SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 15

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on June 3, 2022 titled "Tangents Bonus Pod Ep 15: Quick Question Spectacular."Original Patreon description: Our second episode of Dear Sam and Ceri is on hold for now, so we have a special treat: the first episode of our new SciShow Prime Patreon Podcast, The Quick Questions Challenge, hosted by Sam and Hank.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents!And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

Hey there, SciShow Tangents patrons. What you're about to hear is not an episode of the Tangents Patreon Bonus Podcast. It is instead an episode of the regular SciShow Patreon Bonus Podcast. Let me explain. Over on the SciShow Patreon, we have this thing called the Quick Questions Inbox, where patrons can submit questions and then we take some of those questions and make episodes of SciShow from them. But we get a lot of questions, more than we could ever make into episodes.

Right now, in fact, we have a backlog of like 6,000 questions. So Hank and I have endeavored to answer every single one of them come hell or high water on the SciShow Bonus Podcast. And I wanted to share the first episode of that with you guys because it came out very fun and tangency and I thought you'd like it. If you want to hear more you can check out the SciShow Patreon page at Patreon.com slash SciShow for more info. Thanks and see you next month. Hello and welcome to the SciShow Patreon patron only podcast with your smooth talking host Hank Green and his little green sidekick Sam Schultz.

We should just do the whole podcast in our smoothest voices. My smooth talking alien friend Sam Schultz. I would like to be an alien. I like this. This turn of events for me. You might be. I don't know. You could be lying to me. If I was an alien, I would this, this turn of events for me. You might be, I don't know. If I- You could be lying to me.

If I was an alien, I would not be admitting it right now. So- I met who you say was your parents, but who knows? Yeah. They looked human. But it could all be made up. There was that episode of Star Trek where all the aliens found out they were from the same planet, remember that? This is my least favorite thing about Star star science fiction does this fairly frequently where they like after

Sucking you into a great story. They're like and also here is the reason why humans are actually Exceptional and aren't from earth and I'm like man. That's not how this works We have a lot of evidence that that is not the case. Okay, well, you know too much. For me, when that episode comes on and John Luke's old teacher shows up and he's like, John Luke, I have an adventure. I'm like, hell yeah, I love this one. Cause they're all friends at the end.

They're all just like, we've learned a deep secret about ourselves. We can never tell anyone, but. I mean, it's kind of like, how do you explain that Klingons can have babies with humans as part of the problem is an issue. Why does everything in the universe look like a human just with a really weird head? Yeah, we're weird headed or just exactly the same, but can read your mind.

Yeah. And it's like slightly more Greek. Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of the yeah, it's a race of beautiful psychic Greek women, Hank. Come on. There's nothing wrong with that. What's different about them? They look exactly the same. Evolution is very weird. Yeah, so you have to explain it somehow.

Is that what we're talking about today on this Patreon podcast? Yeah, this is the Star Trek, the Star Trek episode. I'm happy to talk about all the different times that's happened. Larry Niven did it, Battlestar Galactica did it. Pisses me off. It turns out people are aliens

and the fact that we share 90% of our DNA with mice. Wait, now that you've just said that, it is like all falling apart. Where do monkeys come from? Yeah, right. Well, why do they look so much like us? Why are all these fossils of common ancestors and monkeys and humans there?

Even if they just seeded, if they had just like shot something, who knows what, some kind of goo into the primordial ooze of Earth, how do we come out looking just like them, basically? It's gotta be goo. And it makes sense if it was goo and there's some system that seeded life to lots of planets and we are a seed that was seeded to Earth.

I'm into that. That totally makes sense. But it's gotta be a single-celled organism that does that. It's gotta be the Luca. The last universal common ancestor. It's the first organism. We don't know what it is, some little blob. No, yeah, yeah, something that-

Just some little guy. He said, uh-huh, I'm gonna, I have a plan, I have an idea. What if there was two of me? Yeah, basically, what if I did chemistry totally different? This is real weird, chemistry. Okay, so here's my idea. Here's the goal of this episode. So how long have we had a Patreon for?

You wanna count Subbable or do you wanna count from the Switch? Yeah, counting, let's count Subbable first, just first thing. I don't know, almost 10 years probably. So we have this QQ inbox where people who are part of our Patreon can submit questions to it. It's a long list.

