Dear Hank & John - 325: Just A Chicken Floated By (w/ Roman Mars!)

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Why don't we have mouth roombas? Is the universe full of chickens? What scientific advances are happening? What was the first internet purchase? How do I convince my parents to let me check a bag? What is Twitter? What's the difference between a telescope and a camera? Are sea monkeys natural? Hank Green and Roman Mars 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 as I prefer to think of it, Dear Hank and Roman, I don't need to be first. I'm just having to be here. That's a podcast where two brothers and sometimes a brother and a guest answer your questions give you to be a surprise and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Roman, I heard that once you were at a bar and you were ordering drinks and you just held up two fingers. And then the waiter brought you five drinks.

Do you know why? Because I'm Roman Mars. Because he thought you're using Roman numerals. Does that look like a... I love it. It works out. Everyone, I'm sure that everyone always thinks you're using Roman numerals.

I didn't even think about the fact that your name was Roman Mars until I was writing that joke. I was like, wow, Roman Mars, what a name. Well, thank you. I'm a big fan of Mars. Is Mars a Roman God or is he Greek? Mars is a Roman God. I think Aries is the equivalent to Greek mythology. Yeah.

That's definitely something you should know. That's it. Most people are making fun of my name. They'll say, they'll say, oh, is it 99% of us will with Greek Aries. That's what they usually do. They're trying to do it like a little thing. Yeah. Well, I'm glad I didn't do that. I could easily have come up with that joke, but I didn't. I didn't even occur to me. Roman Mars is the host of 99% Invisible, a legendary podcast that continues to make lots of really amazing content. Whenever I think to myself, I'm bored. I don't have anything to do. I think, but I haven't listened to every episode of 99% invisible.

So there is acres of curiosity and happiness to be had just around the corner. All I have to do is push like six buttons in a row. It does require six buttons. Unfortunately, these days are still, but still. Yeah, I'm grateful you listen. That's great. Well, I should be able to set up some kind of shortcut where I can just like tap my glasses and Begins well, I should say that dear Hank and John is like

Between me and my twins we listen to this in the car like exclusively and this is like a very big deal Shoulder them they do not listen to 99% invisible They've no interest in it whatsoever. They only listen to dear Hank and John. So this is like a Very a real honor to be here and they will be so excited. Well, that is an honor to be your family podcast How old are they? They're 15 years old. I've twins. My as long car rather 15 years old I haven't come up with one for I'm my five-year-old yet. Yeah, because our our tastes do not Consistently overlap when it comes to podcasts. Or many things I would imagine.

Yeah, a lot of the music he likes, I'm like, wow, that's great. I didn't get a true love for pop music, like kind of teeny pop music until my kids sort of entered into that age of like five, six and those Disney Channel theme songs are like, these are really good. Somebody worked really hard on this. There's no doubt in my mind that like there were experts involved. Exactly. I like that about your work too. That it reminds me that there are experts involved in so much and that oftentimes I will see a decision that was made. And before listening to 9% and percent visible, I might look at that and be like, what a stupid thing that choice was. But now I listen and I'm like, I bet there

was a very good reason why they did it that way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's going to the premise of the show or why it's called 99% invisible and it's about design is that most the time when it's good design, you don't notice it's invisible. The things that work you don't notice and the things you bang your head up against, you do notice, and so you kind of run across bad design, a little bit more, like there's more friction with bad design, you think about it and hate it,

and so like that. And it is probably likely that there is, you know, like a good amount of thought that went into the even the ones that you don't like for some other reason, some other constraint. Yeah, it was not, it was, it's bad for me, but it's probably good for like the flow of water or something. Exactly. Because it turns out it's important. Gosh, it turns out it's really

important to get the water out of the city. It is. That's one of the most important things. Very expensive problems. Exactly. So I've learned a great deal from you and I appreciate. And also I've learned a great deal from you and I appreciate. And also I've learned a lot from just how you work and the work that you do and the creative enterprise that you have created. I love hearing from a variety of voices on 999PI and like that you have been able to take this thing that was in your head and make it a thing that other people can do as well. Oh, thank you. It seems like that's the case anyway. And I assume that you don't have like a hundred percent control over everything that happens on the podcast.

Yeah, no, we tried to build a little community around people and promote people. Yeah. I'm just a huge fan of podcasting and radio in general. I got into this because I really truly loved it. I loved the sound of people's voices. I love them talking. I love learning new things. I'm like, I'm a sponge for that sort of stuff. And so anytime we can sort of create more of that in the world, I'm super, super happy or, or like promote whatever it is. It makes me really pleased.

Yeah. Speaking of design, I have a question. It comes from Chrissy. Who asks, hi guys. Hey, that was not specific. Chrissy didn't know who she was gonna reach. So there are a ton of people in the world who do not enjoy the task of flossing

or brushing their teeth. Do you think it would be possible to create a Roomba for teeth for all of us lazy people out there? I get that it would be expensive to accidentally swallow a tiny robot, but there must be a way, not at a tent dentist's recommend, Chrissy.

I don't think it's a good idea to have it be a tiny robot. No, I don't think so either. But that doesn't mean that it's not a good idea. In fact, I was like, I wanted somebody must have thought of this. Somebody said to themselves, the toothbrush is 500 years old. There has to be a better way to do it. And indeed, I can't remember what it was called, but it looks like a mouth guard that you stick in and it's on a wand. And then it just like jiggles.

