Dear Hank & John - 435: So Much Idea in That Idea

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Do we sweat the same way vegetables do? What should I do if a billionaire sits down at my dinner table? How do I feel sane in today’s world? Can you please tell my twelve year old son to go to sleep? How did we decide the geological time scales? When were chairs invented? How does John manage his fear of TB contamination? What is Salinger-ing? …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. Or is I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to B's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbled on an actual physical couch together in Los Angeles, California. John, you know what the problem was when Jacques Cousteau and Natalie Portman wanted to get married? What?

But how would they mash their names together? Into a portmanteau. It's a good joke. It's a good joke. So we are in Los Angeles filming Ask Hank Anything, and we decided that we would make a podcast while we're here on this couch. I would love...

It would be so cool to do it like this, except maybe not with four other people in the room. It would be great to do it like this every week, especially if you lived in Indianapolis, because then I wouldn't have to leave Indianapolis. Right. I would just be there. You would be there all the time.

We would do so much work. We'd be like Rhett and Link, you know? Just brothers. Yeah. They're not brothers. But you know what I mean. They basically. I had a dream last night about Rhett and Link

that they gave me really good advice and we were just hanging out like the old days and they were like, man, you gotta take it down a notch. I was like, thanks, Rhett and Link. Yeah. I needed to hear that from you guys. If Rhett or Link said I had to take it down a notch, I'd be like, watch your own business.

I'd be like, don't you talk to me about my notches. I get so defensive when you tell them to take him down a notch. I do. I mean, well, the reason is, sometimes people are like, why are you doing all this? And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, you can't answer the question. I need to rein it in. Yeah, you get defensive because you can't answer the question. Yeah, I do not feel like I am acting in my own best interests right now. Earlier today, and we'll get to your question soon, but earlier today Hank told me that he has a Hank's channel video that he's very nervous about uploading because he's worried that it's going to offend people. I don't think it's going to offend people. People may disagree with certain portions of it.

And then I was like, so don't upload it. And you were like, but I can't because it's a banger. It's just that people are wrong. Oh. And it's, the video is right. It's good to be you. It's good to be certain. There's just, there's a lack of nuance out there in the world.

No. You don't say. On the internet? That's what my friends Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau have told me. Now, I don't want to get ahead of your joke, but isn't it impossible for Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau to get married? Because Jacques Cousteau is dead? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think that that's one of the problems with the idea. Yeah, but it's a good joke. Let's answer this question from Bronwyn, who writes, Dear John and Hank. Oh, wow, you can see that far? When I'm cooking vegetables and they sweat, like release water in the heat, is this the same way I sweat? No. Bronwyn. No.

No. It's not? I mean, because we're releasing. What's the same? We're exposed to heat and we're releasing wet. Wetness in order to... Do you know that we are among the wettest? Like humans?

Yeah. Are among the wettest animals? Among the wettest of the dry animals. Is that true? We are among the driest of the animals because most animals are wet, like completely wet. They're surrounded by water.

Do you want to hear my best joke from my comedies that I'm doing tomorrow? Yes. Pitch me a joke cold, Hank. Nothing funnier than that. Well, it's related. Okay, give it to me. So I'm talking about how Neanderthals

and humans are related. Was we intermated? Yes, and in fact, maybe Neanderthals never. went extinct, we just merged with them. Yeah. And then I say, we, oh, I got to get it right.

Yeah, you don't want to mess up the joke. That's the exact wrong way to start the joke, is with the wrong word. They are in us. Yeah. Because we were in them. Okay, that's a good joke. Or vice versa.

Probably both. All right, well, I mean... Then I go on to wonder whether all of the human Neanderthal sex was straight. Well, I just want to get ahead of this real quick and tell you that if that's, if that's the best joke in your comedy special, I'm concerned.

It's the only, like, joke joke. The rest of it is funny. It's the only badump bump. But yeah, it's the only badump bump. It's the only turn of phrase. Can't wait to hear how it goes. So, when you are a vegetable and you sweat, it's not like being a human who sweats.

No, but we are the sweatiest animal. I think that we are, like, we might be the sweatiest animal. Of all of them. Of all the animals. Because other animals do sweat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not alone in that. No, but we are covered in sweat.

Sweat holes. Interesting. What they call them. The technical, biological name is called a sweat hole. And we're just loaded with them. They're all over. There is a name, but it's some kind of gland. It's like apricor.

There's an apricorine gland. That makes it a certain kind of secretion, and there's another one that I can't remember the name of, and that's the sweat one. But anyway, we're very sweaty. It's a very intentional process that pumps or gets water across a membrane. It pumps ions across a membrane, and then that draws the water out.

