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Hello and welcome to Tierra. Hey, good job. Or is that preferred to think of the Tier John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you advice and bring all the weeks news from both Mars and A.M.C.
with them, John. The astronauts of the Artemis II mission have reported they found some crazy arachnids on the moon. Oh, they're calling them lunatics. It's all right.
Yeah, I am happy to be here with you, John. I don't know when, I have no idea when this episode is coming out as we are recording it. So we record because John's going to be out next week, etc. So we record some out of order.
But like today is the day that the rocket is theoretically taking off. Yeah, like 6.23 p.m. Well, I wish you all the best with that. I hope that it which gets me.
You're experiencing this entirely through the lens of Hank Green. Yeah, pretty much, if I'm being honest, like my my concerns are very worldly right now, Hank. I am thinking entirely about the fictional movie Andy Warhol never gets old and the two young people at its center, Kai and Juniper, they're your worldly as well, rather than like the straight of four moves worldly. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm the great thing about writing fiction. And one of the things that I miss the most about it is that I have no like I haven't come up for air in weeks. Yeah. And it's obviously bad to disengage with the world.
I shouldn't be disengaging with the world. But you need to know that Matt Gates has told the world that there's a human alien breeding program being run by the US government. How's he really? It's not a joke.
No, it's not a joke. It's real. Matt Gates, the former congressperson. Uh huh.
As if they would tell 435 congresspeople that and it wouldn't get out. Yep. Yeah, he had it was a guy who worked for the army. So you know it's for real.
Okay. Well, I'm glad I don't know about that. I'm really so there are some things that I'm frankly glad that I'm not informed about like that or like the new Super Mario Odyssey movie. Yeah, no, I think that I think that I'd say that a solid 10% of people listening had any Matt Gates's opinions no longer a matter, which is fantastic.
I have not formed an opinion on a number of things, including the alien human breeding program that's being run by the CIA. I've also not formed a strong opinion on the Super Mario Odyssey movie that is coming out. I have been really, really deep in writing the story and thinking about Kai and Juniper and writing fiction is such a gift in that way because you just live in that world and it's not always fun to live in that world, but it is always deeply, deeply engrossing. Like the problems of a novel are so real to the novelist that they everything else is subsumed by them.
And it's just it's not a wonderful feeling exactly because like it's also really difficult and really challenging and everything, but it is deeply engrossing. And I think what I want in the world ultimately is to be engrossed by something other than social media. And I think that is something that many people want a great deal and maybe is I mean, you see it a little bit in day that people are actually spending a little less time on social media than previously though, as I have said, I think about this podcast before from a very high high. Yeah, the decrease the decrease is from a very high high.
So it is still very high. But the but but I think that I'm sensing that from all directions, I'm sensing it very much internally, just like wanting to have a little more control, like not yielding my like my consciousness over to the algorithms, letting them decide what you think about. Yeah, who have one single goal, which is just to monetize me more effectively. Yeah, unlike this podcast, which isn't trying to monetize your attention at all.
There's not a lot of algorithms involved in podcasts, which is true. That's not entirely free of the not entirely free of the system or the salient economy, but like a little bit more, a little bit more free of it. I will say, I think this is something that books do very well and books can be engrossing, but you have to put in the time with a book, which is really hard to do right now because the engrossment you can get from social media is there is seconds away, whereas truly being deeply engrossed in a book is probably 45 minutes away. And the difference between 12, 15 seconds and 45 minutes is a pretty significant difference.
I don't know, like maybe 10 minutes. I feel like I can get in there and get in there in 10 minutes. I mean, the first 10 minutes of a book has to be so good for the first 10 minutes to be engrossing. Oh, I thought I thought to me like each individual session.
No, no, I'm talking about starting cold. Like you're opening the cover of Hollywood ending for the first time. Realistically, I'm doing my best to make it a banger from page one, but realistically, you're 15 minutes at least away from being engrossed. I feel like you might know the data on what percent of books are being read on paper versus listened to.
Do you know those numbers? I don't. I don't feel like it's getting close to if not having surpassed 50 50. No, it's nowhere close to parody, but it is growing.
I mean, audio books are growing, which is awesome because I think reading by audio is awesome, but like it's nowhere close to parody. It certainly is a majority of the books I read are listened. Well, I'm excited for you to read on audio Hollywood ending on September 22nd. I don't know who's narrating it yet.
