429: The Mouse Layer

Why don’t ants drown when it rains? Why is my car covered in bees? How do I balance a profession I love with wanting to have a life outside of work? Why is it easy to put my feet in water, but it’s uncomfortable to get my shoulders in water? How do I help my child navigate questions and fears about religion? Is the “membership rate” in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor based on a valid economic theory or is it just a plot device? I accidentally walked into my neighbor’s dorm, do I have to go back and apologize even though I’m dying of embarrassment? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, what do you call five aunts that move into an apartment with another five aunts?

• 0:25John Green?

  Ten aunts.

• 0:26Hank Green?

  Ten aunts.

• 0:27John Green?

  Ten aunts. Ten aunts. Tenants. They're, they're tenants in the apartment. I love it. It's, it's a great joke. How are you doing?

• 0:36Hank Green?

  I slept for so long. I've been having a hard time sleeping for over a month. I finally, this weekend, I went to bed and I slept. And I went to bed at like 10 and I woke up at like 9:30.

• 0:52John Green?

  Wow. Good for you, man.

• 0:54Hank Green?

  It sounds a little bit like maybe problematic, like.

• 0:58John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:59Hank Green?

  Like maybe I've set myself up for another problem. No, I was very tired.

• 1:03John Green?

  Wow. I had a lot of fun at a conference over the weekend with Sarah and now I am also tired. But in general, I find myself to be tired. I'm 48 years old, an impossible age. I mean, I never imagined being alive at 48, let alone like that I would continue to grow and change.

• 1:20Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21John Green?

  It's very strange to me. I thought of adulthood as like a zombie apocalypse virus that you ran away from for as long as you could. And then eventually it got you and you became a zombie, you know?

• 1:30Hank Green?

  It's like the way, like if you could sit on the subway and like, look at all these other people and be like, look at these sheep. It's like that with ages.

• 1:37John Green?

  It is like that with ages.

• 1:38Hank Green?

  Like, you know that all the people your age are really like sort of rich and, you know, interpersonal dealings and lots of change happening among those people. But those folks up there, they're, they're dead. They're done. They're just going through the motions. But boy, are we not.

• 1:55John Green?

  Yeah. I just thought it was kind of like how you start out little and then you get big. And then once you're big, you're done.

• 2:00Hank Green?

  Right.

• 2:01John Green?

  Right? Like, cause you're the same size for the, like, you don't need new shoes all the time, the way I did when I was a kid. And I figured that was also going to be the case with my brain. But actually, my brain has continued to grow and change. And even at the age of 48, which is the oldest I've ever been and feels like the oldest that a human being can be, even though I understand intellectually that people get older.

• 2:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:22John Green?

  I find that I'm still growing.

• 2:23Hank Green?

  We went to see Jonathan Richman this weekend, who is a singer songwriter.

• 2:28John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Hank Green?

  And he's like seventy four. And I can tell he's still doing music different. His like newest album is still very Jonathan Richman, but different from his previous work.

• 2:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Hank Green?

  And and also like he's just he's on tour. He's doing the stuff. He's seventy four. He's doing little kicks and dances on the stage.

• 2:49John Green?

  That's great. That's great. I love a little kick on stage.

• 2:52Hank Green?

  I had the moment where I thought like this man appears to have grown into becoming seventy four. Like, like he was meant to be seventy four. I always like, I feel that way about old people all the time where I'm like, no, you're you were supposed to be like this, like this version of your your wise self. And of course, like they they don't feel that way, you know, they're like, I'm the same person that I was in some ways when I was thirty. And also this stupid body is breaking and I hate it. But I I just try and imagine more, I don't know if this is valuable, but like I try to imagine more how people see me than how I see myself. You know?

• 3:30John Green?

  I don't think that is valuable. I think you got to go the other way. I mean, people see me, they look at me and they're like, oh, my God, that's so distracting his age.

• 3:38Hank Green?

  I think that's not what they're seeing.

• 3:40John Green?

  That is what they're seeing.

• 3:41Hank Green?

  Cause there's always been, there's always old people and they're always, they got their their sort of like, um, the vibe.

• 3:46John Green?

  No, you're right. What they're thinking is good for him. He's still getting around.

• 3:50Hank Green?

  No.

• 3:52Hank Green?

  No, he's wise. He's bringing, he's bringing all of the knowledge of his years. The other thing is that uh, that I thought I would uh, get less ambitious as I got older.

• 4:01John Green?

  I thought you would do, to be fair. I have.

• 4:04Hank Green?

  No, no, and I think I have, but also that's still a change. And that also still changes stuff.

• 4:11John Green?

  I'm not convinced you've become less ambitious enough.

• 4:14Hank Green?

  I am differently ambitious.

• 4:16John Green?

