432: Turtetiquette

Who is responsible for the ridiculous pet names from John and Hank’s childhood? Any tips on how to cope with pre-wedding stress? Can you explain snot? What is turtle etiquette? What organs do you actually need? What would happen if the oceans were 50% less salty? …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, but maybe not that last one because I don't think that, I don't have any right now. Anyway, Catherine recently said to me, John.

• 0:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Hank Green?

  She was like, I think I want to have another kid.

• 0:27John Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 0:28Hank Green?

  And I was real surprised.

• 0:29John Green?

  Yeah, I thought that ship had sailed for sure.

• 0:32Hank Green?

  I said, I thought you liked this one.

• 0:36John Green?

  That's a pretty good joke.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 0:38John Green?

  That's all right. It's not true, though, right? I mean, you're not having another kid.

• 0:40Hank Green?

  No, no. Yes, yes, yes. We, that ship has indeed sailed.

• 0:44John Green?

  That would be a weird way to break the news to me.

• 0:46Hank Green?

  How is, how is the siblings? How do you, how do you find having siblings versus my situation where there's just one of them?

• 0:53John Green?

  It's great. It's lovely. They're, they're lovely kids. So Hank, I just did one of those like long form interviews that sometimes you do where the interviewer talked to me for 90 minutes and asked me a bunch of questions and then it's all going to come out as a podcast and like none of it will be cut and everything that I said will be hyper scrutinized.

• 1:09Hank Green?

  Is it like a big, is it a big one? Is it like one that like Nicolas Cage would go on?

• 1:13John Green?

  Nicolas Cage, I think would do it, but hasn't been offered the opportunity. That's how big it is.

• 1:18Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 1:19John Green?

  I think it's big enough that Nicolas Cage is like desperate to do it. He's like, man, I hope someday I get to do this podcast.

• 1:25Hank Green?

  No, no, no, no. You're not bigger than Nicolas Cage.

• 1:28John Green?

  Okay, we'll go offline real quick. I'll tell you what it is and then we'll come back. And we're back.

• 1:33Hank Green?

  Okay, I get it. I get it. So it's not so much that you're bigger than Nicolas Cage. It is more sort of suited to your personal brand.

• 1:40John Green?

  A little more suited to my brand, but it's a big, it's a big ish deal is my point.

• 1:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:45John Green?

  And the time during the interview is fine. I mean, it's, I'm highly anxious and like very much on guard and like desperately trying. The only thought, the only clear thought that I'm having is like, whee, whee, whee. Like, that's my only real thought throughout the entire thing.

• 1:58Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 1:58John Green?

  You're familiar with this experience, but then.

• 2:00Hank Green?

  I, yes.

• 2:01John Green?

  Afterwards, after the end of the interview, that's when the crushing anxiety hits.

• 2:06Hank Green?

  Because you would think about all of the things you just said.

• 2:09John Green?

  Or didn't say. Yes. I think about all the things I just said and then it's just like, boom.

• 2:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:17John Green?

  Just smashing me in the chest. So that's where I'm at right now.

• 2:21Hank Green?

  Can we just make things not matter? You know, could we just like? Could we just, could things ma- maybe, look, I, obviously, things need to matter.

• 2:29John Green?

  Can we lower the stakes?

• 2:30Hank Green?

  In terms of me, in terms of like, just things people are saying.

• 2:34John Green?

  I wish I didn't care so much if people liked me.

• 2:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, that's really it.

• 2:38John Green?

  I'm 48.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:40John Green?

  Why do I, why am I still in middle school?

• 2:42Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. And are the platforms optimized for it? Do the platforms want us to feel this way? So that we're always checking. One thing I think people don't understand about, unless you're a real poster, is the extent to which the labor comes after the creation. So like, you make a thing, or you do an interview, or you post a post. And then it's like, then you're, you're like, gotta babysit that. I did a thing.

• 3:08John Green?

  You're managing it.

• 3:09Hank Green?

  I gotta manage it. I gotta like, see how, like, the feedback, and I gotta learn from it, and I gotta, yeah.

• 3:14John Green?

  Hank, I'm about to change your life with some great advice. This isn't even dubious. That's why, seven minutes after posting something, when it starts to feel like labor, I just delete it. I just delete it, and I got the kind of high of posting. I got the high of the initial response, and then the moment a person took it in the wrong context, I'm like, oh, I'll just delete that.

• 3:36Hank Green?

  I'll delete that. I always, I, I have this problem of thinking that if somebody interprets something differently than I meant it to be interpreted, that it's, that that's my fault. And I think that it is sometimes.

• 3:47John Green?

  Sometimes it is.

• 3:48Hank Green?

  I kind of like, truly, deeply, actually believe it always is. Like, I feel like if I was misinterpreted, that I could have done better. And this is a-

• 3:56John Green?

  But sometimes people just like willingly, bad faith, interpret you because like, that's part of how you get internet points is by, and I do this too, like, I'm not accusing people of, of participating in some evil social internet that I'm immune to. Like, I sometimes like, present an argument in bad faith as a way of saying like, look at these idiots.

• 4:12Hank Green?

  Yes. It is where, it is where the incentives thrive.

• 4:15John Green?

  Yeah, that's one of the reasons I've stopped posting online, is because I can't resist the urge to do that. And so, the only way to resist the urge is to kind of not start.

• 4:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, I someday I'll stop posting online.

• 4:26John Green?

  I don't know, Hank. I think that might be the last thing you do. But first, before you stop posting online, which you'll never do, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Kaylee, who writes, Dear John and Hank, Red Green the dog, Blue Green the snake. Who was responsible for these ridiculous pet names from your childhood? Are there any other color names you would like to reveal? Kaylee.