And then you turn it upside down and it jiggles your bottom teeth and you're done in 30 seconds, it says. It's like, in part pitched as an efficiency play where it's like, you spend too much time. Are you tired of all the time you waste a minute a day brushing your teeth cut at a half? And also it's pitched as a, your children are terrible at this, don't let them be. Yeah, the sort of idea of a robot

sort of violating your personal body space. To make you floss, it seems like a big mistake. But there have been real changes in toothbrushes in particular. For a long time, toothbrushes were really skinny. The handles were really skinny. The big innovation in toothbrush design was like the big innovation in a toothbrush design was like the reach toothbrush in the seventies that was angled, but it was angled like a dental. Do you remember the advertisements? I kind of do like where you, you can either get a flip top

head or you can get a reach toothbrush. Right. But those, those were made to look like dental tools that somebody else used on you, not for you to hold in your hand. They were kind of like a weird, like, it was mainly using the aesthetics of a dental tool. And then, and then much later on, the way they, they came up with the fat handle toothbrush because they realized that sort of hand canesthesiologists felt that toothbrushes were like a little to, to narrow and they would roll in your hand as well. And fat toothbrushes came around. And the big objection to fat toothbrushes was that a lot of mid-century modern homes had actual toothbrush holders in your bathroom that were built in by the construction company.

And they didn't fit. It was like it was a tile that was meant to modularly exist with all the other tiles. But those did not fit that toothbrush. Yeah, and you can't just go get like an angle grinder and just open it up a little. No. And so that was a big moment of friction when they introduced the fat handled toothbrush. And I remember when the fat-hound toothbrush came out, the company that released them, actually you could mail in for a little stand to put your toothbrush on in case your home didn't have the right size toothbrush holder.

So these are the cascading effects of like any time but device that you get and how it interacts with the bellwrest the belt world is a fascinating thing. Yeah, and now you can use that little toothbrush holder to hold your mouth scrubber. That's right. That you, like on the end of a wand that you just shove into your mouth and sit there. While you, I assume, listen to 99% invisible.

I don't think the big mistake here is efficiency. I've never seen anyone create enough efficiency in the life to do something really great with that. So just take your time, do your toothbrush. I find that I floss a lot more when I have some kind of dental problem, and I think that flossing is going to keep me from the edge of oblivion, right? Yeah. But it's probably the wrong way to do it, but yeah, I agree. Exactly. But that's it. And that's the only thing that gets me to floss. I understand you. I floss two weeks after and two weeks before

any dental appointment and that is it. Exactly. Real strategy. All right, Roman, I have another question for you. It's from Edward who asks, dear Hank and Roman, I understand that Hubble's law of cosmic expansion says that all galaxies are expanding away from

each other. Do you? I understand that. I understand that someone has told me this. But is there anything between the galaxies? Are there any lone planets or dust or is it just completely empty space? And if there was anything, how would we know? Like, do we have any proof that the space between galaxies isn't just filled with a bunch

of chickens? Maybe that's why all the galaxies are expanding. It's the chickens and it's scaring the galaxies away. Not an Ed Letter, but an Ed word. Wow. It's Ed word. This is all you, Hank. It's all, yeah.

Do you know that the galaxies are moving apart from each other? Yes, that I know. Do you know that there is lots of, like, mostly it's space between galaxies and not galaxies. And there's a lot more stuff in a galaxy than not, than like there is stuff in areas where there's a similar sized area where there wouldn't be a galaxy. That all makes sense to me. All of these things are clear.

Yeah. The, got us all that far. See, often here like cubic meters of space. So in like the intergalactic medium is what this is called. There's like one, maybe one particle per cubic meter, and that's almost always a hydrogen ion. So it's just a proton. There's one proton per cubic meter,

which is about as empty as you get in our universe, which isn't completely empty. There's a proton there, and a cubic meter is an understandable volume. Like you can picture it in your head if you know what a meter is. That's pretty big. That's denser than I thought, actually.

Yeah, you thought, well, I mean, you may be imagining a proton is bigger than it is. That's probably true. I can see it written on a piece of paper, is that? No, but that makes sense to me. That's a understandable unit of a... Yeah. And we know about this because we can see, like when we look at distant stuff, there's

like, we can see a little less of it than we otherwise would be able to, because there's a lot of cubic meters between us and there and there are enough of these protons to absorb just a little bit of the light that's coming off of a quasar from a long way away. The question of whether it's full of chickens is an interesting one though, because it's definitely not full of chickens in that like if you were a chicken you could see another chicken Like that would to me like a chicken being able to like see like being close enough to another chicken to be like There's my other space chicken friend Alfred That's that is not that full of chickens, but like there is a number of chickens that could be in the intergalactic medium that we wouldn't notice.

Yeah. I don't know how big that number is, but I bet it's bigger than you'd think. Well, that's the only thing that this question made me think is like, how many chickens would it have to be before we noticed? It could be full of chickens. We just haven't trained the telescope in the right location yet. It, well, yeah, again, full is a, you know, it wouldn't be full. If it was full of chickens,

they would crush themselves into a black hole. Yeah. Because that's how gravity works over time. But if it was a few, yeah, some appreciable amount of chickens, you know? Yeah, you could have like, you could have like two chickens per cubic light year, no problem.

Yeah, that would be a whole lot of chickens. And that would be a lot of chickens in the galaxy. Yeah. But anyway, there are other things, so it's not just protons, it's like that's the average density. So there are also, there will be rogue stars in the intergalactic medium

that have been ejected from their galaxies. There will be rogue planets that have been ejected from their galaxies. They're just very cool to think about that like there are, there are almost definitely star systems in our universe with no stars in the sky because they are that far away from any galaxy. Hmm. So instead of looking up and seeing stars, they look up and they see pure velvet black with maybe a couple of smudges of distant galaxies.

