450: Diet Coke is Tea (w/ Keith Habersberger!)

What is a word like “vegetarian” to describe a person who does not willingly want to consume AI-generated content? How do you avoid doomspiraling when trying to reconnect with your creativity? What’s the tastiest drink? Why do banks always tell you what the temperature is outside? Do I need to get a checkbook? What book should I read? Why are parking lot sunsets so beautiful and particularly, why are Meijer parking lots? How can I convince my friends who are visiting that it is a better place to see the sunset than over Lake Michigan?…Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected] Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and Keith Habersberger. It's a podcast where two brothers and sometimes a brother and some other guy answer your questions, give you the easiest advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Keith, John couldn't be here this week, so we got a guy who looks like he could definitely be our brother.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Definitely, I feel like I could be in the family.

• 0:29Hank Green?

  I feel like, yeah, I feel like you're in it.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:31Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, we could, we could get Joe Hansen in, in here.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  We could get Grant O'Brien in here.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  Man, oh, wow. If the five of us did a thing.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I have thought we, we should find some sort of thing, the way that people do like the, the Ryan Fest like in Oregon and the, where they like get, instead of getting people with the same name, just people who look enough like us.

• 0:53Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  That we're cool with it.

• 0:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, you know, just guys with faces who are white and have glasses.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  I mean, that's pretty much it.

• 1:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  But it is fun that how many of us are specifically like YouTubers from different but similar geek and nerd niches.

• 1:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  You know, I think we're all the top of a different nerd stack in particular.

• 1:15Hank Green?

  Oh, what top, what nerd stack are you on top of?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Food.

• 1:19Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, I guess so. Have you ever had Taco John's?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I have had Taco John's.

• 1:23Hank Green?

  Did you have all of Taco John's?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  No, I haven't because it's just in like the center of America.

• 1:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, we have Taco John's here.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  They have that weird sauce that's named after a lady.

• 1:32Hank Green?

  That's not familiar, actually.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Maybe it's a different, oh, Runza. Sorry, do you know Runza?

• 1:37Hank Green?

  No, I was just thinking about Taco John's because the one by my house closed and I haven't had that burrito that smells a little bit like propane in so long.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I've only had Taco John's a couple of times and it was when, back when I was touring almost 15 years ago.

• 1:50Hank Green?

  Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, back when you had to. I just miss it. This is great for me as a professional podcaster. My neighbor's son has started a band.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, what? Your neighbor's son started a band?

• 2:03Hank Green?

  Yeah, and they play in the garage that's right across the alley from my studio.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  That's, but in a way, isn't that wonderful?

• 2:09Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Because like, the, the fact that kids are still doing bands in the garage, to me, that's, that's Americana. We've, I feel like we've lost that.

• 2:18Hank Green?

  I know. I like, my, my neighbor is like, we should, we should do something about this. And I'm like, but they're, they're just trying to be kids.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. Like, you're, you're having a problem people were dealing with in the seventies and eighties. How often do we get to have that?

• 2:33Hank Green?

  So what we do here, Keith, is we answer people questions. We try to give them good advice, but we don't promise anything.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:41Hank Green?

  And I thought, since my brother, John, is working very hard on his copy edits for his book, and so he can't be here, that instead we would get you. Do you want to answer some questions from our listeners?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I would love to answer questions.

• 2:52Hank Green?

  This first one is from Kendra, who asks, Dear Hank and John, vegetarian is a useful word. It saves a paragraph of explanation every time I use it. Can I grab you a burger? No, thanks. I'm vegetarian. I think the English language needs a new word that means a person who does not willingly consume AI-generated content. What should it be?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 3:11Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  They say like, oh, I'm anti-AI slop, right? Or I'm like, anti-AI. But that's, that's two, it's really a word with a fun prefix.

• 3:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. I'm a humanitarian. That one's already taken. And also makes you sound like you might be eating people.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're in a vegetarian conversation, and then you say that, then like, oh, now I've got a new context to a Terry.

• 3:32Hank Green?

  Right. This is actually a problem. I wonder if anyone's ever written that comedy sketch about a person who's talking about being a humanitarian, and then the other people in the room are like, oh, my God.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Vegetarian. I'm trying to think, like, I'm sure the etymology isn't this, but is it, is et, eat? Like veg eat?

• 3:49Hank Green?

  Vegetarian? No, I don't think so.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Like a.

• 3:52Hank Green?

  There's also carnivore, you know? You got the vor in there.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Which feels more like meat.

• 3:58Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You don't say vegivore, but you should. Herbivore, herbivore.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  I was called out in an episode of Last Meals for the term of voring that Courtney Miller thought I could vor her, uh, which is.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I, this is the whole reason I invited you on, and I can't believe we already got there. What did you, what did you think about, about Shane's wife talking about you voring her?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Well, first flattered, obviously.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  You know, like, I love that the mythos of me eating everything maybe is starting to make people think like, well, maybe he eats.

• 4:37Hank Green?

  Everything.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Everyone. Ever like I'm like, who's the, what's the, the monster that eats worlds? Not the monster, but the.

• 4:44Hank Green?

  Katamari, Katamari.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, Katamari. Well, that's just a guy with a bad dad. But isn't there Galactus, the consumer of worlds, the eater of worlds?

• 4:54Hank Green?

  Galactivore. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about, Keith. I'll be honest with you.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  We're off topic. What is the word for anti-AI?

• 5:02Hank Green?

  Look, I like this from an angle, which is that the information that we consume is very much like the food that we consume. And there has categories and slop is interesting. Brain rot also something to try and avoid, but I definitely.

• 5:17Hank Green?

  Just like with food, I'll have a little as a treat.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  What is brain rot? An AI subset or just?

• 5:22Hank Green?

  No, no, no. I don't. I mean, it can be. It's certainly brain rot can certainly be AI generated. But it is for me, brain rot, and this is me talking to my nine year old. The brain rot is anything where you are watching it and afterward it has provided you with nothing. Except it satiated your attention in that moment, but then you got nothing from it afterward.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like old flash animations when we were younger were sort of brain rot.

• 5:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, there were definitely brain rotty flash animations, but there were some like the moment it like tells a little bit of a story. I feel like it's not really brain rot anymore.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, um, the badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom. That's brain rot.

