Pod Insights Dear Hank & John 428: Hard Pivot to Balls About this episode If humanity is around long enough, could another species evolve to look like us to deter predators? What did people do when they woke up before the existence of phones? What’s your favorite replacement for a swear word? How do purple baby carrots exist? How do I cope with the end of childhood? …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.
0:15 Hank Green? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John?
0:21 John Green? Yeah.
0:21 Hank Green? I had a police officer knock on my door.
0:23 John Green? Oh.
0:24 Hank Green? And I opened it up and I said, oh, my gosh, what's going on? And he said, we're looking for a man with one eye. And I said, well, you should probably use two. How are, how's?
0:34 John Green? How's life?
0:35 Hank Green? How's life?
0:36 John Green? I've been in four states in the last five days and two countries in the last seven days. So I'm a little, I'm like jet lagged, but not, not in the technical sense, just in the soul sense.
0:48 Hank Green? But yeah.
0:48 John Green? I'm trying to embrace travel because I'm going to be doing a lot of it. So I'm just, I'm just, I'm just living my life. This is my life and I love my life and I'm very grateful to be able to travel and to have my job. I miss my family a little bit, but I'm home right now. Look, I'm in my office. So life is good. How are you?
1:04 Hank Green? I'm good. I'm about to do some traveling myself. When I booked this thing, I was feeling really bad and I was like, I, I, I have to believe that I'm going to be feeling better by the time this comes around. And I was right. And that is huge news. It's just, it's very good.
1:18 John Green? That's great.
1:19 Hank Green? Because, because it's going to be like a 12 hour shoot that in Los, like I'm going to get there at 7:30 at night. There's going to be like a stylist waiting for me at my hotel room to like, do my styling and then I get up the next morning and have like go from like eight to, I don't know.
1:35 John Green? Can you say what this shoot is for, Hank?
1:36 Hank Green? I cannot right now.
1:38 John Green? Is it for something hilarious?
1:39 Hank Green? It is for something very dumb.
1:41 John Green? Yeah.
1:42 Hank Green? It is not, it's not something that like you're excited that I'm going to be doing. No one's going to be like, oh, Hank did that. No.
1:48 John Green? Some tiny percentage of people will be excited that you're doing it, but it is a pretty small, I know what it is. And it is, in my opinion, actively hilarious. But listen, man, get your bag in a minimally unethical way is my feeling about that shoot.
2:08 Hank Green? Yeah, when I got the email, I was like, is this a bad thing? And then I, I got the thing. I was like, I gotta make sure this isn't like evil.
2:16 John Green? You can say you got the mobile game because it's for a mobile game.
2:18 Hank Green? Yeah, I got the app and, and then I was, I was like, oh no, this is, this is fun.
2:23 John Green? Yeah, it's pretty fun. It's a pretty fun mobile game. My son has it. I don't allow him to make in-app purchases, but he has it. So he was like, he was actually really excited when I was like, so Uncle Hank's gonna do this thing for this mobile game. Have you ever heard of it? And he was like, have I heard of it? Like, it's all the rage.
2:38 Hank Green? Apparently it's all the rage. It's a bit of a slog when you don't pay. I'll say that, as they all are.
2:43 John Green? Yes, no, I mean, look, it's, I'm not saying that it's the most ethical bag you've ever gotten. I'm just saying that as bags go, it's, it's not the worst one, right? Like, it's not like you're keynoting for the NRA conference or something.
2:56 Hank Green? Yeah. The other thing is I just kind of like want to do it to see what it's like because it's going to be like a real shoot.
3:02 John Green? Yeah, fancy. You're, you're gonna, you're essentially going to be in a movie, a real movie. It's just a movie that appears on people's six inch screens on, on, on the phones.
3:12 Hank Green? I have honestly have no idea how it will appear for anyone. That wasn't part of my negotiation. I, I did recently, this is so frustrating to me. I get these deals, like I get these emails and they're like, we'd like to pay you.
3:25 John Green? Oh, that sounds so frustrating. So far, I, so far, I'm so frustrated on your behalf.
3:30 Hank Green? To promote a, a, a social change of some kind.
3:35 John Green? Yeah.
3:35 Hank Green? That you in fact would like to see in the world.
3:38 John Green? Sure.
3:38 Hank Green? And I'm like, I can't take money for that.
3:41 John Green? Yeah, I try to donate the money back in that situation, but it's awkward because like, I don't actually want to do it for free.
3:47 Hank Green? Yeah, exactly. Like, I actually wouldn't make the video if you didn't pay me, but at the same time, I can't make a video that's about like what I believe.
3:55 John Green? Yeah.
3:55 Hank Green? That you paid me for. Do you ever, do you get deals like this where they're, they're like, hey, we like the, this, you know, solar power or something like that? Where it's just like, like, yeah, I like solar power, but I like, can't be paid for that because then people would be like, you only like solar power because you paid for it.
4:11 John Green? Yeah, I've definitely had that before. In fact, I've only ever done one brand deal, Hank, so I don't really know that much about this world. I'm pretty. Actively envious of you and your constant fount of brand deals, just showering in that rocket money, money.
4:24 Hank Green? That rocket, rocket money, money.
4:27 John Green? I'm just saying, they didn't ask me to star in one of the premier mobile game ads of our time.
4:33 Hank Green? Anyway, that's what I'm getting ready for in my life, and I think it's gonna be weird. John, I have a question from one of our listeners. It's from Tegan, who asks, Hello Brothers Green. I was watching a video about biological mimicry, and it got me wondering if humanity hangs around long enough, could another species evolve to look like us in order to deter predators?
4:52 John Green? What a great question.
4:53 Hank Green? Or for some other reason. How, it is really good. How close do you think they'd have to get in appearance or behavior for that to work?
5:01 John Green? Imagine if they got really good and they were just walking around and you didn't know if it was a butterfly or a person?
5:07 Hank Green? Yeah.
5:08 John Green? I'm imagining, I don't know why I went straight to butterflies, because butterflies are a long way from biologically mimicking us.
5:13 Hank Green? It would be tricky to get there.
