Dear Hank & John - 418: Fifty-Three, That’s It For Me

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

What ages should I look out for? How common are tongues? Should I send a wedding invite to a celebrity? How do I avoid getting discouraged and giving up on my dreams? How do we know there aren’t more elements? How do I connect with my classmates when we are in different stages of life?  …Hank and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Gors, I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to me's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, one time the milk. I threw it right past my friend. I did. It did, and it splatted all over the wall. And she said, why did you do that?

And I said, it was pasteurized milk. Oh. I don't know. I didn't have one. So I just had to, I just had to grab that one out of somewhere. Have you ever tell you my favorite joke about the pig? Maybe. The guy from the city goes to visit his brother, who's a farmer, and the guy from the city notices a three-legged pig. You know this one? And I don't think so. Guy says, hey, why you got a three-legged pig. Uh-oh. This is starting to sound familiar. The farmer says, oh, Bessie?

Oh, Bessie's an incredible pig. Bessie's like, that's a cow name. Not this pig, Hank. This pig is named Bessie. You know what I like about my jokes is that they're over by now. Yeah, that wasn't a great joke, but to be fair, most of them aren't. How are you doing? I'm good.

Can I hit you as an idea I have? Of course. Is it a million dollar idea? Yes. Great. Wine is over. wine is over if you like the way war is over if you want it like john and yoko yeah so wine is this is the first this is the first half of my idea you know what you know wine yeah of course

they're like here it is intimately it's here it is it's this special grape juice that we that we did magic too so that it makes you feel weird and some of it's like some of it's like ten dollars and some of it's like a million dollars uh-huh wine is over People are done with wine People don't want wine anymore I think wine is not good It's okay Go on

Look around Look at the grocery stores There's no wine anymore Wine is over No wine is not over Wine might be declining among the youths But wine is not over But there is definitely

An actual thing happening Where wine is declining among the youth It's the wine declin as they call it I think Did we used to go over To our friend's houses With a bottle of wine You know it's like you invite me over

I'm going to bring a bottle of wine That's what you do You go to the store You get a bottle of wine one people don't want goods anymore they want acts of service so we have to do a little thing for our friends two people don't drink as much anymore so like bring in alcohol maybe they'll only get on behalf of the people who even want any wine three wine was always dumb it was always a bad idea it was always stupid it's just grape juice and it's all everybody built up with this fancy

stuff around it and I know there's going to be some Somaliers listening to this and some ventures listen to this and they're going to be mad at me livelihoods under the bus right now Wine was always dumb. It's always been dumb. I completely disagree. I love wine, but go on. Now what we're going to, what the new thing, the new big hip thing that everybody's doing is they're making at home on their own, they're making bespoke iced teas. And they're bringing that over to drink with their friends.

Using tea, no doubt from good dot store. Using tea from good dot store. Oftentimes, some of the delightful decontestores, sometimes some of the delightful decontestful. caffeinated varieties we have, because you're going over for an evening with friends, you don't necessarily want to be juicing yourself up. I like it. Getting gacked, as they say in my friend group. Getting geeked, as the kids apparently say, over July 4th, Alice said to mom, I think

dad is geeked. Oh, because you were drunk? Well, I had had some wine. I wouldn't say I was drunk, but wine is not over in our house. Gact is when you're over caffeinated. Oh, I see. Okay, and geeked is when you've had some wine. So anyway, I don't dislike the idea because it's good for good dot store

and what's good for good dot store is good for the world. But wine is definitely not over, but I kind of do know what you mean because I recently went to this young person's party. I was with my friend Nat Wolf, who was in the Faulkner Stars and Paper Towns movies. And that's just one of my favorite people. And he was like, listen, I don't want to stop hanging out with you, but I have to go to my friend Olivia's birthday party. You should come with me.

And I was like, do I know your friend Olivia? And he was like, nah, but she's cool. She'll be fine with it. She'll be fine with some 47-year-old guy. She's never met showing up to her birthday party. And she was, to be fair, Olivia was very polite and a lovely, lovely person. Was it a famous Olivia that I know of? I don't think so, but I wouldn't totally bet against it.

You know, I don't have a good eye for famous people. There were a bunch of famous people at the party. And so it's very possible that she's a famous person, and I just don't know who she is. Gotcha. One time I talked to Bella Hadid for 45 minutes, and at the end, Sarah said, how was Bella Hadid? And I said, who's Bella Hadid? So, you know, anything's possible. Was her last name, Rodrigo?