• 4:46Hank Green?

  I cannot believe that we ever have talked about Blue Green.

• 4:50John Green?

  I can't believe we talked about Blue Green either.

• 4:52Hank Green?

  No, this moment, I forgot Blue Green.

• 4:54John Green?

  I feel bad because I don't think Blue Green was adequately loved in the world.

• 4:58Hank Green?

  No, I think that Blue Green was re-released eventually.

• 5:03John Green?

  So I am almost positive that that is a story that we told you.

• 5:09Hank Green?

  Oh, no, don't ruin it for me.

• 5:11John Green?

  Yeah, I might have to ruin it for you, bud.

• 5:13Hank Green?

  Because Blue Green did come from the wild. Blue Green was not a pet store purchase.

• 5:16John Green?

  Blue Green came from the wild, but Blue Green did not return to the wild. Blue Green died inside of that terrarium.

• 5:22Hank Green?

  That's a shame.

• 5:23John Green?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I've got even worse news for you, which is that we all go.

• 5:28Hank Green?

  That's, that is what one might call a shame. So Blue Green was a garter snake, who had a little stripe of blue, a beautiful stripe of blue.

• 5:36John Green?

  Yeah, so he had a stripe of blue and his last name was Green, because that's our last name. It's not our fault that our last name is a color.

• 5:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:41John Green?

  And so we named him Blue Green. And then Red Green was a red dog, and we named him Red Green because we got him at Christmas. It's the perfect name. I don't apologize for either of these pet names. I still think they're hilarious.

• 5:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't, I, but I have no idea who's responsible. I don't know who, who named Red.

• 5:59John Green?

  I think you did. God, what a, what a bad dog. I mean, we don't talk enough about what a bad dog Red Green was.

• 6:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:07John Green?

  He was, he was bad to the bone, man. He was bad for 50. I know there's no bad dogs, only bad owners, but we must have been bad owners.

• 6:14Hank Green?

  I don't, I don't doubt that we were. Also, look, I think that Red Green was not a bad dog. He was a bad pet.

• 6:21John Green?

  He was a bad, he was a great dog. He was a bad family dog.

• 6:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:26John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:26John Green?

  He was, I'll tell you what.

• 6:28Hank Green?

  Like, I only got bit by that dog like four or five times.

• 6:31John Green?

  Yeah, he was violent. He wasn't as violent as some dogs, but he was violent. He was a miniature dog, and he couldn't be that violent. He weighed eight pounds.

• 6:39Hank Green?

  If he was a big dog, the number of times and the intensity with which he bit me would have been a huge problem.

• 6:45John Green?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 6:48John Green?

  Yeah, um, but he also, he was never house trained in a meaningful way.

• 6:53Hank Green?

  Oh, God, I remember when I got, I got a black light because I was like a cool high schooler trying to be. You know, I was trying to be like a, getting a black light poster up there and rebel in my own special way. That was a huge mistake.

• 7:07John Green?

  Huge mistake.

• 7:07Hank Green?

  Huge mistake.

• 7:08John Green?

  Big error, big error.

• 7:11Hank Green?

  Like, I, I, I knew that I'd cleaned up some pee, but I didn't know that I had cleaned up pee from every spot in the room.

• 7:18John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. No, he was a very petulant peer. Like, he would wake you up and then jump down off the bed and stare at you and pee.

• 7:26Hank Green?

  He was, he was like a dominant spear.

• 7:32John Green?

  He was like, hey, you know that thing that you hate? Watch it happen.

• 7:38John Green?

  Whereas Blue Green was a great garter snake. No complaints about him. I think that was the only.

• 7:42Hank Green?

  Also, probably not a great pet, but.

• 7:44John Green?

  Those were the only two pets we named after colors. I don't remember what we called our toys.

• 7:48Hank Green?

  Chip and Dale were.

• 7:50John Green?

  Chip and Dale, the hamsters.

• 7:52Hank Green?

  No, these were finches, the finches.

• 7:54John Green?

  I don't remember the finches.

• 7:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, there it is.

• 7:56John Green?

  What was the name of that, um, that other bird you had? Rico?

• 8:00Hank Green?

  Rico, the conure, and we had Willie the hamster.

• 8:02John Green?

  We had a Willie? Who was Willie?

• 8:04Hank Green?

  Willie was a hamster. One eyed Willie. You don't remember Willie?

• 8:07John Green?

  Only have one eye?

• 8:08Hank Green?

  Because Willie disappeared. Willie had two eyes. Willie disappeared. We didn't know where he was. Every night, mom and dad would like put gerbil food under the headboard so that they would hear him come by. And maybe they would wa, he, they would wake up and the gerbil food would disappear, but then they wouldn't wake up. So they knew Willie was around. Willie was gone for weeks.

• 8:30John Green?

  Wow.

• 8:30Hank Green?

  And then when Willie, when they finally like woke up as Willie was eating the gerbil food, he had one eye.

• 8:35John Green?

  He went from two eyes to one eye in a mysterious accident.

• 8:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:39John Green?

  And then it must be said, he got killed by red green.

• 8:43Hank Green?

  By red.

• 8:44John Green?

  Yeah, no.

• 8:46Hank Green?

  We're dropping some new lore today.

• 8:48John Green?

  That's new lore.

• 8:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I don't know that that we ever let let it slip that red green was the reason that Willie died.

• 8:55John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Hank Green?

  Do you want to know my other traumatic pet death story?

• 8:58John Green?

  Yeah, please.

• 8:59Hank Green?

  So we got two goldfish at the fair. Never do this.

• 9:03John Green?

  No, never do this.

• 9:04Hank Green?

  The eighties.

• 9:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Hank Green?