Word. And then hopefully at some point they see a chicken. Just floating by. Wouldn't that be so surprising if all the time you saw velvety black and then just a chicken floated by. I would, how much would that change your world? I mean, it'd be a big deal. It'd be a really big deal. I'd like, it would especially be a big deal if it were like anatomically and genetically a chicken. Like that would really, that would really

throw us for a loop. We'd have a lot of rethinking to do. This next question, Roman, a call from Seth, who asks, dear Hank and Roman, we often hear the phrase, as science continues to advance, this problem will be easier to solve.

What exactly are these scientific advancements that are always supposedly happening? And who is doing the advancing of them? Is it scientists or engineers, or is it maybe computers? I haven't listened back far enough yet to understand pumpkins and penguins, so pairs and porcupines, Seth. When Roman emailed me about maybe coming on the podcast,

he'd signed off the N.P. Roman, which was pretty crazy. That's just to let you know I'm a real fan, not pretending. That's right, that's right. Roman, how does, what does that mean? So let you know, I'm a real fan, not pretending. That's right. That's right. Broin, what does that mean? Do you have an idea of how progress occurs? Scientific advancements? As you think about this in a sort of a historical way.

Yeah, well, usually the scientific advancement is a kind of iterative process. And we get a narrow window into those moments of punctuation when things like really advance and they sort of percolate up into the sort of consciousness of popular culture. I would say that, you know, how does scientific advancements, I think one is sort of computing power as a huge one that sort of changed the way that things, you know, we can sort of crunch enough numbers to come out with things to model. And I think that's a big part of how advancement happens. I try to think about there's sort of techniques.

There's often these just gigantic movements. Like when I was right before I started grad school, while I was in college and studying genetics, PCR polymerase chain reactions is started as a technique to sort of amplify DNA. And it was this revolution in how people understood DNA and the different assays you could create to like study small samples of DNA. And it is basically a technique that they took to become like this incredible scientific

tool. And these are things just kind of like crop up and happen and then all of a sudden your ability to like examine new things. It's just increased just like exponentially. Yeah, and then you combine that technology with advances in computing technology with like maybe even advances in like how do you organize and manage humans technology

and connect humans like who are in, you know, faraway places who wouldn't normally be sharing research technology and all that stuff like adds on to each other. Yeah, yeah. But like the weird thing is that there is a, there's kind of a sense in the way that we talk about it that all of these things are kind of inevitabilities

and that like progress occurs and that our understanding of the universe continues. But like every single one of those things was done by a person. Oh for sure. None of it. Like every one of the computers was done was programmed by a person. And like we know that. Like we know that objectively. But we it is often talked about as something that kind of just happened. And I think we talk about it that way because because it wasn't done by any one person. And so it just seems like it was something that just happened because it was done by tens of thousands of people. And so if there was a story where like one lab came together and you know you can tell that story with PCR, you can tell the story of how

that happened. And for example, a great example of this is like the story of how an mRNA protein manufacturing process works, where you deliver mRNA into a cell, and the cell manufactures the protein that you want it to, or that the doctor wants it to. And like that, you know, is a many decades long process of figuring out how that works, and it allowed us to create COVID vaccines really fast

that were really effective, that have saved millions and millions of lives. But there isn't a person who was responsible for that. And there wasn't even, there wasn't a lab, there wasn't a school, there wasn't, it was a truly international and whole species endeavor to figure that out. And so it seems inevitable and it seems like something that just happens when really it is a,

and you can speed these things up by having more people dedicating more time to doing these kinds of things. Totally. And that's one of the best parts of progress in science. And one of the things that, you know, on the show that I do,

we don't tend to cover a kind of new design, we tend to cover, it's basically a history show, up in this idea because I'm much more interested in the effects of these types of things rather than in how it says about us as humans and society, then the story of a great person coming up with a great thing. Sometimes those stories are fun to listen to, but they don't really tell you the whole story of most things when it comes to progress. Yeah.

I have a question here from Alice. I don't have an answer. I have a couple of answers that I think are probably bogus. Do you hear Hank and Roman? What was the first thing bought on the internet? And more importantly, I think, for this conversation, do you remember the first thing you ever bought online? Yours from the information super highway, Alice.

Could all information super highway? It is quite a highway. It is the speeds of, I feel like maybe we need a speed limit. In fact, sometimes I do have a speed limit, like when I'm on vacation, like the internet's really bad at the hotel I'm at or on an airplane and the internet's really slow or I don't want to pay for it. But I still have my computer.

I'm like, actually, this might be better. I'm 56K might have been the ideal speed for information to enter into my device. Maybe we should stick with that. It does sort of limit to the, but limiting the pipeline just sort of changes what you decide that you can, it's really like it makes me more productive. Yeah. I looked this up a little bit and there was one source said

that it was likely a bag of marijuana, which was not surprising. It does sort of seem like what, probably the, and then another was telling me that it was a CD, like a music, disk that was sold in 1994 for $12 and something. And I was like,

no, definitely not 1994. It has to be between two professors at UC, so and so and whatever. Like back when it was the you know, the internet, but not the worldwide web. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure like people were like kind of doing transactional stuff on bulletin boards before the web was really a thing.

Do you remember what the first thing you bought was? Because I do. Oh, interesting. Well, you tell me yours while I think of mine, because I think I know what mine might be. I might trigger mine might be. I might trigger something for you. I was on CompuServe or possibly America online.

