a restaurant and somebody in like the server is like your necklaces you say thank you and if you're at on a date and somebody says I like your necklaces say thank you they're my grandpas.
Because what a great conversation starter. But John what if the server is cute? Oh then you say thank you they're my grandpas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because look they want they want to talk about something.
I don't say hey nice shoes unless I want to have a little bit of a shoe conversation. Sure. Sure. What if that's true?
We start a business. Where you get to wear your grandpas on your shoes. Cremation jewelry but it's shoes. Like put them in the aglitz.
We'll put them in the rubber soles. You wear them and then you're like well I guess they're all spread across my entire town. No, I think jewelry is the right vibe for I think we should get in the cremation jewelry business. So that seems like a great business.
You know what I've always wanted to do. I feel like we could totally do is get is do like copper burial rods because copper is one of the things that lasts forever. So if you inscribe like a little message on a copper rod I don't know why I feel like a rod is the right way to go. I guess we could do a coin.
Yeah, I think rod is the wrong impulse but I'm with you on copper. There's something about a rod that I like but anyway I want a rod. I want to be buried with a rod. You can't stop me.
Not a rod. He's going to die first. But so copper. Old great.
He's not that much older than you. He's very healthy as well. But he gets 150 minutes of weekly exercise. Yeah, I bet he's never had shingles.
Jesus. I bet he hasn't had it three times. So and this is a problem that like most like almost everything you bury with a person. It doesn't last very long.
And so sometimes when you dig up it's like what do we actually transport to the grave where we were going to move the cemetery to a new place. So they just like take a fistful of dirt or something. But I think that if they like to grab the rod that would be great. Just like a fistful of dirt and the rod.
So there's always a little identifying information. Okay, so you're not talking about a copper rod that's a grave marker. You're talking about a copper rod that goes into the coffin. Yeah, or the back.
Okay. The bag with a big dollar sign on the side of it. Yeah, you remember the 1910s. You know how robbers used to haul away stuff and bags marked with a dollar sign.
I'd like that to be my cremation earned. Thank you. I want you to remember the value I delivered for shareholders. Yeah, I don't dislike the copper rod idea.
And I think again getting into the copper rod death sales business would be a good business. High margin. You're dealing with fine metals. You know, it seems good to me.
I like it. I don't dislike it. Coin is also nice. I like a coin.
A coin might be good. A copper coin that's got a message on it. You know, we have your grandmothers and my grandmothers wedding ring. My mom and I were looking at it.
And we looked at the date inscribed on the inside of the wedding ring and it was not Nanny and Papa's anniversary. Because it was her grandmother's ring. Wow. Yeah.
She inherited. She wore her whole life. I have a Catherine's engagement ring was Papa's sister's ring, I think. Okay.
And that's that's what mom gave me to do the proposing. I'll tell you a couple things that are unlikely about that story. Oh, no. Papa had no sisters.
It was something like that though. And Oh, no. I guess there's aunt Nell. But aunt Nell had kids of her own.
I think. It wasn't her wedding ring. It was just like a ring that he gave her at some point. And then he got it back.
He took it back. I think so. It does sound like Papa. I got to ask mom.
It was like, I don't know. It's been 20 years since I proposed. This was all very fresh in my mind. I feel like your besmirching Papa's good name one way or the other.
So I had something to do with Miami. Miami. That's a different. That's an uncle.
Not an aunt. Okay. All right. Miami would be a tad.
That's a great name. He used to give us $2 bills. What? Oh, on the outside?
Huh? On the outside? No, mom's side. Oh, I know.
I remember that that's dad used to give us $2 bills. He gave me a $2 bill with a Clemson stamp on it. Nope. You are.
I mean, your ability to misremember family history is truly astonishing. That was bad. Ask yourself, did your grandfather go to Clemson or did he spend his entire life in Indianapolis? That one.
Yeah. That's how you know that it wouldn't make sense for him to give you a $9 bill. Whole time I thought Clemson was an Indianapolis. Nope.
It's in South Carolina. Oh, yeah. Go Tigers. It's funny because you know so much about vitamin D and so little about your family history.
That's about the best. Probably probably this episode. They will. Uncle Mike Wilson.
Uncle Mike's sitting there horrified right now and baffled. Yeah. All right. Here we go.
This question's from Rosie. She writes, Dear John and Hank, I just got unceremoniously and suddenly laid off yesterday after a successful five year career with a company I loved. I'm sorry, Rosie. That sucks.
I'm scrambling to pick up the pieces and just starting to deal with the emotional and financial whiplash of the situation. Whiplash is a great word for it, right? Because like it's like everything is like ripped out from under you. Like your whole life becomes so different so suddenly and I'm just sorry.