5:15 John Green? The easiest one would be some kind of primate, but I love this idea because we are the ultimate, like, well, steer clear of them. They're really weird animal.
5:24 Hank Green? I guess. I feel more that way about a mountain lion. I feel like we used to be pretty scary, but now like pigeons and squirrels are like, yeah, those guys are no problem. They're not a big deal.
5:35 John Green? That's interesting.
5:35 Hank Green? They don't eat us anymore. They stopped eating us. They hate us now.
5:39 John Green? They just find us vaguely annoying.
5:41 Hank Green? You should be close by. Sometimes they give you food.
5:43 John Green? Yeah, it's true.
5:44 Hank Green? Ooh, that would mean that maybe, maybe that would be the, so that's, this is a thing called aggressive mimicry, I think, or aggression mimicry? Where you mimic something that is non-threatening and then it turns out that you are threatening. So what if mountain lions evolved to look like us and then squirrels and pigeons were like, that's no big deal? And then it's like, argh.
6:04 John Green? Or humans, right? Like, imagine like a very human-shaped mountain lion walking down the street. And then it's like.
6:11 Hank Green? I would not like that.
6:13 John Green? No, I wouldn't like that at all.
6:14 Hank Green? I feel like they'd give it away pretty quick, you know?
6:16 John Green? Yeah.
6:17 Hank Green? You only, you only get one snack that way before the humans are like, actually, Steve's not a good guy.
6:25 Hank Green? I would not like he call for a reference and be like, don't hire Steve. No, that's he's he's a mountain lion.
6:32 John Green? Steve, Steve is one of those, you know, he's one of those mountain lions masquerading as a human.
6:40 Hank Green? He eats warm flesh of of humans. It's not cannibalism, though. He's not a human.
6:47 John Green? Yeah, no, it's it's allowed. It's just not cool.
6:50 Hank Green? Yeah.
6:50 John Green? It's not socially, it's not socially frowned upon.
6:53 Hank Green? This is a good point. Mountain lions aren't really breaking the law when they eat a person, but they they are not allowed to do it. We do. We do tend to stop them if we can.
7:02 John Green? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely frowned upon, but I'm saying.
7:04 Hank Green? You don't send them to jail.
7:06 John Green? But you don't send them to mountain lion prison. I believe that instead you send them to Valhalla.
7:12 Hank Green? Is that where they go?
7:13 John Green? I believe so. Yeah, they definitely go to a place where you're no longer alive.
7:18 Hank Green? Yeah, they go into that. They go to where they were before they were born.
7:22 John Green? Now, the Hank Green theory of where we go when we die to where we were before we were born. Oh, man, it never gets old. You like to bring this up over and over again as a way of torturing me, and I don't like it.
7:34 Hank Green? Okay.
7:35 John Green? We go to a new, exciting place where there are no mountain lions.
7:40 Hank Green? No mountain lions.
7:41 John Green? Zero mountain lions in the, that's actually kind of the definition of heaven.
7:45 Hank Green? Yeah, nothing can eat you there. Unless you're into that.
7:51 John Green? Heaven, where nothing can eat you, unless, you know, you know.
7:56 John Green? Because in heaven, we don't judge.
7:58 Hank Green? The question.
8:00 John Green? Yes.
8:02 Hank Green? Devoki and I looked into this, and there's this weird, very weird kind of example of this called called haki crabs. There's this like legend that the haki people were attacked and their samurai were thrown into the sea and their ghosts turned into these crabs. And the more like a samurai the crab looks like, the more fishermen would toss them back into the sea when they were harvesting. And they'd be like, oh, this one's one of the samurai. I'll put him back. And I like this because there's like a vibe of like, you know, you keep the sustainable population by selecting some and not taking all of the crabs.
8:38 John Green? Sure.
8:39 Hank Green? But then, over time, what you do is you select for crabs that look more and more like samurai. And eventually, the crabs really look like samurai. This is probably fake, which is a shame.
8:50 John Green? That's disappointing, Hank.
8:52 Hank Green? I know, but it was like a really big thing. Carl Sagan talked about it and like he really, really popularized the story of the haki crabs. So it became a big thing. It totally could be, and also they do sometimes really look like samurai and sometimes they don't. But the biggest reason why it's probably fake is that in fact, they are not good eaten. So they would probably be thrown back regardless. But I don't know.
9:12 John Green? So we could artificially select. I could see that, but I can't really see a raccoon slowly morphing into a person. It would be awesome. It would be really great if you would be like, I mean, forget about the mountain lion. The raccoon is better, right? Because like then Steve's not a threat. Steve's just a raccoon.
9:31 Hank Green? They just like artificially select for being like, kind of good at a job, like pretty good at, at their job. And you know, and then he gets paid a salary and then he gets food that he can buy at the store instead of having to eat out of the garbage.
9:45 John Green? And then Steve is like, I can't believe I have to pay rent. How did I do this to myself? I was living good as a raccoon and now I've got rent.
9:53 Hank Green? They're like, oh man, now we've got, now we've got metabolic disorder because I can get a coke whenever I want.
10:00 Hank Green? And like, we've got all the diseases of old age to deal with instead of just dying exposed in the cold.
10:06 John Green? Right.
10:06 Hank Green? Yeah.
10:07 John Green? Yeah, no, it's upsides and downsides, swings and roundabouts, Hank.
10:10 Hank Green? That's absolutely the case.
10:12 John Green? All right, we got another question from Kurt. He writes, Dear John and Hank, as professional cigarettes, but also human beings born before the year 2000. I really like, I really like identifying as professional cigarettes.
10:22 Hank Green? Oh, God.
10:23 John Green? We are unfortunately professional cigarettes. Now we try to be the good, healthy kind of cigarettes.
10:28 Hank Green? Yeah, we've got really big filters and it's like organic tobacco.
10:32 John Green? You get almost no tar. I mean.
10:35 Hank Green? Yeah.
10:36 John Green? From us.
10:37 Hank Green? I get the tar. I'm the filter. It's all in here. The tar, that's all, that's the reason why I wake up at 5:30 every morning panicked.