• 6:04Hank Green?

  I guess. I don't know.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It's a story. What are you getting out of that other than an inside joke?

• 6:09Hank Green?

  It's so funny, like, like, like that brain rot is so much healthier than the brain rot of today, though. And there was also like, wasn't like an infinite supply of it. So you just had to watch the same brain rot over and over again, which has a different quality to it.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And it was a whole website sometimes. So it was like, that's the website is like the hamster dance. That's probably the oldest.

• 6:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Hank Green?

  Oh, man. Were you born in 1980?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Eighty seven, yeah.

• 6:37Hank Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little later.

• 6:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, but you were, I guess, for me, you must have been more of a child when Hamsterdance happened because I was in college.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a child and it was a website I was frequenting. I was like, this is a good place to sit for five minutes.

• 6:52Hank Green?

  You know, a really solid fact about me, same. And I was like 18 years old, 19 years old.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  It was good. It was good.

• 7:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It was really good.

• 7:03Hank Green?

  There was so much, there was so much weird.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  The We Love the Moon.

• 7:07Hank Green?

  Can I, can I like do a thing to like 1% of our listeners' brains right now?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  I would think would be wonderful.

• 7:13Hank Green?

  Poe the Sheep.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Poe the Sheep. Do I know Poe?

• 7:16Hank Green?

  That was just for 1% of our listeners' brains.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you lost me.

• 7:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, that was, that was the thing. You could install Poe on your Windows machine and there would be a sheep that lived on your desktop and his name was Poe and, and he like did stuff.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  That does sound familiar, but I feel like that was something like my brother referenced once, not something I experienced because my older brothers are, both of my brothers are older. So they're a little bit more early eighties.

• 7:39Hank Green?

  Should we have him on the podcast? Give him a call, get him in the room?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  They don't look quite as much like us. Brian, a little more so. David doesn't look at all like us, so.

• 7:49Hank Green?

  Is he like really hardcore tattoos all over the face?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  No, he's just like longer haired, like rounder. He's like a, he's, I feel like he's the, like a warlord's build.

• 8:05Hank Green?

  I hope David's listening.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  He would like that actually.

• 8:08Hank Green?

  Who would David eat?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Who would David eat?

• 8:11Hank Green?

  Yeah. Of the Smosh Cast.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Of the Smosh Cast? Maybe Chance.

• 8:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that'd be a lot of people's choice.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he seems like he tastes good.

• 8:23Hank Green?

  He's manageable.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Good. Yeah. Yeah, he's very consumable.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Angela seems consumable, but she's gonna fight back way too much.

• 8:33Hank Green?

  No, actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like a, uh, there's like a defense mechanism in there somewhere. Just below the skin, there's thorns.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  It's like when the eating baby squid thing where you have to chew them alive and they fight. Have you ever? You know what I'm talking about?

• 8:46Hank Green?

  No, don't.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I'm just, it's a thing. It's a thing that exists.

• 8:49Hank Green?

  We're talking to a vegetarian right now.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I'm just talking, I'm just saying, that's a thing. Different people eat different stuff and different stuff is okay to eat.

• 8:57Hank Green?

  Yeah. I think that we should all be more careful about the kind of stuff that we consume, but in all directions. And it'd be nice to have words for it. But I don't know. Like, there's like a content minimalism that really we should have again, but we never will.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  No, we won't. There's too much. And this, the ability for everybody to make anything. And I think that's like the biggest danger of AI. Like, everyone already has the ability to put their thoughts places that no one ever could before. But now we have the ability to vis- like, create a lot of thought, visualize in a strange way, and put it everywhere faster than ever before. I was talking to somebody about like, the amount of AI stuff getting on YouTube is faster than YouTube can stop it.

• 9:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Like, by far. Like, they, they're just like, YouTube is like, oh, we're sort of powerless here. No, that wasn't a YouTube drill. It's like, this is word, word to word.

• 9:44Hank Green?

  I was watching a video about, that was like a guide to starting a YouTube channel that was like, you should do your best to use an email address that's been around for a while. Because like, there are so many people making addresses that Google does like a bunch of things to try and make sure that you're not just a content farm or a spammer. And one of them is, is like, you get, like, the algorithm is sort of like prefers people who seem like they've been a person for more than five minutes.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  That would be good. And sometimes you wanna have, you gotta make a new email to make some new thing real quick.

• 10:14Hank Green?

  I know. I do that. Well, yeah. The, the thing is, I've been doing that for so long. I got a bunch of old emails that I've never used.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  That's true. You gotta dig them up, though, and remember what slight variant password you gave it.

• 10:25Hank Green?

  They're all in my last pass, baby.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  That's smart. I use last pass not enough, but there's some, the important stuff is on there, but my, there's some other stuff that's just flying, flying by the hip.

• 10:35Hank Green?

  Oh, wow. That's dangerous.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  No, it is.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  That's not how I do it.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That's important.

• 10:40Hank Green?

  Can I hit you with my, like, theory here that, like, slop is different from anything created by AI?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Please go on, because I don't, I don't understand it yet.

• 10:49Hank Green?

  So, like, I feel like there's this thing that is slop, that is anything that's very easy to make, but you could also make something that's very hard to make and just use tools while you're making them. And, like, obviously, there's times when you're just, like, using content to wear filler or something in Photoshop, which is not, like, that barely counts for anything. But you could see, like, creating, like, a website, like, my henkreen.com was coded with the assistance of Claude. And I'm just like, yeah, like, but like, it was all written by me. All of the text is from me.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 11:23Hank Green?

  There's a feeling of anything that's, like, super easy to make, humans will make so much of it so fast that it will immediately be devalued in our eyes. And it should be, because it's not valuable anymore. And that is the thing that feels like slop to me. All these LinkedIn posts that sound exactly the same, all of these, like, comics that were generated by ChatGPT that all look exactly the same. ChatGPT has, like, a style of comic that it makes that I just, like, the moment I see it, I'm like, eh.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:53Hank Green?

  I've seen this a thousand times.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think tools that aid in the creation of your idea is more okay than tool-making idea for you, right?

