Hank: Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

John: Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

Hank: It's a podcast about comedy and death where two brothers give you dubious advice and answer your questions and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I forgot to look up Mars news, I just realized now.

John: [laughs] You usually ask me how I'm doing.

Hank: How are you doing, John?

John: I'm just going to keep giving you prompts the whole time. I'm well. We are home from our tour. It was a wirlwind month together on the bus. It was magical. It was long. It was wonderful. I'm glad to be sleeping in the same bed every night and back together with my family. So, Hank, you know what I've been doing the last few days? I've been clearing honeysuckle. From my backyard. Honeysuckle is an invasive bush and I have been clearing it with an ax and a machete, and it feels great. Hank, the good news is there is so much honeysuckle in central Indiana. I might become the like Johnny Appleseed of destroying honeysuckle.

Hank: I like the reverse Johnny honeysuckle.

John: Johnny Honeysuckle, that's what they're going to call me. I- This may be what I devote my life to because I have found the last four or five days to be so magnificently clarifying. I have no desire to do anything other than clear honeysuckle from the world.

Hank: You may be unsurprised to hear I've been in a lot of meetings over the last four days instead of doing what you're doing, talking to people about all of the thing I missed while I was out of town and doing a bunch of Scishow videos and doing an Eons shoot today and Dear Hank and John today. Did our Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck board meeting this morning talking about the Project for Awesome and how that's gonna go and talk about Pizzamas and talk about DFTBA and talk about Vidcon and talk about Podcon, all the things. 

Hank: I feel like if I had a honeysuckle problem in my yard, it would be the worst honeysuckle problem any yard has ever had.

John: Well, good news Hank, you have a brother who's more than happy to fly to Missoula and take care of that honeysuckle. I won't go to any of those meetings. That all sounds horrible. I am so glad when I hear that, I'm just so glad that you demoted me. I'm so glad to be reporting to you and no longer to be co-boss with you. As my boss, by the way, I need to ask for another week off so I can clear some more honeysuckle.

Hank: You know you take all the time you need, John.

John: That's what I needed to hear and also what I required to hear. Otherwise I would have quit.

Hank: [laughs]

John: Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners. By the way, I enjoyed doing this on the phone with you. In real life is fun. It's a little intense though.

Hank: Especially when theres 1,200 people watching. It's not so much not having you in the room, it's not having all of them.

John: [laughs] It's so true. Hank, this first question comes from Alice, who writes: "Dear John and Hank, My brother-in-law and I have been puzzling over a question for a while now, and I would be very grateful if you could give us an answer. What is the smallest part of the body you can be a doctor in? Tempus rerum edax, Alice."

That's good, Hank.

Hank: What's the largest part of the body you can be a doctor in? Let's start there.

John: Well, the way the question was phrased made me think about the movie Innerspace where people like shrunk down into being tiny people so they could be a doctor inside of someone's body.

Hank: Mhm. What's the smallest doctor you can be in a body part? Would be Innerspace. It's a separate question.

John: Right. The answer to that is Innerspace. I think the biggest part of the body you can be a doctor in has to be dermatology. Right? Like isn't the skin the largest human organ?

Hank: Uh yeah. Yeah. Well- Mmm. Probably. I don't know.

Hank: There's also like bones, there's a lot of bones. But I think- Cause like bones don't really count as an organ, but you can be a bone doctor. You can also just be a doctor of like everything, like just a general practitioner is a doctor of the whole body theoretically. And then when you have a more specific problem, they're like "Go see my friend Jeremiah, he just looks at toes."

John: Right. Or I would also argue that perhaps the largest part of the body you can be a doctor in is psychiatry because of course like you know the mind contains infinite vastnesses.

Hank: Mhm. Right.

John: I might be- That might have been too much.

Hank: No, that's very good. That's good. No, I'm there with you, John.

John: OK, the smallest part of the body you can be a doctor in, and bare in mind that Hank and I are both MDs before all of this Youtube stuff, we pursued our medical degrees, passed our board and everything, and then we just gave it all up to read teleprompters. The smallest part of the body you can be a doctor in, I believe, has to be a gland. Right? Like maybe the pituitary gland.

Hank: Yeah, how big is the pituitary?

John: Mmm, I believe it is the size of a walnut.

Hank: Pituitary gland size of- space- fish is the first auto-complete.

John: Well, that is incorrect. It is an endocrine gland the size of a pea that weighs 0.5 grams in humans.

