439: Division I Saint

What is a patron saint? Do we all get eaten? How do flames decide where to go? How do trees stay standing? What happened to Hank’s hair? How do doctors decide where the needles go? …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.

• 0:05John Green?

  Hank, we're doing something a little unusual today. We're dedicating this episode to a longtime listener and nerd fighter named Brayden, who died of cancer a few weeks ago. A lovely young man by all accounts and a listener to this podcast. And we just wanted to say to his family that we're thinking of you. And so we wanted to dedicate this episode of the podcast to him. We apologize in advance for how dubious our advice is and how bad the podcast is. But apparently Brayden found a way to enjoy it.

• 0:33Hank Green?

  Brayden liked it anyway.

• 0:34John Green?

  A real testament to his perseverance and also to all of our listeners for dealing with this subpar crap.

• 0:41Hank Green?

  Indeed.

• 0:46Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:50John Green?

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

• 0:53Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, why can't you eat fried condor?

• 1:04John Green?

  Because it's a rarity of it, I assume?

• 1:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's not legal tenders.

• 1:09John Green?

  Oh.

• 1:11Hank Green?

  Maybe, maybe, well, maybe, maybe, why can't you buy something with a fried condor? Because it's not legal tenders. Is that better? We're working it out, everybody. Welcome to the show. I really, I slept terribly last night.

• 1:26John Green?

  I can tell from your low quality, low energy introduction that you didn't sleep well last night because you have a viral video right now. And there is nothing worse for one's sleep than having a viral video. Hank, at some point, we're gonna need, in the same way that we needed to have an hour long conversation about 2014, at some point, we're gonna have to have an hour long conversation about Hank's emerging celebrity and whether it is good news.

• 1:52Hank Green?

  No, I think, I think probably the conversation that we'll end up having, if my guess is correct, is in 10 years, we'll talk about how I, I fried myself by pressing my face directly against the sun.

• 2:05John Green?

  Yeah, what you saw was me falling from the sky with my melted wax wings. And you thought, you know what? I could do better.

• 2:14Hank Green?

  I could, I feel like that, that's not so bad.

• 2:19John Green?

  There's a lot to recommend falling from the sun.

• 2:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, look at the wind in his hair.

• 2:28John Green?

  Oh, well, thanks to everybody for listening to that, that episode. We had a good time doing it. And lots of interesting responses to it. But today, we're going to go back to old school. Dear John and Hank.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  The, the, the show.

• 2:42John Green?

  We're going to do the show that we usually do.

• 2:43Hank Green?

  If you're new, there's always new people. Is it true that there's like every episode? There's like somebody who's never listened to Dear Hank and John before? And, and if so, is your name Neil?

• 2:53John Green?

  Oh, is there a new Neil?

• 2:56Hank Green?

  Is there a new Neil?

• 2:57John Green?

  There could be. It's not impossible. There's a beautiful snowstorm outside my shed today. And so if you see me not looking at you, Hank, it's because I'm staring at the snowstorm.

• 3:08Hank Green?

  I love that your shed has so many books in it. That's not usually what sheds have. So yeah, we're going to go back to the way that we do the show, the, the show, the conceit of the show. If you haven't, you haven't been here before, the conceit of the show is that people ask us questions. And then we do, we do, we do three total things. One, we answer questions that are, that are kind of sciency. We try to give like good kind of sciency answers. Two, we answer questions that are a little bit silly and we give silly answers. And then very occasionally we actually get sincere and we try to do a good job. But most, but, but please never think that we're, I don't know. It's, it's strange because I desperately, desperately don't want to do to, to, to have people think that we're going to do a good job.

• 3:52John Green?

  Because yeah. Yeah, it's, it's amazing to me how many people write in with serious questions, knowing that this is not a serious question podcast, except for occasionally.

• 4:02Hank Green?

  Do, do them, but I also, I often feel like, you know what serious questions I'd be good at answering are like just about being a YouTuber. Like I don't, I don't know how to date.

• 4:13John Green?

  Well, I don't, I actually don't mind answering dating questions. It's the questions that are like, what do I do with my one wild and precious life? I feel like it's slipping out from underneath me that I don't know how to answer because me too, buddy.

• 4:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:26John Green?

  Hank, let's start off today with a question from Teresa who writes, Dear John and Hank, here in Houston, Texas, we have St. Arnold's Brewery, which is named after the patron saint of beers. I think to be fair, it's the patron saint of brewers. I don't know that

• 4:39Hank Green?

  The beer gets itself.

• 4:41John Green?

  Saint of beer itself.

• 4:43Hank Green?

  Is the patron saint like one who gives like a small monthly donation to someone's YouTube channel?

• 4:49John Green?

  Uh, no. We'll get to that. It seems like there are patron saints for many niche categories. Who decides who can become a patron saint and what can receive a patron? Also, if you could choose a patron saint of science or tuberculosis, who would that be? And why pumpkins and penguins? Teresa? So Hank.

• 5:06Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 5:07John Green?

  There is a patron saint of toothache.

• 5:10Hank Green?

  Toothache? So, so not of a person with a toothache, but of the thing?

• 5:13John Green?

  Of, of people who suffer with toothache, not of toothache itself, but there's a patron saint that you pray to for intercession when, if you're Catholic, when you have a toothache. And now I'm not Catholic, but I have had some immense chronic mouth pain and I'm not above saying that I've prayed to Saint Apollonia for intercession on my behalf. So when you pray to a patron saint, the concept is you're not praying to them as a god, because there's only one god and that would be a false idol or whatever.

• 5:41Hank Green?

  They're not pretending to be gods.

• 5:43John Green?

  You're praying to someone who's in heaven, who hangs out with God.

• 5:48Hank Green?

  But also theoretically, who knows what it was like to deal with the thing that you've got going on? Is that right?

• 5:54John Green?

  Exactly.

• 5:55Hank Green?

  So is this, is this lady Apollonia?

• 5:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Hank Green?

  Did she, was she like tortured to death with tooth stuff?

• 6:02John Green?

  Well, Hank, I hate to inform you that she was indeed tortured to death with tooth stuff. Specifically, she had all of her teeth crushed by pinchers.

• 6:11Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 6:13John Green?

  That sounds horrible.

• 6:16Hank Green?

  The Catholic Saint Canon is the worst Pokémon.

• 6:27John Green?

