472: Through Thicket and Thin Wood

Does the pandemic loom as an obstacle when writing about something set in the past? Did John and Hank predict the comeback of cottage cheese? What does “through thick and thin" mean, and which one is the bad time? Are there different sea levels in different areas? Are there fact checkers for fiction novels? Why are so many boys bad at gossip? Should I buy my dad a fake mustache? …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 http://patreon.com /dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly 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.

• 0:01John Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:11John 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, I've decided

• 0:21John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Hank Green?

  that I don't think mountaineering requires very much expertise at all, and I will die on that hill.

• 0:28John Green?

  You certainly will. You certainly will. You know how dad, our dad has an innate sense of where he is in space?

• 0:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:40John Green?

  So he'll just be like, I think we just need to walk west from here. We'll, we'll, we'll lose a trail. Cause we grew up backpacking with our dad and he'll, we would lose a trail and he'd be like, it's just to the west. And I'd be like, which way is west?

• 0:54Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:54John Green?

  He would have to pull out a compass or anything. He would just sense it.

• 0:57Hank Green?

  What's happening in there?

• 0:59John Green?

  Yeah. It's a reminder that everybody has a different brain, Hank, and that everybody's brain functions differently, even though the only brain that we can experience is our own. And so when we map, when we try to empathize with other people, we of course bring our own brain stuff to it.

• 1:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:14John Green?

  But everybody's brain is a little different.

• 1:15Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I had a moment where I was like, maybe I'm like dad and I wasn't.

• 1:21John Green?

  No.

• 1:22Hank Green?

  I was with Catherine Orin and we were walking along this like old abandoned railroad line. And I was like, I know what's going on. The good thing about that though, was we could just walk back on the old abandoned railroad line, which was not fun, but we didn't, we didn't, we weren't like stuck in the wilderness in California.

• 1:41John Green?

  Right. That's good.

• 1:42Hank Green?

  I thought I knew where we were going and I, we were, I was super wrong.

• 1:46John Green?

  Speaking of being stuck in the wilderness, for the last 23 days I've been on tour.

• 1:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:51John Green?

  And I am now home.

• 1:52Hank Green?

  I'm sure you feel super normal.

• 1:55John Green?

  I do not feel normal. I feel really weird. I feel both sleepy and energized. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I mean, I guess that's pretty normal, actually, but I don't feel, I don't feel great, to be perfectly honest with you, but we're going to nonetheless answer questions from our listeners because that is our job, mostly because I want to talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon. What really motivates me in this podcast, Hank, is the thought that at the end I get to talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon.

• 2:21Hank Green?

  Yeah. And then more people will care about AFC Wimbledon and then AFC Wimbledon will be in the premier league. That's how it works.

• 2:28John Green?

  You know, um, I would say that's impossible, except AFC Wimbledon makes you dream. Let's answer this question from Matty who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just finished Hollywood Ending and I loved it. Thank you. Thanks for reading it, Matty. It means a lot to me. My question for you as a fiction writer is, does March 2020 loom as an obstacle if you set something in the past? Also, happy soon to be released date of Andy Warhol never gets old. Oh yeah. Right. I forgot about that. I tried to make it Sarah's birthday, but it didn't line up with the calendar. So I had to make it a few days later. Um, Pumpkins and Penguins, Matty.

• 3:02Hank Green?

  Hank, no spoilers. The fake movie comes out, uh, soon. Yeah.

• 3:08John Green?

  The fake movie comes out soon and I mean, good luck to Kai and Juniper because if it's as stressful as having a book about a fake movie come out, then I, I, I don't recommend the experience.

• 3:19Hank Green?

  So when does that book take place?

• 3:22John Green?

  2019. So in the very, this is not a spoiler because on the very first page of the book, it says 2019 in big letters.

• 3:30John Green?

  Because I wanted to set the book in the past, partly because like new Hollywood is even more inscrutable to me than, than 2019 Hollywood.

• 3:37Hank Green?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 3:38John Green?

  Partly because, you know, there was a sort of Hollywood that was ending then. The ability to make, you know, $15 million movies about the last year of Andy Warhol's life and release them theatrically was ending. In fact, I had a producer friend read the book to give me notes, you know? And he said, everything's pretty good, man. Like there's nothing that's super unrealistic about this as far as I can tell, except for the idea of an Andy Warhol biopic making $25 million in its opening weekend.

• 4:03Hank Green?

  Yeah. But did COVID loom large?

• 4:08John Green?

  It did.

• 4:09Hank Green?

  Yeah. It was like,

• 4:10John Green?

  I mean, it looms large for two reasons.

• 4:11Hank Green?

  It was about to happen to these people.

• 4:13John Green?

  One, it looms large because it loomed large in the movie industry. It was very disruptive.

• 4:22Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 4:22John Green?

  Also, uh, to an extent that I think sometimes we have, we underappreciate in our current world, it was and is very disruptive period. Like, uh, it shifted and has shifted and will continue to shift so much about the experience of being alive, about the relationship between humans and infectious disease, about the trust between human beings and experts and so on. Like, uh, it accelerated a lot of what the social internet was already doing, the emergence of COVID. And so it was very much on my mind because it didn't just change the movie industry and obviously like human life in general. It also changed

• 5:04John Green?

  the social internet I was writing about. And so I just wanted to put it back there

• 5:12John Green?

  in, in, in what was, is euphemistically known as the before times.