No, no, it wasn't Olivia Rodrigo. I would have recognized that person. Anyway, Olivia was super cool, a bunch of nice people at the party. But I'll tell you what, they're not a lot of alcohol. They had, like, two bottles of wine for like 20 people, and the bottles of wine weren't getting drunk until John Green showed up. Yeah, and the amount of iced tea at this party was unhinged. Or it certainly should have been, you know?

All, like, hip Hollywood people are just drinking iced teas. We're drinking good. Store iced tea. That's right. Olivia and Nat and all the other hip Hollywood people. We're drinking good. Dot store iced teas. All right, Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Grace, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know you're a hit podcast for teens, but I'm hoping you can help out a young adult. Oh, don't worry, Grace. We're also a hit podcast for 20-somethings. I remember once an old episode, in an old episode, John remarked that he disliked being 13 almost as much as he disliked being 23. I remembered that mostly because I also really hated being 13 and thought that I should probably watch out for 23. Well, now I am 23. And while I don't think I tried to make this a bad year, it has sucked pretty bad, definitely among my least favorite. So my question is, are there more ages I should watch out for? Is 33 okay? How about 43? Hoping for a little bit of me, Grace. I don't mean, 43 was pretty bad for me. Oh, yeah, that's when you got the cancer. I don't want to say that you're always making it about cancer, but I was just thinking of 43. You know, I think 33 was really pretty good.

33 things were pretty stable. I think I was on my feet. I think I was doing all right. What year was that? That was 14 years ago. So that was 2011. Yeah, I mean, things were fine. I was right in the fault in our stars.

Actually, actually, 33 was really bad. I just remembered. 33 was so I needed my gallbladder out. I was in a terrible headspace. I lost like 40 pounds. I wasn't doing good at all, Hank. I was like, it felt like to get, to get that book out of me like I was like drowning or something. It was just horrible.

Grace, maybe the issue is numbers that end in three. Yeah, it's a cycle. 13, bad, three? I don't know. Three is pretty good from what I could tell. I don't know. I don't know. I think you got a lot of anger built up and you don't have a good way of expressing it.

I'm not sure what to do with it. It is a very transformative time because. Yeah. I remember when Alice was three, we called it. our three-nager. She acted like a little teenager. So 3.13, 23, 33. 43, you get cancer, Grace, not to concern you.

Or half of us did anyway. 53? That might be it for me. That's the rhyme. 53, that's it for me. It's actually where nowadays, in the new way, we're going to take all the politicians when they hit that age and just put them out to pasture. That's it.

They got to eat grass now. Well, in that case, we won't have a Congress. Yeah, no, it's going to be a weird Congress. Going to have like four members of Congress. I think that in general, the hardest years, and of course it depends person to person, like Sarah had a great middle school experience. Lots of people have great middle school experiences. But I think the end of middle school, which is when you're about 13, the beginning of

proper adulthood, whenever that is for you, like early 20s for most people, is really hard. And then at least, I'm not that old, Grace, but like, at least after that, for me, it's gotten better. Like, things have been bad, but they've never been as bad as they were before. I watched Harvey when I was 25. 23, it's weird. It, I don't, it was very bad for me. Oh, the worst. It's just so, I mean, you know, obviously people take lots of different paths.

But, like, if you kind of graduate from college after, like, with four years right after high school, then, like, that's the year where you're, like, out in the world trying to figure things out. And that's both, like, socially very weird because your friend groups might have fractured and gone all over the place. And it's, of course, professionally and economically very weird because it's like, all right, go make money now, figure that out. Right. Yeah, I think in general, what we want as humans is to be. be accompanied and to accompany those we love through the trials and travails of humanity. And that is really hard when you don't have like stable long-term relationships. And a lot of times you don't when you're that age because a bunch of your relationships

is just fractured as a result of moving or as a result of other people moving. And then you've got the issues that come with being early in your career and being treated often not very well. You know, like, I remember my teacher, Wendy McLeod, my theater teacher in college, said, you know, you've sort of been a somebody here at Kenyon for the last four years, and you're about to be a nobody. And that was very true. Well, luckily, I was, I was like a nobody at school, so that was good. I wanted to be, I wanted to be Kenyans. I wanted to be, like, locally famous very badly.

