439: Division I Saint

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. and how bad the podcast is, but apparently Brayden found a way to enjoy it, which is a real testament to his perseverance and also to all of our listeners for dealing with this subpar crap. Indeed. Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you abuse advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, why can't you eat fried condor? Because of the rarity of it, I assume. Yeah, that's not legal tenders. Oh. Maybe, well, maybe, why can't you buy something with a fried condor? Because it's not legal tenders. Is that better? We're working it out, everybody. Welcome to the show. I slept terribly last night. I can tell from your low-quality, low-energy introduction that you didn't sleep well last night because you have a viral video right now. And there is nothing worse for one's sleep than having a viral video. Hank, at some point, in the same way that we needed to have an hour-long conversation about 2014, at some point we're going to have to have an hour-long conversation about Hank's emerging celebrity and whether it is good news. No, I think probably the conversation that we'll end up having, if my guess is correct, is in 10 years, we'll talk about how I fried myself by pressing my face directly against the sun. Yeah, what you saw was me falling from the sky with my melted wax wings and you thought, you know what? I could do better. I feel like that's not so bad. It can't be that bad. There's a lot to recommend falling from the sun. Yeah, look at the wind in his hair. Oh, well, thanks to everybody for listening to that episode. We had a good time doing it and lots of interesting responses to it. But today we're going to go back to old school Dear John and Hank. We're going to do the show. We're going to do the show that we usually do. If you're new, there's always new people. Is it true that there's like every episode there's like somebody who's never listened to Dear Hank and John before? And if so, is your name Neil? Oh, is there a new Neil? Is there a new Neil? There could be. Hello, new Neil. It's not impossible. Deborah? There's a beautiful snowstorm outside my shed today. And so if you see me not looking at you, Hank, it's because I'm staring at the snowstorm. I love that your shed has so many books in it. That's not usually what sheds have. So yeah, we're going to go back to the way that we do the show. The conceit of the show, if you haven't been here before, The conceit of the show is that people ask us questions. And then we do three total things. One, we answer questions that are kind of science-y. We try to give good kind of science-y answers. Two, we answer questions that are a little bit silly and we give silly answers. And then very occasionally we actually get sincere and we try to do a good job. Right. But please never think that we're – I don't know. It's strange because I desperately don't want to have people think that we're going to do a good job because of course. Yeah. It's amazing to me how many people write in with serious questions knowing that this is not a serious question podcast except for occasionally. We do them, but I often feel like, you know what serious questions I'd be good at answering are just about being a YouTuber. I don't know how to date. Well, I actually don't mind answering dating questions. It's the questions that are like, what do I do with my one wild and precious life? I feel like it's slipping out from underneath me that I don't know how to answer because me too, buddy. Yeah. Hank, let's start off today with a question from Teresa who writes, Dear John and Hank, here in Houston, Texas, we have St. Arnold's Brewery, which is named after the patron saint of beers. I think to be fair, it's the patron saint of brewers. I don't know that he's the patron saint of beer itself. Is the patron saint like one who gives like a small monthly donation to someone's YouTube channel? Like even bigger? We'll get to that. It seems like there are patron saints for many niche categories. Who decides who can become a patron saint and what can receive a patron? Also, if you could choose a patron saint of science or tuberculosis, who would that be and why? pumpkins and penguins, Teresa. So Hank- Yes. There is a patron saint of toothache. Toothache? So not of a person with a toothache, but of a thing. No, of people who suffer with toothache, not of toothache itself. But there's a patron saint that you pray to for intercession if you're Catholic, when you have a toothache. And now I'm not Catholic, but I have had some immense chronic mouth pain. And I'm not above saying that I've prayed to Saint Apollonia for intercession on my behalf. So when you pray to a patron saint, the concept is you're not praying to them as a god because there's only one god and that would be a false idol or whatever. Yeah, they're not pretending to be gods. You're praying to someone who's in heaven who hangs out with God. But also theoretically who knows what it was like to deal with the thing that you've got going on. Is that right? Exactly. So is this lady Apollonia? Yeah. Was she like tortured to death with tooth stuff? Well, Hank, I hate to inform you that she was indeed tortured to death with tooth stuff. Specifically, she had all of her teeth crushed by pinchers. Oh, no. That sounds horrible. The Catholic Saint Cannon is the worst Pokemon. Yeah. So it's like if Squirtle was also like forever impaled upon something like that. Yeah. It really feels that way. Are they not all of them? Certainly not all of them died terribly. Right. No, no, not all of them. But but a lot of them. There are a lot of martyrs because the thing about being a saint is that it's much easier to get there if you're martyred. Otherwise, you got to go the Mother Teresa route of like being perfect your whole dang life or near perfect. I guess nobody's perfect, only Jesus. But you know what I mean. So there's a patron saint for everything. I mean, I'm sure there's a patron saint for writers. Let me look it up real quick. You think Jesus ever lost his