455: The Grocery Store Baseball Theory

Why can you see the outline of the full moon during a crescent moon? What do I do with a surplus of basil plants? How do I make amends with my mom? How do light particles not bump into each other and mess up their trajectories? Are Hank and John aware of how American they are? What do I do with my tongue at the dentist? …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 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.

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

  Of course, 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 is the difference between a well-dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle?

• 0:28John Green?

  What is that?

• 0:30Hank Green?

  Attire.

• 0:31John Green?

  Ah, yes, on two levels.

• 0:34Hank Green?

  Two different ways.

• 0:36John Green?

  It's funny twice.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  It's funny in two different ways.

• 0:40John Green?

  It's not funny in either way very, but it is funny in two ways some.

• 0:45Hank Green?

  And that makes it funny very by being, it multiplies.

• 0:50John Green?

  Yes. Well, Hank and I are starting the podcast late today because we have been talking about my book, Hollywood Ending, which Hank read.

• 0:59Hank Green?

  Finally.

• 1:02Hank Green?

  You know, I, I went up to, to like a nice little spot and I just sat down with it and man, it freaking took over my brain. What mom said is she was like, it's the most surprising John Green book I've ever read.

• 1:18John Green?

  Hmm. She didn't say that to me, but that's nice.

• 1:24John Green?

  Like plot wise surprising or what?

• 1:26Hank Green?

  I think that she was very surprised by, uh, well, I can't tell you now or dock it to the people.

• 1:32John Green?

  But the twists and turns, the actual plotting.

• 1:34Hank Green?

  Turns, yes. I think that there was a, which is funny because it's a plot thing that I, I didn't know it was going to happen, but I got very worried it was going to happen.

• 1:45John Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:45Hank Green?

  And I texted you about it and I was like, is this what's going to happen? And then you ignored the text, which made me even more worried.

• 1:52John Green?

  Yeah, I it's definitely the book that I worked the hardest on the structure and what happens. Like, my books famously are just two people sitting in a room in the dark chatting, but this book is a little more than that.

• 2:05Hank Green?

  It's got a mystery element to it. There's like, there's like a couple of central mysteries that I am very curious about and feel will get resolved.

• 2:13John Green?

  Right. I don't know that it's a mystery, but there is a sense in which, like, things happen, which traditionally in a John Green book, nothing happens. So I tried to, I tried to insert a couple of things, you know, just to, just to reward the people.

• 2:30Hank Green?

  And I, I just, I love the ending, which, uh, I love the ending. I can't, I'm not gonna tell you anything about the ending in a public forum, but I'm just very, I was very happy about the ending.

• 2:44John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, well, here's what I'll say about the ending, and thank you for reading it, and thank you for your kind words about it, both on the air and off the air. It's available for preorder now. You can get a signed copy at HollywoodEndingBook.com.

• 2:57Hank Green?

  But, uh, sorry, that should have been me, I apologize.

• 3:00John Green?

  What I'll say about the ending that isn't a spoiler is that every time I write an ending in like a first or second draft, Sarah reads it and she's like, this is crazy.

• 3:18John Green?

  This doesn't make any damn sense.

• 3:19Hank Green?

  Like when Augustus Waters got a gun and went to shoot up a drug cartel or something?

• 3:22John Green?

  Yeah, like when, um, it's actually Hazel and Peter Van Houten got a gun and went to shoot up a drug cartel.

• 3:31Hank Green?

  Oh, man.

• 3:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:33Hank Green?

  I misremembered.

• 3:34John Green?

  Uh, that's not even to remember the time that Peter Van Houten tied Hazel to literal train tracks to recreate the trolley problem.

• 3:42Hank Green?

  What?

• 3:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Hank Green?

  Man, you're you've got like a funhouse mirror of John Green books up in there in that head that I don't know about.

• 3:52John Green?

  Margot Roth Spiegelman, surviving an earthquake in India. In this community where a single artist has built a bunch of human style figurines and created a sort of city made of sculptures.

• 4:09Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 4:09John Green?

  Yes, the list goes on and on.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  This is a great lore drop. You know, my books ended in their first drafts?

• 4:18John Green?

  How?

• 4:18Hank Green?

  With the literal, exact words that are in the final.

• 4:22John Green?

  That's amazing. That must be an amazing feeling. And now I've had it because I gave Sarah the first draft. And she read the ending and she was like, I liked the ending. And I was like, what do you mean you like the ending? And she was like, I thought it was good. And I was like, what? But it's crazy. And she was like, no, I liked it. I thought it was great.

• 4:40Hank Green?

  I, yeah. And that's the ending? You did it?

• 4:43John Green?

  Yeah, it's pretty much the same ending. I mean, I had to do some

• 4:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:47John Green?

  changes and shifts and a different epilogue and like, but relative to author ties, young woman to train tracks. It's the same ending.

• 4:57Hank Green?

  Who gets her off the train tracks?

• 5:00John Green?

  Augustus.

• 5:02Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 5:03John Green?

  Yeah, it's a different book, Hank. It's a different book.

• 5:07Hank Green?

  That's a very different book. Does he?

• 5:13John Green?

  Hey, hey, hey, that book might be 14 years old, but that is a spoiler.

• 5:19Hank Green?

  Okay, well, bleep the words that I said there.

• 5:24John Green?

