406: Science Spectacular (w/ Deboki Chakravarti!)
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You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I'm calling it today, Dear Deboki and Hank. That's right. It's a podcast where two brothers and sometimes a brother and a Deboki Chakravarti answer your questions, give you NBC advice, and review all the news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Deboki, do you know why Congress keeps smashing plates and bowls?

They want to seem tough on China. Okay, I thought they were trying to pass the bill along or something, but that wasn't working. And I don't know why I'm trying to teach them. That's why they have so many ducks. Right. Yeah. Yes. I don't know why I'm trying to crack dad codes. Like, oh, if I figure this one out, dad jokes will stop. They can't exist anymore. Exactly.

So, Deboki, as people should know if you listen to the last part of the podcast, works on this podcast, helps me get answers to science questions so that I'm less likely to be talking directly out of my own butt. Now it's just indirectly. Yeah.

So I indirectly talk out of Deboki's butt, which is... So we've been working together on a bunch of different... This is not the only thing that Deboki and I work together on. And we've been working together for many years. And you've been on the podcast before. I have. And you have your own podcast called Tiny Matters, which is a delight. Yes.

Thank you. Yeah, Tiny Matters is made by the American Chemical Society. I work with Sam Jones, and we have a lot of fun talking about science and cool science history things and all of that good stuff. Yeah. And not just chemicals, but a lot of chemicals. Yeah.

As I am on record saying, chemistry is the most underappreciated of the biggest sciences. And so I appreciate you for the work that you do. So we decided since John, something broke on his car. I didn't tell you this to Vokey, but something broke on John's car and he has been towed to the car dealership where he is waiting for them to fix something to do with the spark plugs.

And so he can't make her podcast. And we usually meet before the podcast. So I was like, what if we just made a science spectacular where we just go over a bunch of the science questions we haven't hit over the last like five or so episodes. Right. And we can talk about what we've learned.

Yeah. Because we chat anyway, and it's always a good time. We might as well invite some people in sometimes. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to get to go back. Sometimes I think I'm always in suspense for what's going to make it to the podcast. I'm like, I know the questions. Is this thing going to make it? And how is it going to make it? It must be disappointing because there's no freaking logic to it either. Like, I just kind of let John be in charge. And then if he hits one of the ones that we talked about, then I go off.

Yeah, well, you know the thing where you're like, I'm talking to the podcast as if they were my friends. I experience that every time with this where I'm like, Hank, we just talked about this and you're not going to talk about it again? Yeah, yeah. But it's, I mean, there is so much good stuff that we don't get to. So we should get to some of it. One of the things that my instinct is, is to talk about TikTok, which of course we cannot do because the situation is changing so extremely quickly that by the time this episode comes out,

Right. Be entirely useless information. Yeah. And I've barely been on TikTok. I think like with in the past year, I hit a point where I was like, I don't like the way that I feel on TikTok. Yeah, I don't like the feelings that I get from it. And it was surprisingly easy to quit.

Which was weird. Like, I'm so used to it. Like, I just deleted Reddit off of my phone yesterday. Oh, wow. But I know that it's going to be back on my phone in a few weeks. It's just like right now I need a break. And it's so hard for me to leave Reddit or leave other social media platforms. But TikTok, like, once you're off of it, it was, at least for me, it was, like, so easy to just be like, well, I don't really miss it. Like, if there's a TikTok that I need to know about, then I will find out about it. It will be linked.

But also a lot of the things that come from TikTok just move so quickly away from the general consciousness that I don't know that I end up missing. Yeah, it yeah, I I was going through actually I might make a video out of this experience, but I scrolled to my very first comment that I ever left on TikTok. And I want some of those like early, early videos. And, you know, it.

It was really for many years, it's been very vibrant and special. And there's always lots of very cool stuff going on. There's still lots of cool stuff going on on TikTok as of today anyway. Yeah. But it does, you know, the sort of like balance of like, just sort of amazed at the creativity of humans and enjoying myself to like, you know, scrolling past another live stream of a person trying to get a ping pong ball into a cup and

And then another live stream of a person who was playing some kind of medieval stabbing game followed by a commercial for a medically dubious device. Yeah. You know, I like, it's just, it definitely hit its moment of not being like, you know, the, the, the company running Tik TOK needing to leverage it into making a lot of money. And it's just like a less fun place for sure than it once was. But yeah,

Who knows where we're at in a few days. Yeah. Yeah. In a few days, maybe I'll even have put TikTok back on my phone.

What I know for sure is that the answers to the questions we're about to ask are not going to change in the next three days. For example, our first question comes from Dev, who asks, Dear Hank and Deboki, I know Earth's fire requires oxygen. Is there another gas that would serve the same purpose on another planet with a non-oxygen atmosphere, developing a better understanding of the universe? Dev.

This is a complicated question, but there are, when you sort of like think of it as oxidizers and reducers. So a weird thing about fire is that it is rapid oxidation and that oxidation sounds like it's done by oxygen, which it is, but, but there are other things that can oxidize things and they can do it quickly. And so like, if you were in like a fluorine gas environment, like,

Stuff could definitely burn because the fluorine would do the oxidizing instead of the oxygen. But where would that be? That'd be tricky to have. There's also a lot of metals can do oxidizing, but usually metals aren't gases.

sort of famously. Yeah. I think fire is one of those weird things, right? Like, cause I just feels like it's feels like it should just be this thing, but then it's also just more reaction that we get to see, I guess. Yeah. The thing that we're witnessing as fire isn't the chemical reaction. It's the byproducts of the chemical reaction. Right. Or it is the chemical reaction continuing as it floats up because it is so hot. Right.