• 12:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, tool-making idea for you is weird, because these things don't have tools. So if tool-making idea, tool is giving you someone else's idea.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. It's just old idea mixed up.

• 12:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's a, I mean, that's how it feels, anyway. I don't, I don't know. I'm not a AI researcher, thank God.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 12:17Hank Green?

  Okay, well, we didn't answer that question. There's just like, there's not like a good thing. We don't, like, I, I just think it's interesting to say out loud, like, eating food and consuming information are similar processes. But, like, we don't think of it that way, so we haven't, we haven't created language around it.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Uh, what's the opposite of Omni?

• 12:36Hank Green?

  Oh, uh, uni?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Okay, well, uni slopper doesn't work. I'm trying to think of, like...

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Omni slopper would be like.

• 12:45Hank Green?

  Like you know that, you know that Donald J. Trump is an Omni slopper.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are Omni sloppers. So I think we can name at least the mass consumer sloppers.

• 12:54Hank Green?

  Right, right. Not like one slop, but no slop. What's the, what's the prefix for nothing?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, people who only use Chappy T. Well, they're Unisloppers.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  Nunka slopper.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. What is it?

• 13:03Hank Green?

  A Nunka slopper.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Nunka slopper. Sounds internet-y.

• 13:10Hank Green?

  You know, Keith, thank you for like not letting it go. Thank you for keeping us working until we came up with a bad word.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  We gotta try.

• 13:20Hank Green?

  I'm a Nunka slopper.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  I'm a Nunka slopper. I don't deal with any of that.

• 13:24Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Katie, who asks, Dear John and Hank, my husband and I saw John speak at Drake University last week. This is gonna be weird to answer. And as someone who used to write for fun all the time and even briefly considered being an author, I felt really inspired. However, when I think about sitting down to write, I panic and I get embarrassed because what if it's no good? What if I just wasted all of that time on something stupid? What if I'm not as good as I thought I was? So I guess my question is, how do I avoid the doom spiral of trying to rediscover my love for writing? Any tips and or prompts would be appreciated. Pumpkins and perfectionism, Katie.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Well, this is a real time that I'm not a good substitute for a real author.

• 14:07Hank Green?

  You write stuff?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I wrote a book, technically.

• 14:11Hank Green?

  You wrote a book? You write songs?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I write songs. I'm very good at lyrics. I'll, the, the easy answer there is like, well, you, you might spend time making something that sucks. But won't that make you better if you can recognize that it sucks?

• 14:24Hank Green?

  Right. And, and also like, don't be afraid of all the time you already spent doing the thing because that's not you. That's already done.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:30Hank Green?

  You don't have to feel any kind of way about that. That's already done. And like.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Right. You changed.

• 14:35Hank Green?

  I keep hearing this about a number of different creative endeavors. You kind of have to like it when it sucks.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, totally. You have to enjoy the, enjoy the pain. Like, that's a runner thing, right? They like, they actually like the pain at some point. They have to learn to love the struggle.

• 14:51Hank Green?

  That's not for me. And not the physical struggle, but the, the mental struggle absolutely is. I heard someone recently saying, like, an actor saying, like, if you don't like it when it's you in a room with, like, three people who are pretty bad at acting, performing for a quarter-full room off, off Broadway, you'll be miserable no matter what, because it's always gonna be less glamorous than you imagined it would be.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I also like, this is not exactly in the same realm, but I'm, something I wanted to ask you is recently I've decided, you know, people are always like, you only use 10% of your brain. Like, well, you know, your whole brain is working all the time. You're just not aware of it. So I've decided to try to tap into that, to be like, okay, when someone asks me a question, I don't know the answer. I just say, I'll let my brain work on that for a while. And I just don't actively try to think about it. And typically, later on in the day, the answer comes up.

• 15:47Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  My brain just works on it. I just, like, assume that some part of my brain is now gonna focus on that, I guess, if I tell it to. And oftentimes, the answer comes about in, like, an hour or so.

• 15:59Hank Green?

  Do you think that that would happen if you didn't tell your brain that you were?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I think, I think it would, because I think sometimes you're like, I can't think of that word. And then, like, later on, you're like, oh, the word, that came to me. But like, it didn't come to you, your brain worked on it.

• 16:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. I like, I like that. It's, it's like, it's like, look, it wasn't magic. Something, like, somebody did it their job. Somebody in there was doing their job.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Something in there was like, I gotta figure this out for Keith. For Conscious Keith, Conscious Keith's gotta know this answer, that name, that celebrity.

• 16:31Hank Green?

  Yeah, boy, I have no idea. I don't know what's going on there. I'm, I'm totally confident that something is going on there.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:37Hank Green?

  But, yeah, I mean, I also have this feeling oftentimes where I'm like, I can't remember that thing. And I'm not worried about it, because I'm, it's definitely gonna come back. There's something will trigger it and it'll come back. And if it wa, if it wasn't, if it wasn't that good of a thing, I won't, maybe I won't think of it. But if it was good, it'll come back.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Except for those 2:00 AM thoughts. Sometimes they, you perceive them, they must be good. And I think some of them I've lost have been good. Now, I've written down a lot of them. And it's rare that they're good. I don't know what my brain's cooking.

• 17:08Hank Green?

  That's the thing. If you actually do the thing, you're like, oh, in fact, these were all bad ideas.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  It's cooking up some real hot garbage in there at two in the morning. Yes, some human did have to invent concrete and things happened before that, Keith, but that's not a revelation.

• 17:27Hank Green?

  I just wrote a video that I don't even think I'm going to publish about where toilet paper goes.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  It disintegrates.

• 17:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, but where does it go after that? Or where do the atoms and molecules go?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, they become something new. I don't know. I'm interested. Hey, you got one view. Waiting for you. Waiting for you somewhere in the ether. I'm sure you got six or seven at least.

• 17:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I wrote the whole video, so I probably should just make it.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Just do it. I think it's interesting.

• 17:54Hank Green?

  I just, I don't know. I feel like it's not that interesting. Like, is there, what's the?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I think the beginning premise of like, where does it go? It's like, yeah, I mean, it must go in the sewer. Where do the sewers go? I don't know. But then I think the deeper question of like, where do disintegrated things go? And how disintegrated does a thing get before it's not that thing anymore?

