Dear Hank & John - 344: A Film of Scuzz

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Would being caught just before hitting the ground still hurt? Is it bad that the Earth is spinning faster? Where does the air inside of bell peppers come from? Why do people use pot lids as cymbals? How do you get better at trivia?  Hank and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is that prefer to think of it dear John and Hank? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you DB a surprise and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John have been working hard on the complexity calendars. Oh yeah. But actually I got kicked off the team. I was working, I was doing all this stuff and I feel like my work was appreciated but

you make one mistake. They kick you off. You take one day off. It is a deal breaker for a calendar. We have calendars right now to support the many projects of complexity from journey to the microcosmos to SciShow, their beautiful 2023 calendars because get this y'all. And this came as a big surprise to me It's headed toward 2023

It we're gonna yeah, we're getting there very distressing news, but the 2022 your days are numbered Complexly calendars will help ease your way into 2023. Check them out, just Google Complexly Calendars. I can tell you so much more. Okay, great. Tell me more, Hank. Eons calendars.

And the Bizarre Beast calendars are both made with original art that was created for those series. So we have artists who make art for Eons, which is just like, a lot of stuff we do paleo art for is like stuff that's never been like crafted into actual paleoart,

which is so cool that we get to be this source of some of the first images of these old ancient creatures. And then Bizarre beasts, we do these like pretty illustrations that we have incorporated into the calendar. The microcosmos calendar is all photographs from our master of microscopes. He is always sending me pictures. Sometimes he'll just like send the whole team a picture he took

and we get to enjoy them. And now you get to enjoy them on your wall, if you get that one. And the SciShow calendars, there's one for space, which is the moons of our solar system, and there's one for the main SciShow channel, which is just images that we sort of tied together loosely using Pi and then their cool facts that we found out about different things on our planet and we found great photographs to go along with them. All of these things are made in the US. They're really high quality calendars. They're 11. a half by 11 and a half, which is like the standard wall calendar size. And you can get them everywhere in the world. We've meant we will send them to wherever you are.

People have been thinking about these for a bunch of time and we just wanted to do a cool, thoughtful thing to help you know what day it is. You're gonna have to get a calendar anyway. Go to ComplexItGalators.com. There you go. Took you a while to get there, but you got to the URL. I'll tell you about it again before we end the episode.

I bet you will. I'm really excited for the Complex It Calendar. So I'll tell you what I'm not excited for is 2023 coming up. So soon, I feel like I just got used to it being 2022. And I'm not that excited about the passage of time, Hank. I just turned 45, which has caused a little bit of a midlife crisis. I've been trying to think of it as being halfway home. That's the thing that I'm trying to come on, halfway home. But then it's wild that we get a pretty good chunk of time,

but it's pretty, but it's also pretty short. Yeah. And like a lot of things like, you know how the school year, like the first couple of months is real, real slow and then the last couple of months is real, real fast. Like, I'm on the express train right now, Hank. There are not as many stops as they're used to be. It's like, Bing, and then it was like a moment passes,

Bing, oh, that was a year? That was a year. Yeah, I know. Why does the train keep speeding up? Could we have the train go the same speed? Yeah, that's the thing. You did a lot. This is the way of summer camp.

For those of us who've been to summer camp, it's always the first three days are like, interminable, you're like, so confused. I have so much summer camp. It's always the first three days are like, interminable. You're like, so confused. And so much summer camp left. Creating new routines that you never, and then the routine snaps into place. And then summer camps over. Right.

So what you gotta do if you want your life to last a long time is never let a routine be established. Well, that's not gonna be a past. It's always uncomfortable. It's always uncomfortable. It's always uncomfortable. I'm not gonna, that's not how I'm going to do it. Hank, I am going to do the best I can with the time that I have left.

A halfway home. That's the motto of year. John's going to do that. That'd be great. You could do a calendar next time that's called halfway home and it's just pictures of houses under construction. I remember people like when they were like 50 like remember when our parents turned 50 and they would talk about being middle aged and there would I would always just be like, yeah, I mean, but you're not though, you know, like you're not middle aged. You're your past. You're old. you're young old, you know, you're the youngest old you'll ever be, but you are old. Yeah.