Is it a vegetable? also just water coming out of the membrane? I guess, but it's not a biochemically mediated system. It's not an intentionally done thing that has, like, mechanisms around it. It's getting hot, and so it is, the water is getting energized, and so it's leaving.

I don't know if, would we do that if you heat it a person up? Moving on to the next question. Lily writes, Dear Brothers Green, yesterday I was eating outside at a Chinese restaurant in London when Jensen Wong, CEO of NVIDIA, walked up to me and asked if the food was good, and then if he could sit and eat with me and my friend.

What? Photo attached so I don't sound crazy. And then, to be fair, the photo is attached. But also, I will make a note that Jensen Huang makes technology that makes it so that I can't trust that photo. That's a really good point. So how do I know? That's true.

I attached a photo of Jensen Huang hanging out with me. Doesn't mean anything anymore. Now I have to zoom in on your shirt. This is some Chinese characters on this tea. Okay. If the Chinese characters on this tea are identical to the one and on this tea, I'm going to call it. Okay, it's a real photo.

Okay, so I also just trust Lily. Lily seems inherently trustworthy. But I'm telling you, I proved it with a photo, doesn't work anymore. It's true. We made small talk with him for about an hour about his dinner with the king, my recent graduation, and what to see in California,

and then we all left. Only on the bus home did I really begin to process how strange it was to have dinner with one of the world's richest men. Yeah. Now, all my friends are telling me I should have asked for a job or a large donation to charity

or the secret to a lifetime of success, I suppose it is odd that all I got from the greatest proximity I may ever have to power is free Chinese food. Free food, he bought your dinner. Yeah. That's pretty nice, Lily. Did you get the nicest thing on the menu?

Yeah, you should have gotten some real good stuff. I honestly don't know how to leverage that. I feel you must also have odd conversations with people who are kind of from a different planet. What should I do next time a billionaire sits down at my dinner table? Pumpkins and penguins, Lily. This is freaking weird. Jensen Wong seems like a weird dude.

Well, I mean, here's what I'll say. That's more human than I would have expected. To, like, make small talk with a stranger for an hour. It's pretty human. Billionaires are, I have a theory about this. Like, billionaires are different from us because you have to be a certain kind of person to want to be a billionaire.

Because when you are a billionaire, I've said this to you before, Hank, the easiest thing in the world is to become a multi, multi-millionaire. Yeah. It is an achievable goal. The steps are there. If you're a billionaire,

you can become stinking rich and not be a billionaire. You can have the best of both worlds. You can get just right out of that line. Being a billionaire seems stressful. Every time you go out to dinner, you're just trying to have Chinese food. Well, that doesn't go away when you give the money away.

Everybody's still like, Jensen Huang. Maybe. I think so. You got to quit being the CEO of Invidia. That job sounds stressful. Oh, boy. Who would want that job? Just hanging out with Trump all the time?

He's like, you're my favorite guy, Jensen Huang. And the king. And that king, whichever king, I'm not sure which king. I think it's King Charles II if I had to guess. The king? I mean, that's what it says. Of England? Where was she? They were in England.

Oh, I don't know. Did they say that? Basically. I thought they were in Hong Kong. No, no, no, no. They implied that they were in London when they said they were in London. That was the giveaway. It says it a Chinese restaurant, though, so who's to know? In London.

Okay. That's the key. That's the part that you miss. I guess they do have those other places. Yeah, so the king, I think, is the king of England. Wow. Yeah. So, Hank, when you interact.

with billionaires, which you do. I've done. What is your overall approach? Because I never make a direct ask for charitable donations. I just try to emanate that that should be... Here's the thing. I actually... I think if a billionaire gives all their money to charity,

it just creates a new problem, which is that it creates all these, like, perverse incentives and, like, it's easy to stomp on work that's working. Like, it's just... It's a hard thing to do in a one-hour conversation, but there are ways to do. There's ways to do it. It doesn't happen in an hour.

It doesn't happen in an hour. But you have, like, a responsibility to do the right thing with the resources you have. Yeah. And it's tricky. And, like, they've got a lot of demands on their time. They've gotten into the situation that they're in not unintentionally, you know. That's, I think that's a key insight, is that nobody becomes a billionaire by accident. No.

Except for Powerball Wairs. Babies? Babies. Who are born to babies? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't think that should be possible. I'm just going to say it.

I don't want to sound. like two anti-billionaires? No, no, no. I'm bare with you. I don't think there should be baby billionaires. Tiny little newborn baby billionaires. You might make the case there shouldn't be billionaires. But I know for a fact there shouldn't be tiny little newborn baby billioners.

Yeah, you shouldn't like your heads half out and it's like, just happened. That's what it happened. Paching! You're the seventh richest person in the world, baby. Before right now, you were just a baby, but now? Now you're very wealthy. Now you're a Walton, baby. You're a Walton.