10:45 John Green? In a blind panic. All right. As professional cigarettes, but also human beings born before the year 2000, I must ask of you, before the advent of waking up in the morning to the alarm on your phone and then scrolling social media for 10 minutes to two hours, what did you do after you woke up? Did you just lie there staring at the ceiling? Did you read a book? Some other bed related activity I'm not aware of? Surely you didn't just immediately get out of bed. The sweet sirens call of blankie and pillow is too strong for that. Please respond with dubious advice. Short, but hopefully not rude, Kurt. That's good. I like that.
11:16 Hank Green? Yeah, that is good. I think that I remember what I did.
11:19 John Green? I, so listen, I remember the last day I woke up, went to work and didn't look at the news because it was September 11th, 2001. That was the last day I didn't use the internet before going to work. So there must have been a number of years there between 1977 and 2001 where I did something.
11:40 Hank Green? I know exactly what I did.
11:41 John Green? What did you do?
11:42 Hank Green? I got up.
11:43 John Green? Immediately?
11:44 Hank Green? I got up, like, unless there was someone else in the bed with me, what else is there to do?
11:49 John Green? I don't know, staring to the middle distance and contemplate the problem?
11:53 Hank Green? I maybe, I maybe did that some.
11:55 John Green? Yeah.
11:55 Hank Green? I think I, I think I like had to pee.
11:57 John Green? The problem, of course, being that we are temporary beings that can conceive of infinity. But yeah.
12:03 Hank Green? Yeah.
12:04 John Green? That's what I did, I think. But I must have gotten up. I must have gotten up and brushed my teeth and like started the day a little earlier, which also meant that I could sleep in a little more, right? Cause I didn't have that 10 minutes to two hours of social media time before I got.
12:16 Hank Green? That's right. That's right. I, this morning, I, I, you know, I was, I was having a hard time sleeping and I, I like finally kind of like went in and out of sleep until around 6:30 and then I just looked at my phone for 40 minutes. Wild.
12:29 John Green? Oof. How did that feel? Did it work?
12:31 Hank Green? Yeah, it worked. It depending on what works is.
12:35 John Green? Yeah, it's just like waking up in the morning and smoking a bunch of cigarettes, which actually is what I used to do between the years of 1994 and 2001, for sure.
12:43 Hank Green? First thing you do.
12:44 John Green? Oh, I would wake up and smoke a cigarette every day, which is so gross. So gross.
12:50 Hank Green? Well, for for so much of my life, I had designed my life so that I could sleep in as much as possible.
12:56 John Green? Yes.
12:57 Hank Green? So that like when I woke up.
12:58 John Green? That's what I did.
12:59 Hank Green? If I didn't immediately get up, I was not going to be at work in time.
13:03 John Green? Yes.
13:03 Hank Green? Or at school in time.
13:05 John Green? Yes, I would wake up at 7:40 so that I could get on the train at 7:52.
13:09 Hank Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I'd optimize that length to be as short as possible.
13:14 John Green? Right. I think that's the answer to what we did. We.
13:17 Hank Green? Yeah.
13:17 John Green? Slept instead of scrolling social media, which by the way, is better for you.
13:22 Hank Green? Oh, boy. Sure is.
13:24 John Green? This has really become an anti-social media podcast.
13:26 Hank Green? I was looking back at like my body of work over the last couple of years.
13:31 John Green? Yeah.
13:31 Hank Green? Because I have been feeling bad about my engagement with the system that I have have increasingly believed to to not be good.
13:38 John Green? Yeah.
13:38 Hank Green? And and like, so I have this bad feeling. And then I'm like, well, but like when we wrote the book of good times, that's what it was about. It was about here's a book.
13:47 John Green? Right.
13:47 Hank Green? That is stuff to do that's not on the internet. And that's not like publicly like spoken what it's about. And then it's like me and Bria made this app that's like, here's an app that like you can tell yourself that you will make the bean sad if you go on Twitter.
14:02 John Green? Yeah, no, you have been.
14:04 Hank Green? That's what I've been working on.
14:05 John Green? You have been working on ways to combat internet addiction. The problem is that internet addiction is so intense. It's so overwhelming for me, anyway. That like, it's, it's really hard to find ways to fight it. But you have been, we have both been interested in projects that involve some form of like engaging with physical space in the real world. So we are doing, we are doing something that isn't cigarettes.
14:30 Hank Green? You know what I I thought I had this morning and tell me how dumb this is?
14:34 John Green? No, pitch it to me.
14:35 Hank Green? The guy who owns the biggest ball of paint.
14:37 John Green? Yeah, the guy, Mike, Mike, Michael Carmichael.
14:40 Hank Green? He lives not super north of you. He lives pretty close to you.
14:42 John Green? He lives not too far from me.
14:43 Hank Green? I think we should just buy that paint and that should be our lives.
14:46 John Green? You want to buy the world's largest ball of paint from Michael Carmichael?
14:50 Hank Green? Yeah, I want to buy his whole house and farm and ball.
14:53 John Green? You just want to occupy, you just want to inhabit his life. Where like people, you, you sit at the world's largest ball of paint and people come by throughout the day and you get to talk to them in real life instead of on social media. Where like, by the way, I've been traveling a lot, but I've also been in, because I'm traveling a lot, I'm like visiting with college students and high school students who are reading everything as tuberculosis. And other people who are reading everything as tuberculosis and I'm visiting with them in real life and I'm reminded that like people in real life are actually usually very nice.
15:19 Hank Green? Yeah.
15:20 John Green? And that actually we're capable of being incredibly kind to strangers and self sacrificial and compassionate and empathetic and everything. But I, I kind of forget that when I'm online a lot. Anyway.
15:30 Hank Green? Beyond this, I think that the world is lacking for roadside attractions.
15:34 John Green? I agree.
15:34 Hank Green? And, uh, and I, I think that we should just, we should, please, everybody send us in the email, ideas for roadside attractions. So there's like the thing, I don't know if you've been to see the thing, but the thing is a fake mummy that they tried to convince everybody was a real mummy.
15:48 John Green? It's all right. It's not great.
15:50 Hank Green? It's not great.
15:50 John Green? You want a world's largest in general. You want the world's largest ball of twine. You want the world's largest ball of stamps. You want something in that field.
