437: Mouse Relay Intercept

What would you want your clickbait title to be? What is a face? Why is an MRI so loud? Could Rome actually be built in a day? What is going on with the design of traffic lights? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, why is your foot never 12 inches?

• 0:25John Green?

  Um, why?

• 0:27Hank Green?

  Because 12 inches is infinitely precise. It's a rigidly defined length, while a human foot is a soft, deformable biological object with no uniquely defined endpoints. There is no canonical measurement vertical, and it is a length that varies with posture, load, temperature, time of day, and measurement error. Any real measurement has uncertainty. The boundary of the foot is fuzzy at the atomic scale, and for a continuously varying quantity, the probability of matching one exact value is zero. So a foot can be measured or described as 12 inches long, but in the mathematical and metrological sense, it can never be exactly 12 inches long.

• 1:03John Green?

  Did you ask ChatGPT for a dad joke?

• 1:05Hank Green?

  No, no, that was me.

• 1:08John Green?

  Okay.

• 1:11Hank Green?

  I went to Reddit looking for a dad joke, and there was one. It says, "Why is a hand never 12 inches long?" Because then that would be a foot. And then I thought to myself, "Well, what if a foot was exactly 12 inches long?" Actually, that would be impossible.

• 1:24John Green?

  Okay.

• 1:25Hank Green?

  And then I wrote that.

• 1:26John Green?

  Okay. Yeah, no, it's good. It's good writing. It's so good that it reminded me of a sort of mid-level large language model.

• 1:35Hank Green?

  You really liked it.

• 1:37John Green?

  Yeah, I loved it. How are you doing?

• 1:39Hank Green?

  I'm good. I'm good. I'm living the life. I'm so glad that I have my chemistry degree so that I always have significant figures to fall back on. As a, as a potential dad joke.

• 1:55John Green?

  As a potential joke. I in turn am glad I have my religion degree so that I can stare into the middle distance and contemplate the universe.

• 2:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, I made a TikTok recently about how somebody was asking if the self that they see in the mirror is different from the self that is like a past version of the self because of the time that light takes to travel.

• 2:13John Green?

  Sure.

• 2:13Hank Green?

  And, and then I had to remind them that the self was just a story that we tell to ourselves, not a real thing.

• 2:18John Green?

  Yeah, it's a lie that we whisper to ourselves to try to go on.

• 2:21Hank Green?

  Well, I don't know. I think that it's like selected for. I think that it's, you know, I think that we're biologically built to feel a self, but maybe not actually. There are some people who, who say that like the self is a relatively recent phenomenon and was not around at the beginning of humanity for, for maybe quite a while.

• 2:37John Green?

  Right. There are some people who say that. I, until we can interview early humans, it will be hard to know for sure.

• 2:43Hank Green?

  Indeed.

• 2:45John Green?

  Indeed. All right, Hank, let me ask you some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Lauren who writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently had Google show me an article that tried to grab me with the title, Millionaire YouTuber Hank Green.

• 2:58Hank Green?

  I saw that too.

• 2:59John Green?

  I did.

• 2:59Hank Green?

  This is a wild article because it is pitched, it is posed as if they interviewed me, but in fact, it is just quotes from a video.

• 3:07John Green?

  It's great. It's great. I didn't click it because I don't hate myself enough currently to fall for that kind of clickbait. But it did get me thinking, what would you rather your clickbait title slash honorific be? I would go with slightly deranged veterinarian Lauren personally. That feels, yes, kangaroos and kelpies, Lauren.

• 3:25Hank Green?

  Um, uh, on a journey of meaning, YouTuber Hank Green.

• 3:33John Green?

  Anxious has been John Green.

• 3:38Hank Green?

  Coming down the other side of the mountain, YouTuber John Green.

• 3:45John Green?

  I love that that Financial Times article called us The Fault in Our Stars author and his brother, as if like, that's where we're at right now in 2025, with Hank Green answering questions on TikTok to hundreds of millions of viewers.

• 3:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, the question raised by that is simply, who is this article for? And, and do they have a better idea of the sort of state of the American vibe around us?

• 4:13John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  I actually, John, can I tell you something weird?

• 4:16John Green?

  Sure, but we got to get back to this question because it's funny.

• 4:19Hank Green?

  We certainly will, and, and this will help us, I'm sure.

• 4:22John Green?

  Okay.

• 4:23Hank Green?

  I was talking to my therapist who blissfully has no idea who I am.

• 4:26John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Hank Green?

  And, and I was talking to her about some things that had happened in my past and how I sort of carry them forward, and I think that they create some triggers for me.

• 4:38Hank Green?

  And, and I had to explain you a little bit, and I was like, he's an author, he was very, very well known. He wrote The Fault in Our Stars, and she was like, oh, oh, no, did I ruin you for me? Did I ruin it?

• 4:53John Green?

  No, it is true. For a certain segment of the American public.

