466: An Argument with a Mouse

Dear Hank & John

In this episode of Dear Hank & John, the brothers tackle a wide range of quirky and curious questions from listeners, blending science, humor, and personal anecdotes. Topics include why squinting improves blurry vision, whether water particles in ocean waves travel far or stay

Key takeaways

• Squinting improves vision clarity by reducing the amount of light entering the eye, effectively acting like a smaller aperture to minimize blur from scattered rays.
• The interior of Mars is not uniformly hot—its southern hemisphere mantle is significantly warmer than the northern one, possibly due to ancient geological events or impacts.

Main topics

• Optics and human vision (squinting)
• Planetary science (Mars's internal temperature differences)

Notable quotes

"Squinting helps focus the light in your lens." – John Green

"The interior of a planet is not very consistent throughout. That's not true for Earth either." – Hank Green

Conclusion

The episode closes with a mix of scientific wonder and comedic absurdity, highlighting how

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:09) Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and then play the New York Times word game Connections. Speaker 2 (0:21) Nope, that's Hank's channel. Speaker 1 (0:23) That's sorry, I made that up. And to give you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, John, what do you call two monkeys who share their Amazon account? Hmm, what? You can get there, work on it, work it, work the Speaker 2 (0:36) problem. Nope, I don't want to. Primates. It's Speaker 1 (0:39) not Speaker 2 (0:39) in my heart. Speaker 1 (0:40) Primates. Speaker 2 (0:41) Primates. Oh. Speaker 2 (0:44) So they've signed up for Amazon Prime. Speaker 1 (0:47) And they're sharing. Speaker 2 (0:48) They're sharing one Amazon Prime account. Speaker 1 (0:51) I can't give you all, but I need you to groan. I need you. Last time I gave you a good one, this time I give you a bad one. Speaker 2 (0:58) In general, I find with your jokes, and this is true for everyone's jokes, right? You need there to be a C minus so there can be an A plus. Speaker 1 (1:07) Yeah. I mean, that's also how I did college. Speaker 2 (1:13) As a wise man once wrote, without pain, how could we know joy? It's funny, I wrote that line and everybody quotes it all the time, but they're quoting it out of context. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 1 (1:22) yeah. Speaker 2 (1:22) Hazel is making fun of people who say, without pain, how could we know joy? Speaker 1 (1:27) That is... Speaker 1 (1:30) Yeah, yeah. And you made a whole book about how the manic pixie dream girl trope is the thing that is fake and that actually these people are complex humans that aren't existing just to please people. And then people were like, John Green, the manic pixie dream girl guy. I Speaker 2 (1:48) know. Yeah, Speaker 1 (1:49) I remember Speaker 2 (1:50) that one too, Hank. What are they going to think of Hollywood ending? We'll find out in three weeks or actually 13 days as we're listening to this. Speaker 1 (1:57) Yeah, as it's being released. Oh my gosh, John, how are you doing? How are you feeling? What's it like? It's fine. I had a lovely Speaker 2 (2:04) interview. There is something very strange about doing a press tour for a book that is about how unpleasant press tours are. Speaker 1 (2:16) Have you started doing that yet? Have people read it and are asking you questions about it yet? Speaker 2 (2:20) Yeah, yeah. I've done quite a bit so far, and I've got more to come, which is great. I want to emphasize that I remember when my books would come out, and on the day the books would come out, nothing would happen. And that was not as fun as this is. Speaker 1 (2:35) Okay, good. I'm glad. I'm glad that it's fun so far. I just feel like, I don't know, man. Speaker 2 (2:40) I'm going to feel overexposed, inevitably, Hank. Like, that's a side effect of writing fiction, is that, you know, it's... autobiography and code. What did Faulkner say? Never let the truth get in the way of the facts. But people are very curious about how you got to whatever truth you got to. They're curious about whatever facts may lie behind a story. And that's very stressful and challenging for me to navigate. But Speaker 1 (3:09) we Speaker 2 (3:10) don't have Speaker 1 (3:10) to Speaker 2 (3:10) talk about that. Can I talk to you about a book I read that I loved? Sure. It's called Heart the Lover by Lilly King. I've actually read the book before, but I read it on a plane and something about the altitude caused me this time reading it to just weep uncontrollably such that the flight attendant asked if I was doing okay. Speaker 1 (3:33) Yeah. Well. I mean, that's a good thing if a book can do that. It's a power of a book. But it Speaker 2 (3:42) wasn't just a sad book. It was also a delightful book full of wonder and light and wit and repartee and all the things that I love in this story. I