  And we got two goldfish at the fair. Uh, one of them was won by, uh, Phil, who I will not use his full name, but

• 9:12John Green?

  Yeah, I know Phil.

• 9:13Hank Green?

  Close family friend Phil.

• 9:14John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Hank Green?

  Uh, who of, and I think my parents did not want to get the goldfish, but Phil won the goldfish and I wanted them. I think this is what happened. And so they took the goldfish home. We did not have the best way of, of, uh, taking care of the goldfish. One of the goldfish started to get sick. So my parents were like, we need to change the water. And they're changing the water over the sink. One of the goldfish slips out of the bowl and into the sink and goes down the drain. Mom looks at me and she says, I'm so sorry, Hank. That was the good one.

• 9:51John Green?

  Oh, that's like a really metaphorically resonant story. I mean, who among us has not lost the good one here in there?

• 9:59Hank Green?

  And like, boy, do I remember that. Like I'm, I'm having like a, an emotional response to it right now as a 45 year old man. I'm like

• 10:07John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Hank Green?

  prickling and like very like, just, I mean, I guess I'm kind of thinking about Orin too, like just the moments where

• 10:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Hank Green?

  crushing stuff happens to you as a kid.

• 10:18John Green?

  Well, here's the thing, Hank. That fish went where we are all going.

• 10:23Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, what, what did we say? The dust?

• 10:27John Green?

  Complicated dust, baby. Uh, this next question comes from Lisa who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm getting married in five days and I feel as though I am on another plane of existence with the amount of stress I am feeling. I am thrilled to marry the love of my life. Everything is packed and as ready as it can be for the weekend's festivities, but I am buzzing with energy. Any tips on how to coat pumpkins and penguins? Lisa. Now Hank?

• 10:45Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 10:46John Green?

  Let's drop some more lore.

• 10:47Hank Green?

  Yeah. You want to tell everybody what you did for me?

• 10:49John Green?

  I don't remember. I don't, I didn't do anything for you. I just like hung out with you.

• 10:53Hank Green?

  Correct.

• 10:55John Green?

  So first off, when I got married, like I, I was at a very high level of stress, but I'm

• 11:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:01John Green?

  Frequently at a very

• 11:02Hank Green?

  You know what that's like.

• 11:03John Green?

  Stress, right? So like, it wasn't, it wasn't new for me to be like at, at the, at the limit, you know, like if the stress starts in your toes, I was, it was at my eyebrows, but like, that's nothing new for me. I've, I've, I've been there before. I found the day of getting married very, so stressful that it was kind of difficult to enjoy it for me. Fortunately, it turns out that that's like the first day of like a 6,000 day marriage and like the other 6,000 days have been great. Not, I mean, not universally, but pretty, pretty good as, as things go. Um, and so you got to remember that. You got to remember this is not like the marriage. This is the wedding and then the marriage is going to be a whole different thing. That's actually much more important than the wedding and much more

• 11:46John Green?

  interesting and much more fulfilling and all that. But on your wedding day, as I recall, we were at a brunch on your wedding day.

• 11:54Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 11:55John Green?

  And mom was like, can you go find Hank? And I was like, sure. And so I looked around for you. And then eventually I made my way to the bathroom because that's where you tend to hang out. And, um,

• 12:04Hank Green?

  If, if one's not in the brunch, one's probably hiding in the bathroom.

• 12:07John Green?

  Yeah. You were in the bathroom and you were like, not doing too good.

• 12:10Hank Green?

  No. I had overestimated my need for quiche.

• 12:15John Green?

  Yeah. Um, that was part of it. I mean, I wouldn't say that was the primary issue, but yeah.

• 12:21Hank Green?

  Here's what I'll say. Given my mental state, I had overestimated my need for quiche. My current need for quiche was below zero and I had had maybe a spoonful and that had really pushed me over the edge. I was

• 12:31John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Hank Green?

  Feeling real, like the, the anxiety had turned into

• 12:36John Green?

  It was physical.

• 12:37Hank Green?

  It was physical. I was, my blood pressure was not where it would should be. And I was feeling like puke.

• 12:42John Green?

  You were having a physical reaction to anxiety, which is not uncommon, right?

• 12:47Hank Green?

  Indeed.

• 12:47John Green?

  But it was uncommon for you.

• 12:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, it's.

• 12:50John Green?

  And so.

• 12:51Hank Green?

  Look, it's only happened to me like six times in my life.

• 12:53John Green?

  When you're experiencing something you've never experienced before, haven't experienced in a long time, it's stressful on its own. And then there's the fact that like the stress, you know, it becomes a vicious cycle because the stressful thing is getting worse and worse. So anyway, we went, I was like, screw everything. We're getting out of this joint. We're not going to hang out at this breakfast place. We're going to get Hank home and we're going to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.

• 13:16Hank Green?

  Ah, it's exactly what I remember. And you know, there's a, there's an extension of this story that I have also talked about, which is that I biked to that brunch venue. You drove me home and then, uh, then I got married and a bunch of other things happened. Uh, and then I, I woke up one day, uh, to go bike somewhere. And I was like, my bike got stolen. And then four months later, I found my bike parked outside of the brunch venue. I just walked by it. And I was like, that's my bike.

• 13:44John Green?

  Yeah, there's nothing like falsely accusing the world of stealing your bike only to find out that it was not in fact stolen. Yeah, that's, that's a good one.

• 13:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, the, I'll tell you what. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 was the exact right thing. And that's probably not going to be the exact right thing for you. But it was for me because like, I know how to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. I know that I enjoy it. And so like, maybe that's like Star Trek, The Next Generation for you, which it also is for me. Or maybe it's like an album that you have a like a deep relationship with that you can, can like hear a lot of and experience a lot of inside of, or maybe it's a friend or may like, it could be a lot of different things. But like, if everything's done, and the only thing left to do is worry, and the worry is not producing anything except for unpleasantness, that's the, that's the best and purest use of the tremendous opportunities for distraction

• 14:36Hank Green?

  that our society has developed for us.