Yeah. And apparently, I guess only Earth has fire. That we know of. Yeah, we've never seen fire anywhere else. Which I just like had never thought about. But then it's like, okay, I guess that makes sense. And it's like apparently connected to the fact that we have oxygen. And then to get oxygen to this degree, you have to have life. And like, that's what we have. Other planets, as far as we know, don't.

But that's wild to me. I don't know why. Like, you just kind of take it for granted. Like, if I were going to conjure up a planet in my head, I would be like, oh, yeah, there's going to be an icy planet. There's going to be a fiery planet. Those are the planets. But those things are not similar. Fire is an active chemical reaction. Ice is just a rock. It's just another rock. Yeah. I fought this battle on TikTok a few years ago about whether or not ice is a rock.

And it is. It just is. It is. And we're lava monsters. Yeah. So we are fire. I know. But lava is not fire, right? Lava is not fire. Lava is just liquid rock. Yeah. I said Java, which is not. It probably once was. Yeah. It seems volcanic just from the vibes I get from picturing it. Yeah. It must be. Yeah.

Volcanic activity has not built the landmass of the island. What? Has not only built the landmass of the island with lava flows, lahars, and air and waterborne ash. It has also spawned many of the most ingenious and resilient human cultures on the planet. All right, Java. I was right. Yes. Sometimes the vibes are correct. Yeah. But you also have to check them. Fire is...

Uh, is as far as we know, kind of, it requires life because you have to both like the stuff that burns was once alive and the oxygen in the atmosphere was also created by the living stuff.

And oxygen doesn't tend to hang out for a long time. So you always have to be replenishing it somehow because it reacts. It reacts really fast. That's like one of the things about oxygen is like also a huge this. I found this out at one point in my life and I just blew my mind. Like a huge portion of the minerals that we have would not be possible on a planet without life.

Because they are they require a high concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere to form. Right. Yeah. And I guess like that's part of why the Earth used to look so completely different from what it looks like now, like different colors, completely different composition. Yeah.

It's just – it's like the geology of the Earth and the biology of the Earth are very much connected. And we wouldn't have thought, you know? Right. And it does feel like that's not intuitive. If we're looking for life on other planets, like we should look for fire. Yeah.

That's the thing. We should look for fire. If there's smoke. I'm sure someone's thought of that. And I'm sure there's a good reason. The astrobiologists listening right now are like, Deboki. Yeah. What a cool field that exists now and you could actually be a part of theoretically if you worked hard on that. But there's a book called Becoming Earth where I learned all about

the connection between geology and biology and how they are, how the, we're just like a, we're just a living planet. Very cool. Yeah. Also, I, when I looked into this question, I found out that there are some circumstances where metals can burn. They're like very reactive. Metals can burn in carbon dioxide atmospheres. Yeah.

Which is like, that seems wrong. But it's because they strip the carbon off of the carbon dioxide and free the oxygen to then do the oxidation. Wowee. Chemistry, man. It's weird. And that is a gas that can theoretically do oxidation if only you break some very strong bonds. Yeah.

I mean, it's just like casual. If you just do this, then. Yeah. If you can only turn carbon dioxide into just oxygen, then you could definitely burn. So like people, I mean, so like astronauts have like done flames in space, right? Because that's the whole thing about how you get spherical flames. So like, are those like the first flames that have existed outside of Earth? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that we know of, again, like it's a big universe, so there's definitely some kind of forest somewhere that's burnt down in some galaxy. Yeah. But the – yeah, I –

You know, just that is also the first time there was life out there. Yeah. Fire just follows us around. Yeah. And which is a problem. And it's terrifying for the people of the space station. You think – like what do you think is the thing that they're most afraid of on the space station? Because I think it's got to be fire. Yeah. That's – I mean I'm just listing off my anxieties would be like being forgotten out there. Yeah.

The next word that came to my mind, which makes no sense, is plummeting to my death. Yeah, no, you can't do that. I don't know how you do that in space. It'd be really hard to plummet to your death from the space station. It would take a long time. Yeah, and that's what makes it scary. Yeah, it's not like the movie Gravity, which was trying apparently very hard to be accurate, but then just gave up.

I didn't even see it. Yeah. I don't trust a movie called Gravity. At one point, someone just falls to the earth.

from space, which is not how it works. If you're in orbit, you are going very fast around the Earth and in order to fall down, you would have to slow down, which takes energy. Which is why you can't shoot nuclear waste into the sun. When I realized it was easier to shoot nuclear waste into outer space than to shoot it into the sun, truly mind-bending. Like a mind-melting moment. You can get it out of the solar system more easily than we can get it into the sun because you don't fall down.

You don't fall down? Like, what do you mean? You'd have to decelerate it. You'd have to decelerate it until it's not orbiting the sun anymore, which is just like a huge amount of energy to decelerate it. Yeah. So we could just make it someone else's problem, like very far away, but not the sun. Oh, yeah. We could crash it into Mars.

