433: Making the Ice

- You're listening to a Complexly podcast. (upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Dear Ike and John. - Or as I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. - Podcasts for two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and F.C. Wimbledon and John, do you know how when you hold a shell up to your ear, it sounds almost exactly like the ocean? - Mm-hmm. - Well, little known fact, if you hold a squirrel up to your ear, it sounds almost exactly like getting attacked by a squirrel. (laughing) - There wasn't much to that one. - That one I actually really do like. I think that whoever wrote that did a good job. - Yeah. - Okay. - We are two brothers who have done a lot over the last 20 years, John. And I don't know if we've set it on the podcast yet, but the ribbon was cut on the maternal center of excellence. - So everybody who has ever supported been a part of the project for awesome, given a donation to that, bought something from GoodStore, all that stuff. One step at a time, it got there. And it is gonna start seeing patients early next year. - Hank, you keep saying that we raised $25 million, which is very generous of you to say, because it's a huge understatement. In fact, we've raised almost $50 million. - What do you mean? - I mean, we had to raise $25 million to do the initial phase of construction to get the maternal center of excellence open was always gonna cost $50 million, and we raised about $40 million of that. - I mean, I had thought, and I'll be honest with you, and you are much more in touch with the partners and health team than I am. - Yeah. - But I had thought that the other half was raised by partners in health and et cetera. But no. - Well, a lot of it was raised by partners in health and et cetera, but about $40 million, if it was raised by us one way or another, not just by us, but by people in our community reaching out to their friends and family and so on, and matching funds, and matching funds, and all kinds of things. But we got there. I'm very proud that we got there. And I'm very proud of all the money we've raised. I've also just gotten home from the Philippines, where I was for the stop to be partnership board meeting. And I'm very, very jet lagged. Like, I am out of time and space in a way that I've never been out of time and space before. - Yeah, the Philippines isn't interesting in that it is both plus and minus 12th. It's one of the two. - It's exactly 12th. - It's exactly 12th, it's you are exactly 12th off, which is as much as you can get off. - Well, it was convenient in some ways because when it was like 3 p.m. I would be like, well, I can't call home now. It's 3 a.m. You just switched p.m. for a.m. So that's nice. - That's true. - It was really interesting. I mean, I learned a lot. You know, I was in a lot of interesting meetings, but the most important thing I got to do was spend time with people living with TB and those caring for them directly, both in the little island of Gimaras where we're working on a small project with the Philippine government to eliminate TB from that island and in a slum in Manila, where I traveled with doctors without borders, which is a very difficult place to receive care and where there were significant challenges, including drug stockouts and shortages of preventive therapy and all kinds of big challenges that were sobering, I would say I was reminded that 40,000 people are gonna get diagnosed with TB today and that's a huge problem. - What a world. - I know. - I think that if you could get two facts in your head, it would really sort of revolutionize your ability to like understand what's going on generally. - Okay, give them to me. - Number one is air is stuff. - Yeah, I know that this is very important to use it. - This is a big deal for me, air is stuff. If you hold your breath, you die. Air is made out of stuff, it's real. And that explains a lot of different things. And number two is there are way more people than you think. - Way more people than you think. - That goes for your town, it goes for your state, it goes for your country, it goes for your world. There's just way more people than you think. And oftentimes I think there's an instinct to sort of like the people in power are taking care of one person at a time than like they're doing it. But if like the president is taking care of one person at a time, that's not doing any good. - He's actually not doing his job. - Yeah, it really has to be. It has to be broad, and it has to be systemic, and that's really how it works. Because 40,000 people will be diagnosed with TB today. - It's closer to 28,000 now that I googled it. - Yeah, and I'll say, that's most of the way there, you know? That's a lot. - That's still a lot. 28,000 people is sure a lot of people. - Yeah. - A physicist would say that those are the same numbers. - Certainly an astrophysicist