It's recently come to my attention that in general I wanted to be famous very badly. Which is hilarious because, of course, I know of no one who's less equipped to be famous or indeed enjoyed it less. But I did want to be famous so badly. Like, somebody sent me a piece I wrote in 2003 where I was talking about how I would do anything for fans. And it was so, God, it was so cring. You talked about this last week. I don't. I can't get over it, Hank. Yeah. Can't work my way through it. The, the, yes, reading the professions of our former selves is, I don't mean you and me. I mean like everybody is very. Horribly, horribly uncomfortable. To see what you wanted when you were 23 and what you want now, this is the terrible thing about the internet, right? Is that it preserves all of this. Like, otherwise, it would only be preserved in my journals or whatever. And I could at least deny it. But, well, I mean, I think that most of it isn't even preserved in journals. And we don't just deny it. We would not believe it. Yeah, I know. I was genuinely surprised to read these words I wrote in 2003. I was like, there's no way I thought that. That's crazy. That's not me at all. That's not anywhere like the me I understand myself to be and indeed understand myself to have been then. I once watched a movie with Catherine and she was like, we've seen this movie before. And I said, no, we haven't. And she was like, well, I have. And I was like, okay, we must have seen it. You must have seen it and I didn't see it. And then two full years later, I found an old blog post. where I review the movie. Yeah, I mean,

memory is weird that way, right? Like, we think of memory as being reliable or as somehow at least being like our testimony about the past. But in fact, like memory is Swiss cheese. And what we do, both like we don't remember much of what happened, but also like what we do remember is not really what happened. Instead, as I wrote in an abundance of Catharines, what we remember kind of becomes what happened.

Not great. Doesn't seem like that's how it is, but it is. And, man, do we not have any idea how any of that works? So it all makes everything, nothing about the brain doesn't make sense because nothing about the brain does make sense. So you could tell me anything and I'd be like, sure. Good thing. Right, right. People ask me questions about the brain and dear hanging John questions.

I'm like, no, that's not happening. I'm not answering your brain question. I don't know. I don't know what's going on in there. Anyway, Grace, you're going to be okay, not in the short run and not in the long run, but in the medium run. John, this next question comes from Anastasia who asks, Dear Jenkin, Han, hope y'all are well. I'm lying in bed late at night and a thought has struck me. Tongues.

How common are they? How many animal slash beings out there have tongues? And are we humans in the minority? Did we all just evolve to have tongues and tongue-like body parts? Do they all serve the same purpose? not any other Asia, Anastasia. Tongues. Well, first off, obviously we're in the minority because most life is plants.

Plants don't have tongues. And plants, unless Hank Green is going to go on one of his crazy Hank Green rants where he's like, you know, actually, trees do have tongues. They have tongues called xylem and flow them. Unless he's going to do one of those things, trees don't have tongues. As far as I know, insects don't have tongues either, which, though I've I wouldn't be, that it's another most of the things, you know? Yeah, yeah.

So I don't think that they do. A lot of vertebrates have tongues. Now, interestingly, I just made a video on Hank's channel a few weeks ago about the transition from life in the water to on land. And when Toboki and I were looking at this, it seems like this was another thing that the land did. Because fish don't really have tongues. They have tongue-like things that are sometimes, you. used to manipulate food that are sometimes used for chemoreception, like taste, but they're just like little nubs and they most, but like, and the reason is water is much more viscous than air.

And so in order to like get food into the fish, they just like suck water in and it pulls everything with it for the most part. And so it's a lot easier to move stuff around in water than it is to move stuff around in air. And so once you get that, once you're like out of the water, you have to like move things around in your mouth, uh, in the air. And the water can't like play a part in that. Well, it kind of can. It kind of can play a part in it, right? Because it's easier to swallow a pill with water than it is to swallow a pill dry. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Good, good point. And a good illustration of the reality of the... The fact that we brought the water along with us. Basically, we are still water creatures. It's just

we're living on land. So the tongue, once it did evolve, which it mostly didn't do in water, And it's not entirely clear even if the tongue structure that fish have is related to the tongue structure that land vertebrates have. But it did a bunch of different stuff. So as you can see, like snake tongues mostly don't do any manipulation. They mostly taste the air. Sure. And, you know, like... Dog tongues are mostly there for panting.

Dog tongues do serve a panting purpose, but also like a water lifting purpose, which our tongues don't do. but also a swallowing purpose. And then human tongues, human tongues, I hadn't thought about how many jobs they do. How many jobs? I mean, I feel like the main job they do is the talking job and the swallowing job. Well, but they also do the tasting job. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's a, that's a job. It's a minor job, but it's a job. No, it's a super important job. It helps you not eat poison, which kills you. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, it's a minor job, but it's a job. Yeah. And then there's all the, like, a recreational activity that they engage in as well.