  Yeah, so I-

• 6:28Hank Green?

  It's like, it's like if, if Squirtle was, was also like, like forever impaled upon something like-

• 6:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Hank Green?

  It really feels that way. Are they, not all of them, certainly not all of them died terribly, right?

• 6:44John Green?

  No, no, not all of them, but, but a lot of them. There are a lot of martyrs, because the thing about being a saint is that it's much easier to get there if you're martyred. Otherwise, you gotta go the Mother Teresa route of like being perfect your whole dang life, or near perfect. I guess nobody's perfect, only Jesus, but you know what I mean?

• 7:04John Green?

  So, there's a patron saint for everything. I mean, I'm sure there's a patron saint for, for writers. Let me look it up real quick.

• 7:11Hank Green?

  You think Jesus ever lost his temper or like made a YouTube video just to, because-

• 7:16John Green?

  Just to feel something?

• 7:19John Green?

  No, Hank, I don't, I don't.

• 7:22John Green?

  Oh. Yeah, so we got Saint Francis de Sales. He's the patron saint of writers, the Catholic press, the deaf journalists, and education in adulthood. So, the way that patron sainthood works is that you don't decide who becomes a saint, right? The church decides that. But patronage is a kind of a complicated, like a lot of power structures, really. Patronage is a complicated relationship between like official proclamation and popular devotion. Like, popular devotion is really what gets you there. Like, Saint Apollonia is, is considered the patron saint of people living with toothaches because that's what she's been considered for a long time.

• 8:03John Green?

  And a lot of people have found comfort in whatever, in praying toward her. I don't know the exact phrasing. All the Catholics are gonna be so mad at me, Hank. I'm worried. I'm worried the Catholic theologians are gonna come for me, and I, I fear them.

• 8:17Hank Green?

  So you only get this, this canon if you're Catholic? There's no like Episcopalian patron saints?

• 8:22John Green?

  There are Episcopalian saints, but it's not nearly as big of a deal. And there are not like saints in the Methodist or Lutheran church, usually, I think.

• 8:31Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 8:33John Green?

  Because a lot of Protestants see this as like false idol worship. Like you're basically worshiping Saint Apollonia and you can't worship anyone but God.

• 8:43Hank Green?

  I have great news about the patron saint of science who's a real guy.

• 8:47John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Hank Green?

  Saint Albert, Saint Albert the Great, which is great, also called Albertus Magnus. You know how he died?

• 8:55John Green?

  How'd he die?

• 8:56Hank Green?

  Of old age. He was

• 8:58John Green?

  That's the dreams.

• 8:58Hank Green?

  Late 80s.

• 9:00John Green?

  That's the dream.

• 9:01Hank Green?

  He got to be a saint and he died theoretically, just like the same stuff that you and I are gonna die of.

• 9:07John Green?

  Well, the patron saint of tuberculosis is Saint Teresa of La Sou, who of course died of tuberculosis.

• 9:15Hank Green?

  But like, that was certainly true of the, of most of the saints.

• 9:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Hank Green?

  The ones who didn't die of torture, probably mostly died of tuberculosis.

• 9:24John Green?

  A lot of them did, for sure, for sure.

• 9:26Hank Green?

  She was 24 though, that's no good.

• 9:28John Green?

  That's pretty early.

• 9:29Hank Green?

  When, when did that happen?

• 9:31John Green?

  She was the pampered daughter of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who wanted to be a monk. It sounds like a D1 baby in the making, if ever there was one.

• 9:41Hank Green?

  Division one saint.

• 9:45Hank Green?

  There's a lot of them and they, they, I mean, I guess because like if you make it like one every few years. It's been a lot of years. I wanna see a graph of saintings. When were saints made? Are they like, how far in retrospective were they? So like, like when was the saint operating versus? And like, then when were they finally made a saint? Was there like, I bet there was like a really big peak at some point. There was like some point where they were like, we need a bunch of saints. We gotta like, we're doing the same thing.

• 10:15John Green?

  Well, there was a lot of martyrdom early on, and so you got a lot of early ones. Like the other patron saint of tuberculosis, Saint Pantolion, who died at the age of 28, presumably of tuberculosis. But he's also the patron saint of physicians, midwives, livestock. I didn't know that you could be a patron saint of an animal, but apparently you can. And this is my favorite, Hank, helper for crying children.

• 10:43Hank Green?

  He's, he's not the patron saint of crying children. He's just, oh no, he's the patron saint of helpers for crying children?

• 10:50John Green?

  I think he's the patron saint of when your child won't stop crying.

• 10:57Hank Green?

  I wonder which one of these, like which one of the patron saints gets the most prayers? You know?

• 11:03John Green?

  He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome and he converted to Christianity, Saint Pantolion.

• 11:08Hank Green?

  He was the doctor of the emperor of Rome.

• 11:12John Green?

  And then he became a Christian, which obviously was dangerous. When the Emperor Diocletian, and I'm reading this from Catholic.org, by the way, began his persecution, Pantolion at once gave away everything he owned to the poor. Imagine, Hank. Not long afterwards, he was accused of being a Christian. See, imagine, imagine if that these days led to an accusation of Christianity. I can make that joke as a Christian. He was given the choice of denying his faith or being put to death and no torture could force him to deny his faith. So there you go.

• 11:49Hank Green?

  Man, I tell you what, Christianity does seem like it's in a really weird spot right now.

• 11:53John Green?

  Having a weird moment. A lot of disagreement about what the Gospels say. There's, you know, there's a line in the Gospels. One time I was at church and the, the person giving the homily was like, "Everybody wants to take the Bible literally, except when it comes to this line about how it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, when suddenly all the rich people become experts in figurative language."

• 12:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. The, the, there, I was some podcast person. I was listening to a podcast and they said that there was like 3,000 mentions of the like wealth injustice being bad in the Bible.

• 12:39John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:40Hank Green?

  Somehow that's like the main thing that is ignored. And then they try to tease out any little thing about the hot button issues of like today's society.

• 12:48John Green?

  Right, yeah, like there's no mention of any of the hot button issues, but there is mention of the last being first and the meek inheriting the earth. And also there's mention of wherever you see the poor or imprisoned or those who can't afford clothing, you see me, i.e. God.

• 13:04Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:05John Green?

