411: You’ve Gotta’ Optimize
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You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Yours, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, have you ever done that thing where you turn your camera on, but you actually turned it off, and then you turn it off, and then you try and film something, and then you turn it off, and then you get like a 20-minute video of just your feet? I've done this, yes.

That's some pretty good footage, though. Oh, God. Hold on. I have to unzip my jacket. So if you're watching this on the Patreon, if you subscribe to our Patreon, you can get a- You can get the video version. You can get the video version. You can see John unzipping his jacket. You can see me unzip my jacket, but otherwise you just have to sort of, it's like a radio play, you know? Yeah. You just got to believe that I'm doing it. You got to believe that I'm wearing an AFC Wimbledon cap.

He's wearing, as he wore his AFC Wimbledon cap, he unzipped his jacket to show a sort of off green sweatshirt underneath. And also a blue checked button down. That's a lot of layers, John. You okay in there? Yeah, it's a little cold today. But you look ridiculous. What are you talking about? You're making fun of me. You're wearing a Pizza John shirt with a vest over it. I know. I'm reverse Marty McFlying, by which I mean the vest is blue instead of red. Yeah.

The reverse Marty McFly. I'm about to do the reverse Paddington traveling from England to Peru. But first, we've got to answer some questions from our listeners. Which is different from a reverse poo, everyone. What's a reverse poo? That's where you just wear pants and no shirt. What? Poo bear wears a shirt and no pants. I was imagining a reverse poop. And I was like, I can't imagine such a thing. It's where you put it back in.

It's eating is a reverse poo. Oh, I guess so. But the reverse Winnie the Pooh, to be clear, is where he wears shirts. It's the other famous talking bear. It's where you wear a shirt but no pants? No, that's a poo. That's poo bearing. Oh, okay. So it's where you wear pants but no shirt. Yeah, that's the reverse poo, which is just like fairly normal for dudes. Well, as long as you don't expect to get service in 7-Eleven. That's right.

No shirts, no shoes, no service, buddy. And if you have, they don't like good footage there. All right, everybody, let's do the questions. So dumb. That was the tightest intro we've ever had. This first question comes from Becca, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but really only John. But go to Patreon, patreon.com slash dear Hank and Johnny. You can get the video version. You can see our delighted faces as we talk about all of this stuff. My close friend is not-

My close friend does not believe that everything is tuberculosis, despite all the examples I've given him. He is and always has been obsessed with sharks, and he does not think TB can be related to sharks at all. Can you help me out trying to blow a friend's mind here? Becca. Can I try? Can I try? You try. You go first. Sharks cannot get tuberculosis, but did I start out good? No. They can get tuberculosis? Yeah. Oh, my.

Do they get it from eating seals? So there's so much that sharks don't get, right? Like there's so many diseases. Sharks are famously sort of semi-immune to many diseases. But one disease they are not immune from is tuberculosis. There is aquatic tuberculosis that mostly happens in fish tanks.

Mostly happens in human-maintained fish tanks. Oh, interesting. But sharks can get it, and sharks do get tuberculosis. So there. I've already connected it. It wasn't even hard. Animals are always easy because most animals get tuberculosis. Can I get tuberculosis? Can you? Can I get tuberculosis from a shark? It's unlikely. It's possible, though. Yeah. I'd have to be really up close and personal a lot, you're saying? Yeah.

Maybe I have to drink its aquarium water. Yeah, Hank, you can get tuberculosis from sharks inside your aquarium because this disease is zoonotic and can be passed to humans through open wounds. So if you have an aquarium and you've got a chance of fish tuberculosis in there, do not play with your fish when you have an open wound. Additionally, one thing that I know sharks are related to open wounds is

They can make those happen themselves. That's a great point. They're kind of in the open wound business. They open wounds. That's like the main thing they do. What do you do for a living? Oh, I mostly bite. I'm sort of a biter. Some chewing, but I'm most known for the biting. They don't chew.

Sharks don't chew. They don't chew? They bite and they swallow. Those are the two things they do. It occurs to me that if you ask really any non-human animal what it does for a living, its answer is so simple. It is biting and swallowing. Yeah. Yeah. Biting, swallowing. I bite. I chew. I move. Cuddling in the case of dogs. Yeah. Yeah. That's sort of what they do. Yeah. Dogs actually have a job. Yeah. Like most animals are working for themselves, but dogs do work for people. And so do people.

Yeah. People and dogs and cats work for each other and everything else works for itself. Except for ants and bees.

That's a great point, Hank. Bees have weird jobs. What do you do? Oh, I'm a soldier. What do you do? Oh, I'm a worker. This is actually pretty typical jobs. Pretty common jobs. That's it. One of the two of the most common jobs throughout history. Yeah. Yeah, those are big ones. All right, let's move on. I'm a queen. Very uncommon job. But also true for most bees. There's way more bee queens than there are human queens. Even if you...