would. - All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners before I get too tired. Beginning with this one from Lucy, who writes, "Seer John and Hank, "you recently spoke on the pod about handedness. "I'm a left-handed hairstyles, and in daily salon life, "I'm constantly faced with just how uncommon it is "to be left-handed. "I know that being a lefty used to be taboo, "but why, even now when it is no longer looked down on, "are there still so few left-handed people?" - Not righty-talk, but lefty. Lucy, this is a great question. I have no idea. - Well, and you probably won't be too surprised that we have no idea. - So there's a bunch of different ways to ask this question. There's like, why did we evolve for some portion of us to be left-handed? Why isn't it 100% 0%? And then there's also the question of why did we evolve handedness in the first place? And then there's also underneath both of those questions is the what is the actual mechanism behind handedness? So because it is consistently 10% across people and other species also have consistent handednesses, so they might be like 45% right-handed or 60% left-handed or they have consistent across species numbers. There's gotta be some mechanism behind it that is being evolutionarily selected for. Now, the mechanism behind the evolutionary selection is interesting in humans. There's this idea that there's some advantage to having some portion of the population that can fight the other way around and they might be very good at getting through the guard of the rest of the people, but then if you sort of move beyond 10%, it evens out. And so it really only-- - So we evolved it for boxing, like for South Paul Boxers? - Yeah, yeah, okay, I like it. We are a little bit violent as a species. - Yeah, there's also an idea that like our jaws are shaped the way they are in order to take a punch which is interesting. And our hands are also like extra strong in order to do punching. - Wow. - But these are hypotheses, not facts. And then there's the underlying mechanism by which it happens. And that's the thing that we have like the least idea about. There's something going on. It's not random, or else it would be 50/50. And it's consistent. Once hand in this is no longer taboo, it got to 10% and it stayed at 10%. And it's that way across cultures. - So there's something, there's some reason why. And we just don't know. We have a couple of ideas. Some are about like microtubules, which are like literally like the things that hold your cells together. So how would that be involved? But it seems like there might be a relation there. Like they looked like rare gene variants and hand in this and saw some relationship between that gene. But like that's very hard to tease out for sure. - Yeah. - Super weird. And we don't know. And we're gonna get to the bottom of it someday, but we have not yet. - I don't know that we will get to the bottom of it. I don't know how much we're gonna prioritize getting to the bottom of it to be honest with you. - It's true. It's not tremendously important to understand the mechanism of hand in this because it's not like a thing you need to cure. - It's not a thing you need to cure. It's not even a thing you need to address really. I mean, it's nice to understand. - I mean, you need to make sure that there are scissors for them. - You do. - You need to make sure that there are left-handed shears and that they don't cost any more than right-handed shears, right? Because like that's part of how they get you. - Yeah, that'd be better. But you know, of course they do because everything's about bulk of 90% fewer people are buying something. Many companies won't make them at all. But yeah, there's all kinds of, this is very weird. It reminds me that I am, again, and maybe this is a third thing. - Yeah. - An animal. - Not just an animal. I think it's critical that we're mammals. - Yeah. - I identify much more as a mammal than as an animal. Organism first, mammal second, animal third. - And then where's human on the list? - I don't know, 83rd after AFC Wimbledon fan. - No, that's a good question. Fair question. Human first, mammal second, animal third, organism somewhere in there. - Okay. - Yeah, man, yeah, just a bunch of cells. - I have to go to the bathroom, but I'll be back. - Okay. - You got it. Host the podcast without me. - I'm gonna host the podcast without John. I'm gonna do a science question, 'cause he doesn't need to be here for those. We just did one. Let's do this one from Lucy who asks, "Dear, do we just do a Lucy?" We did, this is a different Lucy. Dear Hank and John, I was just watching a squirrel build a nest in my garden. And it occurred to me that they just know how to do that. Did their parents teach them how or can instinct cause them to build such intricate structures? If so, I'm wondering which complex tasks a human can do, purely by instinct. In this guy with