460: Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

Hank has been tweeting a lot recently; is he okay? How does the game “light as a feather, stiff as a board” work? Are bald heads warmer or cooler than hairy heads? What is the lethal dose of pickles? Will John write me into his acknowledgements? How do probiotics work? Why did John write a book for adults? How do you get out of a writer’s rut? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected] Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you devious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, what does Mars have in common with Venus?

• 0:25John Green?

  Hmm, well, they're both planetary bodies that orbit the same sun.

• 0:28Hank Green?

  That's correct.

• 0:30John Green?

  What?

• 0:31Hank Green?

  You got it right.

• 0:32John Green?

  There's no dad joke?

• 0:33Hank Green?

  I didn't look up a dad joke today, John, so that was a surprise dad joke.

• 0:38John Green?

  Oh.

• 0:39Hank Green?

  It's actually a reverse. The funny part is it's just a boring fact.

• 0:46John Green?

  I like it. I just got a colonoscopy and I'm a little loopy, so everything you say is going to be funny to me. And when I say I just got a colonoscopy, I mean that dad drove me home from the colonoscopy about an hour ago.

• 0:59Hank Green?

  That's amazing. Congrats. I'm sure you feel like you've really got a solid foundation under you right now.

• 1:04John Green?

  I think I could operate heavy machinery, but they specifically told me not to, so I'm not going to.

• 1:10Hank Green?

  Okay, that's probably good. You know what else makes me feel like I just got a colonoscopy?

• 1:14John Green?

  Hmm.

• 1:15Hank Green?

  Today's the 20th anniversary of Twitter.

• 1:19John Green?

  Hmm, well, I don't know what to say about that, except we do have a question today about... maybe we should just start there, Hank. Maybe we should start right there.

• 1:27Hank Green?

  Do we have a question about social media?

• 1:29John Green?

  We've got a question about social media, and it's a really good one.

• 1:32Hank Green?

  Heck, yeah.

• 1:32John Green?

  It's one of the best I've seen in a while. It's from Sarah, who writes, "Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, I've noticed Hank has been substantially more active on Twitter recently."

• 1:42Hank Green?

  Oh, no. Why did you notice?

• 1:44John Green?

  Because you're tweeting all the time, Hank. I have to log... now I have to log into Twitter about once a day just to see your tweets to make sure everything's okay.

• 1:53Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:54John Green?

  Because what I can't have is I can't have you mess it up for both of us on Twitter.

• 1:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:00John Green?

  I can't have your tweeting be bad for me.

• 2:02Hank Green?

  I understand that. I understand that. This is a nice thing about the Brotherhood is that we are a natural spring that there feels as if there is a rubber band. If one of us goes a little too far off the rails, the other one is like, I need you to not do that.

• 2:17John Green?

  That said, I've repeatedly asked you not to tweet and you do not listen to me. So anyway, Sarah goes on to say, just wanted to check in on how you're doing, Hank. Pumpkins, penguins, and possible parasocialness. Sarah, Sarah, you are 100% correct and not at all parasocial to worry that Hank has been tweeting more because Hank has been tweeting almost at his pre Elon levels.

• 2:38Hank Green?

  Let me tell you the worst of it.

• 2:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Hank Green?

  I keep saying, I'm not going to tweet anymore.

• 2:46John Green?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:47John Green?

  Wow. Yeah.

• 2:49Hank Green?

  Yeah. So that's like, that's, that shows you where it's at. Um, I keep, I keep like being like, okay, I'm just, I'm just doing this for now and then I'll stop.

• 2:58John Green?

  Okay. That makes me feel a little better, actually, that you recognize that it's naughty.

• 3:05John Green?

  Like when I wake up on a Sunday morning and I'm like, oh boy, I really shouldn't have had those last three drinks. Um, it's good to know that you're waking up on a Sunday morning being like, oh boy, I shouldn't have had those last three tweets.

• 3:16Hank Green?

  Shouldn't have, shouldn't have. And, and have had a couple of, of real deletions.

• 3:22John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Hank Green?

  Where I'm like, boy, why the heck did I tweet that? What, what's going on? That's, that's old Hank behavior.

• 3:29John Green?

  Yeah. Why are you entering the discourse? Like, not just, I mean, I don't mean the discourse, like, you know, questions around, uh, overall, like, climate change. I mean, why are you entering the discourse of the day that will be a different discourse tomorrow?

• 3:44Hank Green?

  That's the worst. That's the worst. It's the worst. It's so dumb.

• 3:49John Green?

  It's so, it's such a waste of our one wild and precious life.

• 3:53Hank Green?

  It's what I, the, the thing I do, I, I feel like. And this can never work on Twitter. This is another, an amazing thing about Twitter is I will tweet something that I will have said in a YouTube video.

• 4:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Hank Green?

  And everybody who watched the YouTube video was like, yeah, perfectly reasonable take. And on Twitter, I'm like, like, everything, everybody's mad for a different reason. And I'm like, I think I may have identified something interesting here, which is the, the medium is the message.

• 4:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Hank Green?

  This is a bad way for humans to create. Yeah, no, that was a, yeah, that was a, a predate Hank. Yes, no, I was, I was, I was assuming that everyone would get that. But yes, I was referencing media theorist Marshall McLuhan, uh, who was absolutely correct. If like, really the ways, the, the ways in which we communicate have a tremendous impact on what is actually communicated. And, and a YouTube video, like a 30 minute YouTube video is just a way better way to do it. And I often will draft a tweet, you'll hopefully be somewhat relieved to hear this and be like, oh, you know what this is, is like a part of a much bigger conversation that I cannot

• 5:02Hank Green?

  have in, that, that like this is a terrible place for.

• 5:06John Green?

  Right. There are structural, I mean, look, there's a problem with Twitter, which is that it's a poorly managed, uh, website.

• 5:13Hank Green?

  Yes, I also am very drawn about this.

• 5:16John Green?

  Yeah, they do a really bad job of, uh, fostering civil discourse. I think it's safe to say, but also there's a, there's a structural architectural problem with Twitter and other many, to many social platforms. I have to sneeze. Oh God.

• 5:34John Green?

  That's not normal.

• 5:35Hank Green?