• 18:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. If you track the atoms and molecules, they end up all over the place. It's wild.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:18Hank Green?

  We eat them eventually.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Of course. We drink them. What is, if you drink a molecule, are you eating? What's the difference in food molecules and drink molecules at that level?

• 18:28Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, I mean, the food molecules and drink molecules, the only real difference is the chewing.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 18:35Hank Green?

  What's the best drink?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I mean, water.

• 18:40Hank Green?

  Oh, boo.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  I know. I know. I didn't say it with enthusiasm. The tastiest drink?

• 18:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, your favorite.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  My favorite drink. I like coffee a lot. It's basically water. Yeah, I like black coffee.

• 18:54Hank Green?

  Did you say it's basically water?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:56Hank Green?

  All the drinks are basically water.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but this one's like tea and coffee feel like the most basically water because it's just like other things have like other flavors, like multiple flavors, some thought. Not that coffee doesn't have thought.

• 19:08Hank Green?

  Coffee has a lot of flavors, but it doesn't, it like, yeah, like Coca-Cola is like a third sugar. But like a Diet Coke is just tea. That's just a tea.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Really?

• 19:18Hank Green?

  That's what I'm, you know, I'm gonna die on this hill. Come at me, people of the world. Diet Coke is tea.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Funny take. You get a lot of engagement on that kind of statement.

• 19:29Hank Green?

  You know what else is tea? Milk. Milk is tea. Milk is cow tea.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm down with that.

• 19:35Hank Green?

  Okay. High five.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  I'm down with that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's just fat, heavy fat tea.

• 19:40Hank Green?

  Heavy fat tea.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, why not?

• 19:44Hank Green?

  I think it's all tea.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, yeah, it sort of is. If it's the idea that you're putting something in something and it's diluting the flavor. That's tea.

• 19:52Hank Green?

  Have you ever watered down milk? Because it sounds like you have.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  I've had ice in my milk before at some point. Yeah, I didn't. It wasn't for me. But I have done the ice in the cereal with milk and there is something happening there.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  It has to be ice that is like more of the chip ice that you can crunch through, but still has structure. Something about making it colder. There is something going on with that, making it yummy or, or at least maybe making your brain thing gets more ice creamy. It is ice cream, I guess.

• 20:22Hank Green?

  So Katie, uh, I'm sorry, but maybe what you need to do is to ask weird questions like, is milk cow tea? And then, and then see where it takes you. But there are lots of good prompts. There are lots of like good writing prompt Reddit, uh, subreddits, which are, are nice. That's like a, a way to get started. I also really like, um, this is what I used to do when I was, when I was a young righty person is I would, I would read a chapter in a book and then I would try and write in that person's style in a different direction. And I was very bad at this, but I had a lot of fun doing it. And the people and when I showed people that work, they liked it. They'd be like, oh, this is all very spicy.

• 21:06Hank Green?

  But I think it was kind of because I like had the ramp, you know? I had like something to get me somewhere.

• 21:14Hank Green?

  And even when I write now, I kind of really rely on the words I have already written to be that on ramp to the process. So I will always like sit down and I'll read like the last page before wherever I am. And then use that as the on ramp into the writing, which just sort of like gets me going. Often I will also say it out loud. That's a big thing for me.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  I just sort of dump stuff out and worry about making it better later.

• 21:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, that is very important.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Cause like if you think about it.

• 21:47Hank Green?

  Like not like, when I say not everything is, is written to be published, I mean, almost nothing.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Even like, you know, I don't edit a video by making sure the first six seconds are perfect before going on to second seven.

• 22:00Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I dump it all out, change it, delete it, add it back. It's a puzzle.

• 22:07Hank Green?

  This question is from Carly Ray, who is, has a regular question asker, uh, who writes, Dear Hank and John, I live in a small town. I mean, Dear Hank and Keith, I have lived in a small town all my life. And one thing I've noticed about small towns is their local bank will always have a digital sign out front that will tell you two things. The time and the temperature. I understand.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  I'm riding this. I'm with you.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  This is very America. I understand telling the time so you know when they are closed, which is any time that you're not at work.

• 22:42Hank Green?

  But why does seemingly every bank display the temperature? What does the weather have to do with me being able to hastily get cash for my kid's field trip I forgot about, or my 15 year old niece's ability to secure a car loan for a 2006 Impala? Hey, hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number, but please don't call me. I don't answer calls from unknown numbers. So text me maybe Carly Ray.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Wow. That was quite a sign off Carly Ray. Did you grow up in a small town?

• 23:11Hank Green?

  I was born in a small town. As a lyric to a song.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  I thought the same thing. It was like, this is a song you're about to sing and I'm so excited, but then. I was born in a small town.

• 23:23Hank Green?

  I was born in, in Birmingham and raised in Orlando. I, I, this is as close as I've ever been to a small town as Missoula, which isn't even a small town.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I was born and raised in a small town, a 2,000 person town.

• 23:37Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  In a.

• 23:38Hank Green?

  The kind of town with, with one light and it blinks and, uh, and a bank that tells you the temperature.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Somehow there were actually several banks and they did all tell the temperature and the time. And, uh, we had a few video rental stores. We had a few traffic lights because this is the, the county seat town. This is the big town of the county. The county was not much bigger than, than the town. So I'm very familiar with this and it is funny.

• 24:04Hank Green?

  Wait, was it called Haversburg?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Don't we all wish? No, it was Smith County and it was in the south.

• 24:11Hank Green?

  So wow.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Very generic.

• 24:12Hank Green?

  So there were a lot of people who had the name that lined up with their county.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  My neighbor was Casey Smith.

• 24:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Like, there were many Smiths. But it was Carthage was the town I grew up in, which is the birthplace of Al Gore.

• 24:25Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Pretty cool. Pretty cool. He did, at one point, when he was vice president, he came to our church for a Christmas service and the Secret Service was there. That was kind of exciting for our little town.

• 24:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  It was thrilling, honestly. I was like, and it was my, the church I went to. Methodist, alright.

• 24:41Hank Green?

  Did the church tell you what temperature it was?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  No, the church only had the swap out the letters signs.