I've been comforted lately, though, by this something Albert Einstein wrote at the end of his life to a friend for those of us who believe in physics, understand that past, present, and future are merely illusions, however tenacious. I'm really, I don't know what that means because I'm not a physicist, but I trust him. Okay. Yeah. So it's all an illusion anyway. Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners.

Beginning with this one from Maddie who writes to your John and Hank, we've all seen that classic movie moment when the main character is pushed or falls off a cliff, usually just as they're about to hit the ground a giant horse with wings or something catches them. And then they're fun. Yeah, I'm wondering how the physics of this works. Wouldn't it still hurt to fall onto a giant horse from what I assume is only a few feet above where you were initially going to hit?

I subscribe weekly to Crabulous Maddie. Oh, thank you for your support. We should have done a crab calendar. Well, why am I not? Why am I just thinking of these things now? People would buy up a deer hankajon crab calendar. The future is 24, 2024 is right around the corner, John. Bing.

It'll be here before you know it. It will. So this is, you have to think about this in a number of different ways. Like oftentimes they'll catch them by the hand and I'm like, that, a hand wouldn't handle that. It could not handle that level of strain. So we are in trouble. Now, what you want to have happen is like a Spider-Man situation where the spider-web things are

stretchy like a bungee cord and so you grab and then you have a lot of stretching to do before you. And so you're going to experience some G-forces, but it's not going to be like the G-Force of an instantaneous stop. The Spider-Man situation is basically an unexpected bungee jump, which if you are already falling is the best possible outcome, right? Like, yeah, that's something I do know situation. I turned out there was a bungee cord the whole time. Wow. Right.

Right. So that works. The flying horse sort of works, right? If the horse is flying down with you. Exactly. If it's also falling, like catches you and then like kind of gracefully in a parabolic arc goes back up. Then I think you would also be okay.

The ones where somebody just like grabs you by the wrist. Like that. And then like you go on with your wife and happens. Maybe you live, but your shoulder is in like, I mean, it's like 17 surgeries worth of shoulder. You got a lot of physical therapy to do. Another thing that happens is you will sometimes see a person that's falling out of this guy

and then they are hit sideways by a Superman-like thing. And so suddenly they're going from going, you know, the 80 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour down to 80 miles an hour sideways. Right. And both of those things, what has just happened is, instead of getting the 200 to zero, which you would have got, you're getting that plus zero to 80. So it's worse. Yeah, that's in the, I think actually in the world of following physics, we call that double trouble.

That's double trouble right there. Yeah, you, you, it doesn't seem like it, but actually you got, you are, you are dead more ways now. I don't know about that. And you would have been if you just hit the ground. I think you're, I would submit that there's only one level. No, there's more ways.

There's one that, but you are dead in more ways. Yeah, you're done. Okay. What if? Yeah. I get what you're saying. What if Superman is a cloud? Should be a cloud.

Why isn't he a cloud? He's from another planet. Why is this? Why on earth does he look like an attractive man? Yeah, why should he even have arms? He should be like a big fluffy, ascension cotton candy. Yeah, then he can catch people however he wants. Exactly. Not only that, but then when he leaps over a building, it doesn't even look that weird, because we're used to their things. It makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense.

Yeah, there's all kinds of ways that the physics of Superman starts to make sense now. He can chew laser beams out of his eyes because he can let a lot of solar energy. He's got cloud eyes. Yeah. He can chew lasers. He got cloud eyes.

He can chew lasers. Yeah, so totally different set of physics. So one thing I'm fascinated by is the world of superhero intellectual property because there are all these obscure superheroes that have been snatched up by either DC or Marvel like superheroes from the 60s or 1930s who were in like four comic books

and then that company went out of business and got bought by Marvel or whatever. And so there are thousands of superheroes available that aren't actually available because they're all owned by DC or Muffell, right? And it's almost impossible to invent a new superhero. Like you think you can, but you're like, okay, what about Aquaman?

And they're like, no, we definitely got that. And they're like, okay, what about like, Aquaman, but he's a horse. And it's like that's also taken. Exactly. Exactly. What about like your only superpower is that you can turn into a brown hat.