It won't be me because well, for one thing, it's an opulent two voices. And so I think it'd be weird if I was both of those voices. And for another thing, I don't really like it when people conflate my life with the lives of my characters. And that will only get worse if I read the audio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't make any sense to for fiction. fiction makes perfect sense. It does, which I'm looking forward to doing for my book, which also is coming along. Yeah, but it's not available for pre-orders.
So there's no reason to talk about it. No, we're talking about it. Boo, boo, boo. I would end it.
Everything that matters, Hank, is what can be immediately monetized. Can you tell the story of the comma? Why is there a kind of, you keep praying up the fact that there's a common Hollywood ending? And it's not how I would write the phrase Hollywood ending.
It changes the meaning of the title for me. Yeah, it's supposed to change the meaning of the title, I think, is the answer to why there's a comma between Hollywood ending. And that you're going to leave that up from you to interpret. It's probably the thing to do.
Yeah, wait to read the book. Okay. Are there, are there what? I know that this would be crazy.
Yeah. And I know this would be a huge spoiler if you told me. Yeah. So maybe just don't tell me, but do either of the main characters end up being human alien hybrids.
That's what it's about. You caught me. It's the big reveal. I've told you, I've told you my succession story, right?
No. Which is that I was once told that I should watch this new TV show, and I really, really like it. And it's released to re-broll and has this crazy sci-fi direction that it goes in. And so I was like, okay, I got to watch that show.
It sounds really cool. And so I watched the first 10 episodes of succession waiting for the sci-fi twist before realizing that my friend told me to watch Severance. And I was like, this is going to be nice. Wow.
Nine episodes in when this person pulls out their human masks and reveals their lizard face. This is going to be a good show. Which you can totally see how that show. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
To be fair, in Hollywood ending, one of the main characters is like a huge movie star who's taken this movie, Andy Warhol never gets old playing Andy Warhol to try to prove that he's still an acting chop sort of. Yeah. And put himself in awards conversations and whatnot. And I could see him being a lizard person.
He's not in the novel. But you know, like, you know, those big stars are so different from being regular people. Like, it's easy to understand why conspiracy theorists say like, well, that's not a human, that's a wizard person. They're so outside of what?
I don't know. They're just like the amount of value you being placed on them by society, you know, and it separates them from reality. It does separate them from reality. It does not make them into wizard people from the record.
Like, I know some of those people and they're human beings who's grieves, grieve on universal bones and whatever. But like, yeah, there is a there is a weirdness to that. That's a Faulkner line. That's the griefs grieve on universal bones.
I love that line. Anyway, let's answer some questions from our listeners. Okay. This question comes from Laura who asks dear John and Hank, I'm wondering if you had to choose one person to represent our planet in an interplanetary meeting with other creatures from different planets, who would you choose?
Not Dora the Explorer. Laura. I think it's not Dorothy Explorer. Laura.
I said, I mean, you kind of put you kind of put an err. Explorer. Laura. There you go.
There you go. I mean, obviously I choose one of the wizard people because they could communicate with multiple multiple folks. So probably Dolly Parton, you know, I imagine Dolly. Probably Dolly.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Dolly is a great choice, John. I feel like I'd maybe I've asked you this question before and you've said Dolly before.
No, but Dolly is one of my background answers for who should we have? Yeah, who can you do it? Who can you still bring us together? Yeah, a real uniter.
That is somebody that everybody like just like the most people can agree on. Abraham Lincoln, you know, that kind of person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I want somebody who's really quick on their feet and Dolly's super quick on her feet.
She is. She sharp as attack, as they say. Sam Campbell. I don't know who that is.
He's an Australian comedian. Okay. Very quick on his feet. Okay.
I want somebody who can think just really be ready for any direction it might go, which is just like an improv comedian. Right. A Brennan Lee Mulligan type of character? Yeah.
Oh my God. Brennan would be, I think, totally up for it. No, Brennan would definitely do it. He would definitely volunteer.
So with you, that's one thing about the Green Brothers is that Hank would volunteer and John would not and Hank would do a good job and John would not. I mean, I'm reasonably quick on my feet, but I can't handle the pressure. I just remember speaking at the United Nations, which was as close to a gathering of all sentient beings as I've ever encountered and being real nervous. So here's what, here's an interesting question.
If you were an alien, how would you do this? There's a great John Scalds'u book where the alien hires a Hollywood agent and it's like, I need you to, I need you to like, let's do this. Let's figure out how to do the first contact thing. But how, like, because I feel like, you know, one person, it's a big plan.