Okay, video title. Have there been more human queens than there are currently bee queens? No, is the answer to that question, I'm pretty sure.

We have another question. It's from Callan who writes, Dear John and Hank, as someone who generally keeps up with Nerdfighteria, I've heard about these really awesome laundry and cleaning supplies from EcoGeek. From previous Dear Hank and John pods, I remember sponsorships from other similar products, EarthBreeze for one, but not trying to make this an ad for them. I appreciate that, Callan. We don't give free promo unless it's for EcoGeek, our incredible cleaning supplies company.

If you're watching the video version, I'm holding up a bunch of those very products. Why create your own line of these products rather than continuing sponsorships with these other companies or partnering with them in some way or another? Pumpkins and Penguins, Callan. You can pronounce it however you like. Thank God, Callan. I really appreciate your generosity on that front. The way the advertisements work is that they pay us and then they make more money than we make. Right. Because otherwise they wouldn't pay us. Right.

So the amount of money that gets spent by people listening to our podcast is lower than the amount of money that we get paid to run an advertisement for that product.

And so, one, better for us to take that money and then give it to charity. We don't get to keep that money the way that we did with advertisements, but that's not the highest priority for us. I got terrible news for you real quick. Yeah. We also don't get to keep the money that we get from advertisements because it goes to Complexly. It's true. Yeah, yeah. But.

That's a kind of keeping the money. Okay. But yeah, it's diverting it into different important things that we care a lot about. Sure. And then second, we get to – we haven't like created these products ourselves. We picked people we really wanted to work with who we thought were doing a really good job. So we get to have more control over it that way. And I like that. Yeah.

And we get to have a deeper relationship with those people so that if we want to do a specific product, we can work with them and help them maybe fund a new product. We haven't done that yet, but we're interested in it. And then also, it gets to be part of our broader effort at Good.Store to create a place where you buy things that you would typically buy from any place that are high quality, that are vetted by us, and that are –

And then all the profit goes to charity. So that is the whole shebang of that. But I appreciate you asking. And it is actually like way long term better for the number of dollars going to Partners in Health than if we just took an advertisement and then donated that money to Partners in Health.

Yeah. It means building more systems, but we also have a great team of people who help us build those systems. So that's why we're able to do it relatively efficiently. And yeah. And plus we get free advertising. Like right now, we can go to good.store and look up EcoGeek cleaning supplies. Look at that, free advertising. Free advertising. And you did it for us. That's the best kind of advertising. Callan, thank you. Thank you, Callan. We appreciate you. Oh.

Also, I had this whole group of people who worked just on helping YouTubers sell stuff. And that seemed like a business that was going to continue being commodified and the margins were going to get thinner and thinner until we couldn't compete anymore. And I really wanted those people to still have jobs.

So that is part of it. So Good Store exists for many good reasons. It's, yeah, we're really proud of it. And it's done some amazing good in the world, including donating over $10 million to reduce maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone. Pretty incredible what Hank has built. Yeah. And that awesome team of people. Yeah, yeah. And thanks to everybody who has subscribed. Check it out at good.store. All right, Hank, I got to ask you this question from Michelle. Uh-huh.

Dear John and Hank, I have a three-year-old daughter who will not stop asking me where she existed before I was pregnant with her. All the answers I have given her so far must not be sufficient because she has not stopped asking. I have tried the following. I don't know. No one knows. Maybe you were part of the universe. You were a tiny egg in my body. I've run out of ideas. Do you have answers that might satisfy her curiosity? Philosophically perplexed, Michelle. I'm going to leave this one to you because my question, I mean, I have a fairly simple answer.

Well, I think that – Which you can predict. I think your answer is – you tell me what you think my answer is going to be. I'll tell you what I think your answer – I think your answer is going to be you are exactly where you'll be after death. Yeah, except I don't actually think that that's true because I think after death –

uh, where, where you are is in other people's minds. Um, he's on a journey of meaning, a journey after and before birth, there, there isn't a you that specifically in other people's minds, there is a, there's an idea of what might be, but there isn't a specific you. Uh, but I think that, um, before, before birth, um,

So my two answers are you were nowhere. You didn't exist. I think that that's a fairly cut and dried answer. But then I have another answer, which is that you currently don't exist. You're just a bunch of stories that one part of your brain is telling to another part of your brain. Yeah, no, that's something you should say to a three-year-old. Yeah.