  That's weird. What was the hell was that?

• 5:37John Green?

  That is not normal. I can't believe that happened on camera. No, people are not sick of it, Hank. People, people love sneezing isn't normal. And, and it doesn't matter if they love it because every time I sneeze for the rest of my life, I'm gonna think sneezing isn't normal. I never sneeze.

• 5:50Hank Green?

  Do you want to hear a weird story about this, John? So I, like back in, I don't know, 2014 era of Vlogbrothers, I thought a really funny video to make would be to write a bunch of very short and catchy songs about regular activities that we do every day. So like, write a little. Laundry song, like, write a little like, turn on the light switch song.

• 6:11John Green?

  That is a great idea.

• 6:12Hank Green?

  And then, and then I'd be stuck in people's heads forever. I never made the video, but to this day, often when I turn on a light switch, I sing the little song that I wrote for that video.

• 6:22John Green?

  Do you know?

• 6:22Hank Green?

  So I did it to myself. Yeah, I know what the song is. Turning the lights on, I'm flipping the switch, I'm turning the lights on, I'm flipping the switch. That's it. Like, that would be the entire video. It would be stuff like that. I had, it, they would all be like, that's, it's very, it's a very catchy tune. And so I, but I only did it to myself.

• 6:41John Green?

  I have a worse problem, which is that I, so the sentence I say the most in the world is, good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. Because when I'm starting filming a video, I say it seven or eight times because I just can't.

• 6:54Hank Green?

  It never sounds quite right.

• 6:55John Green?

  Never sounds quite right. Uh, you know, I gotta get my, I gotta warm up my vocals. Uh, Stan Muller, my longtime collaborator, calls it the wind up.

• 7:03Hank Green?

  I, I do this thing where I think, what's the whole concept of this video? And how do I, how am I thinking about that in this good morning, John?

• 7:14John Green?

  Yeah. Uh, right, exactly. And so, because you want to communicate not just, good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. But also like the overall tone of what you're about to watch.

• 7:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:24John Green?

  Anyway, so the sentence I say the most is, good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. And one of the things that I've done over the last year or so is I've written a song, but it doesn't have an end. So it's like, you know how like back in the day, uh, Mozart's kids used to play, uh, a, a bunch of chords and then like leave it unresolved to annoy him. And then he'd run downstairs in the middle of the night and like finish it off.

• 7:48Hank Green?

  No, I did not know that, but I love that. That's great.

• 7:50John Green?

  So my song is, good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. I love you very much. That's it. I don't have to rest.

• 8:00Hank Green?

  I'm gonna talk a lot right now, such and such and such.

• 8:03John Green?

  Oh, that's good. That's good. See something. I just need something.

• 8:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, because otherwise you're like, oh, my brain.

• 8:09John Green?

  Otherwise I'm Mozart in the middle of the night being tortured by his children. Hank, you gotta get off Twitter, man.

• 8:15Hank Green?

  I appreciate the notes, uh, and I agree.

• 8:18John Green?

  All right.

• 8:19Hank Green?

  I agree. Somebody asked me, this, this is like an embarrassing admission, but somebody asked me like, why are you back on Twitter right now? And, uh, it's because I am obsessed with the sagas of these. Giant weird companies and the people who run them and Twitter is the place where the show is playing, you know?

• 8:37John Green?

  Yeah, I think it's great that you're acknowledging that. I do think, I think it's, I think it's really good that you acknowledge that that's an embarrassing thing to acknowledge. I also have this to an extent where I'm fascinated by the people who have a lot of power because they don't think they have a lot of power. And what does that say about power?

• 8:53Hank Green?

  Oh, my God, it's the worst.

• 8:55John Green?

  Well, it's not the worst. It's the most interesting because they genuinely experience themselves as having limited power. And the reason they experience themselves as having limited power is they think power is a light and that their job is to fly toward the light.

• 9:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, without even questioning it. And I apologize if the sound has gotten weird because they are jackhammering the road outside of my house, but they are doing that.

• 9:18John Green?

  Yeah, I can slightly hear it.

• 9:19Hank Green?

  It's the worst, of course, because if you think you have no power, but you have a ton, you could do a lot of damage with that perspective. That that becomes a very dangerous thing for the world.

• 9:29John Green?

  Right. But the thing is, Hank, I'm, the thing I've tried to tell myself is that when I focus on them, I actually give them more power.

• 9:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 9:40John Green?

  And when I focus on myself and my agency in the world, which is also much more profound than I'm willing to admit, I think this is true for most people. Like, most people, like, I'll give you an example, like, fans don't think they have power over the thing that they're fans of, but they have a ton of power. They may not have power individually, but they have a ton of power collectively. And that's true whether it's a YouTube channel or a sports team.

• 10:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know, like, very popular authors who have lost the ability to finish projects because of this.

• 10:16John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, like, fans are really, really powerful. And so I think that, um, I, I think all of us fail to grapple with our agency at least some of the time. And so I try to tell myself that I need to focus on my own incredible levels of power instead of focusing on them, because the way that I express and use my power, which includes choosing whether or not to tweet, actually has a lot of say in the world we end up sharing. Now, not as much as if I were the CEO of Meta, but still, it matters.

• 10:53Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, and I've I've also watched, you know, people who are creators who who like that that one stranger is able to exert this tremendous amount of power over them just like by being terrifying in their email inbox.

• 11:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Hank Green?

  Or by taking like one like one step down the road of of like the like, it's not like people are never actually hurt by these interactions. They they are. And we've known people who have been and so.

• 11:23John Green?

  Known people who've been killed by them.

• 11:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. So so like the like, people don't, I think, it understanding that we are part of in a society together, that we are all doing this together. I think it's, I think we we've been alienated by it, by the size of society, by the fact that we are all sort of all now imagining the world globally and internationally rather than at all ever in terms of our our local community.

• 11:54John Green?

  Right.

• 11:54Hank Green?

  That's just how how the, I think the Internet in particular begs us to see the world. And so we cannot imagine that we have power. And then even people who don't have very much

• 12:07Hank Green?

  can can end up exerting a lot without knowing it.

• 12:10John Green?

