402: Alfred Australia

What do Hank and John look like? What do Americans know about Australia? Why is there not a cure for cancer? What do I do with having too many books? What’s the difference between a non-profit and a business that gives its profit to charity? What age are dead people? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

  I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank.

• 0:15Hank 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, my friend, actually just won Dentist of the Year in Montana. Can you believe that?

• 0:26John Green?

  Congratulations. That's amazing.

• 0:28Hank Green?

  I was surprised by how small the award was, though. It was a little plaque.

• 0:34John Green?

  Just a bit? Just a bit of plaque?

• 0:36Hank Green?

  It was a little plaque. Just a little plaque.

• 0:41John Green?

  All right, Hank. Usually this is where we would riff a little bit, but I'm not in the mood to riff. I had kind of a rough week. So let's just get to the questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Lydia, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I really need to know this, but what do y'all look like? Hank, you describe John. John, you describe Hank. Lydia, do you think Lydia is not sighted? I have absolutely no clue what y'all look like. My only way of seeing you is blurry pictures on the back of your books.

• 1:08Hank Green?

  Uh, I'm so interested.

• 1:12John Green?

  I've got some news for you.

• 1:13Hank Green?

  This is the emotional energy that I needed. I just don't, like, John is right. We can't riff right now. We need to go straight in because it's just not been easy.

• 1:23John Green?

  No, it hasn't been the best week.

• 1:26Hank Green?

  But this is what I need. I need to know that there's a person who just listens to the podcasts and reads the books and doesn't know about the rest of the internet stuff.

• 1:36John Green?

  Doesn't know about Twitter, doesn't know about Instagram, doesn't know about YouTube. Lydia, stay golden, pony girl. Stay golden.

• 1:44Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, what a normal person would say to you is there's this thing called Google Images and you can type Hank Green into it. But I'm not going to say that because you need to add that complexity to your life.

• 1:55John Green?

  Lydia, you're living our dream.

• 1:59Hank Green?

  This is not...

• 2:00John Green?

  Reading books, listening to podcasts, not on the social internet. I mean, you've cracked the code, Lydia.

• 2:07Hank Green?

  Look, John, if we wanted that, we could make it happen. So it's not precisely our dream. It is just the dream that we dream sometimes, the way that you dream sometimes, you know?

• 2:17John Green?

  Maybe that's how you feel, but I feel like it's my dream and I just haven't been able to achieve it yet.

• 2:24John Green?

  All right, Hank, I'm gonna describe you. I'm gonna close my eyes. And I realize that I have aphantasia, so that's not gonna work. So instead, I'm gonna come back to the webcam. There's, when I close my eyes, I see absolutely nothing. But when I look at the webcam, I see a middle aged man, white, glasses wearing, curly hair, recent development, the curly hair, as a result of chemotherapy. He wears a lot of T-shirts with a shirt over it, which doesn't sound like I'm describing him, but it actually is a description of his face. Because he has the kind of face that goes along with the person who wears T-shirts with like, long sleeve button down shirts over them.

• 3:03John Green?

  I would say a pleasant, well balanced face. He has lips on the slightly thicker side. He's got detached earlobes, nose, average eyebrows, slightly sparse, but not as sparse as mine, and a nice, strong jawline with a good, solid chin.

• 3:22Hank Green?

  Oh, thanks, John. That sounds about right.

• 3:25John Green?

  It's not a compliment, it's just a series of observations.

• 3:27Hank Green?

  I pictured that guy and I was like, that, I like the look of that guy, as you were saying.

• 3:31John Green?

  He's doing okay.

• 3:32Hank Green?

  Yeah, he's doing all right. All right, I'm closing my eyes and I'm thinking of John, and what I'm seeing in my head right now is, Bernard from the movie Mastermind.

• 3:41John Green?

  Well, you're not the first person to make that observation.

• 3:44Hank Green?

  Do you ever think that maybe they knew that they were just fans? And they were like, let's just start with John Green's face and then.

• 3:52John Green?

  First off, Bernard from Mastermind hopefully doesn't look that much like me. I'm Googling him now because I can't picture him because I have aphantasia.

• 3:58Hank Green?

  Megamind, it's Megamind is the movie.

• 4:01John Green?

  Okay, thank you. That is helpful.

• 4:03Hank Green?

  When I typed in Bernard Mastermind, I got a lot of pictures of Bernie Madoff.

• 4:07John Green?

  That guy does, that guy does kinda look like me. Who am I kidding? I mean, completely with my glasses falling down my nose right now.

• 4:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's your head shape, too.

• 4:18John Green?

  It is kinda my head shape, slightly elongated.

• 4:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, and like a pretty big forehead, big hair, and then like your, like the head goes like in a little bit at the eyes.

• 4:27John Green?

  Yeah, well, it's mostly because of my glasses, but it does appear that way.

• 4:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Hank Green?

  And then he's got a beard and then one, but he's like Bernard from Megamind, but with a beard. And also, uh, very briefly, once a year, a mustache.

• 4:42John Green?

  That's right. So you can just imagine me with a beard or a mustache, Lydia, whichever you prefer. But the main thing is don't go to Google Images. Don't go to youtube.com/vlogbrothers. Stay golden.

• 4:51Hank Green?

  But do go watch Megamind.

• 4:54John Green?

  Do go watch Megamind. Well, some people call it the story of my life. We have another question, Hank. It's from James.

• 5:00Hank Green?

  Wait, I have a question for you, John. It's from Hank.

• 5:02John Green?

  Oh, sure.

• 5:02Hank Green?

  Um, are you a beard guy now? Like, I always sort of assumed when I saw you with a beard that you were working your way toward pizza mess.

• 5:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Hank Green?

  But now it just feels like it's all the time.

• 5:13John Green?

  I like to have at least a little bit of grizzle on me, you know? Like a 19th century Wild West outlaw.

• 5:21Hank Green?

  Sure. Uh, they didn't have access to all those, like, easy access to razors. So.

• 5:26John Green?

  That's right. And indeed, neither do I. They're all the way upstairs.

• 5:32Hank Green?

  I can't do it.

• 5:33John Green?

  People in the Wild West, I also suffer.

• 5:35Hank Green?

  As my hair was coming back, I let my beard grow just to see what it'd be like. Uh, and I had a little bit of scruff. It looked like, you know, a bad, like, kind of a crappy little beard. Not the best beard in the world, but a crappy little beard. And I could not handle the way it felt.

• 5:51John Green?

  No, I like the way it feels. It feels like, uh, like a little hug from my own face.

• 5:55Hank Green?