  Yeah, it's funny how like, I'm very, very concerned about my, this book especially being spoiled because I want people who who want to read it cold to be able to read it cold. Like, that's really important to me because it is, you know, it is a book with a plot. But also just because I want people to read it knowing what I want them to know and not more.

• 5:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:49John Green?

  And And yet, I also feel this protectiveness over my books from 15 years ago or 20 years ago, where people will like spoil Looking for Alaska, and I'll be like, hey now, there's a big audience here. And some of them haven't read Looking for Alaska. But at some point, you do have to be able to talk about the endings of books, right? Like, at some point, you do have to be able to discuss in public that the book has an ending.

• 6:11Hank Green?

  Right. And honestly, I'm surprised that Sarah wasn't that baffled by when Kai enters the Jedi Temple and kills the younglings.

• 6:20John Green?

  There you can go. Well, I mean, he had to do it. He had to do it, that Kai.

• 6:24Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:25John Green?

  Um, he's actually named after somebody in Karate Kid, not somebody in Star Wars, but you're close. You're in this, you're in the right, you're in the right generation.

• 6:32Hank Green?

  And then he, then he kicked that guy.

• 6:35John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Hank Green?

  Even though one of his legs was really messed up.

• 6:37John Green?

  There you go. You gave him a flying kick.

• 6:42Hank Green?

  John, do you want to answer some questions from our listeners?

• 6:44John Green?

  Let's do it. Let's do it. Ask me some questions.

• 6:47Hank Green?

  Uh, but let's see. First, we've got one from, from Sydney and her mom, who asks, Dear Hank and John, me and my mom were driving at night, and it was a waxing crescent moon. However, we could still see the outline of the whole moon. Me and my mom's question is, why can we still see the outline? How does the moon work? Sincerely, Sydney and her mom. Do you know why you can see a little bit of the moon, John?

• 7:11John Green?

  So here's a confession for you. I've had this experience, and I always thought that my brain was filling in the rest of the edge of the moon.

• 7:19Hank Green?

  Interesting. Yeah, no.

• 7:20John Green?

  So I just assumed that it was an illusion caused by my totally unreliable brain, which wouldn't be the first one.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  I think, I believe that what is happening here is that there's some light bouncing off the earth, lighting up a bit of the moon.

• 7:35John Green?

  Oh, like, wait, like our electricity?

• 7:39Hank Green?

  No. So, so like, the part of, of the world that Sydney was in at that moment was dark, but from the moon's perspective, only part of the earth was dark, the part that Sydney was in, but there was another part of the earth that wasn't dark. And that light is bouncing, not, not city light, but sunlight is bouncing off of the earth.

• 7:58John Green?

  But what's so weird about that is that I always have to remind myself that the moon does not shine light, it reflects light, because it's so bright up there.

• 8:07Hank Green?

  So bright up there. But it's all sunlight bouncing off the moon.

• 8:11John Green?

  Do you, when did we figure that out? And do you think the first person who figured it out was laughed out of the room?

• 8:17Hank Green?

  I think that we've known that one for a long time. I think, I think that one's like thousands of years.

• 8:21John Green?

  Wait, wait, wait. We've known for a long time that like stars make their own light. But the brightest object in our night sky does not make its own light.

• 8:31Hank Green?

  By a long time. I mean, you know.

• 8:36John Green?

  Heliocentric universe?

• 8:36Hank Green?

  Thousands of years. Not tens of thousands of years.

• 8:41John Green?

  Let me correct myself. Heliocentric solar system. There's no way we've known for multiple thousands of years that the earth does not make its, that the moon does not make its own light.

• 8:49Hank Green?

  I should, I am kind of talking out of my butt right now. I think, I think this was Greece. I think we figured that out in Greece time, but I could, I could Google it. Do you want me to wait, wait while I do some research real quick?

• 9:01John Green?

  Yeah, you, you, you figure this out while I share with listeners that the first time I ever noticed moonlight, I was 22 years old and I was working at the children's hospital. I would work a lot of 24 hour shifts. And so I would like go outside in the emergency department at like 3am, which is one of the most realistic things about the television show The Pit is they show people taking smoke breaks, which is very, very real in the 90s at least. And, um, and I would just go outside in the emergency department and I noticed that there was moonlight that was separate from light. And I realized that the moonlight was coming from a sun that I couldn't see.

• 9:44John Green?

  And that struck me as very beautiful and important in addition to sort of silveriness of the moonlight. And so I've, I've often written about moonlight as a result.

• 9:53Hank Green?

  I remember biking home from school once and it was dark out and I kept, you know, you'd see your like shadow as you go under streetlights and then I like entered an area with no streetlights and yet there was still a shadow. And I was like, why is there this shadow? There's no streetlight. And I looked up and it was the moon. And I could see my, my moon shadow. Which also hit me very hard. And I went home and I wrote an essay about it because this was grad school. So when I say school, I mean, I was a man.

• 10:20John Green?

  So you were also about 22. We were about the same age when we discovered moonlight.

• 10:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:25John Green?

  So my point is, if that I if I made it to adulthood without knowing that moonlight existed, you're gonna have a hard time selling me on the fact that early humans figured out that the moon wasn't shining its own light.

• 10:36Hank Green?

  I like that you think that the the Greeks were early humans. Do you want to know who first wrote about this that we know of?