  Yeah, I'll tell you who has a lot of power right now, Hank, is the American voter. Because it looks like the number of children who die every year is going to go up for the first time in eighty five years. And that was caused by the American voter and can also be addressed by the American voter. Wasn't caused just by the American voter.

• 12:27Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 12:28John Green?

  It was mostly caused by Elon Musk, but it was caused partly by choices we made together at the ballot box.

• 12:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Hank Green?

  I, uh,

• 12:39John Green?

  That's a bummer. Sorry. Sorry to bring up a bummer.

• 12:43Hank Green?

  It's the fact that he's actually the richest man on earth.

• 12:47John Green?

  Yeah. No, you gotta let it go, Hank. You're just giving him more. You're just giving him more power by thinking about him.

• 12:53Hank Green?

  He also did that thing.

• 12:55John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Hank Green?

  It's just like the weirdest, like, it's so.

• 12:58John Green?

  It's a real supervillain move.

• 13:01John Green?

  I know.

• 13:02Hank Green?

  Man, it's hard to not let the story own me.

• 13:06John Green?

  I know, but if you let the story own you, then you lose track of your own agency and your own ability to shift the universe.

• 13:13Hank Green?

  All the things that we're doing, which are great and fun. We're doing so many good things.

• 13:17John Green?

  I hope so, including answering this question from Corinne, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm not a superstitious or religious person. I don't believe in magic or ghosts or a higher power or any sort of supernatural forces. But there is one thing that challenges that stance, the game light as a feather, stiff as a board.

• 13:34John Green?

  Where a group of four people gather around one person who is lying on the ground, put two fingers of each hand underneath them and chant light as a feather, stiff as a board over and over, and somehow magically are able to lift a 100 pound human with only two fingers on each hand. I've tried to do the same lift without chanting, just by counting down and lifting together, and it does not work. They feel as heavy as one would expect a person to feel when you're lifting them with the tips of your fingers. But when you chant, all of a sudden, it feels like the person is light as air. What is happening here? Why does this work? Is magic real, but only for this one strange little trick? Apparently, light as a feather, Corinne.

• 14:06Hank Green?

  Corinne!

• 14:07John Green?

  I know the answer to this. I looked it up.

• 14:10Hank Green?

  I also, here's what I will say. If you go on YouTube and watch people doing light as a feather, stiff as a board.

• 14:16John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Hank Green?

  It ruins light as a feather, stiff as a board.

• 14:20John Green?

  Why? Just because you can tell that they're like really engaging their biceps?

• 14:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, there is like a number of people involved in light as a feather, stiff as a board. This is a very Ouija board phenomenon.

• 14:30John Green?

  Yes.

• 14:30Hank Green?

  And so for the people on certain parts of the body, the body feels extraordinarily light. But there are often people on other parts of the body that are working very, very hard.

• 14:41John Green?

  So that's probably part of it.

• 14:44Hank Green?

  There's also a chanty thing, I think.

• 14:47John Green?

  There is a chanty thing, and then there is a stiff as a board thing. So I have picked up my kids when they are stiff as a board, and I've picked up my kids when they do not want to be picked up.

• 14:58Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 14:59John Green?

  And they're just like loosey goosey, and those are fundamentally different experiences.

• 15:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:06John Green?

  Right? Like, there's a reason that incredibly strong firefighters drag bodies away instead of carrying them away, right? It's because they're flipping heavy.

• 15:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, yeah, big. Imagine a five gallon bucket of water and how heavy that is.

• 15:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Hank Green?

  That's like, yeah, how big am I as a bucket of water?

• 15:24John Green?

  So when you go stiff as a board, you distribute your weight differently and you become easier to carry. So that's one thing. The other thing is that even micro, according to the internet, and I believe this, even microscopic differences in when you start to pull matter. And then people just underestimate how strong two fingers are. Like, we evolved to have incredibly strong fingers.

• 15:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's always like this, you know, like they're like making it like it's two fingers on each hand. So it's four fingers.

• 15:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Hank Green?

  And it's, the whole hand is in this very sort of locked together configuration.

• 16:03John Green?

  And then because the body weight is distributed fairly evenly, not perfectly evenly, as you point out, but fairly evenly, you're actually lifting like 20 pounds or 30 pounds per two fingers, which is not that hard. It's like doing a bicep curl.

• 16:19Hank Green?

  Right. And the stiff as a board thing makes it so that the weight is distributed much more evenly. But, but I did go and watch a bunch of light as a feather, stiff as a board things on YouTube. And one thing I found is very often it's not three or four people, it's like six or eight. And then that's a totally different vibe.

• 16:36John Green?

  And then it's basically living in a society, Corinne.

• 16:42Hank Green?

  Altogether, we can do things that we could not do alone.

• 16:44John Green?

  Exactly. We can collaborate. That is our superpower. Our superpower is not competition. Our superpower is collaboration. Don't let them lie to you.

• 16:53Hank Green?

  Has to want to be helped.

• 16:55John Green?

  Oh, that's true, too. Light as a feather, stiff as a board has layers.

• 17:03Hank Green?

  You can't, you can't, you can't light as a feather, stiff as a board, some floppy, unstiff board.

• 17:08John Green?

  No, you can't. So that's all the reasons why you can continue to have no superstition or religion if you don't want to. I still, Hank, let me ask you a serious question about this.

• 17:19Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 17:19John Green?

  Cause I'm a religious person, you're an atheist. This is helpful for me to understand. When people say they have no superstitions, do they mean they do not engage in magical thinking at all? Like, you don't engage in magical thinking at all? You never think like, oh, if I win this game of FIFA, AFC Wimbledon will win in real life? You never think anything magical of the world or ask anything magical of the world?

• 17:41Hank Green?

  I mean. I'm having a hard time coming up with anything in my recent history in which I did this, even in situat-- I'm thinking about being sick and--

• 17:53John Green?

  Wanting to get better.

• 17:54Hank Green?

  I never, I never felt any superstition about that. I don't, you know, people around me will often be like, "Don't say that. You're gonna knock on wood." And I'm like, "That's not how things work." I do, here's something that I have.

• 18:06John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Hank Green?