diamonds, Lucy, "PS, yes, the squirrel looked frantic." They do do that. So Deboki went and dove down a little bit. And one thing Deboki found was a Reddit thread about a person with a squirrel who had the squirrel since they were seven or eight weeks old. So not a lot of chance to learn anything from the parents, but did start to do some nest building when given sticks. So maybe this is an instinctive question mark. We know more about birds, I think. So birds definitely have some element of instinctual nest building and they have some element of non-instinctual nest building where they actually learn techniques and skills. This is what we tend to find when we look hard at complex vertebrates and their instinctual behaviors is that some pieces of it are instinctual, but then also there are refinements of that instinct that are learned. I think about this with flying, like birds fly. And it's like, they just know how to do that. They just learned how to fly. But they stink at it at first. So they're bad at flying at first, but they are also built for flying. But and they do stuff that is flying like and then they are able to sort of transition from the simple version of flying into the complicated version and then they get good at it. And I think oftentimes we like discount that as viewers of other species because we're not like all caught up inside of their business, the way we're caught up inside of our business. We see the flying occurring and we think, oh, they just like knew how to do that. But like they knew how to do a version of it and then they got good at it. I doing it a bunch and I think that we're the exact same way with walking. John, we're talking about instinct and how the extent to which nest building is an instinct learned. And what we have discovered and looking at this is that many things that we think of as purely instinctual also have elements of being learned. - Like nest building. - Nest building walking also is this way. We're like, we're built to walk. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have to learn from other walkers. - It takes a lot of practice. And it's not just learning from viewing. That's part of it. It's also learning by doing. And so like you have this instinct maybe to build a nest, but you're actually learning what works, what keeps the sticks there when you're doing it, even if you're just a squirrel. - Fascinating. - Yeah. - I'm glad I'm not a squirrel, but I am a mammal. - Yeah. - As are they. - What would you want to be mammal-wise? If you had to be another mammal. - Mamm-wise? - Elephant, but like a safe one. (laughing) - What's a safe elephant look like these days? - Eh, the zoo probably. - Yeah, you'd want to be a zoo-bound elephant. - That's, I don't know. Maybe that sounds sad in its own way. - I just want to be an animal that like a mammal that lives a long time, but also one that has a good time. I don't know that elephants have that much fun. - I don't need to be here forever personally. I know you do, but I don't. I could be a dolphin. How long do dolphins live? - Oh, wild. I don't think it's really fun. - Honestly. - Yeah, mostly swimming. - They can live 50 years in the wild, in captivity. - Yeah. - Orcas, which are a type of dolphin, can live up to 90 years. - I want to be in a workah because that's like fun and also you get to murder a lot. And it's fine though. - Well, you do when you're a dolphin too, I think. - It's true, it's true. And you wouldn't be a good murderer, Hank. You talk a big game, but you wouldn't be. (laughing) - I bet if I was a dolphin, I would be. - Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you're from a fairly violent species and you're not that violent, so I don't really buy it. - It's true. - It's true. I love to see the dolphins evolve to have sort of more pro-social behaviors. - Yeah, me too, man. I'd love to see us evolve to have more pro-social behaviors. Why don't we evolve to have more like systems that include more people? - Yeah. - That's my big complaint about us is that we do not act as if what we know is true is true, which is that all human lives have equal value. We know that's true, we all know it's true. It's something that crosses all the different religions and all the different world views, like we all know that's true. And yet we don't act like it at all. - Do you think we've gotten better? - Probably marginally, you know, in the last 300 years, we're probably better than we were 300 years ago. We probably include more people in our systems than we did 300 years ago, yeah. - I once talked to a historian of prisons. I was on the record, it was a fascinating conversation and I'd love to share, but I talked to this historian of prisons and I was like, you know, sort of thinking that I would get that kind of answer. I was like, sorry, we better not than we used to be and he was like, not really, not with prisons. - No, I