Pod Insights Dear Hank & John 424: Heaven Grades on a Curve About this episode If you were standing on Mercury or Venus, would the sun look bigger? How long is a "while"? What are career fields that AI won’t be able to replace? How do we not run out of crystals and gemstones? How do I clear the smoke out of my house? …Hank and John Green have answers!
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Hank Green? You're listening to a Complexly podcast.
0:09 Hank Green? Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.
0:12 John Green? Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.
0:14 Hank 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, where do you find a cow with no legs?
0:23 John Green? Where?
0:24 Hank Green? Right where you left it, baby. How you doing?
0:27 John Green? That's a good joke. That's good. How come they're not always like that?
0:32 Hank Green? We just gotta, this is the thing, we can't analyze each joke. We just gotta move on.
0:37 John Green? Okay.
0:38 Hank Green? We gotta move on. How are you?
0:39 John Green? I'm fine.
0:40 Hank Green? How you doing?
0:41 John Green? I've been sick all week, so if I sound a little sick, it's because I am sick.
0:45 Hank Green? John has postponed two podcasts and all he has told me is, I just don't feel up to it. And I have just assumed that that means that the world is too much.
0:57 John Green? Yeah.
0:57 Hank Green? And you'd not like to make a bunch of jokes right now.
1:00 John Green? No, there's an element of that.
1:00 Hank Green? But it turns out you actually are ill.
1:01 John Green? Yeah, mostly I just haven't been able to get out of bed. I've gotten out of bed three times this week and each time I was like, that was a mistake. And now I'm out of bed again and I'm sure I'm gonna think it's a mistake again. But here we are. I'm happy to be making a podcast with you despite the circumstances. And, you know, I don't know, how am I doing? Medium? Medium? Medium rare, I would say.
1:21 Hank Green? Have you thought about moving beyond La Croix?
1:26 John Green? No, like to Spindrift or something?
1:28 Hank Green? Yeah.
1:29 John Green? No, I'm a good, I'm a good Midwesterner, Hank, and I don't believe in abandoning a great brand like La Croix that does such good work mining aluminum from the ground and then sending it to my house with water in it.
1:43 Hank Green? You know, it's probably a lot has come from recycled feedstocks, actually, but...
1:47 John Green? Have I told you about when I go to the pearly gates of heaven?
1:51 Hank Green? Yeah, no, I know that La Croix is your, is the one thing that you think that you're doing that's going to...
1:56 John Green? Prevent me from getting to heaven. I'm doing other things that are bad. It's just that's the straw that's gonna break the camel's back is my, my overuse of La Croix.
2:06 Hank Green? I've always assumed that heaven grades on a curve, you know? If everybody's doing La Croix, St. Peter will look at you and be like, yeah, no, I get it. Like, you can't, you can't completely buck a trend.
2:17 John Green? Heaven grades on a curve.
2:21 John Green? This is a big observation for me, Hank, not least because it implies that you believe in heaven.
2:26 Hank Green? I would assume that people assume that heaven grades on a curve, right? They're not walking around being like, all of these people are drinking La Croix and so nobody's getting into heaven. I know that is the premise of The Good Place.
2:38 John Green? I was gonna say.
2:39 Hank Green? I think that that's one of the greatest observations of recent media, where it's just like, we are now, like, it used to be that it was easy to be good because we didn't know how bad everything was. We didn't know, it hadn't occurred to us that eating a pig could be of moral consequence.
2:56 John Green? Or indeed, like, killing your brother-in-law because he coveted his neighbor's wife or whatever.
3:04 Hank Green? Yeah. I got, Scientific American recently celebrated its 180th anniversary.
3:10 John Green? Congratulations.
3:11 Hank Green? And they sent me and a bunch of other people a copy of the very first edition, which was published in 1845.
3:17 John Green? Wow.
3:18 Hank Green? And there's a poem in it, and I know that we've talked about how I'm bad at poems, but I read this poem.
3:22 John Green? Yeah.
3:23 Hank Green? Because it was written in a way that was easier for me.
3:26 John Green? Okay, great. Read it to me, but read it to me like it's not a poem.
3:29 Hank Green? I'll try, but it rhymes, so it's harder.
3:32 John Green? Okay.
3:32 Hank Green? It's easier for me when they rhyme. So I'm just gonna read you the first three standers. It's called "Speak Gently." "Speak gently, it is better far to rule by love than fear. Speak gently, let not harsh words mar the good we might do here. Speak gently, love doth whisper low the vows that true hearts bind, and gently friendships' accents flow afflictions' voices kind. Speak gently to the little child, it's love be sure to gain. Teach it in accents soft and mild, it may not long remain."
4:01 John Green? Wow. Brutal and true.
4:04 Hank Green? And I looked it up, 30% of kids died before five.
4:08 John Green? Wow, in the United States.
4:10 Hank Green? In the US, the year that Scientific American published its first edition, during which they were like, we think the telegraph might actually be a pretty big idea.
4:18 John Green? Yeah, that is amazing. Also, what's amazing to me is that they used to publish poems in Scientific American.
4:24 Hank Green? I know, there's four, and there's only four pages.
4:27 John Green? Yeah, it reminds me of when I was reading all these old tuberculosis books, where everything is tuberculosis, and out of nowhere, people would break out into poems. There was like, in one tuberculosis textbook from like, the mid-19th century, there was a poem about how hot ladies with tuberculosis were, like, just in the middle of the textbook.