You wouldn't want to do that. You want, you want to be like, okay, I've, I've, I've gerrymandered the entire world into, you know, 100 equal sized districts. You all have to elect a person to come talk with us. And then they will, then that Senate will elect.
Yeah. An ultimate representative. No, no, no, they'd have a hundred different conversations. Oh, well, that's interesting.
Yeah. And then they'd be like, we, we, we have reached our conclusion. We believe you to be worthy or not. God.
I would like, first off, this will never happen. If I learned anything from Project L. Mary, it's that the situation that would lead to us encountering intelligent life would be ridiculously absurdly complex. And, or it's been happening for millennia and we don't know about it.
We are, we are it. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Like, it's hard enough for us to talk to each other. And we have all kinds of shared experiences and shared biology. And yet we really struggle to communicate with each other. I think that, I think this would be a challenging circumstance in real life.
Yeah. It's, well, well, certainly it would be challenging. I don't think that we'll have to deal with it. It seems, now that we've, we've got pretty powerful technology and tools, it seems as if the kind of thing we are is not common.
Yeah. Yeah. Or it is common and it's just a really big universe. Yeah.
I mean, common. It's not common enough to be close, close by. And also there is no close by. I actually think that's the bigger issue.
The lack of a close by is a big issue. It's a big issue. I mean, things are so far apart. That is far apart as you think.
Yes, they are. They are literal light years, Hank. It takes light years to get from one star to another. Let me hit you with a solution to this problem, which is intelligence that's not biological.
So it given given that possibility, those things can just turn themselves off and turn them back on, you know, in a thousand years and a thousand years, ultimately, not a long time in the history of the universe. So really, like, not actually, like totally within current ability for us to travel to Alpha Centauri within thousands of years. Like we could do that now. Yeah.
To Alpha Centauri, not like with a body. Not with a body. I understand. And then like what?
And then another 50,000 years to get to the next star? Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I don't know, like I can't hit you with a math, but it's not millions of years. No, but we've only been here for 300,000 years, like as a species. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You have to. So this is the thing. When I say uncommon or rare, I don't necessarily mean that we don't happen very often. But I mean that like the current level of technological sophistication may be more of a shell.
So like a very brief period before whatever we are, it doesn't keep going or not. The great filter could be behind us and we just happen to make it through and most things don't. So maybe we'll be the thing that just takes over the whole galaxy and it's just really uncommon. I hope not.
I don't trust us one. I don't trust as far as I can throw us. Yeah. Well, here, John, we talk often.
We talk sometimes about how our rock is better than nothing. Is a solar system with life better or a planetary system with life better than a planetary system with our life? Yes. So if there's a bunch of planetary systems that don't have life, and we bring it, would that be a positive?
Yeah. Okay. Dolly Parton, everybody. But I think we should be very careful about what sort of life we bring.
I think we should bring Dolly Parton, golden retrievers and kittens that don't become cats. Kittens that don't become cats. You heard me. Oh, how much?
Shut up and take my money. All right. Let's answer another question. This is from Emma who writes, Dear John, I take my partner and I recently got engaged, which is very exciting with planning on having a wedding in 2026.
Sorry, there's no wedding website for you to critique yet, but my health insurance is turning out to be terrible with $100 copays every time I see a specialist. Welcome to America, Emma. And my undiagnosed auto immune arthritis condition means that my meds cost $160 a month. Long story short, we're going to elope so I can be on my partner's health insurance and have the celebration later.
Money is tight right now. So I haven't been able to work much. How can we make our elopement still feel special? Oh, I'm going to elope.
Emma, I mean, I'll just tell you, I think that eloping in general is a great strategy and an underrated one. I once went to an Elvis wedding in Las Vegas and Elvis explained to me, this Elvis impersonator explained to me that actually a huge percentage of his weddings, people come back and like visit like 20 years later or something, and they're still married because he's like some of them, you know, they come in and you're like, I don't feel great about this one. But the vast majority of them, he actually feels pretty good about because they're people who know each other well and have been together a long time, they just decided to elope and have an Elvis wedding. And I think that's great.
Some of the best marriages I know started in a courthouse. The thing about what we're doing here with weddings is we are creating rituals and like the nice thing about the existing ritual of the wedding is that there's a bunch of a bunch of things to choose from that you want to include or not include and but they feel like they have this weight. So you're going to have to like maybe slam a little bit of your own weight down and say this matters because it matters to me and that might be vows that you write to each other, which is of course like the original weight. It might be like letters that you write to each other, like make it an event.