• 14:38John Green?

  Right. That's true. There was no Instagram or TikTok back in 2006 when you got married.

• 14:43Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't know. There's something much like, I, I actually don't think that TikTok or Instagram would be a good.

• 14:48John Green?

  No, that wouldn't calm me down.

• 14:49Hank Green?

  Because it gives you so much, you know?

• 14:51John Green?

  Yeah, it's too much sensory input.

• 14:54Hank Green?

  And like, you don't ever know if like, the next one's going to make you worried or not, you know?

• 14:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Hank Green?

  That's why I had to get off of TikTok when I was sick was because, uh, it would get, would give me like triggers and I would never know when one was coming for like, you know? Sickness.

• 15:08John Green?

  Mm hmm. Well, we wish you lots of luck, but remember that the wedding is is one thing and the marriage is another and the marriage is going to be the most interesting and important thing. The last thing I'll say about this, Hank, is that on my wedding day, the most enjoyable part was walking out of the church.

• 15:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:31John Green?

  Married.

• 15:31Hank Green?

  Once, once it all started, I was like, really.

• 15:34John Green?

  Yeah, you did great. Once it started and you had, you seemed like you had fun that day.

• 15:37Hank Green?

  I did. I liked a lot of the parts of it. I mean, I liked basically all of the parts of it. My least favorite part was how hungry I was during the part where you have to like go around to all the tables and say hi to everybody. And I was like, man, I should have had a hot dog.

• 15:52John Green?

  I was hungry. I was also thirsty for beer and no one would get me a beer. And I was like, I thought this was my special day. I should have as many beers as I would like.

• 16:02Hank Green?

  Oh, man. And I like at my wedding, I won't name any names, but certain family members had never had a real Montana beer before.

• 16:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Hank Green?

  So they thought they were having one beer at a time. And really, they were having like two and a half.

• 16:14John Green?

  Yeah, we, I mean, listen, Hank, we've, we've got a family that knows how to party. So I don't think it was just that they were drinking more than they thought they were drinking. I think that they were drinking exactly as much as they thought they were drinking.

• 16:26Hank Green?

  Scotch ale could be a real surprise when you hit like a seven, eight percent.

• 16:29John Green?

  All right. I'm going to ask you a question about snot, Hank.

• 16:31Hank Green?

  All right. I love that.

• 16:32John Green?

  It's from Mackenzie. Dear John and Hank, as someone who grew up with severe allergies and lots of colds, I've always wondered about snot. What is it? Why are there so many different textures? Is it the same as phlegm? Do you spit it out? Why can it be different colors? Most importantly, how is there so much of it? Thanks for considering my booger question, not Hazel Grace, Mackenzie Grace.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  Snot may be one of the like coolest proteins. And also, I had a video script I was working on about this years ago, and I abandoned it. But I should revive it about how about the largest molecule in your body is probably a single molecule of mucus that runs from your sinuses to your.

• 17:14Hank Green?

  Rectum.

• 17:15John Green?

  Oh, my.

• 17:16Hank Green?

  Because when a, when a, when a single like protein of, of a mucin, which is a mucous protein, is produced, it cross links with other molecules, other mucins that have been produced. So one mucin will join up with another one and they'll cross link together. And they have these like really weak cross links. They don't have very many from one to the other, but they are cross linked. And that makes them into these big, wiggly molecules that have very sort of like weak bonds between each other, but they are bonds. And they're not just hydrogen bonds. Yeah, I think that, I think that they are in fact covalent bonds. This is the track that I was going down and I abandoned the video. So like, I'm, I'm saying things that I'm like 90% sure of right now.

• 17:57John Green?

  Okay.

• 17:58Hank Green?

  And they're also like really, uh, they like water. So they like water gloms onto them. So the vast majority of the mass of snot is water, but it is bound together by these long filamentous mucin, uh, cross link structures that hold all that water in like a gel. And like, the reason you can produce so much snot is because your body produces a little bit of these proteins and the proteins suck water into them. And then, uh, and so it's mostly the water from your body that is, that is creating that. So you can create a lot of snot because there's, just like you can create a lot of spit. Like, it's just a lot of water from your body. And they're produced by, you know, uh, all the like, the like molecules

• 18:42Hank Green?

  on the surface of your mucous membranes that like shoot those mucins out.

• 18:45John Green?

  Now, do you know why some people's noses just sort of drip all winter, but not all summer?

• 18:49Hank Green?

  I don't actually. No, I don't. That's, that's a great question.

• 18:52John Green?

  I'll save that for my, I'll save that for my Ask Hank Anything episode.

• 18:56Hank Green?

  Great.

• 18:58Hank Green?

  John's gonna be on Ask Hank Anything, everybody.

• 19:00John Green?

  I am gonna be on Ask Hank Anything. I've been thinking about what questions I want to ask you. And I don't think I really want to ask you many scientific questions. I want to ask you a lot of questions about your relationship with your brother.

• 19:09Hank Green?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 19:10John Green?

  Yeah, I think that'll be fun.

• 19:12Hank Green?

  Mucus kicks ass, by the way. It's so great.

• 19:14John Green?

  Yeah, we love it. It does a lot of good stuff.

• 19:17Hank Green?

  Anything that gets into your body that's like not supposed to be there, it just like sticks into this gel and it doesn't get into your body. And then you, when you like, you know, spit it out or it comes out in various ways, all that stuff comes out too and, and isn't messing with you anymore.