temper or like made a YouTube video just because – Just to feel something? No, Hank, I don't. I don't. Yeah, so we got St. Francis de Sales. He's the patron saint of writers, the Catholic press, the deaf journalists, and education in adulthood. So the way that patron sainthood works is that you don't decide who becomes a saint, right? The church decides that. Yes. Patronage is a kind of a complicated, like a lot of power structures, really. Patronage is a complicated relationship between official proclamation and popular devotion. Popular devotion is really what gets you there. Saint Apollonia is considered the patron saint of people living with toothaches because that's what she's been considered for a long time. And a lot of people have found comfort in whatever, in praying toward her. I don't know the exact phrasing. All the Catholics are going to be so mad at me, Hank. I'm worried. I'm worried the Catholic theologians are going to come for me, and I fear them. So you only get this canon if you're Catholic. There's no Episcopalian patron saints? There are Episcopalian saints, but it's not nearly as big of a deal. And there are not saints in the Methodist or Lutheran church usually, I think. Gotcha. Because a lot of Protestants see this as false idol worship. You're basically worshiping St. Apollonia, and you can't worship anyone but God. I have great news about the patron saint of science, who's a real guy. Yeah. St. Albert the Great, which is great. Also called Albertus Magnus. You know how he died? How'd he die? Of old age. He was in his late 80s. That's the dream. He got to be a saint and he died theoretically just like the same stuff that you and I are going to die of. Well, the patron saint of tuberculosis is St. Therese of Lisieux, who of course died of tuberculosis at the age of just 24. But that was certainly true of most of the saints. Yeah. The ones who didn't die of torture probably mostly died of tuberculosis. A lot of them did, for sure. For sure. She was 24 though. That's no good. That's pretty early. When did that happen? She was the pampered daughter of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who wanted to be a monk. It sounds like a D1 baby in the making, if ever there was one. Division one saint. There's a lot of them. And they, I mean, I guess because like if you make it like one every few years, it's been a lot of years. I want to see a graph of saintings. When were saints made? Are they like how far in retrospective were they? So like when was the saint operating and like then when were they finally made a saint? Was there like – I bet there was like a really big peak at some point. There was like some point where they were like, we need a bunch of saints. We got to like – we're doing the saint thing. Well, there was a lot of martyrdom early on. And so you got a lot of early ones like the other patron saint of tuberculosis, St. Pantaleon, who died at the age of 28, presumably of tuberculosis. But he's also the patron saint of physicians, midwives, livestock. I didn't know that you could be a patron saint of an animal, but apparently you can. And this is my favorite, Hank, helper for crying children. He's not the patron saint of crying children. He's just, oh, no, he's the patron saint of helpers for crying children. I think he's the patron saint of when your child won't stop crying. I wonder which one of these Like which one of the patron saints Gets the most prayers He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome And he converted to Christianity Saint Pantoleon He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome And then he became a Christian Which obviously was dangerous When the emperor Diocletecian and I'm reading this from catholic.org, by the way, began his persecution. Pantaleon at once gave away everything he owned to the poor. Imagine, Hank. Not long afterwards, he was accused of being a Christian. See, imagine, imagine if that these days led to an accusation of Christianity. I can make that joke as a Christian. He was given the choice of denying his faith or being put to death and no torture could force him to deny his faith. So there you go. Man, I tell you what, Christianity doesn't seem like it's in a really weird spot right now. Having a weird moment. A lot of disagreement about what the Gospels say. Yeah. You know, there's a line in the Gospels. One time I was at church and the person giving the homily was like, everybody wants to take the Bible literally, except when it comes to this line about how it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven when suddenly all the rich people become experts in figurative language. the uh the the there i was some some podcast person i was listening to a podcast and they said that there was like 3 000 mentions of the like wealth injustice being bad in the bible and oh yeah somehow that's like the main thing that is ignored and then they try to tease out any little thing about the hot button issues of like today's society. Right. Yeah. Like there's no mention of any of the hot button issues, but there is mention of the last being first and the meek inheriting the earth. And also there's mention of wherever you see the poor or imprisoned or those who can't afford clothing, you see me, i.e. God. Yeah. It's a tough one to get around, Hank, but people are managing to get around it. And by the way, I am also getting around it. Okay. Like I'm not, I'm not casting aspersions. I am throwing, I'm throwing stones absolutely from within my glass house. I need to pray to the patron saint of hypocrisy. Hold on. Hold on. It was Hippocrates. No. No, I couldn't find one, but I did find a patron saint of rabies. Oh Hubert What Hubert Saint Hubert That does sound a little bit like a Pokemon Do they have trading cards? Do they have stats? What are the stats? I used to have – I used to keep a card of Saint Padre Pio in my wallet for consolation and good luck given to me by my Jewish mentor, Eileen Cooper. And he is the patron saint of Pio. I think he actually is the patron saint of Pio. What's that? Is that a place? I think