• 4:57Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:57John Green?

  That is much more of a thing than all of our online work, which is so funny because as, as proud as I am of The Fault in Our Stars and how the movie did and everything, like, I do not think of it as the center of my professional life in any way. And it's certainly not the center of your professional life.

• 5:15Hank Green?

  No, being the brother of the man who wrote The Fault in Our Stars is not the center of my professional life, though perhaps being your brother is.

• 5:21John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, being your brother probably is the center of my professional life. I mean, at this point, about half the time I get recognized, it's not for being your brother, it's for being you.

• 5:29Hank Green?

  Professional brother Hank Green.

• 5:32Hank Green?

  And his brother, professional brother John Green.

• 5:36John Green?

  Not since the McElroy's have we seen brothers so professional.

• 5:41Hank Green?

  They really, they really went for it. They are really professionally brothers.

• 5:45John Green?

  Depressive Dr. Pepper enthusiast John Green.

• 5:52John Green?

  Founder of Hank Green.

• 5:54Hank Green?

  Founder of the mola mola cult Hank Green.

• 5:57John Green?

  Oh, yes, of course.

• 6:01Hank Green?

  No one knows about the mola mola cult.

• 6:03John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 6:05Hank Green?

  That's just me.

• 6:06John Green?

  Pelican fanatic and top tier TikToker Hank Green.

• 6:11Hank Green?

  Guy who has a PS5 but never plays it, John Green.

• 6:15John Green?

  I play it on, I play it on stream exclusively.

• 6:20John Green?

  If I'm playing FIFA, that's because.

• 6:22Hank Green?

  FIFA streamer John Green.

• 6:23John Green?

  Exactly. Professional FIFA streamer John Green. Yeah, was seen today walking the streets of New York, looking confused and afraid.

• 6:34Hank Green?

  You know, you know what my job has been lately, like my actual honorific?

• 6:37John Green?

  What?

• 6:38Hank Green?

  Manager of a single car repair Hank Green.

• 6:43Hank Green?

  I've spent so much time dealing with this fucking car.

• 6:48John Green?

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's exhausting.

• 6:50Hank Green?

  I thought I bought a normal car, but they, there was no one in, within a hundred, literally within a hundred miles who could fix it.

• 6:57John Green?

  Yeah, you bought a Hyundai Ioniq 5.

• 6:59Hank Green?

  You know, I live in a small town and I forget that.

• 7:02John Green?

  I also own a Hyundai Ioniq 5.

• 7:05Hank Green?

  And I bet there's somebody in Indianapolis who can fix it if it breaks.

• 7:08John Green?

  Well, the battery, the battery just went dead.

• 7:10Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 7:11John Green?

  Yeah, there was.

• 7:11Hank Green?

  Did you have the same problem as me?

• 7:13John Green?

  Not only did I have the same problem as you, I had the same problem as about 40% of Hyundai Ioniq 5 owners.

• 7:18Hank Green?

  It's a recall that I, I thought had been fixed, but apparently I had not gotten the recall done.

• 7:23John Green?

  At any rate, I'm glad that you, uh, are getting it fixed. I'm sorry that it's become such a hullabaloo.

• 7:28Hank Green?

  It's done. It's working now. It's, it's functional.

• 7:31John Green?

  Meanwhile, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 itself is like long-suffering Hyundai Ioniq 5 has to drive Hank Green around all day.

• 7:39John Green?

  All right, Hank, let's answer this question from Joe who writes, Dear John and Hank, what is a face? Like, obviously I know what a face is, but why? It's not its own organ. It's just a cluster of features that we have a name for. Is there some evolutionary benefit to having all your sensory organs squished together? A lot of animals seem to be a big fan of feces for, sorry, faces. The whole question is about faces. I don't know why I introduced feces in the first place. A lot of animals seem to be a big fan of faces and feces for some reason. Wouldn't we be able to get more information if everything was spread out? I can't stop thinking about this. Fanfare and faces, Joe.

• 8:12Hank Green?

  I think that the reason is is a kind of efficiency, maybe.

• 8:18John Green?

  Well, I assume that the reason the face is the face for like humans and primates and stuff is that we like to look at each other and I dogs like to look at each other, raccoons like to look at each other. Like, there's something inherently social about most mammals. And so I would think that's one of the reasons. But is there a reason why all of our sensory organs are squished together? I never thought of that, but it's true. Like, I can't breathe out of my, I can't like smell out of my finger.

• 8:44Hank Green?

  Yeah, though, sometimes you, there are things that can like smell with their feet, etc.

• 8:50John Green?

  Sure.

• 8:51Hank Green?

  And, and we do a lot of sensing with parts of our body that are not the face. But certainly, the face is the, by far, the highest concentration of, of sensory things. And, you know, if you look back, you can see that that's kind of been that way the whole time. So that's why. So, you know, worms, they like had a mouth on one end first, and then they started to develop sensory organs on that end because.