  Um, I, I sometimes feel like if I, it's the opposite. If I say a bad outcome out loud--

• 18:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Hank Green?

  That makes it less likely to happen, because oftentimes, the thing that I worry about is not the thing that actually occurs.

• 18:19John Green?

  Yes, you have preventative worry. That's almost a universal human experience.

• 18:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so I'm like, I, I say the thing I'm worried about out loud, and that, like, I feel like that, that decreases the odds that it will happen.

• 18:32John Green?

  Right.

• 18:33Hank Green?

  And not, not because I think that I'm taking an action. Uh, I am just doing this thing, and I have observed that, that oftentimes, my, my worries that I say out loud are like, you know, the world is too complex for me to have actually identified a real thing that's going to, to go wrong, which is like, really a thing. I remember recently, and I'm not gonna get into the examples here, but you and I were dealing with like, a thing that we were really worried about. And we, uh, we really prepared for it. And then, it didn't happen, and a completely other thing that was, that was of similar flavor occurred, and we were not at all prepared for it.

• 19:12John Green?

  I have no idea what you're talking about. Hold on, we're gonna go offline.

• 19:27John Green?

  Okay, we're back in. Hank told me what he was thinking about. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, actually.

• 19:31Hank Green?

  No, it wasn't that big of a deal, but like, it was, it was very stressful at the moment, and it was not what we were expecting to go wrong.

• 19:37John Green?

  Yeah, well, this is always the case, is that you, when you prepare for, like, I remember, okay, I will give, I will give an actual example of this, and then you can cut it if you're uncomfortable with it.

• 19:48Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 19:49John Green?

  But I remember when we no longer owned VidCon. We were very worried that people would be mad at us for no longer owning VidCon.

• 19:56Hank Green?

  Oh, my God. We did prepare for this a lot.

• 19:58John Green?

  We were so scared, but we needed to not own VidCon so bad.

• 20:03Hank Green?

  And looking back, this was the right decision.

• 20:06John Green?

  And so the fear of not, the fear of owning VidCon eventually overwhelmed the fear of not owning VidCon. And we didn't own VidCon anymore.

• 20:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:14John Green?

  And I-

• 20:15Hank Green?

  We like worked with Elise on this. We had a whole set of things and-

• 20:19John Green?

  Yeah, so my new book is dedicated to my longtime publicist, Elise Marshall Pfeiffer. And Elise was advising us and everything. And then the day came and everybody was like, oh, cool. Congratulations.

• 20:29Hank Green?

  I got a bunch of congratulations texts and that was it. It was like maybe like one person mad on Twitter, but like I could get one of those just by tweeting about global warming.

• 20:39John Green?

  I mean, you can get more than one of those. If you're looking to get people mad at you on Twitter, and apparently you are, it's easy to find.

• 20:49Hank Green?

  Oh, man. I, yeah, I tweeted about global warming yesterday and I got an amazing response that I, that I replied to.

• 20:56John Green?

  Oh, Hank. Hank, you're replying, you're replying to responses?

• 21:01Hank Green?

  I said, yeah, I, I agree. A completely made up thing would be a problem if it were real.

• 21:06John Green?

  Oh, Jesus, Hank.

• 21:07Hank Green?

  I know. I know. I'm like snarking at strangers.

• 21:10John Green?

  You did it, man. You, you, Michael Jordan dunked on some 12-year-old. Good job, buddy.

• 21:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'd feel bad if it were a 12-year-old, but, but in fact, probably it was a computer program.

• 21:27John Green?

  Probably. I probably dunked on a language model.

• 21:34John Green?

  All right, let's answer this question from Luke, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my partner and I are currently watching the US versus Belgium World Cup match. My, my condolences, Luke.

• 21:45Hank Green?

  That went the way it went.

• 21:46John Green?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 21:49Hank Green?

  This, I've been watching a little bit of World Cup, John, and it is heartbreaking.

• 21:53John Green?

  Oh, it's brutal.

• 21:54Hank Green?

  It was good. It's so sad. Mo Salah's goal that got taken back?

• 22:00John Green?

  Oh, they all cry. They cry and cry and cry at the end of the game. And when they win, they cry. I mean, Lionel Messi won that game and he cried because he thought that he'd let his team down and he thought his World Cup dream was over, but now it's alive. At least as of this recording.

• 22:15Hank Green?

  Man, he really, he really should have made that penalty. That was wild.

• 22:19John Green?

  He should have made that penalty. Although I was speculating with my friend Daniel, the co-host of The Away End. How many penalties, if given 10 penalties, do I think I would make at a World Cup game? And I know how to kick a penalty, but I tell you what I don't know how to do is kick a penalty in a World Cup game.

• 22:39John Green?

  I don't think I could get the ball over the line without a goalkeeper in the net, you know?

• 22:46John Green?

  I don't think I could convince my right leg to work.

• 22:48Hank Green?

  I will say, it was on goal, you know?

• 22:51John Green?

  Yeah, it was a good, it wasn't a great penalty, but it was, it was, it was better than my penalty would have been.

• 22:57Hank Green?

  I'll tell you, who couldn't have stopped it? Me, five of me standing in that goal would not have been able to stop that kick.

• 23:06John Green?

  No, they would have run into each other. It would have been like a Marx Brothers sketch where they run into each other and fall over.

• 23:11Hank Green?

  And he would have flown back into the goal.

• 23:17John Green?

  Yes, yes, like a Road Runner cartoon.

• 23:21John Green?

  All right, the players have a variety of hairstyles, I'll say. And the ref is very bald.

• 23:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:27John Green?

  The ref is very bald, all are sweaty. Are bald heads warmer or cooler than hairy heads? They must feel more breezed, but are they also more exposed to sun? Is there a hairstyle that's ideal for head temperature trying to keep a cool head, Luke?

• 23:39Hank Green?

  I mean, cool head Luke, I gotta tell you, DeBocchi did so much research on this.

• 23:44John Green?

  Oh, good.

• 23:46Hank Green?