• 19:32John Green?

  Which reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by mucus. Mucus. It's underrated.

• 19:37Hank Green?

  It's underrated. This podcast is also brought to you by, uh, One-Eyed Willie. One-Eyed Willie, rest in peace.

• 19:44John Green?

  Godspeed, sir. Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by Red Green. Red Green, the murderer of One-Eyed Willie.

• 19:50Hank Green?

  We shouldn't have let them both sponsor the same episode, John.

• 19:53John Green?

  Well, I know.

• 19:55Hank Green?

  I guess, you know.

• 19:56John Green?

  But it's real.

• 19:57Hank Green?

  Yeah. And when you buy an ad with us, we read the ad regardless. This podcast is also brought to you by Cold Smoke Scotch Ale. Cold Smoke Scotch Ale from Kettle House Brewing, the downfall of many a cousin.

• 20:09John Green?

  Yeah, you're getting close to identifying them by identifying them as cousins.

• 20:12Hank Green?

  There's a lot of cousins, John.

• 20:13John Green?

  There's only like 19 of them.

• 20:17John Green?

  All right, Hank, let's answer this question from Samantha who writes, Dear John and Hank, my boyfriend and I live in a pond that is home to many different kinds of wildlife, including.

• 20:24Hank Green?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You live in a pond?

• 20:26John Green?

  In front of a pond. That makes more. I was like, is a frog asking the question?

• 20:33Hank Green?

  I didn't know they were monogamous.

• 20:37John Green?

  I knew they could write into our email, but I didn't know they had boyfriends.

• 20:42Hank Green?

  I thought they were all poly. I thought they were all polywogs.

• 20:46John Green?

  I knew you were gonna do that. Dang it. I hate that. My boyfriend and I live in front of a pond that is home to many different kinds of wildlife, including turtles. In the middle of the pond, there is a log sticking out of the water at about a 20-degree angle, which is just perfect for turtles, by the way. You couldn't have planned it any better, Samantha.

• 21:04Hank Green?

  Perfect turtle log.

• 21:06John Green?

  That the turtles will often climb onto. No joke, they will. They're the happiest turtles in the world. Turtles can only climb on one at a time due to the angle and have to move up the log in order to make room for more turtles. So here is my question. What is the turtle etiquette when it comes to climbing onto the log? Does the first turtle climb straight to the top because they know there are more coming? Do they wait for another turtle to arrive and then move? Do turtles just push each other up the big log to make room for themselves? Thank you, John and Hank, for your knowledge. Samantha.

• 21:33Hank Green?

  I've always thought, John.

• 21:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Hank Green?

  You and I have missed our calling. We could have been the, what's the etiquette lady? We could have been the etiquette lady, but for turtles.

• 21:43John Green?

  Yes, the turtle etiquette, the tur- tur- tur- sorry, it's gonna take me a second, but I'm gonna get there. The tur- etiquette lady.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  I really like.

• 21:54John Green?

  Patience, grasshopper. I'm gonna get there.

• 21:58Hank Green?

  You will be the tur-tet-ec-ate lady, for sure.

• 22:01John Green?

  The tur-tet-ec-ate lady, yeah.

• 22:02Hank Green?

  I mean, tur-tet-ec-ate is an amazing title for our new novelty book.

• 22:11Hank Green?

  Because one thing that we don't, one thing that we're like, look, you, you gotta follow up Everything is Tuberculosis with Tur-Tet-ec-ate.

• 22:17John Green?

  With a novelty tur-tet-ec-ate book. That's just like, absolutely committed to the bit, where it's just like, here's what you do when you are a turtle.

• 22:26Hank Green?

  Like, John Hodgman did this. He wrote like several, like, absolutely dense, complex novelty books?

• 22:35John Green?

  John Hodgman is a bit commitment expert.

• 22:38Hank Green?

  I mean, wow. But yeah, I don't know. Like, how fast could we get Tur-Tet-ec-ate out? I don't think it's gonna happen.

• 22:46John Green?

  Not fast enough. And also, I've gotta go to the Philippines tomorrow, so.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  You've got a long flight. It's perfect.

• 22:53John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I should do on my flight.

• 22:57Hank Green?

  Just.

• 22:58John Green?

  Write the great American tur-tet-ec-ate novel.

• 23:00Hank Green?

  That's gonna get four scotch and sodas and write Tur-Tet-ec-ate. Take a Xanax for the, for the fear of flying.

• 23:10John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Then write Tur-Tet-ec-ate. 16 hour and 10 minute flight, Hank. In the air.

• 23:16Hank Green?

  Oh, my God. You're gonna write Tur-Tet-ec-ate and Tur-Tet-ec-ate 2?

• 23:23Hank Green?

  It can't take more than eight hours to write a Tur-Tet-ec-ate. It's one Tur-Tet-ec-ate, John.

• 23:28John Green?

  You do it. You do it this weekend. You'll have plenty of time. I think that the turtles have a sense of etiquette that we do not fully understand, Samantha. And I think that it is your job to become the Jane Goodall of turtle etiquette and, and observe these turtles closely to see how they move on the log. And that will be the, not the end of your turtle expertise, but the beginning of it. Because from there, I'm sure there's so many other turtle etiquette issues for you to consider.

• 23:57Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah. They're always doing stuff.

• 24:00John Green?

  Yeah. How do they, when they bury themselves in the sand, in the sand, in the muck, in the mud, come winter?

• 24:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:06John Green?

  Do they make space for each other? Or do the biggest turtles get the best holes? Do they believe, as I do, that we have to protect the young? Or are they in fact like monsters of narcissism?

• 24:19Hank Green?