Yeah. We could crash it into the moon much easier than any of that. But you'd have to, in order to do that, you'd have to shoot it through the atmosphere on top of a giant bomb, which is not ideal. Yeah, that would take a little while and probably be expensive. It would probably be easier if we just didn't get to that point. Yeah. Well, I thought, look, it's a big planet. We can figure out what to do with the waste. I just don't want the chance of it exploding in the atmosphere to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

But who knows? Maybe that's not that big of a concern. That is one of my concerns, though. I think my in general, I feel like my concern and being in spaces is that the that is decompression. Yeah, but I think probably fire is.

actually scarier. It does seem, yeah, I think I could see that. I think fire would be up there with things that I would be freaked out about. And just also anything that would end up floating around me that I couldn't get a handle on, I think, would freak me out. I think just in general, being in space. If I were in space, I've already done the thing that is scariest to me. Well, there was the moment on the Apollo missions, because of course everything is public record, where they found a poop

Just a free floating poop in the capsule, which was really sort of like they were like, what's this? Oh, it's a poop. It must have smelled so bad in there that they weren't like, oh, there must be a poop floating around in here. Yeah. Well, do you smell things differently up there? You do, but I think you still smell. Yeah, you do. I think you do smell worse in space because your head's all full of blood.

Yeah. Makes you stuffy. But anyway, do you have another question for us or should I try and hit one? Oh, I can, I can do one. Um, there was one from, uh,

a recent recording that we didn't get to that I felt personal kinship with. And this is from Keely who says, Hi Hank and John, I'm Keely and I'm currently pregnant. I know that when this baby gets bigger, all of my organs will get squished into other parts of my body. I was wondering if my organs stay smaller for a while or if they bounce back pretty quickly after birth. Just wondering when I'll be able to eat a full meal again, which...

I relate to. I was pregnant last year. It hurts your stomach and your ability to eat. It's so weird. Like, where does it all go? It all has to keep moving through. It has to move past the baby.

Yeah, yeah. And it moves. And I think some of the changes for me were very gradual. Like I didn't fully realize that like my stomach was getting squished and that was uncomfortable, but it was like, but I could realize like, oh, I can't breathe as well. Or like I had acid reflux. I was like, oh, a lot of foods just like don't feel good anymore. So yeah, by the end.

I was definitely ready to have a baby. And then also just like physically, I was also like very curious, like what is it going to feel like? Like I remember like in the days leading up to labor being like, huh? Like I am huge right now. There is a baby inside of here in a few days. There is not going to be a baby inside of here. Like what's going to happen? Just a bunch of space. Isn't it all like rattling around in there at that point? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I think it still is. Yeah.

I'm not sure all of my organs have found their way back to the original location. To like where they're supposed to be. Yeah. Is there like a time lapse? There should be like an MRI time lapse of a person after pregnancy. Yeah. I mean, I think the sheer exhaustion, I would just be like, yes, please stick me in the MRI. Oh, a chance to have a break? Okay. Yeah. Could I listen to a podcast? Yeah.

Yeah. And like apparently before pregnancy, like just to give a sense of the scale, apparently before pregnancy, your uterus is about the size of a lemon. By the time you deliver, it's about the size of a watermelon. So that's a big one too. Not like one of those, not one of those like picnic watermelons. Everybody's coming. The barbecue watermelon. Big old watermelon. Yeah.

Like, you took time to pick out this watermelon. Yeah, you got all the family coming over watermelon. Yeah. And so obviously, like, that, like, presses everything around. You're also, you've got the placenta. So that's, like, something else that is taking up space in your body. Which is another thing that, like, I have a bone to pick with the birth people. I thought, like, originally...

before you give birth i'm like okay you give birth to a baby and you're done it's like no no no you give birth to the baby and then you got to give birth to an organ yeah luckily it's at that point you've done the worst part but like that does not sound nice though i mean by that point i was just like so hopped up on like this baby that i was like oh yeah cool placenta yeah um

But it takes apparently about six weeks after delivery for your uterus to get back to its original size. And that's through a process called involution. Yeah. Which is good, too. Is that where your body eats your uterus? Maybe. It sure sounds like it. Yeah. Involution. I've never heard that word.

It sounds very dramatic. It can be the shrinkage of an organ at any time, but also after childbirth. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's probably the most notable one that happens. Yeah. It also apparently happens to organs as you age. Your organs get smaller. So, yeah. I mean, for Keeley, all I'll say is you will be hungry probably pretty soon after giving birth.

Especially anyone who does breastfeeding, like you're just starving all the time because a big chunk of your body is now being dedicated to feeding another body. So I wouldn't worry about needing to eat, like wanting to feel the need to eat again. I'd worry more about like having the ability to savor your food and sit down and eat, but that'll come back eventually. But the rest of the organs don't shrink, do they? They just get pushed around. I don't think so. I think they get squished. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it would be weird to have your stomach shrink like that and then expand again. Right. And you need more resources than ever before. So if anything, it feels like your organs would beef up a little bit. Your heart is pumping more blood. Your lungs are oxygenating more blood. Right. Your liver is filtering more blood. Your kidneys are filtering more blood. Yeah. That's a lot of blood. Yeah.