Oh no, that's for, we've done that brown hat guy. I do not know that there is Superman, but he's a clown. Giant clown. I think giant clown Superman is huge, is going to be huge. I don't think we can call him giant clown Superman, but he's a clown. But Giant Cloud. I think Giant Cloud Superman is huge, is gonna be huge. I don't think we can call him Giant Cloud Superman, but I think we can call him like, Cloud Superman. Super Giant Cloud Man.

We call him. Gotta put the super first. Super. Break up the super in the man. Super, super giant Cloud Man. Super giant Cloud Man. Oh wait, hold on, let me take it. It's good, but we need something from Marvel, right?

What about Super Giant Cloud? Wait, what about... Oh, okay. Okay. Spider Giant Cloud Man. Spider Giant Cloud Man is very, very good. What about Miss Marvel Giant Cloud Man? Oh, it's like the marvel, like, it's not marvel the brand. It's Marvel the adjective or the map, the. Just the TH from the Thor giant cloud and then

the ore from Thor. That's it. That's it. It's the giant clouder. Giant clouder. Thank you. It's got to work, but it worked. The giant cloud. The giant cloud. The adventures of the giant cloud or the cloud. But it has to, here's my question, Hank. First off, I'm 100% on board. I don't think we should answer any more questions in today's podcast. I think we should focus all of our energies on this million dollar idea. My question is, can the giant cloud or choose whether to like go

through a building as fog would or whether to like become dense enough to push over that building? Like can the giant cloud or choose its own density so that it can get in fist fights? Yeah, I think that just in the way that I can like suck in my abs, the giant cloud or can totally like become a denser ball of cloud or a less dense ball of cloud. Yes, and it can become any, it's a shape shifter.

When I suck in my abs, where does it go? And like, into my lungs, where does it go? Hold on, I'm doing it. Well, first off, I wouldn't, and I say this respectfully, I wouldn't call you sucking in your midsection, sucking in your abs as- I go to Pilates. I know you do.

You mention this every time. And, but, you know, we also, we are both people. Among the things being sucked in include abs. Yeah, I think that. Okay, so I think your diaphragm moves up, which allows your internal organs, including your abs to move in. Yeah, so it's going into the lungs. It's like compress it because whatever that

thing, deep deep lungs, though, that implies that it's compressing the lungs. Yeah, exactly. It's it's going where your diaphragm would be in an exhalation. So I take a deep breath and I hold it. Can I still suck a mab? Not as much, not as much. Not as much, no. Not as much. I'm lightheaded. And maybe that's the giant cloud or is problem, right? Is that the giant iron there though?

Just force the giant. The giant cloud or can only become so dense. Sure, because remember, or maybe the giant cloudatter can totally go neutron star and and also just become a started own big bay singularity. Yeah. No, I think that's a little as well too much. You never want a superhero to be too powerful. Remember. Maybe this, but that seems like a power that you can't use, right? You can't become a black hole. You can only use it once.

Yeah. You got to pick your moment. Right. That's how the giant cloud or ends is, it's like there's a terrible super villainance like I have one recourse. There's one thing I can do. And they're like, no, no, the giant cloud or no, you can't. We love you.

I'm the giant cloud. And the giant cloud. And then he just goes at any. And he's like, no, I have to. I have to marry Jane it. I have to. Mary Janet is his love interest. And the giant cloud or is like, I have to.

I have to turn into a singularity to save Earth. And also, I know that earth will be consumed in the singularity. But so it goes, Mary Janet will be together at last because nothing, not even light will be able to escape me at least of all you. And then the giant coder will turn into a singularity killing the supervillain, but also everything else. Also earth. Great. Okay. You know, also are great. Okay. Quite. I rights itself, John.

The giant corridor is overwhelmingly the best name for a superhero I've ever heard of. It's incredible. It's all like I thought it was a joke, but now I'm like, I'm so bad. Okay, so here's my question. Uh huh.

Because to really make this idea take off, we're gonna need the giant cloud or because think about how Batman, he's got like a tortured backstory. You know, Spider-Man's got the dead uncle and I think he's an orphan. And you gotta, like Harry Potter's under the stairs. You know, all that stuff.