it's a place. Oh. Let me look it up. Hold on. Oh, no, it's derived from Pius. Oh, that makes sense. He's a Pius guy. He had the stigmata. And what is the stigmata? That's where you get blood coming out of your hands or your wrists in mimicking Christ's suffering. Gotcha. This next question comes from Talia, who asks. Oh, we're moving on. I thought we were only like one third of the way into patron saints. No, no, no. We're all the way through patron saints. All right. Let's move on. And Talia asks, do we all get eaten? So logically, the answer would probably be yes to decomposition of dead bodies. But what about cremation? Do we still get eaten or will nothing go near ashes? Or does getting eaten by fire count? and if people die in the ocean, then the body will get eaten away by the water. But does that count as being eaten? Talia. Talia, I have so many answers to this question. Yeah. First of all, people who get buried at sea often get eaten like more so than most people. Right. Faster and more aggressively than most of us. And in more of a way that feels and looks like eating. There's like things with teeth that are doing the actual eating. Now, that, of course, does not always happen, but commonly, the human body is made of food. And upsettingly. Yeah, there's something I really can't get behind, and that's my brain being edible. I just can't. I can't. I can't support it, Hank. I'm opposed to it. I'm opposed to it. But do you get eaten if you're ashes? You don't really get – you can kind of get eaten if you're ashes. Now, the main thing is that you don't get metabolized if you're ashes because metabolizing something, like turning it into fuel for your body, is like just doing fire to it, but in a controlled way. So it's the same chemical reactions. Okay. And like sort of down at the root of them. Fire has already been done to it. Fire has done the eating. But when Deboki was looking into this, there's this thing where people will scatter ashes and they'll be like, these ashes will be good for the plants and then they'll be taken up in the plants. But here's the thing about human ashes. They're bad for plants. They're alkaline. So they're like the opposite of basic. That can damage plants. So if you do too much, like if you pour it, like there's some areas that like a bunch of people scatter ashes in the same area and then the plants all stop growing. Oh my God. So there's a company that creates a supplement that you could add to your ashes that makes them good for plants. Of course there is. Which is awesome. So you can go – and I've got some problems with the sort of pitch of Let Your Love Grow, which is this company. I've got some scientific nits I could pick, but it's a fine idea. Basically, I think probably the majority of what it does is it adds some acid to it so that it becomes more neutral. And then it becomes like a thing. And absolutely, the minerals from the ashes can be taken up in the plants. But that's not really – I wouldn't call that necessarily eating. It's like taking a vitamin or like what you do to salt more than what you do to chicken. That reminds me, Hank, that the patient saint of funeral directors is Joseph of Arithmea. Arithmea? Like Arithmea? Arima, Arimathea, Arimathea. I'm not sure, Hank. Are you saying Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus's dad? You know Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus's dad. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know he was a saint. He's a saint. He's a saint. I mean, he did do a pretty good job when Mary was like, hey, I'm pregnant with God's baby. Yeah. He was like, yeah. He was pretty chill about it. I think so. He had a cool hat, at least in this photo. Yeah. I don't know that that's a photo, by the way, Hank. You know who else he is the patron saint of? No one. No one. Just funeral directors. The stepdad of God just got funeral directors and undertakers. That's everybody. But it makes sense because he was the one who requested Jesus's body from Pontius Pilate and so that it could be properly buried or I guess entombed. Oh, that's kind of nice. Well, it's sad. It's a sad story. That is the thing about your story. It's like a bummer. God came down to earth and everybody was like, actually, let's kill him. Yeah. He was rejected. Yeah. It's a bit of a story. I will remind you. And so he remains. That's not the end, by the way. Yeah, it does keep going. But that's a bummer. I want to think that humanity would be a little more chill about God coming down to earth. That's like when Henry was three years old and we watched a movie called Big Bird Comes Home and he got really upset when Big Bird. left home. And I was like, well, Henry, the movie is called Big Bird Comes Home. I got a good feeling about how this is all going to work out, but he wouldn't watch till the end because he was too upset. That's how you are with the Jesus story. You stop when he dies and you're like, this is terrible. What are we up to? That wasn't even like a nice way of doing it. No, certainly not. All right. Enough theology. We're moving on. People don't come here for that. People come here for reasons that are unclear to me. Joy asks, dear John and Hank, how do flames decide where to go? Not in terms of what burns, but the shapes the flames make as they flicker upwards. I'm staring at the fire in my fireplace right now and trying to determine if there's a pattern. There's some level of consistency in back and forth flames, smaller and larger flames and swirls, but no true pattern that I can determine. Do flames have patterns or are they just random? Just feeling warm and content. Joy. oh that's kind of a nice little moment for us all yeah let's just pretend that we're by the fire yeah and i'm going to tell you about fluid dynamics which is i mean are you going to tell me that fire is actually a fluid because that seems like the kind of thing you would tell me what fire is is very is is like it's it's more of a phenomenon of an experiential phenomenon rather than a physical one is what i can tell you about fire oh so like what you see