• 9:13John Green?

  No, it had to figure out like what to look at.

• 9:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, what to look at and then like, you know, feel it with its like face tentacles or something to be like, is this dirt or is it, is it food? Like, it's really sort of like all the way back are, it's, it's not even that this is particularly useful for us. It's that all the way through, it was useful. And, and even if it wasn't useful, at this point, it's so ingrained, even like at fish, you know, fish have their noses.

• 9:40John Green?

  Right. It would be hard to move the face around.

• 9:43Hank Green?

  There's also like, it's very complicated wiring in there.

• 9:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Hank Green?

  So just a ton of different nerves all have to go around and, you know, your body makes it happen.

• 9:52John Green?

  Do you think it matters that it's close to the brain?

• 9:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's also part of it. That you don't have to like, wait for the signals to travel. And, and then you can like, do a lot of sort of very fast transmission from the sensory to the processing back to the sensory.

• 10:08John Green?

  Let me ask you a follow up question that's sensory organ related. Are the ears part of the face? I think no.

• 10:15Hank Green?

  You know, no, no, no.

• 10:17John Green?

  Like, when you do, when I saw Sir Isaac Newton's death mask, which I did see in real life, it was a weird experience. You know, you get the you get the face, you get the eyes, you get the cheeks, you get the lips, you get the nose, you do not get the ears in a death mask.

• 10:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:32John Green?

  And I think a death mask is the definitive determinant of the face.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  If it's not part of a mask, it's not the face. I'm wondering if there are any animals that have that do have like special face ears, but I'm not finding anything.

• 10:48John Green?

  I mean, you definitely have animals that have their eyes closer to their ears because their eyes are sort of on the side, they're sort of seeing out the side of their head.

• 10:55Hank Green?

  Right, some animals that don't really have their their eyes on their face.

• 10:58John Green?

  They have faces but no eyes on the face, their eyes are off their face.

• 11:02Hank Green?

  Their eyes went, they left the face.

• 11:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Hank Green?

  And then there are then there are some animals that don't have faces, like a flounder, you know?

• 11:10John Green?

  Right.

• 11:10Hank Green?

  That's not a face, really, that's just the side of your body.

• 11:13John Green?

  It's more of a silhouette than a face. Trees don't have faces.

• 11:18Hank Green?

  Trees are not animals, but also.

• 11:20John Green?

  Hmm.

• 11:24Hank Green?

  He's gonna fight for it, he's gonna fight for trees being animals. We're gonna redo taxonomy from scratch, everybody, we're just gonna put trees and animals.

• 11:33John Green?

  Yeah, I think we should put trees and animals. I think that we've been underestimating trees this whole time.

• 11:38Hank Green?

  Did you know that plants evolved multicellularity separately from animals, which is why they are a separate thing?

• 11:43John Green?

  Didn't we only develop cells with organelles once?

• 11:46Hank Green?

  Yes, I'm pretty sure, yeah.

• 11:49John Green?

  That's weird.

• 11:50Hank Green?

  So like, there's there's just the just the the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes and all the eukaryotes together, yeah.

• 11:56John Green?

  But that's that's interesting, because that means, first off, it means that trees are animals, but secondly, it means that we developed multicellularity more than once, but we only developed like mitochondria once.

• 12:07Hank Green?

  Yeah, though that was a separate event from the from.

• 12:10John Green?

  Oh, okay. Well, I don't know much about organelles, Hank. All I know is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, because that's that's what's left, that's what's left from high school biology.

• 12:20Hank Green?

  You know, I gotta I gotta do the mitochondria again, because, look, when we first found mitochondria, powerhouse of the cell, very exciting. I have the issue of Scientific American that that. reduces the term, the powerhouse of the cell.

• 12:34John Green?

  Wow.

• 12:35Hank Green?

  They don't exactly say the powerhouse of the cell, but they do use the word powerhouse. But that's by far the like only very tippy, tippy top of the iceberg of, of how amazing and revolutionary mitochondria were. And how unlikely they were to occur and how revolutionary they were to the ability of animals to exist.

• 12:57John Green?

  I think you should make that video. God knows you've made every other one.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  We very easily, very easily could be a planet without movable multicellular life, you know, without life that can like move itself around.

• 13:10John Green?

  But instead we're not, we're a planet.

• 13:11Hank Green?

  But instead we got, we got, you know.

• 13:14John Green?

  We're a planet with like sycamore trees and oak trees and other animals.

• 13:18Hank Green?

  Frick.

• 13:20John Green?

  All right, Hank, I got another question for you. It's from Kate who writes, Dear John and Hank, why doesn't MRI have to be so loud? Seems like they should be able to take pictures of my brain without all that clicking and clacking. Earplugs are great, Kate.

• 13:31Hank Green?