4:46 Hank Green? It's like, it's like, man, tuberculosis is really bad. People die, they, they suffocate on their own lungs, they bleed into their lungs and suffocate.
4:55 John Green? The beauty, the, the hectic glow of consumption and the pearly tear of this shellfish, just so beautiful.
5:03 Hank Green? I looked into the various causes of death in children in like, uh, the cities of America in the 1840s.
5:09 John Green? Yeah.
5:10 Hank Green? And there was something called summer complaint.
5:13 John Green? Hmm.
5:14 Hank Green? Have you heard of summer complaint?
5:16 John Green? I think I have it right now.
5:17 Hank Green? You don't have summer complaint. No, summer complaint, uh, it was food poisoning.
5:22 John Green? Um.
5:23 Hank Green? And summer complaint killed a tremendous number of children who were, uh, drinking milk because for one reason or another, there wasn't someone to, to breastfeed them. And so they were drinking cow milk that there was no way to refrigerate and there was no pasteurization.
5:40 John Green? Hmm.
5:41 Hank Green? So they just died of, of summer complaint and it happened in the summer because it was warm.
5:46 John Green? Yikes.
5:47 Hank Green? And my God, what a weird name for something that kills like thousands of babies a day in one city. It's, it's a complaint? A complaint?
5:59 John Green? Anyway, thanks for coming to Dear Hank and John, your daily source of massive bummer's.
6:04 Hank Green? Or, you know, it's very unusual to die of summer complaint now. We did a good job of that one.
6:09 John Green? We have solved that problem and we don't pay attention to the problems we already solved.
6:13 Hank Green? That's right. Why would we? We're done. We did it.
6:16 John Green? Indeed. Let's solve some problems for our listeners, Hank, beginning with this one from Jonathan and Miriam. Dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, if you were standing on Mercury or Venus, would the sun look bigger? Hope your day is sunny. Jonathan and Miriam. Now, I have a theory about this, Hank.
6:31 Hank Green? I don't know if you have a theory, but okay.
6:32 John Green? I think the closer you are to the sun, the bigger the sun appears. So I think if you're standing on Pluto, the sun is pretty small and tiny. And if you're standing on Mercury, the sun is pretty large and warm, like so warm that you would probably die instantly.
6:45 Hank Green? I actually, I'd be interested to, to figure out what would kill you first if you were on the surface of Mercury. It would be a lot of things at once. That'd be a great YouTube video. How would you die on the surface of every planet?
6:58 John Green? Hmm.
6:59 Hank Green? Because it's interesting because on the surface of Earth, you die of cancer and heart disease mostly.
7:04 John Green? Right. So.
7:06 Hank Green? But yeah, it's big. It's gonna be big. This is a physics thing. It's something that's closer takes up more of your field of view because of how light rays work.
7:14 John Green? How big would it be, though? Would it be so big that it would like cover the sky? Or would it be like?
7:20 Hank Green? No.
7:21 John Green? A third the size of the sky?
7:22 Hank Green? It would. I think it would be less than it. Well, Mercury's pretty close. I don't know.
7:27 John Green? It would be about three times as large, Hank, according to my guesswork, AKA asking NASA.
7:34 Hank Green? It's pretty big. Three times the diameter, which makes it more in terms of area, but.
7:39 John Green? Okay, well, Mr. Geometry, I'm not interested in your magic talk.
7:46 John Green? Henry's taking geometry right now and he's like, why do all these angles add up to 180 degrees? And I'm like, literally magic. That is why.
7:54 Hank Green? That's because it's how we defined the degrees.
7:56 John Green? The Lord deemed it such.
7:58 Hank Green? Actually, that'd be a fun one to prove and probably not too hard to prove. That's what you should have said. You know, Henry, that will be a fun one to prove and probably not too hard to prove. Let's work together on it. Instead, you were like, magic, magic numbers and Pythagorean cults.
8:13 John Green? That's right. That's exactly what I said. And I stand by my answer.
8:17 Hank Green? Lots of people have had that response. You know, well, sometimes, sometimes you find out that like, the Pythagorean theorem exists and you're like, well, that seems like a big deal. That doesn't seem like a little number thing. That seems like we may be starting a mysterious religion where you have to go into a basement and have ceremonies done to you if you'd like to learn about the number stuff.
8:40 John Green? Yeah, and I don't. So I'm good.
8:44 Hank Green? Good for you.
8:45 John Green? All right, I got another question for you, Hank. It's from Blue who writes, Dear John and Hank, my roommate recently asked me to wake them up from a nap. I asked what time and they said, when it feels like enough has happened for it to have been a while. Brothers, how long is a while? Should I be waking them up before something is about to happen or after something has just happened? Neither of us have anything planned for the rest of the day, so I've decided to also nap. And I've asked our third roommate to wake us both up after a while. I'd love your advice for future naps. Thanks so much, Blue.
9:15 Hank Green? Could you, could you say what the first person said again?
9:18 John Green? When it feels like enough stuff has happened for it to have been a while.
9:22 Hank Green? That's like the most, shut up, I'm about to take a nap answer. It's like, don't make me think right now. My nap motor is on. It's revving, it's pushing me toward nap. And if you make me think about how long I'd like to be napping right now, maybe I won't nap at all. Get off my junk. I nap now.