I think I'd like to take it back. I talked about blood too much. That was

I didn't mean to freak you out. Pregnant people, we got a lot of blood in you right now. Yeah. You got like twice the number of bones as usual and a third more blood. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into like, oh my God, pregnancy is scary. It'll be great. It'll be fine. And you'll get to eat and it's all fine. Yeah. But also like, you know that your body is doing a lot. It's inescapable. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I still remember having this conversation like way back where we were talking about like pain receptors in the gut and you were like saying something like, oh, I wonder if like what it would feel like to feel a hand like in your gut. And I was like, yeah, I can tell you it feels weird. There's there's there are limbs inside of me moving right now.

And it's weird. I know. And it's like the most natural, normal thing. Every single person has been birthed. Yep. And, but, and still it seems like the, like the least normal thing a person can do to just build another person. Right. Yeah. It's, it's really wild. And then you like, look at this baby and you're like,

You were you were made inside of my body like you constructed all of these things like when like I had a feeling my baby would have hair. But seeing it was weird. Also, like first trimester, for some reason, I was really hung up on the fact that there were going to be like hands and feet inside of me. And like seeing them was like, yeah, this is weird. I don't know why the limbs particularly freak me out. But well, that's hands and feet are weird.

Yeah. Just like tentacles on the end of your tentacles. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Boaty tentacles. They're like fractal humans. Yeah. It's like whenever you picture an animal that doesn't have hands with hands, it's very upsetting. So, yeah, I think the theme of today's episode so far is life is just weird. Life is weird. Life is weird and amazing. Yeah, and life made more life. Let's do more physics, though. This question comes from Alexander, who asks,

Dear Hank and Deboki, how does copper work? It's not magnetic, but it seems to have some sort of connection to electromagnetism that I've never quite understood. It's commonly used in electronics and all kinds of various things. And there's that magnetic breaking trick you sometimes see with copper. What's going on? Scared, Alexander. You don't have anything to be scared about, Alexander.

Um, metal metals can do electromagnetism, whether or not they are magnetic, I think is one of the big confusing things here. So there's like a thing that means some metals can be magnetic. What is it? I always forget. Yeah. Yeah.

This is a lot of how Devoki and I's conversations go. It's like, I know that this exists and so I can look it up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's really the trick to my job is just figuring out what is the right thing to Google. Like, what are the words that I know are vaguely associated with this? Dipole. Yeah.

Yeah, I was also not entirely sure what the magnetic breaking trick is. So I don't know if you know what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know, again, I know enough about it to look it up. But there is this situation where if you drop a slug of something that conducts electricity through something that is magnetic, it will slow it down.

Even though the copper itself isn't magnetic because it's inducing a current in the magnetic metal and that is creating a magnetic field that is slowing down.

If I got that wrong, forgive me. But I think that's what's going on. I didn't look this up. It sounds right. It's inducing an electromagnetic – because that's what happens, right? It's all about conductors moving inside of currents. And that's how you create all of the electricity that we use and stuff. But yeah, I think that any electrons –

Uh, moving, moving, look, we're going to be fudging stuff a little bit. That's fine. Any electrons moving through a wire are going to, um, are going to create a magnetic field. And that is what we use. Like when we spin stuff in power plants, that's what we use to actually create electricity is just like spinning magnets. Right.

And copper can do that, but copper doesn't have this other property that submetals have that allow it to actually get an induced magnetic field in response to a magnet. And thus a magnet will stick to it. Um,

So you can't stick a magnet to copper. It doesn't have that property. And so that's what makes it so that it won't do the magnet thing. I think it seems confusing that it does like all of this electromagnetism stuff, which all metals do. But then there's this other property that allows something to be stuck to by magnets. And then there is yet a further property that allows something to be a magnet where that it's like a permanent like the permanent magnet.

Right. Dipole for some reason. Yeah. Like because things can do electromagnetism without being magnetic. Yes. Like that is just a function of the ways that the thing is doing electromagnetism. And copper is a very good conductor, which is why we use it in all of these things. It's a good conductor. It's relatively cheap compared to a bunch of other good conductors like gold is a good conductor, but that's very expensive.

Yeah. And so it's relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust. It's relatively easy to do a bunch of stuff with like it's ductile so you can stretch it into a really long thread. Yeah. And so that makes it good for being wires basically. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not. That's why we use it. That's why we use it. It's a good stuff. Copper and. Yeah.

We need more of it than ever. Look at us. Yeah. It's also, it's very important for like electric motors. So we need it in all of the electrification we're doing for electric cars is a big one, but also like heat pumps and stuff. You know, anytime you're spinning something, you're going to be using some copper. What are like the, where are the big iron sources? The big iron sources? Well, if you drill straight down forever. Yeah. Yeah.

Just keep going. I don't know where we get iron. I mean, I think there's a lot of iron. Did I say iron? You did say iron. Sorry. I mean, I think that copper exists in a lot of the same places as other metals. So I know this because of Montana history. A lot of times you start out as a gold mine and then you run out of gold and you become a copper mine.

Because you've got a bunch of the infrastructure already in place. You've got the labor. You've got the right. You know, you've got a whole dug and you start to start to pull out copper or and you were kind of pulling out copper or the whole time. But the and then and then oftentimes it turns into the open pit mine where instead of like following a vein, you'll just dig up the whole mountain, which is what Butte is. I don't know if you know about Butte, Montana.