What would you have done if you were Lily? I think Lily Handling laid, actually. No, I think you do exactly what Lily did. Like, Jensen Huang isn't going to, because he sat next to you, give you $100,000. Or a job. I mean, unless you, like, are a chip designer. Are you a chip designer? Is that what Invidia does?

I've always wondered. Yeah, they don't even make chips. What do they do? They draw them. Is that true? Uh-huh. They draw them? Yeah, they like do the design of the chip.

Oh? like how the chip... And look, I don't... I mean, we're getting outside of our expertise here, everybody. But yeah, I used to think that they made the chips, but they don't. There's a separate company that makes the chips. They just, like, send the chip companies

what they would like the chips to look like and do. So, Invidia is an artist company. Yeah, they're a bunch of... They're just a bunch of artists. Yeah, okay. All right, cool, cool, cool. So we agree that Lily handled it well. How do you handle it when you are with someone

who lives on a different planet? I had a experience recently where I was, I knew that we were at Complexly, we were pitching a foundation that is run by, is a billionaire's foundation. Yeah. And I was just doing my thing, like I was giving the presentation I was giving,

and then I found out after the fact that the guy was in the room. And I didn't know, because I wasn't in the room. It was like a Zoom meeting with the camera on the wall. There was like 15 people in the room. Yeah. And I was, yeah, I was like, that's probably for the best,

that I just didn't know. Right. The best thing is to treat people like their normal people, unless you really want them to know that they are doing the wrong, like a bad thing. But if I'm going to ask me for money, that's not really the vibe I'm trying to give off. That's right. Did it work, by the way? I think so. I think so. It's a little bit down the road. And in general what I do is, like, set the golf ball on the tea in the meeting, and then afterward, that's when you try to hit the golf ball. You send them to ask. I see.

But here's what I want to also to talk about. Last night, I had my cabbie was, had been driving in LA for like 50 years. Right. And so I asked him, like, what are your weird cab driver stories? What's your takeaway? And he just, like, unloaded on me with some weird cab, like, stories of people he's driven around over the years. Yeah. And you know what occurred to me in the midst of those is that, like, I could be way

weirder. Oh, yeah. I mean, I agree. And it's important to remember that, like, whatever it is that you said to the cabby that you, like, think about at night, the cabby doesn't think about you because there's so many weirder people. There's weirder things. And like, and it almost made me kind of want to be a little weirder.

No. No, I asked him like, what are his best fares? And he gave me stories like every one of them was so, I asked for best. And he gave me weird. Right. And I'm like, I guess it's just the ones that are the best stories. Right. And so part of me is like, I should probably be a little weirder.

Yeah, to be a best fair. But you have to understand that being a best fair and being a worst fair are precious close to each other. And different for different cab drivers, I'm sure. That is a thin, thin line. Oh, yeah. So you've got to be careful there. But I'm not going to be. I know. You're going to be weird.

I'm going to get in the cab, and I'm going to get in the front seat. I'm going to sit next to him and be like, Rhett McLaughlin told me to take it down a notch in my dream. So I'm taking it up three notches in your cab. That's just the energy that a cab driver wants, Hank, after a long day at work. You know who Red is, right, from YouTube? You know, Rhett? Of And Link.

All right, we've got another question from Abby who writes, Dear John and Hank, how do I feel sane in a world where it feels like everything I see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda? Oh, Abby, everything you see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda. I like to think of myself as a well-read person who does their research, but I'm struggling right now

to find the truth in a sea of disinformation. I'm too tired to think of a sign-off Abby. Now, I know you have important feelings here, Hank, because you feel like the trust in institutions and in trustworthy people is undermined by the structures of the Internet. Oh, I do. I know you do.

I do. And you're right. You're right. But you're also wrong. Okay. Because this was always the case. There was always a motive in an agenda. Every newspaper had a motive in an agenda.

It had a motive in terms of whose op-eds it published and whose it didn't. Every CBS Evening News had a motive or an agenda. There was never a time without motives. We all have things driving us. Yeah, exactly. I don't know that free will exists. Well, let's not get... Abby did not actually ask about that.

But that's more of a... Hank Green question? But that's like underwriting all of it. It's like everybody's got all, like making all these choices. I'm like, are they? Well, okay. All right, let's try to go one layer up from that if we could.

You freak? And maybe just talk about Abby's particular question, which is how do you find the truth in a sea of disinformation? I mean, we could look at a situation and be like, okay, well, the news isn't going to publish a story unless a bunch of people want to read it. So why would I believe that the news is telling the truth when I know that they're just trying to get people to read stuff?