9:44 John Green? I like the idea of summarizing what happened during the nap for the person, you know, like, if it's been three hours, like they wake up and you're like, I had a cup of coffee and America collapsed.
9:55 Hank Green? It felt like enough had happened.
9:56 John Green? It felt like enough had happened, so I woke you up.
9:59 Hank Green? I refreshed the New York Times every 30 seconds for the, until it felt like some things had happened.
10:04 John Green? Yeah. And also some things happened in my personal life. I myself took a nap. A definitionally shorter one, but I took a nap. I had a cup of coffee. I took a little walk. Maybe I petted the cat.
10:19 Hank Green? I think an, an hour.
10:21 John Green? No.
10:21 Hank Green? I think an hour.
10:22 John Green? No.
10:22 Hank Green? Is that too long?
10:24 John Green? That's too short.
10:25 Hank Green? Wow.
10:26 John Green? The nap is only, as somebody who's barely been out of bed for the last week, I can tell you that a one hour nap does nothing for you. You need at least a two hour nap.
10:34 Hank Green? Two hour nap?
10:36 John Green? At least, minimum.
10:37 Hank Green? Two hour, what are you, what are you, so much has happened.
10:40 John Green? And I mean, really not that much. That's the thing. If you're awake for it, it feels like a lot has happened every two hours. But if you sleep through it and you wake up, you're like, oh, okay. Well, what are you gonna do?
10:51 Hank Green? Man, do you nap?
10:53 John Green? Oh, yeah. Love a nap.
10:55 Hank Green? I have not ever napped.
10:57 John Green? That's not a surprise to me.
11:01 John Green? Yeah. While I'm napping, you're like making hit new iPhone apps.
11:05 Hank Green? I heard nap, I heard iPhone nap.
11:12 John Green? I don't know. I like a nap. I enjoy the fruits of my labor. I especially like a nap on a Sunday. A Sunday afternoon nap is magic.
11:21 Hank Green? The nap is the fruit? The nap is the fruit you're working for?
11:24 John Green? Oh, yeah.
11:25 Hank Green? I need to readjust my situation.
11:27 John Green? Well, what is the fruit you're working for exactly?
11:30 Hank Green? I don't know.
11:31 John Green? I don't think you know. I don't think you've thought about it.
11:33 Hank Green? Nothing I'm proud of.
11:34 John Green? Yeah, exactly. I think you're chasing, I think you're chasing dirty highs, like.
11:40 Hank Green? Hmm, but maybe they're good.
11:42 John Green? They're good, but they're dirty. It's like, it's like an internal combustion engine. It'll get you there, but ew.
11:48 Hank Green? I had a dream that somebody gave me a bunch of cocaine, which I, for clarity, have never touched any cocaine. I've never been within enough distance to even reach out and touch a cocaine.
11:58 John Green? For our younger listeners, cocaine is an intoxicant.
12:02 Hank Green? This is a drug, and I'm not even entirely sure what it does.
12:05 John Green? Me neither.
12:05 Hank Green? But I, I had this dream that I, somebody gave me a bunch of cocaine, and then I had to go on a plane, and I was like, oh, no, I have to get rid of this cocaine. And I was like, I know, I'll do all of the cocaine.
12:16 John Green? Oh, what a bad choice.
12:18 Hank Green? I know. I'm, I'm worried about my waking self because of the decisions of my sleeping self. Luckily, I was not able to do the cocaine because I think that my brain doesn't know what that would be like. So it did not allow it to occur in the dream. But I did have, I was like, I guess I gotta do it.
12:34 John Green? I had a dream recently while I was sick over the last week. I've been having a lot of dreams because I've been spending all day in bed. It's been very frustrating. And so I was, uh, I had a dream, Hank, that, uh, I couldn't open my eyes. I was driving the car back from Target, and I couldn't open my eyes, no matter, no matter what I did. And I was like, you know, pushing my eyes apart, trying to open them, and I couldn't know. And then I finally opened them and I was in my bed.
12:59 Hank Green? Ah.
13:00 John Green? And I was like, no, not like that.
13:07 Hank Green? Ninety minutes.
13:08 John Green? Ninety minutes. We'll settle.
13:10 Hank Green? That'll get you a full sleep cycle, you know?
13:12 John Green? All right. Well, we'll settle for a compromise and say 90 minutes. I still think a three hour nap is magical. Like, you wake up, it's almost a new day.
13:21 Hank Green? Night.
13:22 John Green? No, it's same way I go to bed every night, full of worries.
13:27 John Green? Consumed by fear and mortification, Hank, just like everybody goes to bed at night.
13:31 Hank Green? Some people have it figured out, but I'm not one of them.
13:35 John Green? Oh, me neither. I don't have anything figured out. The older I get, the less I know. This question comes from Meg, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was talking to my friend who's considering getting a master's degree. They were narrowing down fields of study based on what they believe won't be replaced by AI in a few years, which feels wild to me. As someone in my mid 30s, it's not a consideration I ever had to make my education or career choices. What are career fields that will be irreplaceable as AI grows? Aim a little afraid, Meg. Now, Meg, I'm glad you came to two proper experts in AI.
14:08 Hank Green? Yeah.
14:09 John Green? I mean, we are on the leading edge of the AI revolution, Meg. Hank and I, I don't know if you know this, but Hank made an app to try to get you off AI.
14:21 Hank Green? Well, just off the phone generally.