Yeah, I've driven by it. Yeah, it's got a real big hole that used to be a mountain. Yeah. Yeah, that's what really struck me. Because at least on the freeway route that I was taking, it felt like you're just kind of driving through a big cavern of a town, kind of. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't really expecting it to look like that. It was cool. Yeah. Or it was neat to look at. Yeah. And we...

I mean, that mine is no longer active, but there are still active copper mines all over the world, of course, but also in the U.S. I think there's a big one in Utah. I think you fly over it sometimes and it's like, holy moly, that is a big hole in the ground. Here is one from Jake who asks, Dear Hank and John, again, I don't know. I'm sorry. I hope this is okay if I'm doing this to you, but I'm confused about umbilical cords.

I'm here to answer all of the pregnancy science questions. I'm all for it. Someone recently asked, and I didn't end up doing anything with it, but someone asked if the umbilical cord has nerves and who feels it when it gets cut. And I was like, I feel like it wouldn't have nerves. And indeed, it doesn't. So no one feels it when it gets cut.

Yeah. Again, the idea of feeling anything after you've given birth. I actually asked Catherine, I was like, did it feel like anything when they cut the umbilical cord? And she was like, I have no idea. Yeah. I relate to that feeling. She was like, I don't even like that you asked. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So does the umbilical cord have nerves? It does not. It is. And it is not the only part of the body. Most of the body is innervated in some way so that you feel it when things happen to it. Right. But the brain is not, which is interesting. So you like you could once you're in there, you can wiggle all around in the brain and you wouldn't feel it except that. That's a thing from Hannibal, isn't it? Aye yai yai. No, I don't know.

The show? The TV show? Probably both the TV show and the movie. I don't want to know what you're about to tell me. I've not watched either of those pieces of media.

We'll let that reference pass, though. Okay. Confused about umbilical cords, not the during pregnancy part, although that is also a little bewildering. But what happens after birth? You have to cut the cord. Where? Right close up to the belly? What if you cut it too high up? Is that how outies happen?

And how do other mammals deal with their umbilical cords? They don't have scissors. Also, how did ancient humans deal with the cord? What did we do before we had scissors? A former baby, Jake. Yeah, I actually did not look up what happens if you cut it too high or anything like that. But I did look up what other animals do. And like some of them will just bite it off. Yeah, they got scissors there in their mouths. Yeah, those are nature's scissors. They might also eat that thing.

Yeah. And like we probably did, too, until we figured out how to use other instruments. Despite it, there was like a special member of the community who was the cord biter. Yeah. I was doing a bunch of other stuff probably, too. And then they were like, you know, I don't know. Well, humans have had sharp stuff for a long time. Yeah. I think we've had sharp stuff since before there were before there were people.

Yeah. And I wonder what point was like the we're we're done with teeth. Like we just got to we got to go to an instrument to do this. Well, it's a it's a big thing. So I think from from like the advent of culture, regardless of whether it was a blade or teeth, there was probably like significance to that choice. Yeah. I like thinking about things that mattered a long time ago.

Yeah. Because of course we can't know, but you know, like babies laughed in like Neolithic babies laughed and like a golden were cute. So, uh, so like that was the thing, but I also like, we had so, so many fewer things. I like to think that like the blade that was that, that you like cut the baby's umbilical cord with was.

I like to think this is the first time I've ever had this thought, but I'm enjoying having it that that you get to that like then that becomes like an important object for the parents or for the baby. Yeah, that is nice to think now that I've thought it, I will think it more often. Yeah.

I should go back to the hospital and be like, can you give me that scalpel? I don't even know if they use the scalpel. Again, I was so out of it. They could have used their teeth and I wouldn't have known. They clamp it because it does have blood still going through it. Yep. So they clamp it and then they cut it. Yeah. Yeah.

And then what was the other part of this question? Like, how do you know where to cut it? Yeah, I think you, I think that, well, do you remember your baby's umbilical? You must. It was not that long ago. Apparently it was very long. Oh, you had a long one? It's a very weird detail. Yeah. Like my, my doula and the midwives were, they were all like, I've never seen an umbilical cord this long. Yeah.

I was like, I don't need to be told about any superlatives right now. The only thing I want to hear is you did the best we've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. I was going back through pictures from the birth and there's one of my doula, like holding up this umbilical cord. Oh my God. Okay. I guess you can jump a rope with this thing. Yeah. I think, I think you kind of could.

I mean, at least a baby could. If a baby could jump, it could jump that umbilical cord. Yeah, yeah. A two or three year old, definitely. What a, oh my God, that's wild. That would make me nervous. That's the thing I remember. Like everything that was unusual, I was like, is that bad though? You're right. Yeah. Luckily, I didn't know until the baby was here. Like beforehand, we didn't know anything. But I was one of those babies that tried to like, whoa, whoa, it's still going. Yeah.

Yeah, I wonder if they can see it. They must be able to. But like I was one of those babies that tried to wrap the umbilical cord around their neck as they were being born. So like I think if I had known I would have been really freaked out. You were not your baby. Yes, I as a baby was like not survival minded. Maybe your mom also had a really long umbilical cord. Maybe. Yeah. No one told her apparently. But it's just like one of those things that I was like, huh.