Anyway, now that I'm looking for work besides the typical suggestions of taking class, what else should I be doing with all my extra time? It's hard to focus on self-improvement things when you're stressed about your livelihood. I really appreciate any advice you have. While it's dark now, I hope the future looks a bit more Rosie, Nerdfighter since 2007.
Thank you for sticking around all that time, Rosie. That's pretty cool with you. I suggest a garden, a container garden if you're not feeling ambitious where you just use any kind of containers you got around and put some dirt in them or some compost in them or some potting soil and grow a single tomato plant or a single pepper plant or something. I just find that caring for something that's alive but doesn't need all of the support that say a dog needs or a durable needs is very helpful.
Yeah, yeah, jar, dirt, seed, all accessible things. There's this thing that Catherine does that I think is amazing where she'll take people's house plants that are not doing well. She'll like nurse them back to help foster them. Yeah, she fosters a plant and she's like, oh, you got a lot of bugs on this one.
And she gives a totally repot sit. She means them up, gets that neem oil all over them. I just respect this the heck out of this. I'm like, just got a new plant in the downstairs shower where that one comes from.
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe foster some struggling plants from your friends. I just think like being with stuff that's somebody told me once that when you hit middle age, you either become a bird person or a tree person and I have very much become a tree person.
And so maybe my bias is showing here Rosie. But I feel like we are supposed to be with plants. That's the one thing. It's the one thing that I'm sure of is that this is a plant planet and we are supposed to be in communion with them.
Yeah. And they make food. And so at the end of the year, you have some food, which is kind of a fun feeling. You're like, oh man, I grew a tomato and I get to eat it.
Yeah. And then also vitamins also gives you a real appreciation for food systems in general because it takes a hell of a lot of work to make one to make. Oh, boy. Sometimes I'll see like an Instagram reel where they're out in like a broccoli field and I'll be like, there ain't no way.
I try to grow broccoli. It's like a slugs, it's like everything. So hard. Yeah.
And then it's like, no. And yeah, I mean, obviously, like there's broccoli at the store. So somebody's doing it. Yeah.
Boy. They got a big broccoli field out there in California somewhere. I see it on Instagram. So anyway, we wish you well, Rosie.
And we're sorry that you're going through this. Hopefully indeed Rosier days are to come. This next question comes from Sorin, who asks, Dear Hank and John tonight, I noticed one of the stickers on my sketchbook. It is a possum that says, it's a beautiful day to scream.
It glows in the dark. How to go into the dark stickers and other stuff work. Why don't they need to charge under light first? The glowing reminded me of radium, which also may be wonder if glow in the dark things can be different colors or only green.
If only green or there's green. Why? If they could be other colors, why do I only see green glow in the dark things? Is it meant to resemble radium?
Stay curious, Sorin. I love your, I love your possum. First of all, it's a beautiful day to scream. There's always a thing.
There's always a reason. I know the answer to this. All right. It can only be green.
Oh, oh, okay. It can't be red. And it glows in the dark because it holds the energy and the reason it, I'm not done. And the reason it is green is because of optics.
And as we all know, Hank doesn't understand optics. Actually, not very much optics going on here. How much are you writing? I think none.
I mean, you got one thing, right, which is that it has to be charged. The light has to come from somewhere. So with radium, this actually isn't the, I mean, it's coming from somewhere. It's coming from radioactive decay, which is going on over a long time.
So you don't have to charge things up when they're being charged up by radioactive decay. But there's some downsides to having a glow in the dark possum to your radium possum. Yes, the energy is coming from ionizing radiation, which also might ionize your cells. But phosphorescence is what we're talking about here.
So the light will get absorbed. And then it basically raises the energy of the electrons to a different higher state. And then slowly those electrons relax back down. And every time they relax from one shell to another, from one higher energy state to a lower energy state, a photon will be emitted.
And because that does not happen immediately, it happens slowly over time, you get this glowing happening and it happens at the weight, like the color comes from the wavelength of the photon that is released by the electron shell, but like, it's defined by the amount of energy that it's dropping. So I think that this is like a lower energy drop in the goal of this is literally what I said. Is it you were just quoting me back to myself. This is interesting.
This is interesting. Yeah. That is not how I'm experiencing it. It's interesting to be plagiarized.
Well, for example, have somebody take your answer and then answer it the same way. What a fun thing for our listeners to hear the exact same answer twice. Green is not the only wavelength that can be emitted. Is that a useful addition to know?
I said that too. But I think that the higher the higher energy wavelengths are harder. And so I don't think that you might get read, but you, but like in order to get read, they're doing weird things that's, but I don't know. All right.
That was helpful to me. Thank you. I didn't know that every time a photo, an electron went from a higher state to a lower state of photon was released, but that's kind of a beautiful idea. Yeah.
It's a lot of stuff is going on down there. The weird molecular or the atomic level and color turns out to be really freaking weird. Yeah. Seems pretty normal.