  Oh, my God. It feels like I'm constantly being poked.

• 5:59John Green?

  Oh, no, I don't have that experience at all. Uh, now I'm starting to have it since you mentioned it.

• 6:04Hank Green?

  So itchy.

• 6:04John Green?

  It feels like, yeah, it feels a little itchy, but no, I, I think I am a beard guy, maybe. I have mixed feelings about it because I liked myself clean shaven when I was younger, but the thing is, I'm not younger.

• 6:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:17John Green?

  I'm older. I'm older, getting older every day.

• 6:21Hank Green?

  I think you get, like, it's funny. I continue to get more beard as I get older. Like, I, I have more beard now than I did when I was 40. And that's very weird. Like, I'm like, okay, I guess I keep changing.

• 6:32John Green?

  Part of the reason I feel like I can be a beard guy is because when I was in my twenties, I couldn't be a beard guy.

• 6:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:37John Green?

  I didn't have a connector between my mustache and my beard.

• 6:40Hank Green?

  I didn't either. Now I do.

• 6:41John Green?

  Space there. Now I got a nice little connector.

• 6:43Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 6:44John Green?

  So I'm feeling pretty good on the whole in terms of beard.

• 6:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:48John Green?

  Otherwise mixed, but beard, good.

• 6:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. If you're wondering if you're young and you're thinking, I want a beard, but I can't grow a beard. John, here's how John and I did it. One, we got older. Second, we fought a bear every two weeks for two years.

• 7:01John Green?

  Yep.

• 7:01Hank Green?

  Not every week, that's too dangerous. Bi-weekly bear fights.

• 7:06John Green?

  Yeah. Some people would say bi-monthly bear fights. I wonder if bi-weekly could mean twice a week, in which case that's real bad.

• 7:12Hank Green?

  Fortnightly bear fights.

• 7:14John Green?

  Fortnightly bear fights. And not to the death, you know?

• 7:19Hank Green?

  No, it's a pretty nice bear. He really could. He can pull his punches.

• 7:23John Green?

  And indeed, we could pull ours.

• 7:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. No, I've never killed a bear.

• 7:29John Green?

  That's, you just fight a bear every two weeks, fortnightly.

• 7:32Hank Green?

  Two weeks, I give a bear a black eye, but you can't really even tell because they're all furry.

• 7:36John Green?

  As are already black. It's the thing about bears. As a black bear, not a brown bear. We're not trying, we're not out here trying to get smashed.

• 7:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:44John Green?

  No. We're fighting a bear that weighs like 30 pounds more than I do.

• 7:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, I love, I love a fight with a black bear because you punch it and then it runs as fast as it can in the other direction.

• 7:52John Green?

  Why did you do that? That was so rude.

• 7:54Hank Green?

  Very mean. I am basically just a squirrel.

• 7:57John Green?

  Yeah. God, I'm just a fat raccoon. Don't be mean to me.

• 8:02John Green?

  Do you think bears or raccoons would do a better job being the sentient species on earth?

• 8:07Hank Green?

  Oh, bears. I think raccoons would have a lot more fun.

• 8:10John Green?

  Oh, yeah. They'd be trouble, though.

• 8:13Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 8:14John Green?

  They'd make trash just to eat trash.

• 8:18Hank Green?

  You know, I honestly, I bet, I bet a raccoon would vastly prefer a warm cooked meal to trash. We think of them as like trash eaters, but that's because that's the option they have. And they're going in there to get the stuff that's better than like eating french fries out of the trash. I'm sorry, better than eating acorns.

• 8:35John Green?

  For sure, for sure. That's a great point. And raccoons are smart. I don't know that I think I think it's 50 50 that raccoons become the sentient species after us. If we die tomorrow as a species, and I wouldn't rule it out.

• 8:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:49John Green?

  I think that raccoons are really well positioned. They're small, but they could get bigger, like the evolutionary pressures could be on bigger brains. They're smart. They've got those dexterous hands.

• 8:59Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I could see it being chimpanzees, but raccoons are everywhere. There's so many of them and that gives them.

• 9:07John Green?

  Yeah, they've already done the geographic distribution thing.

• 9:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:10John Green?

  I could, I, I, I think it could be a good run for both chimpanzees and raccoons. So people are always like, oh, like the end of the world is coming. The end of the world is coming, repent, the time is nigh. And like for us, yeah, but not for raccoons.

• 9:23Hank Green?

  How do we, how do we leave a note for the raccoons? I don't think the podcast is gonna make it, so we need to do something.

• 9:30John Green?

  That's a great idea, Hank. We need to make a podcast for raccoons.

• 9:34Hank Green?

  That's the next episode. It's all gonna be the raccoons, but send in your raccoon specific questions that you want to communicate to the future of raccoon kind.

• 9:44John Green?

  I think the main thing we need to tell them is that we did our best and it wasn't very good.

• 9:49Hank Green?

  We did our, yes, and also if they feel like they're not doing well, that's because it's really hard to be what we are.

• 9:57John Green?

  It's a tough gig.

• 9:57Hank Green?

  But also learn from us and don't do what we did.

• 10:02John Green?

  But also do, do what we did, do do. Do what we did in the sense that like pursue curiosity and pursue technology, just not unto your own death. And that's a hard line, man. I, we didn't nail it and I'm not sure the raccoons will either.

• 10:18Hank Green?

  Well, look, maybe we did, maybe we're on the right path, John. Or a path.

• 10:25John Green?

  So I'm sorry, that's implausible. We've said some weird crap in this podcast, but that's the weirdest thing you've ever said.

• 10:31Hank Green?

  I did, I did comedy last night and one of the, the, the show I'm trying to build right now is making a case that humans aren't bad. And, and so I got up there and I told a couple of jokes and then I, and then I was like, I'd like to make a, I'd like to do a hot take for you right now. And I don't know how we're all gonna feel about it, but I like to make the case.

• 10:49John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Hank Green?

  That people aren't bad. And there was like one person in the room who was like, woo. And then everybody else was like, uh. This is not why we came to the comedy show tonight.

• 11:02John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, I really think that people don't want to hear that people aren't bad right now. There's too much, there's too much bad.

• 11:09Hank Green?

  There's a lot of, no, there's a lot of bad.

• 11:11John Green?

  And the bad is super real, and so it's hard to balance that because when the bad is super real, it's hard to focus on the good as well. Can I just ask you this question from James? I'm sorry, I'm going into a dark headspace and I don't like it. I don't want to go there. That's not why I make this podcast. I make this podcast to hang out with my brother and talk about James's concerns about Australia.

• 11:32Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 11:33John Green?