That's not going to cause any issues. I don't – like it's simplifying for me, but I guess I'm not three. I think if I were three and somebody said, hey, so the bad news is that you didn't exist before you were born, but the good news is you still really don't exist. I don't know that I would be particularly comforted by that. So you remember what it was like when you were one? Yeah, you don't. That's because that you is already dead. They're long gone. I –

First off, all three-year-olds think they can remember being one and they think they can remember being born. Oren thinks he can remember every moment of his life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes until you're like 16 when you're like, all right, some of that stuff's pretty fuzzy back there, actually. Yeah.

I, I would answer the question differently than saying you don't exist to a three-year-old. I think I would say before you were born, you were the idea of the hope of your existence. You were the hope of your existence and that hope was in your parents and that hope was in the world. It just wasn't, um, it wasn't made manifest until you were born.

That's lovely. I also don't know the three-year-old's totally going to grasp that. I think the problem here is that self is a difficult one for a three-year-old. Well, and for a 47-year-old. Yeah, yeah. Easier, I'd say, but still mostly ungrappled with.

I don't know, man. The days when I actually am paying attention to what myself is are tough days around here. It's true. And you don't have to. One of the things that I've learned from therapy is that you don't have to like fix everything. Yeah. You have to have like ways of dealing with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like sometimes like you glue a cup back together and it's still got cracks in it. Right. Right. Right.

That's beautiful, Hank. Thank you. And then there's that Japanese one where they emphasize the cracks with gold and the gold is the most precious part of the broken cup. That's right. Whatever that's called. Very metaphorical. I think it's called golden crack cup. Yeah, but in Japanese. But in Japanese. This next question.

From Kat, who asks, Dear Hank and John, empires rise and empires fall. Okay. All right. Specifically, I'm referring to my feelings about billionaire-owned social media apps. Oh, great. Okay. Oh, thank God. Yeah. Okay.

I'm handling the withdrawals from following my boycott of Twitter better than I expected. But man, I have fear of missing out on memes. And Blue Sky just isn't appeasing that, even though it seems like all of the pieces are there. Why doesn't it feel like that app is quote unquote online? Craving Taylor Swift discourse. Cat, great point. It doesn't.

It feels like Blue Sky has not woken up to the reality that it is its own thing. And it feels like all of the things that go really big on Blue Sky are in opposition to some other thing. How's that? Give me an example. I need some ground. Well, if you go and you look at every tweet that was posted on Blue Sky in the last day that has over 10,000 likes, they are 100% about...

Billionaires. Gestures broadly. Billionaires or Donald Trump. Right. They are about the actions of the Trump administration. I like the distinction that you made there, Hank. Well, the truth is Donald Trump is now a billionaire again. And I need everyone to know that that is the case because he's using his power as the president to become very wealthy, which is what despots do. Yeah. Empires rise and empires fall. Empires rise and empires fall. What goes up must come down.

That's what Isaac Newton told us. Yes. I'm not sure that actually Isaac – that's funny you should say that, Hank, because you're always criticizing me for applying scientific principles to the social sciences. You're always like anytime – I do not like that. It's true. John gets on his high horse and he starts talking about how energy is not created or destroyed. It makes me cringe. And then you just went and did it. I just want to call that out. You just went and did it. It's true, but for different reasons. Right.

All right. Exactly. It's true, but for different reasons. That's fine. So it is true that the memes are not as good on Blue Sky as they are on Twitter. Here's what I'll say about that, though. If you mix Blue Sky and Tumblr, and this is a dangerous cocktail. Don't get me wrong. Take it from somebody –

Who knows about the dangers of tumbler cocktails? That's how you make a middle school volcano science project. Or alternately like an Everclear-based mixed drink, right? It's a serious –

it's a serious thing that you're, that you're encountering. It's no small matter, but if you mix Tumblr and blue sky in the right way, I find that it does replace Twitter effectively, but like, is it any healthier for you? I'm not convinced. Yeah. But I bet there's a bunch of Taylor Swift discourse on Tumblr. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, I think that the... Did I tell you when I had a post go viral on Tumblr, I said to Sarah, Sarah, I had a post go viral on Tumblr. And Sarah said, what, did all 12 people on Tumblr like it? It's a vibrant little place. It is a vibrant place. I got like 10,000 likes on that, on that, that, that tumble.

Tumbled on the Ides of March, get it nerds, we're killing Caesar. I recently went a little viral on Tumblr with – but it wasn't me. It was somebody else talking about a take that I once had. Oh, that's – And it got like 16,000 likes or something. Notes, notes. That sounds fun. Yeah, it was fine. I do not like going viral. I think that going viral is a great phrase because it implies a disease correctly. Yeah.

It's the memes. They are amazing. How do you get the memes? So on Tumblr, I cosplay as an unpaid social media intern for Kitsuko, the coffee and tea company that Good Store runs. And that works really well for me because then whenever people are like, oh, I hate John Green in my ask box, I'll be like, oh, I'm sorry. You must be confused. I'm not John Green. I'm an unpaid social media intern for a coffee and tea company.