  And there's only one way to find out, and that is to pay attention. And that's really what we should all be doing, because that's what our lives are made of. And we should be paying attention to the, the blue striped garter snakes and the, and the turtles and the weird games at the fair. I feel like that's my job sometimes, and I'm like, I feel so lucky.

• 24:36John Green?

  Yeah, you get to pay attention for a living. I feel like that's my job, too. Good job. Good work if you can get it.

• 24:42Hank Green?

  How about this, John?

• 24:43John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Hank Green?

  A proper turtle never rushes to conclusions. Or anywhere else.

• 24:51John Green?

  That's good. That's a really good, that's a really good first sentence of your Turtedikit novel.

• 24:56Hank Green?

  Thanks. I'm looking at a picture of a garter snake and it's making me sad.

• 25:00John Green?

  Poor Blue Green. Well, you thought, I love that you thought Blue Green got re-released into the wild. I am 100% sure. Well, because he was dead. That's why, because if we re-released him into the wild, we would have been re-releasing a corpse.

• 25:14John Green?

  But I think we told you that because you were still so young and fragile. You were like eight years old and I was 11, so I got, I knew about the, I knew about the world.

• 25:21Hank Green?

  Yeah. I knew what the world does to you. I had to turn nine before mom poured a goldfish down the drain.

• 25:27John Green?

  It is dark. Let's answer another question from our listeners, Hank. How about you ask me one?

• 25:33Hank Green?

  I don't have the doc.

• 25:35John Green?

  Okay, great, I'll ask you one.

• 25:37Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 25:38John Green?

  This question comes from Becky, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know people who've had their bladders removed, and I know that people can live without a spleen or a gallbladder, and you can lose a kidney and part of your colon and half of your liver. I think you can even live with one lung or with only one hemisphere of your brain, et cetera. So what organs do we actually need? Morbidly curious, Becky.

• 25:55Hank Green?

  I think there's only four, like there is something, there is like a...

• 25:59John Green?

  Well, you need at least one lung. And you need at least one kidney.

• 26:03Hank Green?

  No.

• 26:03John Green?

  And you need a pancreas really badly.

• 26:05Hank Green?

  Nope. You don't need a pancreas. People live without pancreases all the time.

• 26:09John Green?

  What?

• 26:10Hank Green?

  I mean, their, their life spans are significantly shorter, but on average.

• 26:15John Green?

  That, okay, all right. You, so you can live without a pancreas for a while?

• 26:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:20John Green?

  Okay.

• 26:21Hank Green?

  I think...

• 26:22John Green?

  I think brain, heart, lungs. Brain, heart, lungs. I think, like, I think you need a kidney. I think you need a kidney, long term. But everything, I mean, long term, I think you need everything except for your gallbladder. No. I don't have a gallbladder and I feel fine.

• 26:38Hank Green?

  You definitely don't need one of your kidneys, for example, you don't need your eyes.

• 26:42John Green?

  Yeah, you don't need one of your kidneys, you don't need a gallbladder. What's that other thing you don't need that people, a spleen?

• 26:47Hank Green?

  Spleens, you, you know a wild thing about spleens, John?

• 26:50John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Hank Green?

  Sometimes people have a traumatic injury to their spleen, oftentimes, car accidents or motorcycle accidents. And then, and they'll take the spleen out. And then, years later, they will discover that they have more than one new spleen located at non-spleen parts of the body. And what happens is that the spleen, when it ruptures, releases spleen cells into the body. Those cells go and re-colonize another area of the body and they can still do spleen stuff.

• 27:23John Green?

  Can I tell you a really sad story about spleens? As long as it's not about a pet. No, it's about a human. It's worse than that, a human child, no less. So when I was a chaplain at the children's hospital, on my first night on call, this kid came in with a ruptured spleen from a car accident. And I, I threw up and fainted. And when I came to, the nurses were kind of laughing. And I was like, what's so funny? And they were like, well, first off, you threw up and fainted and that girl was fine. You know, like, she's, she's gonna have a normal life. And secondly, the parents, who had just been reassured, were like newly traumatized because they thought you were a doctor.

• 28:08John Green?

  Oh, boy, that's, you gotta live with that shame forever. And I feel like that's also new lore that I didn't know. Yeah, that was, I mean, that was a tough job. I wasn't good at it. The rare, the rare unpleasant combination of not, not being, not being graded a job that also is a tough job. But yeah, anyway, I did not, I did not faint after that. That was the only time I fainted.

• 28:33Hank Green?

  There are five, five organs that are definitely necessary, brain, heart, lungs, liver and kidney.

• 28:39John Green?

  Liver and kidney?

• 28:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:41John Green?

  Wow, I really thought your pancreas was necessary.

• 28:44Hank Green?

  It's really, really important. But yeah, yeah, people, people pancreatic cancer patients often have their whole pancreas removed. And then have to have a bunch of stuff like obviously makes you variously diabetic because you don't produce.

• 28:58John Green?

  Sure.

• 28:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:59John Green?

  Sure. Well, I'm glad we took this turn. We were having such a good time. This podcast contains multitudes, y'all. Sometimes it's red, green and blue green. Sometimes it's John having flash memories of being a chaplain. Let's answer another serious one before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

• 29:18Hank Green?

  All right, John, this next question comes from Raquel, who asks, Dear Hank and John, what would happen if the oceans were 50% less salty? High energy but low sodium, Raquel.

• 29:28John Green?

  Now, this is the kind of serious question I've been after, Hank, because I think that life would be dramatically different.

• 29:36Hank Green?

  Well, what are we talking about? Are we talking about like it happened all of a sudden?

• 29:39John Green?