Right. Like, when we look at layers of incentives, if there's, like, a person on Instagram who's, like, brand new to getting attention on the internet, they might actually, to the average person, seem like their motives are more pure, but actually, like, they're not. They have the same incentives

to get people to look at the stuff that they're making. And they also... They might have fewer guardrails as well. They probably have way fewer. regard rails, especially because it doesn't really matter to them, like they don't know how close they are to getting something wrong and having their reputation ruined. And also, like, their reputation won't really get ruined if they get something wrong because they're just a person. Right. Whereas structures, like a newspaper. The CDC's website. The CDC's website,

the BBC, you know, SciShow, like, like things that have things to protect, they have this incentive to not mess up because people take it really seriously when they do mess up. But they will still mess up. But they will still mess up. Because that's the nature of being made out of humans.

Yeah. But I think that there are institutions that have stronger incentives to not mess up. And so we should look at the institutions that have strong incentives to not mess up.

And then when they're like slow or they're not focused on the, they're not focused on the same things that everybody else is focused on. it's because, like, they have an incentive to be a little more stodgy. The only thing I'd say about this, Hank, is that you can't trust the CDC's website the way that you could trust the CDC's website five years ago. Oh, yeah, now.

There are ways that the CDC's website is actually unreliable. And so if the institutions that are the sort of paragons of reliability, the place that you tell people to go to get information you trust are not trustworthy, I understand Abby's question. Oh, I understand the question. It's so hard. It's really hard. This probably isn't Abby's problem, but, like, in general, we have right now a much easier time trusting individuals than we do trusting institutions. And I think that individuals are actually usually worse. I know that that's the case for me. Like, I know that I, when I make a video, like, size show catches more flack than I do, but they work much harder on fact checking than I do. Right. And I'm like,

this is, like, really disappointing for me. This is, like, kind of scary that, like, it's so much easier for individuals than for groups of people when groups of people do a better job. And, like, not perfect. Like, surely mess up, yes. But, you know, I don't know. Well, it's a good question, Abby. We don't have a good answer.

How about this question? From Amy, who writes, Dear John and Hank, can you please tell my 12-year-old son to stop listening to you under the covers and go to sleep. No one listens to mom, Amy. What's your go-to bedtime song, John?

Amy, I wish I could do that, but I can't. Because I don't want your kid to go to bed. Amy, I wish I could do that. But I can't. But I can't. What's the next one? Because...

Because... I need... I need... Your son... Your son... To listen to my podcast. To listen to my podcast some more. Here's the ads.

Because that's how I get paid, Amy. That's how I get paid, okay? How do you think I cover myself in those dear Hank and John riches with your 12-year-old son's ear attention? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Amy's 12-year-old son. Amy's 12-year-old son,

the literal source of all income for this podcast. Rocking out under the covers. I hope that it's not freaking you out too much over here with the various existential dreads. This podcast is also brought to you by seagrass. I don't know why. It just felt right. It wasn't apropos of absolutely nothing.

No, it wasn't a callback in any way. And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the CEO of NVIDIA, the CEO of NVIDIA, having Panacotta with the King. And this podcast is brought to you by my cab driver, who's been driving around Los Angeles since 1976. He did not use the GPS. He took me right to my hotel.

I just told him the name of it, and he went to it. It was amazing, and he's retiring this Christmas. Well, congratulations to him. Yeah. Are you going to retire? Never. When I'm his age, he was 80. I was like, my God, man.

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Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E-D-C-E-D-R-Hank. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash jeer-hank. All right, this question comes from Catherine. He writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently gave up social media. No bragging, Catherine.

Classic Catherine Bragg. I recently gave up social media and, and I've taken to scrolling through Wikipedia when I'm having difficulty sleeping. What a great solution. Sure. My latest deep dive has been the flora and fauna of the myocene epoch.

Epok? I kind of went halfway between. That's, you know, I don't know. I noticed that various epochs have different lengths of time and it got me thinking, how did we decide how long each Earth-Eon era

period epoch, etc. is? Who chose all the geological time scales cutoffs and why? Uncreative sign off, Catherine. Now, Hank, this is something I know a little bit about. Yeah. Because it turns out that if you really want to piss off geologists,

you should call your book the Anthropocene Reviewed. And you should say that the Anthropocene is the geologic term for our current historical moment. They do not like that. They don't like it. They don't like it. I think that there's a good chance that we are at a transition

and that this will be a new... That is certainly my contention. Yeah. But I'm not a geology. If there's one thing I've learned from the geologists, it's that I'm not one of them. So the answer to the question, who chose these things and why?

