Dear Hank & John - 350: Fully Two Selves

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Where does paper go when you cut it? Were silent letters always silent? Why do you only smell smells when you inhale? What categories aren't made up? Do other planets each have their own unique day names? How do you deal with grief? Hank Green 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 Hagen John. Or is I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you DB's advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know that a bunch of horses got elected to, are about to get elected to Congress? I didn't know that. And so real problem because the only thing they can say is,

nay. Actually, that suits Congress pretty well. So we need to get out there and vote and make sure it's not just horses in there. Otherwise, you can't get anything done. It was a joke about voting, but do vote tomorrow as you're listening to this as election day in the United States. And if you are a USEN who is eligible to vote, head over to your polling place and say, I'd like one of them ballots because I don't want to.

I like one of them ballots. Cast it. I'm not here to tell you tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. If you listen to this the day it comes out. If you're not, if you listen to it the day after today is the day. If you're listening to it on Wednesday, you missed your chance. I'm not here to tell you how to vote, but if you want to make...

I'm going to tell you to vote. If you want to make my personal life easier, if you could vote for school board candidates who aren't trying to ban my book looking for Alaska, that would be a huge... I would just be a huge solid for me that you could do for me personally. So look up your school board candidates and notice whether they actively celebrate the banning of books on their website. Yeah. And if they do, you know, again, I'm not going to tell you how to vote, but I will tell you

what would be helpful for me personally. And if you want to know more about your voting situations, very easy to look up your registration status, whether you can register same day, where you're polling places, all this stuff is much easier to find than when I was maybe your age when I was first voting anyway. And you had to like, get a piece of mail to tell you where to go. No, it's the future. It's now and it's much, it's much easier. And so we should all be doing that thing. John, this is unrelated to that previous conversation. For a reason that I'm not necessarily going to get into, I went to Tumblr

recently to see sort of like what the vibe was there. Maybe I might be interested in spending time on a different social media platform than the ones that, than what I spend most of my time on that I don't know is healthy for me. Oh, yeah, no, I can tell you from experience that Tumblr is super good. Yeah, it's super healthy. So good. It's been a while since I checked it out. What I want to say, I went to Tumblr.com, I opened it up and it was like, here's a bunch of things for you. Here's a bunch of information, things you might be interested in.

And one of them was, do you want to send your friends, crabs? You can send crabs to your friends for $2.99. At Tumblr? Which is our idea. They stole Crabulous, Crabulo.us. Crabulous, the world's hit crab picture-sharing web service. Yeah, yeah. You can say, it's a limited edition crab.

Tumblr dashboard crabs. You can also send your friend a Tumblr horse friend and get busy scooping or get busy dying. I don't know what that means. Seems like a lot. Well, Hank, I don't know how to say this exactly, but you going back on to Tumblr, and I just looked, just went to tumblr.com for the first time in some years. And you having posted to Tumblr like six times in the last three days is the single biggest betrayal of my love and trust of the whole Brotherhood, essentially of the whole Brotherhood.

Tumblr is, Tumblr is made of many people. Well Hank, I'm glad that you are seeking out alternative social media addictions because that seems like a really, it seems like a right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. It's better to replace than to just touch grass. Before I have to think for one more second about Tumblr, let's answer this question from Sarah, who writes, dear John and Hank, my seven year old son, John Henry asked where the paper goes when you cut it with a pair of scissors, specifically the part that was connected to what used to be one piece of paper that is now two.

Is it paper dust? I'm not sure if he means this on the atomic level, but he's sure something strange is happening. Wow. Much ado about two Sarah. So when you cut a piece of paper, Hank, in half, and you add the remaining mass of the two sheets of paper, it is a little less. Is it? It's got to be.

Are you sure? Did you read that on the internet? Hank, let's do some standard deer hank and John lateral thinking to analyze this issue. Okay. Well, yeah. So here's what I think. I think it is going to be a little less.

It has to be a little less. Wait, wait, can we try the lateral thinking thing first? I think it could be very... What's that? What's that? Look like. That's where you imagine an analog situation and you try to figure it out from there,

whether part of the piece of paper disappeared. Gotcha. So if I cut down a tree, there's definitely sawdust. I know that. Right. Great example of lateral thinking. If I cut a car in half, definitely some pieces are no longer in either half of the car. There's car dust.

Now, as you know, Hank, when I'm in this situation, I like to imagine a much larger example to see how the physics would play out there. So let's imagine a piece of paper in the size of the earth. If you cut that piece of paper in half, okay? Are you picturing it with me? It's just the earth is the earth is a piece of paper. The earth is flat as as indeed it of paper. The earth is flat. As indeed it always has been, and it is,

we live on it. We live on it's surface, and you cut it in half, okay? Yep. There is gonna be, I think, some star dust, some floaty floaties. Just some floaty floaties. I think if you cut earth as a piece of paper enough times that it would actually form rings

around the center of gravity, which in this case is a piece of paper. Well, I think that the rings would of course have to be, it would be a ring, it would be like a box. Great point, great point. It would be a rectangle. Exactly, because if it's a ring, then that would imply a spherical planet, which is clearly not what's happening.

