SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 7

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on September 30, 2021 titled "Tangents Bonus Pod Episode 7: Stump Hank!"Original Patreon description: This month, it's finally time to Stump Hank! See how he holds up to intense questioning about Star Trek, dark matter, and fashion! Plus: Ceri's long-promised beagle howl impression!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! 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

INTRO MUSIC Hello and welcome to the SciShow Tangents bonus episode for our Patreon patrons. Hey, I'm Hank Green. And joining me as always is science expert, Sari Reilly and our resident everyman Sam Schultz. How are you guys doing? I'm doing all right. How are you doing? Oh, I haven't checked. Oh, use this moment to check.

I feel like it's going to take. It's like when you ask data to do a level level five diagnostic, it's going to take him a little while. We're going to be talking about Data later in this very episode, actually. Data the person? Data the, yes, the person. The Android person? The Android man.

That's weird. Is it a good idea to look at yourself and how I'm doing? Yeah. I feel like yes. Usually my answer is sad, but it's still good to know that, I think, because then I can work on that. Usually my answer is like, oh, like that sound. Oh, man, we're a bunch of... We really bring the energy as a trio of podcast hosts.

This part's fun. I like this stuff. Yeah, I do like the podcast stuff. This is where it's easiest to repress all the bad stuff and you just start here making fart jokes with my friends. Yeah, if you're talking a lot you can't think. So... That's why, that's the thing. I'm fine.

That's why people say that. How are you, Sari? I'm also fine, I think. Sam asked me how I was doing before this and I said, okay, which is like my default human response. I'm okay. You took a long pause before you answered as well. You really did.

You looked at it. You did the diagnostic. I did the diagnostic and then I was like, I don't want to go any deeper and then went, okay. Fair enough. Well, we're not going to, in the course of this episode, psychoanalyze each other and figure out exactly how it is that we are really doing deep down. Instead, we're going to have fun.

So, in our Patreon episodes, we have subjected Sam and Sari to a barrage of questions in the hopes of stumping them. Now it is my turn. But before I turn the show over to Sam and Sari, we're supposed to hear an impression of a beagle howl, so that is gonna put us all in better spirits, I think. This is what happens when you record a podcast at nine o'clock in the morning.

Yeah. We need a beagle howl to get us going. Okay, I'm gonna try not to blow out the speaker. I practiced. Okay, hang on, I'm gonna try not to blow out the speaker. I practice. Okay, hang on, I'm gonna turn off my video too, cuz I look really... She's hiding from us. There's your beagle owl. That was really good. That's what beagles sound like.

I'm really upset that I didn't get to see it, but I guess, you know, you have to do what you're comfortable with. Yeah. She just held up a beagle and had the beagle there. Yeah, there was no proof that it was actually you. Mm-hmm. You're kidding. That's why you had us wait.

All this time you had to line up a beagle. She rented a beagle. All right. So the, so as far as I can tell, the subject matter of today's episode is Stump Hank, which I think was a thing on like SciShow Talk Show, like the first one we ever did in 2000, like before anybody, any of you even worked here.

Oh, I didn't know that. We did Stump Hanks on SciShow Talk Shows. Oh, weird. That must be why, I think somebody asked us to do this in the Patreon comments. They probably, they're probably old. I remember that. Yeah.

They've been around a while. So you're going to try and stump me. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm excited to see what happens. I didn't really know what it meant either. So I just tried my best, but they're okay. So I'll tell you what it means. Much like when we tried to stump Ceri,

it's sort of hard to stump somebody who's a genius like you. Oh, thank you. So I made a little quiz of sorts that combines. So you sent me a list of stuff you knew a lot about and didn't know anything about. We posed that list to the listeners. I thought about that list very hard and I came up with a quiz for you

and I sprinkled in some of the audience questions too. So that's how data comes up because because I may have said that I know a lot about Star Trek the next generation Oh, you didn't even say next generation. I just took a swing and thought yeah, I only know anything about next generation So I'll just write all the questions about that. So great. Our first topic though is not Star Trek the next generation It's pelicans, which were your animal a couple months ago. Maybe they still are I haven't really been keeping track of your favorite It does it does shift, but I do like pelicans. It's been they've been Katherine's favorite bird for a very long time Oh, okay. So okay. It's sort of like rubbed off on me. You stole it from her. Yeah for context