• 10:42John Green?

  Who?

• 10:43Hank Green?

  His name was Anaxagoras. Where do you think Anaxagoras lived?

• 10:50John Green?

  Lorax Land?

• 10:51Hank Green?

  Lorax Land. That's correct. About 2,500 years ago.

• 10:54John Green?

  Dang it!

• 10:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:56John Green?

  Oh, God, back when there were a lot of truffula trees.

• 11:00Hank Green?

  There were so many. Yeah, the Greeks were were taking them and grinding them up and turning them into snuffits, sniffits, snurf, fur, snurf, something.

• 11:10John Green?

  Yeah, snorffles, something like that.

• 11:13Hank Green?

  Something like that.

• 11:13John Green?

  Well, that is amazing. And human capacity for discovery and inquiry continues to astonish me. And it is not only a phenomenon of modern of of super modern humans. It is also a phenomenon that goes all the way back 300,000 years.

• 11:29Hank Green?

  Crazy, crazy to look up there and be like, what would explain this? And then figure it out and be right?

• 11:36John Green?

  And not only that, we weren't even the only species to do this. Neanderthals were doing it, too. They were figuring out what was going on with the stars.

• 11:43Hank Green?

  Oh, man. So cool. So it's, yeah, that dim glow is in fact called earthshine, which is beautiful.

• 11:50John Green?

  Earthshine.

• 11:52Hank Green?

  Earthshine. And and and do you want to know how long we've known about earthshine?

• 11:58John Green?

  How long?

• 11:59Hank Green?

  Around 500 years. You want to know the guy's name who figured that out?

• 12:03John Green?

  Sure.

• 12:04Hank Green?

  Or wrote it down for the first time, anyway. Leonardo da Vinci.

• 12:07John Green?

  Wow.

• 12:12Hank Green?

  Freaking crazy.

• 12:13John Green?

  That guy.

• 12:13Hank Green?

  Anaxagoras, we forgot about, but not Leonardo. We got his paintings up still.

• 12:18John Green?

  Not only that, I mean, he named a ninja turtle.

• 12:24John Green?

  That's how you really secure forever-ness, Hank, is you get a child's toy named after you. All right, Hank, we have another question from Rebecca who writes, Dear John and Hank, I started basil from seed this year because I did not want to needlessly kill any plants trying to do the life thing, so I did not thin them out.

• 12:40Hank Green?

  Yes, you did not.

• 12:42John Green?

  I now have 117 basil plants. I managed to get 77 in various permanent pots. What do I do with the remaining 40 plants buried in basil? Rebecca. Rebecca, you just started a business.

• 12:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, I will say at the grocery store I go to, the basil is on sale in Ziploc bags that were clearly also purchased at that store. Like, somebody is the basil supplier for my grocery store, and they live, like, I could probably hit their house with a baseball, is how I feel about this.

• 13:15John Green?

  So you couldn't hit their house with a baseball, but someone could.

• 13:19Hank Green?

  What do you mean? Like, I wouldn't want to get in trouble? You don't trust me to be a rebellious man?

• 13:24John Green?

  I trust you. I don't trust you to hit a baseball very far.

• 13:27Hank Green?

  Oh, I would, I would, yeah, I wouldn't be hitting it with a baseball bat. I would have no idea how to do that.

• 13:33John Green?

  Well, then I don't trust you to be able to throw a baseball outside your own yard.

• 13:39Hank Green?

  Have you heard my theory on grocery stores and baseballs?

• 13:42John Green?

  No, very much not.

• 13:45Hank Green?

  I think that, that, that a grocery store can no longer be a good grocery store if you could not imagine taking the roof off and throwing a baseball from one corner of it to the other.

• 13:57John Green?

  Oh, you think it's too big?

• 13:59Hank Green?

  Too big.

• 14:00John Green?

  I like a big grocery store.

• 14:02Hank Green?

  No, I hate it. I hate them. I'm in there forever.

• 14:06John Green?

  Oh, there's an international grocery store in Indianapolis that's just endless. I mean, it's just.

• 14:10Hank Green?

  That's, that's almost like a museum. Now, now I'm into that, where I'm like discovering things.

• 14:15John Green?

  Football fields of grocery store.

• 14:18Hank Green?

  And there's like, there's like spices you've never heard of.

• 14:21John Green?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 14:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's different. That I, that I'd go for. But like, for everyday grocery shopping, I know what I need. I don't need anything in particular weird. I need peanut butter and jelly and bread.

• 14:35John Green?

  Right.

• 14:36Hank Green?

  And I just like, I want to get in and out, but I want to have it be, you know, I don't want to be just in like a gas station. I want to be in a, in a place that also ideally has like a deli.

• 14:46John Green?

  Okay. All right. You know who invented the grocery store you're pitching to me?

• 14:53Hank Green?

  Chuck E. Cheese.

• 14:59John Green?

  First off, that guy's name, that guy has a name and it's not Chuck E. Cheese.

• 15:05Hank Green?

  That Chuck Cheese.

• 15:06John Green?

  It's Charles Entertainment Cheese.

• 15:09Hank Green?

  My bad, my bad. Charles Entertainment Cheese. Uh, no, I think it's whoever created Piggly Wiggly, John, right?

• 15:18John Green?

  Clarence Saunders.

• 15:19Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:21John Green?

