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Viewer questions, 2025

39 viewer questions, requests and challenges answered in 9 videos uploaded in 2025, grouped by topic (the domain of the part of the video the answer is in), in upload order within a topic. Each question is followed by the answer as summarised, with the speaker and timestamp. Question Tuesday marks the Q&A series. Back to the overview.

Topics: Science & nature (9) · History & curiosities (6) · Nerdfighteria (6) · Global development (4) · Books & writing (3) · Health (3) · Philosophy & meaning (3) · Everyday life (2) · Projects (2) · Pop culture (1)

Science & nature

  • Q: “What's your opinion on this big potato?” (00:02:57) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Doubting that a giant growth in a photo is a potato, Hank reads a New York Times report: a New Zealand couple's giant growth, Doug, submitted to Guinness, proved by DNA to be a gourd tuber, not a potato. (00:03:34)
  • Q: “What is on your 2025 bingo card that you don't think is on anyone else's?” (00:04:10) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank finds the year-bingo-card idea weird, saying he doesn't feel anyone ever actually had a bingo card for a year. (00:04:10)
  • Q: “How are llamas and tuberculosis related?” (00:01:06) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • John: Asked how llamas and tuberculosis are related, John says llamas can get tuberculosis, and so can fish. (00:01:06)
  • Q: “What fish most resembles its name?” (00:01:06) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Asked which fish most resembles its name, Hank names the boxfish: it looks like a box. (00:01:06)
  • Q: “A seahorse seahorse horse is a seahorse a fish” (00:01:45) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Asked whether a seahorse is a fish, Hank says yes, in the sense that we all are. (00:01:45)
  • Q: “would you ever ride a llama” (00:01:45) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Hank would ride a llama if someone told him it was safe, though he would not jump out of a plane or bungee jump, which don't sound fun. (00:01:45)
  • Q: “How do llamas make wool?” (00:05:35) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Hank explains llama wool: keratinocytes fill with keratin, a cytoskeletal protein, die and stick together into hair that is pushed slowly outward, just like human hair. (00:05:35)
  • Q: “How does baldness happen?” (00:06:22) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Hank says baldness happens when the chemical signals telling the body to make hair stop being received, because they are not made or the receptors break down. (00:06:22)
  • Q: “People are like, hey, Hank, are we going to like escape the effects of climate change?” (00:06:28) — The Molecule that Changed Everything
    • Hank: Asked whether we will escape the effects of climate change, Hank says no: we are experiencing them now and are past the point of no negative impacts. (00:06:28)

History & curiosities

  • Q: “What will the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow be in 2025?” (00:00:00) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Asked the airspeed of an unladen swallow in 2025, Hank says there is no single answer: there are hundreds of swallow species and many millions of swallows, all flying at different speeds. (00:00:20)
  • Q: “How should the calendar be realigned with the solar year to make the most sense?” (00:00:00) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank explains that Earth's spin is unrelated to its orbit around the sun, so a year is not a whole number of days but 365.24-something, and humans patch this with years that have extra days. (00:00:44)
  • Q: “Is the Indy 500 connected to tuberculosis?” (00:00:00) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: John says Louis Schneider, the 1931 Indy 500 winner, survived a very dangerous racing career but then died of tuberculosis at 40. (00:00:00)
  • Q: “Can you connect Taylor Swift to tuberculosis?” (00:00:00) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: Asked to connect Taylor Swift to TB, John cites a line of her song about the lakes as a reference to England's Lake District, where poets and others with tuberculosis were often sent to recover. (00:00:00)
  • Q: “Can you connect your favorite soda, Dr. Pepper, to tuberculosis?” (00:00:29) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: John says Dr Pepper was invented by pharmacist Charles Alderton, who wanted a soda that recreated the smell of his pharmacy's soda fountain in Waco, Texas. (00:00:29)
  • Q: “What's your favorite fact that didn't make it into everything as tuberculosis?” (00:00:58) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: John's favorite fact cut from the book: Ringo Starr had TB as a young child, learned to drum out of boredom in a sanatorium, and survived thanks to newly available curative treatment. (00:01:27)