  It's a tough one to get around, Hank. But people are managing to get around it. And by the way, I am also getting around it, okay? Like I'm not, I'm not casting aspersions. I am throwing, I am throwing stones absolutely from within my glass house. I need to pray to the patron saint of hypocrisy. Hold on. Hold on.

• 13:22Hank Green?

  It was Hippocrates.

• 13:25John Green?

  No, no, I couldn't find one, but I did find a patron saint of rabies.

• 13:29Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 13:30John Green?

  Hubert.

• 13:32Hank Green?

  What?

• 13:33John Green?

  Hubert, Saint Hubert.

• 13:34Hank Green?

  That does sound a little bit like a Pokemon.

• 13:40Hank Green?

  Do they have trading cards? Do they have stats? What are the stats?

• 13:43John Green?

  I used to have, I used to keep a card of, of Saint Padre Pio in my, in my wallet for, for consolation and good luck, given to me by my Jewish mentor, Eileen Cooper.

• 13:54Hank Green?

  And he is the patron saint of Pio.

• 13:58John Green?

  I think he actually is the patron saint of Pio.

• 14:01Hank Green?

  What's, is that a place?

• 14:03John Green?

  I think it's a place.

• 14:04Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 14:05John Green?

  Let me look it up. Hold on. Oh, no, it's derived from, from Pius.

• 14:10Hank Green?

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 14:12John Green?

  He was a pious guy. He had the stigmata.

• 14:15Hank Green?

  And what is the stigmata?

• 14:16John Green?

  That's where like you get, um, blood coming out of your hands or your wrists, uh, in mimicking Christ's suffering.

• 14:24Hank Green?

  Gotcha. Yeah. This next question comes from Talia, who asks.

• 14:27John Green?

  Oh, we're moving on. I thought we were only like one third of the way into patron saints.

• 14:32Hank Green?

  No, no, no, we're all the way through patron saints.

• 14:34John Green?

  All right, let's move on.

• 14:37Hank Green?

  And Talia asks, do we all get eaten?

• 14:40John Green?

  Hmm.

• 14:41Hank Green?

  So logically, the answer would probably be yes to decomposition of dead bodies, but what about cremation? Do we still get eaten or will nothing go near ashes? Uh, or does getting eaten by fire count? And if people die in the ocean, then the body will get eaten away by the water, but does that count as being eaten? Talia, Talia, I have so many answers to this question.

• 15:03John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Hank Green?

  First of all, people who get buried at sea often get eaten like, like more so than most people.

• 15:11John Green?

  Right. Faster, faster and more aggressively than most of us.

• 15:14Hank Green?

  And in more of a way that feels and looks like eating, you know, there's like things with teeth that are.

• 15:19John Green?

  Sure.

• 15:20Hank Green?

  Doing the actual eating. Now that of course does not always happen, but, but commonly, uh, the human body is made of food.

• 15:28Hank Green?

  And upsettingly.

• 15:29John Green?

  Yeah, there's something I really can't get behind, and that's my brain being edible. I just can't, I can't, I can't support it, Hank. I'm opposed to it.

• 15:41Hank Green?

  I'm opposed to it.

• 15:42John Green?

  But do you get eaten if your ashes?

• 15:45Hank Green?

  You don't really get, you, you can kind of get eaten if your ashes. Now, the main thing is that you don't get metabolized if your ashes, because metabolizing something like turning it into fuel for your body is like just doing fire to it, but in a controlled way. So it's the same chemical reactions.

• 16:01John Green?

  Okay.

• 16:01Hank Green?

  And, uh, like sort of down at the root of them and.

• 16:06John Green?

  Fire has already been done to it, so.

• 16:08Hank Green?

  Has done the eating, but, but when the bookie was looking into this, there's this thing where people will scatter ashes and they'll be like, these ashes will be good for the plants and then they'll be taken up in the plants. But here's the thing about human ashes, they're bad for plants. They're, they're alkaline, so they're, they're like, you know, the, the opposite of basic, uh, they can, that can damage plants. So if you do too much, like if you pour it, like there's some areas that like a bunch of people scatter ashes in the same area and then the plants all stop growing.

• 16:38John Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 16:39Hank Green?

  So there's a company that creates a supplement that you could add to your ashes that makes them good for plants.

• 16:46John Green?

  Of course there is.

• 16:47Hank Green?

  So you could go, and I, I've, I've got some problems with, uh, the, the, with the sort of pitch of letting your love grow, which is this company. I've got some scientific nits I could pick, but it's a fine idea. Basically, I think probably the majority of what it does is it, it adds some acid to it so that it becomes more neutral. And then they're not, and then it becomes like a thing and, and absolutely the minerals from the ashes can be taken up in the plants. But that's not really, uh, I wouldn't call that necessarily eating. It's like taking a vitamin or like what you do to salt more than what you do to chicken.

• 17:23John Green?

  That reminds me, Hank, that the patient saying a funeral directors is Joseph of Arithmae.

• 17:28Hank Green?

  Arithmae, like Arithmae?

• 17:32John Green?

  Arim, uh, Arim, Arimathea, Arimathea.

• 17:38John Green?

  I'm not sure, Hank.

• 17:39Hank Green?

  Are you saying Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus's dad?

• 17:42John Green?

  You know, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus's dad.

• 17:50Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 17:51John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Hank Green?

  That's.

• 17:52John Green?

  I didn't know he was a saint.

• 17:53Hank Green?

  He's a saint.

• 17:54John Green?

  He's a saint. I mean, he did. He did do a pretty good job when Mary was like, hey, I'm pregnant with God's baby.

• 18:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, he was like.

• 18:03John Green?

  He was pretty chill about it.

• 18:04Hank Green?

  I think so. Did he? He had a cool hat, at least in this photo.

• 18:10John Green?

  Yeah, he, I don't know that that's a photo, by the way.

• 18:15Hank Green?

  He is, and he, you know who else he is the patron saint of? No one. No one.

• 18:20John Green?

  Just funeral directors.

• 18:22Hank Green?

  The stepdad of God just got funeral directors and undertakers. That's everybody. That's.

• 18:28John Green?

  But it makes sense because he was the one who requested, uh, Jesus's body from Pontius Pilate and so that it could be properly buried, or I guess entombed.

• 18:39Hank Green?

  Oh, that's kind of nice.

• 18:42John Green?

  Well, it's sad. It's a sad, it's a sad story.