  Clarence Saunders invented the grocery store.

• 15:23Hank Green?

  You can see how I confuse him for Chuck E., for Charles Entertainment Cheese.

• 15:26John Green?

  The inventor of, of Piggly Wiggly, uh, the first ever self-service grocery store that also, no, he didn't invent it. So I think he didn't invent the modern grocery store until he, he lost control of Piggly Wiggly, went bankrupt and started a new chain of grocery stores, which, uh, he wanted to call the Clarence Saunders Grocery Store, but the owners of Piggly Wiggly were like, no way, man. You can't start a rival grocery store. We bought this from you and you signed a non-compete clause. And so he ended up calling it the Clarence Saunders Sole Owner of My Name Grocery Store.

• 16:03Hank Green?

  What?

• 16:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Hank Green?

  Man, I love it. I love how fueled by spite we can be.

• 16:11John Green?

  Oh, Clarence Saunders was big time fueled by spite. He once said that there was going to be a, a, a football stadium, uh, in Memphis, uh, for his, uh, Memphis football team that was going to be adorned with like the, the, the spiked heads of his enemies.

• 16:29Hank Green?

  I mean, I gotta tell you, John, like the, my past is littered with former nemeses that I'd never think about anymore. And that's like the biggest win.

• 16:38John Green?

  Yeah. Do you have current nemeses though? I do.

• 16:41Hank Green?

  I do, I do. And I hope that someday they will, they will be forgotten.

• 16:45John Green?

  Lay it out for me, Hank. Who are your top two nemeses? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  I can't tell, I can't tell you.

• 16:51John Green?

  No, I'll just bleep it out.

• 16:52Hank Green?

  It's both embarrassing. It's, well, my top nemesis is Elon Musk.

• 16:56John Green?

  Okay, that's a lot embarrassing. I'm not believing that.

• 16:58Hank Green?

  No, but like, I, I, I, I can't.

• 17:01John Green?

  There's never gonna come a time where Elon Musk is like, oh, man, Hank Green is my nemesis.

• 17:07Hank Green?

  I think he doesn't like me. I think he legitimately doesn't like me.

• 17:10John Green?

  I think when he thinks about either of us, which isn't often, he, he feels that we are virtue signaling, snuffy.

• 17:20Hank Green?

  He thinks that.

• 17:21John Green?

  Liberal trash.

• 17:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, he thinks that we caught the woke mind virus.

• 17:25John Green?

  I mean, he thinks that we spread the woke mind virus. It's even worse than that.

• 17:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:30John Green?

  But I bet he regrets naming Starlink after the fault in our stars.

• 17:35Hank Green?

  Is that what he told you?

• 17:36John Green?

  That's what he told the public on a tweet.

• 17:40Hank Green?

  Oh, man. Oh, I just think about when I told him that he shouldn't have spread misinformation and he responded to me, and therefore Twitter should die?

• 17:55John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:58Hank Green?

  I was like, no, I, I was like, no, man, that's not what I said. I feel like, I feel like that was a big escalation.

• 18:04John Green?

  Yeah, that's a classic, classic Elon escalation. My nemesis, I have two. Tucker Carlson is one. There's no getting around it. I don't want Tucker Carlson to be my nemesis.

• 18:17Hank Green?

  It's, but it's in there. They take root.

• 18:19John Green?

  But he took root and it's hard for me to not, like, I still get fed a fair amount of Tucker Carlson content when I'm in an algorithmically generated space because they know that I'll watch it with all the lack of love in my heart.

• 18:32Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't have that.

• 18:34John Green?

  I watch it and I'm challenged by my own faith tradition that calls for me to love my enemies.

• 18:43John Green?

  And then the other one is our lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, who

• 18:50John Green?

  tried to get my books removed from the YA section of a local library in the only job he ever had before becoming lieutenant governor.

• 19:04John Green?

  And then when I wrote a letter to the library board, including him being like, what the actual heck? Like, these are YA books and they should be in the YA section. He threw the librarian in the community under the bus and was like, oh, yeah, no, like, I didn't mean for that to happen when I wrote this legislation that said that, yeah, every book that described sex should not be in the YA section. And if it has, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, The Fall of Our Stars is great. And then he's still banned Looking for Alaska. I really dislike that guy. I find him to be intellectually disingenuous.

• 19:39Hank Green?

  Yeah. It's funny what gets its hooks into us.

• 19:44John Green?

  Yeah, it's one thing to like ban a book, right? It's another thing to ban a bunch of books by your neighbor.

• 19:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:54John Green?

  Right? Like, he and I are neighbors. And that shows, it just makes me think that, like, when 10% of the people who walk through the grocery store recognize me, they recognize me as like, someone they despise, which is just a bummer. And I don't like Micah Beckwith for like, furthering that false narrative. And then I said he was my nemesis and the indie star asked how he felt about me and he was like, oh, I like John.

• 20:19Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, that's the thing. There's so much of this is just about, like, what thing will get me attention right now? Not about any

• 20:29John Green?

  Right.

• 20:30Hank Green?

  actual feelings of animosity, or even any belief in what should, you know, or maybe they believe it in a moment and then they haven't considered that belief very deeply. But yeah, it's mostly about what will get attention in a moment. And a lot of people's decisions these days make a lot more sense if you ask, instead of like, what's the sort of worldview behind this? If you ask, is this going to deliver attention to them?