as fire is a bunch of different things all happening at the same time but one of them is that there's a bunch of like uh heat being produced and so when heat is produced the air molecules like bump around more and they get farther apart when they're farther apart they become less dense and when they're less dense they get uh pushed uh up by gravity because it's the opposite thing that's happening. It's like a helium balloon, basically. And as that happens, lots of air is doing lots of weird stuff. So it's rushing in to take the place of that air that is moving upward. And fluid dynamics is extremely complicated because it's made of trillions of atoms and molecules, mostly molecules, it turns out. But those molecules are made of atoms. And so they're bumping around, they're moving around the sticks, they're moving through your house, and there's never really any moment where all of the molecules are moving the same way as they were just a moment ago. And they will always be moving slightly differently. And also the shape of the fire is changing. The amount of energy being produced is changing very slightly. The air currents in the room have an effect on this or outdoors or wherever you are. All of this matters. And so fire kind of, I feel like will never look exactly the same in one moment as it did in the last. But certainly there can be patterns. And also you can do things that will actually structure fire. So candles are built to control fire and put the fire into a structured shape so that it doesn't get chaotic and waste a bunch of wax. Well, the patron saint of fire prevention is Catherine of Siena from the 14th century. I don't want to know how she died. Actually, she died of a stroke. I looked it up while you were rattling on. Oh, God. This is our, oh, man. What's the patron saint of Dear Hank and John? We don't get to choose tuberculosis in science. That's a real thing. Yeah. If I could choose the patron saint of Dear Hank and John. Yeah. Dolly Parton? Sure. That's a good one. Kesha? Kesha is good. I think I'm not I'm not completely up to date on Kesha Hank Kesha could not be a saint I don't know I'm out that's outside my realm of expertise I did so for clarity I assume some saints did some did some naughty stuff at some point all saints did naughty things right like that's the that's the nature of being a human is that you're you're sinful yeah yeah so I think that that's okay sure well we'll have to decide between Dolly Parton and Kesha another time. Yeah, we also probably should choose a dead person. Isn't that one of the requirements? Great point, Hank. Really, really good point. You do have to be deceased to be a saint. Yeah. Okay. Charles Darwin. That's my proposal. Charles Darwin, because he appeals to you for his science stuff and me because of his chronic stomach problems. So you can intercede to him and say, oh, please, Charles Darwin, help me with this science problem. And I can be like, Charles Darwin, I can't stop puking, and neither could you. My belly aches. Oh, love Charles Darwin's chronic stung problems. Yeah. Yeah. He was always going to the hot tubs to deal with it. I love that. No, that's how they did it back in the day. All right. We got another question from Kate, who writes, hey, pals, my two-year-old asked how trees don't fall over. He was confused because his towers always get smaller as they go up, but trees have huge branches. I explained that he can't see the strong roots under the ground and I showed him diagrams and such, but he's not convinced. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm convinced either. I need more science. Help. Kindly, Kate. Yeah, there's a bunch of different things going on here. One is that the roots are often bigger than the tree itself. Right. Don't the roots extend often beyond the crown of the tree or whatever? Yeah. Unlike the crown of the tree, they can actually intermingle with the roots of other plants. So crowns don't tend to intermingle for actually somewhat mysterious reasons. Yeah. I was just thinking because occasionally you'll hear the sound in a windstorm of tree branches rubbing up against each other from other trees, but very rarely. You would think it would be a cacophony. And usually it's the same tree that's rubbing up. Yeah. They respect each other's space, which is very weird. Very weird. But their roots can intermingle certainly with lots of different plants. And so this has a very stabilizing effect on the ground. So if you just had a tree with a bunch of like big, thick roots going into sand, this would not be particularly stable. And in fact, there are sandy places where trees are more likely to fall over because sand doesn't bind stuff together as well. And like trees that are adapted to grow in sand do it differently. But one of the things that is sort of an underrated phenomenon here is that it isn't really the big branches that do the majority or the big roots that do the majority of this work. there's like a tap root that's doing a lot of that so it's like sticking straight down into the ground but then there's like a lot of little tiny fingers that are all doing the absorption of the water and the nutrients that is very important to the life of the tree but because there's they create so much surface area these very delicate little root lits actually do a lot of grabbing in a way that like you can kind of imagine like a chameleon's finger works by just having a ton of surface area that gets into every little nook and cranny. Or if you imagine a sponge, if you stick a couple of chopsticks in there, you can kind of just pull them out. But if you imagine a billion spikes come out from inside of the chopstick, they would then be stuck into the sponge. Wow. That makes sense. I mean, that's kind of beautiful to think about that underneath us all the time, there is this web of life that we don't see that holds up trees and other. It reminds me actually of the patron saint of treaties between popes and Frankish emperors, Petronia. What did you say? Treaties? Yeah, the treaties between the popes and Frankish emperors in