  Okay, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Aaron who writes, Dear John and Hank, I saw a post that asked, why don't ants drown when it rains? And it made me smile because I used to wonder that as a kid, but now I'm an adult. This is on the topic of growing, Hank.

• 4:29Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 4:29John Green?

  I'm an adult.

• 4:30Hank Green?

  Very good.

• 4:30John Green?

  And I never win the answer. What happens to ant colonies during a storm? It's also on the topic of ten ants. Do you see what I did? You see how I've done this? You see how I've curated this experience for you?

• 4:40Hank Green?

  And I I did that.

• 4:42John Green?

  What happens to ant colonies during a storm?

• 4:44Hank Green?

  I looked at the questions and I picked out a relevant dad joke.

• 4:48John Green?

  Aaron.

• 4:49Hank Green?

  A number of different things can occur to the ants.

• 4:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Hank Green?

  Would you like to know about some of them?

• 4:54John Green?

  Yeah, I'd like to know about like six of them. I mean, I would assume they can just kind of drink their way out of it, you know?

• 4:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, they'd.

• 5:02Hank Green?

  That would be similar to a person drinking their way out of drowning, which is not a thing that you could would see happening. But interestingly, and I was surprised by this, most ant nests go down below the level that the soil gets saturated.

• 5:15John Green?

  Oh.

• 5:15Hank Green?

  So they just go down into their little nests and they hang out down there. Now, in situations where the soil gets saturated all the way down, you start to see a number of different behaviors occurring, including them fleeing into higher ground, including into your home. So this is a thing that happens during floods is ants will come and invade the houses, which they can do because they're pretty small and houses have little holes.

• 5:36John Green?

  I hate that houses have little holes. Every time I see something from outside inside, I'm like, I gave you all of outside. I gave you everything except for 3,000 square feet belongs to you, and yet still you insist upon inside.

• 5:50Hank Green?

  Well, the thing is that like, it's really nice inside.

• 5:54John Green?

  It's not, though. It's much more dangerous because there's a 100% chance I'm going to kill you, whereas outside there's a zero.

• 5:59Hank Green?

  They don't know that it's so warm.

• 6:02John Green?

  Well, they're not thinking is what I'm saying. They're not thinking it through these ants. They've got a better chance trying to ride out the water than coming into my house.

• 6:10Hank Green?

  The thing about ants is I'm like, I get that, but sometimes there's a mouse and I'm like, that's a pretty big hole.

• 6:16John Green?

  Whenever there's a mouse in my house, which is not infrequently, I remember the first time we had a mouse. It was when we were living in New York City and we had an exterminator come out and the exterminator was like, I don't want to do an offensive New York accent. I apologize if this is offensive. This is just me trying to say what he literally said. He said, what are you gonna do? You live in Manhattan.

• 6:37John Green?

  And I was like, in your career.

• 6:39Hank Green?

  That wasn't offensive, John. You were, it was that specific man.

• 6:42John Green?

  So you're telling me that you make a living by coming out to apartments in Manhattan and telling people, what are you gonna do? You live in Manhattan. That's your job.

• 6:51Hank Green?

  Well, what did he do? You're like, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna call you.

• 6:55John Green?

  Exactly.

• 6:55Hank Green?

  That's what I'm gonna do.

• 6:57John Green?

  I thought I took the action.

• 6:59Hank Green?

  I did. What I was going to do. And now what are you gonna do?

• 7:02John Green?

  He was like, you're never gonna get rid of the mice in this apartment because there's construction next door and that shakes up all the mice. And I was like, okay, well, put out some traps for me or something.

• 7:12Hank Green?

  That's a great, that's a great, like visualization of the layers of New York City. You know, there's like the subway and there's the electricity and just below the street, there's the layer of mice.

• 7:24John Green?

  There's the mice layer. And when the mice get shaken up, they come into the homes.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's great. It protects you, protects you from earthquakes.

• 7:30John Green?

  I do greatly dislike a mouse in the house. I completely overreact. Sarah, the other day, there was a mouse in the garage and I screamed like a little girl and ran away from it crying.

• 7:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:42John Green?

  And, you know, Sarah was like, you're 48. And I was like, but I don't feel 48 in my heart, Sarah, in my heart, I'm a four year old.

• 7:50Hank Green?

  Uh, one time I found, uh, in our bed, a little cash. I thought that it was giant poops. I thought it was like a big rat poops, but it turns out it was, it was little seeds that the mice had been storing in the guest bed.

• 8:04John Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 8:05Hank Green?

  Uh, yeah.

• 8:06John Green?

  But I sleep in your guest bed.

• 8:09Hank Green?

  We've cleaned it since.

• 8:11John Green?

  Why did you mention that to me? We could have just not mentioned that.

• 8:14Hank Green?

  New bed. We replaced the whole bed.

• 8:16John Green?

  Okay, I'm gonna believe you even though it sounds like a lie.