  Yes, like tomorrow, we wake up and the oceans are 50% less salty. We made a terrible mistake and we removed half the salt from the oceans.

• 29:47Hank Green?

  I'm a little worried that, that, that, that the earth would end.

• 29:51John Green?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 29:52Hank Green?

  That like complex life on the planet would collapse.

• 29:55John Green?

  Really?

• 29:56Hank Green?

  I'm worried that there might be like atmospheric effects, but maybe not. So like, like one thing that's going to happen is all of the animals in the ocean are going to die.

• 30:05John Green?

  Really bad for the whales.

• 30:06Hank Green?

  That's going to be very bad. That's going to be bad for everybody.

• 30:09John Green?

  It's going to say, it's going to stink.

• 30:11Hank Green?

  Number, it's going to smell so bad. A huge number of people are reliant on ocean life.

• 30:16John Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Hank Green?

  Or, you know.

• 30:19John Green?

  Their survival.

• 30:20Hank Green?

  Also, maybe a lot of like zooplankton will die and.

• 30:24John Green?

  And what would that mean? I don't know what a zooplankton is.

• 30:26Hank Green?

  Producing oxygen.

• 30:28John Green?

  Oh. And zooplankton actually produce a lot of the oxygen.

• 30:34Hank Green?

  Well, no, yeah, actually, it is, it is in fact not the zooplankton. It's the, that, that means like like living plankton, like, I think.

• 30:41John Green?

  All right.

• 30:42Hank Green?

  It is the other plankton. It is the ones that, that do the photosynthesizing. That would be the concern, but like, maybe not. Maybe they'd all die and just like the cycle would shut down and it wouldn't affect atmospheric chemistry too much.

• 30:53John Green?

  It feels like if we stopped pumping a bunch of the oxygen in the air into the air, that would be a big problem.

• 30:58Hank Green?

  There would also be fewer things absorbing the oxygen, like the photosynthesizers wouldn't be absorbing it. So it might, might stay. But like, I think also that changing it would make the ocean less effective at absorbing CO2.

• 31:11John Green?

  Hmm.

• 31:11Hank Green?

  I mean, if it happened all of a sudden, basically, you're talking like a civilization will collapse. I don't know that humans would survive. Now, there's another version of this question, which is like, what would the world have been like if the oceans were half as salty?

• 31:25John Green?

  Hmm.

• 31:25Hank Green?

  Which is like, probably not that different.

• 31:28John Green?

  Still would have had life on land, still would have had life in the, in the water.

• 31:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:33John Green?

  Yeah. You got everything you need for chemistry.

• 31:35Hank Green?

  Stuff probably would have been a little easier because going from freshwater to saltwater would be easier.

• 31:40John Green?

  Right. It's, it's, it's just a reminder of how fragile, and I don't mean to get, I don't mean to get existential on you, Hank, but like, this whole thing is so fragile. We think of, we think of civilization and

• 31:52Hank Green?

  Well, I mean-

• 31:52John Green?

  our current situation as being so inevitable, but I don't think it is so inevitable.

• 31:57Hank Green?

  No.

• 31:57John Green?

  I think it was like, required a lot of luck and good timing and that like, a bad luck and bad timing could, could, could be pretty bad for us.

• 32:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, it could still happen.

• 32:07John Green?

  It will ha- I mean, you know, I don't want to get ahead of us, but like, it's gonna happen.

• 32:11Hank Green?

  Eventually, everything happens.

• 32:13John Green?

  Yeah. Thanks for coming to our party.

• 32:15Hank Green?

  I wonder what the worst things about Earth are.

• 32:17John Green?

  Hmm. Great question.

• 32:19Hank Green?

  So like, obviously, great planet.

• 32:23John Green?

  Really good.

• 32:23Hank Green?

  Good size.

• 32:24John Green?

  Yeah, best planet in the known, known universe.

• 32:26Hank Green?

  Very underrated, has both water and land. A lot of people are like, wow, a water world. But like, I think, I think most water planets that, that we find, if we go out and are looking, I bet they won't have land.

• 32:40John Green?

  Zero percent land.

• 32:41Hank Green?

  Is actually probably pretty important for things to have gone the way that they did.

• 32:44John Green?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 32:45Hank Green?

  There's been life in the water way longer and none of that stuff figured out how to do technology.

• 32:50John Green?

  Unless it did and then was like, forget this, this is a bad idea.

• 32:53Hank Green?

  Well, there are little octopus towns, so there's

• 32:55John Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Hank Green?

  Kind of-

• 32:57John Green?

  cephalopods, I think, maybe figured it out and decided like-

• 32:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:00John Green?

  Wasn't worth it.

• 33:01Hank Green?

  I wonder about that. I like

• 33:03John Green?

  I do too.

• 33:04Hank Green?

  I sometimes I have thought about like, what would a civilization that happened underwater actually look like? And I have, and I like run into like physical barriers. Like, it's just really hard to do a lot of stuff.

• 33:16John Green?

  Yeah, it's hard to build monumental structures.

• 33:19Hank Green?

  You can't, like, you can't do fire, so it's hard to control energy. You can't, like, you have to have, like, pots of gases instead of pots of liquids, and that's just much harder.

• 33:27John Green?

  Yeah, or, or you take advantage of the tides and use that to create energy somehow.

• 33:32Hank Green?

  Maybe you get out, you get out there, yeah.

• 33:34John Green?

  I hear you. It wouldn't be easy.

• 33:35Hank Green?

  But like, but if it's a pure water world, then like, what are the, what are the tides even? I don't know. I guess they

• 33:42John Green?

  But you're talking about what's good about Earth. I mean, I'm interested in what's bad about Earth.

• 33:46Hank Green?