don't believe that. I believe that prisons are pretty bad. I believe that. And then I'm thinking like, are we actually better or do we just have like way more tools and resources? I think we're marginally better than we were 30 years ago because we've cut the number of children who died by like 60% but I don't know. - Is that just because it's easier to do that rather than? - I don't think it was that easy to do. I think we actually did decide to value the lives of children more highly, but yeah, I might be wrong. I've been wrong before. - Well, John, I made all my windows go away and I didn't know how to get them back. Do you want to do another question? - Yeah, let's do it. Let's ask this question from Michelle who writes, "Dear John and Hank, I'm the mother of a beautiful three-month-old girl. How I love her, she's adorable." I'm exhausted. Michelle is very relatable. I mean, first off, I'm not in three-month-old baby pain but I am in immense pain right now. Like, my body does not know what time it is. It does not want to be awake but it also does not want to be asleep. It wants to be, it wants to not, it wants Hank. And then we'll get to Michelle's question but no mammal was made for this. We were not made to travel 600 miles an hour across the ocean and then wake up the next morning and host a podcast with our brother. We weren't made for that. We were supposed to go at best at the speed of canoe. - This, okay. Fourth important thing to remember, humans, our main ability is adapting to weird situations. - Yeah, okay. Well, I'm trying. - You're an in-year headset in right now? - Yeah, I do. - Like, you're sting? - Like, I'm sting because I have to do this interview after I talk to you and they insisted that I have an in-year headphone. - Wow. I saw somebody else doing that the other day. That was, I was like an Atlantic podcast and they had in-years and I was like, "Man, what should I do that?" - Maybe you should. Anyway, we got to get to this question from Michelle. I didn't mean to dismiss your question, Michelle. I'm just kind of uncomfortable at the moment. I suppose evolution selects your favorable traits and offspring, not necessarily for parents sanity but why could an evolution bring us babies that sleep through the night? This is such a good question. I knew that people say you don't sleep when you have a baby but oh boy, boy, oh boy, was I unprepared? Sleepily, Michelle and baby Abigail. Hank, I remember the first like three months after our son was born and to a lesser extent our daughter but especially our son. It was so horrible. Like, it's almost, I don't even wanna tell people how horrible it was 'cause I don't wanna discourage them from having children. - Yeah. - But it was so horrible. It's just like one bit, it's like that's the thing. And it wasn't even that horrible for me. It was like, it was horrible for me but it was really, properly horrible for Sarah. - Yeah, it's bad and it's not like a week. - No, no, it's months and you do anything for months. You have sleepless months and it affects you deeply. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, man, there's a lot here. The thing appears to be that human babies are born a little bit earlier. - Yeah. - So we can get their heads out. - They would be optimally. Like an optimal birth age would maybe be a full three months after they're actually born, which means that they call it the fourth trimester. This period of time when the babies is still very, very, very dependent on the body of mother. No, I mean, babies, real little babies. And I don't wanna, I know some of them listen to this podcast, I don't wanna hurt their feelings, but like, they're not impressive. - No, no, no. They're not even very cute. - They're not cute, they don't laugh, they cry a lot. They're not that fun to hang out with. If we're being honest, they smell good when they're not pooping. - Yeah, I think that's one of the things that they gotta make them smell good, because otherwise. - Otherwise it'd be very difficult. - But oftentimes they smell bad. They can do both. - Well, when they've just pooped, they smell exceptionally bad. But man, a good, clean, fresh baby. That's a great smell. - So that's the primary thing. There's also like the why is it so hard thing? And part of that I think is because we raised babies very differently than we used to. It was a more communal activity in the past, which might allow for more sleeping, or this is definitely one of the things that I think is worse about the modern structure of society is that we are not as tight, and so we do not have the ability to lean on each other in the hardest moments in the way that we used to. - Yeah, yeah, it's a real problem. But there's also, there's a science thing I found an actual paper, which is unrelated to any of this, but there is a molecule that is about, like sort of a part of the arousal cycle, like being