That works pretty well. That's great. That is a solution to your problem. And it's never going to be a problem ever again. You did it. Yeah, no, I'm sure that I will never regret going back to Tumblr, Hank. As indeed, I never regretted going on Tumblr for the first time. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Tumblr. Tumblr, somehow, still a thing.

This podcast is also brought to you by the Reverse Pooh Bear. That's just like guys at the beach. Yeah, it is. It is a little bit. It is a little bit. Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by the Reverse Tigger. The Reverse Tigger, it's where you jump on your head. This podcast is also brought to you by the Reverse Eeyore, which is where you're always happy all the time and your tail is stuck to your head. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Did I tell you? I did an episode of The Happiness Lab with Laurie Santos, the amazing podcast, The Happiness Lab, which is all about the science of happiness and how we can be happier. And Laurie Santos was like, you're a bit of an expert on happiness. Like she follows our work really closely. She's been a nerdfighter for a long time. And she was like, you're a bit of an expert on happiness. You and Hank both are. And I was like, tell that to my wife. I'm a bit of an expert on happiness? Okay. I got to listen to this.

Well, it's just because we're Eeyores, Hank. But you're less of an Eeyore than I am. You're more of a Tigger. And of course, finally, today's podcast is brought to you by the Happiness Lab. The Happiness Lab. Shout out Dr. Lori Santos.

This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by ZocDoc. You must, you must take care of yourself. One thing we know is that people who are able to go to the doctor have better health outcomes. Sometimes there's really good excuses for not going to the doctor. Sometimes there's really bad excuses for not going to the doctor. Sometimes you got to worry and then you don't go see the doctor because you don't even really want to know. You

You don't want to know, you know? But you gotta go to the doctor. This is one thing I've learned as a person. It's good if you go to the doctor because sometimes it is something to actually be worried about. And thanks to ZocDoc, you have fewer reasons to delay. They make it easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high-quality in-network doctors and click to

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All right, John, we got another question from Kaylee. She asks, Dear John and Hank, I'm upset that this podcast is seen as a sleep podcast. This is my Tuesday workout podcast. The 50 minutes or so is perfect for my Tuesday specific workout. Best wishes, Kaylee. John, that's the exact tempo of Kaylee's workout.

I'm just – that's what your heart sounds like right now, Kaylee, because you're pushing. You're going – you're in that mode. Yeah, Kaylee. Move it. Do that leg curl. We've got to move it, move it. Leg curl, leg curl, leg – that's too fast. Leg curl, leg curl, leg curl. You've got this, Kaylee. Elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical. Is that what it sounds like when you do the elliptical? It does a little bit. Everybody clap your hands. Yes.

I'm going to start doing that when I do the elliptical. I'm going to start singing elliptical, elliptical, elliptical, elliptical. Yeah. Punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch. And then kettlebell, kettlebell, kettlebell. Jog, jog, jog, jog, run, punch, jog, punch, kettlebell. This is the world's hardest workout. Push up, push up, sit up, push up, sit up, push up. Plank, plank, plank.

Keto. We got it. This is a workout podcast. This is definitely as much – this is both a sleep podcast and a workout podcast because what it is at its core, Kaylee, is a banter podcast. And banter podcasts can be all things to all people at all times. Yeah. We banter. We really are a banter podcast, aren't we?

Yeah. And also we're an optimizer podcast. You have to wake up. And if you are not outside in the sunshine within 30 seconds, you are not going to have an optimal life. You're going to have a suboptimal life. You need to get sunshine on ideally.

The butt. No, no, that's incorrect, Hank. And you know that's incorrect. The science says that you've got to reverse poo it. You've got to go outside and you've got to be wearing pants but no shirt. And you've got to let that torso get all that natural sunlight and soak in all that vitamin D. If you have it on your butt or your legs, that doesn't do any good. I think you've got to reverse, reverse poo it where the shirt is only on your head and you're blind and naked everywhere else.

The shirt's like wrapped around your head so you're blindfolded. Yeah. And you're just kind of like running around in a circle desperately trying to get the shirt off. Yeah, yeah. This is how you optimize because that's really good for your core and your balance. And you do want to optimize your life because if you spend your entire life optimizing your life, at the end of it, you will not die.

Well, but here's what's going to happen, John, is that like it'll just feel like you're doing something that's worth it because being alive is the thing and you're just like, I just want to feel like I'm doing something that's worth it. Yeah, and the thing that's worth it. And nothing can fill that gap inside of me because I've decided apparently that like social responsibility just isn't for me.