Okay. I think it was CompuServe, which would be cooler. If you say so. And I sent a $5 bill in an envelope through the mail to acquire a magic the gathering playing card. Wow. Yeah. Pretty good. A lot cheaper than it would have cost if I'd gone to enterprise 1701, which was the

dork store in my neighborhood where they sold magic the gathering cards, which I believe they eventually did have to change that name because I'm pretty sure they were not affiliated with the Star Trek folks. I think mine is pretty similar. I was, you know, I mail order things a lot because I was super into zines and punk rock, you know, seven and singles and CDs and stuff like this. And so when the internet came to me at school, it was all about trying to find some, you know, like, you know,

because that tape from a punk band in, you know, Gilroy, California, that I just like needed to have. So, my guess is I'm almost 100% sure it was some kind of scene, like some kind of punk rock, because I was always looking for new ways. And the first things I ever did when I was online was look up guitar tabs for how to play. That was like, I just printed out guitar tabs just to learn how to play songs. And that's what I used like 90% of my internet time when I first found it.

But this does remind me of something. So I went to, I started grad school in 1994 and there was some email at Oberlin before, but, but no worldwide web basically. And I was in my lab and we had internet and I went to, I was talking with one of my professors and I was mentioning how I was basically downloading guitar tabs and just looking up things and downloading like little snippets of songs or whatever and he said to me, yeah, it's really distracting. So what you should do is take the weekend and go through the whole internet and just get it out of your system and be done with it. And then you can just get back to work. So that is his recommendation that you could just take the weekend and just

be done. Yeah, just finish it. Like, I've had this with books before where I've been like really distracted thinking all the time and I just finished the book and then I'm well, that's, that's obsessed with it. So do that with the internet. Exactly. And with, I was thinking about scrolling all the way to the bottom of TikTok.

I think I'm going to try to do it. I think I'm going to try to get to the end, but that'll give you some, you know, the question has to hear, you know, Alice, some notion of what the internet was like then that it was not a completely laughable thought, even though it was laughable thought, that you could just get through the entire internet

in a weekend, because it's somebody smart who had a PhD told me that that was what could happen. So I was, I just got interested in the card that I bought for $5 in 1995, probably is when this was, and it was called a Syngere Vampire. And if I had had it from the Alpha edition, which was 1993, which I did not, that card would be today worth $1,200, but I had the revised, which I remember, I got it revised, from the revised edition of the Magic the Gathering.

And that card is today worth 23 cents. Wow, that's a big drop off. I was just kidding. So as with most things, the one that you had probably wasn't that valuable. My kids play Magic the Gathering. One of them in particular is pretty obsessed. And every time I get them a box or a pack of something, they'll go through and assess their

values, which is a huge part, I think of Magic the Gathering, it's just assessing the values. And they'll say, well, this one is worth $30 and almost pays for the whole box. I was like, it's only worth $30. Yeah. You sell it or do something instead of keep it in a pile in your room. So go immediately. And also you can't sell it for $30 because you don't own a store. That's so maybe.

So the assess value is the magic cards have always been somewhat dubious to me. Yeah, so the the assess value is a magic cards have always been somewhat dubious to me. Yes, I was legitimately surprised when I thought I saw that you could get it for 23 cents, which is kind of sad to me. That is a lot on that investment. Yeah, do you want to give some real advice, Roman? Yeah, sure, let's do it. It's from Steffi, I think, who asks, dear Hengen-Roman, I am a high school senior planning to go to college next year, and I've narrowed down my decision to two schools.

They are both large in-state university with a variety of majors and programs that I am interested in, and they both have good food. How should I choose between these two very similar schools? Steffinately stumped Steffi. It was Steffi, because Steffinately makes me think it was Steffi.

How do you do in this situation? You've got two options. They're the same. You have to choose between them. I mean, as I know what I do. Oh, interesting. So I'm hoping that she wins both of them. You're just to check them out because there's more than just food.

Like, I just spend a little time there. Yeah, I mean, because there's a vibe at each of them. You're just to check them out because there's more than just food. Like, just like spend a little time there. Yeah. I mean, because there's a vibe at each of them. So how would you choose between two similar or almost the same things? There's a vibe, but I'll, here's what I'll say about my experience. Am I very small school? Is that there was a lot of vibes. So like, you go and hang out with one group of people. It's a very different vibe from a different, there was probably like 40 different distinct vibes at a school of 2,000 people. So here's what I do. When I'm at a restaurant and they all all the stuff looks good and I'm having a hard time, I pick the cheaper one.

I think there probably will be a slightly like a slight you apply to both these schools. I think there probably will be a slightly, like a slight, you applied about these schools. At some point, somebody's gonna tell you how much they cost. And I think you should go with the cheaper one. I think we don't do this enough with education. I don't think we buy on price, we should do it more. We should put some pressure on these institutions to maybe think about how much they're charging

rather than all the different food options they provide Because I their current trajectory is that they're just gonna keep charging more forever because apparently we don't care But I think we should care. I think that's totally true I think I would be much more inclined to think about the area around the town So I thought about this two Roman and then I remember my college experience when I never left campus I really did so I went okay to grad school at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, and I went to Athens, Georgia to go to Athens, Georgia, as much as I went to go to grad school there. I mean, I had a major professor that I was following and I

wanted to do research in his lab, but like I would say, you know, get the local paper or I guess it's probably not local paper anymore, but get some kind of information. Go to the local website that they have. Go to the town.com. And compare the two as to what band or activity or thing is happening next. Just like whatever, what's the your favorite, you know, like something that you would love to go to. Yeah. And that was a huge part of my grad school experience. Let's so college because I was kind of like, I was at Oberlin and Oberlin's kind of its own community. Like you can get out to Oberlin, Ohio, but it's like, it's kind of something. But like if you're