  So MRIs basically use magnets to image your body. The way that they do that is they turn all of your individual cells into little antenna. In particular, they, they turn atoms in your body into little radio transmitters. And the magnets get all of the atoms, like certain kinds of atoms pointed in a particular direction. And then they turn the magnet off. And then when they flop back into random directions, that produces a little radio signal, which they can then interpret as an image, which is wild. But they have to do that like a lot, many times per second. Uh, so they're turning the magnet on and off a lot. And for whatever reason, that introduces vibrations into the machine and those vibrations are the thing that you are hearing.

• 14:16John Green?

  But then isn't there also a thing where like, if you have metal on, it'll like, it's real bad?

• 14:22Hank Green?

  Well, it's a big magnet. So, yeah.

• 14:24John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It's a huge, it's, it's essentially the way to think about it is a huge magnet that causes vibration.

• 14:31Hank Green?

  Yeah. And, and exactly, like honestly, exactly why the vibration occurs to me is I was, I was not able to understand it well enough to explain it.

• 14:41John Green?

  Okay. Well, that makes me feel better.

• 14:43Hank Green?

  There are explanations out there. People have tried to explain.

• 14:46John Green?

  So I've had a bunch of MRIs over the years with the meningitis and, and the orbital cellulitis and whatnot. You've had some MRIs, I assume because of cancer?

• 14:55Hank Green?

  Um, I don't know that I have. I've had, I had PET CT scans.

• 15:00John Green?

  Oh, those sound even more stressful.

• 15:01Hank Green?

  But I have had an MRI.

• 15:02John Green?

  My favorite part of the MRI is when they tell you that they'll play any music you'd like to hear.

• 15:08Hank Green?

  Such, so ridiculous.

• 15:10John Green?

  And then you're like, all right, I'd like to listen to the Mountain Goats. They're my favorite band. And very, very faintly, underneath the sound of what was generously described as the clicking and clacking.

• 15:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:22John Green?

  Very, very faintly, occasionally you will hear a single word of John Darniels emerge from the ether. And other than that, it's just clicking and clacking and, and of a very loud variety.

• 15:34Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, I don't know how to really describe it. I wouldn't call it clicking and clapping. There's like banging.

• 15:41John Green?

  It's banging. It's, it's a loud, you know what it is? It's a raccoon that's inside that machine that is desperate to get out. That's what it sounds like to me.

• 15:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, but like, but like a big one that really likes heavy metal music and has a bunch of chains on him.

• 15:55John Green?

  Yes. Yes. A chained up raccoon that loves heavy metal music and is desperately trying to get out of an MRI.

• 16:04Hank Green?

  Turn off, yeah, he hates the Mountain Goats.

• 16:06John Green?

  He hates the Mountain Goats. So then the next time I did it, I was like, all right, we won't pick the Mountain Goats. We'll pick something loud.

• 16:12Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:12John Green?

  Something aggressive, something that, so I, I think I picked the California-based rapper Remble. And even Remble, even Remble.

• 16:21Hank Green?

  Nobody can fight. Yeah, no.

• 16:23John Green?

  Nobody can fight.

• 16:24Hank Green?

  You know what we should do? We should create a specific MRI band. That's like just to sound good in the MRI. And it's just like a bunch of banging. So it like fits in.

• 16:34John Green?

  Yeah. It's just, it just tries to create a little bit of rhythm amid the banging.

• 16:38Hank Green?

  Next time I go in for the MRI, I'm going to say to the MRI tech, hey, I'm going to create a new band on Spotify. It's just going to be MRI noises. And I'm going to say, hey, yeah, can you look up my favorite band? They're called something that has the initials MRI. So like Mouse Relay Intercepted and then, and then go in there and say, oh yeah, play Mouse Relay Intercept for me. And it's going to be MRI noises and the, the tech is going to be so pleased. And this is all I want, John.

• 17:06John Green?

  All you want is to make the people happy.

• 17:08Hank Green?

  I just want the people doing the work to have a slightly nicer day for having dealt with me.

• 17:15John Green?

  You want to feel like you did a good job and they were amused by your presence. I always feel like I'm slightly on stage when I'm when I'm getting an MRI, like when I'm going in and going out. Like, I feel like I've got to be extra charming and funny so that the people will be like, now that's a good patient.

• 17:29Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, I'll tell you what, getting a PET CT scan is wild because they know immediately what's going on in there, but they don't get to tell you. And so I always feel like.

• 17:40John Green?

  You're trying to read those eyes.

• 17:41Hank Green?

  Look at their eyes and they're looking at your eyes and you're like, you know, things that you're not allowed to tell me.

• 17:46John Green?

  I'm just glad that MRIs exist, even if they're very loud. I do find them reasonably stressful, but I think that stress might be alleviated by Hank Green's exciting new million dollar idea, Mouse Relay Intercept.