Are you talking about French kissing? Yeah, and et cetera. How long has French kissing been a thing? You know, John? I do not know. Do you want to check it out while I talk a little bit more about tongues? Yeah. So a tongue is a hydrostat, which means that it is inflated by and moves around in part

through the action of filling up with fluid, which is wild. There is a case to be made that it is a tentacle. and that makes me think that another species like a space alien seeing us for the first time would hate them, would be like oh my God, they think it's totally normal that there's a tentacle in the middle of the face

the use of the tongue to evolve to be able to be an information communication device absolutely wild. Not what it was for, not what it evolved for. And now we have made it so that a huge portion of our brain is dedicated to the movement of the tongue so that we can speak wild. Yeah, it's super important because if we couldn't speak to each other with our tongues, we'd have to use our hands, like they do an American Sign Language, which we would eventually,

I think, have still gotten to language, but it would have been a very different kind of language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the term French kissing has only existed since the early 20th century, Hank. And it came from the fact that the British and the Americans just felt those French were very libertine and not at all buttoned up. And so it was called a French kiss. Not unlike how the Italians called syphilis, the German disease, and the Germans called it the French disease,

and the French called it the German disease. But kissing with tongue has been around for a very long time, at least as long as language. So it is referred to in texts that go back at least 3,500 years. So, you know, it's been around. whole time. It was probably part of the human story from the beginning. Yeah. There are, I think, I read at some point, there are some folks who don't kiss, like some cultures where kissing isn't a thing. Yeah. But, you know, I bet we've been recreating with the tongue for a long time.

Great. This next question comes from Chelsea, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my partner and I are getting married in a few months, and we've begun the stressful process of preparing invitations. We've compiled what we consider to be a fairly well-thought-out list of family and friends. However, no fewer than five people have insisted that we send an invite to the singer whose concert we attended on our first date. This seems utterly bizarre to me. Is it normal to send invites to celebrities or public figures who are absolutely never going to show up? Should I be sending invites to Brennan Lee Mulligan and the Seattle Cracken and Ben and Jerry? Not the football club, Chelsea.

P.S. you're totally invited. And then there's a link. I'm going to the link right now. So it's not weird to invite us, but it's weird to invite Brennan Lee Mulligan and Seal. Absolutely. A musician. Seal. It was definitely a seal.

It was definitely a seal concert. You're so right. Kiss by a rose in the gray. And that's... Let me see where these people are getting married. See if we can make it. Ooh. I'm not available to go to Seattle.

But I am available to get something off your registry. I'm going to rent you a cabana. We're going to get a lot of questions, you guys. We're going to get a lot of wedding questions soon after these shenanigans. John's pulling right now. Oh, hold on. I'm putting in my credit card number. What do you think, Hank?

Should you invite celebrities? I invited a celebrity to my wedding, but they didn't come. I think that it's about fun, you know? I think it's if you and your partner think it's fun to be like, oh, let's, but you're not, you know that they're not going to show up. But I get wedding invitations. Yeah, I get wedding invitations, too. I've never showed up to one, but I used to say in an early episode of Dear Hank and John,

I was like, oh, I'll totally go. But now I'm like, it's a little awkward if you don't know anybody at the wedding. In fact, I just officiated a wedding last week and we didn't know anybody at the wedding, but it was fine because Sarah was there and I was the officiant. And I knew the couple. So I think it's weird if you're going there and you don't know the couple. Well, yeah, you don't want to like distract from the event of the day. You know, if Jeff Goldblum's at your wedding, then it becomes all about Jeff Goldblum.

All about Jeff Goldblum. Especially because of how he's going to be dressed, which will be immaculate and quite attention. grabbing. A white tucks just there, and it's not even a black tie wedding. It's just that's the only thing he has to wear to a wedding. No, he's got like a floral tux. Yes, a tux of the rainbow, but it's very floral. And it's definitely got a cumberbun, not a belt. It's a tongue tux. It's just, it's very, you wouldn't know unless you looked up close. It is a tux that features all of the variety of vertebrate tongues. It's called tongue men. of the world. You can only get it at jeffgoldblum.com.

The tungsido. I invited the New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg to my wedding because it was in a copy of his book Politics that I asked Sarah to marry me. He signed the book, Dear Sarah, Will You Marry John, Hendrick Hertzberg? And so I thought it would be nice to invite him. And then he wrote back, which was nice, I mean, looking back, it was nice of him even to write back, right? I mean, it was nice from me even to RSVP, no. But, But when he wrote back, he said, of course, I cannot attend your wedding. Of course. That's very nice, though.

