Dear Hank & John - 265: The Kazoo Came First

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

How do I get better at communicating my feelings?! Could the dinosaurs have seen the meteor on its way? Was John really shocked by an electric pen in Crash Course? How can I spice up solo meal times? How do you consolidate your possessions to move in with other people? What's up with kazoos? How do we get vitamin D from the sun? Hank Green and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be a advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. And John, this week, Catherine asked me if I could clear the table and I looked at her and I said, I bet I could if I got a running start. I mean, the reason that's a funny joke is because I could definitely couldn't. I've seen you jump.

Because you're just picturing my shins hitting the table right on. And the look on my face as I did it. I mean, you couldn't clear the table in either way. Like you couldn't jump over it, nor could you jump its length. Yeah, no, I definitely not. I could get up onto it. I bet you could get up onto it. Belly first.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Isn't that what Clarence do mean for you jumping you slide on your belly over it and then you land on your hands on the other side? Before we get to questions from you, our beloved listeners, we do need to acknowledge something that is always true when we record this podcast, but it's perhaps more relevant than the average week, which is that we record this a week before it comes out. So as we're recording this, it's Monday, November 2nd.

You are living in Monday, November 9th or later, a world that is potentially quite different from the world in which we are living. And not only because AFC Wimbledon played their first game back at Plow Lane tomorrow. Oh, it's a good one. Really? Yeah, wow, it's a big day for you, John. I know, I am very excited to watch it on my phone.

I wish that I was gonna be there in real life with my dad, also your dad, and other friends and family, and our kids and everything, and it was gonna be amazing, but not. No. So usually we are unstuck in time when we like it that way, where we can, you know, sort of separate ourselves

from like the goings on of that particular moment. But in this situation, your world is different than our world. Hopefully, like right now we are dealing with uncertainty. Hopefully you are not dealing with more uncertainty than we are dealing with right now. And hopefully, it's less. But we don't know. So we are going to record this podcast, unstuck in time, except for that little note. Right. Beginning with this question from McKenna, which is a real ever green question. Thank you for sending in one McKenna that we could answer at any moment in human history.

This is the question. Dear John and Hank, help five exclamation points. How do I get better at communicating my feelings to question marks? I'm a teenager exclamation point. It's hard exclamation point. Advice on this subject, Dubies or otherwise very much appreciated exclamation point. McKenna, what I love about your question is that it captures something. Is how effectively it communicates your feelings?

Exactly. It captures something fundamental about teenage life, which is that essentially everything ends with an exclamation point or a question mark. Yeah. It is a time of life that at least for me was defined primarily by exclamation points in question mark. Yeah. It is a time of life that at least for me was defined primarily by exclamation points and question marks. Yeah, that's what they should call it. Or an um, understands that there are three stages of life, kid teenager and adult. Yes. Same thing as my kids were like that. Yeah. He will often say, I'm not a teenager yet. I'm like, yeah, no, you got a way to go, but there's more kid than just this kid. Yeah, but there is something to it, right?

Like there is something about adolescence that's different. Yeah, yes, yes, very. I think, McKenna, there's a possibility that you were never good at talking about your feelings. It's just that you just didn't have as many before. It's just that now for the first time in your life, you want to be good at talking about your feelings. It's just that you just didn't have as many before. It's just that now for the first time in your life, you want to be good at it, which I would say is excellent progress.

Yeah. You're aware, like I remember being a young kid and having deep emotional experiences, but they were so disconnected from language that it didn't even really occur to me that I could share them. And then when I did try to share them, both like my literal vocabulary, but also my vocabulary in the sense of like being able to even understand what I was feeling, we're pretty limited. And so I really struggled to express myself emotionally when I was a young kid. And then when I was a teenager, I suddenly, A, like, had really, really intense overwhelming

feelings all the time. And B, I had an expanded vocabulary, but I also had like the feelings were so intense. It was almost like I couldn't exaggerate them. You know, like if I said, if I said something like, I've never been this happy, I meant it. Same thing with like, I've never been this scared. That was also true. Yeah, and I think that you hit on an important thing there, which is that it is hard to understand our feelings. It's hard to understand where they're coming from. It's hard to understand what they mean. It's hard to have any feeling of control over them.