14:23 John Green? Yeah.
14:23 Hank Green? I don't, are people using AI like, like a social media, just like, hey, let's chat, show me.
14:28 John Green? A hundred percent they are using it to chat with their AI buddy.
14:32 Hank Green? They just want like a buddy to chat with?
14:35 John Green? Yes.
14:36 Hank Green? Oh, no.
14:37 John Green? I know.
14:37 Hank Green? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
14:40 John Green? I'm not here to judge, but I am here to be concerned, worried and mortified.
14:44 Hank Green? I, of course, have very bad track records of predicting the future.
14:48 John Green? Me too.
14:49 Hank Green? But I'm, I do not feel like this would be a particularly good time to be graduating from college in the next year or two.
14:55 John Green? I don't know. Who knows? Maybe.
14:57 Hank Green? But yeah, but I don't know.
14:58 John Green? Be great. It'll be better than 2020.
15:01 Hank Green? I heard Sam Altman say.
15:03 John Green? Okay.
15:04 Hank Green? In an interview.
15:05 John Green? Yeah.
15:05 Hank Green? That this, that he thinks this would be the best possible time to graduate from college. And I was like, wow. That feels like definitely a lie. Like, I, like, could you actually feel that way? Actually?
15:20 John Green? I think he probably does. I think you can convince yourself of all kinds of things, but we're not here to talk about Sam Altman. We're here to talk about Hank and John's guide to careers that will not be replaced by AI.
15:31 Hank Green? Hmm. Gotcha.
15:32 John Green? Plumbing.
15:33 Hank Green? Yeah.
15:34 John Green? I'm gonna start there.
15:35 Hank Green? There's the obvious ones where it's just like the things that like AI is gonna be pretty much embodied inside of computers and is not gonna be good at being in the physical world for a long time.
15:45 John Green? I got a buddy who's a plumber who's also a professor of philosophy and I think he's gonna be fine on both counts.
15:50 Hank Green? You know, honestly, John, I got like a weird one. The IT guy at the office, I feel like the printer will still break.
15:59 John Green? Yep.
16:00 Hank Green? And the AI will have no idea because it'll be a frickin' printer and nobody knows how to fix the printer.
16:06 John Green? Right.
16:07 Hank Green? That is not a science, it is an art. You have to know that printer like a human being. You have to know it deeply as a friend in order to get it to do the one thing that it's been designed to do for 50 years.
16:21 John Green? It's true. I recently printed out a manuscript, without spoiling anything, and it took like six hours and it should have taken about six minutes. But it took six hours because I kept having to troubleshoot and I'll tell you what, certainly at the current levels of AI, they were of no help. Another job that's not gonna be replaced by AI, in my opinion, lifeguard.
16:47 Hank Green? I gotta get into lifeguarding.
16:49 John Green? Yeah. I can see AI being like, oh, there's a concern, but I think the lifeguard is gonna have to swim out and deal with the concern.
16:56 Hank Green? I mean, now you say that, I actually think that there could be in certain situations a real benefit brought by a sort of vertical camera. Of course, the actual doing of the rescuing would not be done by the vertical camera, but something to actually monitor a crowded ocean situation where it's very difficult to see what's going on.
17:16 John Green? Oh, I could see AI being of assistance.
17:19 Hank Green? Whether there's a shark approaching.
17:22 John Green? But I think we're gonna need human lifeguards.
17:25 Hank Green? Yeah, no, it seems likely.
17:26 John Green? I also think we're gonna need human rock climbers. I don't think AI is gonna be doing the rock climbing for us very soon.
17:33 Hank Green? Agreed. It's why, like, this is a thing that I think is important. And now I'm being serious, but the...
17:41 John Green? Well, so was I. I think we're gonna need human rock climbers for the foreseeable future.
17:46 Hank Green? Yeah.
17:49 Hank Green? There the idea. So there was like a time when like most of the energy, like the muscle energy that like broke up rocks and stuff was done by humans.
18:00 John Green? Right.
18:00 Hank Green? And now, of course, all rocks are broken up, you know, unless something's gone very wrong by machines. And but in the same way, like, nobody thinks that it's bad to physically exist in the world and to go to the gym and to do the lifting of the weights or to the hiking of the mountains or the climbing of the rocks.
18:17 John Green? Right. I mean, the exact the the obvious example of this is that humans used to be the best at chess and we're no longer the best at chess. Computers are much better than us, but we still only watch humans play chess because what could be more boring than watching computers play chess?
18:32 Hank Green? And in fact, it seems like chess playing is more popular. Like, I know the guys, I know some of the guys who play chess, and I'm not involved. I don't care and know nothing. As people will discover when they watch the the Quadragicon, they will they will be like, yes, indeed, indeed, these people do not know anything about chess.
18:50 John Green? So Hank and I played chess as part of this quadrennial competition we have called the Quadragicon. And we played chess and we're both really bad at chess. Like, we know how the pieces move, but we don't know anything else. I know nothing except how the pieces move. And we played this game of chess that was just, I mean, if you're a professional chess player, you're going to find this game of chess excruciating.
19:20 Hank Green? They call it a blunder. We just did blunders. Every move was a blunder. Except for the one that was illegal, that we did not realize was illegal until way after the fact. That one was not a blunder. It was probably a great move because I put the bishop somewhere it could not have actually gone.