• 17:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, we're really gonna, uh, current of the market on MRI noises. People are gonna enjoy it at the end, then they're gonna go home and they're gonna be like, you know, I didn't get enough of that.

• 18:08John Green?

  It's my dream sleep podcast. It's just MRI noise. It's just bang, bang, clank, clank.

• 18:13Hank Green?

  I mean, I, you could make music, maybe we just hire like George Watzke to rap to it.

• 18:18John Green?

  I don't know if it's always the same set of noises, though. I, I don't know if there's any consistency to it, but we'll have to do some more research. We're in the discovery phase of this million dollar idea. We're not in the execution phase yet. It's not like Hank's hit new project Zondaria that provides white noise for charity. It's something entirely new and different.

• 18:37Hank Green?

  I'm always working on something new and different.

• 18:39John Green?

  Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Mouse Relay Intercept. Mouse Relay Intercept, the hit new band from TikTok's Hank Green.

• 18:47Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by significant figures, all of the places before and after the decimal point that are actually known mathematically.

• 18:56John Green?

  Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by vertical video sensation Hank Green. His preferred honorific.

• 19:02Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by the face. The face. No ears on that.

• 19:07John Green?

  All right, Hank, I got another question for you from Tom, who writes, Dear John and Hank, if all humans on earth joined in a collective movement and used all available resources to build a one-to-one replica of the city of ancient Rome in a 24-hour period, would that be possible? Thanks, Tom.

• 19:23Hank Green?

  You know, there's only one way to find out.

• 19:25John Green?

  Could we build Rome in a day? And would it be like the World Cup or the Olympics? A chance for the world to come together despite its problems?

• 19:34Hank Green?

  You know, I think we could, but I don't think we could do it in one place. There's like a logistical problem to like, there'd be any of the roads to get the thing to a thing.

• 19:44John Green?

  That's my feeling is there's only so many people needed to build the Colosseum, right?

• 19:48Hank Green?

  Right.

• 19:48John Green?

  And I think getting the Colosseum built in a day is possible if you have eight billion people. I'm not sure that it's possible in a physical space because you can't bring all eight billion to bear.

• 19:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, you can't, you can't put all the eight billion people and you, and also you can't bring all eight billion rocks into the place faster.

• 20:06John Green?

  Yeah. Now, that's the rule for the Colosseum, by the way, there has to be one rock per person. That's how they designed it back in the day. They figured out how many people there were and took one rock for each person and then they built the Colosseum with it.

• 20:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:18John Green?

  I, I don't think it's even close to possible because I think just the milling of the stone would take.

• 20:23Hank Green?

  Right, because that's part of it. You can't, yeah, you can't say.

• 20:26John Green?

  Even if you had an infinite number of mills, I think some of, some of it would take 24 hours.

• 20:31Hank Green?

  You can't say like, hey, we've got all the rocks ready now, let's go. Like getting the rocks is part of it.

• 20:37John Green?

  I, okay, if you could say, get all the rocks ready, get everything ready, get all the building materials ready, get all the.

• 20:44Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:44John Green?

  Have all the mosaics made and the paint made, and then all you have to actually do is build Rome in one day, maybe.

• 20:51Hank Green?

  Because also what you would need to do is train a bunch of people to be good at building. So they'd have to be have built, like working on a bunch of stuff beforehand. So they like, in fact, what they would have done is built the thing and then taken it apart. And then.

• 21:07John Green?

  Right.

• 21:08Hank Green?

  Go, everybody just rebuild the thing in the order that we had it up for a second ago.

• 21:11John Green?

  It's like when you're, the first time you do a Lego set, it takes a lot longer than if you get, destroy the Lego and have to do it a second time.

• 21:19Hank Green?

  I think it's worth it. You know, I think what I think is.

• 21:22John Green?

  I think it's worth it.

• 21:23Hank Green?

  I think it's worth it.

• 21:24John Green?

  I think this is a great use of human attention.

• 21:27Hank Green?

  I don't know what we're gonna do.

• 21:29John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Hank Green?

  In the future.

• 21:31John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Hank Green?

  Uh, but, but maybe build Rome again.

• 21:34John Green?

  Well, here's what I'll say about building Rome again as a human project. You could do worse.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  Right.

• 21:40John Green?

  Right? Like you could do worse than having people from all over the world have to come together and each have their own part of Rome that they can be proud of and that they can share with others. It's a little bit like the Venice Biennale, which is a biennial art exhibition thing where every country has its own pavilion. And then like you go around and you walk almost like Epcot, but with contemporary art pieces, you walk and see everybody's pavilion and it's very interesting. And I feel like that's the vibe that we're going for here is like each community takes on a tiny part of Rome in a day and accomplishes that part. And then as a world, we build Rome in a day. It's it's sort of beautiful to me.

• 22:21Hank Green?

  And it's nice because there is the saying.

• 22:23John Green?

  Yeah, it would be the ultimate refutation of a famous saying. I assume that's why we would build Rome.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  That's the whole, that's the whole reason. Yeah.