And none of this stuff costs money like it's almost like worse if any of it costs money. Make it an event. You know, you create something for each other, you put aside some time where you're making a thing to bestow value upon this situation. And for me, like that's that's like heading off in a word type direction because you're a word guy.
But there's you know, you choose the directions that work for you and that matter a lot to you and the things that you share and you find the value in those things whether like you're pulling ideas from from the media love together or you're pulling ideas from the experiences that you've had together, etc. But like give it some weight, make it matter. And then the other thing that you do later when you have if you have a ceremony for friends and family, that will matter as well in a big way and in a different way. Yeah, I agree with all of that.
I think did I ever tell you about the time I baptized a kid? No, wild. Yeah. So when I was a chaplain, this kid was at the hospital and was about to get a liver transplant.
And his mom was like he was probably seven. His mom was was like he's never been baptized and she asked a nurse like can you call the chaplain because I'd like to get my kid baptized just before this operation. And they called me and because I was a chaplain on call not because I was the good chaplain. And I went and all you need to baptize someone is water.
And then you say like I baptized you and the father, son and the Holy Spirit and they're baptized. That's it. That's everything else is, you know, ritual. I mean, that's also a ritual obviously.
But like everything else about it is created to make it feel like a cage. And I never realized this until I'm in the room with this kid. And I'm like, oh, because like they don't come from a particular faith background where there's like a particular set of rituals involved in baptism. I know that like all that's required for baptism is flash some water on a kid and say I baptized you and the name of the father, son and all goes, or whatever.
But I realized like that's not sufficient for this person's need in this moment. Like they want a thing. Yeah. And so I'm like, I kind of talk it over with them.
And I'm like, what kind of things should we do? Should we do a thing from the book of common prayer, which is my faith traditions, you know, organization of rituals? Should we do a thing where we like do it together somehow? Like you want to splash some of the water?
Like you can get involved. Yeah. And I realized looking back that probably what they wanted was for me to go in super confident with a baptism strategy. But I did not have to I didn't feel confident.
I was 22 years old. You know, I was dookie, how's your boy Chaplin? This is so cool. I want to hear all the details of the story.
I used to make a video about this. This is great. I don't know about this. Eventually we go with the book of common prayer and I bring out the book of common prayer and I like read all the stuff.
You like go to the glass, look at the index and you're like be bad almost literally. And I go through all the stuff and you know, I say like, peace be with you and they say like and peace be with you and all that jazz, even though I'm not an ordinary priest. But none of that matters because you don't have to be ordained to baptize someone. Any baptize, christian baptize another kid or person or adult or whatever.
Meanwhile, it's like seven year old kid who's fully cognizant, you know, yeah, exactly. Like an active participant in the baptism in many ways is there. And we go through the whole thing and then I we say the words prayer and I baptize them and then this kid is baptized. But then after I realized that like after the baptism, usually you go back to being in church and like then you have communion and whatever and like you go.
But like there's nothing to do after I baptize them and I'm like, all right, you guys want to soda? Congratulations. Should I turn on the TV? I'll sign.
You want to watch the lion king together? Like what's a good fun? Should we play station? Yeah.
Mario Kart? Yeah. John, this is a great story. I have two questions.
Yeah. The second one's gonna get another first one. Was the kid at the end of being okay? I mean last I heard the kid was okay.
They got through the the transplant. Well, second was the kid's name Duncan. No, Duncan Duncan. I appreciate that you were only gonna ask that question if the kid turned out to be okay.
Oh God, which reminds me, John. Yeah. Oh God, I've gotten two questions and we're already at the sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Duncan.
The only baptized donuts. It's true. It's a really good point. Today's podcast is also of course brought to you by a rock.
It's better than nothing, which I guess means that we should terraform the universe. It's not just brought to you by kittens that don't become cats. Kittens that don't become cats. It's coming eventually and I don't know how I feel about it.
And of course, it's brought to you by Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton, hour chosen, speak for humanity person. I guess speak for America person because if we're doing a speak for humanity person, I think we might want to reach outside of the world. It's a lot of humanity.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure for Dolly. But that's what I'm saying. I would have I would ever speak for for America and don't don't email me and tell me all the reasons Dolly Parton is terrible in my day.
Literally, literally just don't. I don't need to know. I need something. I need something.