• 20:54John Green?

  Yeah. Including from me on my podcast, Inside My Platform, right now.

• 21:01Hank Green?

  And that is what you do with 100 basil plants.

• 21:11John Green?

  Today's podcast is brought to you by Rebecca's Basil Plants. Rebecca's Basil Plants, available at Rebecca's House right now.

• 21:18Hank Green?

  You could maybe put it in like a Facebook post or something. Maybe somebody wants your basil. That's totally a thing. People buy, people buy starts. Yeah.

• 21:28John Green?

  Yeah, I buy starts all the time.

• 21:29Hank Green?

  I was just gonna tell you to throw them away, but.

• 21:32John Green?

  I need three basil plants. I just don't need 40.

• 21:36Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Leonardo da Vinci, the Ninja Turtle. Leonardo da Vinci, the Ninja Turtle. Bet you didn't know his last name was Da Vinci.

• 21:45John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Leonardo da Vinci, the Moonshine Man. Leonardo da Vinci, the Moonshine Man.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  Maybe, maybe, I don't know. It was Earthshine, but maybe there's a guy who lives in like the, the mountains of Tennessee.

• 21:59John Green?

  Who's also named Leonardo da Vinci, who's out there making moonshine all the time? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's who I'm talking about. Leonardo da Vinci, the Moonshine Man, Hank. That guy in Kentucky.

• 22:10Hank Green?

  Oh, we're loose today. And this podcast also brought to you by one more person, Peter Van Houten, who tied a human person to the railroad tracks just to illustrate the trolley problem.

• 22:23John Green?

  Wasn't his best moment.

• 22:24Hank 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 gonna 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.

• 23:08Hank 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.

• 23:58John 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.

• 24:41John 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 noCD.com.

• 25:25John Green?

  All right, here comes a question from Carr who writes, Dear John and perhaps Hank, I'm 16 this year. Recently, I said something to my mom without fully thinking about it and she's completely avoiding me. Every time I try to speak to her, she stays silent and does something along the lines of throwing her phone or closing a door with a little more than needed force. The passive aggressiveness is driving me bonkers. Of course, I regret what I said, but I have no idea how to make amends with her. We've always been really close and although I would not admit it to her, I really miss her. Is there any way I can mend our relationship? Angsty and confused Carr. Carr, play them this bit.

• 25:55Hank Green?

  All right.

• 25:55John Green?

  You miss your mom, you love your mom, you regret what you said, and you wish you could take it back. But also, Mom, I understand as a parent of a 16-year-old, getting your feelings hurt by a 16-year-old, but you've got to remember, they don't have a prefrontal cortex, man. Like, they're not able, it's, they want to, but they can't. Like, they, they, they are, they're, they're struggling. So, you're gonna have to meet halfway.

• 26:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:31John Green?

  And this podcast is going to be your...

• 26:34Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 26:35John Green?

  ...amends.

• 26:37Hank Green?

  We've given you, we've given you an opportunity here, and I don't know if it's, if it's takeable, because we are just two guys. But it seems like you honestly regret the thing that you said.

• 26:47John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Hank Green?

  It seems like it, this could be a hard thing to, to get in, and like, ultimately, like, harm done, damage done is a, is like, it might take its own time to heal. But I don't think that, that if you're having, but, but if you're having the thought, is there any way I can mend our relationship? That's worrying, because like, of course there is.

• 27:11John Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Hank Green?

  Of course, you will once again have a relationship between a mother and a child, and... And and and also, I would say that like, there's there's space here to if there's other adults that you feel comfortable bringing into the situation, if it starts to feel like that kind of difficulty, you can also bring that in because.

• 27:30John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, don't just ask your internet uncles for help, ask your real uncles for help.

• 27:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, hopefully, there are some around who can who can give this who can give this advice. But though you will not admit it to your mom, hopefully, we can admit it for you. You miss her and you do regret the thing that you said, whatever it was.

• 27:54John Green?

  When I was 16, I told my mom that I did drugs, even though I didn't.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  It's funny, that's the opposite of what I did when I was 16.

• 28:08John Green?

  My point is that you can't rely on a 16 year old. They're like the least and I say this with love, car like it's not a dig.

• 28:17John Green?

  But man, life is life can be hard.

• 28:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. And and time tends to heal, but I'm so sorry that this is happening and it's it's very hard when the people we love, when we when we hurt the people we love, even if we do it on purpose, the regret is real and you know, we learn.

• 28:39John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, you can't take things back, but you can move things forward.

• 28:44Hank Green?

  All right, John, this next question comes from Gwen, who asks, Dear Hank and John, how do light particles not bounce off of each other and get all jumbled up together? From what I understand, objects reflect light in every direction, right? It seems like the light particles from my shoe or my chair or my sister should be hitting one another and messing up their trajectory. Is this because light is a wave and not a particle? But wouldn't waves mess one another up as well? I've been plagued by this for some time. Pumpkin pumpkins and penguins, Gwen.

• 29:14John Green?

  It's good, Gwen. It's good stuff.

• 29:16Hank Green?

  And Gwen's.

• 29:16John Green?

  I'm gonna avoid this one, Gwen. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of poke it with a stick and say I don't understand it.

• 29:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, that makes sense that you would do that, but.