awake and aware. And babies that died of cids, they looked at their heel sticks that were still on file, and they found that they had less of that molecule. And so there might be some amount of like just like that arousal is kind of good for making sure that baby is able to around itself if it's in an uncomfortable situation, or like, you know, it's able to like move around, and et cetera. So there's also that element of it. But I think the biggest piece is simply that both babies evolved to be in a more communal environment, and also we evolved to get babies with big heads out. And that meant getting them out a little earlier. - We wanted that head as big as possible because that's where all the fancy stuff happens. - That's where, yeah, it does appear to be where a lot of our abilities lie, including our ability to just somehow get to the Philippines and back. - Yeah, barely. Barely, I mean, shout out to the pilots, they did the real work. I was just sitting there. (laughing) - Well, yeah, I am tired. Which reminds me to today's podcast is actually brought to you by talking over your brother, talking over your brother since 2016. - This podcast is also brought to you by Squirrels. Squirrels, what's going on there? - And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's three to four to five rules for remembering that you are a human. (laughing) - Just an organism, buddy. - And this podcast is brought to you by left-handed scissors. Left-handed scissors available. Thank goodness. - That's a great end. It's a great tagline for them for left-handed scissors. - Available. - Available. - We exist. - No, man. - Didn't use to. - This episode is brought to you by Uncommon Goods. It is time for holiday shopping. Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique high quality finds you will not see anywhere else. They have got so much good and weird stuff and I bet the goodest and weirdest things to get scooped up pretty fast. 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By cutting out middlemen and traditional markups, Quince delivers the same quality as luxury brands at a fraction of the price. I've got a very soft and very cozy cable knit sweater. What I put it on is, like, I put on a hoodie. It's what it feels like, but then I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like, look at this guy. He's ready to, like, deliver the presents to everybody in the house on Christmas morning. I look like I'm in a hallmark movie. Get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince, don't wait, go to Quince.com/deerhank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/deerhank, free shipping and 365 day returns, quince.com/deerhank. Hank, we got a question from Ryan. Ryan asked, "Dear John and Hank, we all know ice breakers, questions and meetings or whatever to break the ice and ease the tension as people get to know each other, but I want to know if there are ice makers out there." Questions that would ask make people feel less connected and less inclined to mingle with each other. Cold pumpkins and regular penguins. Ryan. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's pretty easy ones out there. I could think of a couple. Go around in a circle, everybody. How much do you make? Oh, that's a good one. I was thinking more along the lines of, let's dig into politics. Yeah, yeah. How's everybody feel about how that election went? That's good one. Did man in fact walk on the moon? That's gonna be a divisive one. Surprisingly divisive. We used to be less divisive, but it's back to be in divisive again. Yeah, I try not to think about that as being a thing. That's a thing. You could do it the way that parents and grandparents all around the world do. When are you gonna have kids? Ooh, or do you know where you're gonna go to college? Asked critically of a sixth grader. (laughing) One really shuts me down. What's your sign? That's a difficult one that actually. That's your text out a little bit. I feel like it comes with like a judgment. I'm like, I don't want you to be judging me about that. Well, whenever I tell people my sign, they're always like, oh man, that's too bad. Oh, I think I got a bad sign. I got it. Are you the ones with the twins? You're a Sagittarius, right? Nope. Keep trying. (laughing) That was born on August 24th, if that helps. That's not gonna help at all. No. Is that like a cusp? Is that one of the. It's a cusp? It's a cusp. Yeah, okay. You got that right? You got that right? Yep. So you're between Juno and Mercury. Nope, I'm between Leo and Virgo, but I'm a Virgo. And whenever I tell people I'm a Virgo, they're always like, oh yeah, all right. Yeah, you know, what are you gonna do? It's not your fault. And I tell people I'm a Taurus and they're like, yeah. Oh, do you seem like a Taurus? Do you have typical Taurus? I don't know if I seem like a Taurus, but like, it's cool to be like a bull. That's a