• 8:21Hank Green?

  Okay, this next question, uh, did we answer it?

• 8:23John Green?

  Yeah, we answered that.

• 8:25Hank Green?

  Okay, this next question comes from M who asks, Dear Hank and John, why is my car covered in bees? That's awesome. I just returned to my car to leave the nature park that I'm visiting today and there were at least 15 bees on. M, I was told that your car was covered in bees.

• 8:42John Green?

  Yeah, there's 15 bees? That's not a coverage.

• 8:44Hank Green?

  There's 15 bees on it?

• 8:46John Green?

  I was imagining a sort of bee layer to the car, that there was the car and then there was bees on top of it.

• 8:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, that you're gonna have to be like that lady on Instagram who scoops them.

• 8:57John Green?

  This is disappointing, I have to say.

• 8:59Hank Green?

  So let me reread it. Dear Hank and John, why does my car have 15 bees on it?

• 9:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Hank Green?

  Is this related to my car being covered in large ants when I first got up this morning? By which I assume you mean it had five ants on it.

• 9:11John Green?

  10 ants, 10 ants, 10 ants.

• 9:17Hank Green?

  Confused and concerned, Em.

• 9:21John Green?

  Em, you gotta stop coating your car in honey, you fool.

• 9:24Hank Green?

  Your car's got some tenants.

• 9:26John Green?

  You've got some tenants.

• 9:27Hank Green?

  I think the warmth might be something. Certainly at the nature park, you drove there, your car got warm, maybe the bees need to warm up.

• 9:33John Green?

  Hmm. Also, there's the possibility that your car is like a color that bees like, that they think that they're getting pollen out of it. Like if it's a beautiful turquoise.

• 9:42Hank Green?

  So bees and ants both like, uh, candy?

• 9:47John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Hank Green?

  So maybe there's candy in there? Did you put a bunch of candy in your engine?

• 9:51John Green?

  You got any Werther's Originals in there? I like those, Em.

• 9:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, sometimes the-

• 9:55John Green?

  I'm like a grandma. That's another way I know I'm old, Hank, is I'm starting to enjoy a hard candy.

• 10:00Hank Green?

  I like hard candies now, too.

• 10:03John Green?

  Why don't we get sponsored by the hard candy people? Why is Werther's Original not reached out to us?

• 10:07Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 10:08John Green?

  Maybe that's how we're gonna sustain the podcast over the next, because we have to do it for at least, what is it, 12 more years? Because we have to 14 more years, because we have to do it for two years until it's called Dear John and Hank, and then we have to do it for as many years as we've done it as Dear John and Hank in order to even things out.

• 10:24Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 10:24John Green?

  So we got 14 years in front of us. By the time that's over, I'll be 62 in 14 years.

• 10:30Hank Green?

  And you'll be sucking those Werther's down. You won't even be sucking, you'll be swallowing them whole.

• 10:35John Green?

  Like there's no tomorrow, which indeed there might not be.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  Certainly. Uh, what, what, what may, may, may or may not know is that the little goblins that make the car go love Werther's Originals.

• 10:47John Green?

  Really?

• 10:48Hank Green?

  And Saltwater Taffy, they're always in there, crinkle, crinkle, crinkle. That's what that noise is.

• 10:52John Green?

  Okay.

• 10:53Hank Green?

  They're unwrapping the candies.

• 10:54John Green?

  No, I didn't know that. That's interesting.

• 10:56Hank Green?

  So that might be it.

• 10:57John Green?

  That could be it as well. I think that this is maybe how we keep it going, Hank. We just need to sort of shift sponsors as we age. Get more of that hard candy sponsorship, more that, like, get the AARP behind us.

• 11:08Hank Green?

  Well, from what I can tell of the behavior of the AARP, uh, I count already. I, I think I may have done a brand deal with the AARP already. I don't remember what it was, but I feel like I have been paid by them for something.

• 11:20John Green?

  Get some of that pharmaceutical company ad money.

• 11:22Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, we can start reading to you about Sky Rizzi.

• 11:25John Green?

  Oh, my God. That comes with a risk of tuberculosis, like most of those, uh, those, those ones.

• 11:30Hank Green?

  I took, I took one of those that gives you the TB risk. They gotta make sure that you don't have the TB before you start on it.

• 11:35John Green?

  Yeah. All right. I think we answered the question about, uh, Em's situation.

• 11:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:40John Green?

  I think we got to the bottom of that one.

• 11:41Hank Green?

  I can't wait to sell some people some Mabs.

• 11:46John Green?

  So what do you do? I host a podcast that's sponsored by Sky Rizzi.

• 11:51Hank Green?

  What is the Sky Rizzi is my favorite one because it's got the most ludicrous,

• 11:57Hank Green?

  but actual name. So Sky Rizzi is the brand name.