What's your favorite animal? She doesn't need it. Yeah, she does it was my what's my favorite animal now? Yeah, I Don't know. Probably a pelican. Good, great, great. I don't know. It's difficult. I do like birds of prey a lot. Peregrine falcons are pretty great.

Mm-hmm. But I don't know. The thing I like about pelicans is they're like way more deadly than a peregrine falcon, but they look really dumb while doing it. They're way more deadly in that they're killing more things a day or something? They while doing it. They're way more deadly in that they're killing more things a day or something.

They're just monsters. They kill constantly. They are voracious predators, but they look like big goofballs, like me. All right, well, here's one of the questions is about killing mercilessly, but not this one. So number one, pelicans, as you know, have the stretchy throat pouch thingies

that they use to scoop meals out of the water. How much water can an American white pelican hold in its beak pouch? I don't know. I will guess a gallon and a half. You're half wrong. It's three gallons. Oh! Wrong. I'm gonna actually keep track of your score. I didn't keep track of Sari's score. I can keep track of it.

I did literally nothing for this episode. So, uh... You did one thing. I don't know if I'm just gonna be quiet this whole time, but... No, no. I was gonna say, do you wanna ask the next one? Oh, sure. I get a profit off of your labor now.

How gracious of me. Yeah. Incredible, incredible. Okay, so pelicans generally lay two to three eggs, but can sometimes lay as many as six. However, often only one baby survives. So what's killing all the baby pelicans? Is it, Sari, the baby pelicans? It is. It is.

Do you know more about that? I think that they show, you know, this is not that uncommon in birds. They shove their competitive baby mouths out of the nest or they just outcompete them for food and they die. The thing I was reading says that they throw tantrums in that, so they like slam their heads against stuff and like make themselves pass out and They think like scientists think that that might be a way for the pet Their parents would be like what the hell are you doing over there? So they won't feed their siblings while they're like thrashing it. Wow

That's great. I didn't know about that. It's kind of horrible. Don't you think? Yes, they're terrible. So there's also a sports team called the Pelicans. Where are they from? That's true. And what sport did they play? I feel like they're from the south eastern US, New Orleans? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

What sport is it? It's not football because that would be the Saints. I have Sports it's kind of only one other one. I guess there's two there's a bunch of them. Yeah, but is the baby is it? It's not baseball is it's baseball. It's not baseball Basketball Basketball, yes. Yes. You kind of got I give you, we'll give you a one point of two. I forgot about the existence of basketball. Yeah, we'll be nice to them.

In New New Orleans, which is pretty easy, because that's where Pelicans all live, but... That's not, they're all over the southeast. Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot in New Orleans. Basketball would be good because they could catch the ball in their pouch. If they were really playing it. Oh, yeah. Basketball would be good because they could catch the ball in their pouch if they were really playing it.

Oh, yeah. Basketball is probably three gallons. It's smaller than that. I was like, it could probably fit. Yeah, you could definitely fit a basketball inside of a white Pelicans Guler pouch. Oh yeah. I thought even a baseball glove could hold three gallons.

No, no, no. Basketball, please. A basketball mitt. A basketball mitt could hold at least three gallons. We interrupt this program for a quick viewer question. Listener question, right? They don't view this. Oh, sure. Well, yeah, okay. Look, I wrote this by myself, so.