15:58 Hank Green? The thing about the paint is that like, and stamps is the same way, I assume. Uh, is that like, everybody gets to add to it themselves. Like you go see the paint and you go paint. You get to paint the ball.
16:10 John Green? And not only are you making the world's largest ball of paint, you're making it permanently different because the next person will respond to your color by, with their color. And so on forever. And so your participation affects, ripples out through the next 10,000 layers of the ball of paint. It is a very beautiful metaphor and I think Mike Carmichael is an amazing guy. And I think that we should consider living in rural Indiana and getting offline. And just if people want to come hang out with us, they have to come paint the world's largest ball of paint.
16:41 Hank Green? But there's just like a piece of me that's like, what if nerd criteria is the thing that like, as the aging roadside attraction community nears retirement or death.
16:54 John Green? Yeah.
16:54 Hank Green? And we, we're like, not only are we going to keep this going, we're going to take it up another level. And like, this is, this is a, this is a thing in the real world. Send, just send ideas for roadside attractions is what I'm saying.
17:06 John Green? Yeah. Let us know what world's largest balls you would like us to get involved in.
17:11 Hank Green? If I get paid to do a brand deal, I want to kick some of that towards big balls.
17:17 John Green? What'd you, what'd you do with all your rocket money, money? Oh, well.
17:22 Hank Green? Big balls.
17:23 John Green? I made the world's largest ball of rubber bands.
17:25 Hank Green? I mean, worth it. That's what, that's what I want a tithe for, you know? I want a tithe to balls.
17:32 John Green? Yeah, I want you to tithe to Partners in Health personally.
17:35 Hank Green? That too. You know, that's my AFC Wimbledon. I needed AFC Wimbledon, one that's fun.
17:40 John Green? You need an AFC Wimbledon, and maybe that's the world's largest balls, you being deeply involved. And then, and then like, that'll be a great section of your Wikipedia page where it's like, his hard pivot to balls.
17:55 Hank Green? Cause you have one that's like hard pivot to global health 2020 to 2025.
18:00 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do have a section where it's like hard pivot to global health resulting in a book about global health. Um, and you could have one that's like hard pivot to balls, like just got really into world's largest balls and decided to make that his thing.
18:12 Hank Green? Instead of getting into global health, he was just like, balls.
18:16 John Green? Yeah, well, but it makes sense. It's about real life community, man. And it's about people contributing to something bigger than themselves. Like, I realize that this is a bit, but it's not a bad bit.
18:27 Hank Green? I agree.
18:28 John Green? All right, let's answer another question. Uh, I think we got to the bottom of that one, what we did before 2000. This one's from Joe, who says, Dear John and Hank, what's your favorite replacement for a swear? I have two young children and I try not to swear around them, so I've started incorporating swears from the TV shows they watch, such as, oh, biscuits and cheese and crackers and oopsie kitty, but I'm looking for more phrases to incorporate. Joe.
18:50 Hank Green? Uh, I've been a big poop on a stick guy for a long time.
18:54 John Green? Stick, like that means like I'm very frustrated or something.
18:56 Hank Green? Poop on a stick.
18:57 John Green? Poop on a stick.
18:59 Hank Green? I like poop on a stick because like, um, a lot of, a lot of like traditional swears are things that we have made taboo. That probably shouldn't be that taboo, you know?
19:09 John Green? Yeah.
19:09 Hank Green? Body parts, you know, acts of love or passion. Um, and then, and then, but poop on a stick, actually bad.
19:17 John Green? Right, undesirable.
19:18 Hank Green? You don't want that. That's a weapon.
19:20 John Green? Yeah, exactly. If somebody's waving a poop on a stick, a, a, a poopy stick at you, that's a problem.
19:25 Hank Green? Yeah, poop is, you know, that's not great, but like it's part of life. Poop on a stick. That's
19:31 John Green? That's a problem.
19:32 Hank Green? That's a problem.
19:33 John Green? Mine is shut the front door.
19:36 Hank Green? Nice.
19:37 John Green? Shut the front door. Come on now. Surely you can't be serious.
19:41 Hank Green? Surely you can't be serious.
19:43 John Green? I am serious and don't call me surely.
19:45 Hank Green? No. I also just the regular ones, you know, they're, they're kids. They're not a, they like, we just like, there's grown up words, just like there's grown up drinks.
19:53 John Green? Sure. Dang it. Darn it.
19:55 Hank Green? Yeah.
19:56 John Green? What are the real, those are the swear words I use. I never use the real ones. I don't like to defile my mouth that way.
20:01 Hank Green? I tell you what, I, I put on a song the other day, uh, that, uh, unbeknownst to me, it was a Tom Cardy song. And, you know, some of Tom Cardy's stuff is very child friendly and some of it definitely isn't. And, uh, Orin gave me this look like we're doing something bad, aren't we? And I was like, I guess that's where we're at now. It's the, the stage of development you are at.
20:23 John Green? We're engaged in some naughtiness.
20:25 Hank Green? We are doing a naughty with Tom Cardy.
20:27 John Green? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by cursing in front of your kids, cursing in front of your kids. Hank does it.
20:34 Hank Green? This podcast is also brought to you by Steve the mountain lion. Don't hire that guy.
20:38 John Green? No, he's a big trouble. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's hard pivot to balls. Hank's hard pivot to balls. It's happening.
20:47 Hank Green? And this podcast is brought to you by science fact myths, science fact myths. I try so hard not to engage in them, but it's hard out there.
20:56 John Green? Yeah, because they're so good, right? Like, that's the thing about a science fact myth is that it, it has, it has attained mythical status for a reason, which is that it has tremendous explanatory power. It just happens to not be true.
21:09 Hank Green? Speaking of John, this is from Abby, who says, since baby carrots are just whittled down regular carrots, how do multicolored baby carrots work? Yesterday at the farmer's market, I bought purple carrots that are still like normal carrots. I got them home and, but beneath the purple skin, it was an orange carrot. So how do purple baby carrots exist?
21:28 John Green? Hmm.
21:28 Hank Green? Purple pumpkins and orange penguins. Abby, great sign off. Um, there's so many different kinds of carrots. The answer to that question.
