Dear Hank & John - 316: The Lovecraftian Squirrel Situation

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Why do spoons flip reflections on one side? How do we know the Northern Hemisphere is on top? How famous is Hank on Tiktok? Why do guys have amazing eyelashes? What's the closest flammable planet? What does "matching funds" actually mean? Hank 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. This is a no special. It's a no talk special ladies and gentlemen. Oh, Hank and I just talked on the phone to each other without noticing how much time that I've elapsed and like like a high school couple of fall again love we talked for an hour and a half and the time just melted away and so here we are. It's the beginning of 2022. We've got a heart out in 44 minutes. And this is going to be an amazing episode of Fear Hank and John Hank Do The Intro. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. For as I further think of you, John and Hank. It's a podcast for two brothers and two questions. Give you a glass of beer. And bring all the excuses from both Mars and AFC, England and John. What do a till of the Hun and winning the poo have in common? What do they have in common? They have the same middle name. That's actually I died. I don't know if I'm just kind of giddy from the excitement of trying to do a one takes a new year special or not. I love I love that joke.

I really like that joke. I do. I think I like it so much because Attila the Hun and Winnie the Pooh really do have very little in common except for their middle name. I bring that up, John, because one, apparently this week is, one of the days is Winnie the Pooh day. Which one is it?

I forgot. I noticed it, but also because Winnie the Pooh this year is entering the public domain. And so it's time for you to do whatever the heck you want with Winnie the Pooh. It's your style. What do you, what do you want to do with Winnie the Pooh? I read somewhere that HP Lovecraft also entered the public domain and that it was high time

for a great mashup for a Winnie the Pooh Lovecraftian narrative. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, my publisher, Dutton, is the publisher for Winnie the Pooh. So of course, this is a sad day. This is a sad day for them. I take it back, it's not fun at all. It's terrible news.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Your economic, purely economic loss. Right, yeah, no, the benefit of society, but to the detriment of one privately held corporation. Hey, let's do some questions from our listeners beginning with this one. I thought we're gonna talk about Winnie the Pooh for way longer than that. Well, we can if you want to. I thought we're gonna talk about Winnie the Pooh for way longer than that.

Well, we can if you want to. I mean, I'm a fan of Winnie the Pooh. How many tentacles is Winnie the Pooh gonna have? Wait, is Winnie the Pooh gonna be a bad guy? I was kind of thinking that Winnie the Pooh is gonna be a hero like living in a cocoon world. No, it's a hundred. No, no. Christopher Robin is the hero and the hunter-re Wood is, is Lovecraftian now. So you've got like an owl with 18 eyes. Oh, my God. And he's like, he's like, knows everything.

No, he's also kind of mean about it. I want to yes, and you, but isn't the, isn't the Lovecraftian world coming in from the outside trying to get into the hunter-daker wood and like then Tigger's defending it and Ewers like oh I guess I'll have to kill another octopus today. Killing makes me feel even more sad than I already did but it's a violent world here in the hunter-daker woods. All right, I'm in. You've sl acre woods. Ah, all right.

I'm in. You've slayed me. You've convinced me. And also, I want to point out that that was 100% worth it. What's the first question? We're going hard today. Like we came in, maybe we should talk for an hour and a half offline before we do every episode.

This first question comes from Natalie who writes, dear John and Inc. Why is it that on the inside of a spoon you are reflected upside down, but on the other side of a spoon, your reflection is right side up sincerely, Natalie. Oh, Hank, as I understand it, this is about concave and convex mirrors,

which continue to be impossible for my little brain to understand. Like every time I'm in a fun house, which admittedly, it's been a while, but like every time I'm in one of those carnival settings, and they have the weird mirrors that make you look super skinny or super tall or super wavy or whatever, at least in a single time. I get in front of a mirror that makes me look wavy, and I don't think like, how does that mirror work?

I think, I just became wavy. People do not understand how mirrors work. Like I, it's very weird. It is. So like a picture of you, of you, of you, of what they're not. But they're not. They're not there. A little window into back, into back what it's just photons go in straight lines

and they bounce off of things and perpendicular to the ocean. So what's a flat sheet? They don't go in straight lines. They go in weights. They go in straight lines that are also wavy lines. So it only gets harder. The waves go in straight lines. Yes. The waves go in straight lines. Yes.

The waves go in straight lines. And what a sentence that is to start off our crash course on physics. At least I am definitely the right person to talk to. I took optics as a section of my physics class in high school. So I know all about this. So when it's a flat mirror, it's gonna bounce off 90 degrees. But when it's a curve,

every little point on that curve, is gonna bounce off at a different, in a different direction, because the mirrors are all at different angles to the photons that are coming straight in. And if you draw the little map, then you can see, oh, I see how it flips over.

My brain still doesn't understand it, but I see all the little thing that like crossed and now like the photons from the top are going are at the bottom once they get to my eyes. And if you get cool enough to a spoon, I think, you can actually make it flip back up over because you like get to the point where they're not crossed anymore. It just looks distorted.