19:37 John Green? I believe you took a piece while while putting the bishop somewhere it could not actually go. And I did not notice because I was so upset about the loss of my horse.
19:49 Hank Green? Oh, so I think that I technically should have lost that, but we called it a draw.
19:53 John Green? But I think Hank, that to a point, us playing chess together is vastly more interesting and entertaining, even though it's much worse. And so if you're doing something that is interesting and entertaining to humans, even if you're worse at it than AI, I still think there's a future there. That's why, that's why I sort of think that I'm going to be okay as a novelist, at least for my lifetime.
20:17 Hank Green? I also think that AI will be bad at writing novels for a long time.
20:21 John Green? I don't know about that. I don't know.
20:24 Hank Green? I may be. Well, it will definitely, I, there, there will be human novel collaboration, probably.
20:30 John Green? Well, there already is lots of that, but I think that the novel as a form, you know, is not that old. And I don't know how much longer it's going to be relevant. I don't know if in a hundred years, people are going to be reading novels. And
20:47 Hank Green? That's, yeah, that's a different thing. And I think, I have no idea how to predict that.
20:51 John Green? And one of the ways that maybe they stop reading novels is that they get inundated with AI novels. But novels are good, to your point. They are good.
21:01 Hank Green? They're good. I do enjoy them.
21:02 John Green? Yeah, I like writing them too.
21:04 Hank Green? I do wonder when, when we will cross the line to most of them being consumed in some format other than the written word.
21:11 John Green? Like audiobooks?
21:13 Hank Green? Yeah, I think that's mostly the, mostly the way.
21:15 John Green? Yeah. I mean, I think that's going to happen. It certainly has happened with my kids. I mean, my kids much prefer audiobooks to eye reading.
21:22 Hank Green? Eye reading is a lot of work.
21:23 John Green? Yeah. And for some people, it's work that is unnecessarily difficult because they struggle with decoding. And so there's no reason for them not to read on with their ears instead of their eyes.
21:34 Hank Green? Absolutely. I, yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously healthcare, like nurses, you know, that
21:43 John Green? Oh, we're going back to AI. Yeah, nurses are going to be okay. Some doctors are going to be okay. Helicopter pilots are going to be okay for a while, I think.
21:54 Hank Green? I don't, I do want there to be a person up there. I want there to be a human up there.
22:00 John Green? You know who has the safest job in the world right now?
22:02 Hank Green? Tell me.
22:03 John Green? The guy you strap yourself to when you go skydiving for the first time.
22:10 Hank Green? Everybody involved in that.
22:12 John Green? Everybody involved in that industry is gonna be just fine. There is no way for AI to disrupt the guy you strap yourself to when you go skydiving.
22:22 Hank Green? Oh, and good thing. Man, do I not want that.
22:27 John Green? Exactly. Talk about it. I mean, if that's the last job, I'm unemployed.
22:35 Hank Green? There, there was a, there was a moment when I thought I might skydive, um, you know, like someday, not like on a particular, I wasn't like planning it. I was like, you know, maybe. And then I heard about a friend of mine who went skydiving and they got so nauseous that they puked on their instructor and then remained nauseous for about three days afterward. And I was like, oh, well, if that's one of the things that can happen, then I'm definitely not doing that.
23:07 John Green? Yeah, I don't have a good vestibular system anyway.
23:09 Hank Green? No, obviously.
23:11 John Green? Putting aside everything else, I just don't think I can do it. All right, we got one more question before we get to the, uh, the sponsors, Hank. This one comes from Carissa who writes, Dear John and Hank, how do we not run out of crystals and gemstones? It seems like we wouldn't be able to find that many after thousands of years of mining these colorful treasures. And when I look around at the ground, I mostly see plain rocks. Is the earth's crust like full of gemstones? Enjoyer of shiny rocks, Carissa, or possibly Charissa. I apologize if I mispronounce your name.
23:38 Hank Green? Um, John, there are so much earth.
23:44 John Green? Is there?
23:45 Hank Green? There is so much earth. It's way more than you think.
23:49 John Green? Yeah.
23:50 Hank Green? It's like, it's very hard to sort of to understand, like when you go like on a, on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, it's forever. It feels very big.
24:00 John Green? Yeah.
24:00 Hank Green? And you've just traversed like 3% of the earth's surface. It's so big.
24:06 John Green? Right. I understand that, but I also would submit that like I have traveled far and wide in my life and I've seen many things. And one thing I've never seen is a crystal in the wild.
24:18 Hank Green? Hmm. You haven't gone looking for them.
24:21 John Green? I guess I haven't.
24:22 Hank Green? And actually, I know that's a lie.
24:24 John Green? Oh.
24:25 Hank Green? I know that because I've done it with you as a child.
24:28 John Green? Oh, right.
24:28 Hank Green? We went, we went to those little rock sluices where you get a bag of dirt and then you pull out your little gemstones.
24:35 John Green? Yes, but that's fake, Hank. They, they put the gemstones in
24:38 Hank Green? No.
24:38 John Green? the dirt, don't they?
24:40 Hank Green? They don't. They don't.
24:41 John Green? They do.
24:42 Hank Green? They sometimes put some, like, they, they might spike it with some other ones, but, but a lot of the ones you're finding in there are in fact naturally in the dirt, which is why they built them at the places where they built them because there's a big hill of dirt that they just dig out of and then you run it through and you pull out your cute little rocks.