I just kind of assumed they were all of a standard length. Like we all have a standard length of biblical court. I would. Yes. I mean, but with anything, there's a range and apparently you're on the outside. And what is that related to? Is that related to long-term outcomes? Yeah. I'm sure that babies. The most genius baby. Exactly. Mozart had the cutest baby. Yeah.

Oh, God. But yeah, I think that they cut it roughly in the middle and then they they do end up cutting it close, like an inch away from the baby's belly button. And then you wait for it to fall off.

Yeah. Yeah. That's another weird thing that like, you don't like you see these cute pictures of babies. They have a little stump on their belly and that's where their umbilical cord was. And you got to wait for that to just come off one day before you can really give them a bath because you're not supposed to let it get too wet or anything. Because it can because it's, you know, it's a wound. It's dead flesh. Yeah. Yeah. And so and it has a kind of a little smell. Yeah. Yeah, it sure does. Yeah.

don't let us discourage you from having children it's great yeah but i mean like it is all the weird smells you're gonna get from your child it is biological i'll say that about it right it's definitely biological

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, I feel like it sounds scary when you talk about it, but it's also like so cool. Like pregnancy, like now that I've gone through a full pregnancy, I'm like, that was really cool. And like looking at a baby and being like, huh, like I was really underestimated how cool it would be to watch a baby like learn things. Like I like have never really had that much interest in psychology, developmental psychology and stuff like that. But watching a baby like learn things.

how to sit is like weirdly compelling because you're like, watch them putting all these little pieces together to get there. And I'm like, yeah,

Oh, this is so cool. Yeah. They don't know. They know how to do nothing. Yeah. They're idiots. They're so they're like, they don't even know how to move their hands yet. No. Yeah. They're just like, they're like, just realizing that, like, sometimes I would look at a baby and be like, I think all of your neurons are just firing. Yeah. And like, you don't know which ones. I think that is correct. That is. I mean, I don't know, but that's the vibe that I get. Yeah. Yeah.

And then over time, like those movements become more refined and you're like, oh. Yeah, they learn. It's all building itself from scratch. It's so cool. Which is very, I don't know, it feels important somehow. It feels metaphorically resonant or important to the future of artificial intelligence or something. But that reminds me that this podcast, Tepoki, is brought to you by the little dried up stump of an umbilical cord that some parents keep after it falls off of the baby.

Yes. It's also brought to you by my obscenely long obinical cord that was cut down into a stump and that I did not get to keep. It's so long it had money to spend on sponsoring a podcast. It is somewhere out there in a biohazard box. Yeah. Goddamn.

Weird that you have two umbilical cord sponsors today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a whole thing, though. This podcast is also brought to you by Butte, Montana. Butte, Montana. We electrified America. They do say something like that in Butte. They're proud of it.

And they should be. This podcast is also brought to you by Space Fears. Oh, yes. The ultimate amusement park experience. First they dehydrate you, then they forget you. Bungee jumping from space. Yeah.

So listen, when was the last time you needed to go to the doctor but pushed it off? I know that for me, it was two weeks ago when I severely sprained my ankle while signing my name over and over again. It's a long story, but I should have gone to the doctor and I didn't.

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I've long been a fan of Roman sundials, not so much for their ability to keep time, but for their darkly humorous inscriptions, which tended to be reminders that time is short and death is, you know, coming for us all. "'Life is but a passing shadow,' one read. "'Time flies,' read another. "'The hour is late. "'An hour passes slowly, but the years quickly. "'Time devours all things.'"

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Policy genius, one of these hours will be your last. That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial. This one comes from Silly, who asks, Dear Hank and Deboki, what would happen if we got our tailbones removed? I biked like 20 kilometers today and I would like to sit down. I'm not silly. Silly. I don't actually know how to pronounce your name, so I just said silly. But apparently you're not. So look, we did our best. So we don't need our tailbones to survive.

Which is one of the weird things. Well, I mean, we don't need most of things to survive. A lot of us is excess. It's kind of it's kind of a brain heart lungs vibe. Right. Going on. Ultimately, the rest of it is just just peripheral.

Yeah. But it does do a lot of things. It does support your body weight while you're sitting. It helps anchors a lot of muscles, helps support your tendons and your ligaments. So there's stuff there, which is why it hurts probably because it's like all the stuff it's connected to has got strained.

Yeah. So removing it, especially if you're biking 20 kilometers, I think you're the kind of person who's making good use of your tailbone. You need it. Yeah. So, or not your tailbones, just the tailbone. It's just one bone? One. Yeah. Or I assume, I assume at the very least we all have one tailbone. Like, I don't think we have multiple tailbones. Ah.

I bet. Here's my guess. And we're going to try and figure out the answer to this question. I bet that when you're a baby, it's a bunch of bones and then it fuses into one bone because it looks like it's a bunch of vertebra. Yeah. It has the vibe of like four to six vertebra. But no, I'm looking at a different part. Oh, gosh. I didn't realize it was just that little tiny part. It's so little. Yeah.

Oh, what's that part? That part's the posterior dorsal sacral something.

So it's specifically referring to the last bone of your spine. It is just the last bone of your spine. But it does look like it's three bones that decided over the course of evolution to become one bone. Yeah, it is several vertebrae fused together. So, huh. So usually they're made from four fused vertebrae, but some people can have three to five. So there's a range there, too. So there is a surgery to get rid of the tailbone. Oh. It's called a coccyx.