And so when you can't understand something, you can't communicate about it. And so I think of like that's a really important part of the desire to communicate your feelings is also the systems that you are creating right now that I am still creating, that I use to understand how I'm feeling, which is a complicated thing,

and changes a lot, moment to moment, but also can be very big. And, but I also don't always have a super great grasp on. People ask me all the time, how I'm doing, and I'm like, I'm just not gonna check right now, thanks, I'd rather not look. Right, and yeah, I don't want to consider it too closely. But I also think that there's something magical and wonderful about having a name for

something that you didn't know how to name or finding language for an experience that you didn't know you could ever have language for because it helps you to hold it and grasp it and it helps you to share it. So McKenna, when I think about what worked for me when I was younger about expressing my feelings, I think about two things, one, writing, or other forms of what's called self-expression, because a lot of times you can write your way,

or talk your way through to the feeling, and then the second thing is that when you can't, sometimes you can have art or something else do a little bit of that work for you. So you can say, I don't really know what I'm feeling, but I think if you read this book, it might help you understand where I'm coming from. Or if you listen to this song, it might help you understand where I'm coming from. Now that doesn't always work song, it might help you to understand where I'm coming from. Now, that doesn't always work. I had this image in my mind that whenever I played a song

for someone when I was 16 years old. They really get it. Exactly. Yeah, actually, I think I lost a girlfriend over that very thing once. I was like, oh wow. I love this song. I think it says a lot about our relationship

and she was like, I think that you are wrong. Hahaha. Yeah, well, there's no pressure quite like someone saying, I really want you to listen to this song so that you can understand how I feel about you and then watching you listen to it. So actually, now I'm gonna now that I've talked my way through this, I'm back to my original thought, which is try to write it down and don't tell them to listen to a song. Or tell them to listen to a song on their own time. Right, yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. And also I think that art is always interpreted in different ways, but different people. But it is also a way to communicate something that is impossible or very difficult to communicate. So I think it can be a very good tool, it can also be a good tool for even understanding where you are at because otherwise, it may not be easy to understand a feeling

that you're having. Indeed, I mean, look, McKenna, I'm 43 years old and talking right now, I realize that I have no idea what I'm feeling except that it's a lot. Yeah, it's mostly up in my sort of like upper teeth. For me, it's right behind my solar plexus. Yeah. And it's a mix of the dawns are going home and the void. Anyway, here's another question. It's from Connor who asks, dear Hank and John, could the dinosaurs have seen the meteor,

ultimately meteorite that killed them before it will, like, you know, killed them? Or would it have gone from the atmosphere to the ground so fast that they would have died before seeing any fireball? If the latter is not how you'd wanna go out, corpses and comets, Connor. No, Connor, no.

I do not wanna go out in a mass extinction event. That's one of my number one goals. Yeah, yeah, I want to I want to have a sense of continuity of like the continuance of the human story. I've always felt like there is nothing in this world as narcissistic as believing that the end of your world means the end of the world. Like I wouldn't even occurred to me that someone could feel that way. I want to live in the first 1 1 millionth of 1% of human history. That is my goal, Connor. And I'm trying to live in accordance with that value.

Hank, did the dinosaurs see what was coming? Many, many of them did. The ones that did didn't, didn't last the day probably. Right. The light travels very fast. So if you could see something you will see it before it kills you. If it's bright enough, I guess would be the thing. If it is visible. And if it's coming from space, like if it's coming. Right. There's the number of things that can kill you that you don't see coming. That's true. There's the number of things that can kill you that you don't see coming. That's true.

Yeah, in fact, most of the stuff. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it would have been a big, bright fireball in the sky. They would have seen it explode, but it probably exploded before it hit the ground. So we sort of have this image of like a giant rock like running into the earth,

but there's probably a series of explosions where it sort of like rammed into the atmosphere so hard that it exploded before it hit the actual ground. And they would have been able to see that and then they would have died in a number of ways soon after, if it was visible to them. Yeah. Shock waves, there probably would have been like a 10.1 magnitude earthquake. So that's like bigger than anything that we've experienced in human time scales.

Yeah, keep going. This is doing wonders for my anxiety. Give me more. So like the wind would have been so big that it would have picked up anything, anything. I almost said anything that wasn't nailed down, but nothing was nailed down back then. So anything, and then it would have taken that and put it like on the front of the shockwave and that that stuff would have hit the dinosaurs physically. So we often talk about like these big shockwaves as if they're a wind. And yes, even the pressure of the shockwave can kill you easily. It's also the stuff that is carried along in the shockwave. So even if it is, the shockwave isn't enough to on its own kill you. The stuff that's carried in it would be.