But the thing that gets me, John, is that it doesn't flip left to right. Yeah. No, that is weird. And I'm like, is that cause it's not curvy enough? Is it like, it, why? Yeah. But can you make a spoon where it flips left to right? Where you like raise your right hand and it goes up on the other side on the, I don't know. And everybody always talks about, well, this spoon is good at holding milk or this spoon is good for soup or whatever. And nobody ever talks about this spoon

flutcher right in your left. Right, well, I think you could make a spoon that doesn't flip you. And I think you'd have to be like really far away to get flipped. Right. Just be like worse at being a spoon like really far away to get flipped. Right. Just be like, like, worst at being a spoon,

but better at not turning you upside down. All right. I think that's a good answer. This next question comes from Avery. We're on, we're speed running this thing. Hank, dear John and Hank, I've recently got into listening to the podcast and it's got me thinking more about space,

me too, Avery. I think about space all the time. How weird is it that we're in a vast universe that is maybe infinite, but probably also expanding? I've recently gotten into thinking about space. I was wondering how or if we know that the earth is straight up and down with the Northern hemisphere on top

and the Southern hemisphere on the bottom. Avery, I'm about to blow your mind. Are we just walking around upside down all the time? Is upside down even real? There you go. You're almost there. What is upside down? Like, does it change as the Earth moves?

And if we do know, would it matter if the Earth was flipped the other way? Pumpkins and penguins, Avery, Avery, there is no up. There is no up. There's no down. There's no down. There's an out. There is a down.

There is no up, but there is a down. How is there a down? Well, it depends on your frame of reference. But like, down is toward the center of the earth. Whereas up is in every direction away from the center of the earth. It's not like the Southern hemisphere is below the Northern hemisphere because there is no up.

No, and weirdly, so before we get to this, John, we're going to talk about this question for the entire rest of the episode. We're going to do two questions, and it was our first one in this one. We can't. We got some real quality questions coming up. All right, well, I'll try to get through it fast.

But before we do, have I told you about my new way of visualizing and expanding universe? You have, and everybody has seen the TikTok. Actually, one of the questions is about your TikTok. So maybe we should save it for them. Maybe we're going to save it. This is the kind of thing, by the way, that usually we would cut.

But we're in the, we're in the next... No, yeah, it's got to stand up. We're in the cut zone right now. So here we go. Hey, yes, forget about that. Just answer the question. Is there an up? Is the Northern Hemisphere above the Southern Hemisphere?

So this is one of the great coincidences that we don't, that we don't notice because it is so, it, it worked. So we could have been that we decided that the top of the map was east or west. And if we had, and in fact, many maps before we sort of standardized on north being the, the, the thing to put on the top, many maps did have East and West at the top. And if we had done that, it would have been very confusing when we noticed that the Earth is in a solar system and it is rotating in a way where like the plane of the solar system has a top and has it doesn't have a top and

a bottom, but it has an orientation where there you can pick a top and a bottom. But if we had picked east or west as the top of the map, we would have been like, oh, so this doesn't actually work. It would have been good. It had to stick with it. And it would have been annoying. It would have been annoying for everyone forever, but it was a 50, 50 chance and we got it right. Yeah. In the same way, by the way, that like a 12 month calendar

is annoying all the time. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to have some months, have 31 days and other months have 28 days. And that's annoying. But we can't solve it because it was standardized before we totally understood what it all meant. Yeah, and like that, I can forgive us for, but minutes. Yeah. Oh, 16 minutes. No, minutes are another great example. But the point is that there is an orientation. But there's an orientation of the solar system.

It is not accurate to say, like it could just as easily be south is off as north is. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. From space, they are the same. You can see south is up or you can see north is up. If you're looking at earth from the sun. And there is no special reason why north is up except for like the political geography realities of why maps came, why global maps came to be and who was drawing them. Yeah, and it affects how we imagine the planet. It affects how we imagine each other. Like, we, me, I have written a book on this topic

called Paper Towns, where I say that it is true that our maps, that the world shapes our maps, but it is also true that our maps shape the world. That's wow, John, why would we go further than that? It's almost like you shouldn't like write professionally. Well, instead I'm going to ask you this question about TikTok from Annelise, dear John and Hank, how famous is Hank on TikTok? Oh, good. That's a great question. I would like someone to answer this question. This is so good. Everything about this question is A plus plus plus. I keep seeing random people I know commenting on how Hank is relevant now because of Gen Z and

TikTok. I love the idea that like Hank went through a long period of irrelevance, but then, but now is relevant again. And that is, there's something really brutal about putting it that way, but maybe that's maybe it's true. I don't use TikTok. God bless you, Annelise. Never change. I just follow the account on Twitter that reposts all of Hank's TikToks.