Here's the answer. People, and for a good reason. Well, the answer is people, right? There is like a literal group of geologists who decide these things. Yes, and they had to vote on whether we're in the Anthropocene. And they were like, not yet. That doesn't count.

Not yet. That's not a thing. Maybe soon. I mean, these transitions usually are thousands of years between the epochs. Right. And so it would be ridiculous to call us in a new one when it's only just begun.

Well, the thing is, the Holocene is not that old. Oh, okay. And so they're like, you can't start a new one? So we're currently, according to the geologists in the Holocene. Yeah. Which started at the end of the last Ice Age. So it's only like 12,000 years ago. Right.

Well, maybe they were wrong about that one. That's my contention. That one should be... They should just bump that one up. Renamed the whole thing, the Anthropocene because we were doing... Yeah, we were doing significant interventions into the landscape 12,000 years ago. Oh, yeah. We hunted woolly mammoths to extinction, et cetera?

What are the contentions for the start of the Anthropocene? Because there's this one that I have thought of that's like a real weird one. I think one is the explosion of the first nuclear bomb. Oh, okay, sure. Because that's a moment that had some real geologic impact. You know, a lot of things floating around these days have a little more radiation in them. That's one I've heard, but I've heard a bunch of them. I feel like you could do it at a number of different points when it's like,

like, oh, we're having a big impact now. The thing about the radiation is it's going to be very visible. Right, for a long time. In the geologic record. So the answer to why is that there are always these big changes. There are big changes. Big changes. They matter a lot.

The comet was a big change. Remember that big comet? Like it was yesterday. Yeah. Well, I mean, geologically, it sort of was. Not that long ago. Only 250 million years ago? What was it?

No, 64 million years ago? Yeah, 65, 66. Functionally yesterday. Yeah. You know what I think about sometimes? You know, at the end of the ice age, when the glaciers were retreating and there were these giant lakes, glacial lakes, like my town was under a big lake?

Yeah. There would be these ice dam breaks where these giant lakes, like the size of the Great Lakes, would suddenly outflow to the ocean. Wow. And they would be, you know, you'll, like, see a huge boulders that were carried down by these ice flows that are, like, still standing there to this day.

And I think about, like, that people, because this didn't, like, happen regularly. It happened like every few hundred years. Right. And so they just like have set up their lives and then suddenly just like a wall of water and like every one they knew. And all of their collective memories.

Are all gone. Yeah. Or if anybody survived they would be like, if like a small community survived they would like tell that story for hundreds of years and be like this weirdest thing happened. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I think about? I think about the little stand of forest behind my house. near my house that has been there for since the last ice age. Hmm? 12,000 years. Continuous forest. Just doing forest stuff. Just doing forest stuff at it?

And all of it would still be forest, except most of it is Indianapolis and McDonald's. Well, I think McDonald's is also Indianapolis. Well, my point is that most of it is McDonald's. Oh, that particular stand is mostly McDonald's now. Yeah. Oh, okay. And it's a crown liquors as well.

Okay. It's got a liquor store, Domino's Pizza. Is there a pet store next to like a Christian bookshop? No, but that's a deep cut. It's a reference to a story I wrote in a high school that nobody listening to this podcast has read. No, that can't. Not available.

No, no, the only copies have been burned. It only exists inside Hank's memory. It was called Rosenthal Square. It was about a mini mall where there was a Christian bookstore next. And they were all squatters, remember? Yeah. It was a Christian bookstore that was next to a pet store. I don't think I knew what a squatter was.

Yeah, they all, none of them had leases. or anything. It was an abandoned mini-mall that they'd turned into a commercial enterprise. It's a pretty funny bit, actually. It's not a bad bit. You could bring it back. Could I? I mean, I'll tell you what, I never abandoned an idea all the way. Yeah. I've had this idea for a story for here

that's a sequel, a sequel to a book that doesn't exist. And these characters like, the characters like survive the book and enter our world. And I can't let go of that, even though I know it's not a very good idea. And well, I mean, it is a very good idea. that's the problem. Right, it's a good idea that I can't execute. It's just so much idea.

There's so much idea in that idea. There's too much idea in it. It's like vampires in high school. Great idea. Almost too much of an idea. That works every time. What do you mean? As far as I'm concerned, it only worked once.

Twilight. Buffy? Buffy? Buffy works twice. Some people call it the poor man's twilight. Anyway, let's move on to this story from Sophie who writes, Dear John and Hank. When were chairs invented?

We must have been sitting on rocks and logs since lizard times, but when we're chair, lizard talks, this is a great phrase. Yeah, there weren't any lizards sitting on chairs, that's for sure. We must have been sitting on rocks since lizard times. I mean, to be fair, lizards do sit on rocks. Yeah. Yeah, since lizard times.