• 18:45Hank Green?

  That is the thing about your story. It's like a bummer. God came down to earth and everybody was like, actually, let's kill him.

• 18:54John Green?

  Yeah, he was rejected. Uh.

• 18:58John Green?

  It's a, it's a bit of a bummer for a story. I will remind you.

• 19:01Hank Green?

  He remains.

• 19:03John Green?

  That's not the end, by the way.

• 19:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, it does keep going. But like, that's a bummer. Like, I don't like, I want to think that humanity would be a little more chill about God coming down to earth.

• 19:12John Green?

  That's like when, uh, Henry was three years old and we watched a movie called Big Bird Comes Home and he got really upset when Big Bird left home. And I was like, well, Henry, the movie is called Big Bird Comes Home. I got a good feeling about how this is all going to work out. But he wouldn't watch till the end because he was too upset. That's how you are with the Jesus story. You stop when he dies and you're like, this is terrible.

• 19:33Hank Green?

  What are we up to? That wasn't even, that wasn't even like a nice way of doing it.

• 19:38John Green?

  No, certainly not. All right. Uh, enough theology. We're moving on. People don't come here for that. People come here for reasons that are unclear to me. Joy asks, Dear John and Hank, how do flames decide where to go? Not in terms of what burns, but the shapes the flames make as they flicker upwards. I'm staring at the fire in my fireplace right now and trying to determine if there's a pattern. There's some level of consistency in back and forth flames, smaller and larger flames and swirls, but no true pattern that I can determine. Do flames have patterns or are they just random, just feeling warm and content? Joy.

• 20:16Hank Green?

  Oh, that's kind of a nice little moment for us all.

• 20:20John Green?

  Yeah, let's just pretend that we're by the fire.

• 20:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, and I'm going to tell you about fluid dynamics.

• 20:27John Green?

  Oh, great.

• 20:28Hank Green?

  I mean.

• 20:29John Green?

  Wait, are you going to tell me that fire is actually a fluid? Because that seems like the kind of thing you would tell me.

• 20:34Hank Green?

  What fire is is very is like it's it's more of a phenomenon of an experiential phenomenon rather than a physical one is what I can tell you about fire.

• 20:44John Green?

  Oh.

• 20:44Hank Green?

  So like what you see as fire is a bunch of different things all happening at the same time. But one of them is that there's a bunch of like heat being produced. And so when the heat is produced, the air molecules like bump around more and they get farther apart. When they're farther apart, they become less dense. And when they're less dense, they get pushed up by gravity because it's the opposite thing that's happening. It's like a helium balloon, basically. And and as that happens, lots of air is like doing lots of weird stuff. So it's rushing in to take the place of that air that is moving upward. And fluid dynamics is extremely complicated because it's made of trillions of atoms and molecules, mostly molecules, it turns out. But those molecules are made of atoms.

• 21:30Hank Green?

  And the so they're bumping around, they're moving around the sticks, they're moving through your house and and there's never really any moment where all of the molecules are moving the same way as they were just a moment ago. And they will always be moving slightly differently. And also, the shape of the fire is changing. The amount of energy being produced is changing very slightly. The, you know, the the air currents in the room have an effect on this or outdoors or wherever you are. All of this matters. And so fire kind of, I feel like, will never look exactly the same in one moment as it did in the last. But certainly, there can be patterns. And also, you can do things that will actually structure fire.

• 22:11Hank Green?

  So candles are built to control fire and put the fire into a structured shape so that it it doesn't get chaotic and and waste a bunch of wax.

• 22:21John Green?

  Well, the patron saint of fire prevention is Catherine of Siena.

• 22:27John Green?

  From the 14th century.

• 22:29Hank Green?

  I don't want to know how she died.

• 22:32John Green?

  Actually, she died of a stroke. I looked it up while you were rattling on.

• 22:37Hank Green?

  God. This is our, oh man, what's the patron saint of dear Hank and John? We don't get to choose tuberculosis in science. That's a real thing. If I could choose the patron saint of dear Hank and John.

• 22:49John Green?

  Yeah. Dolly Parton?

• 22:52Hank Green?

  Sure. That's a good one. Kesha?

• 22:55John Green?

  Kesha is good. I think, I, I'm not, I'm not completely up to date on Kesha, Hank. Kesha could not be a saint. I don't know. I'm, I'm out, that's outside my realm of expertise.

• 23:08Hank Green?

  I did, it did. So for clarity, I assume some saints did some, did some naughty stuff at some point.

• 23:14John Green?

  All saints did naughty things, right? Like that's the, that's the nature of being a human is that you're, you're sinful. Yeah.

• 23:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. So I think that that's okay.

• 23:23John Green?

  Sure. Well, we'll have to decide between Dolly Parton and Kesha another time.

• 23:28Hank Green?

  Yeah. We also probably should choose a dead person. Isn't that one of the requirements?

• 23:32John Green?

  Great point, Hank. Really, really good point. You do have to be deceased to be a saint.

• 23:37Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:37John Green?

  Okay. Charles Darwin. That's my proposal. Charles Darwin because he appeals to you for his science stuff and me because of his chronic stomach problems.

• 23:50John Green?

  So you can intercede to him and say, oh, please, Charles Darwin, help me with this science problem. And I can, I can be like, Charles Darwin, I can't stop puking and neither could you. My belly aches. Oh, love Charles Darwin's chronic stomach problems.

• 24:06Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. He was always going to the, the hot, hot tubs to deal with it. Love that.

• 24:13John Green?

  No, that's how they did it back in the day. All right. We got another question from Kate who writes, hey pals, my two-year-old asked how trees don't fall over. He was confused because his towers always get smaller as they go up, but trees have huge branches. I explained that he can't see the strong roots under the ground and I showed him diagrams and such, but he's not convinced. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm convinced either. I need more science. Help. Kindly Kate.

• 24:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's a bunch of different things going on here. One is that the roots are often bigger than the tree itself.

• 24:39John Green?

  Right. Don't the roots extend like out often beyond the the crown of the tree or whatever?

• 24:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. And unlike the crown of the tree, they can actually like intermingle with the roots of other plants. So crowns don't tend to intermingle for actually somewhat mysterious reasons.

• 24:55John Green?