cool thing. I guess so. It's cool as a being a virgin. (laughing) And then there's like one, 12 of them are just out there being cancer. That's not fair at all. Yeah. But I think it's a crab or a woman with water. Point being, that shuts Hank down. It doesn't shut me down. The one that shuts me down more than anything in terms of an ice maker is if somebody asks me a leading question that they know the correct answer to about me. Oh, like, I'll give you an example. Here's an example. You're not comfortable with ambiguity, are you? Ooh. Ice-made. Ice-made. Ice-made. You know? Ice-made, we're gonna have to work a long time to make this shave ice. Anytime you make my personality into a question, but you think you know the answer to the question? I don't like it. I don't like it. Well, I do like this question from anonymous. Dear John and Hank, how do you decide whether you want to have kids? Some of my friends are starting to have kids. And others know for sure that they don't want kids now or ever, but I just can't work out whether I want one way or the other. I'm 30 and now I feel like I barely look after myself. I still feel like I'm a kid in an adult's body. I'm doing okay financially, so that's not a massive factor. But the idea of deciding what to make for dinner every day for the rest of my life is daunting enough without being responsible for feeding someone else. And they just do where you eat anonymous. I know I still have plenty of time to work this out, but I worry I'll just keep putting off making a decision until one day it's too late. And I'll regret not having done something sooner. So how do I work out what I want? Bye-bye baby anonymous. Boy. I don't know if it's a good question for Hank Green 'cause Hank Green made the call "pretty late in life." I did, I did, yeah. I'd like to make a video that's like, why is this good? You know? Hey, having kids is not inherently good. We're not saying that like everyone should have kids, by any stretch of the imagination. If you don't want to have kids, don't have kids. I know lots of people who are fulfilling lives and no kids. Yeah. But the, there's all kinds of fun parts, you know? Yeah, one thing we should have said to Michelle earlier, Hank, is that like the first three months are the least fun three months. Yeah, I mean, there's probably some circumstances where there's some less fun three months, but that's true, sure. That's true, I mean, that's very true. 15 is not that easy, but like the first three months are exceptionally challenging for most people. Yeah, yeah, it really does. It can clear up and become quite a lot easier. That's some point, like at six months orange started sleeping like 10 hours a night. And I was like, oh man. Yeah. That's a lot of time. Or like 12 hours. Yeah, like 12 hours. And then that's 12 hours with the amount of free time. Yeah. And now he sleeps once a day. Terrible. I know. He sleeps so much in the beginning, but also not right at the very beginning when you'd like them to. Right. Sleep when they sleep is what they say. So Hank, how did you decide that you wanted to have kids? Or a kid? I wish I'd been journaling. I was pretty like, I don't need this. You were a kid in my life's body. I felt like I didn't need it for a long time. It's just like so much interesting stuff going on anyway. And then, you know, honestly, what did it was like watching other people with their kids? We were like the last people in our friend group to have kids. And seeing how it went, like going and hanging out with them and like, like, the kids. Yeah. I just hadn't, like every kid I'd ever seen, like, either was invisible or having a tantrum. You know, like strangers kids. Or either not there or they're being annoying. Like those are the two ways that you know, these strangers kids. But the more I, like, hung out with the kids of friends and like watched them grow up and saw how my friends were dealing with it, you know, the hard parts and the easy parts and the fun parts. And I was like, oh, that looks like kind of great. You know, and I kind of felt like, I think Catherine also specifically felt like there was like, you know, kind of a continuity to the, you know, the process of having family. You know, you have family up like you have your parents. But then you like, there's also like, you know, sometimes you want family down to some extent to like add family down. Yeah. And I just kept like seeing like the interesting parts of my friends' relationships with their kids. And I was like, that looks really interesting actually. Yeah. I mean, we decided to have kids because we were like 27 and other people were having kids, which isn't the best reason. But I'm really glad we did. But I think like, I take a lot of my social cues from around me. So like when my best friend had a kid, I was like, oh, guess it's time. I'm not really a leader when it comes to that stuff. I'm