Nerdfighteria

  • Q: “Are llama fish?” (00:00:00) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Asked whether llamas are fish, Hank says yes: all vertebrates are fish because they carry the water around with them; humans are just really weird, hairy fish. (00:00:00)
  • Q: “Do you write your own questions for Dear Hank and John?” (00:00:00) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • John: Asked whether they write their own Dear Hank and John questions, John says they pick a certain kind of question, which encourages that kind to be asked. (00:00:29)
  • Q: “Now, Hank, we got a number of questions on Blue Sky about whether or not fish have butts” (00:02:34) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • Hank: Hank corrects John: the fish bones that look like legs are not vestigial, though in the coelacanth they may as well be. (00:03:05)
  • Q: “Would you rather fight 10 llama-sized fish or 100 fish-sized llamas?” (00:04:51) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • John & Hank: Fighting 10 llama-sized fish or 100 fish-sized llamas depends on the fish: guppy-sized llamas would be a party, a whale shark a real problem. (00:04:51)
  • Q: “more of a llama guy or a fish guy?” (00:06:55) — LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think · Question Tuesday
    • John & Hank: Asked whether they are llama or fish guys, both brothers say they are more fish guys; Hank is 'double fishing' in a fish t-shirt over a fish shirt. (00:06:55)
  • Q: “Um, do you have any new books coming soon?” (00:07:43) — Good Store Holiday Gift Guide LIVE with Hank and John
    • John: Asked about new books, John says a new book is coming but not this year (2025) and probably not next; that morning he emailed Julie asking what publication target a second draft by January 1 would allow. (00:07:43)

Global development

  • Q: “Favorite person you met on tour?” (00:01:27) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: John says he has met many wonderful people on tour, from people who worked at USAID to people working on tuberculosis at the CDC. (00:01:56)
  • Q: “John, if tuberculosis were eliminated tomorrow, what should we focus on next?” (00:03:24) — Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday · Question Tuesday
    • John: Asked what to focus on if TB were eliminated, John says TB is by no means the only disease of injustice: cancer is one too. (00:03:24)
  • Q [challenge]: “why does John Green only care about tuberculosis?” (00:03:17) — We Did It…
    • Hank: Hank says the critics really ask why John focuses on a problem no one else does, and that John's genius is focusing on a problem people don't care much about. (00:03:17)
  • Q: “So Hank, people often ask us what's the best way to support Partners in Health and their ongoing efforts to fight global health inequity” (00:02:06) — John's Annual Psychophysical Decline
    • John: Asked how best to support Partners In Health, John says by far the best way is a monthly or one-time donation at pih.org, or pih.org/hankandjohn for the MCOE specifically. (00:02:35)

Books & writing

Health

Philosophy & meaning

  • Q: “Will my tummy still hurt in 2025?” (00:02:28) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank says he had tummy hurt for a long time this year (2025), which turned out to be acid reflux, for which there is medicine, and suggests seeing a doctor about it. (00:02:28)
  • Q: “What is giving you hope at the moment?” (00:02:28) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank says history gives him hope: humans keep messing things up and fixing them, making terrible decisions and then correcting them. (00:02:28)
  • Q: “Over on the Nerdfighters subreddit, someone was like, does John ever talk about his religious faith?” (00:00:00) — My Religion
    • John: After someone on the Nerdfighters subreddit asked whether John ever talks about his religious faith, he answers the questions about religion he gets most often. (00:00:00)

Everyday life

  • Q: “Do you play video games?” (00:01:14) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank says he almost never plays video games; he would like to play the new Civilization, which takes a lot of time, and the only game he plays is Connections. (00:01:14)
  • Q: “Do you have any New Year's resolutions?” (00:05:06) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Hank's New Year's resolution is to spend more time with his friends: he does not invest enough in those relationships, for reasons partly internal and partly external that he can't tease apart. (00:05:06)

Projects

Pop culture

  • Q: “What item do you own that's the closest thing to a legendary unique quest item in real life?” (00:04:37) — My 2025 Bingo Card
    • Hank: Asked for his closest thing to a legendary unique quest item (the asker names a Pizza Hut Magic 8 ball), Hank lists several of his own: a biblically accurate crab he knows is unique, the All Star Singamajig, a hoverboard signed by SourceFed, and one of every player's dice from a Dimension 20 season he was on. (00:04:37)