in a town, which most of these big, big schools are, you know, like a bigger city or a bigger town or often are, you know, like look for an activity and see which one guides you a little bit is if a band coming through, a comedian coming through, something like that, because that's one of the things that I just loved about that time in my life was doing that sort of stuff. But I think mostly whatever you choose is going to be fine. This is the thing. I mean, there is no decision that impacted me more in the rest of my life than where I went to college, but at the same time, it kind of wasn't that important

of a decision. I don't know. I would have had a very different life, but there was no way for me to know what the right call was. And I really, I went to the school that gave me the most money. Yeah. That, you know, I wanted to go to school in Florida because there was like a Florida specific scholarship. And I wanted to go to a small liberal arts school. And I went to the one that gave me the most money. I think that's crazy. And that accepted me because several of them didn't.

So you should definitely go to the one that accepts you. Yeah. All right. I have a question from Greta. I hope that you can advise me because my strategies are not good on this. Dear Hank and Roman, I'm currently trying to pack for a seven-day family vacation to Hawaii. Congratulations, this sounds fun.

My parents are set on not checking any bags. And this is perfect to be a challenge for me. I'm very prepared. I'm often referred to as the mom friend. However, this seems to be a downfall in my current situation. I know that both of you have done a fair amount of traveling. This is for Hank and John, but it's true both of us as well. And I was hoping that you could give me some advice

for how to pack lightly, still be well prepared. I'm not great, but Greta. See, I cannot give good advice here, because my strategy is to be deeply unprepared for every situation. And how my wife feel like you didn't bring sunscreen, you didn't bring, you didn't bring that, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't know I'd be profan at all. And I was like, no, they sell that in a way. Yeah, that's the thing. I can get that for a dramatically increased price when you're driving away. That's the one thing I, this psychological like, pressure release valve of this is you always have the ability

to just buy the thing, especially if you're going to Hawaii. Yeah. Sometimes you don't. Like, there are things. You can't get your prescription drugs. You need to bring those because it's a pain in the butt to buy them when you go someplace. Focus on everything that you can't possibly get. Another place is when you're packing is one thing.

Have a list of those. Yeah. You just roll things tightly. Have a list of those. Yes. You just roll things tightly. Roll type rolls. Yeah. It's a big one. You'll focus on the things you need. I just did a vacation to Hawaii with only carry on bags and it worked out okay.

You don't need a lot of things. You just need like, you know, kind of a couple of swimsuits and a couple of some clothes. And most places have a few stayed in Airbnb have places to wash things, you know, or whatever, or you can take one of those fantastic outdoor showers and, you know, and so you're rinsed your stuff off. What you call something like that? Just like, yeah, hanging over the balcony and you're going to be just fine. This does make me think this obsession with only carrying on bags is one that I don't quite understand unless you're changing a lot of planes because you're on vacation.

When we travel for work, it's a cost, like extra money. Now, I didn't use to, but now it does. And this is the thing. This is a whole system that needs to be redesigned because we are incentivizing the wrong. Now we've found some bad designs. And Roman Mars is here to tell you about that. I'm here to tell you about the bad design.

We are incentivizing the wrong behavior. That's right, we should be paying to carry on bags and it should be free to check your bags because everything about the process of carrying on a bag through like getting through security, getting on first, finding your place in the overhead bin, all of that. And the part where suddenly you've gotten too many bags

on the plane and there's no more space for them, so everybody's like, what do we do? You gotta bring the bags forward and find somebody to handle it. It's wasting everybody's time. This whole thing should be flipped. As much as you want to make Steffi choose between her two colleges of choice because which one's cheaper, I want in you like you're like you just want to force the system to like to value cheaper education. I want to force the system to like to change

so that checked bags are free and carry on bags cost money because it would totally change air travel. It would be so much better. I do not want to get on a plane first, but I pay to get on a plane first because of my stupid, right, carry on back. Uh-huh. I want to pay to get on the plane last, because I'm going to be on there a long time. I hate being on a plane. Yeah. And so, but the only reason that keeps me incentivizes me to get on a plane first is that stupid

carry on back. And if we just change the whole value proposition of this, air travel will be so much better for everybody. So I say, uh, stand your ground. Protests. But as much as you want. Yeah, but all you carry on bags into one big bag and check that thing. If you're not changing planes a lot, you're going to be fine.

Just like, just, just, I'm just fine. Just like, I want carry-on to go away. I would much rather get on a plane and check all my bags and just have my back-back with my computer in it. So much easier. That's what I do when I can do it. For sure. But this is, look, Greta is in their parents' house. And they're ghostly by their parents rules. As long as you're living under my house, you will not check a bag. As long as you are living in the basement

underneath the house part of my house, covered under the stairs, I just like tightly, you know, tightly roll things, split things between, it was a big moment for me. Like I kind of have a, you know, tightly roll things split things between what it was a big moment for me Like I kind of have a you know like the personal item you get kind of to you get your personal item and you get your roller bag is to Take those soft items from your suitcase that won't close that your roller bag suitcase and just like stuff them in your back Backpack is like split up the ideas my backpack is always full of socks because I've got like my camera in there

and my laptop in there and there's like hard thing. I'm like, no, you got to throw in some padding. It's like the Styrofoam peanuts, except it's my socks. And you always wear the bulkiest items, you know, like if wear the bulkiest items or don't like, this is a thing that I actually did take me a little while to learn.

You don't have to bring all the bulkiest, like some stuff takes up more space. So just like look and see, like with that hoodie is thinner than that hoodie and also I'm going to Hawaii, so why am I bringing up? I wear boots, like since I was like a punk rock kid, I always like to wear boots.