• 24:48Hank Green?

  Oh, those are very good, though.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Oh, they're great. But they weren't, I still currently drive by a church that has those and they put fun stuff. Like, I think they are a fun church because they're always putting sort of Jesus-y jokes, but not at the expense of Jesus, obviously.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  A good pun, a good Bible pun here and there.

• 25:13Hank Green?

  I, you know, look, I have a confident guess here.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  I have, I have a guess, too.

• 25:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, which is that banks are very temperature sensitive. And above a certain temperature, they die.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  That's a very funny take.

• 25:33Hank Green?

  It's like a lot of freshwater clams.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  This is just they're broadcasting their thermometer. Like, this is my temperature. Monitor me.

• 25:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  If you see this too high, you gotta do something.

• 25:45Hank Green?

  Get in there. The money's gonna melt.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm, I'm going to assume that it's actually some sort of like way to gain people's trust in that they're giving you true factual information.

• 25:59Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  So somewhere subconsciously, I'm like, well, I can trust them to tell me the time, which has to be factual. I think I can trust them to tell me the temperature that needs to be factual. So everything they're gonna tell me in there is going to be equally of value and true and factual, so I can trust them with my finances.

• 26:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, and useful. You know, it's like a public service. We're already providing a public service. You know, like the church used to tell you what time it was.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  We're just, we're just helping.

• 26:23Hank Green?

  Banks are the new church.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Put your money here. You'll make more money just by having it here. We're helping.

• 26:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  We've got money in here.

• 26:31Hank Green?

  You could try and take it.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Other people put their money here already.

• 26:35Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Strength in numbers.

• 26:38Hank Green?

  We have enough money that we can tell you the time and temperature.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Hank Green?

  For free.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  We don't need your money, but you could.

• 26:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Open an account today.

• 26:47Hank Green?

  Yeah. And your money is safe with us as long as it does not reach 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  We even made the box called Safe.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  It's safe.

• 27:03Hank Green?

  That actually reminds me, this podcast is brought to you by Safe. Safe. It's, it's the safe for safe.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Today's podcast is also brought to you by Voring, consuming all other competition every day.

• 27:18Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Al Gore. Al Gore, he's from that town that we were talking about that I forgot the name of.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  And it's brought to you by Omni Slopers, those who just love consuming garbage all day long.

• 27:30Hank Green?

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

• 28:14Hank Green?

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

• 28:57Hank Green?

  I shouldn't do that.

• 29:04John Green?

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

• 29:46John Green?

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

• 30:30Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Vanessa, who asks, Dear Hank and John, as a hit podcast for young adults, you're the only people who can answer my question. Do I need to get a checkbook? I pay my rent via Venmo, but I have had to get checks from the bank before. Is this something that I should have? Just checking, Vanessa.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Good question, and one that when I used the last check of my previous checkbook, I was like, do I need to do this again?

• 30:58Hank Green?

  You just used one.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, it was, it was literally like, oh, I'm at the end of the checkbook. That checkbook lasted me, I, I want to say eight years. A single, a single one.

• 31:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And I was like, I, I clearly am not using this.

• 31:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, a, a check is objectively a ridiculous idea. It's like, hey, do you need money? Let me write on a piece of paper and then it will become my money in your bank account. What?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it's so ridiculous that places that really matter are like, that doesn't count here. You've got to get a real check, a cashier's check. That check's not real. My checks are real.

• 31:40Hank Green?

  Do you, have you, did you ever have to travel with traveler's checks?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I don't think I did. I never went international until honestly, like several years ago, so that, that was done. I in fact, I think the second time I traveled, I called the bank to be like, ha, I'm traveling. So just know that you'll see these charges like, oh no, we don't worry about that anymore.

• 32:00Hank Green?

  Okay. I, I mean, I know that I'm 45 years old, but I feel like you need a checkbook. Vanessa, I feel you need a checkbook. Like things come up, sometimes you need a check.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  This is Montana talking right now. It feels like Montana's a check state.

• 32:15Hank Green?

  I probably finish a checkbook a year.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Really?

• 32:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Is it for like, just, I feel like it's for maintenance. Like, the only times I used to pay checks.

• 32:25Hank Green?

  Like when, when the house breaks? Yeah, for sure. Like.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to pay checks for maintenance. That's it.

• 32:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, if I have to pay the guy who's fixing the water heater, that's like a great way to do that. Yeah. I, I gotta, I'd be weird to be like, thanks for fixing the water heater. What's your Venmo? You got Cash App?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  But normally they come and they've got whole card readers now. They're just like, hey, here, just sign this and scan your card. All right, we're good.

• 32:48Hank Green?

  I don't know that that's the case in Montana. I don't know that we're that advanced.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I just got my grill cleaned and I, I want to say, you actually need to follow up because I never saw an invoice at all.

• 32:59Hank Green?

  Have I seen, is this the grill that I've seen? Is this like?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  In my house?

• 33:03Hank Green?

  No, no, no. This was in Palm Springs.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  No, no, that, that, that one, uh, I'm sure we get it cleaned, but I actually, it was because it was broken. And I was like, and the cleaning service called and like, do you want it cleaned? I was like, I only really got it cleaned that one time because like, it was disgusting. But I didn't really use it because part of it was broken. It was like, well, part of it's broken. So why don't you come and you can clean it and tell me what's wrong with it. Uh, but he came, he left. I scheduled it. I never saw an invoice. I never gave him a card, but they have a card on file. So I have, I realized like, I have no idea what I just paid for that. I have zero idea. I never signed anything either. So I'm like, how does this work? There's no work order. I need to call them. I'm feeling like, hey, how much was that?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I gave the guy 20 bucks as a tip and I was like, is there anything for me? He's like, they'll bill you. I'm like, okay.

• 33:51Hank Green?

  And then they didn't? They just, they just took the money out of your account?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was weird too, because they, I mean, I haven't even looked. I gotta, I should look because I kind of-

• 33:58Hank Green?

  You can in fact check.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Forgot immediately.