Yeah, it's a long list. And I was perusing it the other day. It's a cool list. Yeah, it's a long list. And I was perusing it the other day. It's a cool list. When I realized I was perusing questions from 2015. Wow. We got quite a backlog. Yeah. Sometimes we make them into episodes,

which is the QQ is the type of episode that we make them into. Yeah, I'm actually working on a QQ based on a question from the QQ inbox right now. What's the question? It's why is there aluminum in antiperspirant? Okay, don't spoil it. All right.

A little behind the scenes look for all our Patreon people. So I thought that we could rapid fire go through as many of these QQ questions as we could in 2015. Oh my gosh, I like this. Okay. Give me a link. I don't have it open. Oh. Well, or you can just ask me.

I was gonna ask him to. Or else what am I supposed to do? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I probably don't either. This stemmed from me trying to figure out the answer to some of the questions so I could talk about them and then going, nah, Hank just knows this crap, right? Well, ask me one and let's see.

The first question in our QQ inbox from April 6, 2015. Wow. Asked by Mary C. who knows, could still be, I bet still a Patreon, I'm gonna just go out on a limb. All right. Asks, why do people drink or eat pickles at athletic events? I don't know if there's any science behind this, but it is about electrolytes.

So what Gatorade did, it was like Coca-Cola used to be about like a number of different things that were like health related. So it wasn't just like drink Coca-Cola because it tastes delicious. It's the taste of the real thing. It's the real thing? And that's something, right? Yeah, it's the real thing. The taste of the new generation, that's Pepsi. I got confused. Those are both from like 1979.

The taste of the new generation who are now 60 years old. So Pepsi is called Pepsi because of Pepsid. So like for digestive health. So it was marketed as a digestive health thing and Coca-Cola was marketed as a health product as well. And so oftentimes you get these drinks that come out and they get to be about some health related thing.

Like Propel fitness water was a thing when I was in college. I think it's still around. You think Propel is around? I don't think it is, but maybe. And it's great. Like it's great if you can make the case that like seltzer water is good for people. It's not, though. But Gatorade was like, what if we can make a delicious drink at the University of Florida

that, like, actually helped people replenish the electrolytes that they lose while they are doing sport? And so, electrolytes being ions that are things that you sweat them out. So how sweat works, I can tell you this, how sweat works is literally sodium is pumped into your pore and then that creates a higher concentration of sodium in the pore than outside. And then actually just through osmosis

pulls water into the pore and then that trickles out. So it just pumps sodium in there and that sucks water out of your body. And that's why salt is sweatier than your body. That's why sweat is saltier than your body. Is that what I said? Did I say that's why salt is sweatier than your body? I think you said both at the same time somehow.

So that's why sweat is saltier than the inside of your body and why it tastes salty is because the sodium is getting pumped across the membrane to the outside of your body, basically, the inside of your pore. And that draws water out and cools you off. But that means that you lose that sodium. And in the same way, that stuff is really important. Like those ions are very

important for like everything that your body does. Like pumping ions across membranes is how the entire nervous system works. It's how muscles move. So that stuff's very important. You need them and you, if you sweat a lot, will lose them. And so Gatorade was like, well, sports people need to replenish these while they are doing intense sports. We'll also mix it with a lot of sugar so that people will like it. And then we can sell that to them as a fitness product. But really it has way, way, way more sugar than is good for you. Sure.

And it would be better if it were sort of like Pedialyte, which is the same thing, but has less sugar that is for children when they are sick and might be losing a lot of their electrolytes. Adults when they have a hangover. Exactly. I like Pedialyte, but you can tell, it doesn't taste as good as Gatorade. It's saltier and less sweet. So I think that that's probably the idea

behind the pickle juice is it's like the same thing. I heard that electrolytes were good. There's a lot of salt and pickle juice and pickles. And so let's hit those boys as hard as we can. It's got its cramping is involved with this somehow, right? Yeah. So if you lose all of these ions, your muscles will not be able to fire correctly. And they may not be able to let go of the once they inflex. Propel Fitness Water is still around. around Wow a product of Gatorade. So that seems weird. Oh, yeah must have bought it

I bet I think it's always been that from from what it looks like. Oh, okay Always been a Gatorade thing, but who knows why they thought they needed another Gatorade, but Here we are. Apparently there is some maybe evidence that just getting that salty briny shock from the pickle juice can actually make a muscle cramp stop? But I don't know. As with all of this, you're definitely hearing my guesses, not my answers. Neither of us researched any of this. So do not use this as medical advice.