particular. Petronia. That's what Petronia does. There's no patron saint of trees is what I'm hearing. A treaty between a pope and a Frankish emperor you better be praying like crazy to Petronia for intercession There no patron saint of like lumber or something Oh there totally is There totally is Saint Gumar. That sounds like a Pokemon. It's actually Gumarus, which is even more Pokemon-like. Gumarus, wow. Yeah. I think it might be Gumarus, but I'm not here to judge. Gumarus, also Pokemon-y. John, actually, importantly, I should now say that this podcast is brought to you by chopsticks that have a bunch of spikes sticking out from them. The chopsticks that suddenly explode with spikes makes it easier to pick stuff up, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Today's podcast is, of course, also brought to you by John the Apostle, the patron saint of lithographers. Oh, my God. He's got a website open. And this podcast is brought to you by Kesha. Kesha, not the patron saint of Dear Hank and John, because she's alive! And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Little Saint Cards of Padre Pio. Little Saint Cards of Padre Pio in my wallet until I no longer had a wallet, because now you don't need a wallet. Oh, oh no. And now you have to just have like a screenshot of him in your photo roll. Yeah, somewhere in your photo reel. Next time I upload like a carousel on Instagram, I'm going to make the last picture of Padre Pio with no explanation. Always the last one's Padre Pio. It just means father pious. Jeez. Yeah. Brag. Brag. He was a very pious man. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. As you likely know, I have what the television commercials call moderate to severe OCD. And so I have many times experienced having a thought pop into my head that is so weird and so distressing that I just cannot move on from it. Like, maybe you suddenly wonder if your headache means you have a brain tumor and then you're googling symptoms for hours. Or maybe you have the inexplicable urge to swerve your car while driving and then spend hours trying to figure out why you had that thought. Well, that's what OCD is like for many people. I have OCD and for a long time I didn't know there was a name for what I was experiencing or that other people felt the same way. That's why I talk about my OCD, because more people need to know what it really looks like, and more people need to know that there's hope, because OCD is highly treatable. But the thing is, standard talk therapy, the kind you hear about a lot online, is not recommended for OCD and can even make it worse. 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This episode is brought to you by Factor. So if you're anything like me, you'd like to eat better, and also you have zero time and zero energy to make that happen. I've been doing a little bit better, but Factor is so helpful. Because Factor doesn't ask you to do the meal prep or plan ahead, or watch an Instagram video recipe and then port it into a separate recipe app that is trying very bad to make you subscribe to use the features of the app, despite the fact that it's marketed as a free app. But don't worry, if you want to build a grocery list from your recipe, you can watch a bunch of ads, and then maybe it'll work? Not that this happened to me recently. With Factor, two minutes, real food, done. It's really that easy. I can do some meal planning, but Factor makes it so that I don't have to do all of the meal planning. Sometimes I've made a mistake, and the only solution is either just eating a bunch of chips or Factor. With Factor, you get lean proteins, colorful vegetables, whole food ingredients, and healthy fats. Some upcoming meals from Factor include smoky gouda chicken with cauliflower, peppers, and tomatoes, or Korean-style salmon with gochuchang sauce and rice and sesame bok choy and carrots, Or you can get golden corn and shrimp risotto with Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and pepper medley. Head to Factormeals.com slash DearHank50off and use the code DearHank50off to get 50% off your first Factor box, plus free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. All right, let's answer this question from Reed, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, why isn't your hair curly anymore? What happened and how does the same person's hair change between straight and curly like a book read? I don't know. And more than that, neither do we. So I've certainly looked into this, but we're at the stage of understanding how curly hair works. We kind of understand how it works when people's hair is always curly. And it is weird that sometimes when you have chemotherapy, your hair comes back curly. and it is weird that then it will eventually maybe sometimes but not always go back to being straight again and why this happens we've just got what we call hypotheses and we haven't really done much work testing those hypotheses because in cancer research there's a bunch of money to spend on stuff that matters more than that yeah and uh which is almost everything i do feel like there's a way to figure this out. So the big leading hypotheses are, one, your cells grow back unevenly because they've sort of died off or they've gone into dormancy and they emerge from dormancy unevenly. And so when they emerge unevenly, they literally form curls and waves and stuff? Right, right. So one piece of the hair follicle will be making more hair than another piece. Wow. And then there's another idea that... So curly hair we know is created when the hair follicle is more at an angle to the scalp and rather than straight up and down. And so there's an idea that like when the hair follicle gets empty, like it doesn't have anything in there, it sort of like changes shape a little bit. And then after a while of the hair growing through it, it physically changes the shape of the hair follicle. But I don't know which of those two things it is. And it may yet be a third thing or an effect of both of those things together. Wow. Wow. But it initially came back not just curly, but