  Yeah. But I was just thinking because occasionally you'll hear the sound in a windstorm of of t- tree branches rubbing up against each other from other trees. But very rarely you would think it would be a cacophony.

• 25:08Hank Green?

  And usually it's the same tree that's rubbing up. Uh, yeah, they like respect each other's space, which is very weird.

• 25:15John Green?

  Very weird.

• 25:16Hank Green?

  But their roots can intermingle certainly with lots of different plants. Uh, and so this has a very stabilizing effect on the ground. So if you just had a tree with a bunch of like big, thick roots going into sand, this would not be particularly stable. And in fact, there are sandy places where trees are more likely to fall over because sand doesn't bind stuff together as well. And like trees that are adapted to grow in sand do it differently. Um, but but one of the things that is sort of an underrated phenomenon here is that the it isn't the really the big branches that do the majority or the big roots that do the majority of this work. There's like a taproot that's doing a lot of that. So it's like sticking straight down into the ground. But then there's like a lot of little tiny fingers that are all doing the absorption of the water and the nutrients.

• 25:59Hank Green?

  That is very important to the life of the tree. But because there's they create so much surface area, these very delicate little root lits actually do a lot of grabbing in a way that like you can kind of imagine like a chameleon's finger works by just having a a ton of surface area that gets into every little nook and cranny. Or if you imagine a sponge, like if you stick like a couple of like chopsticks in there, you can kind of just pull them out. But if you imagine like a billion spikes come out from inside of the chopstick, they would then be stuck into the sponge.

• 26:31John Green?

  Hmm. Wow. That makes sense. I mean, that's kind of beautiful to think about that like underneath us all the time. There is this web of life that we don't see that that that holds up trees and other. It reminds me, actually, that of the patron saint of treaties between popes and Franciscan emperors, Petronia.

• 26:51Hank Green?

  What did you say, treaties?

• 26:53John Green?

  Yeah, the treaties between the popes and Franciscan emperors in particular. Petronia. That's what Petronia does. When you need

• 27:00Hank Green?

  There's no patron saint of trees is what I'm hearing.

• 27:02John Green?

  And a Franciscan emperor, you better be praying like crazy to Petronia for intercession.

• 27:08Hank Green?

  There's no patron saint of like lumber or something?

• 27:11John Green?

  Hmm.

• 27:11Hank Green?

  Oh, there totally is. There totally is. Saint Gumar.

• 27:16John Green?

  That sounds like a Pokemon.

• 27:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:21Hank Green?

  It's actually Gumarus, which is even more Pokemon-like.

• 27:24John Green?

  Gumarus, wow.

• 27:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:25John Green?

  I think it might be Gumaris, but I'm not here to judge.

• 27:27Hank Green?

  Also, also Pokemony. John, actually, importantly, I should now say that this podcast is brought to you by chopsticks that have a bunch of spikes sticking out from them. The chopsticks that suddenly explode with spikes makes it easier to pick stuff up, I guess.

• 27:44John Green?

  Yeah, for sure. Today's podcast is, of course, also brought to you by John the Apostle, the patron saint of lithographers.

• 27:51Hank Green?

  Oh, my God, he's got a website open. And this podcast is brought to you by Kesha. Kesha, not the patron saint of Dear Hank and John, because she's alive!

• 28:02John Green?

  And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Little Saint Cards of Padre Pio. Little Saint Cards of Padre Pio in my wallet until I no longer had a wallet, because now you don't need a wallet.

• 28:13Hank Green?

  Oh, oh, no. And now you have to just have like a screenshot of him in your photo roll.

• 28:19John Green?

  Somewhere in your photo reel. Next time I upload like a carousel on Instagram, I'm gonna make the last picture of Padre Pio with no explanation.

• 28:29Hank Green?

  Always the last one's Padre Pio. It just means father pious, jeez.

• 28:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Hank Green?

  Brag, brag.

• 28:39John Green?

  He was a very pious man. All right, let's answer this question from Reed, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, why isn't your hair curly anymore? What happened? And how does the same person's hair change between straight and curly like a book? Reed.

• 28:52Hank Green?

  I don't know. And more than that, neither do we. So I've certainly looked into this, but we're at the stage of understanding how curly hair works. We kind of understand how it works when people's hair is always curly. And it is weird that sometimes when you have chemotherapy, your hair comes back curly. And it is weird that then it will eventually, maybe sometimes, but not always, go back to being straight again. And why this happens, we've just got what we call hypotheses. And we haven't really done much work testing those hypotheses, because in cancer research, there's a bunch of money to spend on stuff that matters more than that.

• 29:34John Green?

  Yeah, which is almost everything.

• 29:37Hank Green?

  I do feel like there's a way to figure this out. So the big leading hypotheses are, one, your cells grow back unevenly, because they've sort of died off, or they've gone into dormancy, and they like emerge from dormancy unevenly.

• 29:52John Green?

  And when they emerge unevenly, they like literally form curls and waves and stuff?

• 29:56Hank Green?

  Right, right. So like, one piece of the hair follicle will be making more hair than another piece. And then there's another idea that, so curly hair, we know is created when the hair follicle is more at an angle to the scalp, and rather than straight up and down. And so there's an idea that like, when the hair follicle gets empty, like doesn't have anything in there, it sort of like changes shape a little bit. And then after a while of the hair growing through it, it physically changes the shape of the hair follicle. But I don't know which of those two things it is, and it may yet be a third thing, or an effect of both of those things together.

• 30:33John Green?

  Wow.

• 30:34Hank Green?

  But it initially came back, not just curly, but like very fine. So I had like baby hair at first.

• 30:41John Green?

  It was curly, it was fine, and it was sort of mahogany. It was like a different color.

• 30:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, it also was a different color. It was kind of auburn. Yeah.

• 30:48John Green?

  I remember when I first started seeing videos of you with your new hair, thinking, it doesn't even look like Hank. It looks like somebody like cosplaying Hank.

• 31:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, and now, and now I go.

• 31:04John Green?

  And now you look exactly like you used to look.

• 31:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:08John Green?

  Which is so weird.

• 31:09Hank Green?

  I look at the Hank with the curly hair in it, and I feel weird about him.

• 31:12John Green?

  Yeah, you know what he looks like? He looks like all of our cousins.

• 31:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:19John Green?

  It's like you came back with our cousin's hair.

• 31:21Hank Green?