• 12:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Hank Green?

  What's the actual name is Riscant? Sorry, I gotta my glasses down my nose a little bit. Riscant Kizumab dash Riza.

• 12:10John Green?

  Riza.

• 12:12Hank Green?

  It ends in Riza.

• 12:14John Green?

  Like the Riza, the great rapper from the Wu-Tang Clan?

• 12:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, he's actually their main sponsor.

• 12:20John Green?

  I mean, that'd be a great job for Riza.

• 12:22Hank Green?

  Riscant Kizumab Riza, Sky Rizzi.

• 12:25John Green?

  All right. This question comes from Hannah who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a fan of the pod since I was a freshman in college and I'm now entering my fifth year of teaching. Hannah, we already feel old. You're making it worse. I'm a high school band director and I love teaching so much. The kids are awesome. There's something so special about getting to teach young people how to create music. The only downside is that I work crazy hours with rehearsals, after school, football games, competitions.

• 12:45Hank Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 12:46John Green?

  How do I stand in a profession I love when I don't feel like I have any time for friends, family or myself? Much love to everything y'all do, Hannah. This is such a problem for me, Hank. Like, how do you balance having work you love? I mean, it's obviously a privileged problem, right? And I'm grateful that I have the problem. But how do you balance having work you love with wanting to have a life outside of work? And the answer to that, that Hank and I have found, Hannah, is that you don't.

• 13:12Hank Green?

  I mean, like twice a month, maybe.

• 13:14John Green?

  You just do everything too much all of the time.

• 13:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:17John Green?

  But my friends who are classroom teachers, like I have a good friend who's a classroom teacher who was telling me that, because he also coaches his son's middle school soccer team and he does clubs after school. So he, he gets to school at 6:30, he leaves school at 4:30 to coach his kid's soccer team and he gets home at seven. And then he, and then he wants to work out because he's a big worker outer guy. And so he's not done working out until eight 15. And that's when he eats dinner and like sees the kids and everything and that's really, really hard.

• 13:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, I of course was in band.

• 13:48John Green?

  Of course.

• 13:48Hank Green?

  And until this moment, had not thought about how like my band director was at it all of the time.

• 13:56John Green?

  Yeah, always there.

• 13:57Hank Green?

  Like all summer long too, like there was summer, there was summer band camp happening.

• 14:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Hank Green?

  They were doing that. So like the first thing is, uh, you're not doing this wrong. Like is this, this is does not, I, I think it can kind of feel like it's like, I, I must be doing something wrong because I'm supposed to be doing this, that's my job. And then you're also supposed to do all this other thing, which is like have a life.

• 14:21John Green?

  Right.

• 14:22Hank Green?

  But like, the problem is that we decided a long ago as a society that the teacher's job is to do five jobs.

• 14:27John Green?

  Right.

• 14:28Hank Green?

  And like the band teacher's job is to do eight extra jobs.

• 14:33John Green?

  Right. There's definitely something wrong with the system, but at least it's really well compensated work.

• 14:38Hank Green?

  You gotta do all 12 of the jobs for a half a job's money.

• 14:42John Green?

  Yeah, it's a good deal. But I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I do think that it's a huge sacrifice though, especially for a young person to try to make that sacrifice when you're forming your core relationships and figuring out how all that stuff's going to work and who's going to be your partners in all of life and so on. Like it's really asking a lot.

• 15:00Hank Green?

  And the value of that sacrifice is, you know, real. You were providing a lot of value for these kids and, you know, that, that will be important for a lot of people for a long time. So that's why that's so hard to balance.

• 15:11John Green?

  But we think you have come to the wrong place in your search for balance.

• 15:17Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 15:18John Green?

  This next question comes from Story who writes, Dear John and Hank, my name is Story and I'm five. We spent a lot of time in the pool this summer. Why is it easy for me to put my feet in the water, but it is uncomfortable to get my belly button and shoulders in the water? Story. Hank, I have no idea why this is. It is true though, that you can put your feet in the water and you're like, that's fine.

• 15:33Hank Green?

  Yeah. So I, I think, I think that it's, it's probably, I didn't look this up, but I think it's probably just literally the temperature differential between those body parts. So like you're talking about your shoulders.

• 15:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Hank Green?

  That, the, really what's uncomfortable is the armpits, which is a warm spot. So you don't feel temperature, you feel temperature difference. So my hands are kind of cold right now because it's cold outside, it's cold in my office. And if I put them in, you know, somewhat cold water, it would feel less cold than if my hands were warm right now. So you have the feet, the extremities, they're used to being kind of cold, they're just hanging out in space. And so they're probably going to have a lower temperature generally. But then like the armpits, the belly button, like that stuff is used to be in a warm. Also areas that have lots of nerves. So there's different parts of your body that can feel more, there's just more nerves. But I guess when I'm thinking about that, like the hands and feet have plenty of nerves.