21:35 John Green? Yeah.
21:35 Hank Green? First, since before the ad, we were talking about fake science facts, there's this. Fake fact that William of Orange is the reason carrots are orange.
21:44 John Green? Oh, I love this fake fact. I've, I've, I've almost repeated it several times in a variety of media.
21:51 Hank Green? Yeah. So, so like to honor William of Orange's coronation or birthday or something. All of the Dutch farmers were like, let's make all the carrots orange. And that's how it happened. But it's actually that like, that might be a thing that happened, but, but the sort of orangification of carrots uh, is very unclear exactly what happened there. And it probably had more to do with taste and, and bigness of the carrots. But carrots were originally not orange. They were mostly yellow and purple, which is cool. From sort of Eurasia generally, but like the first cultivation of carrots based in around, in and around like Iran, Afghanistan area. And um, the uh, it turns out there's just like a tremendous variety of kinds of carrots. And we try to crossbreed them and like get better carrots for one reason or another.
22:36 Hank Green? Uh, it turns out purple carrots are like more resistant to some soil nematodes, but orange carrots tend to be sweeter.
22:41 John Green? Yeah, I think orange carrots taste better. We grow purple carrots and orange carrots in my garden. And I think that orange carrots just taste a little bit better, but
22:47 Hank Green? Yeah.
22:48 John Green? Some purple carrots become orange when you, you know, start to peel them, but not all. Some are purple all the way down.
22:54 Hank Green? Correct.
22:54 John Green? And I think that is why the baby carrots are sometimes purple.
22:57 Hank Green? Yes.
22:58 John Green? Because they use that cultivar. I have always found though, that when they put a bunch of like yellow and pink and purple and orange baby carrots all together, that still the orange ones are better. It's just like, they're, the only reason that you buy the rainbow pack of carrots is that like, there's something sort of uh, compelling about it. No, it's not taste based. It's, it's marketing based. I mean, I say this, I'm growing purple carrots right now because I have myself bought in to the purple carrot legend, that they just look kind of cool.
23:28 Hank Green? Yeah, I think, but also like it's, it can be good to have a variety, you know, it could like, e- even if it's not about taste, it could be about like the chemicals you're ingesting. They might have more, more antioxidants or they might have, you know,
23:41 John Green? Sure.
23:41 Hank Green? There might be some advantage there. And maybe sometimes going for sweet all the time isn't ideal. I'm going to put ranch on those babies anyway.
23:48 John Green? That's true. You are, um, which I find just reprehensible. I, I could live in a world without ranch. No problem.
23:55 Hank Green? Wow.
23:56 John Green? Living in a world without ranch.
23:57 Hank Green? You're not a raccoon.
24:00 John Green? I'm not. That's one of the ways you can tell.
24:03 Hank Green? Wait, wait, wait, Hank.
24:04 John Green? In the future.
24:05 Hank Green? Yeah, what, what, what?
24:06 John Green? What if they're already walking among us?
24:09 Hank Green? They're just the ranch people?
24:10 John Green? No.
24:12 Hank Green? Yeah, yeah. No, if you ever see a person with ranch on their fingers, that's a raccoon.
24:18 John Green? Especially if you look closely at those fingers and then you're like, those are raccoon hands.
24:22 Hank Green? Hold on a second. Those fingernails are very thin.
24:25 John Green? Wow. I just did something visual just for Hank and the Patreon supporters, I guess.
24:31 Hank Green? Yeah, no, it could be. It could be. Could be. It's hard. It's hard to tell with people these days.
24:36 John Green? It is hard to tell. I mean, we are so confident. We always talk about how, you know, we're just, we're just one species out here, but are we? Or are we in fact, one species plus raccoons pretending to be that one species?
24:50 Hank Green? Another thing Nerd Fytaria lacks is conspiracy theories.
24:53 John Green? Oh, my God, that's such a good point. We have, and it's really hard to be in internet community these days without a conspiracy theory.
25:00 Hank Green? Really, it's the fuel for most of it.
25:02 John Green? That's right. That's what that's the sort of, that's the Elmer's glue behind the whole thing.
25:05 Hank Green? Yeah. Donald Trump is a raccoon.
25:09 John Green? Hmm. I don't know about Donald Trump. He seems very human to me.
25:15 Hank Green? He's like one of the most human humans. Going off instinct a lot of the time.
25:20 John Green? Just made out of id, man. Just a walking, breathing, slobbering id.
25:27 Hank Green? Oh, my God. Could you imagine having that much power and that little worry?
25:33 John Green? No, no, no. I can't even imagine having no power in that little worry.
25:38 Hank Green? Yeah. Oh, I was, I saw, I saw a little kid walking down the street with his, his parent and sort of yanked on the parent's hand because he wanted to look at a flower. And I was like, man, that kid knows the purpose of life.
25:56 John Green? Yep.
25:57 Hank Green? And the purpose of life is to be, and I'm like so jealous of that kid right now.
26:02 John Green? The purpose of life is to be.
26:03 Hank Green? Wow. The world, the world is rich and full and I am, and the reason I am is so that I am.
26:13 Hank Green? So that I can be.
26:14 John Green? Yes, I don't disagree with that, but I would add one thing, which is that I think the re- I know, I know, this is gonna bug you, but I don't, I don't think you're gonna, I don't think you're gonna hate it. This will be interesting to see if you can get yourself behind this one. Because it is, it's not theological, I promise. But I think the reason to be is to be and observe.
26:35 Hank Green? Well, yeah. Can you be without observing?
26:39 John Green? What that kid was doing was both being and paying attention. And there's something in the paying attention that's actually important.
26:47 Hank Green? I think that kid was being according to his psychology, you know, according to his biology. Like, you know, we are directed by what has been selected for as a communal species, you know? And that means like, community and paying attention and interaction and seeking sensations and thinking-
27:03 John Green? And figuring out, figuring stuff out.
27:05 Hank Green? Yeah, thinking, is, could, could there be raccoon people?
27:08 John Green? Yeah.
27:09 Hank Green? You know, asking the question. I'm just asking questions.
27:14 John Green? Just asking the question, is Martha Stewart a raccoon?