You gotta have a little bit of a tortured backstory. So what's the giant cloud or his backstory? And then the other thing is what's the giant cloud or his like great weakness, you know? The giant cloud or his main backstory is he accidentally destroyed his planet and everybody else on his planet. Yes, yes. And he's terrified that that's gonna happen again, which of course in the end it does. planet and everybody else on his planet. Yes.

Yes. And then he's terrified that that's going to happen again, which of course in the end, it does. He killed everyone. He loves. So he's dealing with a tremendous amount of guilt. He killed everyone. He killed all the other the giant clouds. Yes. It's like when Darth Vader fired on Princess Leia's planet, only it's Princess Leia firing on her own planet.

And it must have been because he did something. He, it's something emotional, something spiritual. Not just what happened, Hank? Did he get his feelings hurt? I mean, I don't want it to be romantic because that's, that's not cool. People love a romance. I thought maybe it would be accidental. I thought maybe he don't want it to be romantic because that's, that's not cool. People love a romance. I thought maybe it would be accidental.

I thought maybe he wouldn't have realized that he could go full neutron because no one else on the planet would have. But how? You can compress yourself and he was like, then he pulled it in his ab so hard that he turned into a, he made a black hole. But how? But, but okay. So he did it completely by accident, but this is not narratively strong.

I'm just gonna tell you. No, yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. Doing it completely by accident is like, that's a great first idea. That's like when you came up with the idea of Super Giant Cloud Man. Now I need you to come up with...

The Giant Cloud or a version of that? Exactly. So what caused him to turn his home planet, which probably wasn't even a planet, it was just a collection of clouds. Yeah, it was a gas giant. That's the guy. It was like one of those huge,

when you look at the James West Space Telescope and you see those images of like vast, galactic gas clouds. Oh, a nebula. A nebula. That's what it was. It was a crab, a nebula. It was home to a nebula. Nebula, that's what it was called. It was called crab, I know there's called a nebula. That's what it was. It was a crab, a new one. It was a nebula.

Nebula. That's what it was called. It was called crab, I know there's a crab nebula. It was called crab, you list. That was his nebula. And he was one of a bajillion clouds inside of crab, you list. But then he just, he didn't destroy a planet. He destroyed a whole nebula, which can be hundreds of light years across.

He got his feelings hurt or, or, or he got angry. What is it? What is it? When we lose control of our emotions that is the equivalent of turning into a neutron star. What is it in a superhero or a person that is the most like dangerous destructive emotion? most like dangerous destructive emotions. Fear and jealousy combined, right? Where you're afraid that your whole identity is about to be, and like everything that you've worked for is about to be invalidated in some way. That's right, he was scared.

He was scared. He was very scared. He got so scared that he destroyed his entire nebula by turning into a singularity. Now he is on earth and he's deeply scared of being scared and the way to never be scared is to never care too much, to never be too invested. And he won't be. He refuses to be. He's a hero, but he's also above it. He's not willing to engage emotionally. These are just human problems.

But then, then the giant cloud or meets Mary Janet and there's a little part of him that thinks, maybe I can afford to love. You can't, the giant cloud or no, because you're an immortal, infinite being. Yeah. And Mary Janet has a has a mere blink of existence. Because before you know it, it's going to be 2024 and you're going to get a crab calendar. I mean, Hank, I think we've got a massive hit on our hands. It's got some Greek mythology in it. It's got, oh, the God marrying the mortal and it's destructive.

It's got all that jazz. This is a proper idea. Now, what I want you to do, Hank, is nothing. I want you to leave it. I want you to leave it. I want you to leave it. I'm never going to, look at it. That's everyone else's now. That's the world.

That's the world now. That's the world now. Yes, Marvel wants to make a movie. And then I own it. I will remind you that Hank contributed absolutely nothing to the underlying concept. Whatever. Your success is my success, boy. This next question comes from Annabelle who asks,

Steerank and John, I recently saw an article saying, Titian to have Hank never referred to me or any adult as boy again. Second again. Anyone? Oh my God, Hank, I hear a chorus of seconds. I recently saw an article, the motion saying that the motion has passed.