Yeah. Well, now I'm copy editing you. Time for a quick listener question. One of the things you said you didn't know anything about was fashion. I don't really know enough about it. Sam doesn't really know enough about it to look up any fun questions. But Patreon patron Martina Gehringer had one for us. Why are you not supposed to wear white after Labor Day?

There's not going to be like multiple choice or anything. Oh, geez. No. Is it because is it because on Labor Day you have hot dogs and there's going to be like multiple choice or anything? Oh, geez. No. Is it cause on Labor Day you have hot dogs and there's gonna be a lot of ketchup around? Hmm. Like that's just like the beginning of hot dog season. It's the beginning of hot, I'm gonna stick with this. It's the beginning of barbecue and hot dog season.

When is Labor Day? September. September. Ah, dang it. Well, it's the end of hot dog season, end of barbecue season. And so then you don't have to worry. That's the wrong, that's the opposite now. Kind of wrong to answer, isn't it?

Is it, yeah. First step, know when Labor Day is, which just happened. So I should have, should know. Is it because when it's hot out, you wanna wear stuff that reflects the light, and when it's cold out, you wanna wear stuff that absorbs the light? It's about photons, of course.

I would have guessed something about, in the winter you want warmer clothes too. That makes sense to me from a science perspective. Ultimately, I think you are both correct in, literally, like why they are wearing white, where they're wearing white. But it's an unwritten rule of fashion. So nobody really knows who wrote it down

or anything like that. But there's two schools of thought. One is that it was part of a whole fleet of rules that were made up by old wealth families to tell each other but not to tell anybody else, like new wealthy families especially. So they would know at a glance, this person doesn't know what they're doing, their sleeves are too short, they're wearing white, stuff like that. They do that all the time. There's always a new rule.

Yeah. So that was like a late 19th century thing. And then the other is a little less sinister, the other school of thought on this, but still about rich people. Uh, white is what you wore. If you could afford to get out of the city for the summer and run around on the beaches, cause white's a cool color. Reflects the photons, like you said. But when you come back to the city around Labor Day, if you wore white, you were going to have nasty sooty clothes, especially in the 19th century.

So it's possible that somebody just heard a rich person say, oh, you can't wear white after Labor Day. And they were just talking about, because you'll get grimy. But then this person was like, rich people said it must be true. It sounds like it sounds like an overlap between those things, maybe. Like that, like originally it was like you wear white when you're out of town at the beach during the summertime and then you come white when you're out of town at the beach during the summertime and then you come back and you stop wearing white and then like that became a thing that rich people

knew about and then had to sort of like get passed around. I solved this problem by never wearing white. White's a tough one to pull off. Like I'm very dirty and a messy person. I eat leaned back. That is so bold. I eat lean forward and still manage to spill on myself. And have to put my hair up in a ponytail because the food's just gonna get there. Everywhere. Beans in my hair.

I would love to see you in a pair of white jeans though, Hank. Gosh, I don't even know where to get white jeans. We can find you some. Alright, more questions. Next up, here's some questions about Star Trek. I'm only familiar with Star Trek Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and you just answered the question I was going to ask you.

Is that also what you're familiar with? I'm also familiar with a fair amount of the original series, Voyager. Was it your favorite TV show? TNG was definitely my favorite TV show for a very long time at this point I can't I can't check in to see what my favorites are anymore because I'm afraid what I'll find in the deep You can't even check in on that I'll be like, oh my god. I don't have any fit. I don't I don't have any favorites at all There is no joy in my life. You gotta learn to compartmentalize or whatever, right? Put your TV show part of your brain really far away.

I'm worried that people are gonna be worried about me. I'm not saying that I'm sad, I'm just saying that I feel like it's better this way. Sounds like what a sad person would say, Hank. Yeah. Question number one, Sounds like what a sad person would say, Hank. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Question number one, Star Trek is full of famous scientists and inventors,

but probably the most important one of all was the man who invented the warp drive. What's his name? Oh God, I know that. I can picture him, cause he showed up when they went back in time. Yeah, he looks just like the guy from Babe. Just like that guy.