Oh, so you use Twitter. So you're not. It's not like you're enlightened or anything. Can you quantify how famous Hank is on Twitter? Like, sorry, that would have been cut, but we're in a no cut zone. Can you quantify how famous Hank is on TikTok? Does Cardi B have a TikTok? Is Hank more or less famous than Cardi B on TikTok? Or is it views that matter not followers? I'm so confused. Tell the world where I signed my name. And Olyse.

Cardi B has more followers than me on TikTok. Yeah. But like not that many more. Not that many more. Not that many more at all actually. I'm gonna look now. Right now, I mean, I have an astonishing number of followers considering that I don't.

Yeah, considering you don't do any, I'm very jealous of the amount of work you've put into your followers. I put in no work into having, like every other video I see on my four U pages from you, and I'm just like, God, Hank makes a lot of TikToks. Hank is very easy. It's so easy to make a TikTok.

It's not easy. It's extremely stressful. And every, so the actual story, I don't think you know this, Hank. But so this is the actual story. And this is something that I love that is pretty secret. I make a lot of dick talks. I make like I make project for awesome per here. We come I make like two or three every week. I just leave them up for like seven minutes and then I'm like No, I'm not enjoying this experience and then I and then I I did it. Yeah, and it's why I have like a lot of tiktoks. It's just that they're all they've all been

private it because I let them get like a thousand views and I'm like, no, I don't like the vibe. I don't I'm not enjoying this vibe. And there's something really like wonderful about that. So you have six million something followers on tiktok, which is a lot. And Cardi B has 15.7 million. So Hank is about just over one third as famous on TikTok as Cardi B. And I think that's about right. Like you're definitely, you're so big on TikTok that like, regularly, people say to me,

your brother is very famous on TikTok, or I love your brother's TikToks. And then I say, did you know I also have a million followers on TikTok? LAUGHTER Yeah, it turns out that you that there is a truth to the fact that the number of followers doesn't matter as much as that, like when it comes to like whatever, whether if you know what a video, yeah, video gets out into the atmosphere. Yeah, and what, yes, certainly.

But also when it comes to like, notability and recognizability, like more, if you have like 800 videos that got a million views apiece, that wasn't the same million people every time. And so you end up with a lot of people, whereas if you get, what, yeah, whereas if you get like, you know,

have five videos that have a million views apiece and you sort of have the same size audience There are far more people will have seen the content or or have been exposed to you multiple times Which is really sort of what yeah starts to generate Notability what what happened John this was actually very weird for me I don't know if I've talked about this in public before but like During the pandemic I started making ticktocks a lot because I was sad and bored yeah and and pandemic, I started making TikToks a lot because I was sad and bored. And, uh, and it brought me joy.

And then the pandemic sort of like, you know, like things started opening, opening up back a little bit. And I realized that I had one, maybe I had just forgotten that I get recognized in public, but two, I just think it was happening a lot more. Yeah. Um, and that like, like a fair percentage, like maybe half of the people who are recognizing me were recognized me from TikTok. Right. And so like, yeah, I think it's, it is, it is substantial and it is weird and it is. Well, I have to say that the reason I, I delete these TikToks, I mean, there's a couple of reasons

or the reason I private them. But one of the main reasons is that they start to like get, like views from outside our community. And I'm like, yeah, nope, nope, nope, nope. That's scary and I don't like it and I don't want that. And I'm totally, you know, that's not to say that like it's bad to want. I think there are lots of good reasons to want that to want that kind of audience.

Like I just, right now in my life, I just don't want it. And that's okay. It's just it's okay to want that, to want that kind of audience. I just, right now in my life, I just don't want it, and that's okay. It's just okay to want it. So I really like my TikTok strategy, but I have to say I love and I'm very grateful for your TikTok strategy because I love watching your TikToks. I think that they are. They're so good, and I can't believe that you make them in addition to doing everything else. I find it very easy to make a TikTok, and of course, Peyton helps to make it all seamless and simple.

Right. Who is my hour TikTok assistant, though, I don't know how often. Yeah, you utilize your services. Not for the ones I delete after seven minutes, usually. Yeah, for the only for the ones I've put an absurd amount of work into. I'll be like, I will text Peyton and say Peyton, I have made a TikTok. That's how I say it every time. I have made, I have made one of these tiki-tokies. Yeah. And I was like, it's an event, you know, it's like a stop all the clocks. A TikTok has been created. Yeah. I could definitely imagine spending a lot

of time making a TikTok. And there are a are a couple of I spent a substantial amount of time on but mostly I make them quite quickly. It is a platform that is designed for my style. Yeah, and that, yes, I feel I feel both fortunate and trapped a little bit. Yeah, that's very much that's very much how I felt about Tumblr in 2012 and 2013. I was like, this is a place that was made for my way of expression. And then that feeling changed. I don't know what you mean. And it hasn't interestingly, and perhaps not in the woods then we, it hasn't come back. Yeah, I don't think I will, I don't think I will ever feel that way again, and that's okay

too. All right, this next question comes from Nico. No, it comes from Emily who writes, dear John and Hank, I vaguely remember from science class, I'm doing a lot of science questions, Hank, because I only have 8% power and so you're going to have to ask the last three or four questions. I can't remember from science class that there's always the same amount of stuff in the world because matter cannot be created or destroyed. But when I watched the Perseverance Rover Land on Mars, I realized that all the

stuff that it's made from came from Earth and we'll never come back. We must also gain stuff when like meteors come to Earth but in the last 50 years have we made a net loss or a net gain of stuff? What about in the last thousand years? My name is so common, it will become my generation's Karen Emily. Well, I'm so glad that you asked, John, because Deboki did a bunch of research to answer the actually answer this question, which is a great question. Are is Earth a net gainer of stuff or a net exporter of stuff? What is the first, what is our trade deficit with the universe?