• 5:17Hank Green?

  Yeah. Somebody, um, I saw a video essay that was called the, I didn't watch it.

• 5:26John Green?

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

• 5:28Hank Green?

  I saw a title.

• 5:29John Green?

  I just, I just read a headline. I read a headline, but I didn't actually read a headline. I read a title of a video that was an hour and 30 minutes long.

• 5:36Hank Green?

  So that's what I, and the title was,

• 5:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Hank Green?

  2026 is the last normal year. And I was like, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, there's never been a normal year.

• 5:49John Green?

  Hank.

• 5:49Hank Green?

  It's such a good title.

• 5:51John Green?

  Because it's still, it's, it's still on your mind. It's still making you want to click.

• 5:56Hank Green?

  But I want to make a video essay now called 2016 was the last normal year.

• 6:00John Green?

  No. 2016 was not the last normal year.

• 6:03Hank Green?

  I know, but there was something that changed around 2016. The, the, it was, for me, 2016, like it was starting in 2014 and it completed in 2016, the transition to being a media environment entirely dominated by the internet. And, and like our brains didn't realize that. We still thought that the mainstream media was in charge for another 10 years, but we were wrong.

• 6:27John Green?

  Well, our brains realized it in the sense that I remember having conversations with you going back to 2013, 2014, where we were like, I don't know if there's about to be a recession or if there's about to be a social revolution or, but something weird is happening. And we were conscious of the fact that something weird was happening because it was happening to the internet. Like we were sort of patient zero of the change because these highly personalized algorithms were starting to take over people's feeds and people were having less choice in what they watched and therefore what they thought. And I think we did see that coming. We didn't understand, we certainly didn't understand the scope of it, but we, we, we were glimpsing. I just remember like being on the phone with you and being like, something is really weird now.

• 7:10Hank Green?

  Yeah. I also remember though, like we, we realized that because we, we being so online, it started to happen to us and our communities in like 2012. I remember the first time that, that like, there was discourse about how bad a year had been was 2012.

• 7:28John Green?

  Right. Everybody was talking about all the celebrities who died that year.

• 7:31Hank Green?

  And there was like a dumpster fire thing, you know?

• 7:33John Green?

  There was a dumpster fire meme.

• 7:35Hank Green?

  2012 was a dumpster fire. And, and it's just like, looking back, it, it's like, well, that's adorable, considering.

• 7:40John Green?

  My kingdom for the dumpster fire.

• 7:42Hank Green?

  Yeah. Been through since. But, but then also what it really was about was we were starting to get exposed constantly to bad news through these systems. And, and even, and also anything that could be framed as bad news was being framed as bad news by people who were trying to, to, you know, compete in the feeds. And, and the feeds were selecting bad stuff over other things. And,

• 8:06John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Hank Green?

  Uh, and of course, like local news and cable news have always done that. Yellow Journalism did that. It's always been a thing. But that's when it kind of felt like it, like when I look back and I, I'm like, wow, I really thought 2012 was a terrible year. And it was like a very normal kind of average bad year. Uh, that, and, but then, then like everybody else was along for the ride by 2016 and you could become president by being a blustering Twitter guy.

• 8:37John Green?

  Right. A professional provocateur and troll. Yeah. Yeah. And here we are.

• 8:43Hank Green?

  And here we are.

• 8:44John Green?

  What a,

• 8:45Hank Green?

  2016 was the last normal year. It's just a good title.

• 8:48John Green?

  Okay. All right. That, that implies that like 1348 was a normal year.

• 8:54Hank Green?

  Right. Right. 1348 was the last normal year. No.

• 8:58John Green?

  1347 was the last normal year. Right before, right before half of all people in Afro Eurasia died.

• 9:05Hank Green?

  I'll make 2016 and then you make 1347 and it'll be funny.

• 9:10John Green?

  Okay. Um, like, yeah, I mean, if you make that video, I am going to have to make a response video that says, that's stupid.

• 9:19Hank Green?

  And I'll start it out being like, John, I know that you're going to make a response video that this is stupid, but.

• 9:25John Green?

  All right. We got an important question to get to, Hank. It's from Becca. She writes, Dear John and Hank, did you predict the comeback of cottage cheese way back in episode 215? I'll remind you, we're currently on episode 472, Hank. How do we decide if something has officially come back? Thanks, Becca. I know that cottage cheese is back big time, Hank, because the other day Sarah was eating a little bit of granola with cottage cheese. And I was like, what the hell is happening? Is it 1982?

• 9:52Hank Green?

  I was, I, the other day I was super hungry and there was like giant tub of cottage cheese in the fridge. And I just, I just had cottage cheese for like lunch.

• 10:01John Green?

  You can, you can hammer it. I'm not saying cottage cheese isn't great. I'm saying that two years ago, or 10 years ago, or 22 years ago, there wouldn't have been that tub in the fridge.

• 10:10Hank Green?

  No. Yeah.

• 10:11John Green?

  That tub doesn't, just so you know, those tubs don't just arrive in the fridge, Hank. Somebody buys them.