With each level, I just feel worse and worse. Hank, what else? Yeah, well, I mean earlier than that, there's a very high likelihood that before the wind, before the earthquake, you'd get thermal radiation. So just the heat, like infrared radiation would make it so hot that everything would catch on fire. So that would be like the first thing.

Yeah. Would be the heat. That's like seconds. So like you see it and then like seconds later, it's great. You'd get the IR. Yeah. And then minutes later, it would be like the ejecta falling down from the sky. Like an hour later would be the shock wave.

Great. Traveling at the speed of sound rather than the speed of light. Right. Yeah. And then, but, but they're also interestingly, if you're further away and you shockwave, which is a great traveling at the speed of sound rather than the speed of light. Right. Yeah, but they're also interestingly, if you're further away and you can't actually see the impact, you would be able to see an effect of this before this sort of like planet-wide catastrophe of the dust that would make it cold for a very long time, that actually caused

the extinction. It wasn't like the impact that caused the extinction. It was the... Right, it was the two years of darkness. It was the years of darkness, yeah. Right. What you would see before the years of darkness would be meteors and meteorites. Oh.

But not the one, because what happened was a huge amount of stuff got thrown up into the sky. And much of that stuff never fell back down. That's how big the impact was. It went off into space. But much of that stuff never fell back down. That's how big the impact was. It went off into space. But much of it did fall back down. And so you would see that as meteors and meteorites, potentially very, very far away.

Wow. And so that would be weird if you were a dinosaur. You'd be like, wow, that's quite a meteor shower. To the extent that it's way more than a meteor shower and much bigger rocks than in a typical meteor shower. So it'd be brighter, bolloids, as they call them. Mostly this all makes me think that, like, humans in the middle ages who were very scared of comets were onto something.

Like, it was something of a well-founded concern. Yeah, well, anything new in this guy is concerning, but it turns out that it wasn't just like, like, oftentimes it's like, oh, a new thing, I'm concerned about it, like oftentimes it's like, oh, a new thing, I'm concerned about it, but then it's like, oh, a new thing, I'm concerned about it. And it just by chance turns out to be something of concern. And that is the case with impactors, potential impactors. Great, well, that really helped me, Hank.

Thank you for that exhaustive explanation of the murderous events that occurred before the two years of darkness that resulted in many more murderous events. I think 50 years from now, we will be able to detect and deflect any potential asteroid impact. Any potential, like, sort of, sort of, like, so- Earth-damaging asteroid impact. So, like, like... We just need to dodge 50 years of bullets.

Yeah. On, like, tens of millions of your timescale, which is the timescale that impacts happen, then I think that that's a pretty, like, that we got a pretty good chance. Next question comes from Taylor, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a year 11 history student, Taylor, you're not allowed to brag about being from the United

Kingdom and or Australia by saying things like, I'm a year 11 history student, okay? So I'm going to rewrite your question for you, Taylor. I hope you know this is impersonal. Dear John and Hank, I'm in 11th grade. And I've been watching many of John's old Crash Course videos. They're very helpful, by the way. Thanks so much. Anyway, in the videos, you have a segment where John reads a mystery document and has to guess

who wrote it. And if he guesses correctly, he's fine But if he guesses incorrectly, he gets shocked with an electric pen My question is were you really shocked with an electric pen and if so what did it feel like? Taylor this I've seen this question. Yeah, like yeah 50 times in the last week We get this a lot but like recently it's like there must be yeah some meme out there that don't know about. Something went viral somewhere and because I've been asked about it. Every time I speak to a group of high school history students on Zoom or whatever, it's the first question.

The answer is yes, you could get these little shock pens anywhere when we were kids. They were a very popular gag gift. And we did have a shock pen. There were a couple episodes where like we couldn't find it or we left it somewhere and we didn't have it on set. And in those occasions, you can sort of tell that I'm faking. Interesting. But almost all the time we used the shock pen. I did really shock myself when I got an answer wrong.

I found, as has been proven in many psychological studies that it did not make me better at guessing the author of the mystery document. Yeah, I know. If anything, it made me worse because it made me very nervous. Yep. But we did, yeah, we did have a shock bend. It did not hurt much. I have to say, it's, it's very, it was like an exaggerated version of, and you've never

had this experience tailored because I think you live in Australia, it was like an exaggerated version of, and you've never had this experience Taylor because I think you live in Australia, but it was an exaggerated version of when it's cold outside and you build up static electricity and then you touch another, I don't know, a wall or something and you have that like electric shock. It was sort of like the biggest one of those you've ever felt, but it was smaller than any proper experience of being shocked.