  James writes, "Good day, John and Hank." I think that I said that wrong. Hank, can you actually read this one?

• 11:39Hank Green?

  Yes, it says, "Good day, Hank and John."

• 11:41John Green?

  No, that's not right. It's like that, but it's more, "G'day."

• 11:46Hank Green?

  Oh, you want me to do an Australian accent?

• 11:49John Green?

  I just want you to read it the way that James would say it.

• 11:53Hank Green?

  I thought you hated when I do accents.

• 11:56John Green?

  I just want you to, well, first off, I've never heard your Australian. For all I know, it could be brilliant.

• 12:01Hank Green?

  I think that the reason you've never heard it is I may not have one at all. I, I, I have, I've worked on it, but I don't think that I've, okay.

• 12:09John Green?

  That's better.

• 12:10Hank Green?

  But it's been years.

• 12:11John Green?

  If you're workshopping it, that's even more exciting.

• 12:13Hank Green?

  Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. "G'day, John and Hank."

• 12:17John Green?

  That's not bad.

• 12:18Hank Green?

  "I'm from the great, faraway nation of Australia, and I'm British immediately."

• 12:23John Green?

  That was pretty good. That wasn't that bad. "After this recent US election, I've been thinking about just how much our Australians know about the USA. It's quite a lot. We get most of our entertainment and news and social media from you guys. But to be honest, it doesn't seem very reciprocal. On the internet, it seems like most Americans know very little about us."

• 12:38Hank Green?

  It's true.

• 12:38John Green?

  Like, at all. But I want to set the record straight. What do you guys think about us? Are we just a nation of Steve Irwins to you? Do you think about us at all? Mangoes and marsupials, James. P.S., Hank better not do his awful Australian accent while writing this, while reading this, I swear.

• 12:55Hank Green?

  You jerk.

• 12:57John Green?

  I had to get there.

• 12:57Hank Green?

  You knew that was there, didn't you?

• 12:59John Green?

  I read the question in advance, Hank. I had an advantage over you.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  Well, importantly, you, you pronounced Australia wrong. It's called, it's called, and not Australians, it's called Shreians.

• 13:09John Green?

  Shreians, all right.

• 13:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:11John Green?

  What do we know about Australia? Hank, who is the Prime Minister of Australia? Who's there, Donald Trump?

• 13:22Hank Green?

  Definitely don't know.

• 13:23John Green?

  You want to try male or female?

• 13:25Hank Green?

  I could, I'm pretty sure it's a guy.

• 13:27John Green?

  That's correct. Um, I also don't know his name, but I know that his initials are AA. It's like Albert, uh, Australia or something like that's like, it's, his name is very much like that. It's like Alfred Amiable or.

• 13:41Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's just Alfred Australia.

• 13:47John Green?

  How could they not elect him, man?

• 13:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:49John Green?

  The guy's, it's in his name.

• 13:51Hank Green?

  It, this is, this, that's, that's the comedy bit I did last night about how, how it, it matters a lot. What your name is when you're running for office and when you start thinking you might run for office, you need to change your name from Pete Buttigieg to something that doesn't feel like a spelling lesson.

• 14:05John Green?

  Let me tell you his actual name.

• 14:07Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 14:08John Green?

  Because it's, it's basically Arthur Australia. It's Anthony Albanese.

• 14:12Hank Green?

  Anthony Albanese.

• 14:14John Green?

  I was on the right track. If you'd given me a million years, if you, if I was the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, I would have eventually gotten to Anthony Albanese.

• 14:24Hank Green?

  Uh, Anthony Norben Albanese.

• 14:28John Green?

  What else do you know about Australia, Hank?

• 14:31Hank Green?

  Um, I, the, the impression I have of Australia is there's a bunch of people who are, who like, there's like a creative vibe I get from it, that, that there's a, there's a lot of creative professionals.

• 14:44John Green?

  Sure, sure. A lot of great writers from Australia, like Marcus Zuzak.

• 14:48Hank Green?

  Housing is very expensive. That's another thing I, that, that Australians seem to talk about a lot on the internet.

• 14:54John Green?

  Okay.

• 14:54Hank Green?

  It's very hard. It's like a, like they have a housing crisis that's like ours, but even worse.

• 14:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Hank Green?

  Um, there's a lot of, one thing that Americans think about Australia a lot is that it's dangerous. We think about, oh, there's got to be big spiders and there's big snakes and all the most dangerous animals are from there.

• 15:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Hank Green?

  One thing we don't know that I think that I, I have incorporated into my understanding of Australia, but I don't think most people have, is that it is huge and empty. And that there's very, there's a very large area of Australia that does not have anything or much, much of anything in it. And then there's a small area that has almost all of the people. And, uh, but over, but on the whole, it is much bigger than you think it is.

• 15:36John Green?

  Yeah. Okay. One thing I know about Australia is that it has universal healthcare.

• 15:42Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 15:43John Green?

  And. They speak English?

• 15:47Hank Green?

  Yep, there's

• 15:48John Green?

  It's a funny English, but it's English.

• 15:50Hank Green?

  Uh huh. It's an English colony. They probably have the queen on their money.

• 15:55John Green?

  They have the queen on the money, for sure, for sure. They're still in the Commonwealth. I think, and I think that in general, I feel like Australia is significantly more progressive than the United States, although these days, that's quite a low bar to jump over.

• 16:07Hank Green?

  Yeah, though I think that it has some things that maybe you could make the other argument. Like, I don't think that their immigration policy is super great.

• 16:15John Green?

  But Anthony Albanese, I know is from the Labor Party, for instance, whose name I just learned. And we haven't elected a Labor Party member or a leader from the equivalent party, ever. We don't have a party that's as left-wing in the United States as the Labor Party is in Australia. Like, we don't have a Medicaid-for-all party in the United States.

• 16:38Hank Green?

  We sure don't. The other thing I know is that they have a lot of coal, but they are becoming a greener nation, but they are still exporting all of the coal, and that's contentious.

• 16:48John Green?

  A lot of great artists in Australia.

• 16:50Hank Green?

  They're all extremely attractive.

• 16:52John Green?

  They do tend to be attractive across the line. It's true.

• 16:56Hank Green?

  They're attractive and tanned and on surfboards.

• 17:00John Green?

  I remember the first time I met Marcus Zuzak, the author of The Book Thief, and I just remember thinking, my god, that man is so good-looking.

• 17:07Hank Green?

  There's the guy Troy Hunt. He's an Australian guy who's like an information security guy.

• 17:16John Green?

  Ooh, I don't know who that guy is, but I know who Troye Sivan is.