And so I feel comfortable in boots and so you wear the boots, you don't pack boots. That's just the way it is. Yeah, I get around all this by bringing, like, by wearing the same outfit four or five days in a row. Yeah, which is what is not what Greta wants to hear because that's not going to be helpful for them. And it really is what vacation is for.

Is to like do things that you wouldn't necessarily normally do. And you'll be fine. Hawaii's a chill place. So we're the same thing over and over again. And also they've got stuff for sale. They do. Which is, remind me, this podcast is brought to you by Hawaii. They would like you to buy whatever you want there.

They've got everything, they think you shouldn't bring anything in your carry on. Just come, buy everything, Get a suitcase while you're there and bring it back. This podcast is also sponsored by mid-century modern toothbrush holders. They're very skinny. That idea. Also, this podcast is brought to you by the cheapest entree on the menu. You'll see it on Hank Green's plate every time. This podcast is also sponsored by that one space chicken. When you're looking out into the velvety blackness and you see that one space chicken, your life will be made. I think we'll ever look the same again.

All right. Before we go to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask a couple of more questions. Do you use Twitter, Roman? I do. Can I ask you a Twitter question? Yes, sure. Okay. Go for it. This from Nathan, who asks, what is Twitter?

No. Okay. I don't have any social media, and my parents and friends never had Twitter. So I don't really have any frame of reference for what it is. What does everybody do on Twitter? Is it important?

Well, why does it seem like all the famous people are on Twitter? And why I always seem to be arguing about stuff? The best I can come up with is a name van specific sign-off Nathan Get something in there. Yeah anyway. What is Twitter? Why okay? Okay, what is Twitter? What does one do on Twitter? Is it very important? Those are my two favorite parts of the world. What does one do on Twitter? Here's what one does on Twitter. You send out short thoughts that are less than 280 characters, which is like

probably three sentences max. And then you send them out and then people have responses to your short thoughts and then you have a conversation that is limited in how much you could say at a time, which is maybe not the best way to do it, but it does create us a particular dynamic that is very Twitter. Is it important, Roman? I'm gonna say, no, in the capital I importance of things. Like if it did not exist with the world move on pretty much as it is and I would say it would.

However, as a source of misinformation and you know like there was some you know different very important people who were denied Twitter at different times and it seemed to matter a lot. In that sense, you know, that it is important, we're at all to disappear. I don't think the world would change all that appreciably. And that's how you measure importance, but it's hard to measure importance. That's a good measure of importance. What is the thing that would matter the most if it disappeared? It's like air. That would be like the main that would matter the most if it disappeared? Is that from like air?

That would be like the main one if the atmosphere disappeared. So the atmosphere is very important. Yeah, well, I mean, besides things like gravity and whatever. I mean, I would say like human made, you know, internal combustion. Yeah, that would definitely. People outside of us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If internal combustion engines disappeared or like all of the gasoline disappeared, it would all kind of stop working pretty fast. Or plastics, you know, if that stuff, you know, like things like that would be. Yeah, the computers would all stop working if there were no plastics, really immediately. Silicon. So with Twitter, the lot of people on Twitter, they probably don't need to be on Twitter.

All the famous and important people that you reference, I mean, let's, that sort of like, you sort of camp out of spot, even if you don't really need it. And most of them really don't. And I find that people kind of go through these like, the cycles of using Twitter when they need to promote versus times when they don't. And it's just, I like to think of myself

as that kind of person, but in fact, I'm a person who has used Twitter pretty much every day for pretty much the last 10 years. To me, it was, it's the most natural social media platform. I'm not on Facebook. I don't sort of think sort of visually, so I'm not very good at Instagram either. And to me, it's the most like broadcasting, which is my sort of natural state of things. And as long as it stays in the realm of broadcasting, I have a thought I presented. I'll take, you know, some feedback and engage with some of it,

but it is not a two-way communication device. And when it does, that's when I think Twitter really breaks down. And if you can sort of just treat it as a place to just like put this message out into the world of your thoughts and it amuses yourself and amuses a few others, that's sort of the idealized form of what Twitter is. I can, yeah, you know how you can have like away statuses?

Like there's a way, but then there's like versions of a way. I think I should have Twitter statuses and one of them should be, I'm talking, not missing. That's where I'm at right now. Like, whatever you say, I'm not gonna respond to it because I'm just talking, I'm not missing. But then there should also be another one that's, I'm just listening, I'm not talking.

Which maybe more people should be in that mode, more often. This is, it's a really interesting thing that like Twitter be, like, I think you kind of put your finger on something there, which is that it is a broadcast platform. It's not really a social media in that. You're not trying to reach the people who you are social with. You're not trying to reach friends or family. Like, Instagram or Facebook might be more set up for.

So it is definitely broadcast. And it is also like, eat. All of these things are so informed by their core audiences and oftentimes those are informed by like who signed up first. So a lot of the structure of it is based on who was there first and what grew out of that. Now it's not all. There's certainly lots of different sections and vibes on Twitter. But there are a lot of people who think that Twitter is very important because they are a group, a part of a group of people who imagine themselves as very important, just like politicians and journalists and, you know, people who do the broadcasty thing. And they all kind of have to be on Twitter. They are talking to each

other. They are understanding what people are interested in and talking about so that they can talk about those things in their news articles and op-eds and continue this sort of like this part of the world's like progress in imagining things differently. And that is important, but it also I feel, has sort of like, hosted off on its own into a land that is pretty different from where a lot of people are. But if you're like a sort of a news consumer, a person who consumes a lot of news, then you have hosted off into that land,

along with them, which I certainly have. Same, I kind of use it as a filtering device for what people are talking about, although it has a real hit miss ratio that is gets really skewed sometimes based off of that. But what is the article everyone's talking about for one thing, but then occasionally like something will trend and you're like,

and it's trending because it's trending and that's trending because it's trending because it's trending and everyone needs to comment on a thing. And yeah, maybe people don't need to comment as much about anything. I just want to button that changes my Twitter handle to Hank Green. Just listening. Just listening here. Just, you know, not in the talking mode.