  The, the first time my hair follicles grew hair for the first time, I also had curly hair for a while.

• 31:26John Green?

  You had curly hair when you were a little kid, and then mom's theory, and I don't think this stands up to scrutiny. Sorry if you're listening, mom. But mom's theory is that when you got scarlet fever.

• 31:37Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 31:37John Green?

  Your hair stopped being curly.

• 31:39Hank Green?

  Could be. I don't know. Orin also started out curly and now is straight, so. He didn't get scarlet fever. Do people still get scarlet fever? I don't hear about scarlet fever anymore. Did we fix that one?

• 31:50John Green?

  I don't know. I'm not an expert. I didn't write a book about scarlet fever. Google it, and I'll find out who the patron saint of scarlet fever is.

• 31:59Hank Green?

  Um, scarlet fever is making a comeback.

• 32:06John Green?

  Of course it is.

• 32:08Hank Green?

  It became rare because of antibiotics.

• 32:11John Green?

  Oh, okay. So it's treatable, but it still happens.

• 32:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:16John Green?

  I can't find a patron saint of scarlet fever, unfortunately.

• 32:19Hank Green?

  Oh, God, it was bad. I did not enjoy scarlet fever.

• 32:22John Green?

  Yeah, you were really sick, I remember. And it's interesting that we've taken on, you, you talked about this in a Vlogbrothers video recently, that we've just taken on the assumption that I'm the sick one and you're the healthy one, even though like you did have scarlet fever and cancer.

• 32:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, uh-huh. And also ulcerative colitis.

• 32:41John Green?

  And ulcerative colitis, you had chronic health conditions, but I seem sickly. I come across as sickly. I, I communicate a certain fragility that, uh, of my constitution.

• 32:52Hank Green?

  I've got a, I've got a certain sturdiness, you know? Keep hitting me, I'm fine.

• 32:56John Green?

  You do. You do have a sturdiness about you that I just don't have.

• 33:00Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 33:01John Green?

  It's okay.

• 33:02Hank Green?

  It's okay. I think we're like equally physically sturdy, but it's, it's not about the physics.

• 33:08John Green?

  No. God, I want you to outlive me so bad.

• 33:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know.

• 33:12John Green?

  Oh, that would suck.

• 33:14Hank Green?

  Whatever happens, happens.

• 33:16John Green?

  Well, that's one way to think of it, but my way, my way of thinking about it is that I like to think of what would be better.

• 33:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:23John Green?

  And I think we can all agree that younger brothers are just better equipped for that kind of business.

• 33:30Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I, I just don't wanna have to do the thing where I stand up in the church and, and

• 33:39John Green?

  Oh, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that if you don't want to.

• 33:41Hank Green?

  I know, but like, I, I, I'm gonna do it anyway.

• 33:44John Green?

  Yeah, I get it. Yeah.

• 33:46Hank Green?

  Do it, but I don't wanna do it and like, yeah.

• 33:49John Green?

  You feel an obligation to do it, but it doesn't seem like it would be fun.

• 33:52Hank Green?

  Look, John, maybe we'll, we won't die. The Silicon Valley guys are working on it. You know, they're really, they're really figuring some stuff out, putting young people blood into them. Nobody tried that before. Literally, literally thousands of years ago.

• 34:08John Green?

  They're doing legit vampire stuff.

• 34:09Hank Green?

  They're do- yeah, yeah, they're doing, they're doing, you know, Transylvania Prince activities over there.

• 34:20Hank Green?

  Catherine the Great things.

• 34:22John Green?

  Yeah, maybe we won't die. That would be a, but then that would also be a bad outcome.

• 34:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'll eulogize you when they upload you to the computer. I'll be like, he was a great physical form.

• 34:32John Green?

  That would actually be the worst outcome. I think I've made this very clear, but to me, the only thing worse than dying would be being stuck as an artificial intelligence or like being, having my consciousness uploaded or whatever. I would not enjoy that at all. As much as I despise the idea that my brain is made out of meat, I do not like the idea of my brain being made out of ones and zeros.

• 34:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Instead, I'm gonna turn you into a non-conscious chatbot that keeps making videos with me.

• 35:04John Green?

  It wouldn't be that hard.

• 35:06Hank Green?

  No, no, no, I, I feel like we're not that far away.

• 35:09John Green?

  I mean, God knows, there's plenty of my voice on the internet to cut around to make a-

• 35:14Hank Green?

  Don't tell people.

• 35:15John Green?

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 35:17Hank Green?

  We wouldn't even have to do AI. You could just edit together all of the things we've already said.

• 35:22John Green?

  Yeah. People have done that occasionally, like edited together, like things to make it sound like I said something I didn't say. But now with AI, you don't even have to go through all that hullabaloo. You can just tell an AI to make John Green say something horrible.

• 35:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:37John Green?

  It's great.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  The horrors.

• 35:41John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, that's just really the tip of the horror iceberg. So we don't have to get into all that stuff. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask you this question from Caitlin, which I genuinely don't know the answer to. Dear John and Hank, how come when doctors need to take blood out of us, they poke us in the inside of the elbow, but when they need to put something into our bloodstream, they poke us in the wrist? Your fellow walking blood bag, Caitlin.

• 36:05Hank Green?

  Oh, Caitlin, I, well, I remember when I was first in Missoula trying to get a job. There was a lot of phlebotomist jobs.

• 36:13John Green?

  Sure.

• 36:14Hank Green?

  And they were, they were hiring phlebotomists. And I, I thought, should I get trained up to be a vein poker? And I could not bring myself, I was like way too scary.

• 36:23John Green?

  Can we just acknowledge before we go on that, that the difference between an average phlebotomist and an excellent phlebotomist is almost incalculable? Like, there is a, like, when you get an excellent phlebotomist, it's, it's, it's game changing.

• 36:37Hank Green?

  It's like nothing ever, it does like nothing happens.

• 36:39John Green?

  It's painless. It's like nothing ever happened.

• 36:43Hank Green?

  Well, I will say, having got poked, not just a ton of times in my life, but sometimes by the same people, sometimes the same, like, I think that there's like nerves involved. And sometimes they just hit in slightly the wrong spot and it hurts more. But there is like a, I, I have also been poked in situations where a vein was missed, or it went through the vein. And like, so I've had lots, I've had a lot of blood draws in my life. And, and I looked into this, and I don't think that this is how it works. So I don't, I don't, I in fact, do not think that they have, have like one spot where they do it to put things in you and one spot for taking things out.