No, Hank, that's not optimized. Thinking about other people and empathy isn't optimized. I just like sort of like did a real quick zip to a take I have that's broader and I don't really want to get deeper into it. But that is a take I have. I love it. Let's not get deeper into it. Okay. Remember when you were talking that you were going to go on that Muscle Guy podcast and I talked you out of it because I'm a freaking hero? Yeah, you did do that. I didn't do it.

Oh, thank God. All right. Let's move on to another question. But thank you for letting us be your workout podcast. We really appreciate that. I just want to be clear. I do think that workouts are good and it is important to be healthy and- Yeah, move your body. Move your body around. It does feel good. Of course. Nobody's saying don't move your body. We're grateful that we're a workout podcast, Hank. Why would we- That's absolutely correct. Why would people interpret that any other way? I don't know. This is the thing, John. The internet interprets you in all kinds of ways you don't intend. Yeah.

Sometimes people are not generous in their interpretation, but usually that's on them, not on you. But sometimes it is on you. It's complicated. I could do better. We all could, my man. We all could. This next question comes from Elena who writes, Dear John and Hank, what do you mean that when you break a bone and they put a cast on it, the bone heals? How does the bone heal? Does it regenerate? Do the broken parts kiss and make up? Just a little confused. Elena. Yeah.

Yeah, basically they kiss and make up. They basically kiss and make up. I mean, that's essentially what happens. They grow back together. But do you know, Hank? What? That my grandfather-in-law invented a compound called BMP that makes bones kiss and make up faster than they naturally do. He invented a compound? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's famous for it. He also wrote the bone article in the World Book Encyclopedia.

I didn't know people wrote that. I figured that that was just sort of bestowed on the world by God. I don't know. Yeah, but it's not. No, God doesn't write the encyclopedia. People do. That's very cool. It's called BMP. Yeah, BMP. You can look up Eurist BMP and find out all about it.

So, yeah. Bones, I don't know. This is like a wild thing. But when you break a bone, it bleeds. Because there's blood vessels in there. There's living cells inside of your bone. If you break a bone, the bone does a part where it's bleeding. And it has to form clots. And it has to repair. And that's going to bring up a lot of inflammation, which is going to bring certain kinds of cells to it to help with the healing. And then there's like...

There's like a temporary patch phase. And then there's a part where the bone cells, which are constantly rebuilding your bones, like they're living things. I know that we like think of them as like dead things because there are dead bones that you can see, whereas a lot of the rest of the body is doesn't last as long. But they are living things. And and the cells that come in and that are constantly like repairing and strengthening and rebuilding bone come in and they heal.

rejoin the bone you could see if you want to go and like look on the internet you can see like what a repaired bone break looks like in a bone from a person who has subsequently died which is and it's really cool to be clear all of us eventually yes see I'm such an Eeyore Hank I can't help myself I thought what look that doesn't have to be bad news that we're all gonna die it is kind of bad news it's objectively bad news it's not something that I like revel in yeah

Yeah. I don't look forward to it. I like this world. I mean, I am grateful to be here with the rest of you. Somebody recently asked, like, would I want to live forever? And, like, they caveated and then, like, made all of the things, like, you're going to be, like, you're not going to, like, be in pain. You're going to be relatively youthful. You're going to –

be able to continue to enjoy things and also you don't have to live forever like you just uh can and i'm like yeah no i would do that why would i currently don't want to die why would i take away the future me's ability to like who like who probably won't want to die oh not me man surprising number of people who are like no i just want to like be able to

I want to have the natural way of it go and go. Yeah, I don't think I'm supposed to be here for – I've had the natural way of it go and go and I don't want to do that. But like then don't. If you can make the choice, be like – at some point be like, okay, I'm done. Okay. I'm into that. Yeah. I don't know. It's complicated. Life is – I wouldn't pick – it is nice to have the constraint. Would you pick a thousand-year lifespan? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, not me. I don't want to see that much change. I know. It's already been on quite a lot. It's been a surprising amount. I started, I felt, I'm feeling it more now. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I feel the change. I think that we've already experienced the last major technological revolution that I'm just never going to get on board with. Now you will Hank, because you're the kind of person who like gets on board with things and like continues to grow and everything in adulthood, but not me. I'm done. I hit the age of 47 and like a brick wall. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know that I'm going to be on the next social media app, like the next TikTok. I think I just I think I just might take a pass. But like, that's me now. That's like you saying that you're not going to sign your next book. You say it every time. Yeah, I have been thinking about how I could sign 100,000 copies of my next book by just stretching it out more. Oh, well, just yeah, yeah, yeah. Just not having it.

Yeah. Just like have the book come out six months later than it normally would? Yeah, do like 1,000 a day instead of 3,000 a day. Or just start signing the tip-in sheets now. You're going to write another book. I'd like to, but that's contingent upon my staying alive and everything. It's true. I think that you're okay. Let me know if you have any worries about that. I have constant, nonstop, overwhelming worries about that. Thank you for asking. Yeah.