Yeah, I remember we on tour had a shocking device. Was it that panel? Yes. It was a different thing. I think it was a different thing. Yeah. I can't remember. We had a game where we, like, if we lost the thing,

then we, the other person would get shocked. And it was fun. But yeah, we, we, It was okay. We've had so many dumb bits on tour now that I think about it. We also, on Project For awesome, like last year, I got a dog shot collar or two years ago. And I actually got myself shocked for, which is though, this was the worst thing. It was like trivia about the companies that I run and the people who work for them, which

is like the thing that would stress me out the most to get wrong, right? Yeah. When it's like, you don't know that Rachel has a dog and I'm like, no, I don't care about which is like the thing that would stress me out the most to get wrong, right? Yeah. When it's like, you don't know that Rachel has a dog and I'm like, no, I barely don't care about my employees at all. Well, have you ever seen that SNL sketch where it's like for $5 name Justin Bieber's Girlfriend in 2007 and they're like, so let me go mess.

And then they're like, okay, now for $500,000, this is your best friend Jeff. And this is his girlfriend of seven years. What's her name? Yeah, this is a bad sign. Megan writes, dear John and Hank, I'm finally living in my own apartment.

And it's nice overall, but it's weird making my dinner and eating it alone. And I'm kind of super tired of like just scrolling as I eat, but it feels empty and eerie to just eat all by myself without any noise or anything. How can I spice things up here? I'm Kinsen Penguins, Megan. Music.

Oh, so you got to get really into music. You think so? No, I think that of the two of us on the only one who's lived alone. Huh. Is that correct? I mean, basically. Yeah. I've lived in an apartment. two of us on the only one who's lived alone. Ha! Ha! Is that correct? Uh, I mean, basically. Yeah.

I've lived in an apartment by myself, but I have always like had neighbors that were on the level of like, sign-failed. Okay. Where you could just sort of walk into their places. When did you live in an apartment complex that had neighbors on the level of sign-failed? When I first moved to Mizzouha.

Okay, but okay. All right, a little bit, but you were in, yeah, you weren't like, I have lived by myself for a long time, for years and years. And in my experience, there are great things about living with yourself and there are challenging things, and the single most challenging thing for me about living by myself was eating dinner.

What I found was that if I ate dinner, I think I don't know if you know this about me, but among the many weird writing jobs I had early on in my professional life, I was a reviewer of audiobooks, which per hour was the worst money I've ever made, right? Because I would like listen to an audiobook for 20 hours, and then I would spend like 10 hours writing a 200-word review for which I was paid $25. But the great thing about it was that I discovered that if I listen to an audiobook while I'm eating my dinner, then I can transition immediately into doing the dish or dishes, depending on the quality of the meal I had prepared for myself. And I could not stop listening to the audiobook,

so it started to feel like it was one thing, like the making of the meal, the eating of the meal, and the cleaning up after the meal were one thing, and that allowed me to do all three of those things in like a focused and determined way. So that's what I recommend. Sort of like lumping the tasks. More like the three things start to feel like they are all part of the same.

Right, it's thing, which is not really a task even. Right. It's like living. It's like ritualized a little. Right. I was able to ritualize it, which helped me. Right. And the other thing is that when I was living alone, I tried to take advantage of the things

that were good about living alone, like the advantages to it, like being able to read whenever I wanted to and being able to like watch whatever TV I wanted to whenever I wanted to. Well, here's it. Johnny, here's the opposite question from Cassie, who asks, dear, Hank, a John, I've been living by myself for the last seven years and I'm about to move into a place. Megan a place Megan wishes put you in contact with Cassie because Cassie knows how to do this better than than either of us Seven seven years. Yeah, she's an expert. I will now be sharing a bathroom in a kitchen with two other people who I barely know How does anyone go about consolidating things with new roommates? I have all of my own silverware, cookware plates, cleaning supplies, et cetera. Also, I have my own routines.

I've only ever had two roommates previously and they were both people that I had known for a pretty long time before we moved in together. I'm not sure how to do this whole thing. Thanks, Cassie. Woo, first of all, cleaning supplies just lump them together. You're gonna get through them. You're gonna use it all.