• 34:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Because I was like, okay, well, they'll just email me and they've done it before, but they had reached out to me. And then I had to like really hound them to set the appointment. Cause they were like, hey, we're doing clean, cleaning. Do you want us to come? I was like, yes. How about tomorrow? No response. Or the next day is also good. No response. Um, just let me know.

• 34:18Hank Green?

  It's basically what happened when I asked you to be on this podcast. You were like, yeah, I'll do it. And then I ghosted you.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  You kinda ghosted me, but I was like, well, he's busy. You're like, you're a CEO of 3,000 businesses, I think.

• 34:30Hank Green?

  Yeah. I'm actually the CEO of no more businesses, but I am, I've, I've, I've freed myself from executive-ing.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 34:37Hank Green?

  Except for Hank Green Enterprises where we just do this stuff.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  That's a nice way to do it.

• 34:43Hank Green?

  What, what, what is the last check I wrote for? I mean, the last check I wrote for was for taxes. How do you pay your taxes?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I have a person do that because this, the CPA for our company just does ours too.

• 34:56Hank Green?

  Oh, wow. That's nice.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause it's like, well, it's this, all the money I make is here. There's no outside money happening. So it's just like, it's already got to do it for one. It's the same. It's basically just copying some things over.

• 35:08Hank Green?

  We got another question. This one's from Bree who asks, dear Hank and Keith, I grew up right along Lake Michigan, so I'm no stranger to watching the sunset over the lake, which is obviously very beautiful. However, the best sunsets I have ever seen in my life have been over the local Meyer parking lots. Why? The whole sky over the parking lot becomes vibrant orange and red contrasting with the clouds. It's breathtaking. How do I convince my friends from out of town to watch the sunset at the local Meyer instead of at the beach? Is this a Michigan Midwest thing? Is there something about the parking lot that makes the sky more vibrant? Not a cheese, Bree. Thank you for helping me understand how to pronounce your name correctly, Bree.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  That's a nice little clue.

• 35:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Well, have you been to a Meyer?

• 35:49Hank Green?

  I haven't, but I've seen some, I've seen some parking lot sunsets.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  I have, I do agree. They are kind of nice.

• 35:56Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  I have a theory, but first I want to talk about Meyer.

• 36:00Hank Green?

  Okay. Did I say it right?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you said it perfect. And it's a challenging.

• 36:04Hank Green?

  It's got a J in it.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  M I J E R.

• 36:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Um, it's basically like a super Walmart, but a Midwest chain.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  So it's not just a, not just a grocery store. There's like, it's a vibe.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Correct. It's a, it's a multi-department store with a large grocery section.

• 36:17Hank Green?

  Have you ever tried to eat everything at a Meyer?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  No, but I have considered I should do like a Publix one because the Florida people would go nuts. And just do all the hot food at Publix because I think that would actually crush. But I got to be in Florida to do that. That's challenging. But yeah, Meyer is great. Meyer is like, if, if super Walmart was awesome.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  That's how I would describe Meyer.

• 36:38Hank Green?

  Do they call it a super Walmart?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Well, they used, I think that's what they're called because I had a town that had a Walmart that did not have groceries. That was like.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  More of a farm supply store.

• 36:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, the Walmart that I worked at growing up didn't have groceries. It was just.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Clothes, electronics, farm stuff, light home goods. That was it. Yeah. Sort of a farm department store.

• 37:02Hank Green?

  We had all clothes. We had clothes.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had clothes, but not a lot.

• 37:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, Meyer's dope. Okay. So my assumption of why it's so beautiful over a parking lot is all the low height, low ceiling space that you get to see. Yeah.

• 37:18Hank Green?

  This, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so like one, you just get a bigger sky. If you have a big area where there's nothing interrupt, but that's also true if you're looking out over the lake.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:27Hank Green?

  At least in one direction, maybe not in two directions. I have a further theory.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:33Hank Green?

  I think every time that you're in the Meyer parking lot and there's not a beautiful sunset, you don't think about it, but you are actually in the Meyer parking lot a fair number of times. Like you're just there more than you're at the lake. Though maybe, I don't know, maybe you grew up on the lake and you were like looking out over there all the time. But I think that like you're just more likely to see a sunset in a place where you are more frequently, where there's a lot of open space. So I think that the place where you most frequently are, that has a lot of open sky, is the grocery store parking lot, and that is true for like most Americans.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  But maybe we just love to see the, the bottom layer being proof of humanity and all we've accomplished. In the top layer, the greater beyond, the sky, the sun.

• 38:16Hank Green?

  You know, I like, I like the idea that the Meyer parking lot is the proof of what all humanity has accomplished.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got cars, you got cart returns, you got carts that weren't returned. You know, you've got morality on display.

• 38:30Hank Green?

  A gas station off in the distance. You got a human bodies slowly shambling their way to their cars.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  You've got a couple of trees.

• 38:40Hank Green?

  You've got a couple of small trees.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Couple of small trees that are decorative trees.

• 38:44Hank Green?

  Probably a crab apple.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Crab apples.

• 38:48Hank Green?

  A decorative crab apple. That makes really tiny apples that aren't a problem when they fall.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are the big yucky spiky ones? When I, when I was growing up in Tennessee, we called these big yucky spiky things crab apples. Then I went somewhere else and they're like, no crab apples for this. I was like, well, what was I, what was I dealing with? They were, they weren't edible. They were yucky, spiky, gooey, green, uh, blobby balls.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  What was that?

• 39:13Hank Green?

  I'm, I'm searching and I got nothing.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Green spiky blobby ball, Tennessee on the ground.

• 39:21Hank Green?

  Are they chestnuts?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Not fun to step on.

• 39:23Hank Green?

  Are they Conkers?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Conker sounds funny.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Like K O N K E R?

• 39:31Hank Green?

  C O N K E R.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Conquer fruit. Yeah. They did look similar to Conquerors, but they weren't hard in the middle. They were mushy in my memory, but I do like the way Conquerors look. We'll never know. And it's really not important.

• 39:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, but I want to know. I love the idea that you guys just took a word for a thing that already definitely existed.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, hey, you know, no, this is our local crab apple.

• 39:59Hank Green?

  Wait, wait. What about hedge oranges? Can you try to do a hedge apple? Search for hedge apple? Is that it?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Maybe that's what I, yeah, that's it.