This next question comes from Eleanor, who asks, Dear John and Hank, why are most envelopes the size they are? In order to fit a normal sheet of A4 paper into a regular envelope, you have to fold the paper into thirds, which can be rather difficult to do. Why don't we use taller envelopes so we only have to fold the paper in half? This has been plaguing me for years. Not Mrs. Rigby, Eleanor. That's a good question. I have a guess.

I have a guess too. My guess is- As a person who electro-jogs, you have a guess? No, my guess is not electro-jog related, but that's interesting. My guess is that it fit into some kind of early slot. Right. So if you have a situation where you have to have a lot of slots in a small space, you can go deep, but you don't want to go higher, right?

So you want the square, the box to have the smallest possible area, but the largest possible volume. And so in that situation, you want something that's deep and relatively small. Interesting. So you slide it in. So that's an interesting guess. I like that guess. It's not that old.

No? Interesting. The window envelope was invented in 1901. Well, that's the window envelope. And that's... Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

With the hole in it, so you don't have to put the address on the outside. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, you're right. The envelope. That makes more sense. I was like, how'd they get away with it? What were they doing? Yeah. You can tell envelope is old because the word for it is envelop. Yes. What are you going to do with your letter? I will envelop it. Yes. That's not something someone in 1901 would have said.

There are a lot of different sizes of envelopes and they seem to vary a lot based on whether you live in China, Japan, internationally or in North America. And there are a number of different lengths and measures of envelopes. And some of it seems to be because of the size of a personal check. Oh, okay. Here, my other thought was, have you ever, so like you pull together a bunch of cards and

Right? Just a bunch of playing cards. Yep. And then you have to sort them so that they're flat again, and that's kind of annoying, right? Right. If they were only a little bit different, if the proportions was like 1 to 1.1, that would be extremely hard. Right. And if the proportions were 2 to 1, it would be easier, and if the proportions were 3 to 1, then it would be easier. And that was my thought, that it was like, you just got to get a bunch of them. It's a lot easier to sort them to be flat. Yeah.

If they have a longer ratio, but I, that might just be like a side benefit. Yeah.

Yeah, I bet that there's somebody out there who's going to answer this question for us and we'll get back to you next week. But in the meantime, that's our best guess. The other thing is what I'll say is it's not that hard to fold three times versus one. And I kind of like it. It's kind of like nice. Well, it's only two folds actually instead of one. So it's twice as many folds. But you're right. It's not that bad. Yeah. And people used to have way more time. Oh, yeah. No, back then there was so much time to fold. Yeah.

Like writing a letter with your ink quill and then scattering some stuff on it to absorb the ink so that it wouldn't smear. Doing that every line. The folding part of the letter was... That was like, I did it. I'm going to do... Oh, this feels good. I finally finished this letter that took me two hours to write.

And now we're just like, send. The folding was the joy. That was when you felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Right. And now you just like click on the Google auto-created message that you most prefer and click on send. And then the person replies with their Google auto-created message that they then click on send. Yeah.

It's great. Empires rise and empires fall, buddy. I'm so glad that we've made human communication so efficient because that's really what it needed. Yeah. No, that's what was missing. All right. We got a question from Max Hank. This one's for you. It says, Dear John and Hank, please tell me about neutron stars. How big are they? How dense? Why are they? Dreams and democracy. Max.

Oh, thanks. Thanks for asking. My son is fairly obsessed with neutron stars. He loves pulsars, which are a kind of neutron star. And so we are talking about it all the time. They are the leftovers from a certain type of supernova, right?

And all the sort of like the collapse of the supernova is so intense that it forces all of the protons and electrons to annihilate each other, I think, until they become a neutron. Is that right? I'm not sure.

Do you want me to ask you a different question? I think that's right. I just looked, I just checked that it is right. So they're not very big. So they're like, they are the leftover core of a star, but when you're just packing neutrons together. So, so as you probably know,

Atoms are almost entirely empty space. They seem very heavy to us, but in fact, they're just puffy balls. But neutron stars are just neutrons and they don't have any of that puff. So they are small, but they are extremely dense. Like if you had a teaspoon, it would weigh six billion tons. So that's like the size of like the weight of a mountain in a teaspoon because there's so much space in atoms. Yeah.

Wow. So neutron stars are often like the mass, like they're like 15, like 10 to 15 miles across, but the mass of like the sun. So they're like the size of New York City, but the mass of the sun. Yeah. Whoa. It might be, what's the mass of a neutron star? Mass of... Yeah, wow, yeah, that's right. Jeez. Okay. But...