I don't know. I'm going to kick myself as soon as you say it. Zephyrum Cochrane. Ted. Ah, Zephyrum Cochrane. It wasn't Ted. That's such a good name. So, your next question is,

when Zephyrum became the first human to break the warp barrier, the Vulcans initiated first contact. Where on earth did first contact occur? Oh, it was, I, well, it was in the US, and I think it was in like the Rocky Mountains. Was it Montana? Yeah.

There's a city specifically. Oh no, that's cruel and unusual. You're like, you need to know where the sports team is and what sport they play. It's one that if you were like, if you Googled cities in Montana would probably be the first or second. Billings?

Or it could be the third. It's Bozeman. Bozeman. But you will get it, you got Montana. It doesn't look like Bozeman in the picture. I'll tell you that. Bozeman. But you will get it. You got Montana. It doesn't look like Bozeman in the pictures, I'll tell you that. Bozeman has undergone some cruel shifts during the wars. They're just like out in the country in the thing. There is no city to be seen, especially not a huge bougie city for sure.

Yeah, I was blown up in World War III. So that's too bad. Yeah, the Gene Wars or whatever they had. Yep. So, Lieutenant Commander Data, who we talked about earlier, I see I told you, is a robot who dreams of being a real guy and as part of his quest to become more human, he built himself an android daughter. What was his daughter's name?

It was like, LOL. Was it just LOL? It was like LOL. It was exactly LOL. Okay, the last Star Trek question. Okay. The Klingons are a warrior race, so it follows that they worship and follow the teachings of a historical warrior king. What is this warrior king's name? Man, I am so embarrassed and also, you know, I just feel like I haven't been engaging with

my Star Trek for like a decade and I've lost everything. Kayless? Was his name Kayless? Oh, you got it. Hey! I had already highlighted it red. Yeah, you're a traitor. You wrote a book about Star Wars and not even Star Trek. I had already highlighted it red. Yeah, you're a traitor. You wrote a book about Star Wars and not even Star Trek.

I did write a Star War short story. You wrote a Star Wars. How dare you? Well, the Star Trek people didn't ask me. Oh, I wish they would. I bet you'd write a good story. You can't like get the opportunity to build like a little corner of Star War canon and not take it. If you got to write a Star Trek, would you put me and Sari in it, please? And Tuna, I guess, too.

I wouldn't have until you asked! Lieutenant Commander Tuna. It's not bad. So time for another viewer question before the final round. Derek Morelli asks, will we ever make larger antimatter atoms like the antimatter equivalent of helium, and would it just be called anti-helium? I don't know the answer to that question.

It seems like it would be hard, but not maybe impossible. And yes, I think it would be called anti-helium. I didn't even know we made antimatter, did we? We have made antimatter. They're just particles, right? Not atoms. We've made anti-hydrogen atoms. With an electron. Well, positron. Yeah, and an antiproton. And most of the experiments have been with just particles, so like studying positrons and antiprotons, but a lot of them have involved anti-hydrogen, as far as I can tell, to the extent where scientists have

managed to stabilize an anti-hydrogen, or probably like a bunch of anti-hydrogen atoms, for over 16 minutes, around a thousand seconds, which feels like a very long time. Also, it feels like a pretty short amount of time. Yeah, it's a short amount of time, but for... Everything is big and small. It's a weird universe. Mm-hmm. But in researching the answer to this, this is the one that I did look up,

we actually have made 18 antihelium particles that survived for about 10 billionths of a second. Oh, that's a lot less. A lot less, yeah. By smashing together a bunch, like over a billion gold atoms in the relativistic heavy ion collider. And it was reported in a paper published in April 2011. You know, a billion gold ions sounds like a lot, but it's not.