24:58 John Green? All right. I mean, I do remember being a child and going with you to those gemstone things and thinking it was super fun. And mom and dad being like, I can't believe you paid $40 for this.
25:09 Hank Green? No, I think that they loved, I thought, I thought we were being very cute and having a good time. And I remember and I got like a big garnet one time.
25:17 John Green? I remember you got a big garnet. I was, I was, I was very jealous.
25:23 Hank Green? That's good. I'm glad you were jealous because I thought it was a really big deal.
25:26 John Green? It was a big deal. It was cool, man. It's still cool. I bet, I hope you still have that garnet.
25:30 Hank Green? Uh, I, I, that's a great point. And I feel, I can picture it in my head. I can see it with my non-aphantasic brain.
25:38 John Green? Hmm.
25:39 Hank Green? And, uh, all of its colors and its weird bumps. I did care a lot about that rock, but I do not have any idea where it is. But they said that we could like pay to get it cut and then it would be worth it more than the price of getting it cut.
25:51 John Green? That's how they get you. We didn't, we didn't do it. Are we gonna run out of gold, though, Hank?
25:59 Hank Green? Uh, no. Um, no. Well, so this is the thing, the thing about crystals is that there's plenty of them because there isn't a lot of need for them. So if there was, there are some times when there's been like industrial need for certain crystals that are just sort of ground up into a mineral. And in those cases, you do start to run low of easily accessible ones. But the ones that we sort of just get for them to be pretty, um, basically, the moment that they become more rare, the price goes up and then people will dig to find more of them. And, you know, they, they show up in, in sort of predictable geological areas and people know where to go looking for them. And so we'll go looking for them.
26:38 John Green? We answered the question with just a little bit of a break.
26:43 John Green? That reminds me, though, that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's Rock. Hank's Rock, lost to history. Lost to history, lost to time. Today's podcast is also brought to you by dying on the surface of Mercury. We're not sure how it would go, but it wouldn't be slow. Today's podcast is additionally brought to you by the 90 minute nap. The 90 minute nap, some stuff happened. And this podcast is brought to you by vomiting on your parachute instructor. That's one of the ways it can go.
27:13 John Green? I already really didn't want that job, but now knowing that you can get barfed on makes it that much better. Hank, we have another question. It's from Sam. And this is a question that we got dozens of times, actually, from listeners around the world. But Sam's version was the briefest. Dear John and Hank, I'll cut right to it. John, finish your joke from episode 418. Its presence floating unfinished like eventual spirit in the atmosphere has wilted crops, soured milk in the utter and caused spontaneous fistfights to break out in monasteries across the world. I've been stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on I-76 for three days as the asphalt has been boiling in unpredictable patterns and my stereo has been on its own accord. Started playing some guy named Hank Redd, who explained the science behind dousing rods
27:58 John Green? while promising cold fusion is just around the corner and cackling and demon overtones. Kindly set the world to right and tell us what was so remarkable about this three-legged pig before reality tears itself asunder. Sam, I am, at least for now. Sam. Wow. Holy Jesus.
28:16 John Green? soured milk in the utter. I got stuck on that and then it just kept going. It just kept happening. What a beautiful email. Hey, Sam. Hey, Sam. Let me tell you the story of Bessie the pig. You want a job?
28:30 John Green? Yeah, Sam, are you?
28:35 John Green? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it is, but you're better than AI at it. Yeah, ChatGPT didn't write that. All right. Here's the joke. Three-legged pig walks by and lady says to the farmer, what's the deal with your three-legged pig? And the farmer says, oh, that's Bessie. Bessie's an incredible pig. No pig like Bessie in the world. One time, the barn was on fire and Bessie informed us by running and oinking like crazy and saved all the animals. And then the person says, well, that's, that's great, but I was wondering about the three legs. Did Bessie like lose a leg in the fire or something? Oh, no. Another time, though, Bessie, when little Timmy was down the well, Bessie showed up at the house and walked me right to the well.
29:18 John Green? And there was little Timmy at the bottom of the well. We had to drag him out. Took forever. I mean, this pig is just something else. And the, and the person says, yeah, I get it. It's a remarkable pig, but like, I guess my question is, why does the pig have three legs? And then the farmer says, oh, you know, a pig like that, you don't eat all at once.
29:41 John Green? There it is, everybody. There it is. There, there it is. For your pleasure, Sam. Now the milk can de-sour in the utter, my buddy. Man, I thought, I thought everybody knew the, the three-legged pig joke. Apparently not. We also got a great email from Julia, a professional Catholic chaplain, who enjoyed our discussion of sainthood and relics, which is a generous take, Julia, a chaplain's take, and I appreciate it.
30:07 John Green? But it turns out my bones could not be sold to raise money for Partners in Health as it is prohibited under church law to sell relics. Instead, she recommends the classic loophole utilized by many religious organizations, send relics for the cost of shipping, but invite folks to make a donation at the same time or on the same webpage. And then Julia says best of luck on the sainthood quest, which I don't, I think it's a long shot, Julia.
30:33 Hank Green? I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you could just create a shipping company and be like, this one's just happens to be very expensive.
30:42 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, um, we, listen, we're in the business of shipping the bones of dead John Green. Like, we cannot mess this up. There are only 218 of them.
30:53 Hank Green? Yeah, we're very serious about this.
30:55 John Green? That's why it costs $50,000 to ship the relic.