All right. All right. The earth was sitting slightly faster. With this, this would make our days slightly shorter, but only impacts our year by fractions of a second. They seem to be brushing this off too easily and I am concerned spinning slightly faster and about. This is not why the years are going faster, John.

They just are. The years are only going faster because of our minds, not our planet. Are you worried, John, about the planet going faster? What do you mean the years, oh, oh, you mean it? Well, the years are going a little faster. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

The planet is spinning faster because we thought too hard about it. Maybe that's why it feels like time is beating up because it is. Just a teeny bit. No, this is like something that happens. Yeah, I've talked about this before. We might have to add a leap second to the calendar in a few years, but it's nothing to worry about, Annabelle, except in so far as all of this, this whole affair is something to worry about Annabel, except in so far as all of this, this whole affair is something to worry about. The planet that revolves around a star is something to worry about, but it is a reminder of the underlying worry.

And like, there's all kinds of reminders of this reality. We just get used to a lot of them. Like, you look up at the moon and you're like, oh, right, I'm on a planet with a moon that goes around it. Why does there a moon that goes around it? Cause, you know, billions of years ago, this planet got hit by a really big other planet, basically. And now that planet's leftovers are up there and also some of our crust,

which is why we're the densest planet, which is weird. And you, yeah, yeah, we, so like that is a reminder, but like getting every fresh reminder is always like, oh, yeah, we're just like a film of scuzz that's on a big rock. And like thinking and listening to podcasts, right, creating superheroes for some reason, making coffee, which I think is like, cause for celebration actually. Like I think it's incredible that the scuzz on the surface of one of the rocks rotating around one of the stars made a new Taylor Swift album.

Like I didn't personally make the new Taylor Swift album nor was I involved in it in any way, but like still, I was here in a way. You did. Yeah. I'm not doing a much psychedelic certain thing, but it is true. We are all of the same lineage.

We are all related. Sometimes I just saw an article that was like, you have a doppelganger out there and you share DNA with them. And I'm like, man, I share DNA with a banana. Like, a lot of... I've got nothing but doppelgangers. Yeah.

Bananas are my doppelgangers, home trees, cyanobacteria are my doppelgangers. Yes. Exactly. So, shocking amount in common with them. And because we are sharing this one world and participating in it all together, in a way, like we all did help make the new Taylor Swift album, which I would like to be the first line of my obituary, John Green, co-creator of Taylor Swift's album, it died this week at the age of 90, 45 years

after declaring that he was halfway home. But, I mean, even if you aren't talking about, like, how we are all kind of just one organism that covers a planet. In addition to that, by being a Taylor Swift fan, you influenced Taylor Swift. And yeah, and Taylor Swift would not be making a bunch of music if people didn't like her music. So it is all very actually connected to itself. It's true, Hank, and it's beautiful. This next question comes from Tula who writes, dear John and Hank, where does the air inside of bell peppers come from?

Are there like tiny air holes somewhere on the bell pepper that let air through as the plant grows? Do the plant cells somehow release gas into the inside? What the heck is going on? Best wishes to the. Actually, the air inside of giant peppers is some of the most nutritious air and for the giant cloud or specifically.

It's actually the only thing he can eat. That's right, he only eats air spicy air. It's actually got to be like inside of a Carolina reprieise like, oh, spicy air, my face. Yeah, the only big problem of having the giant cloud or honor is that all of the peppers are gone. We have to have an entire section of the country devoted to just creating pepper air

for the giant cloud or, which is worth it. It's Kansas. It's Kansas. We've seen it. We've seen it in Kansas, the giant cloud or, in exchange for not having any crime because all the criminals are too afraid of the giant cloud or's wrath.

Right, and everybody who falls off of a building from now on, gets saved. It gets saved, yeah. Which is good. And a puppy cotton candy can away. The only downside is that we had to turn to peak and do a pepper field. What color is the giant cloud or in your head? Oh, you've been picturing it. Him sort of a silver, silver, a gray, but I don't, I don't know. That's just the way clouds are. To me, it was, it looked like a sunset cloud, like pinky orangey.

Yes. Lots of like, crinolations. That's not the right word, but you know. It's a great word, though. Deps and depths in color. Anyway, the air that's inside of peppers, unfortunately, though, this is not the case for everything, and I'm going to get to it.