So, I'm saying that if you cut a piece of paper enough times, it would disappear. I think you are probably wrong. But maybe not. So, like, there's, I don't know. I? But maybe not. So like, there's, I don't know, I guess you're right. Like some atoms probably stick to the scissor somehow. But I think that what's happening is, so like when you're chain sawing a tree, you're grabbing individual little bits of that tree

and you're shoving them out. That's what, that's what chain sawing is. I have to leave the microphone for a moment. So Hank's gonna continue monologue-ing, but I have to look for her pair of scissors. But if I'm cutting, I'm cutting the paper. I think that the paper, it's like glass. There it is. When you break up, when you just crack a piece of glass, there's not some glass dust that shoots up into the air. It's just all the glass stays on one side or the other side. It's like glass.

Hold on, I'm coming back. I'm coming back. I strongly disagree, but I still haven't found any scissors. Hold on. K. K. K. Where's my scissors?

I have scissors too. Oh, I have a little knife. I have a razor. I'm gonna do my best to not cut myself right now. What's this? Can I cut this piece of paper? There's dust, John. There's dust.

Hold on. I don't need your scissors. I got them. I got it. There's dust. You're right. It's also just an excellent ASMR experience going on over here.

Oh my God, that was such a journey. I'm back. Huh, okay. This dust, hold on a second. Did you find scissors? I found scissors. It's too late. I already got it and there's dust.

Oh, it's visible. I mean, there's visible dust. There's visible dust. So not only do I, not only are we wrong about, not only were you wrong about the, oh, that's so loud. Not only, oh God, please stop. Oh no, what's the opposite of ASMR?

What's ASMR for where it just makes your life worse in every way? Sorry, I'm a little out of breath. It was a real run to get scissors, but there's definitely, there's definitely dust, but the other thing that's happening, maybe, so maybe I might wear a sharper, it wouldn't have dust though. So there's definitely dust, but the other thing I would like to observe, Hank, is that I think even when you split glass in half, there is

a remnant. I think there is something, I think there is glass dust or sand as you might call it that isn't in either pain of glass if you split them in half. But this is definitely creating dust. Now, if you had a perfectly sharp edge, I'm not sure if it would. And so the other thing is that I just, okay, so when I did it with paper, it created dust,

but when I did it with like a note card, like something that's thicker, like almost like poster board, there is no visible dust, not even on the blade of the scissors. Oh, so now I'm rethinking it. visible dust, not even on the blade of the scissors. Oh. So now I'm rethinking it. We don't have a good answer for you.

Look, look, I kind of agree with John that like, atoms are very small and they're weird. So if you have weird small atoms, right, I mean, when you're cutting something, you have to be cutting it. Like, if you're, yeah, I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to go too deep into this tank,. Like, if you're, yeah, I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to go too deep into this, Hank, but like, if you're cutting something, there has to be something in the cut that is lost.

Oh, does there? That's the, that's the question. I think, if I think in hairy, I don't, I don't think so. I don't think you can separate two things without there being something lost, right? Did we just put a Nobel Prize for Physics? Well, we may have won a Nobel Prize for a piece, John, because really what we're talking about is people, aren't we? There's no way that we're talking about, that we're just talking about paper right now. When you say something, you can't separate two things without something being lost. We're not talking about paper right now. When you say something like, you can't separate two things without something being lost.

We're not, we're not. We're not. We're not talking about paper anymore. No, no, we're talking about diplomacy. We're talking about love. We're talking about novel peace prize stuff, Hank. And you know what the thing that is lost is, is between two people is,

it's gotta be like spit or snot or something. Something liquid. Yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely microbiota. Microbiotic. Yeah. I just, I think there is something lost when you cut a piece of paper. And I think there is something lost when you separate any two things. But now I'm thinking, well, if you separated two atoms, there would be nothing lost, right? And so maybe there isn't. Okay, but if you separated two atoms, there would be nothing lost. But we're talking about a huge collection of atoms where like a very small amount of stuff could fall off and it could be invisible. The thing is, I'm not even entirely sure how paper even works now that we're talking about it,

because it's, it's, our, is it just a bunch of strands of cellulose stuck together and are, like, what sticking is it? Vanderwals forces or hydrogen bonds or covalent, but like, what is it that's doing the sticking of all the paper together? And what am I actually cutting? Because, because, what, what, but I think that the deeper deeper point I'm holding up this piece of paper that I've cut like 20 times is that there is now nothing between what was once two pieces of paper. But a question is did you have to remove something in order for there to be that nothing there. I don't think so. I think that you can introduce nothing without removing anything. I don't exactly understand what you just said.

You had me. You had me until, you had me until, you had me until, you had me until, without removing something. So you're saying you can add nothing without removing something. So you can, yeah, turn one piece of paper into two piece of paper

into two pieces of paper where you don't add anything. We are putting nothing between two pieces of the paper. I'm not sure that that's correct. I'm not sure that we are. But you've not taken anything away, you've only added nothing. Right, but functionally, okay, yes, maybe that's true in a vacuum, but functionally, when you cut an actual piece

of paper with actual scissors, my argument is that there must be some kind of invisible dust that is involved in that cutting, right? No, well, I mean, there doesn't have to be. There might be, and it seems like there is, based on our practical experiments. But I don't think that there has to be. I think that you can add nothing to something and have the same amount of something that is now two things instead of one.

Okay. You've introduced a gap between the thing, but the gap exists, but you didn't have to take anything out to make the gap. You just added nothing. Okay. Now, I realized that we should move on from this question, but I would like to propose an additional level of lateral thinking now that we're a little further

along in our investigations. Mm-hmm. Give me a lateral example of something that you add nothing to it, and then it's two somethings, but they are the combined size of the same previous something. I'm gonna go ahead and say literally anything.