• 17:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, Troye Sivan, also not Australian, but also attractive.

• 17:24John Green?

  Troy lives in Australia. I'll bet you a million dollars.

• 17:27Hank Green?

  I think he's from South Africa. Did I make that up?

• 17:29John Green?

  Troye Sivan is an Australian singer-songwriter and actor.

• 17:33Hank Green?

  Okay, well, but he was, weirdly enough, I know that he was born in South Africa.

• 17:38John Green?

  Well, you can say that, but he was born in Perth. Nope, he was born in South Africa. Dang it, how did you know that about Troye Sivan?

• 17:47Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 17:49John Green?

  What a thing to know.

• 17:52Hank Green?

  He is Australian, though.

• 17:54John Green?

  I feel like I know Troy better than you do. I should be the one who knows that Troy is from.

• 17:57Hank Green?

  Yeah, you know him as a person, but I'm a bigger fan.

• 18:01John Green?

  That's probably true. I really like Troy's music, though. I always have.

• 18:04Hank Green?

  I always try a lot. I've always thought he was a really interesting guy.

• 18:08John Green?

  Really talented.

• 18:09Hank Green?

  Like even, oh, look, his picture on the, his Wikipedia, his second picture on his Wikipedia is him at the Paper Towns premiere.

• 18:16John Green?

  Look at that. He's at the Paper Towns premiere. Aw. He was so young.

• 18:20Hank Green?

  The third one is at VidCon.

• 18:22John Green?

  Oh, my gosh, he was even younger in 2014. We gotta get some newer pictures of Troye Sivan on his Wikipedia page.

• 18:29Hank Green?

  It's weird, man. I feel, I feel like we're responsible for two thirds of Troye Sivan's pictures on Wikipedia.

• 18:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Hank Green?

  We're just power brokers, John.

• 18:38John Green?

  Well, you said it, not me. And when you said it, it made me, made my stomach turn a little bit.

• 18:43Hank Green?

  I bet it did. But yeah, Troy Hunt is a very attractive Australian who I follow on Twitter to help me understand when there are bad things that happen in passwords on the internet.

• 18:57John Green?

  What?

• 18:59Hank Green?

  Like when somebody, like somebody gets hacked and a bunch of passwords get leaked. He runs a website called Have I Been Pwned?, which helps you understand, helps you know if your passwords are, are owned by hackers.

• 19:10John Green?

  The musician Troye Sivan made a website called Have You Been Pwned?

• 19:14Hank Green?

  No, Troy Hunt, who is also Australian and also attractive.

• 19:18John Green?

  I'm sorry. I didn't know that they could have two Troyes in one country.

• 19:20Hank Green?

  They got multiple Troyes.

• 19:22John Green?

  Wow. I thought, that's the other thing I thought about Australia is that their population's about 12. What do you think the population of Australia is saying? Guess without, guess without Googling, guess without Googling.

• 19:31Hank Green?

  All right, all right, let's do it. This is great. This is great. I think the population of Australia, I'm gonna go 80 million people.

• 19:40John Green?

  First off, that was never gonna be the case.

• 19:43Hank Green?

  What do you mean?

• 19:44John Green?

  Second off, you're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

• 19:48Hank Green?

  Well, did you look it up?

• 19:50John Green?

  Well, yes, but I wish that I had it now.

• 19:51Hank Green?

  No, you didn't say first. That's not fair.

• 19:55John Green?

  Well, okay, I'll just throw out a number.

• 19:56Hank Green?

  Now, everybody thinks I'm dummy and doesn't think you're dummy.

• 19:59John Green?

  I'll throw out a guess. I'll throw out a guess. 26.64 million in 2023. That's my guess. With a gross domestic product of 1.724 trillion. So we're talking about

• 20:10Hank Green?

  I'll check.

• 20:10John Green?

  per capita GDP of about $64,711. That would be my guess if I had to, if I had to make a guess.

• 20:17Hank Green?

  Well, it's 64,711 and 77 cents. So.

• 20:20John Green?

  Oh, sorry. I don't have very good vision when I don't have my bifocals on.

• 20:27Hank Green?

  They have way fewer people than Canada. They have fewer people than California.

• 20:32John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:34Hank Green?

  All right.

• 20:34John Green?

  Well, yeah, I think they have fewer people than Florida, which is frankly embarrassing.

• 20:40Hank Green?

  Well.

• 20:40John Green?

  About the same, about the same.

• 20:42Hank Green?

  All right. It's like the Florida of the entire ocean.

• 20:47John Green?

  Hank, you should never say that, that kind of thing about Australia.

• 20:55John Green?

  We're allowed to make fun of Florida. We grew up there. Okay. So we suffered. We can make the jokes.

• 21:00Hank Green?

  We can make the jokes. And maybe it's better now. Doesn't seem to be.

• 21:11John Green?

  I'll tell you what, not statistically, it's not.

• 21:14John Green?

  I feel like frankly, Florida is in danger of entering that, that territory that Alabama was in when I was a student there in the 1990s, where people would often say that the state motto of Alabama was, thank God for Mississippi, because Alabama was 49th in everything.

• 21:31John Green?

  Anyway, that's not to dig at anybody who lives in Florida, except for their governor. Hank, what's our next question?

• 21:36Hank Green?

  This comes from Megan, who asks, hi Hank and John, there's not currently a cure for cancer, but we have treatments that help. And from what I understand, some people after treatment have no more cancer cells. Is that not a cure? I'm definitely not a doctor, so I apologize if I got anything wrong about this. Pumpkins and Penguins, Megan. Yeah, well, we, we do have cures for cancers. We just don't have a cure for.

• 21:59John Green?

  All cancer.

• 22:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:02John Green?

  Because cancer isn't really one disease. It's a lot, a lot, a lot of diseases.

• 22:06Hank Green?

  Yeah. And it's also different in every person. Like in a way, we don't have a cure for. Um, anything because if you are in a specific situation, you can be killed by the common cold, you know?

• 22:18John Green?

  Right. We don't have a cure for staph infections because some people get the kind of staph infections that don't respond well to our existing tool toolkit of antibiotics.

• 22:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, but we have a cure for, but many, many people with staph infections are cured by their own immune systems.

• 22:33John Green?

  And others are cured by fancy antibiotics like this guy.

• 22:36Hank Green?

  Like that, over and over again.

• 22:39John Green?

  Well, I have to get a lot of, I have to get a lot of antibiotics because I get a lot of staph infections.

• 22:44Hank Green?

  I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

• 22:45John Green?

  It's fun.

• 22:46Hank Green?