• 16:23John Green?

  Yeah, I think it must be the temperature differential primarily. That's really, I'd never thought of that before, that my feet are so far away from my, my heart and so on, that they're just not as warm.

• 16:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:33John Green?

  That's why they're called the extremities story, which reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by extremity. Extremity. It's the future of the internet.

• 16:42Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by the Mouse Layer, the Mouse Layer is just under the streets of New York City.

• 16:47John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Werther's Originals, Werther's Originals, we are available. Reach out.

• 16:54Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by Sky Rizzi Risk and Kuzkuma Brza. Sky Rizzi Risk and Kuzkuma Brza. With a name like that, how could it be wrong?

• 17:07Hank Green?

  If you're not from America, you don't know about Sky Rizzi Risk and Kuzkuma Brza because you don't get advertisements for pharmaceuticals.

• 17:13John Green?

  You don't.

• 17:14Hank Green?

  Here in America, that's allowed for some reason.

• 17:17John Green?

  Yeah, how are you healthy? How are you healthier than us when you're consuming so many fewer pharmaceutical ads? It's mysterious.

• 17:26John Green?

  I have a friend who works at a pharmaceutical company who is a big defender of pharmaceutical ads and, and I.

• 17:32Hank Green?

  Should have them on the podcast, John.

• 17:35John Green?

  It's a place where we just don't align, that's all I can say about it, we don't. But you gotta have those with your friends. All right, this question comes from anonymous, I thought it was a good question and it's about our, our mutual journeys of meaning and. You know how I like to get into that stuff, Hank.

• 17:50Hank Green?

  I do.

• 17:50John Green?

  Dear John and Hank, my husband and I were both very devoted Christians for many years before we met and in the early years of our marriage, but over time, we went through several perspective shifts and decided not to raise our children with any particular religion. Now, our older child is seven and asking a lot of questions about Jesus and God. Recently, a friend told him that if he doesn't believe in Jesus, he'll go to hell. And that has left him worried, not only for himself, but also for us, because we don't believe. At the same time, he's expressed genuine interest in wanting to learn more about Jesus, and we started telling him some of the stories. We've tried to explain there are many religions in the world, and everyone has their own journey of meaning, but he's still anxious. How do we help him navigate these questions and fears with kindness and clarity? Thanks, confused but caring parent.

• 18:26Hank Green?

  John, I feel like you gotta take, you're the one. I got nothing, I got no idea what to do with this as is. And luckily, luckily, I've not had to deal with it yet. Orin seems pretty satisfied with the naturalistic explanations for things.

• 18:45John Green?

  The Hank Green, you die and you go back to where you were before you were born theory.

• 18:50Hank Green?

  That is, that is often how we, and we talk about stories. We talk about how important stories are, but that doesn't mean that they're real.

• 18:57John Green?

  Right. That's a good way to think about it. The first thing that I would say in this situation is I would say very clearly and unambiguously to your child that you do not believe, and that indeed, most people in the world do not believe that you go to an eternal hell if you don't believe in Jesus.

• 19:13Hank Green?

  Right. That's good. That's not one that I would have thought of. Thank you.

• 19:17John Green?

  I would say that just to reassure them, because the reason they feel fearful is the idea of spending eternity with your skin burning is a scary thought. And I would argue one that shouldn't be used to bludgeon children into belief systems.

• 19:29Hank Green?

  I would, I actually feel like children shouldn't know about that at all.

• 19:33John Green?

  Sure. In a perfect world, I agree with you, but.

• 19:36Hank Green?

  Different strokes, I guess.

• 19:38John Green?

  Different strokes. Look, if I believed, and this is sincere, if I believed that if you didn't have a personal relationship with, with Jesus Christ, you were going to go to hell, and you were going to spend eternity there. If I believed that, that would be the most important thing for me to convince people of in the world, right? Because like this life is, means nothing in, in the face of eternity. This is. Barely a blip in time in the face of eternity, right? Like, we're talking about 100 years out of hundreds of trillions or, you know? So of course I would want to convince people of that. The problem is, I go back to what Rebecca Allah-Dewaya said, the great Sufi saint from Basra in what is now Iraq, where she was seen holding a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other, and she was asked what she was doing.

• 20:22John Green?

  And she said, I'm gonna put this torch to the gates of heaven and burn them down, and I'm gonna pour this water on the gates of hell and quench the fire so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because God is God. And if you can't love God because God is God, if you can't find that within you, then your theology is just so misaligned with mine that it's hard to even talk about it. But I would, that's the first thing I would say. And then, and then I would tell them the stories. I would tell them from the perspective of, listen, like, your parents don't believe this stuff, but lots of people do, and your parents have been wrong before, and there's no pressure on you either way. But I think if you come at it from a non-judgmental, inclusive perspective, rather than from

• 21:03John Green?

  like a judgmental, exclusive one, group one does this, group two does that, kind of exclusivity, you stand a much better chance to raising your kids without that sort of religious trauma that it sounds like maybe Anon grew up with. And I think that is a lot of what makes people shy away from their journeys of meaning, is that feeling that there was something fundamentally corrupt about the way that they were told to explore meaning in the world.