The first thing is that a matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but that's a universe rule, not an Earth rule. So matter can definitely, like, arrive at and leave Earth and yes, a Mars rover is part of that, but it is a tiny, tiny piece of what leaves Earth, which is mostly gases that are escaping. A lot of like, lot of atmospheres. Yeah, atmosphere gets up there and it gets ionized and it gets blown away by the solar wind. This is where helium goes. This is why there's no helium in our atmosphere or very little helium in our atmosphere. We're very little helium in the atmosphere,

despite the fact that it's always being emitted by the Earth from radioactive breakdown, because it's lighter than the atmosphere. It ends up going up high and then it gets ionized and gets thrown off into the, yeah. So about 1600 tons of helium escapes every year. Wow. But the most of it is actually hydrogen.

We lose about three kilograms of hydrogen every second That's 95,000 tons a year Wow So that's a that's how that's the majority of how we lose masks and And it should be added that just because I like to bring it back to death and apocalypse that like Eventually, it's true that matter is neither created nor destroyed, but like eventually the earth will be subsumed

inside of the sun. And so like the earth will be at a net loss of 100%. Yeah, that will be a different mechanism that is not currently operating. Right, but I'm just saying like eventually the overall story is going to be that Earth loses mass. Yeah.

Well, by not existing anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The same way that I'm- But we're not sure. We're actually not sure that the sun's going to get bigger than the Earth's orbit. Right. It's like kind of on the line. Well, regardless, a lot of Earth will be baked off in that process and it will lose

a lot of mass, including all of the living parts. What an exciting party that's gonna be. I'm really glad that none of us, or any of our descendants, will be here to see it. But I did not say that the Earth loses mass in total, because it also gains mass. Yeah, from like meteors coming in. It's mostly space dust.

So about 40,000 tons of space dust No, falls, falls to the planet every year. Oh, oh, I thought you were gonna say a day and I was like no Geez am I inhaling it? Did it my All the time I get the flu from breathing in space dust? That reminds me when the Haley's comment came to the US in the early 20th centuries

and people bought all these comet umbrellas because it was so close that the earth actually passed through the tail of Haley's comet and they knew it was gonna be that close and people were really, really freaked out and so there was all these anti-commit medicines that you could take to have the gases not affect you and people had these umbrellas that they were used

when they were outside to try to keep the gases from the comment away. And of course, it turns out that that's not a huge health risk or indeed a health risk of any kind. So no, but it is good to freak out about whatever. Yeah, that's what I mentioned that mostly to remind all of us that we have always freaked out about whatever. Hank, yes, are we at net exporter or a net importer

of stuff? We're losing weight, John. We're losing weight. We're losing weight. We're losing stuff. We're losing weight, John. We're losing about 50,000 tons a year. I knew it, I knew it. We are things are slowly falling apart. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

I knew that we had less of a planet than we did when I was born. I have to say, if you found out that the Earth was getting bigger, you'd also be worried about it. You know, I'd be like, we're getting hit getting the gravity is going to be so way too much. It's going to wait. I'm going to be stuck to the ground. We're not going to be able to play basketball anymore. That's right. Oh, my bone density won't be nearly able to deal with this. People's vertical leap will go way down. Nobody will ever break any of LeBron James's records.

I, you're right. I would have been totally worried about all of that. This is going to completely change. You're right. But we are losing enough weight that it doesn't matter much, right? The earth is 6.5 billion trillion tons. And we lose 50,000 tons a year. So you're going to have to go ahead and just assume

that your brain cannot conceive of the tiniiness of the fraction of the mass we lose every year. Okay, that's helpful. That reminds me of a conversation I recently had with Alice where she was like, you know, the oceans are gonna boil and like all the life is gonna die and I was like, yeah, but we won't, we won't be here as a couple billion years away And I was like, yeah, but we won't be here

and say like a couple billion years away. And like she was like, why won't we be here? And I was like, oh, yeah, I mean, you know, like there's a lot of reasons why we probably won't be here, Alice. Like, you know, it's been around for 250,000 years. You're postulating that this is the first like one billionth of human history or whatever.