• 10:16Hank Green?

  You know, cottage cheese, it's just occurred to me.

• 10:19John Green?

  Yeah. Oh God.

• 10:27John Green?

  I was actually, I was actually really good. The more I thought about it, the better it got.

• 10:32Hank Green?

  So, so anyway, that I feel like, I feel like we did it.

• 10:37John Green?

  I feel like we answered the question.

• 10:39Hank Green?

  No, I, I, but the thing is, I have no idea what we did in episode 251. Did you look this up?

• 10:45John Green?

  No, episode 215, we were like cottage cheese is gonna come back.

• 10:49Hank Green?

  Okay. Well, we were right.

• 10:52John Green?

  Let's make another, let's make some more predictions, Hank. Let's say what, you know, what's, you know, what's on its way back, Hank?

• 10:56Hank Green?

  Three hole punches.

• 10:58John Green?

  I was gonna say, uh, real life experience.

• 11:02Hank Green?

  Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

• 11:05John Green?

  But also three hole punches could be, that's part of real life experience coming back. You know, people are gonna start printing out documents again. They're gonna need to put them in binders.

• 11:12Hank Green?

  Print is the future.

• 11:14John Green?

  Yous have been saying print is the future for a while, and it has not yet come to pass.

• 11:19Hank Green?

  It's really not the future. I was really hopeful there that I'd hit, hit on something and print my view of the future. Print is not the future. A couple of people have tried out, print is the future, and they have proven and even it's not. Yeah.

• 11:31John Green?

  Yeah, it's hard. It's, it's hard to figure out how media works if media isn't the worst people you know are even worse than you thought.

• 11:43Hank Green?

  Yeah, uh, that's, that is true. That is true. I'm, I'm worried for books, my guy.

• 11:50John Green?

  Oh, not me. I feel good.

• 11:52Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 11:53John Green?

  I debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. What are you talking about? The water in here is fine. It does get a little warmer every year.

• 12:02John Green?

  I am a tiny little frog and I cannot, uh, jump out of the water, but, uh, things are good. No, things are good in books.

• 12:09Hank Green?

  Somebody I, I know from, uh, from our universe was like, I'm not sure about books. The Mr. Beast book doesn't seem to have sold very well.

• 12:23John Green?

  Yeah, that's like saying I'm not sure about YouTube. Vlogbrothers isn't doing that great.

• 12:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna say anything in particular about the Mr. Beast book, having of course not read it. Uh, so I don't know, but, you know, I'm sure that it's got, it's got a lot of action and intensity. Um, but, but I do have this sense that the Mr. Beast audience isn't like the prime book, the prime book audience.

• 12:51John Green?

  Yeah. In general, Hank,

• 12:55John Green?

  I think it's very important not to have opinions about things we haven't read.

• 13:00Hank Green?

  It's true. It's true. Maybe it's so good.

• 13:04John Green?

  I mean, it's very, maybe it's like, you know, maybe it's gonna win the Pulitzer and we're all gonna be stunned.

• 13:11Hank Green?

  Uh, that, that's a, I mean, I guess you can put maybe in front of any sentence.

• 13:16John Green?

  You can. That's the magical thing about maybe.

• 13:18Hank Green?

  I, uh, love cottage cheese. I'm an old man folkwire from those darn squirrels. Cottage cheese with a little black pepper. I'm a happy boy. This next question comes from Michael who asks, Dear Hank and John, my friend is getting married in December and she told me that she was going to love her husband, quote, through thick and thin. Is thick the bad times or is thin the bad times?

• 13:42John Green?

  Hmm.

• 13:43Hank Green?

  Oh, that's a good, yeah. I actually am not sure.

• 13:47John Green?

  I have a strong opinion, but now that I'm thinking about my strong opinion, I think it might be wrong.

• 13:52Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, sometimes you're going through a thick time and it's just a lot of work to get through it. It's like molasses. You know, you're pushing through that jello of life.

• 13:59John Green?

  It's like when you're walking through the streets of Orlando, Florida in summer and you're wearing a trench coat because that's part of your identity. It's thick out there.

• 14:08Hank Green?

  Thick out there. And then it's the thin times when you don't have enough food. So it's both. You're with your husband through the bad times and also the bad times.

• 14:18John Green?

  Sometimes things are bad because they're thick. Sometimes things are bad because they're thin, but they're always bad. Welcome to life. On the internet in 2026.

• 14:28Hank Green?

  Yeah. There's also, well, or it could be both good because now thick is good because that's a body shape people enjoy. And thin is good because that's a body shape people enjoy. We now have a diversity of body shapes that we enjoy. Which is great.

• 14:42John Green?

  I would, I would argue is a huge measure of progress.

• 14:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:46John Green?

  Uh, not as much progress as we should be making when it comes to not being judgmental about the size of a body someone's in, but, but still progress. At any rate, Hank.

• 14:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:56John Green?

  I think that it originally meant through thick as in times of plenty.

• 15:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, plenty of stuff.

• 15:02John Green?

  And through, through thin, times of want.

• 15:05Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 15:05John Green?

  That said, I think Michael is asking a very important question.

• 15:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:09John Green?

  Because thin times, as someone who grew up in Orlando in that thick soup of an atmosphere, are good times.