No. Yeah, because when you say, so the question isn't... Well, first off, I don't agree with literally anything because if you did that to my body, you would not have to eat food. No, not to. No, not to. Yeah. But some finite number of individual parts. So if we're saying that

there's a bunch of dust that gets removed from the paper when we cut it, there is now space between not two pieces of paper, but many pieces of paper. So we're only saying is there's either two, there's definitely two, but there might be more than two pieces of paper. And some of the pieces of paper are so small that we cannot see that. There's a finite number of pieces of paper. So in this example, with nothing between them, with like air between them now. Right. So you can really only apply this to anything that's not living because if you split a living

thing in half, you're not going to have two things. Well, there's some animals where that works that way, but that's true, okay? Dang it. If you do it to a stenter, then you're just like, wow, look at all that like a Naga 18 stenters. With stuff between them. So who knows, John?

Who knows? It reminds me of a great artwork by Gordon Metaclark, where he split a house in half, and makes me wonder if anything was lost, or if indeed something instead was gained. This next question comes from Chloe who writes, dear John and Hank, did silent letters used to not be silent? Thanks, Chloe. Gotta be. Gotta be. Gotta be. No, no other reason why. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? What are you talking that people got stabbed with canives? Oh wait, excuse me. When in the history of the English language precisely, do you think people got stabbed with canivies? I was wondering if you were going to pick up on that. I'm going to say the 1400s and I'm going to say they didn't like it just as much as they did now, but it was a little more fun. I mean, there's some words with silent letters that didn't exist until recently. So obviously, they were never pronounced.

But they're based on words that used to exist. You don't make, nobody makes up words from scratch. Well, a little bit sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. But I know what you mean. But I mean, there are a lot of words that are relatively recent, including like, light, L-I-G-H-T. No, light's not recent.

Yeah, it is. That sounds very old. No, we did, we, in English, there was no word for light until the 17th century. The idea didn't exist, but in German it was licked and in Dutch it was licked. And so we were like licked and then we were like, licked. No, it didn't exist in German or Dutch either. It says that right here. No, hey, there was no, there was no word for the idea of light. There was a word for day, but there was no word for light, like what comes from the sun,

or comes from an artificial light source until the 18th century. The 18th century? Yes, the idea of light did not exist until the 18th century. Wow, that's cool. Oh my God, can I convince him of anything? Yes, I can convince him of anything. I am the greatest.

I was one click away. One click away. I mean, he even looked at an etymology dictionary and he was like, it says that it was a word in Dutch and I still tricked him. Yeah, I wasn't looking at the authoritative one, but I got there that the idea of light is from Proto-Indo European, it's all this hell.

Of course it's all that gets light. It's literally the first thing we need to have a name for. For something who's the second word after me. That's not true. Anyway, I think, yeah, I think that as far as I can tell, from what I've looked up and I've looked up, you know, because it's always a fun thing to do, That usually there was some reason why there was the extra letters and then we just lost them. And so there used to be like, thruff, and then we just like, ah, through's easier than that. Yeah, I don't know that that's, but for all the like,

rights and sites and nights and all those, and flights, those all come from other languages where they are semi-pronounced. Right. I mean, they don't sound pronounced to me, but then when I speak German, people are always like, excuse me. Yeah. It's all the times when you speak German. Did I ever tell you about the time that I was in Germany with Sarah and we went to

You know like a convenience key ask late one night and Sarah was like, please God whatever you do just speak English Please, please please just speak English. They it'll be fine And I was like I am going to order this sprite in German and she was like, please God don't and And I walked up to the person and I said, I'm sprite, bitter. And Sarah just, Sarah just, I mean, I thought she was going to, just the ground was going to swallow her up. But I speak German, Hank, I can say I'm sprite, bitter. Yeah, you can.

I can also say the title of the fault in our stars. Das schicks, at least, ein Misevaretter. That's a lot. That's a lot of German words. Da. Is that how they say yes? There's people listening who speak German, and I don't know how they're feeling about that. What do they say for yes?

What's their word? It's not da. Well, they say, what is yes in German? This says that it's ja-wul, which seems definitely wrong. Ja, it's ja. Wait. Yeah. It's ja. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I speak German. Yeah, Sprach and C. Deutsch, as they say, on off the Deutsch. Good, good for you, John. I wanted to say thank you,

but then I couldn't remember how to say it. Give me a second. Patience, patience. Ah, donkishun. Donkishun. There it is. This next question comes from Anna, who we're gonna a move on. We got to, for us, Dear Hagger John, why do you, why do you smell smells when you inhale, but not when you exhale?

Where does the smell go? Ooh, where does the smell go? Oh, all right. I thought I had to answer for this question, but now that I'm looking at it a little deeper, I am more confused. So you definitely do smell on the way out and on the way in. You could do both. And in fact, there's names for both of these things. In the way when breathing in, it's called ortho nasal olfaction. And when you breathe out, it's called retronazol in fact, olfaction. And retronazol in fact, is how you can taste when you're eating things that are not

sweet sour, bitter, and the other one. Umami, or maybe there's another salty. That's there. They all are. Found them all. But yeah, all those other tastes where it's like, you know, all the complexities of flavor is, you are breathing out and the smell is coming from your mouth, which is wild to think. And you can take off. So when you breathe out, the smell is coming from your mouth. Yeah. Okay.