30:59 Hank Green? Yeah, one at a time.
31:01 John Green? And Green always coming up with business ideas.
31:04 Hank Green? Fraud. Sometimes a business idea is fraud. Oh, man. Keep all your bones, though.
31:11 John Green? I, I like to. I'd like to keep the vast majority of them.
31:15 Hank Green? Feel like there's any that you don't need right now? A John Green like this, we don't sell all at once.
31:19 John Green? I don't know, like, if I had to get rid of some bones, I could, you know, it wouldn't, like, be catastrophic or anything, as long as I was under general anesthesia, but I would like to keep all of my bones in a perfect world.
31:30 Hank Green? I wonder what the easiest bone to get rid of would be?
31:32 John Green? I would assume one of the upper pinky bones.
31:36 Hank Green? Hmm. Yeah, that's a good point, because just like, just like the tippy top of, of one of the fingers, not the whole finger.
31:44 John Green? Yeah, just like to the, to the first knuckle or wherever the first bone is.
31:49 Hank Green? I think I might let somebody have one of my floating ribs.
31:52 John Green? Ah, that sounds really painful. I broke a rib once and the recovery was long and, and tortuous. I can't imagine the recovery from losing a rib.
32:02 Hank Green? Yeah, well, it'll be, they'll be nicer about it.
32:04 John Green? Well, you know, actually, arguably, I've already lost a bone.
32:08 Hank Green? Like your teeth?
32:10 John Green? My teeth bones, the bones that are on the outside of my-
32:12 Hank Green? Your little baby, baby bones.
32:13 John Green? The bones that are on the outside of my, my body.
32:16 Hank Green? Outside bones, outside bones. Never forget, your teeth are outside bones.
32:24 Hank Green? Orin loves that song.
32:26 John Green? That's a song from the show.
32:29 Hank Green? Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
32:30 John Green? All right, Hank, we have one last question before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. It's from Aaron, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my house filled with smoke today. I shan't elaborate. How do I clear the smoke out as quickly as possible? Tools available that may seem of use: a single fan, ventilator fans and two bathrooms, many windows enabling cross drafts and an HVAC system. What's the best strategy here? Also, how do I remove the permeating smell of smoke that has seeped into the grain of the house, trying to replace the smoking with Aaron?
32:57 Hank Green? Well, Aaron.
32:59 John Green? I'm glad you I'm glad you came to us.
33:00 Hank Green? Seems like you gotta kind of figure it out ultimately. Like, you are right. You've got those bathroom fans. Anything that I would have thought of that would be like, oh, maybe you don't know about the bathroom. You do. You know about it. Turn on all the things that ventilate air to the outside. Open up all the windows for cross breezes. You might want to do a thing where you sort of like open and close the door if it's a fairly small space to sort of like get get some air moving. But like, I don't know. And as far as getting rid of that smoke smell, you're either gonna have to just sort of wait it out, or the mitigation strategies are more complex and you have to call a one of these companies that does that work, where they do a deep clean or put some kills kills on some surfaces.
33:40 John Green? Aaron, I don't think that you should listen to Hank Green and his dubious advice on this one. I think you should call your local fire department.
33:47 Hank Green? What?
33:48 John Green? Call your local fire department and say, hey.
33:50 Hank Green? The smoke is gone. The smoke is over.
33:51 John Green? I understand. You say, hey, I don't have an emergency. That's the first thing you say, because they like it when you lead with that. You say, but I do have a lot of smoke in the house. What do you recommend? Experts in the field. And they are public servants. They will answer your question.
34:08 Hank Green? Okay.
34:08 John Green? It's like how you show up to the fire department when your when your chest hurts and they will give you an EKG.
34:13 Hank Green? Really?
34:14 John Green? Oh, yeah. No, the fire department is amazing. Like, people.
34:18 Hank Green? You can just go there. You can just be like, hey, my chest hurts. Why don't you go to like, an emergency room?
34:23 John Green? Well, I'm saying like, if you're in, if you can't make it to an emergency room and you happen to be at a fire department for some reason. This happened to dad once. And and they took great care of him because they're public servants. Call the fire department. Believe in government.
34:39 Hank Green? Call the fire department. I don't know that you should call the fire department.
34:45 John Green? I think you should.
34:46 Hank Green? I think that they're there for like, if there's an emergency, and I think that the way your smell smells is not. I think that you should call, you could call like a remediation company, but they will, they will then take your.
34:56 John Green? They come and check your fire alarms. The fire department does all kinds of things that you don't know about. They are amazing.
35:01 Hank Green? Okay.
35:02 John Green? We're going to hear from a firefighter who's like, John is on point. Call the fire department.
35:07 Hank Green? I'm worried that we're going to hear from a firefighter who's like, please don't have more people call us with like weird stuff. That's not our business.
35:13 John Green? A house full of, of a formerly on fire house is very much the business of the fire department.
35:19 Hank Green? I feel like a currently on fire house is mostly.
35:23 John Green? A hundred percent. That is the fire department's number one job. And if there is a current fire, the fire department needs to be dealing with that. And, and they will let you know by not answering the phone.
35:34 Hank Green? Cause you didn't call 911, you called the fire department.
35:37 John Green? Well, you don't call.
35:38 Hank Green? The first thing it will say is, is if this is an emergency, hang up and call 911.
35:42 John Green? Or call 311 or whatever your local like, uh, everyday problems number is. Use the, the tools.