And she was like, that's not comforting. That's not comforting. So instead of going when it's gonna happen, it could happen at exactly, it could happen today, or tomorrow, but for sure I know it won't happen in a billion years, that's way too long. Never have a chance to make it that far. You don't have to worry about that at all.

And she's like, you've introduced a lot of new worries. billion years, that's way too long. Never have a chance to make it that far. You don't have to worry about that at all. And she's like, you've introduced a lot of new worries. Yeah, yeah, I want to go back to just worrying about a billion years from now. That was way easier. Orren doesn't know about the species why it existential dread yet,

which is a perk of having a five year old. But he is, because cameo had died this year. He is aware of death. And he has figured out that he is going to die, but he has not figured out that we are going to die. Cause I think he sees himself more like Cameo than he is like us. Yeah.

Cause like he's like small and taken care of by us. Yeah. And so like, so he clearly thinks that he's going to die before us, which of course, big hopes for that, not to be the case. Yeah. But he is often asking like, what will happen to us after he dies?

And I'm just like, this is not how it's going to go, buddy. Right, not statistically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's talking about death with kids is very hard and this is a no-cut special hank. So I don't want to drift too far into stuff where we might cut it.

We might cut it. Because we do that a lot of times. When Hanks are talking about serious stuff, we need to talk about process together. It's usually like 17 takes and that eventually we're like, you know what, tuna just cut it. So instead of doing all of that, I'm just gonna go to the next question

while I still have 4% power. This is a high stakes game over here. I mean, what is he sweating? He's sweating over there. Brand new fancy pants MacBook suddenly draining battery like it's going out of style. This question comes from Charlotte. She writes, dear John and Hank, my name is Charlotte and I was wondering if there's a reason

you guys have amazing eyelashes. I've been noticing because most of the guys, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys. Me and you? Oh wait, no, dang it. I didn't think it was you guys. Dang it. It's so deceitful.

Do you just, you thought that Charlotte just really loved our island? I was right. I mean, I was riding the high, the likes of which you've never seen, Hank. I was on a unicorn flying over a rainbow. And then I've just come crashing back to Earth. My name is Charlotte and I was wondering if there's a reason that guys in general have amazing eyelashes.

I've been noticing that most of the guys I know, not Hank and John, other guys, have lashes that can, I can only achieve with mascara. My own boyfriend has better eyelashes than me. Is this genetics or just a weird coincidence? Thank you and I love the podcast. Apparently not enough to love our eyelashes, Charlotte. I mean, we're included. I don't feel like I was called out my beautiful eyelashes and then it's the equivalent of like if you're in a meeting and somebody looks at you and they're like like you have the most beautiful eyes and then you say thank you and then they say no not you. The person right behind you. Yeah. Is that a thing that happens to you in meetings? I got halfway through that story and I was like why did I set this at a meeting instead of at a bar

where it would be like vastly more appropriate but still a little weird. appropriate but still a little weird actually. Oh man, this no cut special is really really stressing me out. Hey, is there a reason is this real or is this just a coincidence? It's real. Guys have guys have longer eyelashes on average. Yeah, but the the question of why I don't think it's been researched deeply But like I will point out the eyes are hair hairier in general. Yeah, yeah, so like maybe it's does that It's that like it's just like we got more hairs. Yeah, I think it's funny I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think it's funny that we think so much about Like the differences in humans because There are a lot of differences. But I've just been looking at pictures of orangutans lately

and being like, I wonder if they think, oh man, that one's so tall. This one's so little. And that one has amazing eyelashes and like, oh my God, look at that, that guys, you know, beautiful brown eyes. And we're like, yeah, I mean, they're all just ragged hands. I've ever told you about the time when I found a squirrel

with Catherine and when I was in college. And it was like a baby squirrel. And it had been abandoned. Oh, no. And we were like, we need to get this squirrel to someplace where someone can take care of it. Yeah. And we took the squirrel to the squirrel rehab person.

Sure. It was a woman who lived in a, in their house, in her house, she just had a house. Okay. We have squirrels there. And took us inside and there was like some cages

and, you know, and she was like, I just, you know, I rehab them and then I let them go. And I was like, where? And she's like here. And I was like, oh, this is like,

create a little bit of an op of population of squirrels right here. And she's like, oh, this is like, create a little bit of an open population of squirrels right here and just like, yes, but I feed them so it's okay. And you wanna see them. And I was like, I guess I wanna see the squirrels. I see a lot of them, but they're your squirrels. So please show me. It goes outside with like a bag of food and like, a rain, it's like, if you are to open a sewer

and the cockroaches, like that's like that level of squirrels just sort of showering down where it was almost creepy, like it was like, like lovecraftian squirrel situation. And then she's, that's nice addition. We got to work with that. Go on, finish the story. Then, and then she starts to talk about the squirrels as individuals, and I was like, how do you,

but how do you know? It's like, his face. Right, by appearance. Yeah. By looking at his face, because his face is his face. And I was like, oh, yeah. I grew up, yeah. I mean, that's what I was like.