Of course I cannot attend your wedding. What do you mean? Of course you cannot. I cannot attend your wedding would have been adequate. Of course, you speck of dirt. I cannot attend your wedding. But it is nice to be known even by such a speck. I am a man.

And you, sir, are an aunt. And so of course I cannot attend your aunt wedding. full of other ants? I'd get bitten and dirty. I couldn't even fit in. I couldn't fit into your wedding venue of ants. What is this? What is this a wedding for ants?

I can't even fit in the colony. Oh, man. I think my presence would just be a distraction. It would be weird if there was a man in an ant wedding, right? Yeah. It would be weird. And I'm sure that's, I'm sure that's, he was thinking about it.

And probably because the queen would be like, what are you doing at the ant wedding? I'm the queen. You cannot just attend mere men? That's more powerful than I. You're not even part of a superorganism. Well, he kind of is. And I'm the leader of this superorganism. My genes are in all of them.

I do think that humans are ultimately a superorganism, though, you know? Like, we are deeply connected to each other. When do we get there? When do we realize, you know? When do we start acting like a super organism? organism? I've always felt that at some point in the future, like, if aliens saw us, they'd be like, oh my God, that's so cute, they think they're individuals. And I think they would also think it's so cute that they think the point of life is mere competition and haven't yet

figured out that their super power is, in fact, cooperation and collaboration. And the only way they have ever done anything ever. The only way they've ever gotten anything done. Yeah. Yeah. Or the most effect. Competition gets things done. But the The most effective way we've gotten things done is through collaboration and through thinking of ourselves as a superorganism, through thinking of ourselves, like, as a single species. And nobody ever competed alone, except in sport. And even in sport, they didn't compete alone. Like, even in solo sport, there's all of the infrastructure and the coaching and the people around you supporting you. And, yeah. Yeah. Well, and if you're like, if you're the only human on Earth,

there's no reason to run a fast 100-yard dash, you know, other than to evade cheetahs. That's very true. That's very true. I mean, yeah, I mean, competition exists in superorganisms, you know? Sure, of course. Yeah, I'm not saying, I'm not saying get rid of competition. I'm saying understand that lifting up humanity is way, way cooler than lifting up any individual within humanity. Definitely true. Anyway, Chelsea, enjoy your cabana on your honeymoon, because I just got it for you.

This honeymoon is cabanas, C-A-B-N-A-S. It's cabanas. C-A-B-A-N-A-A-S. That reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by Chelsea and Benjamin's Cabanas. Chelsea and Benjamin's Cabanas. They're Cabanas. This podcast is also brought to you by the Tungsito. Available, jeff-goldbloom.com. It's all tongues.

And, of course, today's podcast is additionally brought to you by the ages of 13, 23, 33, and 43, not recommended. And this podcast is brought you by the end of wine. The end of wine. the age of tea is here. It'd be great if we could catch a big wave like the size of wine with our tea. That's what I'm saying. I mean, in fairness, tea is and has always been bigger than wine.

That's true. That's a good point. It's just like you can charge $100 for a bottle of wine. It's hard to get $100 out of a bag of tea. But we're going to try over at good dot store. That is for clarity, not the current business model. You could get tea for less than $100 at good dot store. This episode of Deerhanging Jones brought to you by Factor.

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you can get 60% off your first Smalls order, plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash dear Hank. That's 60% off when you head to smalls.com slash dear Hank, plus free shipping again. that's smalls.com slash dear hank all right hank let's go to a serious question this one is from anna who writes dear john and hank my name is anna and i graduated college a few years ago with a degree in wildlife biology i love nature i want to devote my time and energy to conserving our natural world but

it's become quite difficult for me to get into grad school or get a wildlife job of any kind due to gestures broadly i applied to 15 plus grad programs and 20 plus jobs and got rejected from everything i was wondering if you had any advice for me on how not to get discouraged and give up on my dreams. I'm thinking of pivoting and getting Pilates instructor certified. Anna, like from Frozen, Anna, or Anna. Which way is it? Is it Anna and Frozen? I think it is. I think it is. Sorry, Anna. I missed that one the whole time. Yeah. Well, brutal, brutal, brutal. Yeah, it's such a hard time right now to get into anything that's been defunded by the U.S. government or like where the funding is suddenly precarious. And that includes,

includes everything related to climate action. It includes everything related to health. It includes everything related to our natural world. And it affects both the job market and the grad school market because, one, there's fewer grad school spots because there's less funding. Two, there's fewer grad school spots because there are people in the situation where they're like, well, I can't immediately get into the workforce. Another option is grad school. And so there's more people competing for fewer spots. This is not to say that you can't get into grad school ever. That's one thing that I would say to anybody in that situation. There are lots of different schools. There's smaller schools. There's next year. You can reach out to faculty