definitely vulnerable to peer pressure, you know, like when it comes to having children or smoking cigarettes or whatever. Yeah. I'm very, I'm very much like, oh, is that what we're doing? Okay, all right, we'll do it. I think that's like most of how humans go. Oh, yeah, so much of how I see the world is just like, ultimately, it's a lot easier if I just kind of go with what's normal. Yep. Yeah. That's a good rule. Not always a good rule. It's not a necessarily good way to go through life, but it is the way that I've gone through life. Yeah, well, it's not entirely the way you've gone through life. You've made all of it. Pretty much. I pretty much had two children and a picket fence. Yeah, but you didn't, you didn't, you also became like a writer and YouTuber, which is not like super typical path. Yeah, but then like as you know, Hank, I think the obsession with what people do for a living is like way overblown and like not the most interesting thing about them. So I actually think like my life is very similar to my friends who are schoolteachers or cell dental supplies or whatever. Yes. There's also the element of, I think that it probably to a lot of people would have seemed like a weird pivot from young adult novelist to YouTuber in 2007. Yeah. But I think that we were following very normal incentives that other people, like lots of other people would have followed, I think. Totally. We were just, we just happened to be into something and it wasn't a weird pivot. Just like it's not that weird of a pivot to go from a young adult novelist to a tuberculosis writer. Like it seems like a weird pivot from the outside, but if you've lived my life, then it doesn't seem like a weird pivot at all because I've always been interested in young people and illness. Yeah. And here I am still interested in young people and illness. Yeah. I'm still writing about them, just writing about them in a different context. And so to me, it doesn't feel like a pivot, but of course, like when you pitch the idea, young adult novelist turns into tuberculosis historian, it seems like a big pivot. But this is true for most of our pivots, I think. I think they're smaller than they look at first. Yeah. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC will, then we need to talk about the physicists. The physicists have responded, Hank. To what happens when you go near the speed of light, does it look like Star Wars or does it look like something else? Yes. So first, we have this physicist. And you'll be surprised to learn, Hank, the physicists do not totally agree. No, interesting. So I'm going to tell you what everybody's bonafides are. So that you'll-- you can make your own decision based on their bonafides. Dear John and Hank, you asked for a physicist to answer a listener question. I heed the call. I'm a particle physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and frequently zoom things around it near the speed of light. Your listener asks, what you would see if you move faster than light like in Star Wars or Star Trek? The listener is right that it would not appear like it does on TV, because the reality is more bleak. You would not see much. Oh, ignoring other physics problems, you would zap past things so fast. Most of that light would never catch up to your eyes hence you would see black. The only light you could see is very narrow cone in the direction you are moving, which is just the light in your way as you crash through it. Now, you will notice that Grant says ignoring other physics problems. Yeah. It turns out that some people did not ignore other physics problems. So maybe that's part of the reason why people disagree. But anyway, what is more interesting is what happens, Grant writes, as you approach the speed of light, both your perception of space and time would change. And a fun way to see this is through a free game developed at MIT. I can see it giving both or either of you the giggles or vertigo. I did the game, and it gave me vertigo. Not a source of funding, Grant. So thank you, Grant. That was very helpful. However, Adam writes, "Dear John and Hank, as someone with a PhD in mathematical physics, I would like to emphasize the correct answer to the question about how stars look when you move faster than light is we have no idea." If anyone tells you differently, they are making some very big assumptions. Indeed. Wow, all right. We're coming for Grant here. As Grant apparently was. When determining how objects look when moving at a certain speed, we typically use special relativity, which is very good answer for anything that moves slower than light. Now, it is possible to plug-o speed larger than light into those equations and get an answer. Maybe you can even get rid of the imaginary numbers that pop up, but there is no good reason why physics should behave the same way on the other side of the light barrier. That's Adam's perspective. Oh, go