Yeah. According to a website article from 2022, it may help with muscle cramps and stabilizing blood sugar. Why? I don't know. Pickledjuice.com, is that the website? It's from Insider. Well, let's move on. This is supposed to be lightning round and you spent like 25 minutes on that question.

Here is also from Mary C. from the same day. Oh, wow. What is the best contender to replace petroleum as the primary fuel source of humanity? Ah, this- This is from 2015. That's great. This one's significantly easier in a lot of ways. Electrons. So back in 2015,

I might not have had the perfect answer for that. I mean, maybe it's hydrogen, maybe it's some kind of biofuel, but it's electrons. So the thing to always remember that the conversation that we're going to be having a lot over the next 20 years is that there's certainly plenty of environmental impact to electric transportation, particularly the stuff that is mined out of the earth and then put into the batteries. Also, of course, the generation of the electricity in the first place, which can be clean and can be not clean. But the things that we mine to put into batteries, that's not the fuel. That's just how we're storing the fuel. Fuel is the stuff that's moving the car, and that is electricity. The nice thing about batteries is that they don't use up those elements.

Those elements will be there, and they can be recycled into new batteries at the end of that battery's life, and they certainly will be. So petroleum is also, though, used for other things. So one of the main things that it will continue to be used for is plastics. And there aren't really good alternatives right now. And that is a big contributor both to greenhouse gases and to pollution. You know, like plastics pollution is a big deal. How to replace the petroleum that gets used and turned into plastics. I mean, there's like part of that is maybe

we should be using less plastics. Part of it is it might change more slowly than the fuel part will. And part of it is, you know, maybe there are biological ways to create the sort of precursor molecules to what gets turned into plastic with like smart little genetically engineered algae

that turn sunlight into oils and those oils can get turned into plastic. Is it gonna happen? Are we gonna, is everything gonna be okay? There was a great video from Johnny Harris that he did with Cleo Abrams and they talk about that. The answer to your question is of course no one can predict the future. I think that a lot of people thought, hey, we've got two choices here. Either we go down this like extraordinarily destructive path that we are currently on, or we change to a new

world where everything is green and beautiful and soft and the air is clean and no one is oppressed. It turns out like we are going to probably find a middle path between those things and that we will burn a lot less carbon dioxide, but injustice will remain. And as will sort of environmental, lots of environmental degradation. And we don't get to solve all the problems

at the same time, unfortunately. We can have a little destruction as a tree. Yeah, you can't stop humans from hurting each other. How will they have fun? Oh, God. Next up, from April 6, 2015 as well, Emily, we got a lot from this day. This must've been the first day that this was happening.

We opened the QQ inbox, leave us questions. We're gonna make it all the way through. We're just gonna kill it. We're just gonna- Let me see how many we have. We're gonna answer all 4,000 questions. I think there are 5,588 questions. Wow, that's awesome. And we're on number three.

This one's a little weird. How do airlines handle daylight savings? For example, if your flight leaves at 1.30 AM and the clocks get set back, so there are two 1.30 AMs, how do you know which one it is? So airlines handle daylight savings by saying to computer programmers, please handle daylight savings. And computer programmers make this noise. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhh uh and different places keep changing. So like different states are different ways. And so yeah, it's super confusing.

And you will occasionally see a person who's on a plane and they will be on a plane on a switch day. And it'll say that like they have like negative four hours left in their flight or they have like 5,000 miles to go and it will take 30 minutes or something, because the in-flight system isn't designed to, hasn't been designed to account for it. So yeah, like there are people paid to solve this problem

created by Benjamin Franklin or whoever. And it is a big lift. And I have heard from software engineers that it is one of the most annoying things that they deal with. What the heck? Yeah. Okay. There's an actual answer to that question.

Is it like a bunch of Y2Ks are happening all the time? Yeah, it's just like a, suddenly there's like, it's like every, like twice a year, there's like mini Y2K season are happening all the time. Yeah, it's just like suddenly there's like, it's like every, like twice a year, there's like mini Y2K season where you have to make sure that everything continues to work. So I don't think that there is a simple little way to fix it.

Like there's lots of little things that have to be done in lots of little different places and they all collage together. We need a worldwide AI supercomputer solve all our problems for us. Or we could just not have that. Not have what, clocks? No, daylight savings time.

