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This is a Terrible Idea…

2026-09-04 · list · Hank, Katherine Green · 7:51 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: self promotion, fundraising ask, guest or collab

Hank pedantically fact-checks science jokes, finding most accurate with nitpicks (atoms do not make up everything; carbon-14 dating suits archaeologists, not geologists), plugs Sun Basin Soap's new facial and shave soaps, and bites a bar of soap to get viewers to check it out.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Premise: Hank loves science jokes and will pedantically fact-check them

  • ★★ Hank, who loves dumb little science jokes, asks what would happen if he took them far too seriously and pedantically fact-checked them: how many would survive? (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Atoms make up everything (dark matter, neutron stars, plasma); the neutron with no charge

  • ★ Hank stresses the video is a goof: he thinks all these are good jokes unless he says otherwise, though viewers might learn something. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank says atoms do not make up everything: normal matter is a minority of the matter in the universe, most of which is dark matter. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says there is no full consensus that dark matter is matter, but it increasingly seems to be matter that does not interact with other matter or light, and very likely not made of atoms. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says atoms do not even make up all normal matter: neutron stars are made of neutrons, and ordinary stars of plasma, a soup of electrons and nuclei. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank notes, as a nit he calls dumb, that a neutron has zero net charge but is made of quarks that do have charge. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — The filthy liar: soap made with lye

  • ★★ Hank says a neutron outside a nucleus has an average lifetime of about 15 minutes before decaying into an electron, a proton and an antineutrino. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Hank explains that soap is made by mixing fats with lye (sodium or potassium hydroxide), creating a salt of a fatty acid, so a bad-soap seller is a filthy liar three ways. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Hank announces a mid-roll in a Vlogbrothers video: it is brought to you by Good.Store, a store whose profit all goes to charity. — 00:02:26 · Good Store, Vlogbrothers

00:02:55 — Mid-roll for Good Store and Sun Basin Soap: Montana maker, aged soap, new facial and shave soaps

  • ★★ Hank says Sun Basin Soap works with a Montana company making soaps from a secret recipe with all-natural ingredients and no plastic packaging, aged like cheese or wine before shipping. — 00:02:55 · Sun Basin Soap, Montana

00:03:24 — Bacteria multiply by dividing; chemists, plumbers and 'unionized'; Einstein setup

  • ★★★ Hank announces that Sun Basin Soap now has facial soap and shave soap and new branding stamped on the bar. — 00:03:24 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★★★ Hank calls Sun Basin the best soap he has tried and expects viewers to check it out at the end of the video. — 00:03:24 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★★ Hank says chemists might use "un-ionized", though he thinks not commonly, preferring non-ionized or electrically neutral (Googling it returned this joke first), and chemists are often unionized anyway. — 00:04:01 · Google
  • ★★ Hank says the line between chemists and plumbers may be blurrier than imagined, since industrial chemistry involves a huge amount of plumbing. (playful, hedged) — 00:04:01

00:04:31 — Einstein was also an experimental physicist; carbon-14 dating is for archaeologists

  • ★★ Hank says Einstein was primarily a theoretical physicist but also an experimental one: he invented a new kind of refrigerator. — 00:04:31
  • ★★ Hank says radiocarbon dating needs carbon absorbed from the atmosphere, so it mostly dates living things, while geologists mostly study non-living things. — 00:05:00
  • ★★★ Hank says carbon-14's short half-life means it cannot date things much older than 60,000 years, while most geologists study far older material. — 00:05:29
  • ★★ Hank proposes fixing the joke by swapping archaeologists for geologists, since archaeologists use carbon-14 all the time. (playful) — 00:05:29

00:05:58 — Infinite mathematicians and the limit of a convergent series

00:06:28 — Thanks to John for the Memory soap; Hank bites Sun Basin Soap to get viewers to click, with Katherine's reaction

  • ★★ Hank says the mathematicians' orders form a convergent series with a limit of two, which the bartender knows, alongside the pun on limit. — 00:06:28
  • ★★ Hank thanks John for helping design the scent of the Memory soap, which reminds Hank of their dad's shaving cream from childhood. — 00:06:28 · John Green, Mike Green
  • ★★ Hank offers, as a gimmick, to bite a bar of Sun Basin Soap if viewers will check it out, noting all its profit goes to charity. (playful) — 00:06:57 · Sun Basin Soap
  • ★ Katherine Green: Katherine says she would not click, not wanting to encourage that kind of behaviour from Hank. (playful) — 00:07:22 · Katherine Green

Humor (significant)

  • Hank opens with a science pun about atoms. — 00:00:00

    “I hate atoms. They make up everything.”

  • A neutron asks a bartender what a drink costs. — 00:01:27

    “for you, no charge.”

  • What do you call someone who sells ineffective soap? — 00:01:56

    “A filthy liar.”

  • Why are bacteria so bad at math? — 00:03:24

    “Well, because they multiply by dividing.”

  • How to tell a chemist from a plumber: ask them to pronounce a word. — 00:03:24

    “So a chemist would say unionized and a plumber would say unionized.”

  • Today I learned Albert Einstein was a real person. — 00:04:01

    “I always thought he was a theoretical physicist.”

  • An infinite number of mathematicians order one beer, half a beer, a quarter of a beer. — 00:05:58

    “I know your limit, and pours two beers.”

  • Hank bites a bar of soap so viewers will click, and asks Katherine if they will. — 00:07:22

    “I wouldn't. I don't want to encourage that kind of behavior from you.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Sun Basin Soap

Also: People: Albert Einstein · Katherine Green · Mike Green

Projects: Good Store

Works: Clarity Soap · Memory Soap

Organizations: Google

Concepts: atom · Bacteria · chemistry · convergent series · dark matter · electron · fact-checking · humour · neutron · neutron star · plasma · quark · radiocarbon dating · Radiometric dating · saponification

Places: Montana

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