  And, and, and to the conclusion of it's different, but it's about the same. And also it's dependent on condition. So one of the things about a bald head is that a lot of solar radiation will go directly into it, whereas hair does a lot of insulation work. And that's maybe why we have hair. And in fact, we see that in places where people have to manage heat differently, they have hair that is more specifically good at insulating the head, which would mean like tighter, curlier hair. And, uh, and it's also good at holding on to water that will then evaporate and cool the air around the head. But if you are bald, your skin is able to more directly radiate heat away.

• 24:27Hank Green?

  And you actually, it, it looks like you, like a bald head sweats significantly more. Because it's literally hotter, uh, and that's producing more liquid to evaporate with. So it looks like after all of that, it's probably about equal. And if it's not sunny out, it's may, it might be better to be bald, but it's like condition specific, it's humidity specific, all this stuff. So it's like, uh, but, but it looks like the best, the best thing for keeping a head cool is short, tight, curly hair.

• 25:00John Green?

  Okay. More than being bald.

• 25:02Hank Green?

  That's better than being bald. Yeah.

• 25:04John Green?

  Okay. All right. So there you go. Julia writes, Dear John and Hank.

• 25:08Hank Green?

  People have done a ridiculous amount of research on this, which was fun to see.

• 25:12John Green?

  Well, I'm about to ask you a question that people have done a surprising amount of research on, given the question. Julia writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm currently studying Russian in Estonia. I'm American. And the other day, while my friend, also American, and this is relevant, was visiting, we went to an open air market where my friend purchased some pickles. When asked how much pickle she wanted, she ordered a kilo. Neither of us fully understood what a kilo was, because we are American. As it turns out, a kilo is quite a lot of pickles. We proceeded to eat all of the pickles, which leads me to my question, what is the lethal dose of pickles? And is it just over half a kilo per person? Because I feel like we got pretty close, slightly pickled, Julia.

• 25:50Hank Green?

  Julia, I also, I looked into this one and I will tell you, you didn't get that far away.

• 25:57John Green?

  You did.

• 25:58Hank Green?

  You got, you got closer than is comfortable. So you were, you were, uh, if you had doubled that, if you had had two kilos to split between you, you would not have died, but you would have been starting to experience the symptoms of salt poisoning.

• 26:13John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Hank Green?

  So it's not the vinegar, it's not the pickles, it's not the water that would be getting you. It would be the salts, the very salty things. You start to experience the beginnings of salt poisoning, which would immediately make you stop eating the pickles because you would be vomiting. Uh, and feeling very bad. Um, but you might've felt a little bit of this, just eating half a kilo of pickles, because I did the math and you probably had enough to have gotten way too much salt that day.

• 26:40John Green?

  Yeah, you got too much salt that day, but you weren't near.

• 26:43Hank Green?

  Not near death.

• 26:45John Green?

  Here's, here's my answer, Hank, because somebody did the actual math.

• 26:50Hank Green?

  Oh, someone else did the math.

• 26:51John Green?

  After this headline, killed by eating pickles, girl devoured scores of fat ones daily and finally succumbed.

• 27:01John Green?

  The girl was employed at a pickling establishment. She developed a passionate fondness for pickles and since the pickling season started, had eaten nothing but pickles. Most of them were the big ones and she would eat scores of them every day.

• 27:11Hank Green?

  This sounds fake.

• 27:12John Green?

  It probably is fake.

• 27:13Hank Green?

  Sounds like it's written by a 12 year old.

• 27:15John Green?

  Or old timey newspaper reporter.

• 27:20Hank Green?

  Scores of pickles every day?

• 27:22John Green?

  The lethal dose of sodium chloride for humans is in the ballpark of 3,000 to 3,500 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Sodium chloride per pickle is in the ballpark of 800 milligrams per pickle. So if she was roughly average weight for her age, she'd be somewhere around 50 kilometers. So the answer is 187.5 pickles.

• 27:39Hank Green?

  Oh, wow. That's not, that's not what the math told me. My math was like, you start getting sick at a, at a full, at like a kilo, no liquid, but a kilo of, of.

• 27:51Hank Green?

  Un- un- unliquided pickles.

• 27:53John Green?

  Yeah. All right. Well, here's the thing, man. Don't eat either 187 or 1 kilogram of pickles. They're not even that good.

• 28:03Hank Green?

  Now I'm, now I am looking at what you're looking at, killed by eating pickles, girl devoured scores of fat ones daily and finally succumbed.

• 28:12John Green?

  It looks real.

• 28:13Hank Green?

  It does look real. It looks real. Pittsburgh, October 24th, but it doesn't tell us the year, which I really want to know.

• 28:20John Green?

  Right.

• 28:20Hank Green?

  Girl dev- because you can't, this poor girl died. You can't say that she devoured scores of fat ones daily.

• 28:26John Green?

  Well, you can in the old days when newspapers were 1908, 1908.

• 28:31Hank Green?

  Oh, is a fat one slang for pickles?

• 28:36John Green?

  Then in the, it got posted in the Pickles subreddit and the most upvoted comment is one of us, R.I.P.

• 28:50Hank Green?

  That reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by Fat Ones.

• 28:59Hank Green?

  From 1908, Fat Ones brand pickles no longer available due to their lethality.

• 29:05John Green?

  Oh yeah, it's from the Sedalia Democrat in Sedalia, Missouri in 1908. It is a real headline.

• 29:12Hank Green?

  Beautiful. I would not have believed it.

• 29:15John Green?

  Uh, today's podcast is additionally brought to you by colonoscopies. Colonoscopies, get yours starting when you're 45.

• 29:21Hank Green?

  This podcast is additionally brought to you by a messy penalty kick. A messy penalty kick. Careful, you might lose a hand.

• 29:28John Green?

  And also today's podcast is brought to you by Selling VidCon. Selling VidCon. Whew.

• 29:37Hank 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 gonna work.

• 30:20Hank Green?

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

• 31:10John 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.

• 31:53John 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 130 48 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.

• 32:37Hank Green?

  All right, John, this next question comes from Rachel, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I was listening to a recent episode where y'all were talking about acknowledgements, and John said that his new book, Hollywood Ending, available for preorder now, might not have any acknowledgements. I personally love the acknowledgements, and I've actually been named in an acknowledgement before in a book written by an author friend. It was so cool, and I was so proud. So maybe we should make it a trend. So how about this idea? You just thank me in your acknowledgements for no reason. Just thanks to Rachel Payne for all of her help on this book. It would be so iconic. How about it? Sincerely, Rachel.