very fine. So I had baby hair at first. It was curly, it was fine, and it was sort of mahogany. It was like a different color. Yeah, it also was a different color. It was kind of auburn, yeah. I remember when I first started seeing videos of you with your new hair, thinking it doesn't even look like Hank. It looks like somebody cosplaying Hank. yeah and now and now like i go and now you look exactly like you used to look yeah yeah i look at the hank with the curly hair in it and i feel weird about him yeah you know what he looks like he looks like all of our cousins yeah yeah it's like you came back with our cousin's hair the first time my hair follicles grew hair for the first time i also had curly hair for a while you had curly hair when you were a little kid. And then mom's theory, and I don't think this stands up to scrutiny. Sorry if you're listening, mom. But mom's theory is that when you got scarlet fever, your hair stopped being curly. Could be. I don't know. Oren also started out curly and now is straight. So he didn't get scarlet fever. Do people still get scarlet fever? I don't hear about scarlet fever anymore. Did we fix that one? I don't know. I'm not an expert. I didn't write a book about scarlet fever. Google it and I'll find out who the patron saint of scarlet fever is Scarlet fever Is making a comeback Of course it is It became rare because of antibiotics Oh, okay So it's treatable, but it still happens Yeah, yeah, yeah I can't find a patron saint of scarlet fever, unfortunately Oh God, it was bad I did not enjoy scarlet fever Yeah, you were really sick, I remember And it's interesting that we've taken on – you talked about this in a Vlogbrothers video recently, that we've just taken on this assumption that I'm the sick one and you're the healthy one, even though you did have scarlet fever and cancer. Yeah. And also ulcerative colitis. And ulcerative colitis, you had chronic health conditions, but I seem sickly. I come across as sickly. I communicate a certain fragility of my constitution. I've got a certain sturdiness, you know? Keep hitting me. I'm fine. You do. You do have a sturdiness about you that I just don't have. It's okay. It's okay. I think we're like equally physically sturdy, but it's not about the physics. No. God, I want you to outlive me so bad. Yeah, I know. Oh, that would suck. Whatever happens, happens. Well, that's one way to think of it. But my way of thinking about it is that I like to think of what would be better. Yeah. And I think we can all agree that younger brothers are just better equipped for that kind of business. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't want to have to do the thing where I stand up in the church and tell everybody stuff. Oh, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. I know, but I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, I get it. I don't want to do it, but I don't want to do it. Yeah. You feel an obligation to do it, but it doesn't seem like it would be fun. Look, John, maybe we won't die. The Silicon Valley guys are working on it. They're really figuring some stuff out, putting young people blood into them. Nobody tried that before. Literally thousands of years ago. They're doing legit vampire stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They're doing Transylvania prince activities over there. Catherine the Great things. Yeah, maybe we won't die. That would be a great – But then that would also be a bad outcome. Yeah, I'll eulogize you when they upload you to the computer. I'll be like, he was a great physical form. That would actually be the worst outcome. I think I've made this very clear. But to me, the only thing worse than dying would be being stuck as an artificial intelligence or having my consciousness uploaded or whatever. I would not enjoy that at all as much as I – I despise the idea that my brain is made out of meat. I do not like the idea of my brain being made out of ones and zeros. Yeah, yeah. Instead, I'm going to turn you into a non-conscious chatbot that keeps making videos with me. Muah! It wouldn't be that hard. No, no, no. I feel like we're not that far away. I mean, God knows there's plenty of my voice on the internet to cut around to make a- Don't tell people. Yeah, don't do that. We wouldn't even have to do AI. You could just edit together all of the things we've already said. Yeah. People have done that occasionally, like edited together things to make it sound like I said something I didn't say. But now with AI, you don't even have to go through all that hullabaloo. You can just tell an AI to make John Green say something horrible. Yeah. It's great. The horrors. Yeah. I mean, that's just really the tip of the horror iceberg. So we don't have to get into all that stuff. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask you this question from Caitlin, which I genuinely don't know the answer to. Dear John and Hank, how come when doctors need to take blood out of us, they poke us in the inside of the elbow, but when they need to put something into our bloodstream, they poke us in the wrist? Your fellow walking blood bag, Caitlin. Oh, Caitlin. I remember when I was first in Missoula trying to get a job, there was a lot of phlebotomist jobs. Sure. And they were higher in phlebotomists And I thought should I get trained up to be a vein poker And I could not bring myself I was like way too scary Can we just acknowledge before we go on that the difference between an average phlebotomist and an excellent phlebotomist is almost incalculable Like there is a, like when you get an excellent phlebotomist, it's game changing. It's like nothing ever, it does like nothing happens. It's painless. It's like nothing ever happened. Well, I will say having got poked not just a ton of times in my life, but sometimes by the same people sometimes the same like i think that there's like nerves involved and sometimes they just hit in slightly the wrong spot and it hurts more uh but there is like a i i have also been poked in situations where a vein was missed or it went through the vein and like so