directly before applying sometimes to tell a story, tell them why their work appeals to you personally, um, that can help. Um, and did, was there something about Pilates in there? Yeah, Pilates, pivoting to become a Pilates instructor. And, and, and then last, you can all, you can do all of that. You can like be, you can be aware of and focused on your future and conservation while getting certified for, to be a Pilates instructor and doing that work, which is good, important work. Yeah. No, I mean, Hank loves his Pilates class. I I do love Pilates, and also I have seen how much it has helped a lot of people who I know, who have had various, you know, limitations on their abilities. It can give you freedom from chronic pain, which is, I think, one of the greatest gifts that you can give a person.

So, you know, there's no, there's no, like, hierarchy of jobs like, like we've been told. You know, this is this, this is a falsehood that exists inside of our mind that we have created in our brains. It's not real. Any work that eases the lives of others is good work. Yeah, and the ability to stay interested and focused on conservation, like that work is going to continue to exist and I think it's going to continue to get more important. I think that this, I mean, I'm an optimistic person, and maybe I should just say that I hope, but I hope that this is not a permanent situation because conservation matters a lot and it will matter more in the future

we are going to need to figure out what to do with a lot of shifts coming up. You know, like the population of the world is not increasing at the speed that it once was. We are continuing to be very efficient at agriculture. And so we have to figure out a bunch of stuff to do with a lot of land. And that land management is going to be a bunch of human decisions and a lot of hard work by humans. So just like stay in touch with it, stay connected to it. but like it doesn't need to immediately be your career, but it is a passion. And I, you know, don't advocate for giving up a passion just because it's not a career. Yeah, I also just want to

make sure that we're not minimizing how much this sucks. It sucks so that. How many people it sucks for? Because we hear a lot of, we hear a lot of this in our inbox and, you know, it's really a hard time to be a young person in the workforce. It's hard to be a person entering the workforce. it's hard to be a person for a lot of people, especially in the U.S. right now. And so we, yeah, it's just, sometimes we don't know what to say, to be honest, because I mean, it's just a really hard moment. I hope that there's a huge, that NerdFiteria just takes over the entire Pilates infrastructure of America.

That would be awesome. That'd be amazing. The Pilates infrastructure and the wedding infrastructure, like, how cool would it be if Nerd Fiteria infiltrated the wedding industrial complex, you know? Yeah. I had two friends get married in the last week. One got married in a courthouse. One got married in a very nice museum. And they both had really good experiences that were right for them. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's great. I freaking love a wedding, Hank. I can't help myself. I love a wedding. Me too. Me too. I haven't gone to a wedding in so long. All my friends got got married. I hadn't been to a wedding in seven years. And when I went to went to a wedding, and I was like, oh, God, I love a wedding. Even when I have to wear a black tucks,

I love a wedding. I know. I feel like I should get married again. We should, we should both do it. We should like do like a, like a recommitment ceremony. All four of us, yeah. Sarah has said that she doesn't believe in getting married a second time to the same person. Who doesn't? My wife. Oh, I didn't hear that. A key, a key figure in your plan. I dropped out. I thought maybe it was going to be Jesus or something, and I was going to be like, come on. Oh, no, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. This is good with it. I'd talk to him about it once.

This next question comes from Raquel, who asks, dear Hank Tastic and John Tacular. How do we know that there aren't more elements we're missing out there that just aren't on the earth? The universe is very big. Couldn't there be some random element never before seen on Earth that would be super hard to synthesize on Earth? Just vibing out there on the edge of infinity. Are we missing out? Not yet in the table. Rakellament.

Oh. I mean, once you thought of that, you had to ask the question. Hank, are there elements or possible elements that we haven't identified yet? Or have we gotten all of them? We got all of them. Are we sure? Yeah. Because you think you have all the Pokemon's and then they invent new ones.

Yeah. I would love it if they could invent. And they kind of can invent new ones wildly. So an element, you can't like fit one between hydrogen and helium, right? Because an element is just a number of protons in the nucleus. So if you have one, your hydrogen doesn't matter what else is going on. Even if you have no electrons, then you're a hydrogen ion. And if you have two, you're healing.

If you have three, your lithium, et cetera, all the way up to over 100. And so there's not like any hiding in the middle. That's one thing we know. And there was this period of time when we discovered elements the way that you would imagine us discovering elements. Like we went out into the world and we were like, oh, this thing is different. This is like irreducible and it's a different thing. And then they had to, like, figure out where it fit on the table by doing a bunch of really careful measurement. And as they did that, they, like, filled in all the gaps of the table and everything, like, kind of made sense.