• 37:20John Green?

  Really?

• 37:20Hank Green?

  But if they want to put something in you that might be like, not great if it leaks out, they really want to put it in the, in the inside of the elbow because that vein is sturdier, it's, it's thicker. And so that's, that's like your, that's oftentimes the preferred place. But sometimes they want to go into the hand. One, those veins are really accessible. Like, they're right there on the surface. They're easy to see. They're, so those, those are good ones. It can also allow for some greater freedom of movement for you, the patient, if you're, if it's in the hand versus, you know, sort of like not being, not wanting to close your arm. And as long as they tape it down, it's it's pretty fine. But like, it really often does come down to like, what what looks the best right now for this specific circumstance?

• 38:05John Green?

  Oh.

• 38:05Hank Green?

  And with chemotherapy, they have actually moved to not doing it into like, direct into the arm at all, they used to. But because that those drugs can be so bad if they slip out of the vein even a little bit, that they install a like catheter that goes straight into one of the big, thick veins in your chest.

• 38:26Hank Green?

  That that then they can poke into through what they call a port.

• 38:30John Green?

  And that port you had installed, I remember you had a surgery to get that port put in.

• 38:35Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I had a so that one I was asleep for, but then when they take the port out, you're just awake and they just yank it out.

• 38:42John Green?

  Oh, I I would be such a bad phlebotomist, Hank, that I have almost passed out from this conversation.

• 38:48Hank Green?

  Yeah. And what I'll say, having had it done a ton, I will occasionally have a new phlebotomist. And I'm like, my friend, I'm the perfect person for you to practice on. Like, I've had it go every possible way. And it's like, I know what it's like for it to go all of the different ways. And and I had a person who recently, they were like, I can't see your vein, but I can feel it. And I've never put a needle in and I like, I've never put a needle into a vein that I can feel but not see. And I was like, girl, do it.

• 39:20Hank Green?

  Like, I like, if you mess up, like, this matters to me not at all. And she's like, yeah, I'm not gonna do it, though. You're Hank Green.

• 39:31John Green?

  Right. And it's like double the pressure. That's why you don't want to become more famous, Hank, because then all your phlebotomists will be panicked when they try to find a vein.

• 39:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:40John Green?

  Yeah. Oh, shout out to blood donors and indeed also to their patron saint, Our Lady of the Thorns.

• 39:47Hank Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 39:49John Green?

  It's just still happening, Hank.

• 39:50Hank Green?

  A lot of leaking going on with the thorns.

• 39:54John Green?

  Yeah, I guess I guess that's maybe how they got there. All right, it's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hank, what's the news from Mars this week?

• 40:04Hank Green?

  In news from Mars, there's there's a bunch of like bummer Mars news. We didn't find that orbiter.

• 40:10John Green?

  Yeah, I heard that. It's gone.

• 40:13Hank Green?

  We didn't find that orbiter. And also, it's it seems to be well and truly the case that Mars sample return is dead. So the idea was rover, pick stuff up, put it in little vials. And then later we pick those vials up and we bring them home and then we can figure out whether all kinds of stuff. But I was about to say whether there was life on Mars, which is a thing that we actually probably could could potentially tell from a Mars sample return mission. Certainly not a high chance of it happening. But yeah, it's just got too expensive and we're prioritizing other things as a nation.

• 40:50John Green?

  That's the understatement of the week.

• 40:52Hank Green?

  We're prioritizing other things as a nation.

• 40:56John Green?

  Yeah, we've decided to spend our money in other ways. Worse ways.

• 41:03Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:04John Green?

  And I'm not even that big a fan of Mars sample return missions.

• 41:09Hank Green?

  He's not.

• 41:11John Green?

  No, I am. I think it'd be really cool to have a piece of Mars. I know we have pieces of Mars on Earth from like meteorites and everything, but like I think it'd be really cool to be able to bring back something from Mars and examine it. And I know that like the science that we could do, you know, it's one thing to do science from millions of miles away. It's another thing to do science up close and it'd be game changing and it's very frustrating that it's been canceled and I'm sorry.

• 41:34Hank Green?

  It's expensive. It's it's the costs went up to about $11 billion and to that I say. Just get a billionaire to pay for it, you know?

• 41:44John Green?

  I even know one who's interested in Mars.

• 41:47Hank Green?

  But he's not interested in Mars for a sample return, John. He's interested in Mars for the planet he could be king of.

• 41:53John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:54Hank Green?

  Which is different goals.

• 41:56John Green?

  Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon isn't much better. AFC Wimbledon have won only one of their last 11 league games.

• 42:03Hank Green?

  Ooh.

• 42:05John Green?

  It's not going great. However, there is one of these silly, kind of somewhat unimportant cup competitions that are all sort of knockout competitions where you either...

• 42:14Hank Green?

  Unimportant cup.

• 42:16John Green?

  It's called the Virtu Trophy and it might as well be called the Unimportant Cup. However, we did beat West Ham United's children. They fielded, they fielded an under 21 team and we beat them. And now we are in the final eight of that trophy. And if we make it to the final, we would play a game at Wembley, which would be really cool and also frankly, kind of lucrative, which we need because we have no money, because we got knocked out of the other cup competitions early. So we didn't get to play at Chelsea or Manchester United or whatever. And so getting to the final of that competition would be meaningful. And now it's clear that we're trying. Like, we put out our best 11 against, against West Ham's kids and we beat them 4-2.

• 43:01John Green?

  The two goals we gave up were not great, though. I actually wasn't that impressed with our performance against West Ham's children. I felt like maybe when you're playing actual teenagers, you should maybe do a little bit better. But at any rate, we won and that's good news. Overall, AFC Wimbledon are currently right in the middle of the table, 13th out of 24 teams. We would take that at the end of the season. We do have a negative six-goal differential, which reveals that we lose a lot of games by multiple goals. But yeah, I don't know, Hank. It's, as long as we get to 52 points and we stay up, the season is a tremendous success. And we're on pace to get there.

• 43:42Hank Green?

  Yeah. You've got 50?

• 43:47John Green?

  We've got 31.

• 43:48Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 43:50John Green?

  But we have 22 games left in which to get the remaining 21.

• 43:56Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 43:56John Green?