• 33:14John Green?

  I like to sincerely sign off, Rachel, just so that we understood that you are not kidding.

• 33:20Hank Green?

  This is not a joke. Sign off. This is sincere.

• 33:23John Green?

  So listen, I read your email, and then I also got a text message from my longtime producing partner, Rosiana Hoss-Rohas, and I wrote acknowledgements into the book. Now, I did not thank you, Rachel. It felt like while your contributions to the book were significant in the sense that you went, you helped me go from no acknowledgements to acknowledgements. It's not quite high enough on the list, but I want to thank, so instead, I'm going to thank you now. I'm thanking you here on this podcast, Rachel Payne. Thank you for helping.

• 33:52Hank Green?

  You're not going to say, "Thanks to Rachel Payne for reminding me that I should indeed write acknowledgements," and then continue on with your acknowledgements?

• 33:59John Green?

  I had to keep them to two pages, and I could barely keep them to two pages. So because I did it so late in the process, there were only two extra pages in the book for me to write.

• 34:09Hank Green?

  Well, just put her on the copyright page.

• 34:12John Green?

  I mean, the book is, the book is done. Rachel, you're not getting into the book, my man. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm thanking you here.

• 34:20Hank Green?

  I'm working hard for you, Rachel. I'm trying to make it happen. I'm gonna write you into the, into the front of a couple of these books.

• 34:27John Green?

  Yeah. Oh, man, that's good stuff. Uh, but yeah, I have written acknowledgements now. I, after wavering on it, I decided that the benefit of it is higher than the cost of it. The cost of it is that like, when you finish a book, you wanna have that end of book feeling. And you don't necessarily wanna turn the page and then be reminded that there's an author. As you know, Hank, in my recent video, I'm concerned about the presence of the author in the novel anyway. And it used to be that there were never acknowledgements in books back when, um, or very rarely back when the author really wasn't a character. Like, you go back and you read all the king's men, there's no acknowledgements. You go back and you read, you know, Shakespeare, nah, you know, there's not like a, a page where he's thanking all the actors who played Romeo and Juliet the first time it was staged or anything.

• 35:12Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:14John Green?

  But, uh, yeah, I decided it was, it was too valuable not to do.

• 35:20Hank Green?

  Do you think Shakespeare ever was, was like, watched his plays and were like, God, these people, they don't get it?

• 35:26John Green?

  Yes, absolutely. I think he was like, man, if only the greatest actors in human history could, could, could live at the same time as the greatest playwright in human history.

• 35:40Hank Green?

  Or, or is like Tom Cruise, he just never goes to his own shows?

• 35:43John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:43Hank Green?

  Do you think? I can't be, I can't watch.

• 35:45John Green?

  Do you think Shakespeare knew, like, do you think he was like, boy, am I better than everyone else?

• 35:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:52John Green?

  Like, do you think he, like, read Christopher Marlowe plays and was like, yeah, that ain't it?

• 35:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that because sometimes I watch YouTube videos and I'm like, I'm pretty good at this.

• 36:01John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, but you're not, just to be clear, and I, I know that you won't say this, so I'll say it for you. You're not Shakespeare.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  I don't think I'm Shakespeare.

• 36:12John Green?

  And you're not the Shakespeare of YouTube either.

• 36:14Hank Green?

  I think he had a number of talents that I lack.

• 36:17John Green?

  Yes.

• 36:18Hank Green?

  Um, yeah, I, uh, but yeah, I, you can't be that good without being a little bit too proud of yourself. Now, you also can't be that good without being a perfectionist and hating yourself. So I think it's a combination of both.

• 36:30John Green?

  Right, right. I think that's probably true.

• 36:32Hank Green?

  That's my, that's my guess. You know, that's my, that's my insight into not, not, I don't know very much about Shakespeare, nor do I, uh, appreciate his work well.

• 36:41John Green?

  Ooh, that's a tough one for me to take.

• 36:44Hank Green?

  I'm not saying that I don't appreciate his work. I'm saying that I don't appreciate it well. I think that there are people who are better at appreciating it than I am. It's like when I have wine and I'm like, I'm sure that this is good, but it tastes like bad grape juice.

• 36:54John Green?

  Hmm, hmm. That is disappointing after our trip to France.

• 36:59Hank Green?

  I love the cheese.

• 37:02John Green?

  All right, let's answer this question from Naomi who writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently took a microbiology course. And among other things, I learned that very few kinds of bacteria can survive in the human stomach due to the acidic environment. That made me wonder, how do probiotics or things like kombucha? I gotta tell you, by the way, Hank, I always call kombucha cambucha. I always have.

• 37:22Hank Green?

  Sure. You haven't always have, because it didn't exist until you were like 30.

• 37:27John Green?

  Well, when I found out.

• 37:28Hank Green?

  Sorry, it existed.

• 37:29John Green?

  When I found out about, yeah, it clearly did. Didn't exist in American, uh, Kroger shelves. When I found out about kombucha, um, you know, 10, 15 years ago or whatever, uh, I called it kombucha because it just, it looks like it should be pronounced kombucha.

• 37:46Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 37:46John Green?

  And, um, nothing in this wide world drives my spouse more bananas than when I say, are you having a glass of kombucha there?

• 37:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:58John Green?

  Um, and she's like, it's kombucha. And I'm like, well, I mean.

• 38:01Hank Green?

  Well, you know.

• 38:02John Green?

  When, you know, when the English say ah, they mean ah. So it's similar for me. Anyway, I, I called it, I called it kombucha out of respect for my spouse.

• 38:11Hank Green?

  Right. Yes. But you are from Indiana and so you're going to say kombucha.

• 38:15John Green?

  Works to, how does it work to improve gut flora? I was always under the impression that probiotics contain bacteria that would populate my gut, but wouldn't that bacteria die en route to their eventual home when they inevitably pass through the stomach? Microbiology and misinformation, Naomi.

• 38:28Hank Green?