That's what I could do the same thing with pigeons. And I can't even do it with people. Like, every time we're watching a TV show, and I'm like, is that the brother and Sarah's like, it's the husband, oh my God, how does this keep happening? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hanks Squirrel Lady. Hanks Squirrel Lady.

She recognizes them by the faces. Yeah, and I hope, and I believe that she took great care of that squirrel. This podcast is also brought to you by Spooned that don't actually flip you upside down. They're just flat. It makes it very hard to have the soup, but you will be normal way up.

Yeah. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Earth's Weight Loss, Earth's Weight Loss, now using NUME. Oh my god. Finally, this podcast is brought, and also this podcast is brought, we're going to make Tuna edit it because I said finally. No, we don't have to, Hank.

Just keep going. Just a cloud through. And also leaving yourself. But it's brought to you by john's eyelashes with our grand look they're like carpets they're like they're like the they're like the the tentacles of a sarlac I remember slightly off topic and not to name drop I try hard not to do that but one time I when Cara DeLavine was in the paper town's movie, I made a question Tuesday video with her and somebody was like, can John, can Cara review your eyelashes or something? And Cara, like very kindly and generously,

that's, she is a really kind person. Like, ran her fingers through my eyelashes, my eyebrows, my eyebrows, eyebrows and said and said sorry. It's the no it's no cut special like I can't read. I can't just imagining car. I mean running her fingers three. Her eyelashes. Yeah, I can't use two thing moment. But she she went through my my eyebrows.

She was like they're a little thin like not I'm just observationally. Yeah, that's part of her job. And it's true. She has to, we also have a question for also message to read. From Porea to Christine, my wife suffers from schizophrenia. Nevertheless, uses much of her limited energy caring about others.

A small example, while achieving top grades, the stress routinely caused her to faint. After waking up, she wouldn't let me ask anything before I told her how I was doing. My wife, the angel, you and Hank and John have for 10 years been the friends she never had albeit deserves. She says, thank you. That is so, so kind. Yeah. That is really lovely. That made my day. And I've actually had a pretty good day. So thank you very, very much. Thank you both for listening. And for, yeah, feeling that closeness to us. That means a lot to us. Hank, you've got to ask the next question because I'm out of battery, man. It's

over. I figured I'm just staring into the abyss now. You got right to the end of the project for us, so message. I did. And then just blink. Yeah. Perfectly done. John, this next question comes from Sue who asks, dear Hank and John, what's the nearest planet I could burn down? Like with a match and watch it disappear in a ball of flames. Wow. A literal example of somebody who just wants to see a world burn. I just want to watch a world burn. I just want to watch a world burn. I mean, doesn't this capture something really deep about humans?

Where it's like, could we, could we burn down a world with a sickle mat? Or because I'm just going to tell you right now, if we can, we are gonna. That's going to be a very difficult urge to resist. I have great news for worlds and bad news for Sue. Oh, wow. No world saw. Well, I mean, I could be wrong about this. I'm just basing this on sort of how I understand chemistry to work, which is like, so burning

is a thing that happens because there are chemicals that are complicated and they have lower energy states where they are simpler. So for example, wood is just a big mess of long carbon chains that were formed by the plant, combining oxygen and carbon dioxide and water together to create these big, long carbon chains. In order to do that, they had to use energy. That's the whole thing that plants do. Right.

So, the process of taking that wood bat and turning it back into carbon dioxide and water is the process of burning. Now, you can also, but the thing is, you can't really build a plant out of these complicated high energy state molecules because they break down on their own over time anyway, if they can. So if they're, so in order for there to be a fire in the way that we imagine them to be, the easiest way to, it would be like a planet has made out a hydrogen and hydrogen burns, right? Except that if the hydrogen was there along with an oxidizer, so along with oxygen,

it would be, it would have already undergone that chemical reaction through a slower process as it was forming. And so you just have the water, not the hydrogen and oxygen sitting side by side because those chemicals are less stable than water is. Well, okay, but imagine of imagine a planet and I maybe this isn't possible. Imagine a planet that is only made out of hydrogen. Okay, just a hydrogen planet.

If I walk up to that planet and I light a match, it should burn to the ground, right? No. No. There's no oxygen. What is it, what is it turning into? Great point. Great point.

What is the chemical reaction? That's so, so, you need oxygen for fires to work. I forgot about that. That's why you, that's why you blow on the fire. That's why you blow on the fire. That's why they bring liquid oxygen into space when they they need to have a rocket working space. Whoa, whoa. Does that mean that it's not possible? Okay. So I want to take you to Star Wars Hank, which is a documentary that was made about a civilization a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Yeah, they were having a Star Wars. They had war and the stars. I don't want to get too stupid.