27:18 Hank Green? Yeah.
27:19 John Green? It's just a question.
27:21 Hank Green? Her hands are always dirty.
27:22 John Green? And they're always hidden. You never see her hands.
27:24 Hank Green? Yeah, you never see her hands.
27:25 John Green? I've never seen her hands.
27:26 Hank Green? Yeah.
27:26 John Green? And then a bunch of pictures of her hands emerge and you're like, well, I mean, with AI, you never know.
27:30 Hank Green? You never know.
27:31 John Green? You never know. All right, let's answer another question. This is a more serious one from Maya Luna, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my name is Maya Luna. We get a lot of questions along this line, Hank. I'm 17 and from Los Angeles, California. I just started senior year of high school and I'm struggling with the uncertainty of where I will be a year from now. And with this chapter of life coming to an end, how do we cope with the end of childhood and the uncertainty of the future? How do I get excited about college and everything else that's coming despite all the unknowns? Thanks, Maya Luna. I love the thanks. Um, what do you think, Hank?
28:01 Hank Green? I mean-
28:02 John Green? We're just here to be, Maya Luna.
28:03 Hank Green? So I just saw this little kid walking down the street with his parents. Pulled on the parent's arm and just wanted to look at a flower.
28:12 John Green? Yeah.
28:12 Hank Green? And was like, stop walking. I gotta look at this flower.
28:15 John Green? Yeah.
28:16 Hank Green? Like that.
28:17 John Green? But there is a feeling, I think, that Maya Luna has captured of time passing. And the sort of, there's something almost, there's something wondrous about time passing and also something almost unbearable about it. About losing that part of your life and then losing the next part of your life and the next part after that. And, um, you know, you go through these chapters and it's, it's hard to leave them behind.
28:39 Hank Green? Yeah.
28:39 John Green? Um, but of course it's also essential to leave them behind.
28:42 Hank Green? I was just, I was like, I asked Orin, I like to ask him what he's thinking about when he's just like staring at the wall.
28:49 John Green? Sure.
28:49 Hank Green? It's one of the best parts of parenthood is you're like, there's stuff going on in there. Tell me what it is. And he never does, very rarely. And, and I pushed him on it and finally he said nostalgia.
29:00 John Green? Mm hmm.
29:01 Hank Green? And I was like, what for? And he was like, you know, years ago. And I was like, oh, tell me more about, here's, you're, okay, you're eight, but okay. Uh, I get like, yeah, I guess like you're thinking two years ago, that's, that's like a quarter of your life away.
29:18 John Green? Right.
29:19 Hank Green? And, uh, and I was like, what about it? And he was like, all the books we used to read. And I was like, yeah.
29:25 John Green? And I think nostalgia is an important human emotion.
29:28 Hank Green? It's like a grief, almost.
29:30 John Green? It's a grief and what Maya Luna is experiencing is an anticipatory grief, a feeling of like, this, um, precious moment is slipping away and will inevitably slip away. And that's, that's true. It will slip away. It will be replaced by something that will be also valuable and also, you know, interesting and, and, and rich and fulfilling in its own way.
29:51 Hank Green? But not just, not just replaced, also, uh, layered on, you know? Like it's not gone.
29:57 John Green? That's a great point.
29:58 Hank Green? Building on top of that. You're a lasagna.
30:00 John Green? You're a lasagna.
30:01 Hank Green? You're a lasagna and you're gonna, you're gonna put another layer of lasagna on that. And nobody wants a lasagna that has one layer.
30:07 John Green? No, no, you want, you want to be able to look back on being six when you're eight and to look back on being, you know, 17 when you're 20 and so on. And I still look. Back at that time of my life with not mere fondness. As a friend of mine said about high school, that place saved my life, but it also did lots of other things. But I look back on it with a lot of interest and I look back on it with, you know, a feeling that that person is deeply traceable to the person I am now.
30:35 Hank Green? The, the last thing I'll say here, things like this, it's so easy for the thing you're imagining to be everything. Where it's like, it's like this is like what's about to happen is four years of school and social interaction. And, you know, leaving stuff behind and learning all like how to do my own, like doing all my own laundry and having all these responsibilities and making mistakes and having people, other people make mistakes that affect me. All that stuff, eh, like if you imagine it all at once, like there's no way to not hate that.
31:10 John Green? Yeah.
31:11 Hank Green? So, so shrink the frame, like what's today about for making tomorrow easier and better.
31:17 John Green? Right. That's very.
31:18 Hank Green? More fun and like, like, you know, what am I doing today? Yeah.
31:22 John Green? That's not even dubious. That's, that's high quality. Hank, we have to get to some corrections before we get to the all important news from Mars and.
31:28 Hank Green? Oh, no.
31:29 John Green? We've made a number of mistakes recently.
31:31 Hank Green? Okay, I'm, I'm going to catch some flack for this crab thing probably too.
31:35 John Green? Well, not as much flack as we caught for this from Hope. Dear John and Hank, I'm writing to let you know that a keg of bubbly water is very possible. As my neighbor has one in his garage, he says that the soda maker did not provide him with enough soda water per day. So instead he has it on tap. I'm not positive this would be a savings since you will still have to employ the, a person to sit a room away and yell pomplamoose. Whenever you take a sip, but it is definitely a reduction in aluminum waste. Hope this helps from Hope. Andrew writes, as an IT professional, I feel compelled to correct your statement about printers. We may know them deeply, but it is certainly not as friends. Rather, we know their every weakness like a mortal enemy. I haven't met a single person in this industry that doesn't despise those demon machines. Best, Andrew.
32:15 Hank Green? Their weaknesses, like immortal, and it's like the Sun Tzu for printers.
32:21 John Green? Yes, the art of war. Ashley says, Dear John and Hank, I was recently listening to your newest episode and noticed you talk about muscles pulling and pushing, but did you know that muscles only pull?
32:32 Hank Green? Ah, I did actually know that.
32:34 John Green? I'm a freshly licensed occupational therapist and was once an undergraduate kinesiology major, and I found it mind blowing to learn in my education that your muscles can only pull.
32:43 Hank Green? They can also not pull, which is important.