Hank: That's very small, and I bet you can be a doctor of the pituitary gland. Do you think you can be a doctor of just pores? Like I'm a doctor of pores. Pores are very small.

John: Well, you'd have to be a doctor of one individual pore, which would be weird. Like I'm the doctor of the pore right like the one that you always get a zit on right at the edge of your nostril. I'm the doctor of that pore.

Hank: Please. I need that doctor.

John: Oh god those are the worst zits.

Hank: It's always right like right in the crease. In the crease between my nose where my nose meets my rest - my face part, which is weird because your nose is part of your face, but you know what I mean. And it's right in there and I don't know why it's extra irritating there to have the zit there.

John: I know what you mean mostly because I have noticed over the years that you often get astonishingly huge zits right there where you're talking about.

Hank: Oh thank you so much, I'm glad at least to know you're looking at my face a lot, so that's nice.

John: You're welcome.

[long pause]

Let's include that entire pause, Nick.

Both: [laugh]

John: So people will be like, "Wait, is my podcast app working?" It's your turn, Hank, you ask a question.

Hank: I feel like there must be something smaller that you can be a doctor in.

John: No! It's the pituitary gland. It's the size of a pea, Hank. It's smaller than a toe.

Hank: I'm frustrated- In any case, I'm frustrated that you got to the right answer too fast.

John: The good news is that means we can answer more questions. If you don't ask one, I will.

Hank: This next question, it comes from Jojo, who asks: "Dear Hank and John, Why do we rub our eyes when we are tired? Wake me up before you, Jojo."

John: Oh, that's a great name specific sign off.

Hank: It's also a question specific sign off because they need us to wake them up because they're tired.

John: That might be the greatest sign off in the history of Dear Hank and John and that's really saying something. Hank, why do we rub our eyes when we're tired? Do you know?

Hank: Here's what I will say. My view on this has changed dramatically since having a child because the first- like one of the first signals of like a state that my baby was in, like there was crying and I knew that the baby was in a bad state, but one of the first ones that wasn't crying was eye rubbing. And I was like "Oh, you're tired. You're rubbing your eyes and yawning because you're tired. And what a useful signal. Thank you very much for letting me know." I had always assumed that that was a thing we learned from cartoons, was like oh you rub your eyes when you get tired like how tweety birds fly around your head when you get hit by a two by four. No! This is a thing that is ingrained in humans and I had no idea until I had a baby.

John: For the record, I think Tweety Birds do kind of fly around your head when you get hit by a two by four. I read about this. I actually did some research-

Hank: Oh yeah?

John: Unlike some people.

Hank: Oh, well, I bet your research is gonna be wrong, so go ahead.

John: It's going to be really good, Hank, because it comes from Susan Blackmore, psychology professor. So, there you go. Tired eyes get dry, and rubbing them stimulates the lacrimal glands to produce more fluid. That's it. That's the reason. When you're tired, your eyes get dry and you press them because it makes a gland release fluid.

Hank: Do you think there's any doctors of the lacrimal gland? Cause I bet the lacrimal gland is smaller than the pituitary gland.

John: The lacmi-lac-lac- The lacrimal gland are paired exocrine glands, one for each eye, that are about the size of an almond. So you're out.

Hank: That's bigger than a pea. That's bigger than-

John: Nope. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. They're shaped like an almond. They're smaller than an almond.

Hank: I was wondering how I had a whole almond in there. There's not a lot of space in your face.

John: No, you don't. You don't.

Hank: Uhhhh- I bet there's somebody who just studies the lacrimal gland. Like Doctor Ricardo (?~48:08) MD.

John: Well, sure, but there's doctor- like you don't, oh, you've got a lacrimal problem, let's send you to the lacrimal gland expert. You just go to an eye doctor or I- I don't know. Is this a good bit? This might be stupid.

Hank: Yeah, in general I feel like it's because there's like itchiness and irritation, and that might be because of the dryness, it might be because you just like- it's probably because of the dryness. And you're just kinda like scratching an itch when you're rubbing your eyes. Beacuse when you get tired, your eyes get itchy.

John: There you go. Alright, we answered your question.

Hank: And that happens to babies and it's so cute!

John: It is really cute.

Hank: It's so cute! He's just like "I'm so sleepy."

John: And babies don't know how cliched they look when they're doing it and that's part of what makes it so cute.