It was a Star Wars war. They had multiple Star Wars. That's why it's called Star Wars because they had more than one war, okay? That's what I'm gonna look back on it. Star Wars, the name of Star Wars is the worst thing about Star Wars. Like if you say Star Wars to me, I'm like,

oh, the six flags attraction, like it just sounds very silly. That's true. But I mean, this speaks to the fact that, you know, the guy who created Star Wars was like obsessed with like the Yugi and subconscious and Joseph Kampels, you know, ideas around myths and everything. Obviously, obviously worked out okay. I'm not here to criticize George Lucas's ability to understand what kind of stories work for people. Yeah, but there's this documentary called Star Wars that's

about this, this stuff that happened a long time ago. But in the dock, there is a giant weapon. It's like this planet size itself that uses a laser to blow up a planet. Yeah. That's okay. That's possible. Yeah. Well, I don't know that it would, to me, that's close to burning. Right. But that's, that's adding energy. And then energy and then the energy. So I don't think that there would be a giant fireball in a way that maybe Star Wars has. I'm trying to picture. I can't picture it either.

I don't think it's going up. So there's no fireball. I don't want spoilers, everybody. But our listener could build a laser that would achieve the same thing, but without, but it wouldn't be a kind of burning experience. So whatever. Iron Mania, like, I could imagine a situation, you could blow a planet up. Like, I don't know if you could blow a planet. I don't know. I know I can't even light a fire, like a regular fire with dry wood. Okay, man. I can't even do wood stuff.

But yes, but if you got like a moon sized object and got it going like 4% this beat of light and you hit the earth with it, like you'd blow up a planet. Like it wouldn't be, it wouldn't burn down, but it would blow up. Hmm. Well, I'll tell Alice about that one.

I'll tell her about that one. I'll tell her, I'll tell her this afternoon. She'll be excited. She'll be excited to hear that I've discovered a new thing to worry about. Yeah. All right. I think we've answered the question. Hank, we got to do one more question before we get to the all important news from Mars and ANC Wimbledon.

I think we have time. Yes. We do. Um, Murray, this question is from Scott who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm curious what matching funds actually mean. Do people with match with means donate more or less depending on what small money donations

come in? I'm asking this maybe poorly, but basically say there's $10,000 and one-to-one matching funds and a project generates $8,000 in donations. What happens to the extra $2,000? Why not just donate the full $10,000? Looking forward to the PFA, Scott. So I think that I mean, matching funds mostly serve as an incentive to get people who can donate less money

to feel that their money is going further and also like it incentivizes them to donate in the first place to like take advantage of the match. Yeah, I can't speak for what everyone does when the match isn't maxed out. Several things can happen. Several things can happen. What we do is we give the money anyway because we feel weird not to and because we've generally made a good way.

We've allocated it. Right. But I know that there are instances of people being like, I give the matching fund and if it's matched, it's matched and if it's not, it's not. And then I move that money over to some other matching fund and encourage donations at that organization or at a later fundraiser at this organization. Or I just keep it. Yeah.

Or I just keep it. Yeah. So I think there are a variety of responses to it. But in general, like, I think because there was research that matching funds work, in general, there has been like a huge rush to matching funds over the last five years. And so you get emails that are like, if you donate a dollar right now, it'll count as $7. And not to brag, Hank and I were sort of on the forefront of that. Back in the early days of the project for awesome. But that's what it comes down to.

It comes down to people who are in a position to make large gifts, making those large gifts to encourage the people who are in a position to make smaller gifts, to make smaller gifts. And in that sense, I think it's good. And certainly with our project, you know, I, some listeners to Dear Hank and John won't know about this, but we have a nerdfighter has a has a really large long term project to build a and staff and support a stronger healthcare

system in Sierra Leone's Cono district. And that has raised or is on track to raise over $26 million over five years and matching has been a really important part of how we've gotten to that number because every dollar that gets donated monthly at pih.org slash hank and john gets matched by people who've come together to match that money and it has worked. And so I don't know if it works in general, but it has certainly worked. Well, it also it also helps us get money from the larger dollar donors where it's like, you can say to them, hey, you, if you give us this amount of money, it's going to, it, like, it's almost like we're saying to them, your donation will be matched by these people. And so you

are able to, yeah, to multiply your, uh, your impact. So everybody gets to feel like they're doing a thing together and, uh, gets to feel like they're affecting the world even more than they otherwise would be. Which, um, that mean, is true. Like it actually does work. So, yeah, I kind of can't question it. Yeah. So between, between the two groups, everybody ends up donating more, which, yeah, is good. Hey, let's get to all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I will go first. Wimbledon two groups, everybody ends up donating more, which is good. Hey, let's get to all important news from Mars and AFC. Wimbledon, I will go first. Wimbledon have been on a terrible run.