Don't throw any of that away. Silverware is a little bit of an in between space for me. Yeah, well, it depends on, like, is it a full set? Yeah. And, like, I didn't have one of those until I was married. So it was just sort of, like, cobbled together silverware. And in that case, I feel completely comfortable, you know, just having the amount that fit in the drawer. I never really, from the age of about 21 until the age of about 29, I did not really know where any fork I owned had come from. Right. You know, like, I didn't know the origin story of any of my forks.

Well, I definitely went to the Goodwill and I bought four of each thing. That's how I forked up. And maybe that's the origin story and I bought four of each thing. That's how I forked up. And maybe that's the origin story and I've just forgotten it, but I would look in, I remember looking in the silverware drawer and just being like, this is amazing. I mean, where did you find come from?

So many different kinds of works in here. Where did you all come from? How did this happen? Did I steal you from the golden corral because I wouldn't put it past me. This is part of living life. My personal feeling about this when I've had roommates in the past is that my plates were pretty much mine, mostly because I don't think my roommates trusted me to have totally clean plates.

So it was sort of, it sort of discouraged them from using my plates in the first place. But that's how it's always worked for me. Like my plates were mine and then the silverware was pretty much shared, but only because it came from very nebulous sources. Right. I mean, the things that you're going to have to worry about more than this furniture, if you're moving any furniture, is a big deal because it takes a huge amount of space and like you only need one couch, probably.

Right. And appliances as well, because like, counter space is important. And you don't want to fill up every into counter space with like this person's blender and this person's soda stream and this person's cuisine art and the sky too many things. So you have to like, yeah, you don't want four toasters in one apartment. Yeah. And you also want to compromise on like what appliances are necessary for your health and happiness. And that you may be, and also like refrigerator space is extremely important.

And must be maintained at all costs. That is actually the bigger issue in my experience is like, also when there's a diversity of opinions about whether or not to for instance, refrigerate peanut butter. If it's shared peanut butter. Yeah. And as you know, Hank, refrigerated peanut butter is catastrophic on every level. It's used because you can't...

What do you do with it? You can't spread it, which is the thing that peanut butter exists to do. Yeah. And the big upside of refrigerating peanut butter is nothing because it doesn't need to be refrigerated. Yeah, somehow peanut butter can't go bad. And I don't know what that's about, but like that's the situation. Yes. I've never had it happen.

Yeah, there's a lot of things you don't refrigerate. Like you don't refrigerate your jeans. And I don't know the exact reasons why I just know that you don't. Yeah, it's true. But also the process of roommateing is a process of compromise. And it is also one of the chief question asking areas of the Dear Hank and John in-box. So do not be surprised that conflict can and does arise.

But hopefully- I think the actual key is being able to have that conflict rather than having it like, simmer and turn toxic and ask the pressive and everything else. And you're sending emails to strangers about it. And not like you. Yeah. Like, hey, please read my question on the podcast.

My question is, why does my roommate, Juniper, continue to refrigerate the peanut butter I hate her? And I'm like, I don't think I was really a question for the podcast. I think I was like, that was a question for Juniper. Yeah. Yeah. So Cassie, it is definitely a weird experience

to live closely with people you don't know well. I've had this experience before, but it can also be really wonderful as long as you keep those lines of communication open. It's like being in a band together, it's like being in a family together. Like you've got to be able to talk. And if you don't, the resentment will just build up and build up. Yep, that's the main thing.

John, this next question comes from Sarah, who asks, dear Hank and John, what's up with Kazoo's? Thanks, Sarah. It's a great question. Do you know that the Kazoo is the oldest musical instrument? Wow. Like in terms of documentation in the history of the world? Really?

I would have definitely thought I was like a flute. No, the kazoo came first. Wow, why do we call it a kazoo? We call it a kazoo because in ancient Mesopotamia, that was the name for it. Oh, isn't that wild? I definitely assumed that is the Sanskrit word for it. Oh. Isn't that wild? I definitely assumed. That is the Sanskrit word for a kazoo.

I definitely assumed that kazoo was like a brand name from the 1950s. Kazoo's, it sounds like a brand name from the 1950s. Kazoo's are so old that one of the earliest examples Zuz are so old that one of the earliest examples of written language refers to a kazoo. Whoa. How long can I keep doing this before Hank realizes that I am full of crap?