And they're out there and they're basically, they could like, if the, if the star had been bigger, they might've become a black hole, but it's not, not big enough. So there are neutron stars. And then like, there's weird ways in which they can actually emit light or, or more like infrared radiation. So usually like in the radio spectrum, so we can see them. You can't see them with your eyes, but we can see them with radio telescopes. And when we first spotted them, we were like, what the heck is going on? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up. You can't see them with your eyes.

I mean, if there was like light shining on them, you could see them. Okay. Okay. So they're like there. They don't emit in the visual spectrum. Yeah. Okay. All right. But you need to shine light on them to see them, but they do emit radio waves. Yeah. That's so mind blowing. And they can have very strong magnetic fields as well. Yeah. They're called magnetars. Yeah. People say that about me too, actually. Yeah.

That you have a very strong magnetic field? I'm just kind of, I just have that inherent charisma. The riz. The riz, if you will. You don't have to say all those syllables, John. Sorry. I just have that riz. It's 2025. You've got sigma riz, and you don't have to be afraid to say it. I am terribly, terribly afraid to say it, and I'm also afraid that you've said it. This morning, I was watching a video about a paper that

a published scientific paper next to my son and he was watching it with me and he turned to me and instead of discussing this scientific paper, he said, what's a sigma mean? And I was like, oh no. I was like, I don't know what sigma means, son. That's for you to tell me. You have to go to school, figure out what sigma means and then tell me.

Yeah. It's interesting. My son does not use any of that slang with me or with us in our family, but I hear him use it with his friends. Oh, jeez. Not like – he wouldn't say sigma-riz. I mean, I think like that's a joke. Like I think young people say that as a way of making fun of old people rather than a thing that they would actually say. It's irony. It's the extension of irony into every facet of everything. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Like irony also has to invade slang as part of ironies taking over our overall discourse. But it does fascinate me that he has a different language. And this is true for all teenagers, I think, a different language when talking to his friends than when talking to his family. Yeah. Yeah.

It's wild, man. Having a teenager is the best. And yeah, anyway. Hey, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Mm-hmm.

Which actually this week is very important because we're recording the podcast. As we're recording this podcast, I'm sitting next to a suitcase that I will immediately upon finishing the podcast take with me to London. I wanted to give a quick update, a little bit of a good news update actually for once from Chris.

Dear John and Hank, at the time of writing this email, John mentioned the magic paste made with peanut butter from Georgia in the latest episode. More importantly, the people who helped make the paste have lost their jobs and contracts, and many of those pastes were sitting in warehouses where malnourished people live overseas who should have been receiving them. And all of that is true, except I come bearing good news. I know the episodes are prerecorded, but the magic paste is back. The contracts with USAID were reinstated, the workers are back at their jobs, and the awesome magical peanut butter paste is once again back.

being sent to those in need. Now, that is good news. There is, however, still problems with links in the chain further down, like last mile delivery stuff, because so many community health workers have been fired in impoverished communities as a result of the USAID cuts. So,

Unfortunately, the magic paste is not getting everywhere it needs to be getting, but it is getting to more places than it was a few weeks ago. So this is a reminder, actually, that what feels inevitable and we feel totally powerless against, some of that we are not totally powerless against. We've seen some tuberculosis funding restored recently.

from USAID, not nearly enough. And obviously, this is still a huge unmitigated and unprecedented catastrophe. But we have seen sort of marginal, small, private successes. Yeah. Right. And it's very frustrating because it's what –

It's what attention can be brought, you know? Yeah. Mostly that is like bringing life back into things. But there's a finite amount of attention to be brought. For sure. Because the people that you need the attention from are just like a couple of guys. Yeah. And so they can only feel a certain amount of attention being spent on them. Right. Yeah.

And that is why it shouldn't just be a couple of guys. No, no, no. That's why the framers of the Constitution made it not say that. Yes. No, they gave Congress the power of the purse in fairly unambiguous terms, and Congress needs to take back that power in a big way.

But in the meantime, we have to fight and scrap for everything that we can fight and scrap for because so many lives depend on it. So I think we have to do both at the same time. We have to pressure Congress to take back its power, but we also have to encourage – we have to work within the systems as they are to try to get funding restored where we can. Yeah.

So what's going on with AFC Wimbledon, John? Oh, Hank, it's so tense. It's so tense right now. Oh, God, of course it is. AFC Wimbledon are in fifth place in League One, which is a playoff spot as it stands. There are four games left in the season. Ugh.

If we're going to get automatically promoted, we probably have to win at least three of those four games. And we've only won one of our last five games. So I'm not brimming with optimism that we'll suddenly turn it around and win three of those last four games. I hope we do. That would be amazing. It would also be fun for me since I'm taking my father-in-law to the game that's on Friday. And so I would much prefer for his first visit to Plough Lane to involve joy than suffering. But it's probably more realistic for him to see suffering.