Because I was just trying to smell a diet, Dr. Pepper can, although I have to tell you, slightly out of the topic, my relationship with diet, Dr. Pepper is in real jeopardy. But I was just trying to smell an exhale in the diet, Dr. Pepper can and I don't smell anything when I exhale. And diet, Dr. Pepper has a very distinct odor. Yeah. And so, but what, what I don't know and what is an amazing fact is when I, so theoretically, I breathe in a big, bulongye say, and on the way and I'm like, hmm, that smells like good food. But then, where do the smell compounds go? So that when I'm breathing that same air out, I'm breathing that same air out.

I brought it through my nose, I don't smell it. Does it all get like trapped somewhere? Does it get trapped on the way in? When I smell it, do I capture all of the, no, no way. I don't like being in a body. I don't like it. This isn't what I would pick. I wouldn't have picked this way. If you could have let me design,

you know how in like Dungeons and Dragons you can decide whether you wanna be an alpha, a dwarf, or whatever. If you'd let me pick, I would not have picked being in a body that has all this sensation. Yeah, I think I would have gone with, and let me know if this is a little bit too much, but I think I would have gone with a one-dimensional line,

like just a line that you couldn't interact with, but could sense. And so I could tell you what I see. I could like sneak around. This would be a good D&D character. But I can't be hurt. I can't. I can't. I don't. There's no entropy. I'm I am just a line. Don't you need a second dimension in order to sneak around? I like the idea. No.

Why? I mean, I need I need some way of moving through space. Yeah. So I am one dimensional, but I move through three dimensional space. Just like we are three dimensional, but we move through four dimensional space. Is there a chance that there's something that's one dimensional moving through

three dimensional space that I don't know about? Feel like we'd see it. Would we? But I don't know. I can't see one dimensional thing. If it was always sort of like on, if it was on edge, which is what you'd try to do. If you were me, a one dimensional being, you try to always be on edge to the thing that's looking at you so that you can't see you. But then when you're sideways, when you're perpendicular,

then they'd be like, ah, line, I see it. Quick, we're being spied upon. Wait, would it look like a line? Would it look like a line or would it look like a whole plane? It would look like a line. Two-dimensional would be a plane. Wait, but then how is it visible if it's a line? How thin is it? It's infinitely thin in every direction, right? That's great. I'm invisible. Now I'm a great spy. I'm the best.

I'm the best. Wait, you just throw me in there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I I'm a great spy. I'm the best. I'm the best. You just throw me in there. I'm sorry, I'm really bad at geometry. I could, to be honest with you Hank, I didn't, I didn't do well in geometry. Well, I don't know either, obviously. I'm asking you.

Uh huh. If you are a line, aren't you always on edge? Like the only reason I can see a line that I plot on a graphing calculator is because I'm imagining a world that looks like that world, right? Like, I don't think I can see a line that's a true line. That's truly a one dimensional space. I think you can see a plane. I think you can see a plane that you can't see a one dimensional line. I think you can see a plane. I think you can see a plane that can't see a one dimensional line. So yeah, maybe we're constantly surrounded by sentient one dimensional lines

who are like, oh my God, I don't believe these people have to poop all the time. Oh God, I don't want to be surrounded by sentient one dimensional lines. I would like somebody to tell me why I can't be surrounded by sentient one dimensionaldimensional lines, please. Well, based on how we understand how consciousness works, it would be tricky. Yeah, right.

We could be surrounded by one-dimensional lines that aren't thinking, which is maybe even worse. But then that makes me think, am I really thinking? Or am I just, am I just much more complicated in the way, in the story I tell myself about my predetermined thoughts and actions? Mm-hmm. I don't know if free will exists, John. But I feel like it does.

I know that it doesn't exist to a large extent because I know I certainly know that I oftentimes have no idea how I got onto Twitter.com. Well, no, but I also think like sometimes you don't get to choose what you think about even though you are ostensibly the captain of this free will will ship. I wrote a whole novel about this. I thought very, very hard about it for about six years. I woke up in the morning thinking about it and went to bed at night thinking about it.

And because like one of the like fundamental problems of free will for me is that it's very obvious that we don't have free will in certain moments because if you have a compound fracture in your arm, it's very difficult to not think about it, right? Mm-hmm. If you're in a lot of pain, you can't think, fracture in your arm, it's very difficult to not think about it, right? If you're in a lot of pain, you can't think, like, or at least, when I'm in a lot of pain, the way that I think is to some extent circumscribed by that pain.

And that's not just true for pain, right? It's also true for lots of other things when you're massively falling in love. The way that you think is circumscribed by that experience. And so some stuff that we don't choose shapes our thoughts all the time. The question is whether all of our thoughts are entirely shaped by stuff we don't choose, which in the end I wiggled out of. That was my solution when I was writing turtles

all the way down. Yeah, I think that's mostly what the philosophers have done about it too. Yeah, no, I took a cue from them. Yeah. Somebody in college once said, do you think free will exists or not? Or do you think that free will is built into the larger system of everything being inevitable? And I was like, that last one sounds like a real weasel. That sounds like a big ol' cop out.