Oh man, oh man, it seemed possible to me. No, because these are like 120 years old. And then I was agreeing, because I was confused, and I was reading the etymology dictionary, and I was like trying to figure out what, so I was just like agreeing, because I wasn't paying attention.

Oh, and they're called kazuz, because they sound like kazoo. Okay, it's an alteration of earlier bazoo, which was what we called a trumpet, because it sounded like bazoo. And they were like, well, this is kind of a knockoff, terrible trumpet. Let's call it the cousin.

Yeah, but at least it wasn't from the 50s, because if I had gotten it that right, I would have been angry. No, it, they're from like the late 19th century, right? Yeah. Correct. Well, I bet the earliest music instrument No, it they're from like the late 19th century, right? Yeah, correct Well, I bet the old earliest music instrument is some kind of flute though Now I want to look at all The earliest musical instrument were flutes. It was a lute made from birdbone and mammoth ivory

From a cave in southern Germany. That's the earliest musical instrument ever found. Oh, absolutely. All right, great. Well, at least I won that one. Well, not really. I made you believe that written language started with a discussion of kazoo. I was like, I think I win.

I think you win. I think I definitely win that. We've been doing this podcast for like eight years and that's the first time you've ever done that. Well, you gotta be Hank, you've gotta use it very jud've ever done that. Well, you've got to be Hank, you've got to use it very judiciously, right? Like, if I did it every week, you'd be looking for it every week.

And I wouldn't be able to trick you on that scale. It's been a while since I've tried to pull off one of that scale, and I feel really, really good. I, yeah, I love, it's one of my favorite things, and I can't do it publicly, because people, because like, I can't affect my credibility as a science communicator. Right, you're a science communicator.

You can't like share fake science. Oh, but back in college, I once convinced my roommate that we got herpes from oranges, but only because oranges come from whales. You know who's really good at that game is my best friend, Chris Watto. Oh, yeah. I am so gullible. He's just so good at it. He wants convinced me that we were walking up a hill in Southern Indiana, like in the woods,

in December. And Chris convinced me that Larry Bird, the famous basketball player, had just walked past us. I like that. So, we passed like a group of three people and like two minutes later Chris is like, that was Larry bird and I'm like what no it was like a it was like a 35 year old person and and they're two children and he's like no man that was Larry and I was like they weren't even tall they weren't tall they weren't old uh but but like 20 minutes later I was like I can't believe we saw Larry bird here, down here in Brown County. What's he doing here?

Yeah. And was he with his grandkids? And then finally, Chris is like, I mean, I really can convince you of anything. God, that's amazing. What reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by Larry Bird. He called in.

He sent us a message and he was like, I wanna give you 376 Larry birds in order to get sponsored in your podcast. And I'm like, wow Larry, that's an old goof. I was listening to old episodes of the podcast. Way to dig into the archives there, Mr. Bird. Thanks for not just being like a new listener to the podcast, but for being a deep fan.

Yeah, we really appreciate that. We're also really grateful to our noted deep fan, thermal radiation, thermal radiation. Thank you for sponsoring today's podcast, thermal radiation. It's like the second thing that kills you about the media, right? That's the first thing. But that's okay. Okay.

The podcast is also brought to you by John's Shock Pen. It's real. It's a real shock pen. John was actually experiencing real pain while shooting Crash Course World History. And today's podcast is also brought to you by the happiest I had ever been when I was in high school. It was the happiest I had ever been.

But then like six hours later, was this most scared and afraid I've ever been. And that's- Sounds about right. Be in a teenager. And that's on love. Hmm. I mean, for me, it was more on friendship.

Oh. John, this next question comes from Halley, who asks, dear Hank and John, I always hear about how we get vitamin D from the sun. How does that work? Are beams of light just full of vitamins that we soak in through our skin? Does Sun activate something in our bodies

that generates vitamin D? Not Bailey, not Barry, but Halle? Uh, this is so cool, John. I love this. We need vitamin D to live. Uh, it is an essential vitamin that we cannot make ourselves, except through photo action. So there's a chemical, it's a precursor to cholesterol. So basically, like, our body is making chemicals all the time

so that we can have our body be made up of stuff. And there are enzymes that do all this work. And most of those things, we can make ourselves, but some of them we can't. But one of the things we can make ourselves is cholesterol. And on the way to cholesterol, like there are intermediate compounds, and one of them is called 70 hydrocholesterol.