• 22:33John Green?

  Is to be like impossible things are possible.

• 22:35Hank Green?

  And then we'd be like, okay, everybody take Rome apart. Gee, John, do you want to know something very embarrassing about me?

• 22:40John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Hank Green?

  Everybody new lore drop.

• 22:43John Green?

  Great.

• 22:43Hank Green?

  In college, one of the first songs I ever wrote.

• 22:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Hank Green?

  Was called Rome Didn't Fall in a Day.

• 22:49John Green?

  Oh, well, that's, why is that embarrassing? That's true.

• 22:52Hank Green?

  No, yeah, it did. In some ways, it's still doing it.

• 22:55John Green?

  In some ways, it is still falling.

• 22:56Hank Green?

  There's still an emperor of Rome. He's from Chicago.

• 23:01John Green?

  Well, I mean, a little bit. I, I, I actually think that the link is more to the Eastern Roman Empire. So the link is more to like Turkey and that part of the world. But there is also sort of an emperor of Rome who is from Chicago. Both these things can be true at the same time because the Roman Empire was very influential. In some ways, it didn't fall until 1914. In some ways, it hasn't fallen. In other ways, it fell, you know, in the 600, whatever, whatever.

• 23:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:28John Green?

  The point is that like Rome didn't fall in a day. And that might be a cliche observation, but you were like 19 years old and that's a good point.

• 23:36Hank Green?

  Well, but it was, it was about the, it was a very angsty song about the sort of fall of America.

• 23:42John Green?

  Oh, well, that's kind of creepy.

• 23:42Hank Green?

  You know, at this point.

• 23:44John Green?

  But proved prophetic.

• 23:49John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 23:50Hank Green?

  Posting through it.

• 23:52John Green?

  We're posting through it. That's right. That'll be the last, the last thing will be a post. America won't fall the same way Rome didn't fall. It'll just decline in importance until eventually we have an emperor god king from Chicago.

• 24:05Hank Green?

  Right.

• 24:06John Green?

  Instead of one from New York.

• 24:08Hank Green?

  Is he from New York?

• 24:09John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:10John Green?

  Born and bred, baby. Never, uh, yeah. All right, moving on.

• 24:14Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Ella, who asks, Dear Hank and John, on traffic lights, the lit part is surrounded by this almost cylindrical shape. It's like there's a circle surrounding it, but it doesn't go all the way around. Why is there a gap at the bottom of the light sheath? I have attached a photo for reference. Thank you for all that you do. Under my, under my umber, Ella, Ella, Ella, A, A. Oh, it's a, it's a Rihanna joke.

• 24:39John Green?

  It's under my umber Ella, Ella, Ella. I, I, I.

• 24:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:44John Green?

  That was embarrassing. That was actually way worse than your, we didn't build Rome in a day thing.

• 24:50Hank Green?

  Rome didn't fall in a day. Uh, John.

• 24:54John Green?

  I know the answer to this, so I don't know.

• 24:55Hank Green?

  Oh, do you know the answer? Is it, does it have anything to do with like the history of the?

• 25:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Hank Green?

  Lights?

• 25:01John Green?

  No, it has to do with physics.

• 25:03Hank Green?

  You gotta keep it covered because otherwise the wood will rot.

• 25:06John Green?

  So my initial thought actually was that maybe it was so that they could easily change the light bulbs.

• 25:13Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 25:13John Green?

  You could reach a hand up there and unscrew the light bulb and pull it out, uh, which I, I still think might be part of the reason, but it's not the reason. Do you know the reason?

• 25:22Hank Green?

  I have a guess.

• 25:23John Green?

  What's your guess?

• 25:24Hank Green?

  Something to do with keeping the light off of it. So you don't light up the ones that aren't on.

• 25:29John Green?

  Yeah. So it's to keep the light off of the light above it and also to keep the light focused out and down because that is where people actually need to see the light is below the light and out from the light. So the idea is that it keeps the light a little bit in your direction.

• 25:48Hank Green?

  You need the gap there because otherwise it's going to block the light if you're right underneath it. You'll be able to see as much of it.

• 25:54John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. You definitely need the gap there because you, if you're close up, you can't see the light and also it focuses the light outward. So it serves multiple purposes, but it's a good, it's a good technology and we should keep it.

• 26:05Hank Green?

  We should keep it.

• 26:06John Green?

  That's my opinion.

• 26:07Hank Green?

  I wish it were more whimsical. Should we add a little bit of whimsy, whimsy to every traffic light? Like put a little Garfield statue somewhere on each one?

• 26:15John Green?

  Can you imagine the? Scandal when it came out that the creator of Garfield was good friends with the Secretary of Transportation. Absolutely reeks of corruption.

• 26:27Hank Green?

  Jim Davis getting, getting like two cents every time a traffic light gets installed.