It is both end is not like was so like you had to smash them together. So you had they were like accelerating gold. That sounds very hard. Yeah, they were accelerating gold and and it seems like it was very hard because of all those they made 18 anti helium that disappeared. But they could count. They were there for a trillionth of a second or whatever, and they were like, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Mm-hmm. I'm sure that's not exactly how it went. It was just a bunch of nerds looking at a screen going, oh, there's one. ["BURP"] How did they know that accelerating gold would do the thing that they wanted them to have?

That's a math question. Okay. Yeah, that's where particle physics gets into like, the mathiness of it. The part of particle physics that we get to talk about it is all like, they made anti-helium. The part that they talk about is like, yeah, it's very mathy. Yeah. It's like you have to collide things at really high speeds, but then lower them to really low temperatures so that the particles

that you create are stable enough to exist for a little bit. And the way that you know that they exist isn't by like taking a picture of them necessarily, it's like recording an energy spectrum and knowing that that energy can only be produced by known particles with known properties. So it's like, oh, well, there had to have been something with two positrons and two anti-neutrons and two anti-protons here. And so we can conclude that there was one anti-helium, along with a bunch of other stuff here.

And would it share properties of not, of like regular helium, or do we just have no idea? I mean, yeah. So if there was a whole anti-universe, it would just be helium. So it would do all of the same things that helium does along with all of its, but the problem is only that it gets annihilated if it encounters normal matter, I think. Okay. I think, I don't know. It may be that there's something different

that would make it just dissociate or something. Yeah, I think contact between matter and anti-matter, they destroy each other with a burst of energy, but I don't know enough about it to answer. Okay, I didn't write all of this intro, but finally, me and you and Sari have made a lot of episodes of this show, and that's where I stopped. So, we've also dropped a lot of facts about ourselves.

So here's a few of them to see. Oh, are you gonna test me on you guys? Yeah. Oh no. I tried to write some Stefan trivia questions, but I don't know anything about him. He's a mystery I could have helped you with that. You just told me the right trivia questions about myself. Well, what's a trivia question about Stefan? Well now I on the spot I'll think of one while I'll do you take this. What was Stefan's job before he worked at Complexly? He was a butcher in a grocery store. He was. What was Stefan's job before he worked at Complexly? He was a butcher in a grocery store.

He was a butcher, that's correct. When was he a bagger? I think before he was a butcher. He got upgraded to a butcher. He got promoted to the meat department, I think. He was a butcher and a bagger, and before that he was a candlestick mager. So stupid, I hate you.

Okay, number one. What was Sari's dog named? We learned this just last recording session. By learned you mean heard. Nope, it's not in there. Kalis. Dr. Noonien Soong. Taffy. Taffy, that's great.

That's a great dog name. I'm going to forget that now. Two syllable food names was her suggestion for the best. Did you pick a cat name? No, we're still working on it. We're going to have a cat next week. You better name it. It's going to be so confused if you don't.

And speaking of dogs, Sam and I both have the same type of dog when we were kids. We're gonna have a cat next week. Ooh. You better name it. It's gonna be so confused if you don't. Yeah. And speaking of dogs, Sam and I both had the same type of dog when we were kids. What kind of dog was it? Was it a beagle? Yeah. Yeah? I guess Sari's impression kinda made me get that one. Yeah, that was a helpful hint.

Sari spent enough time around a beagle to develop a high quality impression. Did you howl around Taffy? Yeah, that's where I learned it. She didn't have a pack to howl with, and so I felt really bad about that. And so as a kid, I would run around, like pretend to be her pack. So if she was sniffing and howling, then I would follow her and run and howl.

Did she howl with you? Yeah, she really liked it. Yeah, my people would howl with me too. Do you have a beagle howl impression? Oh. Well done. well done. Okay, number three, where was I born? Was it not Bute?

It was not Bute. I think I would have gotten the state, but I don't think I would have gotten the city for this, Sam, if you asked me. Was it Illinois? It was not Illinois. Was it Maryland? No, that would be weird.

