I have a surprise for you.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1-surprise.png">MediaI’ll tell you about it in a minute. First, let’s have a little fun. Come with me.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2-fun-room.png">Media<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SIZE-DRAWING-1v2.jpg">Media <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SIZE-DRAWING-2v2.jpg">Media <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SIZE-DRAWING-3.jpg">MediaI haven’t told anyone this before, but I actually live in the fun room. I just gave you a tour of my house, where I spend a large portion of my life thinking about the size of things.I have visitors in the fun room from time to time, but after a few minutes, they’re usually pretty funned out and leave me to my crises. But one day, something unexpected happened.It was 2013. Wait But Why was a few months old. And I got an email from someone named Philipp Dettmer. I was slightly unsettled by the pp and tt, but I decided to read what he had to say.He explained that he lives in Germany where he makes animated educational videos about a lot of different things, kind of like Wait But Why but a different medium. I took a look at his YouTube page. It was named a random string of letters:kurzgesagtApparently it means “In a Nutshell” in German, but I didn’t know that at the time and was <em>very</em> close to being done with Philipp Dettmer for good when I decided to watch one of the videos.It was <em>delightful</em>.I watched another. And another. And then it hit me.Philipp—this random man in Germany—<em>also lives in the fun room.</em>The next day, we were on the phone. There was a lot to talk about. We decided we had to do something together, and we settled on adapting <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html">one of my early posts into a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell">kurzgesagt video.<a href="#footnote-1-8973">1In the seven years since then, Philipp and I have become great friends, and I have not missed a kurzgesagt video since. Whenever Philipp and I get dinner, we head straight to the fun room to talk about the universe. And a few months ago, we decided to collaborate again. It was time to go public with the fun room.At some point in our pasts, we had both become enamored with two fun room icons, Cary and Michael Huang, known on the internet as the Huang Twins. The twins do <a href="https://www.htwins.net/">a lot of cool things, but it was their <a href="https://www.htwins.net/scale2/">Scale of the Universe toy that we loved most.Inspired by their work, we decided to go for it. We wanted to make the best size explorer we could imagine. We called it Universe in a Nutshell.Of course, it took roughly 18 times longer than we thought it would. We brainstormed the interface for quite some time, and then Philipp, along with the incredible kurzgesagt team, dug into working on illustrations and animations, while I worked with the team on the written explainers.Thousands of human hours later, the app is done. 250 objects, 30,000+ words of explanations and fun facts, just the right mood music, and what we think is a pretty great interface.Here’s how it works:The app is a giant wall. The wall is impossibly large—large enough to fit full-sized galaxies on it. The wall is also impossibly high-resolution—hi-res enough to contain sharp images of subatomic particles.I know it seems weird that I’m talking about it as if it’s a real object, but I have a good reason: to get the full mind-blow effect, you have to realize what you’re looking at. You’re not moving forward and backward through a tunnel of objects—it just seems that way because your brain will refuse to accept the insanity of the actual sizes you’re seeing. By reminding yourself again and again that all of these objects are “painted” on the same 2D wall, you’ll hopefully experience…

In case you missed it, here’s a transcript of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cathmZFeXs&ab_channel=NBCNews">first Trump-Biden Debate:Chris Wallace: Good evening. I’m Chris Wallace and I welcome you to what I predict will be a very bad personal experience for me. There will be six 15-minute segments, each on a different topic. At the beginning of each segment, both candidates will get two uninterrupted minutes to respond. The remainder of the segment will be open discussion. The audience has agreed not to be trashy. Both campaigns have signed off on these rules, so for sure nothing will go wrong. And with that, let’s welcome the candidates.