So yeah, we are four games left in the season and basically three points from automatic promotion and four points from falling out of the playoffs. So it's very tight at the top.

Yeah.

And as a result of that red card, we were playing with 10 people and they were playing with 11. Now they eventually got a red card too. And so it was 10 versus 10. And then they equalized, which was frustrating for sure, but still proud of the way the guys played. I thought they played really well and they stuck together and defended as a unit.

The great Joe Lewis, our central defender, played great. So I'm feeling good about the team on the whole. I think that we're a good football club going here into the last four games. But man, is it tight and is it nervous.

That's intense. I opened up the AFC Wimbledon stats like Google told me about it when I opened my Google and it was like draw. And I looked at the numbers, you know, it was like it's as as is often the case, you guys scored early and then they scored late, which is frustrating. But then I looked and I was like, oh, well, you also got a red card early. And I texted you and I was like, this means you played almost all of this.

one person down? Yeah, we did. I think they had like 80% possession and they had 18 shots and only scored one goal. It was a proper Alamo kind of defense. Yeah, yeah. And AFC Wimbledon had one goal and one shot on goal. That is correct. It was a very good shot on goal by Alistair Smith and we're very grateful to him for that great shot on goal.

What's the news from Mars? The news from Mars is going to be news from Earth this week. So we're looking at more cuts that could have future impact on future Mars news.

So we got an open call from Doge to call for early retirements and resignations in the Astrogeology Science Center, which is in Arizona, and it's part of the U.S. Geological Survey. So it's expected that after that, more employees will be laid off. The science center is rescheduled.

responsible for precision mapping. And it has experts from tons of different fields. It's got, it's got mineralogy people, volcanology people, and it's played an important role in making all of these beautiful maps of Mars and the moon and other planets that you have seen on the internet. Those don't just come out of nowhere. NASA makes them and we get to enjoy them. And they are a thing in the world because of our shared tax dollars. Um,

And they also help plan out NASA missions, where things are going to land, what they're going to do. And that goes for the moon stuff as well as for Mars stuff.

And it does all of the maps and software for the Perseverance rover. So that's going to have potential consequences for crewed missions to Mars, since those are people that would find things like the water ice deposits that they might use to have like pre-missions that like manufacture oxygen or fuel and

but also the actual crewed missions. And then they've just been a really great resource for NASA and for private companies. Like, for example, a private company you may have heard of called SpaceX. Yeah. That's pretty frustrating. I mean, it's pretty frustrating. I don't know what else to say. It's pretty frustrating. Again, it's so annoying that the attention can't be paid to everything.

But it's heartbreaking that so many –

It's not like the budget is being affected. I think it's really important to understand that the budget is not being affected, that we are not spending less money as a country. In fact, we are spending more money in 2025 than we did in 2024 or 2023. Which was the expected outcome. That was going to happen. Well, actually, the expected outcome was a freeze. That's the OMB expected spending to be flat. So we're spending more-

Partly because we're paying a lot of workers who are on leave but not actually fired, and it's not clear that they actually can be fired. Right. But partly because we're spending more on defense and we're spending more on different forms of enforcement, for lack of a better term. Sure. But yeah, it's a really – it's just heartbreaking. I know so many people personally who've lost their jobs and who've –

you know, worked in public service for decades and have seen their jobs go away. And that just breaks, it just breaks my heart because so many of those people are doing such important work and it both, um, it costs them their livelihood. It also, in many cases, costs them their life's work. And that's, that's doubly devastating. Here we are. Empires rise and empires fall, my man. Um, but, but we will continue to pod for you. That's right.

And just go out there, do a little reverse Pooh Bear. Got to optimize. Just make sure you're optimizing. That'll fix everything. Get some vitamin D in you and you'll be all right. Oh, man. What's the relationship between the obsession with the efficient use of a human life and how actually inefficient all of that energy is?

The efficient use of the US government and how actually inefficient all of that is. No, I think there's a pipeline there, Hank, for sure. There's something – you're on to something. Yeah. Well, that's not the video I'm going to make this week. Great. Thank you in advance.

John, thank you for making the podcast with me. It's always really nice. And I hope that you have an excellent experience in London. I'm going to go have, right after this, hopefully an excellent experience at a Bernie Sanders rally, which is happening in Missoula, Montana. So that'll be fun. Though I think that I will put a scarf around my whole face to hide.

from people. Smart man. If you want to send us questions, you can do that at hankandjohn at gmail.com. We don't have a podcast without you. So thank you. And also, you can watch a video version of our podcast if you become a patron at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna Hulse-Rojas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Bradley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. 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.