You've messaged after the beep. Yeah. Yeah. Turned it all off Twitter into an answering machine. I read whatever's on Twitter three days later. That's what, oh man, that would be a great Twitter. Just show me Twitter three days later where I'm like, I can't do anything about it now. It's done. Happened. It's way less stressful that way. That's how everything used to be. It was the news three days later because they had to get on a

horse to get to you. Yeah, it changes your dynamic with coronavirus when you just wait and like just see how things play out. And I think that's probably like a good thing. Some things like, it's good to know that, you know, President Lincoln has been shot, you know, like pretty immediately. But like a few things, it would be good if maybe you just let them digest and so reacting to them. And Twitter kind of facilitates that quick reaction. And I don't know if it's really that helpful. This next question comes from Peter who who asks Dear Hank and Roman, with all of the news and excitement around the James Webb Space Telescope,

it reminded me of a question my wife wanted to ask you, what's the difference between a telescope and a camera? Oh, interesting. Like, dubious ruminations highly encouraged and desired, not tailed with cotton, Peter, pumpkin, purveyor. Well, it's capturing with cotton, Peter, pumpkin, purveyor. What is capturing the image, right? That's the real difference. Yeah, so there is.

So like, what you are thinking is that, is that like a DSLR is a camera, but it's not really. It's a camera attached to a lens. And the camera is the part that does the image capturing. So the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb both have a number of different cameras or image, image detecting devices. And then they have a big set of lenses on the outside. But this is the question that you

may be asking, what's the difference between all the lenses on a camera and all the lenses on a telescope or all the lenses on a microscope? And the answer to that is, man. Yeah. They're kind of all the same thing. Yeah, they're kind of all the same thing that they do, basically what are they being used for? Yeah. It's the difference. Oh, yeah. Which I hadn't thought about until I read that question.

I was like, oh, so I kind of have a telescope. It's just not a very good one. That's right. And it sits on top of my camera. I thought for a second, oh a telescope, like you can look through it and see with your eye, but no, because obviously the Hubble Space Telescope I cannot look through and see with my own ones doing that.

That would be impressive. At L2 with the web, you know, I'm like out there, beyond the orbit of the moon, hanging out, looking through, doing the Galileo thing, drawing pictures and sending them back to Earth. I like that question. You could job.

If you, if you, if you, you'd be the first person to see the chicken at least. Dude, you can say exactly. And you could tweet about it. Yeah, perfect. It's all you could do. You can't come back to new interviews. Or you perfect. That's all you can do. You can't come back to new interviews.

Or you could do an interview. You'd have to go up in front of the telescope. It could take a video of you. Yeah. But you have to be pretty far away. Or you'd be out of focus. Roman, I want to ask you one more question because I want to know if you know this story

and this seems like, you know, even though it's not really about design, it seems like a 99% invisible story. Janine asks, dear green guys, when I was younger, I had the pleasure of experiencing the seemingly ubiquitous experience of owning a colony of sea monkeys. The eggs came in a pouch and you would put in water and eventually little specks began to swim around.

Yeah, I know how sea monkeys work. How do this become a thing? And do sea monkeys naturally occur in nature? Why do they come in little pouches and had are given to irresponsible children? I need to know, not quite a sea monkey queen, Janine. Do you know anything about sea monkeys? I don't have this story at my fingertips.

I know that sea monkeys are brine shrimp. They go through a sort of like a stage where they can be desiccated and still be viable. Had water to them, they opened up. That's all I know. Why they were given to children and why they drew cute faces on them is not something I'm familiar with. Yeah.

It was just a marketing thing. This guy figured out that you could combine sea monkeys and sea monkey food into a pouch and that their eggs would hatch. And this guy, so we did an episode of Journey to the Microcosmos about this and we kept going further and further down the rabbit hole and it turns out that this guy is, was,

a legit Nazi. Oh, wow. Like the C-Monkey's guy took that money that he made from C-Monkeys and he did almost exclusively Nazi stuff with it. And in fact, like he ended up being in legal trouble for like arms stuff. Oh my God.

So like the most innocuous thing you can imagine, the C-Monkey Got milkshake, doc. Wow. That's, I need to know more about this story. I'm gonna go find more about that. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, I was very surprised myself.

Yes. It was initially called Instant Life, and it was sold for 49 cents, but the sky changed the name to sea monkeys in 1962. And then he figured out that like comic book marketing was sort of a really inexpensive way to reach a lot of people. And he was became the kind of quintessential comic book marketer in the 60s and 70s. So I also had C. Monkeys growing up.

Did you have C. Monkeys? I never had them. They didn't ever really appeal to me. But other stuff that it shared the page with on the back of the comic book, I desperately wanted. I never could get those either, but X-rays backs in. And various other decoder rings and stuff. I wanted every single one of those things. Never, never managed to get those. Yeah, it feels a little bit like buying something on the internet. It's very similar.