32:45 John Green? Right, they can, they can pull or not pull. Those are their two main vibes.
32:49 Hank Green? They can pull or do nothing.
32:50 John Green? That's why you have both a tricep and a bicep. All right.
32:54 Hank Green? You know what all like kinesiologists have tried to explain to me? How do, how do my fingers move, but the muscles controlling them are all down here? That's wild. I mean, I get it.
33:07 John Green? I don't really get it.
33:07 Hank Green? This bending?
33:09 John Green? I'm bending my fingers now and I'm completely, my mind is completely blown by it.
33:14 Hank Green? Bending, that like how, how does this bend? But there's no muscle in the whole hand that controls this bend.
33:21 John Green? Is that true? The muscles are not in the hand?
33:24 Hank Green? There's only the thumb muscle.
33:25 John Green? The thumb.
33:26 Hank Green? All of the finger muscles are all of the forearm.
33:28 John Green? All the finger muscles are in the forearm? Whoa, man.
33:32 Hank Green? I know, it's really upsetting.
33:34 John Green? I haven't gotten to the most important correction, by the way.
33:37 Hank Green? Okay, is it the next one?
33:38 John Green? Yeah, it's from Alex who writes, dearest brothers Green, in a recent episode, while deciding whether John should bequeath his name to a pea plant or a corn plant, you assume that multiple corn plants are needed for pollination. Despite my strongest efforts at restraint against pedantry, as a former agricultural worker and the grandchild of professional corn breeder, I find myself unable to resist correcting your frankly understandable misunderstanding on corn reproduction. Each corn plant has two reproductive parts, the tassel and the shoot, which develops into the cob. The tassel sheds pollen, which when in large fields of corn is spread by pollinators in the wind to silks of shoots to pollinate the ear of corn. Since each plant has both male and female parts, corn plants have no problems pollinating themselves. So there you go.
34:18 Hank Green? Wow, that, I mean, I will say some plants have both male and female parts and still can't pollinate themselves, but.
34:23 John Green? Well, I mean, according to this person, whose grandparent is a professional corn.
34:28 Hank Green? Corn definitely can't.
34:29 John Green? Pollinator, it's, it's possible. So I apologize to my friends, my family and the entire community for being wrong about that and so much else in my life.
34:38 Hank Green? You think you call yourself a Hoosier? You don't know how corn does sex.
34:42 John Green? I really don't know how corn does sex. I don't know how corn does anything. I don't grow corn in my garden because if I find it very intimidating and also because there's no way I can compete with that sweet, sweet Indiana sweet corn.
34:52 Hank Green? Oh, my God.
34:53 John Green? Indiana sweet corn is as good as corn gets, y'all. People can talk all the smack they want about Indiana, but we've got you beat on corn.
35:01 Hank Green? I don't know. Montana's got great corn because it's like, it's cold. I don't know something about the cold sweetens it up.
35:06 John Green? Hmm, so sweet. Well, our corn is better. Hard stop. Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's the news from Mars this week?
35:14 Hank Green? Oh, gosh, it's cool. So tumbleweeds is the news from Mars. They found tumbleweeds on, no. The, so there's a new-
35:22 John Green? You had me for a second. I was like, that seems possible.
35:24 Hank Green? That seems possible. I also, big, I should have heard about that. But there's, uh, there's a group that's trying to design like weird ideas for rovers. So, uh, people are always doing this. I, you know, I've, I've met people at, uh, colleges who like, you know, part of your like robotics program is like, let's try to design something new, uh, for like a Mars rover design. But there's a group of international scientists working on a new quote rover design that involves just a spherical wireframe that, uh, has sails that would be about 16 feet in diameter. And the idea is that these tumbleweed rovers would be able to cover a lot of ground using the winds of Mars. So they'd be like wind-powered rovers.
36:08 Hank Green? Uh, it has not been like adopted by any space agency or anything yet. It's just like people working on ideas. But they have been testing out smaller prototypes like, uh, in a, in a quarry in the Netherlands or, uh, at the planetary environmental facility in Denmark. These tests have, have kind of helped them figure out how that rover might perform on different surfaces, different wind conditions. And they're planning to head to the Atacama Desert in Chile soon for further testing of their weird tumbleweed rover design.
36:36 John Green? That is a really cool idea that you just sort of tumble your way across the entirety of Mars. You could circumnavigate the place if you waited long enough.
36:44 Hank Green? Yeah, just put a bunch of them down there and let them go wherever.
36:47 John Green? I love it. Love it. Um, well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is equally exciting, if not even more so. AFC Wimbledon cannot stop winning. I will remind you, we have the lowest budget in League One in the third tier of English football, and yet somehow we can't stop winning.
37:02 Hank Green? You know what it is, John? It's the power of you, of, of that, of that DFTBA on the back of the shorts. It's finally kicking in.
37:10 John Green? It might be. It is. There is something magical happening at AFC Wimbledon. I actually went to this game with a bunch of my friends. So I flew over to London to see AFC Wimbledon beat Wickham Wanderers, who have three times our budget, two to one. It was a game of two halves. We scored two brilliant first half goals. Uh, one, one scored by Omar Bougal, the other scored by Steve Seddon. And they were both high class. As I said to Omar Bougal after the game, you played like you were on, like, actually on fire. You played so angry and brilliantly. And, and he was like, I know. Thank you. Um, it was incredible. It was an incredible game to watch and I, and then in the second half, we had to defend for our lives and barely escaped with a two, one win.
37:54 John Green? But it was absolutely magical. The stadium was rollicking, absolutely rollicking. And the vibes were immaculate. And in general, it was just awesome. I had so much freaking fun. And I hope my friends did too. I mean, I'm in completely in love with this AFC Wimbledon team. Hank, we're in sixth place, which is a playoff spot.
38:15 Hank Green? I looked at the League One table and I was like, I can't find AFC Wimbledon on the list. It's because we're so high up. High up, but they're like near the top. Yeah. I haven't been looking for them there.
38:26 John Green? Yeah, well, we would.