  Well, there's, there's a ton of stuff going on here. So, so one thing that when you take a probiotic supplement, there's this thing called acidophilus, lactobacillus acidophilus. And I'd heard this word a thousand times and I just was like, well, that's what they call it. Lactobacillus acidophilus. Lactobacillus means that it's like a bacteria that's like into the lactate. Acidophilus, if you look at that word, what does that mean? It means acid-loving. So acidophilus is specifically a bacteria that survives the stomach very well because it's, it is acid-loving. But most of the stuff in kombucha, I did like a little halfway between there. Most of the stuff in kombucha is, is not acid-loving.

• 39:07Hank Green?

  So there are a few different things though, in which it may help with the gut bacteria. But a lot of that, a lot of that bacteria is not actually going to survive. So what you do get though, is you get fermentation products. You get, you get, you get like prebiotic-ish compounds. And then, so like the, the stuff in the kombucha is good. It's gonna, it's gonna, it is gonna make it through your stomach and it's good for feeding bacteria because of course it is, because it's feeding bacteria. But then also you might have some of these bacteria actually survive and they mostly will do that by being part of like clumps of bacteria and the ones in the inside will be able to survive. So if you've ever

• 39:51Hank Green?

  made a kombucha, or if you have had a kombucha that has scoby still in it, well this like clump thing that is the, the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, then you know, that, that obviously is a colony. It is a biofilm. And so you might get little pieces of that biofilm that will be able to protect the ones that are interior and they will be able to make it through. I'm not entirely sure about that. But it isn't, it is true that of course the digestive system is a very harsh place to bacteria for really good reasons. But some bacteria are really acid tolerant and they, lactobacillus acidophilus is great

• 40:35Hank Green?

  at being inside of there and doing good work in, in the gut. But also there are some in the guts that would not be well-suited to the stomach. And so we know that they have to be making it through somehow. It's just not entirely clear how.

• 40:47John Green?

  Well, that's fascinating, Hank. Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to answer this question from Patrick, which is really for both of us because we both know how to finish a novel.

• 40:57John Green?

  Don't do it as often as we'd like, but we do know how to do it. Dear John and Hank, I'm currently in a rut in the second draft of my first novel, and as part of my procrastination, I ended up poking around John's author website and stumbled over the fax pages. In the section about writing, there is a question that asks, "Do you ever think about writing an adult book?" And your answer is, "Not really." But now, you have written a book for adults, Hollywood Ending, available for preorder now. I really have trained these people.

• 41:21Hank Green?

  I haven't reading Hollywood Ending for a second time, John, which I almost never do.

• 41:25John Green?

  Thank you. How do you like it? Are you reading it for a second time because you're reading it in a different context?

• 41:30Hank Green?

  I'm reading it in the context of knowing how the book goes. So the first bit of the book is a different book, almost. You know, it's like this story of these people making this thing. And it's enjoyable from the perspective of a maker. And then the harder parts of the book are all like, now that thing is out and you can no longer change it. And it's not this thing you love, it's this thing that everybody loves.

• 41:56John Green?

  Right.

• 41:57Hank Green?

  And everybody's finding their own beautiful and terrible ways to enjoy it. And so getting to read the beginning part again. So yeah, that context is great to sort of enjoy it from like knowing what is coming. I don't often, but because there's that juxtaposition, it's a really interesting reread.

• 42:23John Green?

  Well, I do like to write stuff that can hold up to rereading. I think you do a good job of that, too. So anyway, I did write an adult book. So what changed? Also, do you have any dubious advice about getting out of a writer's rut? Not a Saint Patrick. So first off, what changed is simply that I came across a story in my mind where the problems were not problems that teenagers have. They were problems that people in their twenties have. So, you know, when you're establishing those foundational relationships in your life in early adulthood, when you're figuring out what your career, professional life might look like, when, you know, you still have everything in front of you, but you're technically an adult, what does that look like and feel like? Those were the questions that interested me when I was starting to write Hollywood

• 43:08John Green?

  Ending, and those just aren't questions for high school. And so it was an adult book. I was also a little surprised to end up writing it, but that's how it went. As far as getting out of a writer's rut, Hank, what do you think?

• 43:23Hank Green?

  I hate what works for me, because it works and I choose not to do it. Because I almost want to be in the rut, or I don't believe it'll work, and so I don't do it, but then when I do it, it works. And it is just to read my own work. And it feels a little self-indulgent, and it feels like a waste of time, and it's like, I've already read this. But like, if I just read the chapter beforehand, or the two chapters beforehand, I get myself back into the mind palace of the story, and it really helps. You know, another thing that can help is outlining a few chapters forward, because I don't tend

• 44:08Hank Green?

  to outline on paper, like I have a thing in my head. Or writing a more distant chapter and then being like, I'm gonna fill in these gaps later, just like finding a more rewarding piece of something to do. But just, I find that rereading my work is part of the writing process, and gets me back into it. And then like, the writing becomes basically like reading again, where I'm just like, okay, I'm still in this story. In order to keep reading it, I have to write it.

• 44:40John Green?

  I also find that sometimes with a second draft especially, it's harder to give yourself permission to not be great because you feel like every, every step you make has to be the exact right step.

• 44:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:50John Green?

  But there's no rule, in fact, like with me, a second draft is not anywhere close to a last draft. So there's no rule that you can't still suck. Um, and I try to give myself that permission to like, say like, well, uh, this doesn't exactly work, but it gives me a bridge from X to Y and I need to get to Y in order to write the rest of the story. And so I'm going to accept this bridge, even though it's not the right bridge for the novel, I don't think. And then sometimes it is like, when I was writing Hollywood Ending, the last part, um, which obviously I can't talk about very much, but the last part, um, I, I initially thought that I was writing the last part as kind of a placeholder. And then Sarah read the first draft and she was like, there's a lot of problems here, but I really like the last part.

• 45:33John Green?

  Hank just tried to reveal a spoiler and I cut him because even though he doesn't think it's a spoiler, I think it's a spoiler because I think everything is a spoiler. I want you to go into this book totally cold. Like I didn't want, I didn't want there to be flap copy Hank. Like my editor was like, you have to have flap copy that tells book, people what the read, what the book's about. And I was like, I don't want anybody to know what the book's about. I want them to know the title and I want them to open it up and start, but that's not realistic.