You're not, you know, that's not a thing. That's just a way to say that free will doesn't exist without admitting that it doesn't exist. I feel, I think that what, how I feel is important for philosophical conversations, which I know is different from how many people approach these questions, but I feel like I make choices. And I feel like my ability to feel that way is important for me to be able to make the choices

that whether or not they are inevitable are the ones I want to feel like I'm making. And so, I feel free will. And I'm sure that that really is going to work for Kierkegaard or whatever. I don't even know if Kierkegaard talked about free will, but like they all did, but they all did. So some of them got rid of it pretty quickly, but they all had to deal with it at least a little. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, this is a very serious episode of the podcast for some reason. I don't know what's going on with Hank of me, but for a long time, when I was in high school, a teacher told me about this debate in the middle ages about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

And all of these really smart, really well read European theologians devoting themselves to how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, which turns out to just not be a very interesting question. It's like the wrong question to be asking. And so it's a very important question if you need to know how many angels can fit on the head of a pin or if knowing how many angels can fit on the head of a pen would shape your life in a deep and profound way. Right. For me, I don't think that I need to know the answer to free will in any kind of like

cosmic sense, just as I don't need to know how many angels can fit on the head of a pen in order to live my life well. Now, if I knew, in a cosmic sense, that everything was predetermined, it still wouldn't change what you're talking about, Hank, which is the experienced reality of albeit limited choice. Yeah. Well, and this just sort of gets to the whole question of what consciousness is and like, what is the spotlight that I shine upon the world as it exists around me, which is something that I have also very much not gotten to the bottom of.

When I have heard about angels on the head of a pin at first, and were they dancing? Was there something about them dancing on the head of a pin? I wasn't sure which side of the pin was the head. If it was the pointy part or the flat part. You thought there were all these little angels getting impaled on the pointy part of the pen. This is the thing. If they're small enough, they could fit on the head of the, like if you bust out a microscope, you'll find that that's actually not like infinitely pointy. It's blunt eventually. Like there are, it's just like a dome at the tip. It's just very small. So you could have an angel party on that part too.

And then there's all kinds of different pins. I was imagining the kind of pin that had the little, like an embroidery pin that has the little like plastic red ball at the top. So you can grab onto it, which is a much bigger head than the pins that I'm sure they were talking about then. How many, what kinds of pins do they have? Where they always, with their standard, a pin size, it seems, seems very improbable considering they didn't even have interchangeable parts back then.

This reminds me of something important, which is that if you could create a pin with an infinitely sharp edge, would you cut a piece of paper such that it is fully two cells that are precisely when added together the size of the previous self? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by an infinitely sharp pin, an infinitely sharp pin. Once again, it can't exist, so it's only so much fun to think about. This podcast is also brought to you by Bull on Yaysay.

It smells going in, but not going out. I don't know that I would totally agree with that. That's not what I meant. That's the... Hey, gloves of poop joke. I mean, hey, gloves of poop joke. I mean It goes a poop joke. He just he's always loved him and today and today of course the podcast is also brought to you by the The idea of light The idea

Light It didn't exist until 250 years ago you had me convinced it was like until 250 years ago. You had me convinced it was like a hundred years ago. That's it, doesn't matter. It's equally ludicrous. No, it's even worse. It is worse.

It's equally ludicrous at all periods of human history to be like, well, you know, they just didn't have a way of differentiating between when they could see each other and when they couldn't. And this podcast is brought to you by the Awesome Sox Club. In order to limit inventory, we only have it open for two weeks a year with limited sign updates to fill up throughout the rest of the year.

But these are the main sign up window. We now have ankle socks available. That means that those people who have always been like, but I want ankle socks, you can sign up now. You can go to awesomesocks.club slash something just that. Well, if you go to awesomesocks.club slash D.H.J., I think you'll get five dollars off. So do that. And then, and then you'll get five dollars off.

Awesomesocks.club slash D.H.J., you'll get a pair of socks delivered to your door once a month, designed by a different independent artist and a hundred percent of the profit goes to decrease maternal and child mortality and Sierra Leone. Five dollars off your first pair, just to be clear. Five dollars off your first pair, yes. Okay. We also have a project for Awesome message this week from Neatage to Marissa. Dear Marissa, once I never understood online friendships, but I'm so grateful that our

shared love for biochemistry memes and the vlog where there's brought us together virtually. You're a wonderful friend, and I'm so proud of you for your perseverance and dedication as you put together your master's thesis. I truly believe nothing can stop you. Keep looking up, PS, thank you Hank and John

for everything you do, Livelickman Prosper. I just have to say, Marissa, I do think that there's something that can stop you, and I think it's everything you do, live in Prosper. I just have to say, Marissa, I do think that there's something that can stop you. And I think it's, if you cut, if you cut your master's thesis in a half, precisely down the middle, I don't think it becomes two master's thesis. No, it does not become two master's thesis.

Actually, John, we have a question that is kind of about this. Okay, great. So someone asked, do you're Hank and John, what categories aren't made up? I just watched a TikTok from Hank where he said that almost all categories are made up, which, yes, but which ones aren't made up? Maybe I'm missing something obvious,

but I can't even think of any. Best wishes, Katie. So our prevailing guess at the moment Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I can't even think of any best wishes, Katie. So our prevailing guess at the moment is that at least as we generally think of it, categories like electron are not made up. Yeah. So there's a bunch of subatomic particles that fall into the unmade up category thing. We think, unless it's all made up. You know what I mean? I give

it was all made up then. We're really going to be part of this for made up. Consciousness were free will and we're simulation theory all going on. No, not necessarily simulation theory. There's a bunch of ways that the universe could have been made up and that we could be living inside of a universe that was created by something other than what we understand to be the natural forces we can observe. And in all of those theories, electrons are kind of a little bit somewhat made up. Gotcha. But regardless, they are a category. The thing, yeah, yeah, yeah. They all seem to be identical, which is a weird thing about subatomic particles.