[CANDIDATES ENTER]Wallace: Let’s start with the Supreme Court. President Trump, you nominated Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. You say the Constitution is clear about your obligation to nominate someone to the court. Vice President Biden, you say this is an effort by the president and Republicans to jam through an appointment in what you call an abuse of power. To start, why don’t you both explain your positions.Trump: Amy Coney Barrett is a perfect nominee. Conservatives love her. Liberals love her. Chris Wallace loves her.Biden: Amy Barrett would repeal the Affordable Care Act. And besides, the new thing is that you have to wait until after the election to nominate someone.Trump: A presidential term is four years, not three. Everybody knows that. You want to instate Communist medicine.Biden: I don’t want to instate Communist medicine. I want to expand Obamacare.Trump: Your party wants to instate Communist medicine, and you’re scared of them.Biden: I may be scared of them but I am the Democrat Party now so even if I was and still am scared of them, I’m not anymore. They’ll do what I say now. And how about Covid? The president killed 200,000 people. Roe v. Wade.Trump: You would have killed 2 million people by not banning China. Not Roe v. Wade.Wallace: K let’s go back to healthcare for a minute. Mr. President, over the past four years you have promised to replace and repeal Obamacare, but you have never in these four years come up—Trump: Yes I have.Wallace: with a plan—Trump: Of course I have.Wallace: to—Trump: Of course I have.Wallace: replace—Trump: I got rid of the individual mandate.Wallace: Oba—Trump: The individual mandate was a joke.Wallace: macare.Trump: The individual mandate was the worst part of Obamacare.Wallace: I am the moder—Trump: The individual mandate sucks dick.Wallace: I AM THE MODERATOR of this debate and I would like to be treated as such. You have never come up with a plan to replace Obamacare. So what is the Trump healthcare plan?Trump: I’m cutting drug prices. Insulin is like water.Wallace: Uh huh. How about you Joe? Why do you want to end private insurance?Biden: I don’t want to end private insurance.Trump: You’re literally friends with Bernie Sanders.Biden: No I’m not. I want to—Trump: You’re a piece of shit Joe.Biden: I want to make sure—Trump: A sad little man.Wallace: Stop picking on Joe, Mr. President.Trump: You care deeply about Bernie Sanders. You like Communist medicine. Anyway I asked the doctors and they said Obamacare is a disaster.Biden: He doesn’t have a plan.Wallace: Changing gears, Joe some of your colleagues are talking about ending the filibuster and packing the court. What’s your stance on that?Biden: My stance is that voting is good. Americans should vote. It’s easy. You just go to the booth, you wait in line, and then you go into the booth, and you push the little switch down for the candidate you want to vote for. Sometimes it’s not a switch.Trump: You gonna pack the court, Joe? Tell us about how you’re gonna pack the court, Joe. The radical Left is pulling your puppet strings Joe. You and I both know it Joe.Biden: Shut up, man.Wallace: This is going well. Okay next segment. Covid-19. There have been more than 7 million cases in the United States and more than 200,000 have died. The question is…

<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Notes-Key-v3-750x236.png">MediaLast month, I <a class="ClickPico PicoRule">emailed readers announcing an upcoming mailbag post—the WBW post version of an AMA. 1,500 questions poured in—remarkably interesting, creative questions on a wide range of topics. I picked some for this round, and we’re keeping the rest in a database that I’ll go back to for future mailbags (<a href="mailto:mailbag@waitbutwhy.com">mailbag@waitbutwhy.com is always open, so send questions anytime and we’ll add them to the list).There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get going.Question from my 7-year-old: How many germs would you have to put together to actually be able to see them? What would it look like? – <em>Kirsten, Zachary’s mum (Sydney, Australia)</em>You’re my kind of guy, Zachary. Let’s discuss.There are a lot of germs out there. A smaller germ, like the virus that causes covid, is 120nm across. The smallest object we can see is about 0.1mm—about the width of a human hair. You’d have to line up about 800 coronaviruses to get to 0.1mm—but that would be a one-dimensional line way too thin to see. To actually see something, you’d have to give it some <i>area</i> and turn the 800-virus line into an 800 x 800 square. That clump of 640,000 viruses would be just big enough to see as a tiny speck.<a href="#footnote-1-9079">1 As for <i>what</i> it would look like, your guess is as good as mine Zachary.I’m <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/09/universe.html">never <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/7-3-billion-people-one-building.html">good <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/what-does-quadrillion-sour-patch-kids.html">at <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/03/my-morning.html">stopping once I start on an exploration of size, and doing this answer got me googling all kinds of things.Like how big all the bacteria in the human body would be if you clumped it all together. I had always heard the famous stat that there are 10 times as many bacteria in your body as human cells. It turns out that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/#:~:text=Given%20the%20dominance%20of%20bacteria,body%20is%20about%2050%E2%80%93100g.">that’s been debunked. The real ratio is closer to 1:1, with both kinds of cells in the ballpark of 40 trillion in an adult human body.