And then there was a period of time where discovering elements was a totally different thing, where you took two atoms-ish. There's lots of ways to do this. But you took basically, you took two things and you smash them together really hard. And hopefully, if you do it right, you will get. one of these like super heavy elements very, very briefly because once a, once a nucleus gets to a certain number of protons and neutrons, and they have to have the neutrons to keep the protons from pushing each other apart, the nucleus is too big and it wiggles itself apart. It's just like wobble, wobble, wobble, and then it becomes too, and it, you know, it fizzes. It's like

becoming too famous. You just can't hold the center for very long. And then you wob, wob, a wobble until... Unless you're Taylor. Explode. Something's holding that nucleus together. Sometimes it happens, but very, very rarely. Very rarely. So there is like a thing that people imagine that perhaps there is some island of stability

where if you get a nucleus a certain size, it won't wobble itself apart. If you get it super, super big, we're pretty sure that that isn't the case, one. And we're almost certain that that couldn't happen in natural. that it would have to happen in a laboratory because the things that would lead to it happening could not happen naturally. And this is like a weird thing about Earth. The things that happen on Earth just don't happen other places. Like the hottest place in the universe and the coldest place on the universe are both on Earth. And that's very weird.

What? What? What? I just made fireworks go off. I don't know how. But that was just such a, that was such a truth bomb that my camera was like, fireworks! Tell me, explain this to me how the hottest place in the entire universe and the coldest place in the entire universe are both here. Well, first cold is like, is pretty rare.

Like it gets down to like close to absolute zero in natural situations, but getting down to like very close to within like fractions of fractions of degrees from absolute zero. is not something that happens naturally. So that definitely is on Earth. In any given time, it's in a laboratory somewhere. And there are some time, like there are records we've set that are much colder than anywhere else in the universe, but they don't tend to last very long. But at any given time, there's some lab on Earth that's the coolest place in the universe.

Unless there's some other smart species that got slightly closer to absolutes. Exactly. Yeah. Your point is taken. I get the cold. But the hot makes no sense to me. I mean, we're talking about, I know something that's extremely hot that's in our neighborhood that's that's not on earth. It's called the sun. Yeah. And on the very middle of it,

crazy, crazy hot. And then it's pretty easy to make the case to like the hottest thing that's ever happened in the universe has been like a particle accelerator. So, so things sped up to very near the speed of light and then crashed into each other. That's hotter than the sun. That's hotter than the core of the sun, yeah. Wow. Wow. All right. I mean, that's pretty wild. That is pretty wild. Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, And I want to answer one more question from Megan, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been accepted into my local university's animal science program. Congratulations, Megan.

I'm a first-generation college student and super proud of myself for taking the steps to get there. However, I'm a 31-year-old with a middle schooler and a kindergartner who also works as a custodian in the animal science building. How on earth do I not make things awkward when my peers and professors eventually notice that I am also the cleaning lady? How do I connect with my classmates when we are in such different places in life? Parenting and panicking. Megan. Megan, Megan, weird animal masks. It's a good solution. It's a good, and not during the custodian job at class. No, no, I think, I mean, it's a great solution. But I actually think the solution is probably just to be like, hey, I have both of these jobs. Isn't that incredible

impressive. Never complain again, other students. Do you have two full-time jobs, or is that just me? And also two children? And also two children? Or is that just me? I feel when I was in college, I went to a college that was almost entirely young people and was like almost entirely residential students who lived on campus, a small liberal arts

school kind of place. But there was one student there named. Dan, who was also a security guard, which is even like more awkward, Megan, because, like, he's essentially arresting you to tell you to do stuff. Yeah, he has to like, he has to be like, you're too drunk and now we have to take you to the hospital kind of thing. And yet, Dan was awesome. And all of us looked up to him and all of us thought, like, which was true that, like,

Dan had an amount of wisdom that we would never have, or at least, like, certainly that we could never imagine having. And so I think you bring something to those classroom experiences that the other people don't have. And so even as I totally understand, feeling nervous about it, you also have to remember that, like, there's a benefit to being you that they, that other people from different experiences don't have. Right. So, first of all, shame dies in the light. You know, don't put on an animal. Shame, shame dies in the light. Don't put on an animal mask. Yeah. Second, the.

professors, I think, will be amazed by you and very supportive of you, unless they suck. And then third, like, as far as, like, being a peer with your peers, you're not going to be the same peer. Like, you're not going to, like, have the same relationship as if you were in the exact same moment of life. So, you, like, you have to, you have to, like, be a good presence in the same way that they are going to be a good presence. And like there can be like lots of productive relationships and connection there, but it just won't be the same thing. You know, like you're not going to be going out to the bars or whatever is happening, maybe sometimes, but not in the same way when you're in a different, you know, time in your life and you've got more people to take care of. I don't know. I don't know, Megan. I went to Olivia's birthday party. Anything is possible. It's possible. Anything is possible. Yeah.