Get him. Get to me. A coccygectomy. So because people do have coccyx pain and so coccyx, coccyx, tailbone pain. So if it's not responding to non-surgical things like you can get it surgically removed. If it hurts that bad.

Yeah. And one of the rare side effects from the surgery is that you can get a hernia because you've got this weakened pelvic floor. So that is that is the thing that could happen, I guess. Yeah. I would say don't get rid of it. I would say you need your tailbone. You don't need your tailbone.

But it's good to have your tailbone. It's doing work. It's not for nothing. It's there for a reason. But it is kind of amazing the extent to which I hear about them being problems. But I guess if you land on your butt too hard, that's kind of what you break. Is that also like a we're sitting down so much kind of thing that it's now a problem? Well, what I will say is biking 20 kilometers is not what we were built for. It's not like... It's not...

And, you know, like running 20 kilometers is what we evolved to do. And that also creates all kinds of skeletal problems. But yeah, we just did a SciShow about the effect of people who bike a lot on fertility for men and people with testicles. And that situation...

is wild way more wild than I expected it to be I just like well it's just like a lot of of guys have like stuff that they have to deal with because of their biking and I'm like oh I would just choose a different sport if I had weeks of penis numbness yeah

Well, so that reminds me there, we did an episode of tiny matters about this. And it's from this great book. We interviewed the author up to speed, who was talking about female bikers. I mean, the book overall is about female athletes and the lack of science around them. But she was talking about like how badly designed bike seats and bike clothing is for female bikers. And it was like, there was this known kind of like open secret that a lot of bikers were having to get labiaplasty is because they were just getting like

And so they were just in so much pain and so much discomfort after these endurance races. I was like, oh, my God. What do I do that's anything like requiring that level of self-control? It's just nothing. Right.

Or just also dedication. Yeah, I guess raising a child is it. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, like, we have talked about blood, umbilical cords, organ squishing. And I did do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You did that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, chemo probably similar. But but but again, you didn't have to go. You know, it would be fun this year. Yeah.

Oh, boy. I went down the path of pregnancy knowing it was going to suck. And still, I would not. I still look at endurance athletes and I'm like, no, no, no, that's not for me. Definitely not. I like for at the end of the process to have a baby at least. Yeah, yeah. Rather than...

Just pain. But to all of the endurance athletes out there listening to this as they bike painfully. Yeah. We're impressed by you. And yeah, you're doing great. And the reason and I mean, maybe you just need to stop raising the bar so much on yourself. Maybe the bar, maybe that maybe your way over the bar. Maybe you've cleared the bar and you should just like I had this experience recently because I go to the gym a lot now.

And the first thing I do at the gym is I just like bike for five minutes to warm up. And I had like four days in a row where I felt kind of like crap the whole time I was at the gym. And then Catherine was like, why are you going so hard on the bike? And I was like, I'm just trying to like, you know, do a little aerobic. And she's like, you're just warming up.

And then I was like, oh, and then I like went like 80% as hard on the bike. And I was like, oh, the entire rest of the gym is much more fun when I'm not exhausted from five minutes of going as hard as possible.

Yeah. First thing when I arrive. Yeah. I mean, pacing yourself. Yeah. It's one of those annoying things. You're like, I'm here to make myself be better. But it turns out there are limits to the things that I can do. And also, like, I'm here to make myself be better, but I'm also here to make sure I come back next time.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I can't make myself miserable doing this. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out that's the secret to working out consistently is really just finding a thing that you actually like doing and doesn't make you miserable. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And yeah, it's finding a buddy is a big deal. So that's always very helpful. Having getting cancer is very motivating to be healthier for as long as possible. Yeah.

All that stuff. All right, Deboki, do you have Mars news? I do have Mars news. This is really a follow-up to the last Mars news because last time we were kind of being held in suspense about how NASA was going to be talking about their plans around the Mars sample return project, which is set to return samples collected by the Perseverance rover. The project has been in limbo because it turns out it's going to cost a lot more and take a little more time than originally planned for. So,

NASA talked about it. And now what I've taken from this is the plan is now going to be in two limbo's.

Because NASA is going to try and make the Mars sample return happen, but they just don't know how they're going to do it. And so they are working through two plans and they're going to decide at the end of 2026, which one is the plan that's going to happen. So one of them is going to be using methods that NASA has used to land Perseverance and Curiosity. The other plan is to look at using a commercial heavy lander and Perseverance.

According to NASA, both of these plans should be a lot cheaper than the $11 billion that was estimated for the original plan. Like that was the amount that kind of put a pause on everything. But again, we're not going to know until the end of next year which of these plans is going to happen. I think if they put me in charge of it, I could figure it out. You know, yeah, there's like like you have to have a thing go up and then you have to have it go back down and then you have to have it up again and then come back down.

Yeah. That just seems like jumping, which. Yeah. Yeah.