  They just love, they love you. So in that, in that way, I, this is, that's a, that's a great point that we do have, like, we cure many cancers. There are, there are many cancers that have no cure, especially ones that are later stage.

• 23:03John Green?

  Right.

• 23:03Hank Green?

  And so that, that's another thing that like a cancer, it's a, it's like a different disease at stage three than at stage one, which is why they do stages because it, it, you know, requires a totally different set of treatment and, uh, and how you think about it when it's at a later stage. And it's not just that it is a more advanced disease. It's literally that it's different. Like cancers, when they metastasize, so if a solid tumor metastasizes, it's because it changed. And when it metastasizes, that provides a number of advantages to it. One, it's in a bunch of different places. Uh, and so you, it's harder to just like cut it out.

• 23:44Hank Green?

  Two, as a cancer evolves in the place where it first formed, it only has one set of pressures on it. And so it sort of maintains some amount of, like similarity to itself. And then if it moves from, you know, from the breast to the lung or from the kidney to the brain, it's in a new environment. And so that new cancer colony in a different area of the body is going to be super different from the cancer colony in another area of the body, which means that the treatments, like one set of treatment, isn't going to work as well on, on one of the colonies than another because it's literally genetically different. It is keep evolving as they move around the body.

• 24:28John Green?

  I don't think I fully understood that, but that's really both interesting and kind of scary.

• 24:35Hank Green?

  No, yeah, that writing this book is very much that. It's like, wow, this is fascinating and terrifying.

• 24:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Hank Green?

  I love how interesting this is, as long as I don't have to consider it as a thing that actually happens to people.

• 24:49John Green?

  I am very excited for this book, Hank, that you're supposedly writing and that I have read, to be fair, so I know you're writing it, but I'm just excited to see where it goes and what happens with it when it comes out.

• 24:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's gonna be a while, I think.

• 25:01John Green?

  All right, Hank, we have another question from Sylvie, who writes, hi, my name is Sylvie. I'm 11 years old and my question is that I have too many books. I collect graphic novels, but now I have too many and I don't want to give them away. What shall I do? Pumpkins and penguins, Sylvie.

• 25:12Hank Green?

  Sylvie, you gotta give them away.

• 25:15John Green?

  Oh.

• 25:16Hank Green?

  Or, or alternate, you create a lending library.

• 25:21John Green?

  Hmm, like with your school, fellow schoolkids or whatever?

• 25:24Hank Green?

  With your fellow nerds, I assume.

• 25:26John Green?

  Well, Hank, I think that Sylvie's parents had Sylvie write this email to us in the hopes that we would say exactly that, like, oh, you gotta give them away, Sylvie, nothing lasts forever, you gotta let go. You know, if you, if you love something, let it go and let it have another life with another person. No, Sylvie, hoard your books. That's my advice. Keep all your books. The books that I have from when I was a child are absolute treasures to me and I can't get rid of any of them and I beg my kids to read them and they don't. And, and yet I still can't get rid of them. Hoard, hoard, hold on to them, Sylvie, hold on to every single last one of them, cling to them as if they were life rafts and you were in a vast and empty ocean.

• 26:12Hank Green?

  Sylvie will be the dragon of the book world, just poised atop a mountain of graphic novels, glistening claws, teeth dripping with ink, just murdering anyone who approaches.

• 26:27John Green?

  That's right, Sylvie. That's what we're dreaming for you, is that one day you'll have a vast adult library that goes all the way up from when you were reading, like, Cat Kid Comic Club, all the way until you started reading, I don't know, Watchmen and Mouse.

• 26:42Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:44John Green?

  And you'll have the greatest graphic novel collection on earth.

• 26:49Hank Green?

  But no one, no one shall approach. It'll be, there'll be zines in there.

• 26:54John Green?

  Tons of zines.

• 26:55Hank Green?

  From all corners of the earth.

• 26:57John Green?

  Sylvie, when you're 16, you're gonna get so into zines.

• 27:00Hank Green?

  It's gonna be, it's gonna be weird manga, that kind, the kind, the kind that's not even that interesting. Where like, bad stuff is happening to people, but not in any kind of unusual way.

• 27:13John Green?

  Just the everyday misfortunes.

• 27:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, I've read a couple of those and I'm like, why am I doing this?

• 27:18John Green?

  That actually reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the everyday misfortunes. The everyday misfortunes, they're right around the corner.

• 27:25Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Sylvie's Hoard. Sylvie's Hoard, stay back. No, do not approach. None shall enter, none shall leave. If you come in, you cannot go away. I will turn you into books.

• 27:40John Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Troye Sivan. Troye Sivan.

• 27:46John Green?

  He's handsome.

• 27:50Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by the state of Florida. The state of Florida just sort of wiggling off at the bottom there.

• 27:59John Green?

  I think an alternate name for the state of Florida is Florida. There's less and less of it each year.

• 28:08Hank Green?

  So we're gonna have to learn to share, right?

• 28:11John Green?

  Right?

• 28:12Hank Green?

  Right?

• 28:13John Green?

  Right?

• 28:14Hank Green?

  Sell their houses to who, Ben? Aquaman?

• 28:22Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. The things that you want in your closet are the things that when you open your closet, you think this is gonna look good and be easy. And it's gonna take care of itself. And I'm not really gonna have to worry about what pants or shoes I'm gonna wear with this. It's just gonna look good. I'm gonna look put together. And Quince specializes in finding that kind of thing to sell on their website. They focus on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold, Italian leather, all timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become every Everyday favorites long after the holidays. Their cashmere sweaters start at $60 and everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut the middlemen out so that you can

• 29:06Hank Green?

  get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. And when it comes to gifting, Quince actually has a lot more than clothing. You've got fine jewelry, you've got leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everybody on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Dear Hank of John, because that's a good way to support the show. This episode of Dear Hank of John is brought to you by Factor.

• 29:45Hank Green?

  There's so many meals that we have to work on and enjoy this holiday season, and that's exciting. We get to have these big, important meals, but also there's a bunch of other meals that have to get done in addition to them. And let's be honest, if you're me and there's no factory meals in the fridge, some of those meals are gonna be leftover Halloween candy. There's a lot going on, and that can make it hard to eat well. So, bring Factor into your life. Factor is made with good, high-quality ingredients, and these meals are ready in two minutes, whether it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping. There's no prep, there's no cleanup, there's also no effort. Occasionally, I'll have like an extra Factor meal in the fridge, and I'll realize, I can feed this to my child. It's good for him.

• 30:29Hank Green?