on like faster than the speed of light. OK. Kevin's perspective is, "Dear John and Hank, I am a physics PhD student, and I bet there won't be any universal conclusion on what a star looks like when passing above the speed of light." Man, that's a good answer right there. Not really thought through it. Personally, I think it's like Star Wars, though. So there are your answers from real physicists. Real proper physicists have weighed in our physics question, and you've got some answers. Now, Hank, we have long known that the AFC Wimbledon Juggernaut simply could not last forever. That Eucharist was melting its wax wings, Hank. We've always known that AFC Wimbledon was flying way too close to the sun, and sure enough, AFC Wimbledon played in the FA Cup. A tournament we really needed to do well in because we need money. I don't know if I emphasized this enough, but AFC Wimbledon is, as football clubs go, desperately, desperately poor. And we really needed the money from a big cup run where you get like a Liverpool away, and you get like $500,000 just for playing Liverpool. We needed that. Instead, we lost to Gateshead. Well, you know what they always say about Gateshead. What do they always say about Gateshead? Oh, I don't know either. We also lost to Burton Albion, the 21st Best Team in League 1. So in our last two games, we've lost to one of the worst teams in League 1, and a team currently playing its trade in the 5th division of English football. So not covering ourselves in glory at the moment. No, how many of those count toward your standings? Only one counts toward the standings. The other just means that we don't get to play in the FA Cup anymore, which is really unfortunate because we needed that $1/2 million. We were going to make if we made it to the third round. OK. So, yeah, it's a bit crap, Hank. What else can you say? Yeah, we're out of the FA Cup. We're struggling down, I think, in sixth place in League 1. But I don't know, I'm just kidding. I'll take that all day. Six place in League 1. You got to be joking. Well, I mean, as long as you can hold onto it and look, it probably means you're going to stay on the League. At least. Yeah, the main thing is to stay on the League. That's job number one. Job number two is to miraculously get promoted to the championship and lose 100% of our games the season after. Well, we'll try that. All right, what's the news from Mars? The news from Mars, John, is that we're going back? No. Well, yeah, a pro. So we're probing back. Yeah, we've never gone with people. So we're just probing back. There's called the Escapade probes. This is a dual space craft mission. And it's going to launch in the next two weeks at some point. So this is actually supposed to launch in 2024 using blue origins, rocket, new Glenn. But NASA was like, this thing doesn't look 100% ready. So there were some more test fights. And now it has been prepped for launch with the Escapade probes. What you're going to go to Mars, I will continue to look at the deep details of what Escapade is going to do. But they're basically trying to, I think, understand, Mars is like a weird, weak magnetic field. How it interacts with the solar winds. How it became a desert lifeless place with no atmosphere. Or at least a desert. I wouldn't go so far as to say life was just yet. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Also, it has some atmosphere. Thank you. So this is my big question, Hank. And it's not about Mars. It's about my home planet, which I much prefer. Yeah. It's autumn right now. It's beautiful. The sky is blue. There's planes in the air. The robins are-- We're all merge of mammals, air and dust. We're all just a bunch of mammals, breathing air, which is stuff. Is there a chance the solar winds are going to blow off this atmosphere and leave this place like done and dusted? No. I mean, if we've gotten four and a half billion years into this, we're going to hold onto our atmosphere. We could do some stuff to the atmosphere that's not ideal. And by I could, I mean our-- Yeah. No, I know we are doing that, but we're going to have an atmosphere for the foreseeable future. Yeah, great. I'm not worried. That's a big relief to me. Yeah. You're good. Keep breathing, buddy. All right, I've got to figure out these headphones before I do my big interview. I'm so hungry right now. All right, well, Hank, that's a good reminder that we need to end the podcast, because Hank needs to go eat. I'm going to get a snack. Thank you for potting with me. You can send cool listener questions, can be sent to [email protected]. I'm sorry I was so tired today. I swore I'd do my best. Did my best. You did great, John. This podcast was edited by Ben Swardout. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trockervardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. And as they sand our home down, don't forget to me all. (upbeat music)