• 21:31Hank Green?

  From the non-believer side of things, I don't know, I'd be interested to hear how you think about this, John. But the way I think about God is as, as a technology, like as a unifier, like a religion is a way that people have found to extend our circles of empathy outward into other, into a larger group than just our close family. And sort of understanding the bits of it as, like, is, does this exist because it helps the religion?

• 22:03Hank Green?

  Dominate? Or does this exist because it helps the people who are a part of it? And I know that this is probably not great for a seven year old, but, uh, but, but I do not shy away from like the importance of stories. Stories are real, even if they are not facts.

• 22:21John Green?

  Right.

• 22:21Hank Green?

  So we talk about like the stories that Christians believe in our household as like an important part of, you know, being a part of this culture and like you are, you're gonna be aware of the story of baby Jesus. You're gonna know what a, what like the resurrection is. You're gonna know what, uh,

• 22:40John Green?

  Yeah, and we also talk with our kids about other faith traditions and the stories in those faith traditions and how we can find meaning in those stories and direction in them and orientation in them, regardless of whether we take them as scripture.

• 22:56Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 22:57John Green?

  I agree with you basically. Um, it's a hard thing though, when your kid is that scared. Like I, I get why that would be hard.

• 23:04Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, it makes, it's frustrating. It's

• 23:06John Green?

  It's not okay. It's not okay to tell a seven year old that they're gonna go to hell. Period. That's the end of my sentence.

• 23:12Hank Green?

  All right, John, this next question is for me. It says, Dear Jenkin Han, uh, I'm currently reading A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor in which Andy is asked to pay a membership rate based on his net worth. If he has a net worth under the national average, he's paid $50,000 a year, but if his net worth over the national average, he must pay a dollar for every hundred dollars above the national average. Where'd this idea originate? Is it based off of any valid economic theories? Or is it just a plot device? What are valid economic theories?

• 23:40John Green?

  Exactly.

• 23:41Hank Green?

  Are there any of those?

• 23:42John Green?

  Economic theory. This is Hank Green's theory of change. I had, I did have something similar happen to me. Have you ever had something similar happen?

• 23:49Hank Green?

  Uh, I don't think so.

• 23:51John Green?

  All right. So I was given this award. This is a great story. I, I have to, I have to tell it delicately because I don't want to reveal the institution involved. I was given an award. I was, uh, at a conference and I was taken into a special room and they said, listen, you, we've given you a very special award. And I said, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And they said, um, yeah, the benefits of the award lasts for five years. And I said, that's, that's really wonderful. I mean, what, what a dream come true. And then they said, um, it's $5,000 a year to, to pay for the award. And I was like, to me or from me?

• 24:27John Green?

  And they were like, from you. And I was like, well, this is the worst award I've ever received. I've received awards that came with a financial with financial compensation. I've received awards that didn't come with financial compensation. And was I a little hurt about the awards that didn't come with financial compensation? Sure. But never have I received an award that came with me having to pay you for the privilege of the award. And they were like, well, it's only $500 a year if you're an artist. Do you consider yourself an artist? And I was like, yes.

• 24:57John Green?

  Secondly.

• 24:58Hank Green?

  Second, that's still a lot.

• 25:00John Green?

  Just because you've reduced.

• 25:01Hank Green?

  Why are you charging the artist $500?

• 25:03John Green?

  Just because you've reduced the price by 90% in a 30 second negotiation doesn't mean that I'm willing to pay.

• 25:09Hank Green?

  It sounds like some Scientology situation, John.

• 25:12John Green?

  It was awkward, man. It was really weird. And I, I did eventually, as politely as I could manage, turn, turn down the award.

• 25:19Hank Green?

  Down the award. Interesting. What were the, were the benefits of the award like a special credit card? What's happened?

• 25:27John Green?

  Yeah, it was called entrance into the Delta One Lounge.

• 25:32Hank Green?

  The people, the people at the, the ticket counter come over to you as you're sitting at the gate and they're like, Mr. Green, we have amazing news for you.

• 25:41John Green?

  I actually do feel that way. Every time I go to the Delta One Lounge, I'm like, I am your most loyal customer. And you're telling me that I have to pay for the privilege of going here. This is bananas.

• 25:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, otherwise it fills up, John. There's a lot of most loyal customers, it turns out.

• 26:01John Green?

  I guess there are. I guess there are.

• 26:03Hank Green?