And in that, it makes it much easier to draw a hard line around what they are and aren't, because there's not like a sort of thing that's halfway between an electron and a proton. There's just, it's a totally different thing in so many different ways. And, and then that also means that things made up of electrons and protons and neutrons like atoms that there are, you know, there is an iron atom that has a certain number of neutrons and there's an iron atom that has a different number of neutrons. And those are like two understandably different and you can understand their proportions relative to each other on earth. And it's very clear that there isn't like, there isn't a, you know, an atom that has like half a proton. They all have, they all have a whole number of protons. This is also true of lots of things

in mathematics where there are categories that are like, there's a hard line around what is a integer and what is not, you know, it's defined. It's, you know, is that made up? No, I don't think it is. Well, but even if it's made up, it's still a category that holds no matter what. Right. Well, in that way, like there are things you can make up that hold no matter what because the societal structures are, so like this is a question, like could a master's thesis be something that is definitely a master's thesis because there is really strong institutions

around what counts as a master's thesis and what doesn't? Because it has to be approved by the system in order to exist as a master's thesis and what doesn't, because it has to be approved by the system in order to exist as a master's thesis. Maybe, but I think that I think that most of those categories fall apart if you look hard enough at them, like, I think that most categories that are human-made, this is one of the things that I think makes mathematics appealing, is that most categories that are human-made fall apart eventually, right? Like the category of photography seems like a specific thing until you add three pictures in a row together and you have a gif and or gif depending on your worldview. The category of t-shirt

seems to make sense until somebody adds a couple buttons and a collar to it at which point it sort of becomes a polo shirt, etc. Jon, do you know what the T in t-shirt stands for? I do. It's for Tyrannosaurus because it has short arms. That's a good dad joke, but it's not the actual truth. Truth is, it's just shaped like a T. It stands for the T that the shirt makes.

That's right. So like, but here's the thing. Here's my, just to continue to get overly deep on things. Sorry, I need to do this, but I need to roll back real fast and just tell you one thing, which is that I just said it's a good joke, but the truth is, and I just want to clarify that it wasn't a good joke. Thanks, I appreciate that. Okay. So, to illustrate the weirdness here, there isn't a such thing as a sock. Like, you can look at a sock and be like,

that's a sock, but then there are plates, there are times when you're like, ooh, is that still a sock? Like, at what point? Like, if it just goes over your toes, but doesn't go over the heel, is that a sock still? If it goes all the way, like if it goes above the knee, is it like at what point is it a leg gain?

Right. Or I don't know. There's other words for it. And then eventually, like it goes all the way over. Yeah, eventually goes all the way over your butt and it's definitely not a sock anymore, but like where's the line? Right.

And there is no line. But there is definitely an awesome socks club sock. I could, because there are only like 24 of them so far. So you can definitely draw a line and say, that is or is not an awesome socks club sock. Right. So that's an interesting thing about like societal definitions. Like you can create categories that by virtue of not being abstract and being, but being very specific are actually categories that, you know, while being human created are entirely

definable. Yeah, I mean, I have to say I just don't love the fascination with categorization right now that much. Like if you married to a museum curator and I am one thing one thing you'll note is there there will be a lot of conversations in museums about what should be in the photography collection and what should be in the contemporary art collection and what should be in the European art collection and what should be in the Islamic art collection and et cetera and and where those lines are and they all bleed. And some of that stuff is just functional, right?

Like you have to organize a museum, you have to organize a library, and so you need some kind of cataloging system, some kind of organizing principle. But by relying on categories so much, we start to think that they are really real, or that they're deeply applicable, or that they mean more than they mean. And so I wish that when we were talking about photography or even when we're talking about master's thesis, that we were talking about useful fictions or fictions that become real

because we all agree upon them. And then our subject to change as what we understand and agree upon changes. Because that's the truth of categories. Is that we are doing the categorizing and the way that we understand the categories will change over time, as it always has. Yeah, and it never stops. This next question comes from Floyd who asks, dear Hank and John,

since the Martian day is the soul, and soul is just the name for the sun, does that mean that the days on other planets are also souls? I kind of feel like other planets deserve their own names for their days, planets and perseverance, Floyd. It's even worse than that, Floyd.

What is it? Mars gets soul, and every other planet just gets day, just like the Venusion day, the Jupiter, the Uranian day, wow. And then Mars gets souls. Not good. You got, there's also lunar days, which is actually like exceptionally confusing because it's more than one thing.

The lunar day is the amount of time it takes for the moon to go around the Earth and also the time that it takes for the moon to spin in relative to the sun. It's totally different things. I always find this scale of this stuff very challenging. Like what is the word for the sun's day? Does the sun have a day? Like does it spin on its own axis relative to the Milky Way?

Has it rotates around the Milky Way? It does. It does. So what is the word for the solar day? So the sun rotates like the Earth does. Yeah. And I don't think that there's a word for that, but it does it every 25, 27 days.

Oh, wow. It's also confusing because it rotates at different speeds, at different latitudes, because it's of course a ball of plasma. So, but at the equator, that's how long it takes for the equator to go around. 25 to 27 days. And then it's also has a solar year, which is traversing around the Milky Way galaxy, which I assume is longer than a year. Yeah, I think that's like 250 million years.