  And like, then I don't have to cook for either of us. Factor has heart-smart options, like the Green Goddess Barimundi with tomato, rice, peas, kale, and green beans, or the enchilada-style chicken and sweet potatoes. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber-packed fruits and veggies, and healthy fats. You can try them out, your heart and your taste buds will be happy with you. 97% of Factor users agree that Factor meals help them live a more nutritious life. So yeah, Factor supports your everyday health and your long-term health. Let's eat real. Head to factormeals.com/dearthank50off and use the code DEARHANK50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That's code DEARHANK50OFF at factormeals.com.

• 31:13Hank Green?

  Dear Hank, five-zero-off, at factormeals.com. See the website for more details.

• 31:19John Green?

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

• 32:02John Green?

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

• 32:46John Green?

  We got another question from Scott, who writes, "Dear John and Hank, what's the difference between a business that gives 100% of its profit away and a nonprofit? Best, Scott."

• 32:57Hank Green?

  What a good question that we had to figure out the answer to on the fly.

• 33:02John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also have been asked this question before, but as far as I can understand it, Scott, a business that gives 100% of its profit to charity funds good work, and a charity does good work.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  Exactly. This took me a while to figure out. I was like, why can't we just turn Good Store into a charity? And they were like, because it doesn't do charity stuff.

• 33:24John Green?

  Right. It does selling tea and coffee and soap and undies.

• 33:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, there is like a buzzy line there where, you know, like the Arts Community Center in Missoula puts on shows. Like they have comedians come into town and that helps to fund the... The community center, but that's not like, that's like what a comedy club does and a comedy club is a business. And so they have to like, but the way that they do that is that the shows are run by an external organization that then pays for the space and that money goes to the budget of the comedy club or of the community center. And that, you know, like, but like, the majority of the work that they do is they help, they like, provide services for all the people of Missoula to like, learn how to do art and hang out.

• 34:13Hank Green?

  And so they're doing that work. Whereas the majority of the work that Good Store does is just selling, it's like e-commerce. That's all, that's really all we do. And then we give all that money away. So we have to pay taxes. Like, a big thing there is like, what you, what you don't want is for a company to pretend that they're not a company, so they don't have to pay taxes. And Good Store still has to pay taxes.

• 34:32John Green?

  That's the important thing to understand. That's the big difference is, is the tax exempt status.

• 34:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:39John Green?

  But we set up Good Store, which by the way, you can visit good.store and solve all your holiday needs. But we set up Good Store with the idea of funding in a long-term, open-ended way, impoverished healthcare systems. And so the idea is to provide recurring, ongoing, long-term revenue to those healthcare systems.

• 34:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:59John Green?

  And it's going great so far. We've raised 1.25 million dollars this year.

• 35:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:06John Green?

  But I think we'll probably get to 1.5 before the year is over. That's my hope anyway.

• 35:09Hank Green?

  Yeah. Which is a little smaller than last year. And we are, you know, like, the balance of that. And I think that the big reason is that I didn't do the cancer socks, which was a huge thing last year.

• 35:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Hank Green?

  That I did during chemo.

• 35:26John Green?

  Right.

• 35:26Hank Green?

  And, but I think that like, the other parts of the business are growing and that it's definitely sustainable and cool. And we just have to figure out the right way.

• 35:34John Green?

  We have to figure out how to get it bigger.

• 35:37Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I also want to figure out how to not have it be smaller. Because that's always hard when a business is smaller one year than it was the

• 35:46John Green?

  We have to make it bigger specifically so that it doesn't become smaller.

• 35:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Hank Green?

  Yeah. Which we have a bunch of ideas for, but like, we don't know if they're gonna work.

• 35:57John Green?

  Yeah, and we've struggled to scale Good Store at the rate that we thought we could scale it. Like, we've struggled to scale it outside of Nerd Fight Area. So one of the reasons we're giving away less money this year is because we spent money on paid advertising, which is becoming a better investment for us over time, but started out as a pretty-

• 36:13Hank Green?

  Pretty hard.

• 36:14John Green?

  Pretty hard. Lot of money per, per customer acquisition, as they say.

• 36:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, we have a significant CAC.

• 36:22John Green?

  That's the customer acquisition cost, to be clear.

• 36:26John Green?

  I try not to ever use those words, those shortened words. They're terrible.

• 36:32Hank Green?

  It's so bad.

• 36:33John Green?

  But anyway, we're, we're making progress on, on the CAC front and we're also making progress on other fronts. So we're hopeful that Good Store, and Good Store's had a pretty good holiday season, which I have to say is a massive relief.

• 36:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:46John Green?

  But we could still have a better holiday season if you go to Good dot store today.

• 36:50Hank Green?

  Thanks, I forgot that we can do that. There's so much good stuff. That's one of the reasons I think we're, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's sort of selling itself at the moment.

• 37:00John Green?

  Yeah, the coffee and tea especially have such, and the soap all have such high customer retention because people get it and it's really good and they like it and so they keep getting it. All right, Hank, we have to answer one more question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. This question's from Carmen, who writes, "Hello, Green Brothers. I'll cut right to the chase. In episode 400 at 13 minutes, 17 seconds while talking about a dead author, Hank says, 'Well, he's dead, so he's the same age as all the other dead people. Isn't that how it works? And is that how it works? You've become an ageless object in the form of a body for the rest of eternity? Or are you frozen at the age you died? Or do you age continuously as time goes on? Time is weird and I'm afraid of dying. Ticking time bomb, Carmen."

• 37:36Hank Green?

  Ooh, I think I'm right. All the dead people are the same age.

• 37:42John Green?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 37:44Hank Green?

  Are they zero or are they some like?

• 37:47John Green?

  No, they're not an age on our um, on our spectrum.

• 37:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:52John Green?

  They're a different age.

• 37:54Hank Green?

  It's not like a number, it's a different thing.

• 37:57John Green?

  But I do think, I think of them, and I know that that you're not gonna like this, but there's a hundred twenty billion people of whom about a hundred twelve billion are dead.

• 38:06Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 38:07John Green?

  There's like, what does that mean? Like about twenty two dead people for each of us living people.

• 38:13Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:14John Green?

  And they uh, I think of it as as them. I mean, we inherited their world in on every level, right?

• 38:23Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 38:23John Green?

  Even though the majority of them died before the age of fifteen years old, they still contributed through their love and being loved to the world that we share now. Like they loved us up into the world, like literally and figuratively. And I think of them as like, kind of trying to hold us together.

• 38:42Hank Green?

  Yeah. You know how I think of them, John?

• 38:46Hank Green?

  I think of them as all.

• 38:47John Green?

  What? As a bunch of femurs?

• 38:50Hank Green?