We lost our third round FA Cup game against fifth tier, Borum Wood. I have to say Hank, in other news, one of the teams that won their third round FA Cup game is a team name that is so absurd. their third round FA Cup game is a team name that is so absurd, so totally absurd that you will not even believe it. The name of the team that won its third round FA Cup tie is Kidderminster, Harry's. Kidderminster, Harry's? Kidderminster, you know, the village of Kidderminster. And the Harry's, which is either like a small hawk

or else like a person who's annoying. What? What? What? Which is magical. I was like, is a Harry or a person who makes a hat? And so I looked it up and, no, it's just like a person who harries you, you know? a hairier. Anyway, Wimbledon did not win. We lost a Boram wood, which also sounds

like a made-up place name. And one cool thing, Phil Dunster, who's an AFC Wimbledon fan, in part because he was a fan of my FIFA series when he was a kid, who now plays Jamie Tarte on Ted Lasso was at the game with Jason Sudayka, who plays Ted Lasso. So Ted Lasso attended an AFC with a little game. That's pretty cool. We got our butts kicked by a fifth tier team though. We did not look good. And in our previous game against Oxford United, we looked even worse.

Like it was the worst I've seen us look under head coach Mark Robinson. So for the last year, so it's really worrying. And tomorrow as we're recording this, we play our first game this season against the franchise currently, applying its trade in Milton Keynes. So that is, I just, I mean, I really hope we perform well in that game because, you know, it's a game that shouldn't exist. And I think most Wimbledon fans will be boycotting it because it's in Milton Keynes

and who wants to go there to attend that game for that occasion. Yep, but it's still an important game to the fan base. Like there's no getting around the fact that we want to beat those guys. And we think we deserve to beat them. So we'll see how it goes. I'm really nervous going into tomorrow, though. So that's the news from AFC Wilden. What's the news from Mars? Or do we get news from the space telescope?

Well, I can do a little bit of both. So the, the, the web space telescope is doing fantastic. I don't know if you've been following this. I've been following it every single sigh of relief, all 472 of them. It's been incredible. I don't know. So I have a scale of my size of relief. I think we're in the approaching the mid 400s of 472. So we're getting quite close.

There are a number of things that, you know, still need to be tested. But like what the things that could still go wrong, unless like there are still some things that don't never count your chickens and the mission. But like a lot of the things that like are my final size of relief are things that like if they went wrong, it would be a less good telescope, but it would still be the best telescope we have. Right. Certainly infrared telescope that we have. So by a very wide margin.

So like if one mirror didn't work, that would, it would still be a great telescope. But like the mirrors focus themselves, and so right now they're going through and testing all 18 mirrors to make sure that they're focusing themselves correctly. And it's great. It's 100% deployed and it is now in the process of being commissioned. So it is in its final configuration. And then commissioning is like, you got to wait

for it to get to the right temperature because it's designed to operate at very low temperatures. You have to calibrate all the instruments. You have to boot up some stuff. You have to make sure that all, like, yeah, I gotta get all the mirrors in their perfect configuration, et cetera. So that stuff takes a long time. So we will get our first picture in about five months and that, and like all of the hard parts are done.

This is, it is, it went amazingly well and was like pretty much on schedule the entire time. A couple of moments where they were like, let's just make sure we know what's going on. But like a bunch of people made it happen, feel very good about it. In Mars, actual Mars news, I also have to mention because this is like real Mars news. So the perseverance rover has put a pause on its rock sampling efforts because of a rock that was in the wrong place, basically. So there's some stuff that is not where it's supposed to be, and that is affecting its ability to sort of move all of the parts that shuttle the stuff that it drills out of the

ground around the rover to do chemical analysis on it. Now, there are basically little pebbles and they probably fell out of a sample tube into the carousel where they are now blocking the drill bit from being able to sit nicely inside the carousel spot. I think that so like, there is an easy fix for this, which is you just like, but like, we wanna be careful about it because we want the rocks to go

somewhere where we know where they're going, rather than just like shake them off and like be like, I don't know where they ended up. So, there was some anticipation that something like this could happen, they're assessing the data and they're figuring out how to remove them correctly so that the rover can continue doing its all of its science. So there of course, like, there's lots of science it can do even if this thing breaks, but it is an important part of the mission. So the thought is that this will almost definitely be fixed and we will resume rock sampling soon. And this is basically like the underlying idea here is that we take these rocks, we put them in a, you know, we put them in a,

you know, we put them in a sandwear and then like, and then we're able to do chemical analysis to understand what they're made up of. Right. Yes. Which helps us to understand what Mars is made up of. Yeah. Which helps us to understand like where the water might have gone or when it might come and lots of other things about the nature of Mars. Correct. That's, I mean, I hope they get that fixed soon. I can't imagine how hard it is. There are other ways that we can, that we do that. I find it has a pretty difficult to like get all the rocks out of my lawn mower. Yeah. And you're there with the lawn mower. Yeah, exactly. I'm screaming at it. I don't know what else I can do other than lecture it and say like you shouldn't be picking up rocks in the first place.

You're a lawn mower. You should be mowing walls. Thank you for making a podcast with me. We have to go. We gotta go. Thanks everybody for listening to our incredible special one of a kind, no cut special, never doing it again.

Unless we do too. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune to Meticet's produced by Rosiana Halzferos. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trock-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now is by the great Gonna Rolla and as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be off.

you