All right, Hank, speaking of anything being possible, what's the news from Mars this week? Oh, boy, we have good Mars news, John. So this week in Mars researchers have gotten the first visible light picture of an aurora on Mars, which I didn't even think was possible. And this news came to us via the email inbox from a listener, Helene, who said the researcher, Elise Knutzen, who works on this at my university, I know her, and I'm sharing because I'm very proud of my colleague. And it's very cool that Mars gets auroras. not from Troy Helene

So auroras are different on Mars. Mars does not have an electric magnetic field so the way that it works on Earth is that they like come in at the poles and that's why they're at the north and south there's like some local magnetic effects on Mars

but mostly it's just coming straight into the planet so it's more dispersed and so harder to see but then also there's much less atmosphere for the aurora to be visible in like much less Right. That's why I would have thought it would be impossible. You've got to do a lot of work to be able to see auroras on Mars.

So the measurements of auroras on Mars so far have been done in the UV spectrum. And to get measurement of an aurora and the visible spectrum, Knudsen had to keep track of solar storm alerts and look through situations or simulations of how the storms will show up around the solar system. So basically, like, had to wait for a really big solar storm that was going to hit Mars. And in March of 2024, the sun released a solar flare that was perfect, but things were still really stressful because they had to coordinate with people in charge of the perseverance rover to see if they could use the camera on the rover to actually take the picture and also do all sorts of calculations to make sure the camera would be in the right position. Luckily, it all came together and it happened. Here's a quote from an article about this. When I opened the file, I immediately saw that this was what we had been waiting for. I was sitting next to my colleagues and tears streamed down.

I couldn't say much as this was classified at the time, so I couldn't really talk about it. And it was my 30th birthday. It was all the ultimate birthday gift from Mars. You know it wasn't our 33rd birthday. That would have been some bad outcome. Exactly. Exactly. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is that, AFC Wimbledon have played their preseason match against Watford, who are in the championship, Hank, a division above us, and we tied 1-1.

Now, it was a lucky tie. We had some good saves from our new goalkeeper Nathan Bishop, but we tied. We tied 1-1, and that's good. Also, the AFC Wimbledon women's team, who are also in the third division, their schedule just came out. They will start the season August 17th against Rayall Bedford, which is a phenomenally good. name for a football team. Rayall Bedford. It's great.

I love it. I don't understand. What is the Rayall? Established in 2005. Are they Portuguese? Or Spanish? Maybe. Maybe it's an all Spanish expat team.

We don't know, Hank. We don't know the details. The point is we'll be taking on Rayall Bedford. On August 17th, and the schedule goes from there. Very excited. And we're still waiting to see. if we sign any more players. Are you sure that it's not just Real Bedford?

I'm pretty sure it's Rayall Bedford, Hank, because that's way, way funnier. Why would you not have the funny option? I mean, Real Bedford's also funny because it implies that there's some other Bedford that was like, no, we're Bedford. No, we're real Bedford as like AFC Wimbledon being like. Right, right. No, we're the real Wimbledon. Yeah.

Although there is a Rayall Salt Lake and they go by Rayall Salt Lake. Like, that's the MLS team. That's fascinating. Yeah. No, I guess there's like, I could see it. You know, you just take that term. Take that term. Anyway, the women's team and the men's team both start their seasons in August.

I'm excited. In the meantime, I'm hoping that both teams actually sign some more players, but especially the men's team. It's not clear to me exactly where the goals are going to come from. But that's okay. I mean, who needs goals? When does the season start? For the men, it starts, I think, on August 9th. Oh, okay.

So that's soon. Yeah, we only have a little more time to wait, my friend. Well, congratulations for being in the next league up. I'm excited. Whichever one it is. Good for you, Hank. Good for you. You're getting there.

Thanks everybody for listening to our podcast. We really appreciate your questions. Thank you for emailing us at Hank and John at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Chris Ankiko. Thank you, Chris. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Demoky Trock Rivardi. 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 awesome.