• 46:00Hank Green?

  Not real. No, indeed.

• 46:01John Green?

  There is flap copy. If you want to read that, you can read that at bookshop.org.

• 46:05Hank Green?

  Oh, let me read it.

• 46:08John Green?

  That's, that's the only spoiler I'll allow. All right, Hank, it's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's the news from Mars this week?

• 46:14Hank Green?

  In the news from Mars, we have a new rover design and his name is Ernest.

• 46:18John Green?

  Aww.

• 46:19Hank Green?

  Yeah. So NASA scientists have been testing out a new rover, uh, that could shape the rovers, the next generation we're sending to Mars and the moon. It's called the Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain. And it's, it's, here are some advantages, John. It's a fast boy. How fast do you think Ernest goes?

• 46:40John Green?

  Four miles an hour.

• 46:42Hank Green?

  Point six, but that's very fast for a Mars rover.

• 46:48Hank Green?

  They are not traditionally super quick. Perseverance after five years has gone now 26.2 miles. It's finished its first marathon. So that Ernest will be able to go faster than that. But Ernest also only has four wheels, which is new. And also, those wheels are gonna do that thing that car wheels don't do, where they can point in any direction. And so if it wants to go diagonally, or sideways, or forward, or whatever, it can do all the things. They're also redesigning the wheels to be a little more resilient, as we have found the Martian rocks are a lot more hard on the rover wheels than we expected. And we're working hard to keep these rovers working, even though their wheels have been absolutely

• 47:31Hank Green?

  torn to shreds. And it doesn't have that that cool gimbal thing that always keeps equal pressure on all of the wheels. But they're going to solve that problem in other ways. We've got we've learned a lot since we started designing Mars rovers 2030 years ago. So that's it's exciting. It's a simpler design in some ways, a more complex design in others. But it's gonna it seems to be very good at a lot of the things that you want rovers to be good at. And we recently went on a 16 mile journey through the desert of Southern California. It took almost 37 hours to do that 16 mile journey. But that's quite quick. The rover did almost the whole journey autonomously, which is another thing that we can do more now.

• 48:15John Green?

  Impressive.

• 48:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 48:18John Green?

  Well, in news from AFC Wimbledon, the schedule has been released, Hank, and it is catastrophic.

• 48:24Hank Green?

  For me. Okay. Oh, okay. Great. That's better than catastrophic for the team.

• 48:29John Green?

  AFC Wimbledon play the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes at home on September 19, one day before the first event of my yet to be announced book tour.

• 48:40Hank Green?

  Well, John, I think that you'll manage.

• 48:44John Green?

  I will be able to go to several games this season, including one with mom and dad, which I'm really excited about. But yeah, so AFC Wimbledon, the other thing, the other thing that's really bad about the schedule is that everybody's been looking forward to playing Leicester away, like Leicester won the Premier League title 10 years ago, they've got a huge stadium, it'll be a really fun away day, and they scheduled that game for Boxing Day, December 26th, when a lot of people can't travel because they're like having family time.

• 49:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:10John Green?

  And that's a bummer.

• 49:12Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:12John Green?

  That's kind of, that was like the biggest away day we had to look forward to, and they scheduled it for a bummer day. So lots of people are upset about that, but in general, the schedule looks good. We play Bromley, we play Wigan, we play Wickham, we play Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield Wednesday will be a fun day out. So yeah, lots of, lots to look forward to in the League One season. Now, I know what you're wondering, Hank, do we have 11 players to field?

• 49:36Hank Green?

  Seems important.

• 49:38John Green?

  I wouldn't say we have 11. I would say we have 11, but not 11 in the right positions. But we'll get there, buddy. We'll get there.

• 49:45Hank Green?

  You, you could try.

• 49:47John Green?

  Ah, I think I'm more of, I'm more of a locker room guy than an on the pitch guy.

• 49:52Hank Green?

  You know who's getting old, maybe is looking for a job, is Lionel Messi.

• 49:56John Green?

  Well, he's doing pretty well at Inter Miami, making tens of millions of dollars a year, living in Miami.

• 50:04John Green?

  It's gonna be hard to get him to-

• 50:05Hank Green?

  Not paying income tax.

• 50:06John Green?

  Not paying income tax. It's gonna be hard to get him to southwest London.

• 50:13Hank Green?

  Who else? Who else? What's, what's Mo Salah up to? Who are these old guys?

• 50:17John Green?

  What about Vuzina, the 41-year-old, uh, Cate Verdi goalkeeper? That guy's a genius.

• 50:22Hank Green?

  He's got lots of Instagram followers, that's what you need.

• 50:25John Green?

  I suspect that he's gonna be in high demand as well. I think probably we're not looking at the World Cup for our next 11.

• 50:31Hank Green?

  You know what I think? I actually just had an amazing idea. You know what World Cup needs?

• 50:35John Green?

  What?

• 50:36Hank Green?

  It needs Leon Mus to tweet for them.

• 50:39John Green?

  I thought about it. I thought about going back to Twitter as Leon Moss and just doing my World Cup tweets.

• 50:43Hank Green?

  No, no, I think that you should be AFC Wimbledon as Leon Moss.

• 50:48John Green?

  Oh, very, very, very meta. That's what the world's crying out for.

• 50:52Hank Green?

  But you could tweet so good for them and then they'd be popular the way that Ryan Reynolds' team is popular.

• 51:02John Green?

  I don't think Ryan Reynolds' team is popular primarily because of Ryan Reynolds tweeting. I think it's because of his really good TV show, actually.

• 51:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, but that's your version of that, you know?

• 51:13John Green?

  It's nice of you to think that we're close to that, but I think we're a ways off from that. All right, Hank, we got to end the pod because I've got to take a nap.

• 51:21Hank Green?

  All right. I'm so happy for you. Great job doing it, getting that colonoscopy and making a really, I'd say, top 10% episode of your Hank and John. I had a good time.

• 51:31John Green?

  Thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.

• 51:33Hank Green?

  This podcast was edited by Linus Obenhaus, mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohass and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gnerola. And as they say in our hometown,

• 51:51John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.