It's just air. It's just atmosphere air that diffuses into the plant. But there are some plants that produce their own air or their own gases. Seweed does this a bunch where like kelp will create pockets of little like, little ball balls that they fill with air.

And they create that air with gases, and they create those gases through biochemical processes that then off gas into the little thing, and it helps it float upward so that it can anchor to the bottom and float up to where the light is. Oh, cool. Yeah. And make their own little blueies.

It's can create gas. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was pretty cute. Yeah, I couldn't come up with a word, I had to say balls. That reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by kelp booies, kelp booies. This crust of earth can do so much weird stuff.

Yeah. Podcast is also brought to you by Taylor, Swiss new album, Midnight. You did that. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha did that. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Uh, most importantly, this podcast is brought to you by the giant cloud or the giant cloud or maybe Hank and I's ticket to finally, finally some mainstream success. Well, I don't want it.

Uh, this podcast is overrated. This podcast is also brought to you by the Complexly Calendars, which you can get at ComplexlyCalendars.com. You need to know what day it is. Do it with a high quality, beautiful calendar created by your friends at Complexly. We also have a project for us a message

from Victoria Richardson to Ada Jane, a love letter to Ada Jane, a love letter to Ada Jane. You are a baby-shaped container of magic. The pride on your face when you learn something new, the smile when you hear my voice, the habits you've picked up from your mom, your dad, and inexplicably the dog. Parenthood is hard. There has been profound sadness and exhilarating highs. There has been fear,

but also so much joy. I want you to remember that they are all important for a good life. I'm so glad I have the privilege to watch your dad carry you around like a potato sack while you giggle. I love you. DFTBA your mom. That's so sweet. Oh, I'm made me miss having a baby. Yeah, my friends keep having babies, which is good. Because then I get to have a little football for a second. Oh gosh. Well, potato. Second fairly even picked my kids up anymore. And so it all happened so fast.

All right, Hank, let's answer a few more questions before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, which I'm in no hurry to get to anyway. Here's a question from Huxley age eight, and Huxley wrote this question by hand, and then it was scanned and sent to us. So we get to see Huxley's handwriting, which is nice. Dear Hank and John Huxley, dear John and Hank, why do people use potlids as symbols with symbols spelled correctly, which is a minor miracle.

Pumpkins and penguins, Huxley, because they work Huxley. Yeah, because the symbols are kind of hard to come by and also surprisingly expensive. Whereas pot lids are ready to be symbols all the time. And when they are, when, when pilots are being used as symbols, are they symbols? Oh, that's a deep question. Is it a, is it a symbol symbol? It might be a symbol of symbols. This next question comes from Nathan who asks, do you reckon, John? I love trivia. It's something that my wife and I love to do together, but we're very competitive and we want to win more. and it's something that my wife and I love to do together, but we're very competitive and we want to win more.

How do you go about getting better at trivia? Almost a palindrome Nathan. Okay, Nathan, I have to, this is a great point about being almost a palindrome, not just like letters wise, but at what point in our history did we decide that TH would instead of having a letter for that sound, we're gonna just make it be that.

It's not like, sounds like it doesn't. It doesn't. Right, there's so much more need for a TH letter than there is for an X letter. Oh yeah. Like we do not need an X letter. It could be ECKS every time. Uh huh. Oh yeah. Like we do not need an X letter. It could be ECKS every time. Uh-huh. Or Z every single time. Yeah, which is whereas it's a ludicrous thing to have one letter do Z and

yeah, when we have things for both of those. Right. Whereas we have nothing for Tha which is one of the most common sounds in English all over the place. So it should be a palindrome. You know, if you were to, it should be a palindrome, Nathan. Yeah, but you were robbed of that by history. And indeed, in the fullness of time, it may be that in the year 2500, there is a letter for TH. And Nathan is again a palindrome.

And people of the future will read Nathan's name and think, oh, it's a palindrome, like Hannah. Right. Or we could do it right name and think, oh, it's a palindrome, like Hannah. Right. Or we could do it right now and say there, no longer is there a TH, or even a TH sound, we're just gonna do F. So you're Nathan.