• 15:21John Green?

  Thick times suck.

• 15:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 15:27John Green?

  You know, you're getting bullied. It's humid. It sucks.

• 15:32Hank Green?

  I don't know. I can't, I'm trying to actually look this up and figure it out.

• 15:36John Green?

  You know how many people have written us about our hatred of Florida? But like, they didn't grow up in Florida in the 1980s, so they need to take a seat. I mean, you tried getting stuffed into a trash can in sixth grade.

• 15:49Hank Green?

  Did you actually get stuffed into trashcans?

• 15:51John Green?

  Yeah, man, it was terrible. I, middle school sucked so badly.

• 15:58Hank Green?

  It was thick.

• 15:59John Green?

  It was thick times.

• 16:01Hank Green?

  So possibly Chaucer.

• 16:04John Green?

  Chaucer.

• 16:05Hank Green?

  First recorded use of the phrase can be found in Jeffrey Chaucer's famous Canterbury Tales.

• 16:11John Green?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, if you're gonna say something other than the Canterbury Tales, I was gonna be duly surprised.

• 16:16Hank Green?

  Um, and it is a hunting expression, through thicket and thin wood.

• 16:21John Green?

  Oh.

• 16:22Hank Green?

  So the thick is bad. The thick is bad.

• 16:27John Green?

  Wow, that's a mind blower.

• 16:30Hank Green?

  The thick is bad.

• 16:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Hank Green?

  Man, that is not what I would have thought.

• 16:35John Green?

  You wanna be hunting through those thin woods.

• 16:37Hank Green?

  It's probably switched back and forth a bunch of times over the years. People are like, yeah, obviously.

• 16:42John Green?

  Right.

• 16:43Hank Green?

  The thick is bad. And obviously the thin is bad.

• 16:46John Green?

  Oh, wow. That's good stuff, Hank.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  Thicket, thicket and thin wood. Thicket and thin wood sounds awesome. That is a great mouth feel.

• 16:56John Green?

  It's a good band name, actually.

• 16:57Hank Green?

  Yeah, Thicket and Thin Wood. Good, good title for a book.

• 17:02John Green?

  Uh, yeah, it's a pretty good title for a book, but you insist that, you insist that books are over. Um, which is bad news for me because I don't actually have another job.

• 17:13Hank Green?

  I think that books will be reborn.

• 17:17John Green?

  Oh, okay. Yeah. So books.

• 17:20Hank Green?

  Rise like a phoenix from the flames.

• 17:22John Green?

  They have to die so they can be resurrected.

• 17:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, I definitely don't think that like the, the book, that the book length story is going anywhere. I just think, um, I, I, I

• 17:32John Green?

  Oh, I strongly disagree with you about the physical object. The physical.

• 17:35Hank Green?

  No, I agree about the physical object. I just think that the, the, the systems that surround the physical object are, are troubling me.

• 17:44John Green?

  Well, they're a little rickety for sure. A lot of, uh, books did not go out to the places they were supposed to go out. Not actually my book primarily, but, uh, a lot of other books that came out in the last couple of weeks, uh, have not gotten to the bookstores they were supposed to get to, which is a an example of rickety-ness for sure. All right, Hank, we got another question. This one's from Vicky who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just read an article with the line, El Nino may cause sea levels along the California coast to rise up a foot in September and October. But wouldn't that mean sea levels rise up everywhere? Are there different sea levels in different areas? I mean, I guess I know tides would increase or decrease sea levels slightly, but doesn't El Nino have to deal with currents? Why would that impact the sea levels only in particular areas? Thanks, Vicky.

• 18:25Hank Green?

  So, uh, it, it, the ocean is so big.

• 18:30John Green?

  So big.

• 18:31Hank Green?

  That it, that if you raise sea levels in one place, it does not necessarily raise sea levels in another place. There are more than one, there's more than one reason for this. So there's one obvious one, um, which is, and like it'll make a total intuitive sense. Which, though, if the wind is blowing in a direction, it will push a mass of water.

• 18:50John Green?

  Sure.

• 18:50Hank Green?

  Or if a wind is usually blowing in one direction and it stops flowing in that direction, then like everybody sort of expects the sea level to be influenced by the wind that is always there. And if that wind gets weaker or goes away, then the ocean will sort of move back toward that area and sea levels will rise in that spot. So, but then there's the other stuff where like if a bunch of rain falls in an area, the water will stay higher in that area for a while. And also, if the water gets hot, it will expand and it will raise, rise in that area, which is also a big effect during El Nino, is that the water is hotter on the west coast.

• 19:31John Green?

  So warmer water takes up, warmer water takes up more space, which raises sea levels on its own.

• 19:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:39John Green?

  Wow.

• 19:40Hank Green?

  Not a ton, but like there's a lot of warmth and a lot of water. So.

• 19:43John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Hank Green?

  It can. So that's what's going on there.

• 19:46John Green?

  You know, Hank, I used to like visit a beach when we were kids and I would think to myself, this is what I was made for. I was made to be on the seashore, you know, like I, I, I, I'm comfortable swimming in the ocean. I, there's lots of food sources. This is a good.

• 20:04Hank Green?

