Dear Hank & John - 441: The Value of a Single Shoe

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

How has your relationship with your audience changed? What’s a good lie to tell my coworkers about my butt surgery? Has anyone ever tasted the moon? What’s the highest altitude we have ever recorded a cloud? How long do I have to sit in the bath to touch every molecule of water? What is the value of a single shoe? How do I handle the information that we might live in a black hole? …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/dearhankandjohnProduced for Hank and John Green by ComplexlySee 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. But welcome to dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your question, give you deuce advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you hear that if you listen to enough queen, that you can go crazy?

Oh, no. Yeah, they think it's the high mercury content. It's good. It's good. I mean, I don't want to rehash your joke, but I would say more that you can become very sick because it's not just mental illness that accompanies mercury poisoning. It's all kinds of illnesses.

But it seems more like a thing that might actually happen if you listen to a lot of queen. It could actually go crazy. And they do say that about the mad hatters. Okay, all right. They are mad because of the mercury and the hatting equipment.

John, by the time this comes out, this will be old news, but the new news for us is that we are finally announcing to the world that complexly is becoming a nonprofit. Yeah. And one of the things that I'd like as we shift things slightly is for the Deerhanging Johns to come out more in line with when they are being recorded so that this doesn't seem as crazy as what's happening right now. Yeah. Right now we're on like a two week schedule.

Two week minimums, which means that you're getting the AFC Wimbledon news, which I know you need piping hot a little bit cold. Yeah. Yeah. And the Mars news also. Yeah. And I know that that's why people come to the podcast think. And so it's hard for them. What if Artemis has launched. Like Artemis II might be on the way to the moon right now. I have no idea. We wouldn't know. The reason we decided to become a nonprofit for those who don't know, because I know some people don't watch our YouTube videos, which is fine. Don't feel pressure to. I know this because it turns out that our hit podcast is actually bigger than our YouTube channel that we always thought was much bigger than our hit podcast. So, complexly is the educational media company that makes crash course

and SciShow and Study Hall and Askank Anything and lots of other shows. And, It has functioned in some ways in the sense that it hasn't made a profit. Well, it has. So here's how it's functioned like a nonprofit. The owners have not been taking profit distributions. So when it does take a profit, we give a portion of that as bonuses to the staff and we take a portion of it and save it for a rainy day. And that's been that way for an awful long time. And like ever since audience support has become a really big part of Complexly, has felt entirely wrong to take profit distributions from it. Yeah.

So it's like, oh, the crash course coin did really well this year. I guess I'll just spend that on a Maserati. Buy a car. Right. And so that is not how that's been working. And then also another way that it's functioned like a nonprofit is that audience support is a really big part of the functioning of the organization as our grants. So in some ways, we're just enshrining what's been the case for a while.

Yeah. But in other ways, it is a big change. It's a big change for me personally because I'm not joining the board of directors. So I'm moving into a role as founder emeritus, whatever that means. We'll figure out what that means together. But it's also a big change for complexly because it means that now it is owned not by Hank and me, but by the public. I mean, that's basically how nonprofits work is that they are publicly held institutions.

So we're giving our shares and also the money that we have that's inside of the company. We're giving all of that to this new nonprofit record. organization. And we're also giving like up a lot of power. So I've not been the CEO for a while, but as owners, we have remained, you know, the controlling interest and we will no longer be that. There will be a board of directors that will have that power. And I will be on the board. And like part of that is going to be fundraising obligation, but also, you know, continuing to direct the course of the company. But I certainly won't be doing that alone, which I think makes sense. I agree. I think it's time. I think it's time for complexity to be a nonprofit. It's an unusual

decision to take a really healthy company and give it away, but it's not an unprecedented decision. There have been a number of people who've done this over the years. I think Patagonia did it, and they're much bigger than we are. Kind of in a different way, I think. But yes. But yeah, we just, we decided now was the right time. So that's the news from our world. The other piece of big news is that I went skiing over the weekend. Whoa! Yeah. That's huge news and you're walking around. Well, I wouldn't say that I'm walking around, actually. You've only seen me seated for a reason. I saw you walking for a second at the beginning when we were recording that you were moving from one place to another. I didn't know what was going on

there, but I don't know how quick you were moving. Yeah, so I've been skiing once before when I was 44. I'm now 48. And when I went skiing when I was 44, I had an instructor named Haley, lovely young person. No idea who I was. And the kids were with me, and we were all first-time skiers. And, you know, then by the end of course, the kids were like, you know, shredding down the hills and everything. And I was still very much in a pizza mode for those who've never been skiing. You initially learned by making a pizza slice with your skis. And I never really advanced past that. And then I went skiing with my friends and Sarah, all of whom were very good skiers in Utah this weekend.

And I mean, it was catastrophic. It was. There's no other way to say it. Okay. There was a lot of falling. There was one really bad sustained panic attack such that I thought for a while that Ski Patrol might have their first ever mental health call. Whereas like, look, I'm okay, but I'm not okay. Yeah, like I'm not getting down the mountain without you guys. I think that that actually probably happens fairly frequently. I've had those moments where I'm like, look, I'm not hurt now, but I'm going to be. And so either I'm walking or somebody's coming to get me. The preemptive ski patrol call.