I need something. 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 easier.
When you start with Shopify, the tools, to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one. You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business. And this is important because you also have to like look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing.
It also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate. Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet. It's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks. Returning customers can check out with a single click.
That means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody. That stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing. You're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work. You're not wondering whether customers can get through the process.
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Shopify handles the rest. 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 you website for more details. I'm going to go back to Quince. I often wear either a long sleeve or short sleeve button down from Quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints. In fact, sometimes I get compliments about it.
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So that's why I'm wearing Quince this summer. You can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deer hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash deer hank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deer hank. John, we've got a question from Elise who asks deer hank and John I'm a first year microbiology student into My Great Dismay.
I had to take a couple of calculus courses. I mean to My Great Dismay this person is named Elsie. Did I say Elsie? Yeah.
Well, just goes to show you. Sorry Elsie. There is a reason that I went into the biological science is one because I think bacteria and viruses are cool and two because I don't want to do math. Got terrible news for you Elsie.
Some math is very useful in biology but I haven't come across a single part of calc one or two that are helpful and anything to do with my field. Can you tell me why do they make me page $1,200 for two courses that I will never use the information that I learned in mathematical mysteries Elsie? This drives me crazy. Yeah.
So I could tell you the logic behind it but I don't think the logic is good. Okay. Well, I appreciate that you don't think the logic is good. Before you tell me the logic behind it, let me just say that if I'd gone to a college that required calc one and two in order to graduate from college, I would not have graduated from college and I think I'm getting a microbiology degree.
That's true but I just want to state for the record that this college math course that so many colleges force you to take in order to get a bachelor's degree is really denies educational opportunities to a lot of people like me. I agree with you. Okay. And that's that's a that's actually a separate you know it's a separate course from calc one and two of course but like a lot of this like college math stuff.
I don't know man. It feels very 1952. I'm not sure what we're training people for because it's now and if you like get algebra conceptually, you don't need to remember like the inverse square law. I'm sorry.
And indeed I don't. I actually don't even know if that's definitely algebra. So I just came up with a math term that's bumping around in there. Now with specifically about microbiology, the thing that they're doing here is twofold.
First, there are conceptual things in calculus that you should understand that you actually don't need all of the like different ways of solving the derivations that you're going to spend the vast majority of your time on but there's concepts in calculus that you do want to have. You do want to know about like first and second order effects. You do want to know about like the area under the curve. You want to know stuff.
You want to know what the tools of calculus are for at the very least. Like that is actually important. Yeah, I was going to say I don't actually need to I know I understand that I can understand that intellectually and I can grasp that without doing the math. Yes.
And the math helps to reinforce it. And if I'm going to be in a career where I where the area under the curve is a huge part of what I do, I'm going to need to know the math. And then the other thing this is this is the actual reason why you took one and two because there are directions that you can go with a microbiology degree where you will end up taking classes where you will need calculus. And they want to keep that those options open for all microbiology students, even if not all microbiology students are going to go in that direction.
I don't know if this is worth doing. But if you're going to be going into like pharmaceuticals, if you're going to like do pharmacokinetics, if you're going to do physical chemistry, like a lot of this stuff is really important. Like it's like it's like people are going to go in those directions and those people are not going to be able to go into those courses without taking one and two first. And so they're going to have a pre-rec that you have taken calculus before you take those courses.
And so they're just basically saying, hey, you know, a lot like several of the future courses in your degree path that you might take are going to have pre-recs of Galk1 and 2. So we're just going to make everybody take it so that they have those options of potentially taking those courses when they're seniors or juniors. And that's why. But from what I can tell, you're unlikely to be going in those directions with your microbiology degree.
So I ultimately agree with you. But that's I think that that's the theory behind it. But isn't there also an element hank of filter, snobbery and filter about it? Like I remember when I was a chaplain, I said to my like discernment supervisor at one point, like why the I mean from a patient perspective, from a chaplain perspective, why do you have people do this before they are ordained or very far down the path of ordination?
Yeah. And he was like, Oh, it's hazing. Yeah. And he was very effective hazing.
Like I quit. It worked. You know, like I figured it out cheaply and quickly that I didn't want to head down that path. But there are a lot of people who would be good doctors who don't do well in organic chemistry.
And there are a lot of people who would be good microbiologists who don't understand talk too very well. And I think that that's a disservice to people who would do well in the profession. Maybe I'm wrong. I might be wrong.