Why would I be born in Maryland? Is it east or west of the Mississippi? Uh-oh. Oh. East. Oh, okay. I think. I don't actually, it doesn't help me that much either.

Ohio, I think that's east of the Mississippi. I was born in Mobile, Alabama. I guess that makes sense. You do have a little bit of a Southern accent. I was born in Mobile, Alabama. I guess that makes sense. You do have a little bit of a Southern accent. I was born in Birmingham. Oh, Rachel told me you were also born in Mobile. And I was just like, great, trivia question, but. They're Alabama, both of them.

Okay. So I've worked with a comic book team since 2015 as an editorial assistant. And you said hi to me working at their booth at San Diego Comic-Con in 2016. What is the title of that comic? I could have told you all of those things. Any of that would have been a great question

that I would have had an answer to. I cannot remember the name of the comic book. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. It's called Monstrous. Monstrous. I feel bad now. You feel so... I feel terrible. They did this to me at the Project for Awesome once.

It was like, do staff trivia. And I was like, I don't know any of your dogs. I'm sorry. Yeah. But you were also getting electrocuted. It's true. It made me nervous. Yeah. And I didn't write any questions about myself because I didn't want to look deep into my soul. So the last one's about Sari too. That's rude. You wrote three or so questions about yourself

and I've provided six. Yeah, well we'll just ask all of them. This is just a Sari interviewer. What is the sport Sari played the longest from high school into college? Fencing? Hey! There's one, one little nugget of information. That's it. That's the end of the quiz. All right. So did I get greater than 50%? You got nine out

of 15. Oh, okay. Well, I'm very displeased that I did not get Zephyrum Cochrane. That's actually the only that and that Pelicans beak can hold three gallons are the only two you got wrong. Aside from questions about you're very good friends. You know where my... where my attentions are oriented, I guess. The acquisition of useless facts. Well, I didn't stump Hank. I stumped Ceri. Well, what's the definition of stumped? Flunking the test.

Well, I think if you do the math, I may have gotten an F. Nine out of 15 is 0.6, a 60%. That's a D. Sam's the only one in the room that knows what the rules are that low. No. I was the wrong reader in the A's and B pluses.

Yeah, I can tell you all about like, where the differences between a B plus and a B is. But what happens down in the 60s and 70s is unclear to me. That 87, 86.5%, I'm ready to debate that line. But what? There were people in my class who'd be like, oh, I have a 4.4 on my GPA. And I'd be like, I don't even know

how you would get that in a million years. What did they do, take extra classes or something? There were some, oftentimes you can get, if you get an A in an advanced level class, you can get a five instead of a four. What? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I was hovering in the threes

and that was perfectly fine with me. Well done, well done, my friend. I wasn't applying myself, but I was having a good time. So I got, I just barely didn't fail. So I guess you didn't stump Hank. I got a, by the skin of my teeth. I'm gonna write see me after class on your paper, but I can't flunk you in good conscience. I'm very interested to see how our little conference goes after class.

And also whether you're gonna call my mom. I'd love to call your mom. Just have a little chat with her. See how she's doing? I don't think she'd mind, honestly. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us for this month's bonus podcast. Also for being patrons on Patreon. You're the reason why we can make SciShow Tangents, which we are very grateful for because we love to make it.

You can join us here next month, which is going to be October. And during that month, we're going to have some scary science stories for you on our Patreon only podcast and we're gonna call that one um Spoopy Peepypedia. Damn that's good. It's gonna be it's gonna be a little spooky there's also gonna be pee. How is it gonna happen? I don't know but I'm forcing it onto Sam right now and I'll require a little bit of pee in our October issue of our patron-only podcast, Spooky Peepipedia. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Sari. Thank you, Sam. And thank you, Tuna, for making a podcast with me today. I hope you have a lovely day. I have a half an hour free now during which time, I probably will tweet. Really good, you see your time.