Yeah. One of the things that makes panic attacks really scary for me is that I don't know when they're going to end. And in fact, I often don't know if they're happening or if I'm actually having a heart attack or having some kind of, you know, you just can't really differentiate your brain's too fried. And I'm trying to come down this mountain. and Sarah's with me. God bless her. She really, she really coached me down the mountain. She was my ski patrol.

And I'd fallen so many times that I, at this point, I was just going incredibly slowly, like, just inching my way down the mountain, stopping every time I could. Like, my whole body was shaking. Sarah kept being like, why is your body shaking? Well, it's just like, you're so high up. Like, there's so much more to do and you can see it.

You can see how much more there is to do. Yeah. I mean, there were my, There were literally miles to go before I slept. And so I kept thinking, like, I don't know how or when or if this is going to end, but there is no way out but through, to quote Robert Frost. Like, there is no way to survive this except to get to the bottom of the mountain uninjured. Yeah.

Which I didn't really do, like, my hip and my back and my neck are super sore today from all the falls. But I'm not like, I didn't break my leg. When you got down, were you like, this is ski lodge hot cocoa time? I mean, I got down, Hank, and I was truly, I was so drenched in sweat that I went to the bathroom, took off my t-shirt, and wrung it out. That's how much panic sweat there was. And it was not, I mean, it was a warm day, but it wasn't that warm. It wasn't like time to relax and come down off of your adrenaline high.

It was time to, like, go to sleep for two days. It was time to have a beer, to be frank with you. Yeah. I had a beer, and I talked it through. Sarah and I don't know if it's the last time I'll go skiing, but it's the last time I'll go skiing for a while. Sounds like it. Sounds like it. What's your ski experience, Hank? You live in, you live in ski country. Zero. Zero. Nothing. When we first moved out here, I did a little bit of snowboarding because I was like, let's get good at this. But the ski hill that's near Missoula is

really not for beginners. Okay. And oftentimes is very icy. So I went like four times. And the last time we went, it was so icy and so unpleasant. And I hurt my knee pretty bad. but bad enough that I was like, if that had gone another like half a centimeter in the twist. Yeah. You know, I'd have like a lifelong thing to deal with. Yeah, I mean, that is my concern about skiing. It seems like the injury risk is pretty high. Yeah.

And so I didn't do it again. But now Orrin is getting to the age where it's time for him to ski and all of his friends ski. And I'm like, oh, no, now maybe I'm going to have to ski. My hope is that like back in the day, we couldn't, we didn't have like the ability to get to a bunch of different ski places. But there's better places, not that far away. just like a couple hours away. For me, I mean, Sarah's a really good skier because she learned as a kid. And so I understand like it's a really fun thing if you know how to do it.

It's less fun if you don't know how to do it, I'll tell you. 48's pretty old, John. So then on the plane ride home, Sarah was reading a story that I'm working on. And she looked over at me and she said, you know, reading this is the exact opposite of watching you ski. What an amazing compliment. She was like, that's the blurb on the back of the book. You seem confident. You know what you're doing.

I feel very safe in your hands. John Green's writing is the exact opposite of John Green skiing. That's a great blurb. John, do you have any questions for me? I got some questions for you, Hank. I got some science questions for you this week. Oh, no. Yeah.

But let's start out with a non-science question about parissocial relationships from Ellie. He writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been watching your video since I was in middle school. I'm a working professional with a master's degree now. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about parasycial relationships and creator audience dynamics. From your perspective, how is your relationship with your audience and how you view it changed over time? Have you noticed things have changed since you first started sharing your work with the world? I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. DFTBA, Ellie. John, can I bust in real quick before we get to this question?

Yeah. Catherine has just won the local taco place sweepstakes to name a dish. What? This is huge. She's won a gift card and the name of what she calls, what she calls her go-to order, which is a burrito bowl in a box with a number of things on it. So it's a breakfast burrito bowl. And she calls it the sloppy box.

And she was like, oh great. And they were like, hey, like, name a dish. We'll put it on the menu. And she was like, well, I got one. And they have chosen the sloppy box as their dish of the month. The sloppy box is going to be on the menu at your local taco place. It's on the menu at the local taco place. Congratulations.

This is huge for Catherine. So if anybody in and around Missoula, Montana, if you go to Taco Sano, go in and get a sloppy box, hopefully it will still be February when this episode comes out. All right. So back to how our parasycial relationships have changed. I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed is that Hank is still willing to tell you what the name of his local taco place is. I really, yeah. That is.

I mean, how local. You know? They're all local taco places if they're in Missoula. I guess that's true. I guess that's true. You are like the mayor of that town. Every time I go out with Hank and Missoula, it's like handshakes and kissing babies. And yet, I'm not the mayor.

Thank you to Mayor Andrea Davis for being the actual mayor. Indeed. Doing the real work. John. Yeah. It's changed for sure. But like in so many ways that it's very difficult to even talk about. I agree. So there's like how I imagine them. There's how I imagine them imagining me. And then there's how I imagine me imagining you imagining me. So it goes all the way down. It goes infinite. I think the biggest change is that I'm much more cautious about what belongs to me because I know that once I share anything, it doesn't belong to me anymore. Also, like the biggest thing I think that I've come to more recently is have, have

diverse the relationship is. It used to really be that it was like nerdfighteria and that was it. And it could sort of reliably understand, like reliably envision how those people were understanding me. In 2008, almost everybody who recognized us was a nerd fighter and knew us from vlog brothers. Right. Yeah. And now it could be anything. Yeah. You know, it might be books. It might be podcasts. It might be crash course. It might be size show. It might like, it might just be TikTok. It's been so many different things. And like sometimes people will be like, hey, my friend is your friend. And it's like that's just like I'm expecting it to be, you know, internet, parasycial relationship, but it's just small town social dynamic.

Yeah. And so because it's very hard to know what people know me from, there's sort of like a escalating like nesting dolls of who I expect to be to a person. So, like, most people who know who I am know that I'm just, like, a science guy. That's your main reputation at this point. Yeah. Which is great. Like, best job ever.

But, like, I can get really surprised when people are not aware of other parts of my, you know, public persona, which is very public. Right. But that doesn't mean that everybody knows about it. Exactly. It's not their responsibility to go and watch every vlog brother's video or listen to every episode of this podcast and stay till the news from Mars and everything. Yeah. Like, sometimes people will be mad at me because I didn't. say something about like AI, for example. And they're like, Hank Green only talks about

AI from X perspective. And I'm like, that's just, I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. It's just that you've only seen one of the videos that I've made, but I've made lots of other videos. But like, they're not all on the same channel, you know? And they're not on the same platform, right? Like, I talk on Tumblr about things that I don't talk about on threads. And that doesn't mean that I'm not talking about it. It means I might not be talking about it in your space because I'm not comfortable with like the way the conversations are happening there. Or just by pure random chance, you know, it's like what I logged into right now. Right. The other thing that I think has changed for me is that I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be famous very, very badly. And I wanted as much attention as I could get and as much positive affirmation as I could get. That's what I wanted. And like that was true even before we did Flog Brothers, right? Like that was part of why I had a website in 2003 and why I wanted. part of why you were in a comedy sketch group. In college, absolutely. It's all of that, right? And so I... Do you guys believe John was in a sketch comedy group?

Like the least John Green activity of all time. He'll do anything! I wasn't a particularly good actor, but I wrote some okay sketches. I did not shine as a comedic performer, I don't think. I tried. I mean, I enjoyed watching... Like any young young, Hank Green, I always... was a fan of anything you were doing.

And so I, like, watched a VHS tape of that stuff. And I was like, wow, it's so good. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it does feel like the person who did that was a different person in the same way that it feels like the person who was a chaplain was a different person. But it feels that way because now I have such a different relationship with celebrity. Like, yeah, I mean, I saw it as merely desirable, as merely a positive outlook. come as the best thing that could happen to you. And now I don't. And that's like the biggest shift in my public life in my adulthood. Yeah. So, you know, that has very much changed the way

that I interact. I see it more now as a, as an opportunity, as to some extent an obligation, you know, that like having an audience is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a to do something, not a desirable outcome in and of itself. Which is an amazing learning and also very enabling and also hopefully not horrible. So if it's all obligation and not actually something you want, then like that can be tricky. Yeah, but I mean, listen, everybody has obligations in their professional lives. Yeah. It's not just me.

But is there pieces of it that you still of the fame stuff? that you still enjoy? There's no piece of being famous that I enjoy, really, but there are pieces of having an audience that I'm extremely grateful for it and that I really enjoy. You know, like, I love having an audience for my books. I love having, you know, I love seeing TB fighters flourish.

You know, I love seeing... Yeah, and you love, like, getting feedback on a piece of work instead of having it, like, toss out into the world and not get much back. Totally. I would even go so far as to say that as unpleasant as I find press junkets, it is worse when nobody wants to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. All right, Hank, let's answer another question. This one comes from Anon who writes, Dear John and Hank, I have to have butt surgery, and I do not want to explain to my coworkers why I can't sit at my desk for the two weeks following.

What's a good lie to tell them in place of the actual reason, which is that I'm getting a cyst removed? I've thought about telling them that I'm getting my tonsils out, but they'd probably noticed if I were to continue to eat normally. Maybe ear surgery? It's hard to lie to them, though, since I'm a researcher and half of them have doctorates, like MDs. Maybe I'll just hang out.

with the mice and avoid them. Anonymous. Anonymous, if they have MDs, they're used to butt surgery. It's not even a big deal to them. Yeah. Anonymous, it is good for the future of the world and the species if you can help destigmatize butt surgery by being like, hey, folks, I'm having butt surgery. You don't have to, but it is more than just a thing to say. It is also pushing forward the future that we want. Yes, it is bringing about a better planet for our species. Uh-huh, to be like I had butt surgery. That said, you don't have to do it, and I understand why you wouldn't want to. There are more embarrassing surgeries.

Yes, make it more embarrassing. This is anonymous, so I don't know all of the body parts that are potentially involved. Yes. But you could go more embarrassing. You could be like, oh, I'm sorry, I can't come to work for two weeks because I had my big toe lengthened. I've just always needed it. I've always been about a really bad relationship with the shortness of my big toe. I'm super insecure about it, and I've decided to finally do something.

I would just say, like, I like leaving a little bit of, I'm not afraid to leave a little bit of ambiguity in those, just to be like, oh, I had a little surgery, so I'm going to be out for a couple weeks. And then if they say what kind of surgery, you can be like, whoa, whoa, that's a weird follow-up. Yeah, I mean, that'll be interesting to see, because I think that I would not ask, personally, would you ask? I would not ask. Not only would I not ask. It was not offered. Nobody should ask.

Yeah. It's none of your business. None of your business. That's what I would do. I would just say I'm having surgery. A small surgery. I'm having a little surgery. Yeah. Yeah. But surgery, man. This butt surgery is such a pain in, oh my God. That was not. It is a pain in the butt. I did not say that it was a pain in the butt. But it's not being able to sit.

Yeah, not being able to sit is uncomfortable. You got to kind of stay on your tummy, I guess. Yeah, what do you do? What do you do a lot of standing? Yeah, or you can, I would spend a lot of time lying on my stomach, I suspect, because I do love a lie down. You could say, because they're doctors, you could be like, it's in the sacral area. And they'd be like, gotcha. I mean, according to Hank, you could say you're having upper leg surgery.

Oh, yes. Why didn't we get there sooner? Lower back, upper leg. somewhere in there. It's not the lower back for clarity. It is the upper leg. Well, I mean, where this cyst actually is might be the lower back. I just Googled it and I'm looking at it. And it looks lower back to me. It looks, it doesn't look upper leg. Oh, you're having lower back surgery. Lower back surgery. Yeah, that's no big, you're totally having lower back surgery. Yeah. And also that explains why you can't sit. Yep. That's your lower back. It's your upper butt,

but it's your lower back. I would argue. That that's definitely where I've located this cyst. It is definitely not a part of the legs, meaning it is definitely not part of the butt. Ergo, it's part of the back. So, problem solved. All right, Hank, one more question for you. This is from Mrs. Merbroat, who writes,

Dear John and Hank, I'm a fifth grade teacher, and while learning about the moon, a child asked me, what does the moon taste like? I'm sure it would taste like some sort of dirt, but it caught me thinking, has anyone ever tasted the moon? It would be inadvisable for an astronaut to take off his suit and try. right, but maybe somebody licked their gloves after coming back on the spacecraft.

My class would love to hear your thoughts. Mooney, thanks. Mrs. Mayor Broat. So we don't know why. Yeah. But we do know that. Uh-huh. The moon has a smell.

And it smells, according to astronauts, who have been to it, like spent gunpowder or like burned charcoal. Oh. So I don't know if that tells you much about its taste. I don't think that, I don't know that anybody tasted it. but it has a smell for sure. And usually when something has a very strong smell, and I assume the smell would have to be pretty strong

to get through the spacesuit and everything, usually after they were taking their spacesuits off inside of the capsule, but yeah. Oh, they could still smell the moon. Yeah. Yeah, but then by the time it got to Earth, it didn't have a smell anymore. That's a pretty strong smell, though.

So that makes me think that anytime something has that strong of a smell, it sort of overpowers the taste buds a little bit. So it would have to taste at least a little bit like burnt charcoal. Yeah, and I think that it's mostly made of, like, basalt. and basalt does not have a taste.

Okay. Or silicate. Yeah, various silicate minerals because it's crust. Yeah. So it's probably not a lot of taste. But you would still, as you were eating it, you would have the strong smell, which would be proximal to taste. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like the aftermath of a fireworks show.

It's not something I particularly feel like tasting. I once said this about a glass. We were on a wine tasting. I think you were there. And like mom and dad had taken us on a wine tasting. And I said, you know what this tastes like? It tastes like after a fireworks show. And they said, no, it does not.

Usually they try to yes and your tasting notes. But in that case, they're like, shut your mouth. That's not what it's supposed to taste like. You've sullied the reputation of this fine winery, sir. But it did. It tasted like gunpowder. No, it does not. I was like, oh, okay.

Is that a faux pa? I'm learning. I'm learning. Great tasting note, Hank. I thought I was like the best thing I felt like I'd noticed that day. Everything else tasted like grapes. Right. It all tastes like wine in my experience.

All right. This next question comes from McKelke, who asks, Dear Brothers Green. Probably mostly, Hank. I'm currently in an airplane. I'm 11,582 meters above the ground. Now, for Americans, that's like 35,000 feet. Yeah. Exactly. It's the height that you fly at when you're flying a long way. It's cloudy and I'm sad that I can't see the view. But these clouds are so uniform and flat on the top. So they must stop somewhere near the same place. What's the highest altitude we've ever recorded a cloud? And why don't they just float up forever? I'm currently imagining a little cloud that wants so badly to be an astronaut. Oh, it's children's book coming your way. Any science or otherwise is greatly welcome.

Rikelchi, John. Yeah. don't you think that the clouds can go all the way up? Well, first off, I'm surprised to know that they can even go up that high to 11,582 meters. Well, they can, but in this case, I think that Rekke is seeing them from above. Above, yes. And it appears that there's sort of like a uniformly flat cloud ceiling that prevents you from seeing the ground. And indeed, that is a thing that occurs where there's a point at which, above which the clouds kind of stop happening.

Right. And it looks like, you know, an endless pillow or something. Yeah. I would say this is because of the amount of atmosphere. That's right. Yes. So clouds famously made of water droplets, which are heavier than most gases. But they can float up when the atmosphere is fairly thick.

They can kind of float like feathers because they're really small water droplets. But they also rely on there being water vapor in the atmosphere. water vapor is fairly heavy. It is actually lighter than oxygen and nitrogen, which is why clouds form at all. So this is crazy. Water vapor is a lifting gas. If you put pure water vapor into a balloon, it will float, which is why water vapor goes up into the sky, and then at a certain point, it gets cold enough that it starts to condense, and that's what a cloud is. And you don't see the water vapor before it condenses. It is invisible. It is see through just like all the other gases in the atmosphere. One thing that's going to happen in general is that that water vapor is going to condense

when it gets cold and it's going to get cold up there pretty quick. It gets cold as you go up. But you can't have very high up clouds. They're instead of being made of dropouts, they're made of ice, but they are still considered to be clouds.

There's clouds called noctolucent clouds, and they start forming an altitudes of around 50 miles up. And you probably couldn't even see them easily if you're in a plane just looking up or if you're on the ground just looking up. They're very wispy, very thin clouds, and that's about as high as they will go

and they can't go higher than that because there's gravity. So the only, like, atmospheric mixing is basically what's pushing stuff to different altitudes. But eventually, you hit the top and you have mass. So you don't just float away forever. You stick to the earth. It's crazy to think that there are clouds that go up that high because I always thought that planes go up to pretty thin air. They do. We're talking about, I mean, seven, eight miles usually is how high planes fly.

and to think that there's a cloud 50 miles high is pretty mind-blowing. I guess, like, when I'm looking out the window of a plane, I can kind of see up, but I can't see up as if I had a windshield, you know, because you're like looking to the side and up. Yeah, you can still, you can see up. You just tend to not because there isn't a lot to see up there. Yeah, I tend to not look out the window because I tend to not want to be reminded about what's going on.

Oh, gosh, it's so cool out there. Yeah, I do sometimes look out the window and think it's wild, that nobody could, nobody ever had this view before 100 years ago. Like, this is a brand new human experience. You know the thought that I have when I look at a window of a plane? Hmm. Oh my God. We make so much corn.

Yeah. We do make a lot of corn. We make a lot of corn. We make more grass, which I think is pretty wild. We make more turf grass than we make corn. It's just like when you fly over the majority of America, it's just so clear how much, like almost everything is like turns to agriculture. So much land use.

Yeah. It's crazy. And all for feeding us and our animals and also sometimes our cars. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by feeding your cars with plants. Feeding your cars with plants known to not be that efficient. This episode is also brought to you by lower back cysts. Lower back cysts. That's not your butt.

Because your butt is your legs. Today's podcast is also brought to you by John's complicated relationship with celebrity. John's complicated relationship with celebrity coming soon to a bookstore near you question mark? And this podcast is brought to you by John's complicated relationship with skiing. John's complicated relationship with skiing! It was available on a mountain in America, but is maybe never available again. Yeah. No, it was a one-time thing. And thank God nobody recognized me going down that mountain. That would have been a double disaster.

Man, you don't want to be recognized amid your fragility. It's one of the lessons of life, I think. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. As you likely know, I have what the television commercials call moderate to severe OCD, and so I have many times experienced having a thought pop into my head that is so weird and so distressing that I just cannot move on from it. Like maybe you suddenly wonder if your headache means you have a brain tumor and then you're Googling symptoms for hours, or maybe you have the inexplicable urge to swerve your car while driving and then spend hours trying to figure out why you had that thought. Well, that's what OCD is like for many people. I have OCD, and for a long time I didn't know there was a name for what I was experiencing

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It goes with all my pants. I can go light pant. I could go dark pant. The only pants I couldn't use if I had the exact same color of dark green, because that was. look weird, but I don't have dark green pants. So this dark green sweater I wear it all the time, I feel like I look like Chris Evans, which I definitely don't, but I feel like I do. Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're not paying the brand markup. I don't know if you know this, but a lot of the major brands out there, they're working with all the same factories.

And so what if you just bought direct from that factory? Well, Quince gets you a step closer to that, just well-made clothing at a price that makes sense. Everything's built to hold up to daily wear and still look good season after season, which is kind of the whole point. And Quince only partners with factories that meet high standards for craftsmanship and ethical production so you can feel good about how your clothes are made, not just how they look. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash dear Hank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash dear Hank. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash dear Hank.

This episode is brought to you by Factor. So if you're anything like me, you'd like to eat better, and also you have zero time and zero energy to make that happen. I've been doing a little bit better, but Factor is so helpful. Because Factor doesn't ask you to do the meal prep or plan ahead, or watch an Instagram video recipe and then port it into a separate recipe app that is trying very bad to make you subscribe to use the features of the app, despite the fact that it's marketed as a free app. But don't worry, if you want to build a grocery list from your recipe, you can watch a bunch of ads, and then maybe it'll work. Not that this happened to me recently. With Factor, two minutes, real food, done. It's really that easy.

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customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. another question for you. It's from Zoe who writes, Dear John and Hank, how long do I have to sit in the bath for me to touch every molecule of water? If I take a 20-minute bath, will I exit the water having touched each water molecule at least once. The more you knowie, Zoe. You know, definitely you will not have touched. I think it may be infinite. Because one thing that's going to happen is that the water that's in the bath when you start is different from the water that's in the bath when you end. Right, because of the aforementioned water vapor. Yeah. So a lot of, not a lot. but a substantial number, like a huge number, not a great deal in percentages, but a huge number in absolute numbers of that water is the moment that your toe touches it, a bunch of it has already left.

And is floating around, getting sucked up into your vents, floating around the, yeah, it's just, I think never. Really? That's kind of disappointing. I was thinking that if you sloshed around enough, maybe you could at least get most of it. I mean, I still think, I think even then, even if you're just talking about the ones that don't evaporate, I feel like there's a really good chance.

It's just so many. Right. It's just so many. Yeah, I found it helpful when I found out that in a cup of seawater, there are 100 trillion viruses. And those things are pretty big. Exactly. Compared to water molecules. Exactly.

Right. Those are like complicated, arguably life forms compared to a water molecule. And so the numbers are pretty mind-believe. blowing. That said, you could touch a lot of water if you get pretty aggressive in the bathtub. You know what I mean? You just make a point of really moving around in there. I think you get most of them. I feel like I need a person who works in thermodynamics to answer this question for me. Okay. Well, maybe we've got someone, Hank. I would say, don't take everything I have said as gospel here. Hank, this is a dubious advice podcast. Nobody takes anything we say with gospel.

Molecules are so weird. Okay. That's helpful to know. Fluids are extraordinarily weird. Yeah, the two things Hank really doesn't know that much about are fluid dynamics and optics. I do have a hard time with both of those topics, which is, optics is actually a little embarrassing because it's not that complicated. But fluid dynamics, even people who study it don't understand it. Okay. That makes me feel better because I don't understand it. I remember reading the Richard Feynman essay about Brownian motion and being like, nope.

Ah, if only. You know? Yeah. No, God bless him. I think he did a good job. It's just like it wasn't for me. All right, John. I have another question is from Jen who asks. Dear Hank and John, I recently discovered that a friend knows a billionaire. Mr. Billionaire apparently introduces himself by saying, one of my shoes is worth more than your annual salary. Wow. What a, what a charming down-to-earth way to introduce yourself. I have been thinking about this for days. Yeah. I'm baffled by the suggestion that a suggestion that a single shoe has any intrinsic value, let alone precisely half of the value of the pair. I like that that's Jen's question. I've been arguing about this with Fran. It keeps me up and I may lose my mind. What is the value of a single shoe? Many things. May you always have more sense than money. And may your shoes come in pairs until we meet a Jen. Jen, beautiful question. Yeah. Yeah. It's not really where I thought we were going. No, it took a great.

turn because the I'm glad that you were able to see past the abject horror of how that person apparently introduces themselves. Especially because if I ever meet this person, it's going to be amazing. Because I'm going to say, actually, sir, I believe that the value of one of a pair of shoes is substantially less than half of the pair of shoes. So true. And as I have proven myself to be your intellectual superior, a male, you allow me to suggest some potential donations. Checkmate. Now we do have a writer friend

Josh Sunquist who only has one leg. He had autism. He had a coma as a kid. And he shares his pairs of shoes with... He's got his shoe buddy. He has a shoe buddy with a distant friend of his he met online who is missing the other leg and has the same size shoe. And I've always thought that is a great use for a pair of shoes.

but even Josh Sunquist, I suspect, wouldn't be willing to pay $30,000 for a single shoe. Or, I mean, first off, I mean, I have so many questions. How do you know my salary? Yeah. What is wrong? Like, genuinely, what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? What broke inside of you that made you buy a $100,000 pair of shoes and, like, thought that that was something to brag about instead of something to be deeply ashamed about?

Yeah. I've been to some fancy shoe stores, Hank. I'm not a particularly price sensitive person, but if you put a $100,000 pair of shoes in front of me, I'm going to laugh out loud. I'm looking. And from what I can tell, the shoes that get to this price, they don't come out of the box that price. They're like collector's editions. Like a Rolex from 1973 or something. Yeah, yeah. Like some like limited edition, Nike's that were made in 2002. I love the idea of just wearing Air Jordans and being like, my shoes cost more than your salary and me being like, those are Nike's. Oftentimes they are Nike's. Nikes are among the most collectible of the shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah. I fully support the sneakerheads out there. Maybe this guy isn't a billionaire. He just, like, got really lucky in 2002 and bought a pair of shoes and forgot about them in the closet. Right. But I would argue that if you've been wearing this shoe. shoes, if you wear the shoes regularly, they've got a decrease in value. It's true. That's true. That's true. But we're not getting to the Jen's actual question,

which is what is the value of one shoe? And I do, I do think that it's like nothing. If you have one of a pair of shoes, it's nothing. I don't think it's very valuable. It's certainly not half, right? It's closer. Certainly not if there has been a foot in it. Yeah, I'd say it's closer to an eighth. If you gave me, like, here's what I'd pay $5 for. I got a shoe I'd pay. I'd a hundred dollars for a single shoe. Okay. If you gave me a signed boot by the Montseradian messy Lyle Taylor, who helped AFC Wimbledon get promoted in 2016.

You're paying for a signature. You're not paying for a shoe. I do not accept. I do not accept. All right. Even if you gave me his boot unsigned, I'd still pay 10 bucks for it. Sure. You are still paying not for a shoe.

You are paying for a store. Which I guess would be the case with these. You're not, nobody's buying a $100,000 shoe. to cover their feet, Hank. They're buying a story. They're buying a narrative. And so in that, maybe he's walking around, maybe he's walking around with the cleats that Leonel Messi won the World Cup in.

Maybe he's squeezing his billionaire feet into those cleats. Yeah, yeah. In which case, in which case, one of them would be worth a lot. But if you broke up the pair, I'd guess if you broke up the pair of, like, Leonel Messi's World Cup boots. They'd be worth a lot. that in that case, they would probably be worth roughly the same apart as a loan. I think that, like, it would be about half.

They might be worth more apart than together. Because, like, two different people get to pay $50,000. Yes. But only, like, one person would only pay $75. Right. It's like those people who used to buy, like, the big Audubon books and then they just cut the pages out and sell them separately. Yes, yes, yes.

That is the only possibility I can see is that he is walking around in little mess. these World Cup winning boots. Yeah, but normal shoes, like my shoes that I'm wearing right now, somebody would pay, nobody would pay, no. Forget that. Nobody's going to pay for one shoe. I don't think anybody's going to pay two. Well, I mean, you can, I don't know.

I buy, I buy, occasionally I'll buy a used pair of Adidas from Goodwill or something. Sure, sure, sure. I think that these shoes I'm wearing right now specifically, people would not pay anything for. But I agree. You could buy used shoes and they have value. But if they're just like normal shoes, if there's just one of them, they have no value. Okay.

Wait, hold on. I've just got a new argument. Okay. What if they're made of gold? Sure, if they have actual gold in them. What if they're like 50 pound shoes? There's diamond studs. This guy walks real slow.

Big thuds. His name's Brian Johnson, and he's doing a new health thing. Heavy football. His shoes have to weigh 30 pounds each. And to get there, it has to be. tungsten and gold. Can you imagine gold shoes with diamond studs in them and just being like, my shoes cause more than your salary? I would be like, yeah, they're hideous. People say he's crazy, but he's got diamonds on the souls of his shoes. That's how, that's what it is. He's got diamonds

on the souls of his shoes. He's trying to cure his walking blues. And who can blame him for that? In that case, one shoe is valuable. I'll give you that. One shoe can be valuable in that. It's like, it's like the stealing that the stuff from the Louvre where they don't steal the paintings anymore. they steal the stuff they can melt down and sell for scrap. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think we got to the bottom of it.

This guy's got gold shoes studded with diamonds on the bottom. And I really want him to email me. Oh, I want to email me so bad. What's going on, buddy? We have some advice on how to handle social situations. Yeah. You're taking the wrong tack, my friend. Oh, Lord.

Oh, Lordy Lord. I said it before, Hank, but when you're a billionaire, it's incredibly easy to become a centa millionaire. And then when people are like, I don't like billionaires, you can be like me neither. I didn't like being one. I felt like it was weird. Felt wrong. So instead I just became unfathomably wealthy.

This next question comes from Ari who asks, Dear Hank and John, I was doom scrolling, and I found out that there is a very probable possibility that we live inside a black hole. Can we like talk about this? Like, what does that even mean? Is it black holes all the way down? What do I even do with this information? Beginning to go through an existential crisis, Ari. Ori, let me tell you, this doesn't change anything for me.

If it turns out black hole cosmology is real, that's the same. It's the same level of weird as the current situation. Yeah, I mean, first off, we live on a planet, which itself is very weird. We live on a planet that is orbiting one star that is one of hundreds of billions of stars in one galaxy, that's one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe that is probably infinite. So, yeah. I mean, things are real, real weird here.

And the thing that I don't think anybody has properly brought into their understanding of the situation, is that we've known that for like a hundred years. We've known it about as long as we've known that you can look down from the sky and see little ant people when you're in a little. plane. Yeah, like the knowledge that there are basically infinite galaxies, uh, brand new, brand new. Really, I'm so impressed that we're in a situation where we found that out and we're still doing, we're still like making it work, you know, we didn't all, we didn't all have a complete, complete meltdown. We're still paying the rent, you know? Like, we didn't, we didn't all just like

run out into the streets naked hysterical screaming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems, it seems, it seems, like Edwin Hubble would have been like, hey, so I figured out that not only are we like one of several galaxies, we're one of like billions, hundreds of billions of them, probably infinite of them. And space is so, so much bigger than we thought, so much bigger than we thought. And then we were all like, let's try and figure out like new ways of understanding the world. And we're still in that process, you know, still working through that knowledge. Why did God create all of this stuff if we're the whole point. Maybe we, in fact, aren't the whole point. What does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. No, I still think, I mean, look, we're only 200 years removed from

evolution as an idea, right? Like from the first hint of the idea that there might be an explanation for the emergence of life other than God. Yeah. That is also brand new. It's about half as brand new, but it's still brand new in the scheme of things, right? Like our species is 250,000 years old. This happened in the last 1,000th. Yeah, yeah. It happened in like the last 10% of Christianity. So like 90% of Christianity.

Last 1 tenth of a percent of human history. Yeah. So like even Christianity is very new. Christianity is very new. This is my big argument is about half the people lived before Christianity, about half the humans who have ever lived, lived before Jesus. and if you're going to make an argument that all those people go to hell, it's a very weird argument to me. That seems like a bad one.

It doesn't resonate with me. I'm not here to tell other people how to feel. But like that argument, it's a real problem for about 65 billion people. So would you like to know a little bit about black hole cosmology? Yeah, tell me. So there's this very weird, there's two very weird facts that I think black hole cosmology is reckoning with. one is that at the inside of a black hole, nothing makes any sense. So when you get to the singularity, all of our math breaks,

and so we kind of have no idea what that means or is. And so basically it could mean anything. I guess not anything. I'm sure that physicists would quibble on that, but math breaks. And at that point, who knows? So when you've got a who knows, it could be a bunch of different stuff could be happening.

Certainly then jumping to, well, maybe a whole new universe gets created it would be a silly idea to have. But also, when we look at the size of the observable universe and the amount of mass in it, when you do the math, I'm winging it here, so I apologize. It seems like that's about the density of a black hole, the size of our universe. And that's a weird coincidence. But there are a lot of reasons to think that this is not the case.

It's a very fun idea. I like the idea. It also, like, it would help explain sort of a multiverse situation where if we have a fine-tuned universe right now, we just like happen to be in the universe that has the conditions necessary for life and intelligent life to happen inside of it, that would imply that there's a bunch of other universes that have different conditions where other things are happening. And if a universe with slightly different parameters pops up every time there's a black hole, maybe that would explain why there are a bunch of universes, because there's a bunch of black holes. But also, you could. imagine a universe, like most universes, I don't think black holes would even be possible inside of. So that's weird. Cosmology is so weird because if we're inside of a black hole, that's the size of the universe. And there's a bunch of other universes that are, you know, inside of black holes, then there must be something bigger than that. Yeah. It doesn't solve the problem. It doesn't solve the problem. The problem for me is what started it and why is it so big that it's probably

infinite. Yeah, the weird thing is that it does appear to exist. Right. Yeah. Like the fact that there's, the weird thing is that there's stuff in the universe. Or at least there seems to be. I mean, I'm almost positive. There's stuff in the universe. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. There's some people who aren't quite so sure, which is very strange to me, but yeah, definitely seems very stuffy. Well, let's do the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon on that note. Okay. What do you got, John? Well, AFC Wimbledon lost again. We can't stop losing. We haven't won in January, but don't worry. also didn't win in December. And now it's February.

So lost to Bolton Wanderers, played better in the second half. I woke up at 5.30 in the morning in Utah to watch the game. And we played significantly better in the second half. If we play as well as we played in the second half for the rest of the season, we will stay up. But I don't know that we will. I will say that the two new players that NerdFiteria helped pay for, James Tilly and Zach Nelson, both looked very good. So that's good.

and it will be hilarious if for a second straight season, Nerd Vitaria genuinely and directly contributes to the survival of this football club. I was going to say, you know, all the players are contributing, but the reality is, if you're close to the bottom, you need all the players. Yeah, and at this point, like three of the 11 players have been brought in by us. Wow. Yeah. Did you get like a, I was on vacation or I was in England maybe and I feel like you got a message from somebody who's like, I'd love to support your football club.

I did, yeah. And I've reached out. Did you ask that guy how expensive his shoes are? I didn't. I should have. I should have been my first question. Hey, hey, buddy. How nice are your shoes?

What percentage of the average American salary is one of your shoes? Lovely guy. Yeah, but if you're interested in buying part of AFC Wimbledon, don't be afraid to email. me. John will write back to that one email for sure. All right, Hank, what's the news from Mars? Well, as you may have heard, Mars is very far away. Right.

And so sometimes we have communication lag, and that means that scientists can't drive around a rover in real time, which really slows things down. So scientists have to, like, analyze the data we have to figure out the best route for the rover and then send that route over to the rover through what's called the Deep Space Network, and then let the rover follow the plan. And that's been what we've done for 28 years as we've been driving rovers around on Mars. But on December 8th, JPL's Rover Operation Center

tested out a collaboration with Anthropic where they sent instructions that had been developed via generative AI and then tested on a digital twin of the rover. And following the itinerary, that rover drove around 807 feet and did it well. So it figured out its own path and it made its own decisions. And in the future, scientists at JPL say that these kinds of tools might help them find cool surface features to study and figure out other autonomous navigational tools for Mars rovers.

So if at some point these rovers become smart enough to make their own choices and decisions about where they are roving on Mars, will you try to convince me that there is life on Mars? Yeah. Wouldn't you just call that a human, you know, at that point? What was the exact phrase? Was it people or was it humans? Because people's different from humans. You're going to try to convince me that a semi-autonomous rover on Mars is a person? It's got AGI. It's got that digital god in it. See, Hank talks about artificial intelligence all the time. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. You can email us at Hank and John at gmail.com if you have a million and a half dollars to invest in AFC Wimbledon, but also.

So if you don't. This podcast is edited by Ben Swardout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halls, Rojas, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Dubuki Truck-Ravardi. 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.