So I'm probably not going to be here for the next one. That's what you're saying. I mean, it's weird to think that like the last time we were here around the galaxy, yeah. was like before dinosaurs existed. Right. The two atara was just evolving.

Really? Is that how old the two atara is? Two atara are around 250 million years old. Wow. They emerged early in that, what was it, the Cambrian? No. No. Okay.

That's the, that's the, their last common ancestor with, with lizards and snakes, with 250 million years ago. Yeah, but that was wild. Yeah. So yeah, they've been around for a very long time. Two otara might be one of the only, I was going to say complicated animals, but if you've ever hung out with the to a tar, it's actually not that complicated. But yeah, they've been around for a very long time. They knew this space in time,

maybe last time around. And we sure didn't. We're younger than polar bears, which are very young. Yeah, polar bears are super young. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, it's been a serious podcast. So I thought we'd we'd answer a serious question. Okay. We get a lot of questions about about loss and coping with loss. And this one is from McKenna who says, dear John and Hank, last month, my brother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly and asleep, leaving behind me, my parents, his wife, and his one-year-old son. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for how to deal with this grief and keep his memory alive, especially for my nephew, pumpkins and penguins, McKenna. So I don't have any advice for getting through grief. I'm a little suspicious of those who do,

unless they are on that journey with you. One of the things that I've found about grief is that it's it's so particular, it's so specific to the circumstances of the person you lost, the so specific to the circumstances of the person you lost, the age at which you lost them all that stuff. And so I think the main thing is that it's okay that it's hard, like this is a huge, huge loss, and you're having to try to get used to a very different world. Cheryl Straits said once that one of the hard things about loss is that everyone else is living on, it feels like everyone else is living on planet earth and you're living on planet, my brother just died. And I've found that to be

really true. Part of what's so disorienting about it is that you're not on the same planet and that's why I think think grief groups can be helpful finding other people who are going through, if obviously not the same experience, but who are also going through grief who are also living on that strange planet can be helpful. As far as keeping your brother's memory alive, I, you should talk about him, you know, you should talk about him with his kid. When you, when you feel all the times that you feel like you're able to with his spouse, with your parents, sometimes it, it starts to feel unmentionable or at least in my own life.

I've had periods where loss was so overwhelming that it began to feel unmentionable. And I think continuing to talk about someone makes it mentionable, which as Mr. Rogers said, not to lean on all of, not to lean on quotes, but Mr. Rogers used to say that anything mentionable is manageable. And I've always loved that because a lot of times it's the stuff that we're scared to talk about or embarrassed or ashamed to talk about that can kind of fill up those spaces within us and really take over. And so, yeah, talk about him. Show pictures. Yeah, and I think also be forgiving of your own abilities in the moment, as we spend a lot of time

talking about in this podcast, we are only under a certain amount of control of our minds. And what we are capable of and that is never more obvious than when we are living on point out my brother died. And it takes up your whole consciousness. And then in the moments when you're free of it, it suddenly crashes back in. And you have no control over when and how it crashes back in. So it's about understanding that this is, it is a new reality that you can't control.

And that also extends into your own self, which is a whole lot, but it is what it is. Yeah, but I think giving yourself that permission and that acknowledgement that this is a lot. And I also think like the email comes at an interesting moment because a month after someone dies, a lot of the help tends to fade away, a lot of the, you know, talking about it with people in every conversation tends to fade away, but you're still real, real deep in the grief. And so other people may feel like it's over, but for you, it's, you know, it's not going to be over. Yeah.

So, yeah, we're thinking about you and really sorry for your loss. Before we get to the news from Marzenay of C. Ombaldon, I have to do a correction from last week or the, not last week, but the one I did with Mark Watson where I said that it would be harder for planes to fly if there was less nitrogen in the atmosphere, and Stephen is confused about that, because nitrogen is less dense than oxygen. So that doesn't make sense. I don't mean if there was a commensurate amount, if it was all oxygen, it would be roughly as easy for planes to fly. But if there was, if there, we could breathe a pure oxygen atmosphere

without much problem at the current partial pressure of oxygen. But the addition of the nitrogen just means there's more atoms for the plane to hit creating air pressure. So it could be any, any, it could be argon, it would be just as good, but it has to be something that is taking up that partial pressure. What a deeply necessary correction. I mean, that is, that is certainly the biggest mistake in the history of our podcast. I've never heard before of us missing the mark by so much. I wanted to be clear. So this week at AFC Wimbledon News, a long time nerd fighter and dear Hengen John Wessner

and AFC Wimbledon fan named Phoebe put together a really helpful graph for me of when I tweet about Wimbledon games while they're happening. Uh huh. What the result of the game is when I don't tweet what the result of the game is. When I don't tweet, what the result of the game is. Wow. This is perfect for John. Johnny, like this, there was a time in my life when John would make me leave the room

if we were watching a football game and our team started losing. Yeah. You have to go outside of the house now. Yeah, it's you. You're the problem. Well, Hank, I think it's ludicrous that everybody else imagines cause and effect as being so narrow that it's only about the players playing the game.

Like, I've been one of the players playing the game at times in my life, and there is no way that I was the only force that was deciding what was happening in the game period. Like if nothing else, there's wind. But also there's just anyway, the point is it doesn't matter why this is statistically significant, but it's more two games, drawn four, and lost six. Okay. When I have not tweeted during an AFC Wimbledon game, we have one four. Wow. drawn none lost none. You can tell me it's not. you can tell me all day long that whether I tweet doesn't matter, but the statistics disagree.