• 26:32John Green?

  Exactly.

• 26:33Hank Green?

  And like, why? Well, we used the same orange as Garfield. Garfield owned that orange and so we had to pay for it. So we figured we might as well put him on there too.

• 26:43John Green?

  Yeah, that's how Garfield becomes a billionaire is with the traffic light hustle.

• 26:47Hank Green?

  Oh, man. That would, that would do it.

• 26:49John Green?

  I think traffic lights are actually doing a wonderful job.

• 26:53Hank Green?

  They're doing pretty good.

• 26:54John Green?

  In Carmel, Indiana, just to the north of me, they've gotten rid of most traffic lights and replaced them with roundabouts.

• 27:00Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 27:01John Green?

  Because it makes it more European.

• 27:02Hank Green?

  And in some cases, very, very weirdly, like not in a European way, but very like structure. Here is the roundabout, two blocks later, another roundabout, and then that happens for like 80 blocks.

• 27:15John Green?

  It makes using Google Maps impossible.

• 27:17Hank Green?

  In like one straight line. Yeah. Google Maps gets so confused.

• 27:21John Green?

  When you use Google Maps, it's like in 200 feet, take the second exit on the round, 200 feet, take the second, in 200 feet, take the second. It just keeps going like that. And all you're, all you're doing is driving in a straight line. I, for one, like the, I, I don't mind a roundabout. I don't want to be critical of Carmel. I know I have a lot of fans and friends in Carmel. But first off, it's named after Carmel, California, I assume.

• 27:46Hank Green?

  Oh, is it?

• 27:47John Green?

  And it goes by Carmel because it's so car oriented, and I think that's lame.

• 27:52Hank Green?

  I figured it was named after the candy.

• 27:54John Green?

  No, that's caramel or caramel, depending on your pronunciation, but it has an extra A.

• 27:59Hank Green?

  But you know how people are.

• 28:00John Green?

  You know how people are. It's true. There's a Cairo, Illinois, why not a Carmel, Indiana with an extra A? Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I like the occasional traffic light, okay? And there's a specific moment I like about a traffic light that I want to tell you about. It's called the all red and it was it's a relatively recent innovation.

• 28:20Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 28:20John Green?

  And what traffic engineers noticed is that a huge percentage of injury producing accidents that happened at traffic lights happened because there was a moment, the very moment that one light turned red, the other light turned green. And if they just instituted a one second all red, they would see traffic injuries go down. And indeed, that proved to be the case.

• 28:46Hank Green?

  Have people adjusted? Have they like realized that the all red is there and they're like, oh, now I can just go, I can go deeper into the running the red light?

• 28:54John Green?

  I don't know. It's a good question.

• 28:56Hank Green?

  Probably not. I'd actually wager not.

• 28:58John Green?

  Point being, I love the all red because it's a moment where we are all, just a moment,

• 29:06John Green?

  one breath, where we are all stopped and it's okay.

• 29:11Hank Green?

  What I'm hearing is I can go one second before the light turns green.

• 29:15John Green?

  No, that is incorrect. That is a good way.

• 29:18Hank Green?

  I know when the lights turn in green. I know it. I can feel it in my bones.

• 29:22John Green?

  I never should have told Hank, or indeed the world, about the all red. It's a huge mistake. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we just need to answer this one last question from Linia, who writes, Dear mostly Hank, but it's about John. This summer, I started listening to the pod for the first time. I began with several of the first episodes, then skipped around and eventually began regularly listening to the presently released episodes. So maybe I missed something. The podcast is fantastic, but I'm very confused about this one occurrence, ordeal, canon event that keeps being referenced throughout the years that I have no context for. What happened to John Green in 2014?

• 29:55Hank Green?

  Oh, no. And then she ludicrously lost. And then very clearly she writes Linia.

• 30:04John Green?

  And I've lost it completely, like I like I always do. Linia, I apologize. Hank, should we save this question for the first question of next week?

• 30:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, maybe. Maybe our first episode of Dear Hank and John of the New Year.

• 30:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Hank Green?

  Should just be the 2014 spectacular.

• 30:23John Green?

  But nothing happened to you in 2014. You put on a vest and went to a movie premiere. Other than that, it was very boring for you.

• 30:31Hank Green?

  Not the case. I don't know, man. How like, but there's so much that hap- this is literally what I was talking to my therapist about is 2014.

• 30:40John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, you're trying to like, you're trying to like, explain to your therapist all the lore of 2014 in a single hour, which is nigh on impossible.

• 30:47Hank Green?

  I was like, so have you heard of copy pasta?

• 30:55John Green?

  First off, I need, I need to just-

• 30:58Hank Green?

  Do you know?

• 31:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. How familiar are you with Wizard Rock?

• 31:08John Green?

  Stop me if you've heard this term. Doctor Who lock.

• 31:17Hank Green?

  Doctor Who lock. What was the, what was the one that the main one? Super who lock?