  That's why he moved to Indianapolis.

• 20:06John Green?

  Well, I'm, I'm gonna get there. I would, I would think this is a good spot to be a hunter gatherer, you know? But no, Hank, we did not evolve for the beach. We did not evolve for the coasts. We evolved for hardwood forests. And so I moved to Indiana.

• 20:23John Green?

  In specifically a region of Indiana that for the last 12,000 years has been a hardwood forest. And I feel much more at home.

• 20:31Hank Green?

  Are there softwood forests?

• 20:33John Green?

  Yeah, totally.

• 20:34Hank Green?

  Is that just a different kind of tree?

• 20:36John Green?

  I don't know. Hank, I'm making it up. I just, all I know is that I was told that this is a hardwood forest and has been for the last 12,000 years. So the little nook of Indianapolis where I live has been an uninterrupted forest since the last glacier receded. Isn't that cool?

• 20:53Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:54John Green?

  Have I ever told you about the Indiana State Museum? My favorite thing about the Indiana State Museum?

• 20:57Hank Green?

  You've been there and you've found your favorite thing.

• 21:00John Green?

  Yeah, I go there all the time. My favorite thing about the Indiana State Museum is it tells the history of Indiana from the beginning of time. And because there are no fossil records from like 40 million years ago until 12,000 years ago, it just has a little room where it's like, we don't know what happened.

• 21:22Hank Green?

  It's good. You gotta let the, you gotta let the unknown remain with us.

• 21:27John Green?

  Yeah, it's like this used to be underwater.

• 21:32John Green?

  It used to do all this other stuff. There used to be Ginkgo trees here 200 million years ago. And then the glaciers arrived and we have no idea what happened. For millions and millions of years.

• 21:44Hank Green?

  It's hard to know what's going on.

• 21:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Hank Green?

  The, the thing, I was recently trying to figure out the evolutionary history of fruit bats.

• 21:52John Green?

  Sure, of course, as one does.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  And that's a big question mark in the world, whereas we know a lot about the non fruit bats. And I was like, why do we know so much about the history of these, of the non fruit bats? Where they're just like, not a lot of fruit bats and maybe. But one thing that's for sure, fruit bats die in places that don't fossilize well. They die in like active rainforesty type environments where stuff gets turned into more stuff really quickly. Whereas regular bats oftentimes die in like river beds or lake beds where they are much more likely to fossilize.

• 22:28John Green?

  Right. Yeah, it's like how we know very little about the art that humans made before 10,000 years ago, except that the stuff, for the stuff they happen to make in caves.

• 22:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, because it sticks around.

• 22:39John Green?

  Yeah. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the lost fruit bats of earth. The lost fruit bats of earth, never to be heard from again.

• 22:49John Green?

  You can't hear them, Hank.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Cottage Cheese, of course. Cottage Cheese, which we remain staunch advocates for.

• 22:59John Green?

  And today's podcast is brought to you by the thicket and thin wood. Who knew?

• 23:03Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by number one New York Times bestselling book, Hollywood Ending. No spoilers.

• 23:10Hank Green?

  The commitment to no spoilers has been wild, John.

• 23:12John Green?

  Oh, I know. It's almost like too committed. Like people aren't sharing anything about the book because they know that I don't want spoilers. They're just like, I liked it. I liked it a lot. And I'm like, I actually want more than that.

• 23:24Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. I do very much like opening up my closet and finding an item that I know is going to be both comfortable and I'm just gonna look good in it. It's gonna go well with my khakis or my jeans or my third kind of pant? That I, I have like a, like a pair of orange pants, just things that make getting dressed easier. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and merino wool. And the styles are timeless and they're versatile and they're designed to become dependable pieces that you reach for day after day. This morning, I put on this jacket that I'm currently wearing with just a white t-shirt. And I knew immediately, this is gonna work.

• 24:07Hank Green?

  I went downstairs and Catherine was like, look at that nice jacket. Where'd that come from? You know where it came from? It came from Quince. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for the quality, not the brand markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know that it was Dear Hank and John. It's a good way to support the show. I feel like I should say it's Q U I N C E. I guess it's pretty easy to spell Quince. Quince.com. I feel tempted to make up a tagline for them, but that's not what they want me to do. I shouldn't do that.

• 24:57John Green?

  Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NoCD. So you may know that I've had obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a kid, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. I lived with intrusive thoughts and the compulsive behaviors I used to manage those intrusive thoughts for many years without treatment. OCD is not just anxiety. If you have those what if intrusive thoughts and you cannot close the loop on them and you find yourself in thought spirals, you might have OCD. And it's not the organizing stereotype you've heard. It's a persistent unwanted series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character, along with mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to, to get relief, even when that relief never actually comes.

• 25:40John Green?

  The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment and it has transformed my life. NoCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP therapy, who meet you in live face to face virtual sessions with support between sessions. So you're never facing OCD alone. So if you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started at n o c d dot com. That's n o c d dot com.

• 26:24John Green?