• 29:26John Green?

  But light, isn't it like both a wave and a particle? I don't know if that helps.

• 29:30Hank Green?

  It doesn't really, but if you could, if you could wager something outside of light is both a particle and a wave, why doesn't light bump into itself?

• 29:39John Green?

  Uh, because it has no mass?

• 29:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, kinda. Light, it turns out, doesn't bump into itself. It just, like, two photons will pass directly up, over one another. Even if they were big enough that they would probabilistically hit each other very often, which, you know, in terms of bigness, this is a little bit of a difficult thing to say here, because there's kind of, they don't have a size.

• 30:06Hank Green?

  From what I can tell. But even if they were big enough, they would just pass through each other. They don't interact with one another, which is amazing. Turns out, photons don't, don't touch. They don't engage with electromagnetism, which is the thing that makes touch happen. Which it seems like what makes touch happen should just be existing. But indeed, that is not the case. You can exist and not touch.

• 30:33John Green?

  That's so weird.

• 30:35Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know.

• 30:36John Green?

  That's so weird. I don't even know what to say about that.

• 30:39Hank Green?

  I know.

• 30:40John Green?

  Except that, like, the rules of the universe are so weird, and the, like, the more you look into the universe, the weirder it gets.

• 30:50Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 30:51John Green?

  Even the, like, I was reading Katie Mack's new book, that's not out yet, so I shouldn't be promoing it, but it talks about how, like, the way we're taught about atoms when we're in middle school and then in high school is useful but not accurate.

• 31:08Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 31:09John Green?

  And that, like, an atom is actually so much more than the sort of electron shell that I imagined it to have.

• 31:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's, there's a lot of weird stuff going on in there.

• 31:20John Green?

  So much weird stuff.

• 31:21Hank Green?

  It's like a weirdo.

• 31:22John Green?

  The weirder it gets.

• 31:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, and there's all kinds of like geometries that seem like, did somebody make that up? But then it's like real.

• 31:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Hank Green?

  I don't know, man. But they don't touch, so they don't bounce and they don't collect up and they just like go exactly the way that they're gonna go, which is super useful for using them to detect the world around us.

• 31:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Hank Green?

  They're always coming from where they're coming from.

• 31:48John Green?

  Right, okay, well.

• 31:50Hank Green?

  We can, you can, but you can bend their trajectory, but only by, only by bending space itself.

• 31:56John Green?

  Hmm.

• 31:58Hank Green?

  Or, or by having them pass through different materials. So, you know, like if, if the speed of light is different in one material than another, which it is, don't ask me why, then light will bend as it enters that material, the way it does with like glass.

• 32:12John Green?

  Wow.

• 32:12Hank Green?

  And then you can get them to like bunch up, which, you know, magnifying glass would do.

• 32:17John Green?

  That, that's a mind blower. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, let's answer one more question, this one from Ruby who writes, Dear John and Hank, as a British listener, I'm always struck by how American you guys are. Do you notice your American-ness? Despite having similar cultures and being constantly exposed to American media, I always feel like, wow, these people are different from me, or we have totally different worldviews and cultures. Do you feel that difference when you visit other countries with globalization? Will there be a day when we aren't as conscious of the distinctive separation between peoples? Tea and biscuits, or dinner and cookies? Ruby? It's more like a late afternoon snack.

• 32:54Hank Green?

  Snacky, snacky and cookies. Yeah.

• 32:57John Green?

  I, I, I do notice it, and I think while, if I were to move out of the US, I would move to the UK because it would be the least culturally disruptive. It is an important reminder that anybody who moves anywhere experiences a pretty intense cultural disruption. And the further you move from what you're used to, especially if you're in a different language environment, if you're in a different, you know, whole different cultural environment, like the harder it is, and it's.

• 33:26John Green?

  It would be like the three months or six months, however long I lived in the Netherlands. I was shocked by how different it was and how hard it was for me to get accustomed to the difference.

• 33:38Hank Green?

  And, and that's a place where things are not very different at all.

• 33:41John Green?

  No, totally, totally the same.

• 33:44Hank Green?

  Yeah, England is such an interesting example because it is like outside of like Canada, I guess. The most similar place to America, you know, like literally the, the, the language is the same. The colonists that begat this country were English.

• 34:02Hank Green?

  Certainly not exclusively, but you know, in our history primarily and the, and the like, we share a lot of media. You know, we watch a lot of the same shows, but then you show me Mr. Blobby and I'm like, no way. You're not messing with me right now. That cannot possibly be a thing that would Mr. Blobby cannot have happened in America. That is.

• 34:24John Green?

  Well, neither could Doctor Who.

• 34:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, so many, so many different things and like there are all of these and you, you, you don't understand how much cultural knowledge you have of your place. And there's such an interesting thing about England where it feels like there should be nothing. And so the fact that there's so much is, is like really illustrative.

• 34:44John Green?

  Why does it feel like there should be nothing? Cause it's one third of a small island?

• 34:48Hank Green?

  It's just like they speak English.

• 34:50John Green?

  Right. Like we do, they go to, they, they have about the same number of years of school as we do.

• 34:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's lots of shared systems. Yeah.

• 34:57John Green?

  Right, right. They drive on the other side of the road, which is weird, but they drive.

• 35:04John Green?

  You know, it's not like.

• 35:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, they got a lot of the same cars even.