I've been wrong before. But that's my inclination. Yeah, there are artificial constraints being placed on the number of people who can get degrees. And doctors and specifically, like there's literally like the federal government decides how many doctors, how many new doctors we get each year and the right sorry to be a little controversial here.
But the the doctor groups lobby to keep that number as small as possible. So that there will be a doctor shortage. Well, all right, we're getting hot here. Hot takes.
I mean, that is true. Nobody wants to know. Nobody wants to hear it. But this is a, I'm not saying every doctor agrees with this, of course not.
But the groups that represent doctors do not want and they say that the reason is because they want that only the best doctors to come out of the process. But we are officially the number of doctors that we get. And it's a big problem. All right.
Let's answer another question. This one from Taylor who writes Dear John and Hank, I'm working on some history homework where we have to create a museum room about the 2020s. My intended audience consists of people who will be alive in 2017. Oh, so like Hank and me.
What objects would you include to educate visitors about the 2020s? Would a jar of sourdough starter count is historically authentic? What about a pizza John shirt? Looking forward to your expiration advice, lusoots need a tailor.
Lusoots are back, actually, Taylor, as it happens. Yeah, yeah, tight suits need a tailor now. Yeah. A sourdough starter is a great shout because that was huge in 2020.
Yeah. Especially if you can keep sourdough starter alive from 2020 to 2070, that would be a hell of a museum thing. You know, the most 2020 object that exists is those like cloth face masks that said do good. Which is actually funny because it turns out like the cloth ones didn't do much at all.
They weren't as good as they wanted them to be. Just massive holes in them, it turns out on a microscopic scale. That it was just like, oh, no, I don't want to get to it. But that now feels very 2020.
Well, it's the 2020s overall though. That's why I think a pizza John shirt would be very good because, you know, I mean, Pizza John is one of the defining images of the 2020s and the 2010s. Well, it does feel to me, I mean, this is this was my thought is that Pizza John feels a little bit like like it's a 2010s nostalgia play. Yeah, more before that, I would say that Pizza John, like all great images like iHeartNewYork, like the smiley face is timeless.
Oh, John, John, I got a good one. Okay. A ring light. Oh, a ring light is very good.
A ring light is going to be the most 2020 object. We're already leaving it behind, but oh man, we will look back on ring lights with a weird feeling. Yep, that's true. Anything from Sheen?
Sure. Mass produced plastic of any kind really feels very 2020s to me. It's the 2020s now, right? Oh, yeah, it's still the 2020s.
So you got to put Chachi PT in there. No, you don't. There is a piece of me that feels like maybe the way that like the chatbot AI thing will be looked back on as a bit of a fad. Wow.
I mean, you're bringing a lot to it. You're bringing a lot of hot takes today, Hank Green, and it makes me uncomfortable. I think that I don't think that they won't be too things, but like you think talking to an artificial intelligence will be a fad. I just want to be clear about this because in 2040 when we're still making this podcast, I just want to have you on record that you thought that it would be bad.
There will be other ways to use the tools that won't be so chat based. Okay. I don't know. You don't think that we're going to say in the future like, hey, Chachi PT, schedule a haircut?
That's a good point. Probably we'll do that. I'm worried that we're going to do more of it, not less. I don't know.
It feels like we very much all went all in on the first use case, and there's got to be other ways for it to just be sort of like a more subtle background piece of life rather than like you're, I think people will be doing it. You don't think it's going to be your therapist in the future. Oh my God. Here's what I think is possible that if it is that you talk to it like a person and it lives in your head, okay?
Well, that has me panicked. Let's move on. For people who didn't get to see the way John's face just looked, he hadn't had that thought yet, and he didn't like it. I didn't like it.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. I want to move on from the whole question and answer this question from Starr who writes, do you're John and Hank, I'm currently attempting to follow sleep while listening to your hit sleep podcast for teens in the earlier as I started rubbing my eyes. You got to be right to stuff down, Starr, put your phone down.
I started to see kaleidoscopic shapes. Why does this happen? Also, am I physically seeing it or is it all in my head? Is John see weird shapes when he rubs his eyes, do twinkle twinkle little star?
Thank you for only caring about my perspective, not Hank's on this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't have eyes because Hank's obviously going to do the science stuff, but I'm going to do this, and I'm going to see the kaleidoscope effect in my and I think it is physical. Yeah, it's well, well, here's the thing, John, everything is physical and everything is psychological because the brain is made out of meat.