i've had lots of i've had a lot of blood draws in my life and uh and i i looked into this and i don't think that this is how it works so i don't i don't i in fact do not think that they uh have have like one spot where they do it to put things in you and one spot for taking things really but if they want to put something in you that might be like not great if it leaks out they really want to put it in the in the inside of the elbow because that vein is sturdier it's it's thicker uh and so that's that's like your that's oftentimes the preferred place but sometimes they want to go into the hand one those veins are really accessible like they're right there on the surface they're easy to see there. So those, those are good ones. It can also allow for some greater freedom of movement for you, the patient, if you're, if it's in the hand versus, you know, sort of like not being, not wanting to close your arm. And as long as they tape it down, it's, it's pretty fine. But like, it really often does come down to like, what, what looks the best right now for this specific circumstance. Oh, and with chemotherapy, they have actually moved to not doing it into like direct into uh the arm at all they used to but because that those drugs can be so bad if they slip out of the vein even a little bit that they install a a like catheter that goes straight into one of the big thick veins in your chest um that that then they can poke into through what they call a port i guess and that port you had installed i remember you had a surgery to get that port put in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I had a, so that one I was asleep for, but then when they take the port out, you're just awake and they just yank it out. Oh, I would be such a bad phlebotomist, Hank, that I have almost passed out from this conversation. Yeah. And what I'll say, having had it done a ton, I will occasionally have a new phlebotomist and I'm like, my friend, I'm the perfect person for you to practice on. Like I've had it go every possible way and it's like i know what it's like for it to go all of the different ways and uh and i had a person who recently um they were like i can't see your vein but i can feel it and i've never put a needle and i like i've never put a needle into a vein that i can feel but not see and i was like girl do it like i like if you mess up like this matters to me not at all and she's like yeah i'm not gonna do it though you're hank green right and it's like double the pressure that's why you don't want to become more famous hank because then all your phlebotomists will be panicked when they try to find a vein yeah yeah oh shout out to blood donors and uh indeed also to their patron saint our lady of the thorns oh my god it's just still happening a lot of leaking going on with the thorns Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's maybe how they got there. All right. It's time for the all-important news from Mars in AFC Wimbledon. Hank, what's the news from Mars this week? In news from Mars, there's a bunch of bummer Mars news. We didn't find that orbiter. Yeah, I heard that. It's gone. We didn't find that orbiter. Also, it seems to be well and truly the case that Mars sample return is dead. So the idea was rover, pick stuff up, put it in little vials. And then later we pick those vials up and we bring them home and then we can figure out whether, uh, all kinds of stuff. Uh, but I was about to say whether there was life on Mars, which is a thing that we actually probably could, could potentially tell from a Mars sample return mission. Certainly not a high chance of it happening, but yeah, it's, it's just got too expensive. Uh, and we're prioritizing other things as a nation. That's the understatement of the week. We're prioritizing other things as a nation. Yeah. We've decided to spend our money in other ways. Worse ways. Yeah. And I'm not even that big a fan of Mars sample return missions. He's not. No, I am. I think it'd be really cool to have a piece of Mars. I know we have pieces of Mars on Earth from like meteorites and everything. But like, I think it'd be really cool to be able to bring back something from Mars and examine it. And I know that like the science that we could do, you know, it's one thing to do science from millions of miles away. It's another thing to do science up close and it'd be game changing. And it's very frustrating that it's been canceled and I'm sorry. It's expensive. The costs went up to about $11 billion. And to that, I say, just get a billionaire to pay for it. You know? I even know one who's interested in Mars. But he's not interested in Mars for a sample return, John. He's interested in Mars for the planet he could be king of. Yeah. Yeah. Which is different goals. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon isn't much better. AFC Wimbledon have won only one of their last 11 league games. It's not going great. However, there is one of these silly kind of somewhat unimportant cup competitions that are all sort of knockout competitions where you either- The unimportant cup. It's called the Virtu Trophy, and it might as well be called the unimportant cup. However, we did beat West Ham United's children. They fielded an under-21 team, and we beat them. And now we are in the final eight of that trophy. And if we make it to the final, we would play a game at Wembley, which would be really cool and also, frankly, kind of lucrative, which we need because we have no money, because we got knocked out of the other cup competitions early, so we didn't get to play at Chelsea or Manchester United or whatever. And so getting to the final of that competition would be meaningful. And now it's clear that we're trying. Like we put out our best 11 against West Ham's kids and we beat them 4-2. The two goals we gave up were not great, though. I actually wasn't that impressed with our performance against West Ham's children. I felt like maybe when you're playing actual teenagers, you should maybe do a little bit better. But at any rate, we won and that's good news. Overall, AFC Wimbledon are