Oh yeah, I don't mind it. I don't mind it. Let's just stop doing flights. This seems too complicated. Yeah. All right, next up from Kate, from 2015, Kate asks, why are some children born with blonde hair that turns dark when they get older?

Oh, I don't know the answer to that question, but it's definitely a thing that has happened to my son. Yeah, I don't know. Well, maybe we'll make an episode about it. Yeah, nothing in. Okay, well, we'll look into that one. I think that'd be a good episode. We'll get back to you.

I'll make a note of it. Next up, Michael asks, does gravity get weaker the deeper down you go? Like in a hole, perhaps. I don't know what the alternative really would be besides in a hole, but. I know. Does gravity get weaker the deeper down you go?

I think it well, of course, it depends. Oh, well, no, I guess it doesn't depend. You have less. Yeah, it would. It would get I think that's because you're being pulled on by less stuff. You're getting pulled on by less stuff. But you're also closer to some of the stuff. So that's interesting. But you've just got to some of this stuff. So that's interesting. But you've just got less mass beneath you.

So do you weigh more? But I feel like I've been told that you weigh more at sea level than on the top of a mountain. But like that would make sense because you're like further away from the gravity well. But like I do know, here's what I know, that if you dropped a ball through the middle of the earth, eventually it would be at the very middle

and it would experience no gravity. It would just get stuck there? It would just be like hanging out in the very middle of the earth. It would experience no gravity slash it would experience gravity from every direction equally. All gravity at once. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe we'll make an episode about this too. That sounds great. That's a great idea for an episode. That's a weird question. Do you weigh less at the top of a mountain? You would weigh very slightly more at sea level than at the top of the mountain. Not enough to notice, but a measurable amount.

I trust this source. So do you weigh the most at sea level and then going down or up? There's gotta be a place. There's gotta be a place where like, I would, it would, it seems like it wouldn't, there's no like reason for it to be sea level. What? Oh. So like, so like sea, sea level is an arbitrary thing.

It's just the amount of water that we have. Like sea level would be higher if we had more water. So it can't just be like arbitrarily sea level is the place with the most gravity. But I think what this means is that there's probably a place below the surface of the earth or above sea level, but not on top of Mount Everest. There's like the optimal, like you experience the most weight. The most gravity.

The most earthy gravity. The most earthy gravity possible. Yeah. Well, look for earthy gravity possible. Yeah. Well, look for an episode coming soon. Does this also mean that if the moon is right above me, I weigh a little less because it's kind of tugging on me? I don't know anything about how this stuff works. That sounds right.

That sounds right. That sounds right. Because it tugs on the oceans, right? Yeah, yeah. It's tugging on the ocean. How am I gonna know that too? Can I measure, can you measure me? Yeah, that'd be great to put in that episode.

And I always just be like... We're planning the next month of content right now. And if the moon gets really, really dense, could I just jump really high? How high could I jump if the moon were as big as the Earth? Okay. I think I'll get some pushback. That's a great title for a SciShow. Because people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

I guess I have to click on that. I'm so confused. How big would the moon have to be for me to be weightless? There would be a problem with that, which is that if that were the case, it would eat the entire earth. Oh, yeah, sure. I feel like you'd run into that problem pretty easily. Yeah. a problem with that, which is that it would, if that were the case, it would eat the entire earth. Oh yeah, sure. I feel like you'd run into that problem pretty easily.

Yeah, there's probably a lot of problems with this, but let's just say like for an instant, if the moon turned into the earth, could I jump higher? Would it suck all the oceans into just like a big ball of ocean in the middle of the two earths? That would be very bad. Oh no, that sounds bad. We'd have to go up into space and get some to get our water. It's an ice moon out there.

Well, Sam, thank you for these questions. I am fascinated by how easy it is to have fun conversations about them despite the fact that I feel like I've confidently answered one. You very confidently talked about Gatorade. Let me tell you the history of Gatorade. I don't know the answer to the question, but I can tell you about Gatorade. So everybody came away in knowing a lot more about that particular beverage.

Yeah, and Star Trek and Luca. And I'm constantly wowed by your ability to make anything sound interesting. That's my job. All right, everybody. See you next time on the SciShow Patreon, Patreon podcast, where we will be going through more of our most stale, old, stinky, ancient-

Sorry you took us along. Questions. We're gonna get through all 5,000, I promise. It'll be a while. Bye. Bye.