When were chairs, as we know them today invented, when does a structure you've decided to sit on become a chair? Oh, no, we're not going to go there. We're not going to go there. Pumpkins and sitting penguin, Sophie. Yeah. So, Hank, this is wild. It wasn't until the 1950s.

It's true. They did not do chairs. We actually had an atomic bomb before we had a chair. Yeah, all those atomic scientists, they all sat on rocks. Or they did squatter. Like warm rocks, like lizards. They all had hemorrhoids because their diets were so bad. Is that true?

So they sat on warm rocks. Wow. Fascinating. That's not true, Sophie. None of it. Just in case you weren't sure. The first... I actually don't, I can't confirm or deny whether the hemorrhoids thing is real.

Yeah. They didn't, I don't think they wrote about that. No, it wasn't covered in how to make an atomic bomb or whatever. The Christopher Nolan movie. Oppenheimer? I love that you called that the Christopher Nolan movie. I couldn't remember what it was called. Not the Oppenheimer movie.

Somewhere Robert Oppenheimer is absolutely spinning in his grave. That man needed nothing more than for you to know his name, and you didn't know his name. It's literally the only thing he wanted out of the world. Yeah, and you don't get it, not from me. Lizard Man, Warm Rocksitter. So 4,500 years ago, we have evidence of chance. What? Did you Google this? Yeah.

I don't believe him. I did. I don't believe him. You could Google it while I talk about it. I looked this up. 4,500 years ago we have evidence of chairs in ancient Egypt. But interestingly, chairs have been invented independently of each other several times. So the Aztecs had chairs.

The Egyptians had chairs. The Northern Europeans had chairs separate from the Egyptian chairs. Frustratingly, this is correct. I don't know. I looked it up. You're doing the work out here. I'm out here doing the work, Hank, answering Sophie's question,

like a proper podcaster, which I totally am. So convergently evolving into chairs. Same thing with agriculture. We invented agriculture repeatedly many different times in many different places. Fabric too. Fabric as well.

Oh, man. Humans are weird. Humans are super weird. Let's answer this question. What did we do? How did we make the chairs? Why did we need chairs? We couldn't.

Squatting's hard. And sitting, ow, my butt. Sitting is better. Sitting is better than standing. Yeah, yeah, but like just sitting on the ground. Yeah. No, you want a nice, comfortable sit. That's why we invented chairs.

Man. And it's been a great invention. Good job. We're in a room right now with three different people who are sitting in chairs. Four. I can't see the fourth. It's some way it's back there.

I don't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, five. Five. There was a surprise fifth person emerged from the ether. It's dark. It's dark back there. There's big lights.

As for what makes a chair a chair. Yeah. There's a Michael Stevens Vsauce video about this. Is there really? And you can be like, oh, it turns out chairs don't exist. Of course. Well, nothing exists if you dig deep enough. Well, it's not just that they don't exist, it's that you...

There isn't a definition for a chair that works. Well, neither is there a definition for a sandwich that works. Exactly. That's why we have hot dogs and debates. Yes. Words, man. Categories are problematic. They're really just there to be useful and they feel like they're there to be definitive,

but they're just there for when they're useful. Almost everything that feels like a dichotomy is, in fact, a spectrum. But let's move on to this question from Courtney before we get to the all-important news from Mars and ASC. Wimbledon, who writes, John. Just John. Oh, weird. My favorite kind of question. I was just watching the video you made in the Philippines about tuberculosis.

How do you visit places with so many folks with active TV without putting yourself at risk? Do you take preventative meds when you travel? Also, on a more personal level, how do you manage your own fear of contamination on those trips? Yes, it's spelled like the Kardashian-Courtney with a K. Well, how else are they going to be all K's... K. Kardashian. I don't, it doesn't have to be that way. Oh, it did. They could have

been named normal things. They are named normal. What did you just say to our friend, Courtney, who listens to the podcast every week? That's normal. What's not normal is like giving your kids a letter that they all have to be. Like giving your seven kids all naming them like James, Jim,

Joey, Jamel, and so on? Well, look, now it's fine. I think maybe I have something in particular against the Kardashians. I think that's what it's about. I think you have some Kardashian bias that you need to work on. It's because of what they did to Bejure. What's Bejure?

Where the Bajorans are from. Who are the Bajorans? Laser got it. So that's the only important thing. This is a Star Trek reference. Oh, okay. There's a species called their Kardashians. Oh, Jesus.