• 40:08Hank Green?

  Hedge apples.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  We call them crab apples or maybe, and maybe that was us as children misunderstanding what people were saying.

• 40:16Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are yucky.

• 40:19Hank Green?

  These are yucky.

• 40:22Hank Green?

  Common in Kentucky, uh, these green brainy looking bumpy balls. That's what we do here at Dear Hank and John. We answer Keith's questions. All right, Keith, can we do some corrections? Cause we made some mistakes in our last, in our last episode.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Oh, not me.

• 40:38Hank Green?

  You did nothing wrong.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  You'll correct me next episode.

• 40:41Hank Green?

  Yes. Um, so that's right. You won't be here and we won't tell you what you got wrong. You won't have to worry about it. Kathleen lets us know because they, Kathleen is a, a student graduating from Clemson in May. It's very important to me that I correct John in episode 447. You talk about Hank could not possibly have a $2 bill with a Clemson stamp on it. Wrong Clemson tradition. It's a tradition to bring $2 bills stamped with a Clemson paw to every away game and use them in opposing team stadiums. This is not, I think, what John was saying. He was not saying that I didn't get a $2 bill stamped with a Clemson stamp. It was in fact, that was not my grandfather who gave it to me. It was some other guy.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 41:23Hank Green?

  So that was, that is the thing that I had misremembered.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  It could have been, could have been your grandpa.

• 41:28Hank Green?

  I think grandpa got it. Could have been. Uh, yeah, it, it was, I, I, I, John, John, in fact, knew who it was and I have once again forgotten. It was like my great uncle or something.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Hey, that's close.

• 41:40Hank Green?

  That's close. Close for me. I'm not good at remembering.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  A relative is more than some other guy. He's just the, you just had the wrong branch of the tree.

• 41:48Hank Green?

  That's right. Angela also wanted to correct me to tell me that red is in fact, a shorter wavelength of light corresponding to higher energy in accordance with the equation E equals HC over lambda, where lambda represents the wavelength. Red is actually the lowest energy wavelength of visible light with violet being the highest. This makes sense because you have to worry about ultraviolet light. That's the high energy stuff that you want to not hit your eyes and skin.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's, isn't in the ultraviolet, there's also like low, there's other waves of ultraviolet and they're, they're different as well. Cause there's some that like, my dad, my dad is a geologist kind of guy, collects rocks and he has a bunch of fluorescent rocks that only shine under a certain type of wavelength of ultraviolet light. And so he's got a few different waves and a few different rocks that turn pretty colors under the different flashlights.

• 42:46Hank Green?

  Oh, that's cool. And you gotta get a lot of energy into those rocks for them to do their weird fluorescent thing, I guess.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Some of them will absorb fluorescent like that and then glow after and some will just glow under the light itself.

• 42:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  The light activates it.

• 43:00Hank Green?

  Yep. And then we have another one. Dear Hank and John, this is from Lily, who says, I wanted to let you know that I'm sure as many others have let you know, there's no pregnancy in the third Twilight movie. Bella becomes pregnant on her honeymoon following the wedding that is at the beginning of the fourth movie, Breaking Dawn, part one. I, that's a, there's a lot of Twilight movies.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  And also, if it's part one.

• 43:25Hank Green?

  How many Twilight movies were there?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Half of a movie?

• 43:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Part one means that it's not done. Yeah, there's a lot. And they did the whole, like, Harry Potter-y thing where they broke up the last books to make more money.

• 43:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why wouldn't you?

• 43:44Hank Green?

  How much money do you think the Twilight series made?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Oof. And since then?

• 43:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, total. How much has it grossed worldwide?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, it's gotta be seven billion.

• 43:58Hank Green?

  No.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:59Hank Green?

  No, half that.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:01Hank Green?

  Half that. See, they're a failure. Keith thinks actual Twilight is half as valuable as it should be.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow. Tough.

• 44:11Hank Green?

  All right, Keith, let's do one last question. It comes from Eve, who asks, Dear Hank and Keith, I stopped reading books as an adult. Growing up, teachers would assign books and my parents would pick out books and I'd get, hand me down books from my older brothers in God College and grad school. They had so much reading. But now I'm in my 30s and the concept of picking out a novel to read feels so overwhelming. There's too many options at the bookstore and at the library. How do I even know what genre to start with? I haven't picked out a book for myself since the Twilight series. Please help. Always a day early, Eve.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Well, I, I also exclusively read, growing up, mandatory reading and did very little voluntary reading. It just did not interest me, did not excite me. And I'm here to say, I'm that same kid. Reading doesn't interest me. It doesn't excite me. I have read books.

• 45:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  But it's never been like, oh, good. Oh, my book. It's just not my, it's not what I'm looking for in entertainment. My wife loves books, just crushes a book in like a day and a half. She'll just, she's a very, very good reader. I'm not a good reader. And maybe it was because like, it was very much presented to me like a task, not a joy.

• 45:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's such a weird thing where like, there's these kinds of media that are the ones that are good and, and healthy and, and like soulful and, and the ones that are just, you know, YouTube and TikTok and TV. And it used to be, people used to think that books were the brain rot stuff. And of course, a lot of them are, like, for clarity. And, and were, have always been. But

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Garfield comic strip books? You ever buy a compilation Garfield book? Cause I had several growing up.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  So many of them.

• 46:01Hank Green?

  Man, Orin has read every single Calvin and Hobbes, which I think is amazing.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I think Calvin and Hobbes is better than Garfield, as much as I love.

• 46:08Hank Green?

  It's wild, it's wild to think that you could keep writing Garfield for decades when the, the vibe is very much just the same things happening.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the amount of like Garfield mummification that happened, maybe a little over a decade ago with the random Garfield randomizer and the Garfield minus Garfield.

• 46:26Hank Green?

  Garfield.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Really good stuff.

• 46:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Really exposed the, there were five jokes they oscillated between.

• 46:32Hank Green?

  The Garfield randomizer is an amazing idea.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  It's really good. It just grabs three random cells and they almost always work.

• 46:42Hank Green?