Wouldn't it be Nathan? Nathan. Nathan with an F. An F. Nathan's. Well, Nathan, there you go. Congratulations on the... Hey, thanks.

It's a British, it the one of the British accents. Let me try it. John, let me try it out for you. Okay. Not I'm not going to congrats on the rebrand, Nathan. How to get better at trivia? My strategy is to read trivia books and trivia guides. Like, there are books about how to be good at Jeopardy, man, how to

be good at bar trivia and stuff, and they're super entertaining even if they don't help you get better at trivia. So that's my strategy. What's yours, Hank? Well, it sounds like you and your wife are playing trivia just the two of you. And if you're playing bar like a pub quiz type thing, you're gonna be playing against teams who may have up to eight people on them. And so you should expect to be at least half as bad as eight people. So it may be that you want to recruit.

And that's the real question. How do you recruit, like how do you steal somebody from one of those other teams? You say, hey, free beer at our table, or you say, hey, half price beer. I hear you've got, not free, half price. Yeah, thanks always been a terrible business person. Say, hey, I hear you've got those friends,

but what about these friends? I know you care about them and have loyalty to them, but why? There are, here's what they said about you on the group chat that you're not on. You gotta be really Machiavellian about it. Don't do that. I do think that bringing in a ringer really helps.

I've never won bar trivia without stand, the co-founder of Crash Course Humanities, who's one of the most trivia testing people on Earth. And I would highly recommend either befriending or hiring a ringer, because they can make all the difference. It's really true. And it's good to, so you have different expertise

at the table as well as helpful. Because I can bring you lots of science and nature but I got nothing on sports and leisure and that's what John's for. Yeah, that is the basic, that is the reason I was put on this earth was to provide sports trivia for Hank. And then you've got Dave for history, also John for history.

It's if you got Dave and John. Oh, yeah, Dave's great. All right, Hank, one serious question. If you don't mind from Hannah who writes, you're channeling Hank, I'm entering my sophomore year in college, majoring in aerospace engineering. I overthink things quite a bit. One being choosing the right major.

To put it simply, I want to end up working with things like the J and so space telescope analyzing the pictures it sends us making more telescopes like it, etc. How do I know that I've chosen the right major to get me where I want to be in the long run pumpkins and penguins Hannah Hannah, you are so far ahead of the game. You're a sophomore in college and you have some idea what you want to do as a job in your life. That's amazing. Stop for a moment and just revel in that. Yeah.

There are so many people who work on a space telescope and they work on so many different things. It's everything from like designing new materials that can be super lightweight or resistant to changing shape when they change temperature. There are people who are like doing the analyzing. The picture is very different from like doing the like design for the jet for the rocket engine, right?

And so I mean aerospace engineering, in general engineering gives you a huge wealth of background to do a lot of different things. A lot of different, very interesting things. And so I think that you already have a definite perspective here, but that's not the major or the expertise that ends up doing the analyzing of the pictures that it tends to touch. It was much more like astrophysics kind of stuff. So it's just like that there are so many people who work on these kinds of things that if you want to work on a space tellers group, you could do a lot of different things. Right.

And I think aerospace engineering is a great major. Like, of course, you may find out that there are aspects of it that you're not interested in, but that's the great thing about college is that you don't have to only study aerospace engineering, at least at most colleges. That's going to be the majority of what you study, but you can also study other stuff you're interested in. You don't even have to formally study it all the time in order to learn about it. I would just say to take as broad an approach as you can to learning because a lot of what you're doing in

college anyway is like learning how you're going to study other like how you're gonna study in the future whether that's in graduate school or on your own time or at work or whatever. Yeah absolutely. I can't wait to see what you do with your life. One of the great joys I think, of our work and having been able to do it for as long as we've been able to do it is that we've gotten to see people grow up. We've gotten to see people go from high school students, from middle school students, to now having careers of their own. And it just fills me with this immense pride to see these young people who

entrusted us with a part of their childhoods like growing up and doing stuff, raising families, do and work, making their communities a better place in various ways. It's so awesome. in various ways, it's so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And I obviously didn't think this would be my job. I actually was hoping to work on a totally different thing, totally different set of things when I was getting my undergrad major. And I think that it's also important to let to follow the passions as they appear and to follow

the opportunities as they appear, which has always been the way that I moved through life. I've been lucky. Yeah. Have that outlook. I mean, when Hank and I were 25 years old, there was no YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. No. So there was no YouTube and there were almost no podcasts.