  Okay, we have a question from Isabel. It's about Hollywood ending. Dear John and Hank, I reach my right thumb to my left wrist describes taking a pulse in chapter nine of Hollywood Ending. So that's a little bit of a spoiler, but not much of one. As an EMT, I am here to inform you that the thumb has its own pulse and for that reason cannot be used to get an adequate reading. I, Isabel, I know this, okay, but I still take my pulse with my thumb and it works okay. You know what I mean? Like, like it works okay if you're healthy and your pulse is full throated. Like I'm, I'm doing it right now and I can get my basic pulse. Like I'm in a.

• 27:02Hank Green?

  You know that there's a pulse there?

• 27:04John Green?

  Yeah, I know what Isabel means, but especially if you're taking someone else's pulse, you can't do it.

• 27:09Hank Green?

  That's not the place to do it. Yeah.

• 27:11John Green?

  Also, it complicates things because your thumb has a pulse. I know, I, I understand. I would apologize, but I don't think I can because that's how I take my pulse.

• 27:21Hank Green?

  It's good enough for you.

• 27:22John Green?

  That's how Kai takes his pulse.

• 27:25Hank Green?

  And also it is absolutely possible for a person to slam their boob in a door.

• 27:30John Green?

  Yes, while, while we're defending.

• 27:36Hank Green?

  I know it's possible because if you search Twitter for slam my boob in a door, there are many people reporting, having slammed their boob in doors.

• 27:45John Green?

  Yeah, okay. There we go. Also, I knew when I was writing The Fault in Our Stars that the number of numbers between one and two is identical to the number of numbers between one and three. I was just having Hazel not know that. And that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do for the author to know something that a 16 year old doesn't. Okay.

• 28:05Hank Green?

  However, John did not know that tuberculosis bacteria do not move under the microscope.

• 28:10John Green?

  That's true. That was an actual mistake when I said that what's his face saw tuberculosis squiggling under a microscope. That was an error and that's an example of an error, as opposed to these other things that we don't have to apologize for. To get to Isabel's question. I know for nonfiction books, like Everything is Tuberculosis, there are fact checkers. Apparently, I mean, no, no disrespect to my fact checker. That's a, that's a tough one to get right.

• 28:35Hank Green?

  That's a tough one to get right. Yeah.

• 28:36John Green?

  But what about for fiction? Is there an opt in system or do publishers allow, not allow for the cost of fact checkers? Obviously, there's a spectrum of meaningful accuracy in fiction from historical fiction to fantasy, but who decides? I love the book. So excited to keep reading when I finish typing this current pulse of 68, Isabel. So there are no fact checkers for novels, except for the editor, who can fact check unless you hire a fact checker. And that was true for Everything is Tuberculosis too. Like the publisher wasn't going to pay to fact check that book. I hired a fact checker because I wanted to get the facts right. And by the way, thank God I did because Will caught a lot of errors.

• 29:11Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:13John Green?

  But I don't know of an example of publishers paying for fact checking for fiction. I don't know if you do Hank, but I don't. That said, I could have, it occurs to me, I could have just made it. And I can't remember if it's Juniper or Kai. So whoever it is, I was obviously channeling my own experience when I was doing that. But I could have done it better, right? I could have had it be the.

• 29:38Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 29:39John Green?

  Her, her, her, her finger instead of her thumb. And that would have made it better.

• 29:44Hank Green?

  The way that publishing works, like of course is completely inscrutable to most people. You get an editor and you get a cover designer and a book designer, but you do not get a sensitivity read, you do not get a fact check. If you're writing a book about like a life on a cruise ship, you don't get anybody to, like the publisher isn't going to pay you to do interviews with people on cruise ships. Now you can go on a cruise ship and write that off on your taxes, maybe if you're doing a cruise ship thriller. But you can't, you're not going to get paid. This is all the, the author's responsibility to do if they would like to do it. It's just like, what makes the better book? And you had this idea in your head a little bit that like, because it's going in a book,

• 30:29Hank Green?

  somebody must be in charge of whether the things are right. But let me tell you, there's a lot of things in books.

• 30:36John Green?

  That aren't right.

• 30:37Hank Green?

  That aren't right. They, they'll, they'll put anything in there.

• 30:41John Green?

  Anything that sells.

• 30:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:44John Green?

  They're not that, I mean, they're, they do have editorial standards. I want to be clear about that.

• 30:48Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, yeah, yeah. When I say they, I mean, like humans, like will put anything in there. I've got, I have read some, you know, for research when I'm researching misinformation. I've read some books that are just misinformation, the whole book.

• 31:00John Green?

  For sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I have too. There's one called Turtles All the Way Down, actually. That's a anti-vaccine book that is just misinformation all the way down. I will say Hank, I don't think that our experience is universal and like, I think sometimes publishers do pay for certain things. I think in fact, my publisher paid for some sensitivity reads over the years. So I think it depends on your deal, but. I definitely, and my editor did a tremendous amount of fact checking for everything is tuberculosis and the Anthropocene reviewed, and so did the copy editor. But ultimately, I also felt that there needed to be a level of just reading for a fact check.

• 31:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, but the editor's job isn't fact checking. You know, a fact check is a very specific job.

• 31:41John Green?