Well, hit me with the specific language of Starr's, what? Hit me with the specific language of what Starr said here. Starr said, am I physically seeing it or is it all in my head? It's both.
Yeah, so this is a really big question and consciousness does red exist. So obviously, if you're me, you would say red is an illusion created by the brain. That is like a consciousness's representation of a specific wavelength of light. And then the philosopher would be like, but Hank, there's something physical going on there and I'd be like, fine.
And then, and then I'd stop out of the room and be like, I guess. And that's so that's very much what's going on here is that it's not it's certainly not something that you are physically creating like wavelengths that your head is that your brain is interpreting, but you are physically having an impact on your optic nerve and that is changing the signal that's getting interpreted by your brain and it's being interpreted as these like weird shapes and stuff. And that's a thing that we all get to experience whenever we want to, to prove to ourselves that consciousness is is just sort of like a vivid hallucination that is yet tied to the reality that we inhabit. Why do we see stars when we push on our eyes?
Yeah, okay, I'll walk you through. I think I said that the eyes send electrical signals to the brain in response to stimuli, usually your rods and cones being hit by photons. When you rub your eyes, you are generating a physical stimulus and that also causes electrical signals to be sent to your brain. And they are what we see as those shapes and they are actually is a name for them that are called phosphines.
And we get when we do other things that make our retina's behavior, we can also see shapes like if you stand up really fast, sometimes sneezing does this, you can like see like flashes of non non-existent things that your brain is interpreting as stuff you're seeing. Right, right. Okay. Thank you, Hank.
That was helpful. Now I have to ask you another question. Is an alligator of fish? No, yes.
I mean, it depends on what you mean by fish. Dear John and Hank writes, Anna, I've been listening to old episodes of the podcast recently while running an episode 410, you all said that fish are not well defined. Seeing as it's lent right now and Hank, a little bit of background information for you, a lot of Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent. It's not a huge sacrifice, but they start looking at the gators funny, but they do eat fish.
Okay, so this is so many people. We say meat, fish are actually plants. That's why there's like Friday fish fries in a lot of Catholic communities. Okay.
I saw online the other day, the Archbishop of Louisiana or possibly New Orleans declared that alligator was acceptable to eat during Lent as a fish, which leads me to believe that at least in one sense, fish are well defined as the ones you can still eat during Lent, pumpkins and penguins, and a McKay. This is famously true of Beaver. What? There was a French like Catholic French trappers in early America.
It didn't have like a lot of food options. Yeah. And so the Pope declared, Beavers tails were pretty scaly. They spent a lot of time in water.
You could eat those boys during Lent. Oh, is that true? Yeah. Maybe it's the Catholics don't eat meat on any Friday and don't eat meat at all during Lent.
I can't remember because I'm a Piscopalian and that's different. And we broke off with them so that a king in England could get a divorce. So things are different now. Things are different now.
I mean, here in the Anglican Convention, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, to my knowledge anyway, give up meat during Lent. Although, I've been trying to eat less meat just because of the horrors. Yeah, I think that it makes sense to me that it would be, it would be during during all of Lent. And as I have looked this up, it's some people are saying they abstain from meat and some are saying they abstain from land animal meat.
Land animal. There you go. And alligators aren't really land animals. Sometimes they aren't, but not often.
Yeah. So I guess if the alligator was killed in the water, then it's safe. If the alligator was killed on land, then I've got some questions because that feels like a land animal. You got to get down in there in its environment and take it on in its own terms.
Exactly. The crocodile done, Dean. I've been one hand and I just a bottle of Adderall and the other. I believe that is the only way to legally hunt alligators in Louisiana.
All right. Before we get to the all important news from Mars and Nancy Wimbledon, one quick correction from Jeanette who writes Dear John and Hank in your recent episode, 445, you were discussing the stimulants available to peasants during the Middle Ages. And I wanted to add that medieval peasants also had access to another drug in that they used to eat grain and or bread that grew a type of mold that produced a hallucinogenic effect. So, the disempurpose?
I don't know. That's a great question. European peasants did perhaps have access to drugs in the form of moldy bread. In fact, the artist, Hieronymus Bosch has paintings said to have been made under the influence of this mold.
If you're interested in seeing the effects for yourself, pumpkins and penguins, Jeanette. Well, in that case, it does sound like it was doing an upper-class. I know a lot of ergot poisoning was not intentional. What's ergot?