We know how to do that. We know how to do that. Yeah. Bold words from us when we were like electromagnetism. That thing. I know that the word dipole exists. Yes. I'm sure of that. I've found that I can do physics sometimes. And like, so weirdly, I am better at quantum than I am at mechanics. And I think it's because the secret to physics is to know when to stop thinking and

And so I feel like if I could operate with that philosophy here, like in quantum, I learned like, oh, if I stop thinking like immediately, this makes a lot of sense mechanics. I keep thinking I can eventually make sense of it. And that's my problem. And I do feel like with that jump, like if we just need to get the thing to go up and need it to come back down, like if we can stop there, I can make it happen. That is where my the appropriate range of my genius. Yeah.

And then you just fly over the surface of Mars with some kind of helicopter with a magnet on the bottom of it. And all the samples stick to the bottom. And then you just bundle up and get back in and go back up. Yeah, yeah. Easy peasy. I hope they made that stuff not out of copper, though, because then the magnet won't work. Yeah. I can't believe we just solved it on a podcast. Yeah, God. Is this how Elon Musk feels all the time? Right, yeah. What the hell?

In news from AFC Wimbledon, you probably already know about this news. John did a bunch of live streams over just a ton. He's done a ton of live streams over the last few months and playing FIFA, signing stuff, doing other things. And he decided that all of the super chats from that, any money that came in in the ways that people make money doing live streams these days,

Would go toward AFC Wimbledon's player fund, which is how they get new good people to join the team. And they raised enough money to pay for like most of a new player whose name is Marcus Brown.

And they are now John's live streams are responsible for this man. John got to do a live stream interview with him. And now he just has a huge amount of pressure on him to perform well and score goals and stuff. And I don't I don't I think he's a midfield player. And but the the the good news is that so like this is happening.

This is how I understand it anyway. Right now, there's what's called a transfer window. In the middle of the season, the players on the teams can get shuffled around. If they're doing exceptionally well, they might move to a higher league. If they're doing badly, they might kick them out and try and get somebody else in.

And usually because AFC Wimbledon is not a rich club and doesn't have a bunch of money behind it, the transfer window is a very bad time where a bunch of their players go to get paid more doing other things. So they've proved themselves that they're doing well. And then the second half of the season is like they're bad because all of their good players leave. But they're so high. This is how John explained it to me. They're doing so well this year. They're like fifth in the league overall.

That the players don't want to leave because they might move up to the next tier of football, not by transferring, but just by moving up with the club, which feels better and maybe is better for like their careers to be like, I was on a club that moved up. And so instead of losing a bunch of people, they've lost nobody, it seems like, during the transfer window. And they gained Marcus Brown, who is probably pretty good at football.

Yeah, that's really cool. It's cool. Livestreams paid for it. That's really neat. Isn't it weird? Yeah. I don't understand how any of this works. It just seems like like a weird. I don't know. I guess it's just like you don't understand how transfer windows work. No, I don't like the economics of it. There's just like so many football teams. But I guess like it's just a it's like a live events business. Yeah. People want to go see these sports players play sports.

Right. It is like fascinating to keep track of the transfer. Yeah. The transfer window in general, I've learned is like a very funny time to follow like soccer because you're just like, there's so much rumor. There's so much weird stuff going on. And then there are weird shenanigans. I think there was like,

My husband's told me some of the really crazy stories of transfers that fell apart because they didn't get it done in the deadline. I think one of them might have involved a fax that didn't go through in time or forms that weren't signed in time. So I think that if you watch a lot of the soccer documentaries, the...

inevitably at some point they get to the transfer window and you're just like watching these guys in suits run from like room to room on like phones and like with forms in their hand. It's like really compelling drama. Oh my God, it must be so stressful. Bureaucracy. Yeah, it's how it's terrible. I just want a job that's not like that. That's... Imagining

if you had to have a transfer window for like writing YouTube videos. Oh, I'd love it if like all YouTubers were like somehow independent agents between the different platforms and it's like, come and get me. We should do that. That should be how it works. Yeah.

Yeah, you can draft it. Sorry, I'm not going to upload to your platform. I mean, that is like that is a thing that has happened with Twitch streamers where, you know, YouTube or the Microsoft one will poach them from Twitch and be like, you can't post on Twitch anymore. So I guess kind of.

But we need it. We need it for like the little guys, too, for the League Fours of the YouTube world. Yeah. Please let us matter. We're really good at this. I promise. Yeah. I mean, I guess the economics are the same, whether you're like a soccer player or a YouTuber. Like, I mean, the economics are different. The principles are the same. Yes. Yes. We need teams. We need teams. I don't know how to do it. I'm scared for all my TikTok friends.

Yeah. I'm going to be okay. It's always going to come back to TikTok. Yeah. Where my brain is. Yeah. Well, thank you, Deboki, for making the podcast with me. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I feel like we should have done more. But I like the idea of since you are oftentimes like have kinship to questions that don't get answered. If they don't get answered and you're like, ah, you should put that in a list.

Yeah, I'll start doing that. And then we could do this every once in a while and be like, here are the ones.

And especially because I understand. I understand where you were at, Keely, where you were just trying to get through it. And I hope everything goes well for you and anyone else who is pregnant. Man, that sounds like a good book, actually. Like an actual kind of like awe and wonder of science pregnancy book rather than sort of the prescriptive pregnancy book. Oh, don't worry. I've thought about it. All right. Yeah.

Let's talk more about that, I guess. Yeah. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for being here and also for sending in your questions if you want to do that. It's hankandjohn at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is still the bookie Chuck Rivardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.