  Here's what I will say, Eve, is pick like, and I never do this because it's, it does, it feels like work. But if you pick like a classic novel, they're all very good. Like if you read Their Eyes Were Watching God, you're like, oh my God. If you read Catch 22, it's like, oh, what a beautiful thing. Like the, the ones that are very popular are actually good. And also this is true of, of mostly of books that are popular in any given year, if, as long as it's like a topic or like a genre you're interested in. Like the ones that are super like, you know, Tom Clancy, if you're like a middle aged guy, you're gonna like it. Like you're gonna devour a Tom Clancy novel. It's gonna be great.

• 47:25Hank Green?

  So like, i- if you pick the genre and you like go and pick the ones that are popular, this is crazy talk right now, but like, there's a reason why they're popular. Like there's a reason why To Kill a Mockingbird is like a big deal book, because it's really good.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  It's a good book. But I had to read it.

• 47:41Hank Green?

  I know, but, and I'd be interested. And you don't have to, but if you read it now, how would you feel about it? Like I, I should read The Great Gatsby again, because I hated it when I was in school and I've never read it since.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and yet I can recognize that the books, there were, there were also, I had to read The Hobbit and I loved that.

• 47:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Like, that was awesome. I was like, this is actually incredible and so fun and what a, what a world. But it always still was a task. So I still always thought about like, well, when's this chapter end? How many pages is left? It was always a like, I have to finish this, not enjoy it.

• 48:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I do. I'd look at the genres that you like, and then I'd pick the ones that are popular and/or classics in that genre and just, just go because I'll tell you what, if you pick like a random book from a genre is probably not gonna be like super great.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Oh, and I'm learning that about kids books. We go to the library and I let Henry just grab like five or six books. Oh my God, it's trash. There are so many trash books. I'm like, who made this book? This is garbage.

• 48:42Hank Green?

  Why was this worth anybody's time?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  This sucks. This book sucks.

• 48:46Hank Green?

  And then there's all like the classics and you're like, oh my God, this is so good and sweet.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  There's tons of great books, but there's even more slops.

• 48:54Hank Green?

  How old is child?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  He's almost three.

• 48:57Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  So he's a little tornado.

• 48:59Hank Green?

  I remember that it was, it was maybe that year or the year before when I read like the Puff the Magic Dragon sing along book. And I'd, I'd of course, heard the Puff the Magic Dragon song a thousand times before, but I'm singing Puff the Magic Dragon in the book. And then at the end of the book, Jackie grows up and Puff stops existing and, and, and like, boys become men and eventually your little baby is, is a guy. And I just fricking started crying.

• 49:34Hank Green?

  Like reading, I was like singing this song I've heard a thousand times before. Oh.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Wow. I haven't read that one. Maybe I'm not gonna. I was like, oh, I should read that. And then hearing it traumatized you is maybe not what I want to do.

• 49:46Hank Green?

  There is like the book, the pictures in the book, Puff finds a different child and gets to have a new friend, but the words don't have that. They just put that in there to, to, as a salve over my broken heart that they made up, but I'll take it.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's something about picture books, like there's, there are two stories going on. There's the words you're saying and then there's pictures for the children to like look at and interpret more from. So maybe, hey, that's just, that's half the story in a, in a picture book.

• 50:14Hank Green?

  That's right. I'm gonna believe it. I'm gonna believe that Puff found a different child.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:19Hank Green?

  This one, a, a girl, cause they had, cause like, you got like, Puff, Puff's not sexist. He's a dragon.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Not at all. Not a chance. Not Puff. Not puff.

• 50:31Hank Green?

  Dragons live forever, but not so little boys. Ow, what? Ow, why'd you do that? Why'd you do that song? Who? You could have just not done that.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is tough. You should see if the band across the street will play the Puff the Magic Dragon song for you.

• 50:45Hank Green?

  I'll put a note on their garage door.

• 50:49Hank Green?

  If you've been hearing that at all.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  As much noise as you want, if once a week, you will just play this song.

• 50:54Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I'll tell you what, like, they'd probably be well served by doing something a little, a little bit like, uh, left attorney, you know, just like, make some really hard versions of some classic folk songs.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's honestly always a good recipe.

• 51:11Hank Green?

  Everybody loves that.

• 51:13Hank Green?

  Who loves that? Keith Habersberger, thank you for making a podcast with me today.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Hey, this is so fun. Thanks for having me.

• 51:18Hank Green?

  I appreciate the time. I, uh, need to go make a video about toilet paper now. Cause you told me to.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you told me you would and then thought you wouldn't, and I encouraged you to, to go back.

• 51:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, you've, you've got me back on board.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Good.

• 51:30Hank Green?

  You told me that you were interested in where the molecules go.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  I would, I would watch.

• 51:33Hank Green?

  If there's one person who cares, then there's two people who care.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  I watch your videos. I love, I love all the tidbits of education. I do.

• 51:40Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  They're great listens on my, I have a pretty short commute, so they're great listens for like the 15 minute drive I have. So like, it's kind of perfect every time.

• 51:48Hank Green?

  Thank you.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:50Hank Green?

  I'm also a fan of your content.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Well, thanks.

• 51:53Hank Green?

  And I, I'm glad I don't live in Los Angeles, cause I'd be over all the time.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  You would. Have you watched our killer dinner show yet?

• 52:00Hank Green?

  Oh, I haven't.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  You should.

• 52:02Hank Green?

  You should watch it tonight.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  It's really good. It's, five of the episodes are out on second try and the finale is next week. It's real, it's like, not to toot our own horn, but it's definitely like the best thing we've made.

• 52:13Hank Green?

  Nice. All right. Yeah, no, Catherine and I will watch it tonight.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'll love it.

• 52:16Hank Green?

  We're fans.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Cool. Hell yeah.

• 52:18Hank Green?

  Thank you. Um, thank you also to everybody who sends in your questions to Dear Hank and John. You could do that at hankandjohn at g bell dot com. We don't have a podcast without you, so thank you for doing that. This podcast was edited by Bridget Kennison. Thank you for dealing with whatever is going on in the background of my audio. Hopefully it's not too bad. It was mixed by Andrew Smith, who also had to deal with that. Marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsro, Hassan Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. The editorial assistant is Devuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gennarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.