love Lilly King. I can't believe that I get to be on stage with her in Portland, Maine. It is silly, silly to think about sharing a stage with her. Also, some of the people I'm sharing a stage with are just ludicrous. Like obviously there's Hank Green, Sarah Urist Green in Birmingham, Alabama. That's a little, those are ones I can handle. But like Gillian Flynn, the author of Gone Girl, Brandon Sanderson. Oh, uh Speaker 1 (4:14) -huh. He's written a lot of words. Oh, yeah. And wants to think that he could reach your... record for the number of signatures signed. Well, Speaker 2 (4:26) there's no way that he can ever reach my record for number of books signed because he's too busy writing. He spends so much time writing. Speaker 1 (4:33) The key is to not Speaker 2 (4:34) spend that much time writing. You got to focus on the signing part of writing. Speaker 1 (4:38) Yeah. Can I show you something and have you describe it to people? Yeah, great. For the audio listeners. Speaker 2 (4:45) Great. I am looking at a, what appears to be a knife stuck into a piece of soap. Speaker 1 (4:53) Uh-huh. Speaker 2 (4:54) If I had to guess, that's what I would guess. Speaker 1 (4:57) Tell me more about this piece of soap, John. Speaker 2 (5:00) The piece of soap appears to be silver gray. Uh-huh. It could theoretically be a piece of foam, but I think it's a piece of soap. I actually think I can see the word sun basin on it. It might be a piece of sun basin soap, our soap company that donates all its profit to charity. Speaker 1 (5:16) Uh-huh. Speaker 2 (5:17) And it looks good, man. I mean, I love our soap. Speaker 1 (5:19) I'm a big Speaker 2 (5:20) fan. Speaker 1 (5:21) You're missing a crucial detail here. Oh, there's a big part bitten out of it. Yeah. What appears to have bitten that? A man? Speaker 2 (5:34) Was it a man? Speaker 1 (5:35) It was Speaker 2 (5:35) a man. Speaker 1 (5:35) Did you bite a piece of soap? I did. I was inspired to record a number of promotional videos for Sun Basin Soap yesterday. And by the end Speaker 2 (5:48) of Speaker 1 (5:48) it, I was getting a little loopy. And I was like, would you go and check out Good Dot Store if I ate this right now? And then I kind of made a deal with this imagined version of the person watching it. And I was like, you will, won't you? If I take a bite, you will. And I realized that they would if Speaker 2 (6:07) I did. So I did. It's non-toxic. I will say when I was a kid. Speaker 1 (6:12) I wouldn't call it non-toxic. Look, it's all high quality natural ingredients before the soap part gets made. But all soap is not good for you to put in your body. Don't do that. And it tasted not good for me to put in my body. Speaker 2 (6:26) I remember when I was a kid. I cursed in front of one of our friend's parents and they made me wash my mouth out with soap. Yeah. Wow. And they weren't even my parents. I was like, wow, I can't believe someone else's parents are making me wash my mouth out with soap. When in our household. No, cursing was frankly encouraged. Speaker 1 (6:49) What? How did our parents feel about this? I Speaker 2 (6:52) don't think they ever Speaker 1 (6:53) knew. Speaker 2 (6:53) We've had this conversation Speaker 1 (6:54) on the podcast before. Speaker 2 (6:55) I think we might have. Yeah. Probably while promoting sunbasin stuff. All right. Let's do questions from our listeners before we fall down a rabbit hole of promoting our promotions within promotions. Speaker 1 (7:06) Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Speaker 2 (7:07) All right. Let's begin with this question from April who writes, hi, John and Hank. Why, when you don't have your glasses on, do things get less blurry when you squint your eyes? Thanks, April. Now, Hank, I have a guess for this. I bet you Speaker 1 (7:19) have Speaker 2 (7:19) science for this, but I have a guess for this. Speaker 1 (7:22) I Speaker 2 (7:22) think that. Speaker 2 (7:26) Nearsightedness. Oh. And potentially farsightedness as well are actually problems with the shape of your eye. And when you are squinting your eye, you are changing its shape. That's my guess. That's Speaker 1 (7:42) wrong. Dang it. I mean, there's certainly shapes that are wrong here, but you're not changing the shape of your eye when you squint. You're changing the amount of light that's getting in. And when you've got a bunch of light. That can go in all kinds of like it's coming from a lot of different directions. This is how I understand it. When you're getting a little bit of light, it's only coming from kind of the one direction. So so effectively you are you kind of like making your pupils smaller. You're letting light less light in. So like the flesh becomes artificial pupil. Speaker 1 (8:17) And so that lets fewer light rays in. That might end up getting to the wrong part of your eye. And so you're only letting the very middle part in, I think, is how I understand it. Here's what Speaker 2 (8:30) Deboki Speaker 1 (8:30) wrote. Squinting Speaker 2 (8:31) helps focus Speaker 1 (8:31) the light in your lens. Hank Speaker 2 (8:31) doesn't understand anything about optics, man. I hate Speaker 1 (8:34) optics so much. Speaker 2 (8:35) What Deboki just, read that again, Hank, because Deboki just confirmed my Speaker 1 (8:40) guess. Okay, squinting helps focus light on your lens. Also, it helps make sure we don't get too much light in our eye. Also, yeah, but I don't know. Maybe there's some effect where it's actually changing the shape of your eye. I don't think that's what's happening. You can do it the same thing if you just look through a little hole in your fingers, though. So, like, I know that it's not just that. Like, if you, yeah, that totally works. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that works great. I can absolutely see. What my computer screen says, even when I can't, if I do a tiny hole with my finger. I Speaker 2 (9:16) can't. But then again, I can't see anything. I am so unable to see past the end of my own nose, both metaphorically and literally, that it's a real hindrance. It's a real hindrance, Hank. Speaker 1 (9:31) Look, here's what I'm going to say, April. There's diagrams on the internet. I can't explain this with words, but there's diagrams. And I can't give you one of those here. I love that if Hank comes within a mile Speaker 2 (9:42) and a half. Speaker 1 (9:42) Some Speaker 2 (9:42) things Speaker 1 (9:42) are for pictures. Speaker 2 (9:43) I wanted to start with this question because I know that if Hank comes within a mile and a half of optics, he gets very stressed out. I Speaker 1 (9:48) don't like it. Speaker 1 (9:52) Devoki is moving right now, so we didn't get a chance to have a pre-call about the Speaker 2 (9:56) facts. She was probably going to say how good a job I did with my guests. Speaker 1 (10:03) You did great, John. But nobody write that on your term paper or anything, okay? Speaker 2 (10:08) I've got another question. It's from Colleen who writes, Hi, John and Hank. I'm a listener from Taiwan and I've been a fan of Vlogbrothers and John's books since 2014. I'm currently at the beach looking at the waves roll over and over again. And I was just wondering, Do the water particles from really far away eventually reach the shore or are the ones washing up on shore always the same water particles? If some do come from far away, roughly how much of the water is actually new? Thank you. Currently curious, Colleen. Now, this is a great question. I know that some of the water must be from far away because sometimes like, you know, things from miles. hundreds of miles away or thousands of miles away wash up on further shores, right? You get wetters in bottles that have gone 10,000 miles or whatever across the Pacific Ocean. But how many of the water particles in like a wave lapping against the shore are the same water particles? from like six weeks ago lapping against the shore. Speaker 1 (11:07) You know, I don't think anybody's like done the math on this. I think that there's, it mixes, but it's slow. And this is like a wild thing to think about the ocean. And the way that it mixes is so important to life on earth. So one of the things that you really want is for like the cold water from down low that contains a bunch of nutrients to like. come up and be able to, because you can't, the ocean has so much light that all the nutrients will get used up pretty quick. So like the top level of the ocean, it's like, there's like, the limiting factor is not the fuel of the sunlight. The limiting factor is the nutrients. And so that nutrient availability is a huge deal. And so there's not just like the top of the water, there's the depth of the water. And all of this mixing matters so much because that water carries stuff around. I was just reading about how, you know, we killed most of the whales, like a lot. We're nowhere close to the old whale populations. Right. And they looked at this and they were like, well, the krill population must have skyrocketed because these whales weren't eating the krill anymore. And what they found was that the krill, actually, there were fewer krill than... Speaker 1 (12:28) Now, then there would have been back then when the whales were eating them, which made no sense initially, but it turns out that the whales were part of nutrient cycling. They were bringing nutrients to the surface and that was allowing more phytoplankton to be created, which was allowing more krill to survive, which was allowing more whales to do their whale stuff. Whoa, whoa, Speaker 2 (12:46) whoa, Speaker 1 (12:46) whoa, whoa. Let me stop you. So the whales were creating nutrients by dying and falling Speaker 2 (12:51) to the bottom of the ocean? Speaker 1 (12:52) By pooping. Speaker 2 (12:53) By pooping. Speaker 1 (12:55) Yeah, so by pooping at the surface of the ocean. By Speaker 2 (12:57) pooping, Speaker 1 (12:58) that would Speaker 2 (12:59) help create some nutrients, which would allow for phytoplankton, which would allow for krill,