And that chemical exists in our bodies, but it's usually exists in our bodies on the way to becoming cholesterol, which we think we talk about in terms of it being bad, but it is also extremely necessary. It's just bad when it is out of balance. What happens is it turns out that if that chemical gets exposed to UVB energy, it turns into vitamin D. And so our bodies, instead of figuring out how to make vitamin D, they didn't need to do that. They just like started to store a fair amount of that chemical,

70 hydrocholesterol in our skin. And that was how we figured out how to make vitamin D, so that we wouldn't have to worry about actually manufacturing it because it was easier to just put it in our skin. Wow. Or simpler, I should say. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So we're like kind of like trees. We are a little bit photosynthetic and that that step on one chemical pathway is done by the energy from the sun, not from us. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first because tomorrow, as we're recording this, or six days ago, as you're listening to it, a huge day in Wimbledon's history. We will briefly mention the fact that over the weekend, AFC Wimbledon played

the franchise currently playing its trade in Milton Keynes, got a a one one draw. Nothing in this world more uncertain than a one mill Wimbledon lead. I mean, if we score before the 94th minute, it's too soon. So scored a great goal and then gave up a goal three minutes later. Game ended one one, whatever, good point away from home. The important story. Also won a game in between the last episode of We Recorded. So you are still doing well. We did. I think we're in a weventh place right now, which I mean, I'll take that all day long. Two big stories that affect Wimbledon right now.

One is the lockdown in the UK. It appears that the top four tiers of English football will continue playing. So that's that for now. And then secondly, after over 10,000 days away from Wimbledon away from Plow Lane Stadium funded, built, and owned by the fans of the club tomorrow. Unfortunately, it will be in front of no fans. And so it will not really be Plow Lane, I think, to a lot of people until we can all be together there. I think to a lot of people until we can all be together there, but it is a huge moment and an incredible testament to my mind of what can happen when a community sticks together and holds on to hope because everyone, everyone said that this was going to be impossible,

that Plowlane was gone and never coming back. The English FA itself said that football in that community, a football team in that community was not in the wider interests of the game. And Wimbledon fans have proven everyone wrong without a billionaire benefactor with nothing but togetherness and hard work for more than 30 years to get to this moment. So huge congratulations to everybody who worked so hard on this. Thank you for showing the world the way back to Plalein and offering a different vision for what sports and what communities can be and can accomplish together. Well, this week at Mars News, John, a milestone in Mars News as well as the perseverance

rover has passed the halfway mark to Mars. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this spacecraft finished traveling 146.3 million miles on October 27. So it's, it's well passed that now, which is the exact distance it has left to travel before reaching Mars in February. Now, it isn't a direct midway point between us and Mars because this spacecraft is taking a curved route, so you can't draw a straight line, it's sort of like. Basically, perseverance is continuing to orbit the sun as it moves toward Mars, so it moves.

Because it was moving very fast when it left Earth because of how Earth is moving very fast relative to the Sun. While the rover is traveling, the team has been checking in on it to make sure everything's working. They've been testing instruments and they've been uploading files. Everything seems to be working just fine. Another fun fact right now. It takes about two minutes and 22 seconds for transmissions to go from mission control to the spacecraft because first of the air is two minutes and 22 light seconds away from us. Wow. Which is wild. When it lands on Mars, it'll be about 11.5 light minutes away.

Actually that amount will change as Mars gets further away from Earth, right? That's a big annoyance when you're trying to control spacecraft on Mars, but it's one of the things that we're getting better and better at planning the paths, and also letting the rovers make some decisions for themselves as they go across the surface of the red planet. That's so cool. And it's kind of nice, Hank, that this week both the news from Mars

and the news from Wimbledon are about perseverance. Yes, they are. We find a way through. That's the greatest thing about us. John, and I'm glad we be making a podcast with you. Thank you for taking the time to chat. Yeah. And I like making podcasts.

Me too, let's do it again next week. Oh, okay. And then the week after that until we die. Ha ha ha. John, we're off to record our Patreon only podcast this week in stuff. Also, if you don't know this, before this podcast, did our livestream with our Patreon patrons,

which is really nice to do, so you can go to patreon.com slash the your hankajonofine.com or about that. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tunamedish. It's produced by Rosie on a Halsey Rojas and shared in Gibson. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. The editorial assistant is Deboki Trock-Ravardi.

The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great gunnerola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT