Dear Hank & John - 444: Hank Brown

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Why are humans not transparent? If you lived on a moon, would you know it? What did cavemen dream about? How does Good Store work with other companies? How do you deal with the grief of having limited time left with your parents? …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. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Yours, I prefer to think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast where two brothers raspe you your questions, give you do beautiful advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC, Wimbled, and John. Yeah. Do you know who can have 10 liters of gasoline without getting sick?

A car? Jerry can. Good old Jerry. Hi, how are you doing? I am not doing good. I can tell just from your intro, it was low energy. It was raspy. I can tell that you're sick, which is weird because we were together yesterday and you were fine.

I was fine. I was fine. On my 24-hour flight home. Yeah, Hank and I had a really... A lot of things went bad on the way home. The first flight got delayed. I had to reschedule it, and then after rescheduling to a much... later flight. My last flight got delayed a lot. And we landed in Missoula at 222 in the morning

after having waken up at like 422 in the morning Montana time. Yeah, it was not an easy schedule flight day for you. I hope it didn't completely ruin the Caribbean vibes that we enjoyed because I really enjoyed giving me some time to get away and get off of the phone. Yeah, I really enjoyed you off of your phone off the internet. I thought you did a great job. You were truly detached. It was a beautiful thing to see. I really also enjoyed how you didn't get me off those pina colatas, but maybe I should have. Yeah. I feel like my immune system is just not up to it. Well, it is true. Maybe that was it. That now you can drink a little bit. You know, when you first got out of chemo, you couldn't drink at all. You were almost allergic to alcohol. And

now you can drink a little bit. And I did take advantage of that. There's no denying it. I was like the pinocola on a smoothie. There's rum in it, but there's also fruit in it. Hank was literally... And that's good for you. Hank was literally dancing in a waiting pool. That's how off the clock Hank Green was. And it was beautiful to see.

I would have done that sober. Well, it was beautiful to see regardless. Yeah. I made me really happy to be with you and Catherine and hope it was a good vacation for you. Sarah also. Sarah also. I mean, it goes without saying that I,

I'm with Sarah all the time. Okay. An island Sarah is a different person. Different lady. Yeah. Yeah. No, she's fairly, she's fairly abusive to me in my lack of having the kind of glasses I need. Oh my God.

Well, she feels passionately for good reason. For good reason that you, Hank Green, need progressives. Progressives. You can't name them that way. You can't call them progressives. You need progressives so bad. And Sarah started out by just saying you need progressives. And you were like, yeah, yeah, whatever is.

You took off your glasses and held a menu one and a half inches away from your face to read it. Sarah was like, maybe you should get progressives. And you were like, no. And then she took a brilliant strategy. She said, I think it would increase your productivity. And you worked up and you said, what now? Nothing can increase my productivity, John. I'm at max.

No, no. Getting progressives really would increase your productivity because it would make it so that you can read. I have my reading glasses for the computer. Yeah. So as long as I never leave this space, I'm doing great. Yeah, I'll tell you what, on vacation, you were direly in need. No, you're not the first person who said it to me. Yeah.

Yeah. I love mine. I thought I was going to take a long time to get. used to them, but for me, it only took like a couple days, and now I can read whenever I want. It's beautiful. Wow. That sounds magical. All right, Hank, let's answer some questions from our beloved listeners here at Dear Hank and John. All right, let's start with this question from Wren, who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are we not transparent? I know that melanin is probably part of the reason, but there must be more to it than that. I thought that blood might be a factor,

but those deep see-through fish that have blood too, right? Is being transparent to the default state, or did they evolve specifically to be transparent? Wish I could see my organs now and then Wren. That makes one of us, Ren. Well, we certainly have transparent parts of our bodies. What do you think is the most transparent part of your body, John? No, the skin on the inside of my wrist, I can see my veins through it. Close.

Okay, let me think again, my eyes. The inside of your eyes. Right. Very transparent. The light goes through it. It's not empty in there. There's a bunch of stuff. You're in there.

Yeah. Most of me. Most of what I consider myself, all the parts of me that aren't, the gut bacteria that do half of my thinking are in there. Well, just behind. But yeah. I can almost see the wheels of my consciousness turning, but not quite, which is probably a blessing. That part's definitely invisible.

Yeah. Nobody's found it. They keep looking and they don't find it. No, you can turn it off. You can't remove it with a tweezer. That's the thing about consciousness. You can remove it with propofal or just going to bed. That's true.

Well, you don't totally remove it by going to bed. You still have dreams. But with propofal, it's pretty removed. That's a different thing. Yeah, that's true. It's a different guy's consciousness. What are we talking about? Why aren't we transparent?

It's just the stuff that light does. And I will point out that everything's a little bit transparent, you know? You put like a one atom thick sheet of something down. Yeah. A little shine some light through that. Sure. There's space there. There's a bunch of space between all the nuclei, famously.

But we're not transparent in the sense that I can't. can't see my pancreas right now. Right. Yeah. But if you had a bright enough light. Well, in some ways, I mean, not to get too specific, but isn't that what a CT scan is? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, it's more of a more energetic kind of light with a different size wavelength. But yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's not visible light, but it's radiation. So we're transparent to x-rays, partially.

Partially. But, you know, it absorbs some, but not all of them. You know, I'd be interested to actually know how many visible light photons. I guess it would be zero. Like, it would get to zero. Like, there isn't a number that would get through. All the way to the pancreas, you mean? Yeah, all the way to the other side.

Right. But certainly there is, if you, like, shine a flashlight up to your hand, you know. Comes out the other side. Yeah, it comes out the other side. So I guess theoretically, if you had a bright enough light, some of it would come out the other side of your... I am wondering this. Yeah.

I'm curious. And now I feel like that may be a thing. I didn't think to search it beforehand because I was sleeping. Why'd you build the world's brightest light? Oh, I wanted to see through a man. Like intuitively, I feel like if you held a bright enough light up to a man, his back would glow. That's what it feels like. Intuitively, it feels that way.

But I feel like it might kill him. Yeah, that's certainly possible. Yeah. I mean, there's pieces of visible light that don't do any absorbing, that don't absorb at all. But they do bounce, they would bounce around a lot. So it wouldn't be like a straight through shot. You remember in the old days when doctors would get anxious about doing a clinical trial so they would just test it on themselves and their mistress who was named Hedwig? Yeah.

Yeah. That's what you should do with a really bright light, huh? Yeah, I just, I don't trust. I feel like if you're passionate enough to. and learn about this Wren, I feel like you're going to have to shine that light on yourself. Take your first burn child.

No. They do it to their kids sometimes too. That's true. They do it to their kids as well. And again, to their mistresses who are incredibly truly named headwig. As she was named for her wig and where she wears it.

All right. Let's move on to this next question from M who writes, Dear Brothers Green, if there was life on our moon, or really any moon, for that matter, would the inhabitants of that moon know they were on a moon of a planet, or would the moon's planet be the moon's moon? Moons and more moons, M.

Oh. So, Hank, if we, like, eventually we would have figured this out, right? Yeah, yeah. But I don't think cougars would have figured it out. I don't think Bobcats would have figured it out. I don't think any of the major cats would have known. They wouldn't even have figured out that the thing in the sky was maybe a, a thing.

Were we the first creature to think that the thing in the sky is a thing? I don't know. I think so. God, we're so underrated as a species. We're so weird. It's very weird. Now, there might be somebody who's going to come and be like, no, actually, dolphins know that the thing in the sky is a thing.

It's very possible. But I don't know. They don't know what's keeping the stars apart, though. We are very weird as a species. We have worked incredibly hard and collaborated across time and space for millennia now to figure out a lot of weird stuff. And the more we learn, the more the more we realize that all of all of that is not a function of the individual, but of the connections between the individuals. Yeah. And the great thing about being a person is that you don't just collaborate with the people you share the world with. You can also collaborate with people who died 500

years ago or 2,000 years ago or whatever. Like, this is, this is a, our ability to pass along and share information across time and space and death is truly impressive to me. Absolutely. Well, John, just a quick question. Do you think that it's possible that all of the connections between humans could be like all of the connections between the neurons and a brain and it could have like a kind of super consciousness that exists but we are unaware of? Where one super consciousness and the great thing about that super consciousness is that it doesn't

need to poop. It doesn't. It needs to poop a lot, though. It's either doesn't or it's always pooping. One of the two. It's like a camel with water. Like it just poops once every three weeks. No, because it's made up of all of the people.

No, it's not. It's made up of all the... Each of its neurons is poop. One of them's always pooping. At least, yeah. That's kind of comforting. Next time you poop, you can think I'm not alone in this endeavor. Yeah, no, I'm probably there.

Hank's always with you. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to get turned into an AI assistant after you die where people can keep talking to you, but I do, but only when you poop. I do not want to be turned into an AI after I die. That is terrifying to me. It's bad enough to be stuck inside of a body. Being stuck inside of a computer would be worse. Yeah, no, I'm into it. Hank Green is going to die, but Hank Brown will live forever. Okay. All right. Great. Great. Such a stupid joke, but it was so effective on me. Not as effective as it was on you. I mean...

No, I did. I did. I had I load it up for like a full 15 seconds beforehand. Like many of my poops. Hank, how advanced would moon people have to be to recognize that they're on a moon, not on the earth, and that they are in fact orbiting a planet? and get excited about the potential of that planet. So, like, if you're on Europa, how long would it take you?

Well, here's an interesting thing about Europa, because the life there would happen in the subsurface ocean. And so they would never know. They would never know about a world outside of their world. The thickness of the ice above them is too thick. It would feel like the ground beneath their feet. They might eventually create, like, ground penetrating radar and be like, after a long way, of being very hard,

the roof stops. Whereas after a long way of being very hard, the ground doesn't. It goes all the way through to the other side. But the roof stops. You guys, I think we might be on a ball. In a ball. Right. They might figure out that they're in a ball,

but there's no way they would figure out that they're in a ball that's orbiting a ball that's orbiting yet another ball that's orbiting the center of the galaxy. They'd have to drill all the way through it, which is very advanced technology. It makes me think... We don't have yet.

It makes me think that we are both very lucky to be on the surface of a planet. Probably very unusual. And also that there must be countless ways in which we are in the deep sea of Europa and cannot see X, Y, or Z... Just simply cannot know. Because we cannot know what we cannot know. That's just how I actually feel about. consciousness. I feel like that that information is very available and very understandable,

but but like simply we cannot reach it because we cannot see the ground for what it is. Hmm. Or the ceiling or whatever. All right. So if you were on the moon, just to take it away from consciousness. We're doing surface stuff now. We're okay. If you're on our moon, if you're on our moon. You can totally figure it out. It is extremely figure outable. It would not be the first thing that occurred to you, but if you got into the science game, you were doing a lot of transmission of information between each other and you were making your data available and you were trying to disprove each other, you'd figure it out on the order of after like that system started, you'd figure it out on the order for a couple hundred years. Okay. So you would figure it out pretty fast

once you were able to share information. Yeah, but I feel like getting to that point, like, oh yeah, it's very hard. Look, it took us, 275,000 years and we've only been doing it. doing it for like 400, 500 years. What do you think most of that was? Most of it was hanging out, Hank. Most of it was hanging out and eating. Most of it was making culture. Yeah.

Yeah. And we had very different ways of making culture. So we had like communities that enslaved people. And we had other communities that were extremely egalitarian. And we had all kinds of different communities. But what we didn't have was a system for sharing information across time and space like we do now with writing and reading. Yeah. And increasingly other.

things. Here's my pet theory. Okay. That the 275,000 years is what we needed to go from no language to language. And that at any point in that time, there would have been a thing that we would recognize as communication, but it would be much different from language, but it would be taking steps to word at the whole time. I think that we deeply underestimate how complex talking is. I don't disagree with that except that I think we were talking pretty early on. And my evidence for the fact

that we were talking pretty early on is we were making art. We were making art 40,000 years ago that was pretty good art. I think that you can communicate with, and I think that there's like versions of talking that are just very different from what we're doing now and less good.

And I also think that you can make art without talking. So what you're saying is talking, art is a kind of talking for clarity. Bayowulf is not as good as the fault in our stars because it was written so early when language wasn't as good. The only thing Beowulf has going for it is being first. Like vlog brothers. I mean, that is a...

Am I going to get in like Timothy Shalemay trouble for that? Yes, yes. You are going to get in Timothy Shalame. Nobody watches ballet level trouble. Your Oscar campaign. and has been doomed by a single misstep green. Yes, you are going to get in trouble. I mean, first off, clearly, you've never read Beowulf.

I have read Beowulf in college. And secondly, I just don't agree that language didn't get good until 500 years ago. I just don't agree with that. No, no, no, I mean 50,000, 100,000. Okay, yeah. It's just like throughout the process, it's taken a long time. Yeah. Well, in language must have evolved separately in separate places and separate places and

separate ways. And it wasn't a binary. It wasn't like we flipped a switch and suddenly there was language. It was, it's like language is changing, not just in form, but in functionality. Still. Yeah. For sure, language is still changing in functionality. But I don't think that language is quite as important as you think it is. I do think that it's very, very important. I think it's one of the great gifts that we have as a species. And I think that the fault no stars, is better than Beowulf to crash my own Oscars campaign. The only Oscar we care about lives in a trash can. What's the next question?

I mean, a thousand dollars cash if you win an Oscar and give that as your acceptance speech. And that's where this one's going. All right. We're going to stay on prehistory, Hank. Yeah. By the way, linguists who are the people I fear the most in the world. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

are going to have an absolute field day with your totally unjustified theory about language. Well, I don't know. I'd be interested to hear their thoughts, but I do appreciate you pointing out that it's totally unjustified. Well, you, we do you see. I don't want people to walk away thinking that I'm an expert on this topic. I am a man with a cold. There you go. All right.

My inhibitions are lowered by my lack of sleep. This question comes from Stella, who says, dear John and Hank, have been pondering an important question. We have all different dreams. and situations that we dream about. What do you think cavemen dreamt about? Did they dream about hunting, decorating their caves, fire? What new fun painting they were going to put on their walls? I genuinely don't know.

I think you guys have the answer. Thanks, King, sincerely Stella. First off, Stella, the first thing I'd say is that we have to remember that what we see of the life of prehistoric humans is inevitably biases us toward thinking about what they were doing. But, like, they may have been doing lots of things that just happened to decay other than painting, right? Oh, yeah.

There was a lot that they were doing. They were definitely making rope. They were huge part of it. They were, they were, they were, cordage. Cordage. There was a ton of braiding of various objects. Very useful, very useful tool. That's another, that's another one.

The language more important than cordage. I think they would dream about what they did during the day. And like, also I think they would dream about like their kids being safe or not safe. And I think they would, you know what I bet they had. I bet they had dreams about their teeth falling out just like we do. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's definitely deep down in there. Yeah, that's pretty rooted.

That's pretty, pretty young-y. Yeah. Rooted. Yeah. Not as good as Hank Brown, but it's not terrible. I feel like I have those dreams. Like, I would have dreams about my teeth falling out, even if I'd never heard of a tooth falling out.

Yep. I agree with you. I think there are some weird, I mean, there's some weird stuff in the wiring. that goes all the way down. Yeah. You can't grab it with a tweezer, but it's there. It's in there.

It's in the connections. Yeah, that's what I loved so much about your book, an absolutely remarkable thing, when everyone had the same dream on the same night. Oh, that was a good moment. That was such a cool moment. That was like one of those brain-expanding moments for me. I'm glad that you also enjoyed it.

We're obviously in our I celebrate myself and I sing myself era. What happens if you lower my inhibitions? I feel like I need to go back to the- back to the previous question and make it clear that I do not actually think the fault of our stars is better than Beowulf. Somebody like cut it up and be like, this and this is jerk. Look, Bay Wolf is way better than the books around it than the fault in our stars is than the books around it. Yeah.

Agreed. But I just think that we can do more now. There's, look. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I need to give Beowulf a second chance. I mean, in old English, it's almost unreadable, but that doesn't mean that language didn't exist or wasn't rich or wasn't complex.

That's not what I said. Okay. All right. I think we have more complicated ideas now than we did back then. Well, it depends on when you define back then. If you define back then as 100,000 years ago, I agree. If you define back then as 1,000 years ago, I don't agree at all. Okay.

And I think that a huge body of evidence is on my side. was. They didn't know what the moon was, but they knew what love was, not to get too cheesy about it. Like, they, they knew what, they knew all kinds of complex ideas about interhuman relations, and they knew all kinds of, you know, like, they had, they had fear, they knew about, yeah, they knew about the big grief. They knew about all the big stuff. And they knew about, you know, that we have obligations to ourselves, and to our families, into our communities that are sometimes in conflict, and they knew about honor and sacrifice, and they knew about all the stuff that we do. They just didn't know not the moon, which is okay.

It's like, whenever people are like... I'm saying if Beowulf didn't exist, hear me out, John. If Beowulf didn't exist and you wrote it now, would it be a critical success? Well, no, of course not. Although I will follow that up by saying that my friend Paige Lewis has just written a non-binary epic called Canon, C-A-N-O-N, that is an epic, like, is Beowulfian in certain respects,

and is brilliant because it's not attempting to recreate a thousand years ago. It's its own thing. Sure. I bet it's better than Beowulf. Well, I had more fun. Paige, you want me to blurb it? You want me to blurb it? Better than Beowulf.

I had a better time reading it. That is for sure. That is not the same thing as being better. Which reminds me, John, that this book is brought to you by Ken by Paige Lewis. It's Better Than Beowulf. Okay. Well, I mean, it is really good. Y'all should read it. I don't think it's out yet, so I think we're kind of prematurely celebrating it.

But we'll get back to it when it comes out, too. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Hank's linguistics. Hank's linguistics questionable. And this podcast is brought to you by Cordage. Cardage. It literally tied the world together. And, of course, this podcast is brought to you by transparent skin, transparent skin. A nightmare of its own making. Yeah, just shine that light.

You know who's invisible? Who? Hank Brown. Well, he's invisible for now. But maybe Elon Musk will make him a body someday, and he can walk around and talk to you while you poop. No, he has to stay in the bathroom. He's a little guy and he's on the shelf.

He's like elf on the shelf, but he's an AI that can be with you while you poop. Right. Because God knows there's no room for any form. You can't be alone. Of being alone with your thoughts for even three seconds in the future. He's also, he's going to be great for your anxiety because he'll smell the poop

and he'll be like, that smells so healthy. Oh, that's good. He's going to be a diagnostic tool as well as a companion. He's also very relaxing. He's very chill. Though when he does say, actually, I think I need to go to the doctor, that will be pretty freaky.

Yeah, but you know, you need to go to the doctor. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by, No CD. 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

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All right, let's answer this question from Melissa who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a fan of good. Dot store. I'm a fan of you, Melissa. Recently, I've been getting sun base and soap from y'all, and I had a thought the other day while using it in the shower. With the products that are awesome socks, which you make in-house, all the proceeds go to your work with partners and health, but with products like SunBas and Soap that are partnerships with other companies, how does that work? Are those groups making money off the partnership? Does that generate less money for the projects it's fundraising for? How's it all work?

Sox and Soap subscriptions, Melissa. Well, first off, Melissa, thank you for subscribing to both our socks and our soap. All the profit goes to charity. But to be clear, that's all our profit. Yeah, well, but to be clear, to be clear, SunBas and Soap is our brand. We invented it. Yeah, we invented Sun Basin Soap, but we do work with a company in Montana that makes soap. In the same way that we don't actually have a sock construction machine.

Sure. That makes So, yeah, there's a company in Montana that's run by a friend of mine. He didn't used to run it. He only recently became the CEO. And he was one of the first people I met in town because I went and volunteered at the nonprofit that he worked at. And so old Bud, good to have another reason to talk to him sometimes. And but, but there are actually products that are like we, for our eco-friendly cleaning products line. Yeah.

So Meliora is a company that is not ours. Sheets Laundry Club is a company that is not ours. And we basically buy their wholesale price. We get, we negotiate the lowest wholesale price. We can figure out how to negotiate. And so that that still super works. And you might even notice that those products are quite inexpensive, even though we're buying them wholesale and selling them retail.

Yeah. So we have multiple business strategies for each of our different businesses, but what it boils down to is that we don't do something unless the margins are good enough to raise money for partners in health or in the case of EcoGeek products,

the Coral Reef Alliance. Basically, we're just trying to run ourselves like a normal business. You always got a little bit of margin, and then that margin's going to go to your owners and our owners don't get the money. Our owners are essentially, I mean, this is how I think about it, our owners are fragile communities and ecosystems, not shareholders. And that's great because shareholders get plenty of profit. So basically, here's what the deal is. I have a brother who could talk a dog off a

meat wagon, right? Like Hank could sell anything to anyone. That's not true. I can sell good products. Yep. And I try... I can't sell a bad product. You can't, but you can sell a lot of good products. And I try very hard to orient that ability to sell it, to talk a dog off a meat wagon toward partners and health. That is my personal goal in life, is to just distract Hank in the direction of P.I.H. All right, Hank, it's time to take one of those typical dear Hank and John turns toward the bummers. Oh, boy.

And this next email is from Nicole who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm writing after the bummer episode, and I realize I may have messed up my timing because you've already done bummers. I'm 41 and my dad is about a year into losing his memory. It's painful. He's not himself anymore. I keep finding myself trying to be grateful that I've had him in my life as long as I have not sure it's that helpful. How have you both dealt with grief at different stages of your life? Do you ever grapple with the limited number of weekends you have left with your parents? I often hear you speak about how much time you have left on earth, but I worry more about how much time I have left with my loved ones. A nickel for your thoughts. Nicole. Well, isn't that a stab? I... Sometimes I feel like I am more worried about me than my own experiences, you know? What do you mean? I'm just worried about like the continuity of self rather than like what that will actually bring. Like your own death or the death of people you love?

I'm worried about like, I'm worried about like me dying. I'm not worried about like the limited amount of experience I have left. and optimizing for it and, you know. I'm certainly not worried about optimizing for it because I think a huge part of being in relation with people is just doing nothing, you know? Yeah, I don't like what, this is one of the great lies is like, well, you know, we have to have quality time

and I'm like, quality time is quality time. Yeah. You don't have to put a qualifier on that. It's all good. It's all quality. Yeah, it is quantity time is underrated, I think. And I say that as somebody who traveled a hundred, 110 days last year and missed a lot of quantity time and had some regrets about it. But I do think about

the fact that I only have a limited amount of time left with my parents. I mean, they're older, and my wife's parents are also older, and that will be a very painful time in my life when it comes, and I'm sorry that you're going through this. My friend Luna, who's now 16, my friend, best friend's kid, has lost two grandparents to dementia. And she told me once, with dementia, you do a lot of your grieving in advance. And I think that's true because you lose a person piece by piece instead of all at once. And that's really hard. But then there is also the final grief, which remains, I think, super intense. So there's no easy way to go through this stuff. I think the way to go through it is not alone. I'm a big supporter of the Alzheimer's Foundation here in the U.S.

because they do such a great job with support groups. So, Nicole, I would, if you can, I'd look into the opportunity to be with other caregivers because caregiving is sacred work, but it's also really, really hard work. And being able to talk through that with other people who know the experience from the inside is pretty valuable in my experience. This is interesting because what I I've, you know, of course I've looked at what various cancer charities do as I've gotten more versed in that world. And it's so important that they aren't just, it isn't just about someday we will beat this thing. It is also very much about right now we are living with this thing. Yeah.

That's true for tuberculosis too, man. I mean, you know, TB support groups can be so important. And like having a patient advocate or a survivor advocate who knows the experience and knows how to navigate the system, like studies show that just dramatically increases not just the quality of life after tuberculosis, but also like the experience of going through it. Because cancer, any serious life-altering disease can be so stigmatizing in addition to everything else, you know? Like people say dumb crap and they are dismissive of your experience or they tell you that you just need to take ivory. or they tell you whatever they tell you. And like, that's, that, that is its own form of exhausting.

Oh, God. What just happened? It's neat. Oh. Well, that wasn't normal. Oh, my bad. I don't know. I think one of the great, one of the great wins of this podcast was having a thing that

happens to people. Not like every day, but many days. Yeah. Frequently enough that you think about the podcast every time you sneeze. I like, I'll like, I'll like, I'll look out at the world after sneezing and be like, what the hell was that? I think about Dr. Never Sneezer Scrooge all the time because it can't be that that was only one person he spoke to, right? So like, Dr. Never Sneezer Scrooge has been telling thousands of patients over dozens of years.

I never sneeze. Sneezing isn't normal. It's like, well, what? It's a weird thing to be able to do if it's not normal. Yeah. Anyway, Nicole, we wish you all the best, and it's such a hard thing to go through, and I hope that you don't have to go through it alone. Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I have to let you know something, which is that we received about a million emails from our elderly listeners.

Turns out we have many elderly listeners. Gillian, for instance, wrote and said, you are a top podcast for the elderly. I'm 78. I've listened since the Roman Mars ran an episode of Dear Hank and John on 99% invisible. You're both a joy, and it's my favorite podcast. Everyone else becomes predictable over time, and I stop listening. I don't have a question. Thank you, pumpkins and penguins.

Jillian or Gillian. I pronounce it like my aunt pronounces it, but you could pronounce it Gillian, which is fine. We also got a great email from Royce that talked me out of ever going skiing again. Royce said in the latest episode of the pod, you talked about skiing and snowboarding. I say this from personal experience. You are right to fear it. Uh-oh. Royce broke their collarbone in seven different places.

Oh, Royce is bionic now. While snowboarding and says, I strongly recommend you both take your and so I haven't done it again, mindset, and so I will never do it again mindset, lest you end up with a lifelong thing to deal with. Yeah. Man, I tell you what. Wait, I have to tell you how Royce signs off here.

Okay. You do not have to ski or snowboard, especially as middle-aged men who aren't, comma like comma in the Olympics. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I have so many friends who have plates in their collarbones because of mountain biking that I'm like, why would I mountain bike?

Yeah. I've seen what it does. Seems to have a 100% collarbone break record. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we are middle-aged men who aren't comma like comma in the Olympics. So that is worth bearing in mind as well. we age, Hank.

Gosh, thank you to our elderly listeners. I hope that you enjoyed Hank Brown as much as the 10-year-olds. All right, Hank, it's time for the news from AFC Wimbledon, and I can't say this with enough joy. AFC Wimbledon have won a football game again. They're good again. We're good again. I mean, I don't know if we're good again exactly, but we're, we tied Mansfield Town 2-2.

We beat Bradford City 3-1, and then we beat Northampton Town one. nil. And so, AFC Wimbledon are now not safe, but we only need to win two of our last 12 games to survive. That seems doable. That seems doable, especially with this recent record. If you, I mean, it's two, we're in 14th place right now, dead mid-table. If we win two games out of our last 12, we're basically guaranteed to stay up. I will say, I took a cheeky little peak at the top of the table yesterday. Uh-huh. And we're only nine. points out of fifth. Okay.

I mean, could we go to the playoffs? No. But keep that in your sights. Because remember, there's a reason why those teams down at the bottom are down at the bottom. You're not going to be down there. You don't need to worry about that. You need to be heading for the top.

That's right. That's what I'm saying to the boys. Are you listening to boys? I know you listen, fellas. Marcus, Isaac, I know you're listening. They've been playing great in general, and I've been really happy with the quality of the football. We did play Northampton Town, who were down in 23rd place.

And as we were playing them, and their fans were booing them, I was like, yeah, I mean, they are bad. Like, you know, like, leave one football in general isn't great, so it can be hard to differentiate between the good teams and the bad teams. But like, when we were playing them, I was like, they're pretty bad. And when we were playing Cardiff City, who are in second place, I was like, they're pretty good. So there is some range.

This is actually different. Yeah. Well, John, and news from Mars, scientists have finally done the thing that we have been waiting for them to do. Oh. They have figured out what happens to tardigrades on Mars. Ooh. How are you going to do that? How do they know what happens to charter grades on Mars?

Well, we do all this, like, creation of synthetic Martian dirt. Oh. Regolith. Yeah. Which you call it regalith because it's dead. And so that's what other planets that don't have life in them call their dirt. And so they got samples. from the Curiosity rover.

They've looked at this stuff. They know what it looks like, what it's made of, ish. And so they made it. And then they added tardigrades to it to see if they would tolerate the simulated Martian soil. Despite their hearty reputation,

the tardigrades did not do great. Oh, really? Yeah. They died. Yeah, yeah. Within two days of being in one of the soils, and this is, I think, with water, added to them.

The tardigrades stopped being active. But when the scientists rinsed the soil with water, freshly added tardigrades tolerated the soil a lot better. So they had to get a bunch of the stuff out of it that's in there. And so there is probably something in the soil that needs to be washed out before you use it, which makes sense because marsh and soil really bad for you. Mark Watney definitely would have died.

Mark Watney definitely would have died. Yeah. That's your position. Oh, for sure. Because of the grossness of the soil, even though the potatoes never would have grown in the first place. The potatoes would not have grown, yeah. I see. They didn't know that.

We did not know this when he wrote the book. So I give him a pass. All right. So he's in the clear. Yeah. All right. Well, Hank, it has been an absolute joy to podcast with you, despite your illness, which it always is. Sorry for making gross noises sometimes during this one, you guys.

No, that's all right. People understand. They're just happy you're here. I know all the gross noises you guys make. I'm there on your bathroom shelf. Oh, God. I mean, someone someday is going to use this podcast as like, listen, he wanted it to happen. To create a marketable product.

Yeah, he wanted it to happen. And like, we don't have to pay his descendants for it. Yeah. We're making a sploosh. I get a science fact. Every spooish you get a science fact. Aye, aye, y. All right.

Thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. This podcast is edited by Linus Ovenhouse. We're mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Rosiana Hoss Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Duboki Chakrabardi.

And the music you're hearing now, and it's beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola. Finally, as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.