  There are also many things in economics where people who have less pay less. And I like this. I think that it is so that there's everything from progressive taxation to like coupon cutting, like coupons exist so that the people who need to pay less will take the time to cut the coupons. The people who, for whom it doesn't matter that much will pay the full price. Not, isn't so much a thing anymore as it once was. But there's lots of things like this. And there's also like this idea of pricing people differently based on who they are, which people hate, understandably. But sometimes I feel like when I get like a sandwich at McDonald's. I'm like, I should have paid more than this because what I'm paying for right now is my

• 26:48Hank Green?

  time. And like, people like me are always bragging about how much their time's worth. So why didn't I pay more? Because I got more value out of this because my time is worth more. You should be charging me 50 bucks for a sandwich.

• 26:59John Green?

  I certainly think you should pay more for public goods like roads, right? Because you benefit more from them because you sell goods that are transported over those roads. And you should pay more for schools because you benefit more when a population is well educated and so on. I definitely think that. I'm not as convinced by that pricing model. And then I'm convinced by it for things like speeding tickets, which some people do.

• 27:24Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:24John Green?

  So that the, so that it is meaningfully painful to you to speed in the way that it ought to be. And if you're very wealthy, a $50 ticket might not matter that much to you. But what if it wasn't a $50 ticket? What if it was a $500 ticket? Maybe then it would matter.

• 27:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:40John Green?

  I'm less convinced of it when it comes to like refrigerators. But maybe that's a personal bias because of course I would be the one who would, who would pay for the more expensive refrigerator.

• 27:49Hank Green?

  But also like, like it wouldn't just be that, you know, there's all kinds of ways. It's not just how much money you have. It's how price sensitive you are, which can happen for like all kinds of different reasons.

• 27:59John Green?

  That's true. That's true.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  That's, that's more about like, how can we make the most profit rather than how can we make this like a fair transaction, which is what it's always going to be tilted toward.

• 28:08John Green?

  That's when I'm not interested in it. All right. We got this question from Annabelle that I think we need to answer before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC One Bloom. Annabelle writes, Dear John and Hank, I write to you in the heat of the most greatest embarrassment. My fingers shake as I type. I live in a dorm room. I went to the bathroom down the hall. On the way back, I got distracted and walked straight into my neighbor's dorm. I do not know my neighbor. He is a big scary athlete of some ball sport. I closed the door immediately and ran away. I did not see him and I don't know if he saw me. Do I have to go back and apologize? I will probably cry of embarrassment if I do to knock or not to knock Annabelle.

• 28:38Hank Green?

  I mean, Annabelle, I've got, I've got several worse stories that are in this exact genre from my personal life.

• 28:47John Green?

  I've got one that's worse than all of yours that I can't tell. You know what it is?

• 28:53Hank Green?

  I I have a friend who my roommate freshman year of college slept naked. And he got into another man's bed naked because he was that drunk. And then that man came home and got into his bed and there was a naked man in there.

• 29:06John Green?

  Well, that is bad. It's not quite as bad as bleeping in Bleep's dorm room. Because I was bleep to the bleep.

• 29:19Hank Green?

  My my other roommate.

• 29:21John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Hank Green?

  Second semester of freshman year, uh, he I want I once got into my bed and it was covered in dirt. Because he had fallen asleep in the quad in the dirt. Then he had gone to the bathroom, puked, flushed his glasses down the toilet and then fallen asleep in my bed.

• 29:41John Green?

  Anyway, Annabelle, it sounds like what you've done is actually quite minor. And I don't think you do need to apologize for it because I think the big scary athlete knew exactly what happened and was like, oh, that's all right. That's not a big deal. Uh, at least nobody, uh, bleeped in the bleep.

• 29:56Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:57John Green?

  Boy, I made some bad choices in college.

• 30:02Hank Green?

  What I what I will, what I will say is that all of these, all three of these situations do seem to have a common element.

• 30:10John Green?

  Except for Annabelle's. Annabelle seems like it was just a moment of carelessness.

• 30:13Hank Green?

  My first roommates and my second roommates.

• 30:15John Green?

  My mine definitely involved a measure of bin shrinking. Um, as it did when I, uh, one time a friend of mine came up to me and said, um, are you, uh, peeing on the church? And I looked down and I was, I was peeing on the church.

• 30:32Hank Green?

  I'm worried that people are gonna think you bleeping in the bleep is worse than it is. So just for clarity.

• 30:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Hank Green?

  It's not worse than you than than it is.

• 30:42John Green?

  I mean, it's pretty bad. How could it have been worse?

• 30:45Hank Green?

  Well, you didn't, you didn't like injure anybody.

• 30:48John Green?

  Oh, no, of course not. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was hurt.

• 30:52Hank Green?

  You didn't, no person got bleeped on.

• 30:54John Green?