  On a nonfiction book, the editor's job is partly making sure that the information is accurate, but you know, like whether or not tuberculosis is motile probably does not factor into that read. All right, let's answer this question from Emily who writes, or Emily, yeah, same pronunciation. All right, let's answer this question from Emily who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are so many boys so bad at gossip? If my husband finds out about something interesting, he asks zero follow-up questions. For example, yesterday, his brother said he was prepping for a job interview, and my husband said, good luck, and didn't ask any details about the job or why his brother wanted to leave his current company. It drives me crazy. DFTBA, Emily.

• 32:22Hank Green?

  Is there a thing where we don't care?

• 32:25John Green?

  I don't know that we don't care. I probably would have asked a follow-up in that situation, like, why are you thinking about leaving your job?

• 32:30Hank Green?

  I feel like I've had to train myself a little bit to be like, this is my friend. This is his family. These are the things that I know have been going on over the last six months. This like, and, because I don't know, like, I don't want to be that guy who just like sits there and talks. I am legitimately curious. I want to know about their life. And it's, there's almost a sense of like, if you're not volunteering it.

• 32:56John Green?

  Yeah, if you're not volunteering it, maybe you don't want to talk about it.

• 32:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:59John Green?

  I do think that's why I don't ask sometimes is because I feel like if they wanted to talk about it, they would talk about it. But there's something else at work, too, which is that, like, just to pull back the curtain a little, Emily, Hank and I talk probably for like, three hours a week on average, and I would say 45 seconds of that time is spent talking about something other than work.

• 33:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, maybe. Nah, no, it's more than that.

• 33:27John Green?

  Related to work, related to work.

• 33:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:30John Green?

  We're not usually talking about our, our families.

• 33:33Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 33:33John Green?

  Like, we do if there's a problem.

• 33:35Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 33:36John Green?

  You know, like, obviously, but like, if things are good, we don't like gossip. In fact, you recently, you recently posted on threads, you were like, one of my best friends is really going through it. And I thought to myself, I should ask Hank about that, but I haven't.

• 33:54Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:55John Green?

  I hope, I hope they're doing all right, though.

• 33:56Hank Green?

  Yeah. Who knows which one that is? You know, three different people came to mind that I could have meant.

• 34:06John Green?

  I hear you.

• 34:07Hank Green?

  Could have been you.

• 34:08John Green?

  It could have been me. It could have been me.

• 34:10Hank Green?

  You've been really going through it.

• 34:12John Green?

  Little bit, little bit. Yeah, sorry, we're not better at answering questions, Emily, but you just, you gotta call your brother-in-law and say like, what's the deal? What's the deal, bud?

• 34:20Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Sierra who asks, Dear Hank and John, my dad recently started chemo, and amongst all of the things, I have a fear that he will lose his mustache. My dad has had a mustache for my entire life, and well before. I have never even seen a picture of my dad sans stash. My brain cannot begin to process what he will look like without it, so I'm here for dubious advice. Should I buy him a pack of fake mustaches, convince him to dye it a wild color before it goes away? Any and all ideas are welcome to help me process this. We were recently in Pilates class, so we've been in the same Pilates building, Catherine and I, for ages, you know, 10 years. And one of the Pilates machines wasn't there because it was getting reupholstered or something. And Catherine said, I don't like that. It's

• 35:05Hank Green?

  like seeing your dad without a mustache. And I was like, holy crap, baby. That kicks ass. Oh, my God.

• 35:15John Green?

  It's a great line. It's a great line. And I'm sorry that you're going through this, Sierra. That sucks. I think, though, that the pack of fake mustaches is going to be the way.

• 35:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, I will also say that it might not go away. So like,

• 35:27John Green?

  Oh.

• 35:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, like, it depends on the chemo regimen, and it also depends on the person. Some people, facial hair can be different from head hair, and it's, you never really know what's going to happen. You roll in a bunch of dice on your whole face when you do chemo. But fake mustache has a stand-in, absolutely.

• 35:46John Green?

  Yeah, and I think you gotta go full Burt Reynolds on it, like, a really thick fake mustache.

• 35:51Hank Green?

  They got the good stuff on, it's Spirit Halloween time right now. I don't know if you've got time to get into Spirit, but they're gonna have all of them.

• 36:01John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great shout, Hank. And in fact, the time you really want to go to Spirit Halloween is like November 2nd.

• 36:09Hank Green?

  Right, as it's, as it's closing down. And you gotta, they gotta be like, what do you want a mustache for? And you're gonna be like, my dad has cancer.

• 36:17John Green?

  Yeah, and they'll be like, just take it.

• 36:19Hank Green?

  Just, yeah, free, I got a whole bag, whole bag of free mustaches for you. A mustache bag is all for you.

• 36:25John Green?

  All right, Hank. Sierra, we wish you and your dad well. It is time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

• 36:32Hank Green?

  Woo, woo.

• 36:33John Green?

  AFC Wimbledon have lost their last two games by a combined 8-0, which is actually, I would say, based on the performances, a flattering scoreline?

• 36:45Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 36:46John Green?

  We have been dreadful.

• 36:48Hank Green?

  Wow, you guys were doing so good.

• 36:51John Green?

  We are now in 16th place and looking real bad.

• 36:54Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 36:55John Green?