• 31:22John Green?

  Super who lock. Yeah. Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock.

• 31:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:25John Green?

  Locked into an eternal battle. But when I, when I got back on Tumblr a couple of years ago, which is a hell of a turn of events, by the way, and I really love Tumblr now. I have no interest in any other social medium and I love spending time on-

• 31:38Hank Green?

  Yes, you win.

• 31:39John Green?

  I feel like Tumblr is going great. It's, it's finally established itself as a fun place to hang out and with essentially no help from the company, just, just by people deciding not to be like, they were like, we want a space that's sort of good faith.

• 31:54Hank Green?

  Yeah. What if, what if it wasn't bad? What if there was a not bad place?

• 31:58John Green?

  It's kind of become that weirdly. Anyway, point being, we will make a special, all time, once and for all, what happened in 2014 episode at the beginning of the year?

• 32:10Hank Green?

  Oh, that makes me nervous, but let's do it.

• 32:12John Green?

  All right, let's try. We'll see how it goes.

• 32:15Hank Green?

  If it doesn't happen, it's because me and John, our brother, our brotherhood is fraying. We decided to preserve it rather than make that episode of during, no, I think that we'll figure it out.

• 32:27John Green?

  I think we'll figure it out. So listen, what's the news from AFC Wimbledon? The news from AFC Wimbledon is that the losses have turned into ties, which is better than losses, but worse than winning. At this point, I think- Going into the January transfer window sort of vibe, I don't know that AFC Wimbledon is necessarily going to be looking to strengthen because I don't know that they necessarily believe they can get to the playoffs. 10th place after 19 games, almost halfway through the season, 27 points. It feels like, hopefully not a relegation season, but also not like much else. And I mean, look, the goal was always not to get relegated. So that on its own would be a huge

• 33:08John Green?

  win. But most recently, AFC Wimbledon drew 0-0. Before that, we drew 3-3. So definitely some, you know, some good points on the board, as they say.

• 33:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, as they say in soccer, any goal is a goal.

• 33:23John Green?

  They do say that. They don't really say that, but they could because any goal is a goal. And we scored three of them against Huddersfield. It's just they also scored three against us. So

• 33:31Hank Green?

  It's a lot of goals.

• 33:33John Green?

  A lot of goals, six-goal thriller, as they say. And meanwhile, the AFC Wimbledon versus Mansfield Town game was a sleepy affair with not only no goals, but no meaningful shots on target that I can remember.

• 33:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, they did a lot better against them than they did against Townsfield Man.

• 33:49John Green?

  I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Townsfield Man were in fact a lower-level English football team.

• 33:54Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:55John Green?

  All right, Hank, what's the news from Mars?

• 33:57Hank Green?

  Oh, God, it's not. So NASA has lost the Maven orbiter.

• 34:03John Green?

  What?

• 34:03Hank Green?

  Maven has been studying Mars' atmosphere since 2013.

• 34:07John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Hank Green?

  And its main mission lasted for one year. So that was the goal. So look, it's done a lot more than the goal. The orbiter has since then been collecting more data serving as a communication link also to rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance. So if, you know, they're not like oriented right to talk to us directly, it can talk to us through Maven. But Maven disappeared. It went quiet on December 4th. NASA was able to make re-contact with it briefly on December 6th, but that contact suggests that they think that the Maven spacecraft is rotating strangely and that its orbital trajectory has changed, which neither of those things is good. So it's not good because, one, that makes it harder

• 34:51Hank Green?

  to reestablish contact if it's, if it's, we're not sure how it's rotating. And two, it's rotating and that's not supposed to be what's happening.

• 34:59John Green?

  Oh, no. And they don't know what caused this? Did it get hit by a little space rock?

• 35:03Hank Green?

  More likely, and I'm going off vibes here. So that's possible, but more likely, something went wrong and it, it like something vented out the side of it. It's an old spacecraft. It's been up there for a long time. Things can go wrong or like something got stuck on or, you know, it tried to do something and wasn't able to do it correctly. And maybe like, I don't know if these things are even able to adjust their orbits after this much time, but maybe it tried to adjust its orbit and did that incorrectly or something.

• 35:36John Green?

  Well, Godspeed to a real one.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  Godspeed to a real one. Great job, Maven. Probably out of commission permanently because once it's been out of touch for this long, very hard to guess at where it might be at this point.

• 35:51John Green?

  Well, my condolences, Hank. That's a big loss.

• 35:54Hank Green?

  Yeah. Good work, Maven.

• 35:56John Green?

  Good work, Maven.

• 35:57Hank Green?

  If you would like to send us questions, you could do that. Our email address is [email protected] because we are Hank and John, famously professional brothers Hank and John Green. And we can't have a podcast without your questions and we really enjoy them. Thank you so much for sending them in. This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Menesh. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosie Anahals Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Chragravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.