• 35:07John Green?

  Yeah, their cars are a little smaller, but your point is well taken.

• 35:11Hank Green?

  Different cars. Yeah.

• 35:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Hank Green?

  We got, we got, we have, our cars have gone really off out of hand. I gotta say.

• 35:17John Green?

  I know. I'm buying a small car just as a act of counterculturalism.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, I can't, I can't wait to, to get back into a small car.

• 35:26John Green?

  You're in a fairly small car. Actually, I know your car because it's also my car and it's not too big.

• 35:32Hank Green?

  If it's big to me, I want to get back in that Bolt.

• 35:35John Green?

  No, you miss your Bolt.

• 35:36Hank Green?

  Man, I'll tell you what, what a car. I mean.

• 35:41Hank Green?

  I'll tell you that prices of used bolts going up right now. Why? Well, let's not get into that. But the price of bolts, it's a great car, very small. It's the most affordable electric car in America. I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna be to the moon. Everybody's gonna have a bolt. Counter culture begins with a B and starts with a Chevy.

• 36:03John Green?

  Okay, alright.

• 36:05Hank Green?

  That's my, that's my slogan for when they hire me to be the spokesperson for the Chevy Bolt.

• 36:12Hank Green?

  What were we talking about there? I feel like, did we get it?

• 36:15John Green?

  I think we got it.

• 36:16Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 36:19Hank Green?

  Wait, John, I want to ask one more question before you get the news from RC1.

• 36:22John Green?

  Okay.

• 36:23Hank Green?

  This is from Emily who asks, Dear Hank and John, what am I supposed to be doing with my tongue at the dentist? DFTBA Emily.

• 36:29John Green?

  Hmm. Hmm.

• 36:31Hank Green?

  This reminds me, last time I was at the dentist, my dentist asked me if, said my teeth were stained and asked me if I smoke or drink coffee and I told him that I drank it.

• 36:40John Green?

  Like you drank smoke?

• 36:42Hank Green?

  No, I drank.

• 36:43John Green?

  Oh, cuz you were making a pun.

• 36:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:47John Green?

  Do you smoke or drink coffee? I drink it.

• 36:58John Green?

  God, that's a bad joke.

• 36:59Hank Green?

  I feel like you actually liked it. You just couldn't let yourself.

• 37:03John Green?

  Nope. You're wrong. You're wrong. You've been misinformed.

• 37:08Hank Green?

  What are you supposed to do with your tongue at the dentist? It's in there the whole time. We can't get rid of it. You got a tentacle in your mouth. Don't think about it too much.

• 37:16John Green?

  Yeah, I think the key is not to think about it, actually. I don't think, because I think what your tongue does naturally is just fine. But then you start, it's like when you're getting photographed and you start to think about where your hands are and then you're like, why do I have these?

• 37:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, somebody take these away.

• 37:30John Green?

  Yeah, it's like that.

• 37:32Hank Green?

  I just want the dentist to take care of it for me. I'm like, wherever that tongue's supposed to be, put it there. I tell you though, it has a mind of its own sometimes.

• 37:41John Green?

  It does. Well, the tongue desperately wishes to participate in the dental procedures, which of course is the one thing it can't do.

• 37:48Hank Green?

  It's like, what is that? Ah, there you go. Fish sharp.

• 37:52John Green?

  I think in general, the less you think about what you're supposed to be doing with your tongue, the better off you are when it comes to dentistry.

• 37:59Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the dentists, here's what I'll tell you. Pretty much every mouth that dentist ever dealt with, there's been a tongue in there. They're experts in this.

• 38:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Hank Green?

  So like, what you're doing, that's normal. They've seen it.

• 38:15John Green?

  Yep.

• 38:16Hank Green?

  They've seen every way a tongue can go.

• 38:18John Green?

  There you go.

• 38:20John Green?

  All right, what's the news from Mars this week?

• 38:22Hank Green?

  In the news from Mars. Did I tell you I got theme music?

• 38:28John Green?

  No.

• 38:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. That's, I just did it for you.

• 38:32John Green?

  It's great.

• 38:33Hank Green?

  And now I'm trying to find that to, actually, I was trying to kill time while I found it, which I do now have. In the news from Mars, John, do you know what astronauts do with their dirty clothes?

• 38:45John Green?

  What?

• 38:47Hank Green?

  I want you to guess.

• 38:49John Green?

  Uh, put them in a hamper.

• 38:53Hank Green?

  That's step one. It's just like normal. The step one is just like normal. Step two is completely different from normal.

• 39:00John Green?

  Okay. What do they do?

• 39:02Hank Green?

  Instead of washing, washing them, which they can't do because they do not have water up there.

• 39:07John Green?

  Right.

• 39:07Hank Green?

  They put them in a pot and burn them up in the earth's atmosphere.

• 39:11John Green?

  You're shh kidding me?

• 39:14Hank Green?

  I'm not, that's what they do.

• 39:15John Green?

  They just burn their clothes?

• 39:18Hank Green?

  They just, they send more up. They have temporary clothes. Yes. It's way better to do it that way than to, than to, to take the resources to clean them. Yeah, they wear them for like three to five days and then they put them, they, they fold them up real tight. And they put them in a bag.

• 39:35John Green?

  That's a great fact. That's a great fact.

• 39:40Hank Green?