35:48 Hank Green? Use the services.
35:49 John Green? Use the services that are available to us. That is.
35:52 Hank Green? And call before you dig.
35:54 John Green? Call before you dig. Call before you dig. There you go, Hank. See? Another example of utilizing public services for the benefit of overall humanity. Speaking of which.
36:05 Hank Green? Yeah, John Green.
36:06 John Green? AFC Wimbledon simply cannot be stopped, Hank.
36:09 Hank Green? Woo. I thought that you lost a couple of games.
36:11 John Green? Well, we lost the care about cup game that I don't care about at all. But in general, we've been playing great.
36:16 Hank Green? I can't, I cannot tell. I cannot tell when I'm looking at AFC Wimbledon. It's just like, here's the game that they're playing and here's how they did. It doesn't tell me whether it's one that matters or not.
36:26 John Green? We didn't, we didn't play any of our starters in that game. That game is not important to me. Uh, so we are five games into the season now. We've won three of those five games, which is. A phenomenal return on our League One investment.
36:41 Hank Green? Yeah.
36:42 John Green? We are in 10th place. What? Everybody, Hank, everybody picked AFC Wimbledon to be relegated out of League Two. I mean, out of League One, back to League Two. Everybody. Because we have the second worst budget in the league. We are, you know, we're Wimbledon. We're gonna struggle in League One.
37:00 Hank Green? You're brand new. You're brand new in the league, and you've also been relegated out of it before.
37:04 John Green? And of the last five teams that got promoted via the playoffs to League One, all five of them got relegated within two years of their promotion. So, all of these are reasons to think that we were not going to have a strong start to the season, but instead, we've had an incredibly strong start. Solid defense anchored by Nerd Fight area's own Joe Lewis, great central attacking midfield, thanks to Nerd Fight area's own Marcus Brown, and we're just, we're playing great. I'm so thrilled with it. I don't even know what else to say, except that like, we're able, we seem able to score at least one or two goals per game, and the games that we've lost, like, were to two of the best teams in the league, but more importantly, we barely lost them. Like, we lost one on a 93rd minute
37:47 John Green? deflection. What are you gonna do? The other was like a sort of random crazy own goal. Like, in general, I think we've been playing very well. So, I'm super, super happy. Shout out especially to our new wingback, Nathan Assimway. He is really good. So, there's a lot of reason to feel enthusiastic and optimistic as an AFC Wimbledon fan in League One, which is not something I expected to be telling you.
38:13 Hank Green? Heck, yeah. This is, this is very exciting. 10th place. There you are. Right behind Mansfield Town. They're one of the best teams in the world.
38:25 John Green? That's right.
38:25 Hank Green? Yeah. I mean, that, that's, isn't that one of the ones? Like Liverpool and Mansfield Town?
38:30 John Green? No, no, not exactly.
38:34 John Green? Oh, it's, I think you're thinking of Manchester United.
38:37 Hank Green? Oh, yeah, I was.
38:39 John Green? Although Manchester United are having a pretty bad season. They just lost to Grimsby.
38:43 Hank Green? Grimsby?
38:44 John Green? Little Grimsby. So if you can lose, maybe, maybe what, maybe soon enough, Manchester United will be in League One and we'll be battling it out with them. But for now, they're still in the Premier League barely.
38:53 Hank Green? Okay.
38:55 Hank Green? What a wild world. I love, I love the way that, A, that like football works.
39:00 John Green? Yeah.
39:00 Hank Green? In, in England. It would be so amazing if like the Arizona Diamondbacks were constantly fighting to be a Major League Baseball team.
39:08 John Green? Yeah. And then they would have to play like the Missoula Paddleheads.
39:11 Hank Green? Yeah. Which would be uncomfortable because we farm, like two.
39:15 John Green? Right. That's your farm team.
39:17 Hank Green? Players to, to the Diamondbacks, which is why I know the name of that MLB team.
39:21 John Green? Okay, that's impressive.
39:24 John Green? What's the news from Mars?
39:26 Hank Green? Well, they found a new mineral. Speaking of crystals and big planets. So they were looking at data from, from orbiters to study sites near the Valles Marineris Canyon system, largest canyon system in the solar system. And they were looking specifically at, at like an impact crater there. And they saw some like funny little signatures in the spectra. And that corresponds to a mineral called ferric hydroxysulfate. And they worked on recreating the mineral in the lab to figure out what kind of conditions can produce ferric hydro sulfate. And they were successful. They figured out how to make it and they learned that you can make it by heating up hydrated ferrous sulfates with oxygen around, which is cool, because it might tell us more about the chemistry of how, like how chemistry happens on Mars.
40:11 John Green? Wow. So it might tell us a little bit about like what kind of chemicals are available there or whatever?
40:16 Hank Green? Yeah.
40:17 John Green? Okay. Cool. Cool.
40:19 Hank Green? And they can do that just from space, just by looking at it.
40:22 John Green? I feel like that would be the most valuable crystal of them all. Like that one would really cure all your ills.
40:29 Hank Green? If only we could have some.
40:31 John Green? Well, maybe after 2027.
40:33 Hank Green? Well, we could do a sample return before that and you're still safe. But we're not going to.
40:41 John Green? Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for their questions. You can send us questions at [email protected] . We love your questions and indeed don't have a podcast without them. This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout, mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medich. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Rosalind Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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