That back of the day when you put a crisp $5 bill into an envelope, put a stamp on it and mailed it to some other child. Yeah. Who had a playing card you wanted. That's a good time. Yeah. Wilkins yield cash is like how I did my first transactions across state lines. All right, Roman. It's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. If you haven't listened to this podcast because you're just a Roman Mars fan, AFC Wimbledon is a third tier English soccer team that my brother is obsessed with and Mars is a planet. It's the fourth planet. It's cold, it's dusty, it's red.

I know vaguely about AFC Wimbledon because I was, as I'm my mom's 70th birthday party recently and so I was hanging out with John. And the news is bad. Oh no. It was, this whole year has been a real roller coaster because of the very beginning. It was like the first year in which there was no relegation like risk and everything was doing well.

It was a lot of ties, but things were doing well. And I was following along. And then, you know, like pick up in the last few months. And it's just scary. Yeah, they have, they are currently in the midst of the longest no-win streak in the last like 10 years of their league. Wow.

And they were up one to zero in the 80th minute. And then they lost, soccer games zero in the 80th minute and then they lost soccer games, by the way, are 90 minutes long. They lost three to one. Oh my goodness. That's... So they're like in the last 10 minutes, the other team scored three goals.

That's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. And I was in the house with John and he was like, good thing, I don't feel negative emotions about football outcomes anymore. So this whole season has been like, like, it's sort of blown up game that went well in place because right. Yeah. You know, according to John, it's a notorious for like when they go up, you know, score first, then they then they lose. And the whole season they scored first. And now they did well in the beginning

and now they just yeah, yeah, well, it's tough to hear. It's not looking great. There's still out of the relegation zone as of this recording, but only just and and I thought that they won that game because my dad said, oh, he's humilded one because he just looked at it when there is 80 minutes in and he was like, well, I like I assume that's going's gonna go out okay. Anyway, it's not great. But in the news from Mars, great news, very exciting, very interesting. The perseverance rover is about to go on its first like real long drive. So it's gonna drive, so it's been a, it's been there about a year. It's about to drive up to a delta that sort of spilled into the crater that it's in.

And to get there, it has to sort of drive around to this area that's sort of rocky and sandy. They don't want to drive on. It's going to be a three mile long drive. And they're going to do that three mile long drive. They're very specific about this and their language and how they talk about it. It's going to be faster than any rover has ever driven three miles before because they need it to sound like it's quite fast and it is quite fast But it is gonna take 30 days But that's very fast and there will be some stops along the way And it's a lot faster than how curiosity would do the same thing because

Preservience can actually drive itself a fair amount where you just say go here and it can look ahead of itself and kind of choose a path that doesn't have a bunch of rocks that it's going to get stuck on or sand that's going to get stuck on. So it knows more about how to do stuff and we don't have to be in control of it as much. It's really cool. And the driving three miles is to get to this new place is to study something in particular. Is it just to do three miles? What is the? It's to get it now. Yeah. The moment I just make it go. Now it's to get to the delta. So a delta, so this is where a river

flowed into a lake, basically, and that lays down layers and layers and layers of sediment and is a great place to see the geological history of the spot by all those different layers. It's also potentially a great place to find things that you wouldn't expect to see whatever those may be. Obviously, deltas are often a great place to, on earth, to find fossils, to find evidence of previous biologies, which is, you know, I think the perseverance would love to have

happened. They're just fine like a chicken in there, but we're not like, that NASA never sort of like says that goal because they're not like, we're not trying it, we're not like, you know, they've been burned before. But they're all very curious about how common life is in the universe.

And if it evolved twice in one solar system, that would be a pretty significant expansion of the, you know, going from an end of one to an end that would be a pretty significant expansion of the, you know, going from an end of one to an end of two is a big deal. That is a very big deal. One of the deal with a universe, this big. So who knows? And it's a big solar system.

There's other places we haven't been that are prime and interesting places for life to maybe happen. So they're just hard to get to because they're under giant sheets of ice around and moons around gas giants But yeah super Stoked for the Curator for the perseverance team doing doing this drive So keep your eye out over the next month. There's gonna be a lot of movement on Mars You can check on the map at JPL's website just search for Rover Drive probably

Think you're it out. You'll think you're at out. You're not a user, the internet. Yeah. Roman, thank you so much for making a podcast with me. I assume that everybody who listens to this knows about 99% visible, but if you don't, you've heard enough that you're going to go check it out now, but I assume. I would hope so, and I hope that anyone's here in this who is here because of me, goes and checks out the rest of your hangin' John, because it really is the thing that gives my, my, my kids the most joy.

That's so cool! A lot. A really cool one. Well, I'm happy that you are, I have a productive relationship with your teenage sons. I am crossing my fingers that in 10 years I, uh, productively listen to podcasts with a person who I have a good relationship with. Yeah, it's a nice thing. And it's like one of those things that starts a little conversation, we hear a thing,

then somebody reaches forward and pauses and says, give their answer of like, how many lemons a person would be made out of or something. And then they may unpause it and then we can we continue listening. If you're listening, Mars Twins, I want you to guess how many chickens you think there could be in a cubic light year before we'd notice. That's a good one. And then we can have some after-visits to scum on that as well.

Perfect. Be very curious to find out. It was a real pleasure. Thank you so much. If you want to send us questions, you can do that. Our email address is hankandjohnjohnat-gmail.com. We don't have a podcast without your questions,

so we appreciate everybody who sends them in. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. It's produced by Rosiana Halcero-Hoss. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom, our editorial assistant who helps me with things like the facts of my ass. We didn't get to this question. What percent foot am I?

Like, what percent of my body is foot? The answer is about 3%. So, Deboki helped answer that question for us. That's why we need her. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be us. you