  But there is something even more important than the news on the pitch from AFC Wimbledon, which is, as we're recording this, in about 12 minutes, there is going to be a announcement about who the mysterious investor group is that has said that they would like to come in and purchase 35% of AFC Wimbledon stock. So 51% of AFC Wimbledon has to be owned by the fans, by the Don's Trust, but there is now about 35%, I think, of stock available. And there is someone who wants to come in, buy this stock, and try to invest in the club

• 37:36John Green?

  in such a way that it would lead to the club doing better. This is a big, big question. I mean, probably the biggest question, aside from whether we were going to invest in a new stadium, the biggest question in AFC Wimbledon's history since the loss of the club back in 2001. And I have no idea, uh, who they are. No idea.

• 37:59Hank Green?

  That's terrifying.

• 38:01John Green?

  I know.

• 38:01Hank Green?

  Because mysterious investors, you got like a 90% chance you're not gonna love them.

• 38:06John Green?

  I, I did ask, I was like, I was like, are they the weapons manufacturing business? They were like, no. And I was like, well, that's, that's good.

• 38:16Hank Green?

  Good first step. That rules out a few people I'd rather not need to work with.

• 38:24John Green?

  Yeah, do they currently own Paramount Studios?

• 38:29Hank Green?

  How many satellites do they have? Just real quick.

• 38:33John Green?

  Just back of, back of napkin math. What's their satellite situation? Yeah, all that stuff. So we'll see how, we'll see, we'll see what the announcement is. You can Google it now. I can't Google it yet, but you can as you're listening to this. And, you know, AFC Wimbledon only has one chance at this, because we can only sell this 35% of our club once.

• 38:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:59John Green?

  And so, we gotta get it right. We gotta get it right. If now's the time, now's the time. But if now's not the time, we've got to be patient. Yeah. What's the news from Mars? Is 35% of Mars up for sale? Probably.

• 39:11Hank Green?

  I mean, there's actually a really weird story there that I couldn't give you the details of, but there's a guy who decided that he could sell all of the planets, and he is selling them all, which is fun.

• 39:19John Green?

  No.

• 39:20Hank Green?

  I don't think that it's, I don't think it's actually gonna work out that way, but,

• 39:25Hank Green?

  it's weird, anyway. But in Mars news, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which is Japan's NASA, they have launched the Martian moon's exploration probe. It's called like the MMX is what they call it. And the spacecraft is going to reach Mars next August. It's going to orbit Phobos. It's gonna get some data, and then it is going to land on Phobos, which is one of Mars' moons. And it's going to collect samples of Phobos. And if all goes to plan, some of that sample will come back to Earth, which is exciting and fun, but like, it's so frustrating to me that we can't get a piece of Mars. It's so much easier to get pieces of Phobos than Mars because

• 40:04John Green?

  Because there's less atmosphere?

• 40:06Hank Green?

  The less gravity is the, yeah, it's the real problem.

• 40:08John Green?

  Right, gravity.

• 40:09Hank Green?

  You don't have to carry the fuel.

• 40:10John Green?

  I keep hearing about that. I keep hearing about that stuff.

• 40:12Hank Green?

  It's a real, it's a real weight, that gravity. I, you don't, you don't feel it, but man, it's heavy. It's heavy stuff. It'd be so much easier.

• 40:23John Green?

  A little bit as I get older.

• 40:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'd, it'd be, you know, sometimes I think about how like, if the Earth were twice as big, there's like, no way we'd ever get a rocket off of it.

• 40:33John Green?

  Right.

• 40:33Hank Green?

  But if the Earth were twice as small, we'd be all over the place by now.

• 40:37John Green?

  Right.

• 40:38Hank Green?

  Yeah, it would be way easier to get all around.

• 40:42John Green?

  I bet there would be downsides. This is like the Hank Green theory that all human beings should be about between two and three feet tall.

• 40:50Hank Green?

  Three and four, but yeah.

• 40:51John Green?

  Listen, I'm not a scientist, but I think one of the scientists who listens to this show can point out why it's not a great idea to make Earth half its current size.

• 40:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I think that there, that things would have gone very differently, for sure. Also, maybe we wouldn't have held on to our atmosphere, which would be a real bummer.

• 41:07John Green?

  Yeah, I'm a huge fan of our atmosphere. It's probably my favorite atmosphere, even though it does make it nice and humid in Orlando in the summer. I still think that it's my favorite atmosphere.

• 41:17Hank Green?

  Honestly, one of my favorite things.

• 41:19John Green?

  Yeah, top 10 thing.

• 41:20Hank Green?

  Plants.

• 41:22John Green?

  Yeah, consciousness.

• 41:23Hank Green?

  Life, yeah, consciousness, language, a little boogie in your soul.

• 41:28John Green?

  Little move to the left and to the right.

• 41:30Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 41:30John Green?

  Yeah. Put a foot in, put a foot out, turn yourself around, all that jazz. I think the atmosphere, plants, consciousness, and transforming the raw materials of Earth into things that are useful and or beautiful.

• 41:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, and a little

• 41:48John Green?

  Are my top four?

• 41:49Hank Green?

  A little boogie.

• 41:49John Green?

  And a little boogie, and a little boogie. There you got, there you got your top five.

• 41:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:53John Green?

  Done. Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at [email protected].

• 42:00Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Michael Polk. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hulse, Rojas, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola, as they say in our hometown.

• 42:19John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.