So the world changes. And the main thing is you're doing, when you're in school is learning how to learn and change along with the world around you. Well, Hank, speaking of changing, AFC Wimbledon were unable to change their approach to playing football against Barrow. Last time we faced Barrow, I think we were both in the seventh tier of English football. Life comes out you fast, man. Life comes out you fast. Barrow are now up to league two and they're looking pretty good in league two. I think that their third or second in the table right now.

So it's not an overwhelming shame to lose to them one. No, we had the majority of the possession. We had more shots than they did. So I thought we played pretty well, but I will say we never aside from when Ayuba saw did score a goal, but it didn't count because he had used his hand before he scored. Aside from that, we never looked that likely to equalize.

Like Barrow did a very good job of something that's underappreciated in soccer, which is getting an early lead and then making the game boring. It's something that Wimbledon cannot do. So maybe we learned something hopefully from watching 80 minutes of a team taking early lead and then hold on to it. But yeah, we did not win.

We are now in 12th place after six games. 40 games left in the league two seasons. So plenty of time for things to get better, but also plenty of time for things to get worse. Well, also, yes, we may lose a UBA Saul. Oh gosh. Our Moroccan magician are amazing, amazing player. There are some teams in the second tier that appear to be interested in him, which would be a real shame for us, but you can't hold a good player down and good golly. He's a good player. So if that happens before the end of the transfer window, you'll hear about it on dear Hank and John, your number one news source for League to transfer news. What's the news from Mars Hank? We've published as a species.

We you and I and the rest humanity has everybody. Yep. As published for whole papers, worth of results from the perseverance rover and its exploration of the Jesuera crater. They are looking at various types of rocks around the perseverance rover and its exploration of the Jezero crater. They are looking at various types of rocks around the crater and what we can learn from them about Mars' history. So, we found that Jezero crater has two types of igneous rock. One comes from magma that's like deep down magma and another from volcanic activity at the surface. The downside there is that igneous rock

is not great at preserving signs of life, so it's been there for a long time and it could tell us some things about how the climate on Mars has shifted, but not anything biological, probably. Another paper looks at a rock formation that was previously found by Mars orbiters that has a lot of olivine, which is a mineral. It is a big area around the size of South Carolina

and scientists have wanted to know what could have made all of that olivine. Is it meteorite impact? Is it eruption? Some other process. And so the Perseverance rover was able to like actually like scratch up the rock and then study the olivine in there and that indicated to them that it was formed by slow cooling magma that was then later exposed through erosion. So there's also another report using other equipment on the rover, the study rock layers and those results of those and the results of that suggests that some of the layers might have been directed with water, which is not a surprise, but another signal that we're looking at an ancient lake bed. Yeah, but we still can't find evidence that there's water down there in there yet, right?

There's ice. But there's almost definitely no water that we would think of as like a pool of good healthy water. It's gonna have a lot of weird stuff in it, or it's gonna be sort of clays mixed, like water mixed around with minerals and stuff. Mm, well, I'm excited to find out more. It's a shame that that rock doesn't have, like, it'd be sweet if it just had like a nice grasshopper fossil. And we could be like, oh,

it's sort of on the lookout, you know? It's like they never say this is what we're looking for, but then they are always very much like, right? What is that? Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, well, well, it's great that Percy has already resulted in so much science. And I know there's a lot more to come. John, yeah, if you get the complexity calendar, touch it on January 1st of 2023. Mm hmm. You will get an electric shock. Do you know why? Why? Because it will be the current calendar. Oh, there you go. You've got a dad joke at the beginning and at the end folks You're welcome complexly calendars.com Hank, thank you for making a pod with me John, thank you for making a podcast with me. Complexlychallenders.com. This podcast is produced by Rosie on a Halsey, Rojas

It's edited by Joseph Tuneh Mettish. Our Communication coordinator is Brooke shot well our editorial assistant is Deboki Drucker-Varty. The music you're in now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great-grandeerola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.