Who's an eugenic mold? Yes, that grows in grains, I believe. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure a lot of it was unintentional. I'm sure a lot of it was also unpleasant.
Like, it's one thing if you're going to make a point of going on a trip. It's another thing if you're just trying to have breakfast. Yeah. I'm on the Wikipedia page right now.
A very cool fact about ergotism is that it is ergotism, sometimes known as Saint Anthony's Fire. Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah.
That's an amazing name for like something weird's going on with Steve. What's up? We've got that old Saint Anthony's Fire on him. You know, Saint Anthony, old Tony.
Well, it's good to know there's a patron saying of going on a hallucinogenic trip by accident because you ate healthy bread. Yeah. Or maybe sometimes a little bit on purpose. If you're a Hermanos Bosch.
Speaking, Hank, of hallucinogenic joy, I have some news from AFC Wimbledon that is not news from AFC Wimbledon for you today. Former AFC Wimbledon player and hero, Ali al-Hammadi scored a goal in a playoff game to decide who was going to go to the World Cup, Iraq or Bolivia. Wow. He scored a goal and he is going to the World Cup.
Iraq is going to the World Cup for the first time in 40 years, thanks to in part to former AFC Wimbledon player who I've hung out with Ali al-Hammadi. Incredible. Like someone I've met is going to the World Cup, Hank. Someone, I think this is the first time an AFC Wimbledon player, a former AFC Wimbledon player, has ever made it to the World Cup.
Like at least since the catastrophe of Milton Keynes and everything. So this is unbelievable. Like it's so cool. Not only like he's not going to the World Cup and he's going to sit on the bench, he's going to the World Cup.
He's going to play. He's going to be a striker in the real World Cup. Someone I kind of a little bit know, someone who might if you ask them might remember me 50-50. Do you know how cool that is, Hank?
Maybe he's got to score a goal. Oh my God, if he scored a goal in the World Cup, he's already a hero in his nation. Yeah. I mean, imagine, imagine being one of the 11 people who brings that level of joy to 45 million people.
All right. It's unimaginable to me. God, I love the World Cup so much. By the way, if you are interested in football in the World Cup, you should really listen to the podcast I have with my great friend of 35 years, Daniel Arcon.
It's called the Awand and it's available wherever you get your podcasts and it's just going to get you incredibly hyped for the World Cup. We'll also talk a lot about poetry. Heck yeah, brother. What's the news for Mars?
I guess it's this art of itself. I mean, I feel like I can't talk about Artemis because of course I have nobody when this podcast is going to come out. Sorry about my travels. But I do want to talk a little bit more about this nuclear-powered mission to Mars because I don't talk about the ship that theoretically in 2028, which is running an entirely new propulsion system using a reactor that does not exist yet would go to Mars.
But they aren't also delivering a payload. And I love the idea of the payload, but which is basically to bring a bunch instead of rovers, bring just a bunch of those helicopter things to Mars and just be like, we're going to do this. We're just going to fly around. We're going to fly around Mars.
We figured that out. It works. And bring a bunch of them, have them go all over the place and learn a bunch of stuff. It's nice.
You don't have to worry about your wheels getting all messed up. There has been so much skepticism about this. I experienced a lot of it from basically everyone I know in the space community that this could happen by 2028. It feels very much like that deadline is imposed rather than by reality, by when President Trump would like to have it happen so that it happens during his term and he can get credit for it.
It's not really how you plan missions to Mars. But at December 2028 launch, would it be extremely aggressive? But there are a couple of people, not inside of NASA, but a couple of people who have been inside of NASA who have said like, it's tight, but it's the thing if the budget's there. You could do it if there was enough money to spend on which I still remain skeptical of, but I do want to allow for the fact that there is a level of feasibility here as long as there's budget to go with it.
Well, I would be excited to have a bunch of helicopters on Mars. As long as there's no humans there, I'm happy. Things are looking good for you. Yeah.
I mean, they've never been on that front. They've never been better on other fronts mixed. Yeah, other fronts mixed. Oh, everybody.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you want to send us questions, we have an email inbox. It's Hank and John at gmail.com and we appreciate you for sending them over to us. We enjoy them very much.
Oh, it's the 50th of April. Okay. That's what it says. It says at the top.
This podcast was edited by Bridget Kennison. It was mixed by Andrew Smith, our marketing specialist is Rook Shot. Well, it's produced by Rosie on a Halsborough House on Hanawest. Our executive producer is Seth Radley.
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