  I thought you said beavers. And I was like, no, but that's awesome. Maybe I should.

• 38:54John Green?

  Yeah, just building dams for us.

• 38:57Hank Green?

  I just wanna imagine all the dead people as beavers, like the cutest beavers.

• 39:02John Green?

  That that is a little weird when I think of my grandma as a beaver.

• 39:04Hank Green?

  It's a hundred and twelve billion beavers. Yeah. Playing in.

• 39:10John Green?

  No, but how?

• 39:10Hank Green?

  The stream of time.

• 39:12John Green?

  How do you seriously think of them?

• 39:13Hank Green?

  I think of them as all of the words.

• 39:16John Green?

  Hmm, all the words together.

• 39:19Hank Green?

  I think of them, I think of the words. And I think these words were not made by any person, like the words that we use were not made like no word, no one word was made by any one person, though a couple were.

• 39:32John Green?

  Except for Shakespeare.

• 39:33Hank Green?

  Shakespeare's got a bunch of twists.

• 39:34John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But other than that.

• 39:36Hank Green?

  But but then we like, you know, we took those and we kept on messing around with them, even Shakespeare's.

• 39:41John Green?

  Um, right.

• 39:42Hank Green?

  And we will continue to to mess around with them. And the thing that is communication and the the tremendous number of words that we get in all of the different languages that that then get shared between languages.

• 39:58Hank Green?

  Is how we do the thing that is the most human thing, which is put ideas into each other's heads and put stories into each other's heads. And, uh, and so without, and like, there was a time when there weren't very many words. And so we were less good at that. And now there's just like more and more words. And those are-

• 40:15John Green?

  Well, there's both more words and there's fewer words in the sense that there are fewer languages.

• 40:20Hank Green?

  That's true. It's true, but in like-

• 40:22John Green?

  There's fewer words.

• 40:23Hank Green?

  In my, it like, in, in my communication, I just think about like the ghost of all of the people and all of the things that I say.

• 40:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Hank Green?

  Cause like, not like, I didn't come up with these words.

• 40:34John Green?

  No, they, they brought the language to you and then you inherited it and did what you could with it and added your little bit. It's a little bit like the world's largest ball of paint, right? Everybody gets to add their own layer and your layer affects the next layer. But it's not like, uh, your layer is by any means the last or most important layer.

• 40:51Hank Green?

  Yeah. And I, I extra like this because like words aren't a thing that exists. They're just like-

• 40:56John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Hank Green?

  Breath.

• 40:59John Green?

  Yeah. Anyway, that brings me to, uh, AFC Wimbledon news. America's favorite fourth tier English soccer team, which is made ultimately out of language, just like the rest of us.

• 41:12Hank Green?

  And ideas.

• 41:14John Green?

  AFC Wimbledon played Accrington Stanley during the week, Hank. I was actually at the Partners in Health, uh, Board of Trustees meeting and rather heroically chose not to stream the match, um, during that meeting. And then it was feeling really good about that decision in the 75th minute because we were down 2-0. And I get little updates on my phone, so I would glance down at my phone and see, oh God, we've given up another goal.

• 41:36Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 41:37John Green?

  And I was like, well, what a perfect game not to watch. And then in the 89th minute, Alistair Smith scored a goal and I was like, well, but probably not, right? And then in the last kick of the game, 97 minutes in, James Tilly with an outside the box banger, 2-2 draw. Beautiful come from behind tie. The second most glorious result of them all, Hank, a draw. That's right. We tied Accrington Stanley. Um, we're currently eighth in the League Two table, but we still have a game in hand. So theoretically we could be good enough to get into the playoffs if we were to win that extra game that we have. And I don't know. I mean, it's only about a third of the way through the season.

• 42:15Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:16John Green?

  We look good.

• 42:18Hank Green?

  Well, I feel like a third of the way through the season is weird to be a weird time to be talking about the playoffs. Am I confused?

• 42:23John Green?

  I know, but I can't, I can't resist myself. I can't hold back in hope. Hope is the thing that springs eternal. I, I've been signing my name over and over again, as you may know, during these live streams over at John's channel.

• 42:37Hank Green?

  That's you.

• 42:37John Green?

  And we're taking all the money and giving that we get from like super chats and member memberships and everything. And giving it to AFC Wimbledon's Players Fund.

• 42:46Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 42:48John Green?

  And I got to call the Director of Football for AFC Wimbledon, Craig Cope, and tell him that in January, he's going to get to buy, I don't know, at least two thirds of a player as a result of this ridiculous project.

• 43:06Hank Green?

  That's wild.

• 43:07John Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Hank Green?

  I cannot believe that.

• 43:08John Green?

  And he was like, are you serious? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, I'll tell you what, I've worked at a lot of football clubs and that just doesn't happen elsewhere.

• 43:18Hank Green?

  Oh, man. I was, I was talking to my Uber driver when I was in California and he, he was, you know, been in America for a few years. And he was telling me his impressions of America. And he said, one thing about America is that there are a lot of rich people. And I was like, yeah, it's weird.

• 43:38John Green?

  It's true.

• 43:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, like, it's like, not most of us, but they're like, there's a lot of them.

• 43:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Hank Green?

  They're out there.

• 43:47John Green?

  What does that have to do with me? I would, are you saying?

• 43:49Hank Green?

  I'm just saying, John, we gotta find them for AFC Wimbledon and also Partners in Health.

• 43:55John Green?

  Mostly, mostly for reducing the burden of maternal mortality in the world, not mostly for fourth tier English soccer. But I did decide I wanted to have one silly project this year.

• 44:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:08John Green?

  And that's the silly project. And it's, it's been really fun.

• 44:12Hank Green?

  Good. I believe it. It looks really fun and I'm happy.

• 44:14John Green?

  You can check it out at youtube.com slash, I don't know, just go to YouTube and type in John's channel.

• 44:20Hank Green?

  That you're not gonna have a hard time finding it unless you're that person who's never seen us before, in which case, don't do it.

• 44:27John Green?

  Lydia, I believe her name.

• 44:28Hank Green?

  Lydia, stay off of YouTube.

• 44:31John Green?

  What's the news from Mars?

• 44:32Hank Green?

  In News from Mars, Curiosity, in its 12th year traveling across the surface of Mars, has just sent us a 360 view of the area that it is with all these broken puzzle pieces of rocks that are just very cool and weird. And it has also found some of these weird pure sulfur rocks that we have been, I think that perseverance, I'm not entirely sure, I should have done more research here, but I think that perseverance found similar rocks, like when they got crushed and then you could like see them behind. And we find this very interesting because here on Earth, oftentimes, these like crystals of pure sulfur come from hot springs and hot springs.