They did unethnic cleansing on the planet of Bejure. Okay, well, that, I mean, the expectation that you had that people were going to be able to get that reference is not quite as bad as the expectation. you had that people are going to get the reference to a story I wrote in high school that literally no one can read. But it's almost that bad. Courtney, to your question, I do not take preventative meds. There really, there is preventive therapy for TB, but you only take it. Do you take anything for like various others? No, I mean, sometimes you take malaria meds

if you're traveling in a high malaria community, but like, no, not really. And I make sure my vaccines are up to date, yellow fever, all that stuff. But you're taking on a certain amount of risk when you meet with people, but like not a high level of risk. I wear a mask if I'm talking with someone who has active TB, but you're not taking on a lot of risk. And the thing I remind myself of is the people who are really taking the risk are the people who live in a community that has a high burden of tuberculosis. And that is a risk that they're forced to take. And so the risk that I take is minuscule compared to that. And it doesn't really, and so I, and my OCD is well enough, is treated well enough

at the moment, so that that's not a big problem. Is there an amount of a lot of people have TV, but it doesn't get active if you are living, if you have enough food, if you... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So between a quarter and a third of all people have a TV infection on Earth, but

most of them will never get sick. And you're right that the main risk factor, one of the main risk factors is malnutrition. So about a little over half the people who get active TB this year will also be malnourish. And so, diabetes is also a big risk factor, HIV infection's a big risk factor.

So there are risk factors and I'm relatively low on the risk factor scale, so that's another thing to consider. But in general, it's like being with any sick person. It's so easy to make people feel othered and marginalized and pushed to the edge of the social order

and that's the last thing that I want to do when people are generous enough to be able to talk to me about this highly stigmatized illness. And so, yeah, it's not a big deal to me. Do you, I hadn't thought about this, but now I am thinking about it. How hard is it to be writing about this topic that is pretty complex and has a lot of experts in the field? How worried were you publishing the book? Pretty worried that the experts would be like this guy's...

Yeah, just some guy? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's why I had a lot of experts read the book, Hank. But yeah, I mean, I definitely worried that they would be like, this guy's just some guy, and this book isn't that deep. but it was not intended to be that deep. If you want a deep dive into TV, there's lots of books. My hope was to make something

that would appeal to a broad audience. Yeah. But anyway, that's the answer to that question. Maybe we should do one last question, Hank. Okay. You got anything? Oh, we have an important correction to make. Okay. Oh, man. Oh, no.

Hank, this is a classic Hank Green error that you made. Oh, God. Dear Brothers Green, in last week's episode, Turtle Etiquette. Turtetiquette. Turtetiquette. Someone wrote in with a question that ended, what organs do we actually need?

And after some debate in which various organs were deemed necessary or not, Hank proclaimed brain, heart, lungs. John followed up with, I think you also need a kidney long term. And I agree that all those organs are necessary, but you missed the largest of all organs. Skin. Yeah. No.

Fine. That is a mistake that you made that you need to be contrite for. Fine. Fine. Now, Hank, this is your whole problem. Skin is very important. Your inability to show contrition when you're wrong. Well, it's just that...

Is it an organ? I know it's an organ. Google it. It's the largest organ. It's the largest organ. It's an important part of the immune system. Temperature regulation, very important, sweating. Yes.

It's a very good sweater. Dana. Full of sweat holes. You were right, and Hank was wrong. You were right, I was wrong. Dana has, for some reason, included this cute picture of penguins. Dana hugging a penguin. Yeah.

It's not a real penguin. Yeah. But inside that penguin, do you know who's in there? Hmm. Jensen Huang. Okay, one more question. from Nella. Then we'll get to the news from Mars and As You Holden,

which is the reason everybody comes to this podcast thing. Yeah, of course. Nella writes, I'm listening to Episode 392. My first language is Spanish. What is Salingering? I am writing the word as it appears on the transcription. I used to think I was good at English. Nella.

He made that one up. Don't worry. Yeah, Nella, you are good at English, very good at English. I just made up a word. So there's this writer J.D. Salinger who had a public life. He was the author of this book, The Catcher in the Ride,

that became a very popular book in the United States. And, like, it became a complete phenomenon. And then he disappeared, sort of, into a semi-reclusive life. And he no longer had a public life. He had a very private life for the last, like, 60 years of his life. And when I refer to Salingering, I refer to me leaving behind my public life for a private life. Yeah.

What did he do? They go to parties? He wrote a lot. He taught at a high school, and he wrote a lot. He wrote a lot about Hinduism. Did he have to tell? Did he, like, people, like, come and try to get him? Oh, yeah.