<a href="#footnote-2-9079">2Anyway, the NIH <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/#:~:text=Given%20the%20dominance%20of%20bacteria,body%20is%20about%2050%E2%80%93100g.">estimates that all that bacteria adds up to only 0.3% of a human’s body mass. Zachary is 7, so let’s estimate his mass at 25 kg. That means the bacteria in his body adds up to 75 grams—about the weight of a plum. Assuming the density of Zachary’s bacteria is similar to the density of his body, that would make the bacteria ball about the <i>size</i> of a plum too.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/19-zachary-plum.png">MediaThis led me to the obvious next question: how big would all the bacteria on Earth be if you bunched them all together?<a href="#footnote-3-9079">3Thankfully, University of Georgia microbiologist William Whitman has <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/08/980825080732.htm#:~:text=B.,reach%20a%20trillion%20light%20years.">done the hard work of coming up with an estimate for the number of bacteria on Earth: 5 nonillion.That’s 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.To couple that estimate with a wild estimate of our own, we can use the volume of an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli">E. coli bacteria (.7µm3) and assume that’s somewhere around the average size of Earth bacteria. 5 nonillion x .7µm3 comes out to a cube with a base of about 15km (~9.5mi).<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/20-cube-LA-v2.png">MediaThis massive cube of bacteria covers a large part of Los Angeles and rises higher than the cruising altitude of commercial airplanes.…

Disclaimer: This is a post about going to the doctor in America, why it sucks, and a way to make it better. It’s also a post about my wife’s startup. Which means I’m almost certainly biased on this topic. But also I really think these things. I wouldn’t say things on WBW if I didn’t really think them, because that would be a dick thing to do. But I’m also not exactly a neutral observer on this one. But still. K? K.___________There’s someone I’d like you to meet.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/1-v2.png">stick figure Tandice waving at youThis my wife, Tandice. We met back in 2011.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2-v2.png">Tim and Tandice holding hands. Tim: I really like you. Tandice: You're fine.It took a while but I eventually won her over, and we’ve been together ever since.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3-1.png">Tandice: Thanks for writing all those posts about the struggles of choosing a life partner while we were dating!No problem.Anyway, one of the things about Tandice is that she’s kind of Larry-David-esque, and she likes to complain about stuff.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/4-1.png">Tandice on one knee proposing to Tim: Will you marry my complaints?Her most impassioned complaints are reserved for one particular type of experience: the doctor’s office.Tandice has a rare autoimmune disease that, without some very novel treatments, would cause her immune system to attack her eyes and destroy her vision. This, plus some general <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/5-1.png">hypochondria, has made her somewhat of a regular at the doctor’s office.The frustrations start with making the appointment.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/6a.png">On the phone. Office: Hello? Tandice: Hi I'd like to make an appointment.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/6b.png">Our next available appointment is three weeks from now, only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and only during the French work day. Nah nah.Then comes the actual appointment.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.1.png">Media<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.2.png">Waiting room with stick figure walking through door<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.3.png">Tandice: Hi, I'm here for my 4:30 appointment.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.4.png">Not-that-friendly lady: Here's your clipboard of forms that were created in 1967.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.5-v2.png">Tandice: The same forms I filled out the last 90 times I came here? Not-that-friendly lady: That's right. Please have a set and the doctor will see you shortly.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.6.png">20 minutes later<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.7.png">From off-panel: Tandice? Tandice: Yay the doctor.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.8.png">Off-panel: Nope not the doctor, I'm a nurse who's going to take your vitals, ask you the questions you just answered on your forms, and then you can resume you waiting experience in another, smaller room.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.9.png">15 minutes later<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.10.png">Tandice sitting in a doctor's office, looking at her cell phone<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.10a-v2.png">Zoomed-in picture-in-picture of Tandice's phone screen. Her texts with Tim. Minute 40 over here. Just watching my life tick by. Funny to break the wait into two different rooms. Funny stuff. Can hear the doctor small talking in another room. What are you doing Tim: Trying to live my life Tandice: Guess how many times I've told them my birthday so far<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/7.11.png">Doctor…