• 45:14John Green?

  Hot springs are where life comes.

• 45:15Hank Green?

  Are a very lifey kinda place.

• 45:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Hank Green?

  Got a lot of different ways for life to happen in hot springs. You got a lot of energy gradients, you got a lot of chemical gradients going on, you got a lot of water, obviously.

• 45:28John Green?

  It would be under the ground, right?

• 45:30Hank Green?

  What?

• 45:31John Green?

  It would be under the ground, right?

• 45:33Hank Green?

  The life?

• 45:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Hank Green?

  Could be, or it could be at the, at the vent. So if it was in a lake.

• 45:38John Green?

  Oh.

• 45:39Hank Green?

  And the hot spring was under the water or in an ocean, like a hydrothermal vent situation?

• 45:44John Green?

  No, I'm saying today, today's life on Mars.

• 45:47Hank Green?

  Oh, today's life on Mars, look, it's possible. There's still geologic heat. There's still like, the most recent eruption of Olympus Mons was a long time ago, but not like billions of years ago. So there's still, there's still magma and lava and heat and like stuff going around inside of Mars. It just is a lot more, uh, like a lot more sort of locked in than us. It doesn't have, than us, doesn't have plate tectonics.

• 46:15John Green?

  In the US, also than the US, both.

• 46:18Hank Green?

  We have Yellowstone, I guess. It's pretty weird that I said the US when I meant Earth. But then I tried to pass it off that I was just spelling us.

• 46:26John Green?

  Yeah, it wouldn't seem that weird to that Australian guy. Um, so if you dug into, but we think if you dig into Mars, there's liquid water underneath the surface, right? Or do we not think that?

• 46:37Hank Green?

  Um, yeah, there are areas where we think there's liquid water under the surface. Yeah.

• 46:42John Green?

  And if those areas are near hot vents or vents of some kind.

• 46:47Hank Green?

  There could still be life. Yeah.

• 46:49John Green?

  There could still definitely be life. Like, that's the number one place where there would be life.

• 46:53Hank Green?

  That is the number one.

• 46:53John Green?

  There's life on Earth.

• 46:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That would be the number one place there would be life.

• 46:58John Green?

  Dude, can you imagine, like, you're up in, like, the Mars polar regions or whatever, and it's ice, and you're, like, digging down like an ice fisherman? This is how I imagine it happening. I know this is not how it actually happens. You're digging down like an ice fisherman, and you get, like, three feet down, and there's some liquid water, and you drop in your fishing pole, and you bring out a freaking Martian fish?

• 47:20Hank Green?

  That's not, that's not what we're talking about. Uh, I don't think that we're talking about fish, fish things.

• 47:27John Green?

  We don't know. We don't know what's down there.

• 47:28Hank Green?

  Look, we don't know. We don't know. Uh, what we see in, look, you're right, but what we see, it would be of, uh, like, not, obviously not as big of news, but it would be very big news if it was just little microbes. And that is much more likely. Though I'm telling you, these ice moons that have these giant subsurface.

• 47:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Hank Green?

  Oceans, I'm like, ah, there's gotta be, there's gotta be some big sea monsters down there. But maybe not.

• 47:59John Green?

  Maybe not, but maybe.

• 48:01Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 48:01John Green?

  This is so exciting to me, the idea that we're not even alone in the solar system, let alone in the universe.

• 48:08Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, ice moons are particularly weird because there's just no way to know for a long, a long time. Like, that's just.

• 48:15John Green?

  Well, it's gonna take us a while to get there.

• 48:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, and then to get through the ice is like more than we've ever dug on Earth.

• 48:22John Green?

  Right, right, but.

• 48:24Hank Green?

  I think. But we're working on ways. We got a new way of digging holes on Earth that's very exciting.

• 48:30John Green?

  Do we really? Is this a joke?

• 48:31Hank Green?

  No.

• 48:33John Green?

  Are you setting me up for, like, a dad's joke, where you're like, da-dum-pum?

• 48:37Hank Green?

  No, the uh, there's a lot of uh, excitement around geothermal power right now. And so they're trying to think of different ways to get to the heat that's down there. And one way that I think is pretty outlandish, but is real, is that instead of sending a drill down, which is pretty fast, but requires you to swap the drills out all the time. Because the drill bit gets, and it takes forever to get the drill bit up and then put it back in. And then you, it, so like, that's the thing that slows down drilling. Instead of using a drill bit, you use a laser. And you just, you just like with a huge amount of electricity, uh, just burn away the ground.

• 49:18Hank Green?

  And then the ground becomes gas and it just flows up out of the hole. So it's slower per minute, the thing is in the ground. But you can potentially go way deeper and you never have to replace the drill head. So if that was, if that's a technology that actually like gets on a learning curve and, and like gets way cheaper over time. And we've sort of figured out how to do it well with a compact solution. That's the kind of thing you could send to Enceladus and drill through the ice. But like, also there's the problem of.

• 49:50Hank Green?

  Do we want to?

• 49:50John Green?

  Getting there.

• 49:51Hank Green?

  Do we, getting there? Do we want to do that? Do we want to upset an ecosystem that might be down there? Like, how do you do that in a way that's ethical?

• 50:00Hank Green?

  Also, what happens when you blow through it? Does it just like create a volcano that then you can't actually explore through et cetera?

• 50:07John Green?

  I'm just going to tell you right now, if we can do it, we're going to do it and we're going to find a way to justify it.

• 50:13John Green?

  Not to be too negative on humans, but like, I mean, raccoons would do the same thing if you gave them a space program, but we're going to find a way to justify it if we can do it.

• 50:21Hank Green?

  Oh, man, raccoons would be so much better at space than us because they're little.

• 50:25John Green?

  I know. This is your main contention about what's wrong with humans is that we're too physically large.

• 50:29Hank Green?

  That's why raccoons are going to do so much better than us. Like they're going to be way more reckless, but they're going to have a smaller impact per raccoon.

• 50:37John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:40John Green?

  Well, I for one, welcome our Raccoon Overlords, and I'm grateful to you for podding with me here at the tail end of the human era.

• 50:47Hank Green?

  They're also so much cuter than us.

• 50:49John Green?

  I don't know about that.

• 50:50Hank Green?

  You can email us at [email protected]. Thank you to everybody who sends us your questions. We do find them extremely enjoyable. This episode is edited by Linus Obenhouse. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosyana Halsrohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant, returning from maternity leave, Vista Boogie Chuck Rivardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gonorola. And as they say in our hometown.

• 51:17John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.