See it all the time. Why is why is things the colors they are way weirder than you think? Yeah. I just scratched my shingles, John.
And it is such a crazy mix of relief and pain. Yes. The intensity of the satisfaction feeling is beyond any itch I've ever had in my life. Like I feel it in my brain.
It's like full body dopamine wash, but then at the same time pain. It's like giving into compulsive behaviors when you have that OCD. Maybe. Yeah.
It certainly is compulsing. No, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that you have shingles. You've made now, I think three podcasts while you had shingles and I would have made none.
I would have, I would have, you couldn't get me out of bed for a million dollars if I had shingles. I am pretty exhausted. It is taken out of me. Well, that's how mom and dad don't listen because they do worry about you.
Understandably. All right. Before we get to the on port news from ours and ask you one more question from Mike who writes, Dear John and Hank Teeth. Sometimes.
Teeth feels like I have bones going through my skin, which is not great. The need to perform daily maintenance seems to support that hunch as to the existence of medical specialists. I need to visit annually in order to continue to have teeth. Have any countries figured out a better answer?
Flossing under protest, Mike. As the Titus Andromeda says, outside bones, outside bones, never forget your teeth or outside bones. They're not, they're not like a hundred percent outside bones, but they are pretty amazing. They are the closest thing to a bone currently outside my body that's connected to my body.
Yeah. I wrote a short story once that took place in a magical town that was sort of, you know, like a little bit. Teen, Teen Edgy. This was when I was a young person.
Oh, right. When you were young, I thought this was a recent short story, but no. In that world, did people not have teeth? No, but they did.
There was a character who had done a magic thing so that his fingertips were his bones. And so he could like, like, clack them and he was like a scary guy and he clacked the bones on the table when you were in meetings with him. That's kind of good. I like that.
The fact that you wrote that as an edgy teen is actually quite impressive to me. I was probably 23. Less impressive. And who knows who knows if I even have a copy of that anymore?
We interested to read. But that is not actually a solution that anyone has ever created. There are like other tooth solutions. You know, obviously teeth are very useful.
That's why so many things have them. But there's of course there's sharks that have a tooth conveyor belt that replaced them. Actually elephants replace their molars, though only a certain number of times. And at the end, they like have like their sixth molar come in and then that one wears out, they just die.
Wow. Crazy. Unless they're in captivity. And they get to eat mashed up stuff.
Wow. And like rodents, they grow forever. That's a thing you can do. Beavers have their teeth doped with iron so that they're stronger.
All kinds of crazy things happen in the teeth world. But we have teeth because like we like extraordinarily useful to be able to grind stuff up. You know what I was thinking this morning, John? I'm always eating stuff.
Yeah. Super, super strong ability. Like I can chew. I can chew some hard stuff.
And you know what's like always less than a centimeter away from my hard chewers is my soft talker. He's just in there, one of your softest parts and your soft cheek. He's just in there like pushing the food right up into the teeth so he can get chewed on. And he gets bit so rarely.
And then when you do bite your tongue, I know when you do bite your tongue, it's so painful and so horrible. And then you think then you should be thinking about all the times you didn't bite your tongue. You know, we should be thinking with gratitude for about all the days where the tongue went unbitten. Yeah.
But we won't because you do you you chomp with such ferocity. Oh yeah, I could eat a tongue. Oh yeah, I think I have. Yeah, I definitely have.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad about it, but I've had beef tongue.
Yeah. Yeah. Now that you say it for sure. The the and that's a big that's way bigger than mine.
How weird is it in general that we have to masticate recently to see his plant and animal matter in order to continue thinking? How weird is it? So all. Oh, it's so weird.
If you said I did it when alien, they would hate it. I don't know that we can be brothers anymore. I disagree with you and the project is over. I mean, in terms of like earth animals, it's extremely normal because there's nobody who doesn't do it.
Yeah, but you would think we could just keep going from sunlight. Right. Well, I think I feel the same way about babies where I'm like, boy, I know that this is how it all all of us happened. But that nuts.
Yeah, live birth is pretty wild. That's nuts that you that like you grow one in you grow one on the inside from scratch. Yeah. Instead of just having some warm eggs.
I mean, even that's pretty weird, but yeah, not as weird. Yeah. I just think if you pitched for, okay, imagine pitching it to a tree. Imagine saying to a tree.
Yes, the only way you can live is my eating cows on the or eating eating were still eating other trees. Like imagine pitching that to a plant. Yeah, the trees going to be like, like the nuts, like the nuts. No, no, the whole tree.
No, the whole thing. Well, what happens to the tree, then? Well, it does. It's dead now.
The tree is dead. That's the only way. In fact, you have to kill the tree first. Yeah, you have to use use the energy you got from killing the previous tree to kill a new tree.