  What's the, so like, there's all this good stuff. What's, what's the stuff that's bad? Like, plate tectonics is really important, probably, for life.

• 33:53John Green?

  Yep.

• 33:54Hank Green?

  But, but also, like, we have plate tectonics, but like, we have a pretty mild volcanic situation.

• 34:00John Green?

  Right.

• 34:01Hank Green?

  Compared to what it could be.

• 34:02John Green?

  Again, this is something that's good about Earth.

• 34:04Hank Green?

  That's not, like, I was thinking maybe volcanoes were a bad thing, but like, actually, you kind of like, if you're gonna have plate tectonics, you're gonna have volcanoes, but our volcanoes are, frankly, pretty insignificant on the global scale of things.

• 34:15John Green?

  Right. I'm gonna say dip and dots.

• 34:20Hank Green?

  If we're gonna go to human-created things.

• 34:23John Green?

  Yeah. Dip and dots. Why not just, why not just have ice cream?

• 34:26Hank Green?

  I, I probably would have moved beyond dip and dots.

• 34:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Hank Green?

  I like dip and dots. They feel so weird.

• 34:33John Green?

  Oh, what a bad take. It's like all the people who wrote into me mad that I hate

• 34:36Hank Green?

  Worst thing about Earth, bad take.

• 34:38John Green?

  Yeah, bad take, man. Bad take. Pro dip and dots is a bad take. I'm sorry.

• 34:43Hank Green?

  Everything that I'm ending up with is like, the worst thing about Earth is that we could lose it.

• 34:47John Green?

  Oh, yeah. Well, let me, let me put it in a different phrase.

• 34:52Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 34:52John Green?

  We will lose it.

• 34:53Hank Green?

  Oh, Jesus. You made me make Ben bleep something.

• 34:58John Green?

  Sorry, Ben.

• 35:00John Green?

  All right. It's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first since Hank has no news from Mars. Hank?

• 35:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:06John Green?

  The news from AFC Wimbledon just keeps getting better. It's not just that we keep winning football games. It's that we're securing our future. We just signed Isaac Ogundera, who's played for us since he was a kid, to a new contract, and we signed AFC Wimbledon manager Johnny Jackson to a contract extension. And Ashley Baze, Bezo, our goalkeeping coach, who's one of the main reasons why we've developed so many great goalkeepers over the years, he signed a contract extension. And when I said, "Thank you so much for signing a contract extension," he smiled at me and said, "You're welcome." So, there you go. I'm very excited about the future of this football club. I feel like we're really securing it. One contract extension I would love to see is Craig Cope, the head of football,

• 35:48John Green?

  the guy who's organizing all of this behind the scenes, who's responsible for our incredible recruitment and everything. I'd like to see him signed to a lifetime contract. But in the meantime, AFC Wimbledon, securing the future of our football club.

• 36:01Hank Green?

  That kicks butt, John. I'm so glad. Is this the transfer window that people talk about?

• 36:06John Green?

  No, the transfer window opens up on January 1st. So I'm trying to accrue some capital between now and then.

• 36:13Hank Green?

  Oh, like, if you're, like, you're trying to get money?

• 36:16John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Hank Green?

  To spend? You?

• 36:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Hank Green?

  Wild. What, how do you accrue capital?

• 36:22John Green?

  Well, Hank, there's a number of ways to do it.

• 36:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, who knows?

• 36:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Hank Green?

  Gonna sign a book deal?

• 36:29John Green?

  Signing a book deal is the, is the obvious one, yeah. But let's move on.

• 36:33Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 36:36Hank Green?

  Well, in, in news from Mars, as, I don't know.

• 36:40John Green?

  Yeah, you don't have to have news from Mars. That's okay. It's, it's a rock, man. I mean, it has, it had the same week this week as it had last week.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  I think that they, like, there were some scientists that were doing some simulations on what it'd be like to dig under Mars, to like, build down there.

• 36:54John Green?

  How? That's a great question. How, how, what are we talking about? Are we talking about drills? Like, do we, would drills on Earth work to get down under the surface of Mars?

• 37:04Hank Green?

  It seems like Mars has a lot of sedimentary rock, which is pretty easy to dig through.

• 37:08John Green?

  Okay.

• 37:09Hank Green?

  And, but also indicates just sort of astounding amount of water happened for quite a long time.

• 37:17John Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Hank Green?

  But...

• 37:19John Green?

  It was a water world.

• 37:20Hank Green?

  Oh, God, it was. And probably also had land, which makes me think maybe my take about how... Most planets would be just water is probably wrong. So yeah, they could definitely dig down there, but I think that they want to kind of see, because you know, you want to have a mix of the rock being not too hard, but not so soft that it's going to cave in on you.

• 37:39John Green?

  Right, especially when there's all these volcanoes and Mars quakes and whatnot.

• 37:44Hank Green?

  Mars is actually much less quaky than Earth, so that is.

• 37:47John Green?

  Oh, really? Oh, good. All right, well, see, there's one thing, we're a little too quaky.

• 37:51Hank Green?

  But they don't have plate tectonics, which ruins.

• 37:53John Green?

  We need plate tectonics. That's, that's a huge part of the reason for our success.

• 37:57Hank Green?

  They also don't have the spinning core, which protects you from the electromagnetic rays of the sun.

• 38:02John Green?

  No, I'm very grateful for that because I stress out enough about radiation without having more of it.

• 38:08Hank Green?

  Radiation is so good. I gotta classify visual, visible light as radiation and then it all gets much more chill.

• 38:15John Green?

  I appreciate that reframing. Thank you, and thank you to everybody for listening to our podcast. You can email us at [email protected].

• 38:23Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Ben Swordout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Menesh. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti. 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.

• 38:42John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.