  There was no pooping and there and no, no person got hurt. How's that?

• 30:58Hank Green?

  Okay, good.

• 30:59John Green?

  Yes. Everything turned out okay in the end, after some embarrassing conversations.

• 31:06Hank Green?

  It's pretty, pretty bad, John.

• 31:08John Green?

  I know. It's not my best work.

• 31:09Hank Green?

  I didn't, I didn't do that. I didn't really, I'd ever, I mean, the, I've still never puked from alcohol and probably won't in my life now because I don't drink alcohol anymore.

• 31:18John Green?

  I wish I could say that, Hank. I wish I could say that. I wish I could say that I, I've never puked from drinking alcohol.

• 31:24Hank Green?

  I got a real close once on our anniversary party night because I drank all the, I drank all of the pitchers. There was like a little bit left in all of the pitchers at the bowling alley and I just did them all at once.

• 31:34John Green?

  Oh. All right. Let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon because I have to go to a volleyball game.

• 31:40Hank Green?

  All right.

• 31:41John Green?

  Here's the news from AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon can not stop winning football games, Hank. It is a miracle. It is the miracle on the Thames. AFC Wimbledon somehow have now won four consecutive games in League One. AFC Wimbledon, Hank, with the lowest budget in League One, are in fifth, fifth place. We're in the playoffs right now. Now admittedly, there's a lot of season to go and we will not be in the playoffs when all is said and done barring some kind of absurd miracle. But I just, at this point, I don't know what to believe. We've played 11 games. We have 21 points. We're three points off of second.

• 32:16Hank Green?

  Wow. Three points off of second is wild. Can I rain a little on your parade?

• 32:21John Green?

  Please.

• 32:21Hank Green?

  Number one, uh, this most recent win against Blackpool, which seems to be the worst team and they're having some real problems.

• 32:30John Green?

  They did fire their manager immediately after we beat them.

• 32:35Hank Green?

  Second, is it okay to talk about, did one of your guys just go down for gambling?

• 32:39John Green?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we can talk about that.

• 32:41Hank Green?

  How's, how's that, how's, is that okay? Is he a good one?

• 32:44John Green?

  Uh, no, he's, well, I mean, he seems like a nice kid, but he's very young and uh, he doesn't play much, so we're good.

• 32:50Hank Green?

  Okay. I just saw that. Uh, Google knows me now and it's like, you need all the AFC Wimbledon news.

• 32:56John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't even seen that, but uh, no, he'll be all right in the end.

• 33:00Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 33:00John Green?

  He'll learn his lesson.

• 33:01Hank Green?

  Well, this week in Mars news, Perseverance Rover has taken a picture of what may be the most important comet of our lifetimes.

• 33:08John Green?

  Whoa.

• 33:10John Green?

  Uh, so. Haley's comet? The overwhelmingly the most important comet of our lifetimes?

• 33:14Hank Green?

  No, it turns out Three Eye Atlas is an interstellar comet, not from around here. And it seems to be quite weird. There's a bunch of unanswered questions about it right now, but that's mostly due to lack of data rather than it being extremely mysterious. Though certain people who think everything can be explained by aliens think that that's not the case. And in fact, we have plenty of data to say that's an alien, which it's not. But Three Eye Atlas is weird and we are trying to suss out why. So basically, comets, really interesting if you're me, comets change direction based on how they throw their stuff off.

• 33:53Hank Green?

  So they have these tails and that tail is pointed toward the sun because the sun is boiling stuff off of its surface that condensed when it was far away in the cold, cold interstellar space or just distant solar system. And as that stuff like ablates off the side of the comet, it pushes the comet in the other direction. And Three Eye Atlas has a big cloud around it, like the sun is ablating the stuff, but it's not changing speed or direction very much. There's a few different things that could explain this. I don't really understand them. But that's strange and it's not behaving the way a comet that's from our solar system would act, which is making people very curious about it.

• 34:33Hank Green?

  But that comet is going between us and the sun, so we will not be able to see it for a long time, until like a few months from now, when we will be more aligned to be able to see it again. But during that time, it turns out Perseverance can see it, so we can continue to track it and look at it, which is cool.

• 34:48John Green?

  Isn't that nice? Good job, Perseverance. What a weird little comet. Probably not a little comet.

• 34:53Hank Green?

  Bigger than you.

• 34:57Hank Green?

  Interestingly, and slightly less good news, the press releases that would normally come out about this didn't seem to really come out because the government shut down. So I'm saying all of this with a little bit of a grain of salt. I think all of this is true, but the information from NASA is not coming out the way that it normally would.

• 35:16John Green?

  Good times.

• 35:17Hank Green?

  Good times.

• 35:19John Green?

  Hank, I gotta go to this volleyball game, so thank you for podding with me. Send us your questions at [email protected].

• 35:24Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Schottwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trukravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.