Like, at his class, in high school? You know, people were very protective of him in his community. In the same way that people are fairly protective of me in Indianapolis. Yeah. I once had somebody come to my house, and they were like, I thought you lived here, but when I asked one of your neighbors, they said you didn't. And I was like, oh, it was very nice of my neighbors. And maybe

You should have taken the hint Yeah Well, they were invited to my home Oh, oh, okay They didn't come to my house No, no, no, no, no, they were invited to my home Okay Which is important, very important distinction

Yeah, yeah, this is, everybody should pretend to be a vampire You can't come over unless you're invited That's right That's not sure exactly how that's like being a vampire That's a thing, you're not allowed to come in Vampires can't come in unless you invite them Oh, I didn't know that That's one of the many lawyers

Yeah. But I don't know. Probably not consistent. What happens to them? They turn to dust? They just can't walk. There's like a barrier. Oh, that's kind of nice.

Yeah. Not that familiar with vampire war, I have to confess, except that it all does boil down to tuberculosis. Of course it does. You know? Bloody mouths, white skin, pale skin, all that stuff. The Cardassians as well. Were they vampires? All based on tuberculosis.

Is that true? Sure. Okay. Let's move on. The news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon failed to lose a football game for the first time in a while, which is great. However, they also failed to win. Yeah, but they succeeded in scoring a lot of goals. They scored three goals.

And each time they scored one of those goals, it made them in the lead. It's true. They went up 1-0, then they went up 2-1, and they went up 3-2. But sadly, each time they scored, how do you know all this of the EFC Woodland? I looked at the little piece of information that Google gives me. It tells you when the goals got scored. Marcus Brown scored a great goal. Ryan Johnson scored a great goal.

Danilo Ors he scored a goal and Wimbledon should have probably... But that one wasn't great. That one was that great. Actually, it wasn't that great. It was just kind of poked it in from two yards out kind of thing. Got it in there. Obie doesn't listen to the podcast. It doesn't feel offended. All goals are great.

All goals are good. Except for own goals. 3-3, the game ended. It was a six-goal thriller. 3-3. 3-3. That's a big score line for us. It was away from home against a pretty good team, Huddersfield. I'll take it. I'll take it all day.

Huddersfield were in the Premier League, not that long enough. They make those good turkeys. Do they? I think that's an American company. The Hutter writes. Oh, okay. Hank, your references in this episode have been way, way too narrow.

Just for clarity, I've recorded three episodes of Asking Anything. I can tell. And we rolled straight into this. Yeah, well, so I'm scraping whatever I got off of the gray matter here right now. You're doing a great job. What's the news from Mars? Well, in the news, In Mars, we've got lightning.

I heard! There's lightning, there's Mars lightning. Mars lightning. So there's wind on Mars. We know that. There's storms on Mars. I mean, are there, there's no rain. There's dust storms on Mars.

Right, so how do you have lightning? And these dust particles, they rub against each other, and it moves the electrons around. And eventually it turns out probably lightning happens. Well, definitely lightning happens. They were using curiosity, I think curiosity, to detect by both the sound. Sound of lightning? Usually I have notes, but I don't have notes. I think that they could hear this sound,

and they also were, like, detecting, like, the electrical signals of the lightning. They detected something like 55 lightning strikes. Wow. Yeah. During one storm. I don't know. Okay. Maybe.

Very impressive that there's lightning on Mars. It makes Mars feel more, like, earthy to me. More like the planet. Also a little scary, but you know what? No fires. There's nothing to catch. Nothing to catch. I've been trying to figure out whether or not

a planet can have fire without life. Oh, interesting. Can a planet have fire without life? Because all the fire on Earth is life... It's pretty lifey. And also the oxygen on Earth is very important for the fire, and all that oxygen is lifey. It's life-ish, but it's not life necessary.

It was made by life. All the oxygen was made by life? All our oxygen made by life. Is that true? It is not a long-lasting molecule. I'm breathing oxygen that was made by others. stuff? Yeah. That's a little bit of a mind-blower for me. What? You, this is well, this is like elementary school. It comes from the trees.

I didn't pay attention in school. This is, this is great. I'm glad it's a good partnership. It is. We learn a lot from each other. There's a smart one and there's a, there's the other one. I don't know which one I am. Well, thanks for coming to our podcast. It was edited by Ben's sworn out and it's produced in part by Hannah, who's here. We do have a credit list, but it's not here. So we're going to cut to a version that we recorded a different time. You can email us at Hank and John at gmail.com.

That's where you can ask questions without those questions. There's no podcast. And if you want to see a visible version of this, there's the Patreon. At patreon.com slash do you're Hank and John. That money goes to support complexly, which makes Crash Course and SciShow and a whole bunch of other cool stuff on the internet. This podcast is edited by Ben Sword Out. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish.

Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chuck 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. I'm so tired. Well, now you have to record a vlog brother's video.

Is it a Perseverance Rover? It was perseverance? It was perseverance. Did you Google that? No, we'll leave that in the end. We'll leave that in the end. Yeah, we'll just edit that on to the end.