  With a lot of other stuff that goes into the thing to get burned up in the atmosphere. But on a mission to Mars, this is less convenient because resupply is not as easy. It'd be better to reuse stuff if possible. So scientists at the University of Alabama Huntsville and the Marshall Space Flight Center have developed a device that blasts helium, air and water vapor along with electricity at the clothing. And that blast makes oxygen ions that get into the fabric of the clothing and kills off microbes through oxidative stress. Basically, it just gives them too many reactive oxygen molecules to deal with and they die. That blast is safe and doesn't cause any damage to the fabric, but it's also currently not very efficient. So far, the gun can clean about a patch, a square centimeter wide at a time.

• 40:25John Green?

  Oh, okay. So that's really inefficient.

• 40:30Hank Green?

  A first step. The researchers are still refining the idea. They're also looking at developing a plasma washing machine, which I didn't do any more research on, but is a cool sounding couple of words.

• 40:43John Green?

  That is cool sounding. That sounds like the future, man.

• 40:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. And I made, Deboki and I then spent a huge amount of time talking about whether or not we could use these systems just on our armpits.

• 40:55John Green?

  That's a great idea. Just one centimeter at a time.

• 40:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, that's way easier than cleaning a whole garment.

• 41:02John Green?

  Right.

• 41:03Hank Green?

  But I got worried about introducing oxidative stress to the cells of my body rather than just the microbes on the body.

• 41:11John Green?

  Well, you are.

• 41:12Hank Green?

  It is made of my body.

• 41:14John Green?

  You are a little paranoid about cancer. I don't know why.

• 41:20Hank Green?

  Wouldn't want to get armpit cancer.

• 41:23Hank Green?

  Which I already did in a way.

• 41:26John Green?

  You did. You had cancer in the armpit. You had it elsewhere, but yeah, it was in the armpit, too. Well Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon this week is that it's been a year to the day as we're recording this, since Miles Hippolyte scored that goal at Wembley to send AFC Wimbledon back to the third tier of English football where we managed barely to stay last season.

• 41:51Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 41:52John Green?

  We are the only, out of all the teams that were promoted via the playoffs in the last six years, from League Two to League One, we are the only one that survived a season in League One.

• 42:06Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 42:06John Green?

  So, that's something to be proud of. It does indicate that there's going to be some stress next year, but we're gonna do our best.

• 42:14Hank Green?

  It continues to be difficult.

• 42:15John Green?

  It continues to be difficult, and we don't have a buyer yet for the 25% of AFC Wimbledon that is now available. We haven't found the right partner, or at least if we have, I don't know about it, yet to buy that remaining 25% that's available before the Don's Trust, the Don's Trust owns at least 51% of the club, but we haven't found that 25% owner who potentially could fuel a little extra capital into the club that could keep us going for, make us a little more sustainable, but we're not there yet. So it looks like it's gonna be another hard season, but life is full of hard seasons and we somehow make it through.

• 42:57Hank Green?

  John, do you know who Hippolytus was in Greek mythology?

• 42:59John Green?

  I don't.

• 43:00Hank Green?

  He was the son of Theseus, associated with, and this is crazy, horses, chastity, soccer balls, and karate kicks.

• 43:09John Green?

  Did you make up soccer balls?

• 43:11Hank Green?

  And karate kicks.

• 43:12John Green?

  Did you, you made those two up?

• 43:14Hank Green?

  I made those two up, yeah.

• 43:15John Green?

  Okay, great.

• 43:16Hank Green?

  Sorry.

• 43:16John Green?

  Well, Miles Hippolyte is, if I recall correctly, a Grenadian international. He plays his international football for Grenada.

• 43:26Hank Green?

  It's a French name, I think. Is that, is that related?

• 43:30John Green?

  Probably. Probably. Let me, let me find out. Yeah, probably. Miles Hippolyte was born in, in England, and he represents Grenada at an international level.

• 43:42Hank Green?

  Interesting.

• 43:42John Green?

  Uh, and he's never played in France.

• 43:46Hank Green?

  Yes, but it was a French colony, Grenada was.

• 43:49John Green?

  Yeah, I believe it was.

• 43:51Hank Green?

  Up until the 1760s.

• 43:55Hank Green?

  So much, so much world, John. It's fascinating to watch Orin realize how much world there is. He's never really been interested in, uh, like, cultural geography, just in the physical geography so far, but he's starting to, to ask questions about. Last night, he was like, "Why is there, why are there Guineas in Africa, but then there's also a Guinea in the, in the Oceania, Papua New Guinea?" And I was like, "God, man, I don't know." And then we read all about all of the use of the word Guinea.

• 44:27John Green?

  Wow. Well, that sounds interesting.

• 44:30Hank Green?

  And New Guinea is just like any other new place, where it's like, "This seems like, it looks a lot like that other place that we were before."

• 44:37John Green?

  I just want to state for the record that Grenada was also a British colony. So who knows?

• 44:44Hank Green?

  Who knows? We're learning, we're learning, John.

• 44:48John Green?

  It's also invaded by a little nation called the United States.

• 44:53Hank Green?

  Seems like something we'd do.

• 44:56John Green?

  Thanks for listening to our podcast. You can email us your questions at [email protected].

• 45:02Hank Green?

  This podcast was edited by Linus Obenhouse. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.