Are you watching when you're not tweeting? Yeah. Okay. I'm just not tweeting. Well, I mean, it's not a surprise to me that the problem is Twitter. That's true of the most things these days. I know. I know. I also was ultimately not terribly surprised by this data, but what it means is that I absolutely cannot tweet

about any AFC-Wiveleton games during the game for the rest of the season. No chance. Because we won over the weekend. Admittedly, we were playing Harrogate Town. But he won. And in League 2, when I look at the table, there are some that don't have logos. And I'm always like, you don't even have a logo. Yeah, I know. So the teams that have been recently promoted, they don't get badges on Google. And Harrogate Town does not have a badge.

They're also in 21st place, but we were down to one. So I was working out during the game. We were down to one. We led in two in, like unbelievably frustrating, early second half goals. And I got so mad that I slammed the computer shut. And then I got a text message from a friend when we scored and made it 2-2.

And I watched the rest of the game. And we scored in like the 84th minute to make it to two. And then we scored three minutes later. Josh Davidson, 22 year old Josh Davidson, it looks like such a good striker, such a good player. So we scored we won three two. And suddenly we are almost at the top of the league two tables second half, bottom half. You're almost at the top of the bottom half of the league.

In the bottom half of the league, you're nearly at the top of the bottom half. We are third from the top of the top of the bottom half of the week. That's great. I'm so happy. We would be in a playoff position if the bottom half of the week were the top half. The week. All right. Well, one day at a time. One day at a time. But I mean, we had a couple, we had a couple real game changing players, including Alfie Bendel, who is a very promising ginger. And I don't think he would mind my saying that he is 18 years old and he is so good when he gets on the pitch.

It's just incredible. And Courtney Senior, another Wimbledon youth player just looks really, really good. So I felt lots of Wimbledon fans were like, I can't believe we almost lost a hairigate. And I was like, I can't believe we beat hairigate. So I'm excited. Whoof. Well, hold on. Hold on.

Yeah. That's the drill. The hearing what a squeaker it was does not make me happy or inclined to invest, but congratulations. So last year in Mars news, last year, right before Christmas, the Insightlander, which was there to study the Insight of Mars and have a seismometer on board, it recorded a Mars quake, magnitude four Mars quake. A few months later, scientists were looking at the data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera and spotted a new 492-foot wide crater on Mars.

And using that data, they figured out the timing of when and where the crater formed matched the epicenter and timing of the Mars quake. So it wasn't a Mars quake. It was a meteor strike. It wasn't a Mars quake. Yeah. We didn't detect a Mars quake. So it wasn't a Mars quake. It was a meteor strike. It wasn't a Mars quake. Yeah.

We didn't detect a Mars quake. We detected a meteor strike and a big one. Yeah, I mean, we detected a lot of Mars quakes as well, but this particular one was a Mars quake caused by a strike of a meteor. Probably was around 16 to 39 feet long. It's very specific for a wide range. I'd say 15 to 40, personally, if we're just going to go by, I feel like that's more like where the confidence is. Some of the ejecta from the impact landed around 23 miles away. The impact is also

excavated at Boulder-sized pieces of ice, close to Mars' equator, which is exciting, because maybe you could just go there and be like, ah, recent, recent Boulder of ice. Let's go there where there's ice boulders. Now Hank, if this same meteor had hit Earth, it would not have been a big issue, right? Because we have a thicker atmosphere. And so more of it would have burnt up, right? Right. But I think that at that size, I think at that, like at that size of meteorite, it would have been a deal. You like, we would have been a thing that hit the surface of

earth. And it's just dumb luck that it hit Mars instead of us. Well, I mean, we also, like, we have meteorites that size hitting Mars or hitting Earth fairly regularly too. Oh, great. Cool. Most of them land in the ocean because of how most of the Earth is the ocean. Yeah. I also don't like that fact. I don't like the fact that I can't go on most of my home planet because my ancestors crawled out of the oceans with their wet lungs and they carry around like wet, wetness because they can't be in the ocean all the time.

I don't like any of it. I don't like any of that. Yeah. I'm opposed to the whole thing. It's really weird. It's really weird. I want to, I want to be alive. I want to have a consciousness.

I want to love and I want to experience sensory pleasure. I want to eat great meals. I just don't want to always be in a body. I want to choose if I'm in a body. Well, I mean, Facebook's working on it, John. Oh no, that's not what I meant at all. Zuck, Zuck, you've misinterpreted me completely. Actually, I take it back, Zuck.

I want to be in a body. I just almost got to be in a body. I'll stay in a body. I'll stay in a body. I didn't realize that it was this or the metaverse. I'll stay in a body. Oh, maybe I should do a vlog where there's punishment that's like, be in the metaverse for 15 hours.

I would get so sick. Did you watch the Marquez video about the metaverse? I thought it was really good. I, I didn't yet. I'm excited. It was really good. It was really interesting. And I kind of emerged from it thinking, oh, there might be something to this virtual reality stuff. Unfortunately, yeah, we'll see one day at a time.

Okay. Well, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to record our Patreon only podcast. This week in stuff at patreon.com slash deerhankandjohn. And thanks again for your questions, which you can send us by emailing us at hankandjohnatgmail.com. It's true. This podcast was edited by Cali Dishman.

It's produced by Rosiana Halls-Rohas. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trock-Ravardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast, it's by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

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