  We only have to win five.

• 43:57Hank Green?

  You get a point for a tie?

• 43:59John Green?

  You get a point for a tie. We have to win five or six more games to stay up.

• 44:02Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 44:02John Green?

  Out of the last 21. Yeah, it's that simple.

• 44:06Hank Green?

  John tried so, I'm going to London for a work thing and John

• 44:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Hank Green?

  tried so hard to make it into an AFC Wimbledon trip.

• 44:14John Green?

  I was ready to, and by the way, I am so busy right now. Like I am working like 12 hour days right now and I was gonna throw everything away to take you to an AFC Wimbledon game. And you wouldn't do it.

• 44:26Hank Green?

  Well, it's, I mean, it's literally not possible as far as I can tell for me to do it.

• 44:30John Green?

  All right. Well, that's what cowards say.

• 44:33Hank Green?

  I, I opened, I opened up the possibility, but then the, the, the games were on the wrong days.

• 44:39John Green?

  Oh, it would be so wonderful to take you to an AFC Wimbledon game. I really, and I know this probably isn't true, but I really believe that you would like see the light.

• 44:47Hank Green?

  You, you don't think that would happen to me at church, but you, you do think that would happen to me at football.

• 44:51John Green?

  Absolutely. I understand it's not gonna happen in church. And indeed, I don't need it to, but I do need you to see the AFC Wimbledon light.

• 45:01Hank Green?

  You're, you've, you've got a different idea of, of souls and how they shall be treated. And I like yours very much.

• 45:10John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's fine. I, I don't, I, that doesn't bother me at all. You not wanting to support AFC Wimbledon financially is baffling to me.

• 45:18Hank Green?

  Man, I tell you what, I do think for the people who stuck around, because I know a lot of people stop at, at the news from AFC Wimbledon and Mars.

• 45:27John Green?

  Yeah, this, this for the special people.

• 45:29Hank Green?

  I just think there's so much money out there and it should be doing, I, I, I think that it should be doing the stuff that we do, which is like really focusing on, but I think that like some money in the same way that a lot of money goes to just like movie theater tickets and concerts and, and soda pop. I think more, like there should be like a good, fair amount of money giving away that is about just doing fun, weird stuff.

• 45:54John Green?

  Yeah, rich people should do more weird stuff like, but not, not bad weird.

• 46:00Hank Green?

  Like, yeah, yeah.

• 46:01John Green?

  Morally neutral weird, chaotic neutral weird.

• 46:04Hank Green?

  You know how Paul DeGeorge has that stapler museum, stuff like that?

• 46:08John Green?

  Paul DeGeorge has a store in Lawrence, Kansas that only sells staplers.

• 46:13Hank Green?

  He's not rich. He's not rich. Just for clarity, Paul DeGeorge is not a billionaire. He is a former wizard rock musician who now owns an art supply store in Kansas. But he also has a stapler museum.

• 46:25John Green?

  It's also a store. You can buy things there.

• 46:27Hank Green?

  It's the way. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:28John Green?

  I bought it. I bought a stapler T-shirt. It's it basically is is a T-shirt that says we sell staplers here in Lawrence, Kansas. Yeah, more things like that.

• 46:39Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 46:40John Green?

  There's a rich guy in Indianapolis who built something called the Idol, which is this like weird walkway that you go through off a off a highway bridge. And you walk through this like, you know, thicket of honeysuckle trees. And then eventually you come to this lookout point where you look out at a spaghetti junction in Indianapolis, and it's so loud from all the cars and trucks that you can't even hear each other talk. And there's like stadium seating there where you can where you can sit and watch the cars. We need more weird stuff like that.

• 47:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you know that the Carmex Carmex, the lip balm stuff?

• 47:19John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:20Hank Green?

  The the guy who started Carmex also is super into pipe organs. So the the largest theater pipe organ in the world is at the Carmex factory. And you can, sometimes they have like exhibitions where they play the organs. There's a bunch of other organs there as well.

• 47:37John Green?

  That just seems so much more. I mean, look, obviously, nobody should be allowed to accumulate wealth in the to the degree that we've allowed it to happen. But like, that seems so much more interesting and useful to me than like.

• 47:50Hank Green?

  Right, yeah.

• 47:52John Green?

  Dot, dot, dot.

• 47:53Hank Green?

  Hmm hmm. Yeah, like the biggest ball of paint. Should absolutely be worth a lot to a billionaire. You know, they should be like, you did a good job and now you can retire.

• 48:05John Green?

  Well, that person should have a patron, right? Like they shouldn't, it shouldn't be somebody buys the ball of paint. It should just be somebody patronizes the ball of paint.

• 48:13Hank Green?

  Somebody should pay. Yes, I like it's, it's very hard to say, don't do the thing where you're educating people or where you're helping get medicine to people. Instead, ball of paint, goofy stapler museum. But like, we spend money on ridiculous stuff.

• 48:29John Green?

  And they're buying yachts.

• 48:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 48:32John Green?

  They're buying yachts that go in the ocean.

• 48:35Hank Green?

  That they don't use. They're, they've got a yacht for their yacht.

• 48:37John Green?

  Well, you need to for some of those bigger yachts.

• 48:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, you support vessels. Some of the yacht yachts need yachts.

• 48:43John Green?

  Oh God, I just got sick to my stomach. That was worse than you brought up the phlebotomy.

• 48:49Hank Green?

  If you're like a cent a millionaire or above, send us an email.

• 48:53John Green?

  Send us an email. We've got so many good ideas for you. We can fight tuberculosis. We can improve science education.

• 48:59Hank Green?

  We can give you credit or not.

• 49:01John Green?

  We can support AFC Wimbledon.

• 49:03Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, we, look, maybe we just want to like build, like just dig down in the center of Missoula, Montana and build a giant catacomb. Why not? Better than a yacht.

• 49:16John Green?

  Better than a yacht any day.

• 49:19Hank Green?

  That's our new nonprofit organization. It's called Better Than a Yacht. Dot org.

• 49:27Hank Green?

  This podcast is made possible by everybody who sends us questions at [email protected]. It's Hank and John at gmail.com. Thank you for everybody for sending us questions. It's edited by Linus Obenhouse. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medash. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosyana Halsro, Hassan Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Bradley. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Roll Up. And as they say in our hometown.

• 49:53John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.