38:29 John Green? Uh, it's, it's just astonishing. I don't even know what to say about it. We just can't stop playing brilliantly. Even when we lose, we're playing well. So I am completely, I mean, I'm always in love with every AFC Wimbledon team, but I am especially in love with this group of players and our, our coaches. Everybody's just doing an amazing job together and all pulling in the same direction, playing for the badge, as they say. And it's, it's been a magical, magical season so far. Still only. Uh, less than a quarter of the way in. So, so lots of time for everything to fall apart as things almost always do. But I mean, sixth place in League One, you have to be kidding.
39:08 Hank Green? Yeah, I mean, the, and the teams you've lost to are good teams.
39:11 John Green? Yeah, we've only lost to really good teams and a couple of those teams we should have beat. So this has been, this, this season is, is bonkers. I don't even know what else to say about it. It's a delight.
39:20 Hank Green? Well, that's the power, the power of, of belief.
39:23 John Green? The power of DFTBA on the back of the shorts. That's right.
39:26 Hank Green? Um, and if you get, you get up in that, that next league and then spend $0 the entire year just to take the money home and then, then, you know.
39:35 John Green? Don't even field 11 players, you know, just, just show up every weekend.
39:39 Hank Green? Be like, everybody's fired.
39:41 John Green? With whatever children want to play for us.
39:43 Hank Green? We're just gonna send a goalie out there.
39:50 Hank Green? Where does, this is, this is the money season.
39:52 John Green? Exactly. We've decided to make this the money season. We're going to intentionally lose all 46 of our games and then we will go back to League One with some money.
40:01 Hank Green? Some actual budget. That's wild. You really have the lowest budget in the whole league?
40:05 John Green? Either lowest or second lowest. It's, uh, there, there's some, some debate, but yeah, very, very low.
40:10 Hank Green? So is there a worry that like at the mid-season trade that a lot of people will take, take these players away because they're better than expected?
40:17 John Green? Maybe, uh, but a lot of them, a lot of them really like playing for Wimbledon. Like Omar Bougill is like, I want to play for Wimbledon as long as I can. Like, I love it here. I'm happy and, you know. I mean, would you rather be happy or have an extra couple hundred pounds a week? I think like most people would rather be happy. So, um, so far, so good.
40:34 Hank Green? Just gotta make the town of AFC Wimbledon very nice for footballers to live in.
40:38 John Green? Well, it is London, so it's pretty nice.
40:41 Hank Green? Okay.
40:42 John Green? I like that you don't know where we play.
40:45 Hank Green? It's not quite London. It's, it's not like downtown.
40:49 John Green? There is no downtown London. There is.
40:51 Hank Green? Yeah, there is. There's like the Tower.
40:53 John Green? Okay.
40:55 Hank Green? It's like where all the subway stations are.
40:57 John Green? We don't play at the Tower of London, but we do play on, on a subway, so like very near a subway stop.
41:02 Hank Green? Okay.
41:03 John Green? Yeah, in London. I can't believe you've never been to a game. This is bonkers. I know I haven't been to Mars. So maybe I shouldn't complain, but you should really go to a game sometime. It's super fun.
41:12 Hank Green? I completely agree. I would love to go to a game sometime.
41:15 John Green? When I was there, I met a few nerd fighters who were at their first game and it was really fun to meet with them and see them. So I just had a great time.
41:21 Hank Green? I might be, I might have to be focused on my balls.
41:25 John Green? Oh, that's right. You've got to really, you're gonna have to use all of your extra resources around the collecting and distributing the world's largest balls of exciting new things.
41:35 Hank Green? There's so many things to make like balls out of nowadays, you know, there's all this stuff. We've got so much stuff.
41:40 John Green? It's a great point.
41:41 Hank Green? All those old AOL CDs.
41:43 John Green? Yeah, the world's largest ball of AOL CDs.
41:46 Hank Green? Just send me, send me all your old, like, oh, man, like, like, send me every DVD that anyone has of a Die Hard movie.
41:56 John Green? Yep.
41:56 Hank Green? We're gonna make the world's largest ball of Die Hard movies.
41:58 John Green? Have you ever seen that guy who has an entire room of his house dedicated to VHS tapes of Titanic?
42:04 Hank Green? Yeah, yeah, that's like, things like that. That's what we're gonna do.
42:08 John Green? That's what we're gonna do. That's the new, that's the new thing. Hank's taking us in a new direction.
42:15 Hank Green? We're also gonna do the world's largest ball of dollar bills. That'll be at my house.
42:20 Hank Green? I'm gonna use the world's largest ball of dollar bills.
42:22 John Green? That'll be for my personal use, personal use.
42:24 Hank Green? To buy more balls of other large balls.
42:27 John Green? So you're getting into conspiracy theories and you're also turning this into a pyramid scheme. I love it.
42:34 Hank Green? If everybody just sends me $1.
42:37 Hank Green? Then, then you have to get a bunch of other people to send you $1, but they also have to send me $1. It's not exactly clear why.
42:43 John Green? Yeah, yeah, but trust me, it's gonna lead to a very large ball of dollars for me.
42:49 Hank Green? Have you ever been pitched on a pyramid scheme?
42:51 John Green? Oh, yeah, many times.
42:52 Hank Green? I remember the first time I was in high school, my girlfriend's dad tried to get me buy into a pyramid scheme and I was like, that's a pyramid scheme. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I remember being in grad school and having like, like, people who worked at the university talking about their pyramid scheme. And I was like, that's a pyramid scheme. And it's just like, what you are describing to me is exactly what a pyramid scheme is. And I'm just like, this still happens?
43:14 John Green? Well, when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a pyramid scheme, like the people who were. Selling that athleisure on Facebook didn't feel like they were in a pyramid.
43:22 Hank Green? Well, these were like pure dollar. These weren't like even product.
43:25 John Green? Oh, like you give you give a dollar up the money tree?
43:29 Hank Green? Yeah.
43:29 John Green? That's a pure pyramid.
43:30 Hank Green? Money trees.
43:31 John Green? Yeah. Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me and thank you to everybody for their questions. You can email us anytime at [email protected] about world's largest balls or other.
43:41 Hank Green? This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout, who has his work cut out for him this episode. Thank you, Ben. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medishid. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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