currently right in the middle of the table, 13th out of 24 teams. We would take that at the end of the season. We do have a negative six goal differential, which reveals that we lose a lot of games by multiple goals. But yeah, I don't know, Hank. As long as we get to 52 points and we stay up, the season is a tremendous success. And we're on pace to get there. Yeah. You've got 50? We've got 31. Oh. But we have 22 games left in which to get the remaining 21. Okay. We only have to win five. You get a point for a tie? You get a point for a tie. We have to win five or six more games to stay up. Gotcha. out of the last 20. Well, do that. Yeah. Do that. It's that simple. John tried so hard. I'm going to London for a work thing, and John tried so hard to make it into an AFC Wimbledon trip. I was ready to – And by the way, I am so busy right now. I am working like 12-hour days right now, and I was going to throw everything away to take you to an AFC Wimbledon game, and you wouldn't do it. Well, I mean, it's literally not possible, as far as I can tell, for me to do it. All right. Well, that's what cowards say. I opened up the passability, but then the games were on the wrong days. Oh, it would be so wonderful to take you to an AFC Wimbledon game. I really, and I know this probably isn't true, but I really believe that you would like see the light. You don't think that would happen to me at church, but you do think that would happen to me at football. Absolutely. I understand it's not going to happen at church. And I don't need it to, but I do need you to see the AFC Wimbledon light. You've got a different idea of souls and how they shall be treated. And I like yours very much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's fine. That doesn't bother me at all. You not wanting to support AFC Wimbledon financially is baffling to me. Man, I tell you what. I do think for the people who stuck around, because I know a lot of people stop at the news from AFC Wimbledon and Mars. Yeah, this is for the special people. I just think there's so much money out there and it should be doing – I think that it should be doing the stuff that we do, which is like really focusing on – but I think that like some money in the same way that a lot of money goes to just like movie theater tickets and concerts and soda pop. I think more – like there should be like a good fair amount of money giving away that is about just doing fun, weird stuff. Yeah. Rich people should do more weird stuff. But not bad weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Morally neutral weird. Chaotic neutral weird. You know how Paul DeGeorge has that stapler museum? Stuff like that. Paul DeGeorge has a store in Lawrence, Kansas that only sells staplers. He's not rich. He's not rich. Just for clarity, Paul DeGeorge is not a billionaire. He is a former wizard rock musician who now owns an art supply store in Kansas. But he also has a stapler museum. It's also a store. You can buy things there. Yeah, yeah. I bought a stapler t-shirt. It basically is a t-shirt that says, we sell staplers here in Warrens, Kansas. Yeah. More things like that. Yes. There's a rich guy in Indianapolis who built something called the Idol, which is this weird walkway that you go through off a highway bridge, and you walk through this thicket of honeysuckle trees. And then eventually you come to this lookout point where you look out at a spaghetti junction in Indianapolis and it's so loud from all the cars and trucks that you can't even hear each other talk. And there's like stadium seating there where you can sit and watch the cars. We need more weird stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you know that the Carmex, the lip balm stuff? Yeah, yeah. The guy who started Carmex also is super into pipe organs. And so the largest theater pipe organ in the world is at the Carmex factory. And sometimes they have like exhibitions where they play the organs. There's a bunch of other organs there as well. That just seems so much more – I mean, look, obviously nobody should be allowed to accumulate wealth to the degree that we've allowed it to happen. But like that seems so much more interesting and useful to me than like – Right. Yeah. Dot, dot, dot. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like the biggest ball of paint should absolutely be worth a lot to a billionaire. You know, they should be like, you did a good job and now you can retire. Well, that person should have a patron, right? Like they shouldn't, it shouldn't be somebody buys the ball of paint. It should just be somebody patronizes the ball of paint. Somebody should, yes. Like it's, it's very hard to say, don't do the thing where you're educating people or where you're helping get medicine to people. Instead, ball of paint, goofy, state board museum. But we spend money on ridiculous stuff. They're buying yachts. Yeah. They're buying yachts that go in the ocean that they don't use. They've got a yacht for their yacht. Well, you need to for some of those bigger yachts. Yeah, you need support vessels. Some of the yacht yachts need yachts. Oh, God. I just got sick to my stomach. That was worse and you brought up the phlebotomy. If you're like a centimillionaire or above, send us an email. Send us an email. We've got so many good ideas for you. We can fight tuberculosis. We can improve science education. We can give you credit or not. We can support AFC Wimbledon. Yeah. Yeah. Look, maybe we just want to build, just dig down in the center of Missoula, Montana and build a giant catacomb. Why not? Better than a yacht. Better than a yacht any day. That's our new nonprofit organization. It's called better than a yacht. Dot org. This podcast is made possible by everybody who sends us questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. It's Hank and John at gmail.com. Thank you for everybody for sending us questions. It's edited by Linus Obenhaus. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Maddish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. 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.