407: Concepts of a Bubble

Is it socially appropriate to cover my ears and go “ahhhhhh?” Where did all the water on Mars go? How do I deal with friends who disrespect my favorite singer? Why are there perfectly uniform bubbles in my soap? Why don’t people just take the bribe and not do the corruption? Should we abandon social media platforms? …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?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know what the mermaid wore to her math class?

• 0:25John Green?

  No.

• 0:25Hank Green?

  Well, how about this one? An algae bra.

• 0:28John Green?

  Oh, I find that problematic.

• 0:30Hank Green?

  Is it?

• 0:32John Green?

  I don't know. I mean, just, just-

• 0:33Hank Green?

  Well, they wear seashell bras, so that's normal. They often wear bras made from sea life.

• 0:39John Green?

  I'm not going to acknowledge anything further about the joke, but I should acknowledge that there's quite a lot of work happening upstairs in my home, and so-

• 0:47Hank Green?

  Some banging may occur.

• 0:48John Green?

  You're gonna hear a lot of banging.

• 0:50Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 0:50John Green?

  Or maybe not.

• 0:51Hank Green?

  You never know with these modern setups. That's right.

• 0:54John Green?

  That's very true. That's very true. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

• 0:57Hank Green?

  Oh, we're gonna get right into it? We don't want to talk about the state of things?

• 1:00John Green?

  I don't want to talk about how I'm doing. I want to answer this question from Mel.

• 1:04Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 1:05John Green?

  This first question comes from Mel, who writes, "Hi, is it socially appropriate to cover my ears and go, 'Haaah'?" Yes, Mel, it is. Next question.

• 1:14Hank Green?

  In what circumstan- does Mel have any more information about this?

• 1:18John Green?

  Oh, yeah. I just think in all circumstances it's currently allowable to cover your ears and go-

• 1:23Hank Green?

  Aaaaaah!

• 1:24John Green?

  Yeah. I do- this is, this is the one I do. I go, "Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo."

• 1:27Hank Green?

  He does do that. He's not- he's not making that up.

• 1:30John Green?

  Yeah, that's the, that's the sound I make.

• 1:32Hank Green?

  It's like, almost like a tic. It's usually as a joke. You're like, "Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo." I don't want to hear about it.

• 1:37John Green?

  I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear about it. I genuinely, and I say this with love, can't take on anything else right now, so I don't want to hear about it.

• 1:47Hank Green?

  I was writing an email yesterday and I almost put that at the end. I almost was like, "And by the way, if you might be coming to me soon with something, just don't. Just, just let's pause. That one, we should pause."

• 2:03John Green?

  Yeah. Uh.

• 2:05Hank Green?

  But I did it, John.

• 2:06John Green?

  That was heroic of you. That was heroic of you not to confess your current state of affairs. Let's answer this next question from Michelle who writes, Dear John and Hank, where did all the water on Mars go and why did it leave confused and a little bit worried about Earth, Michelle?

• 2:21Hank Green?

  Ooh, where did all the water on Mars go? Well, Mars has a couple of things not going for it. Earth has a couple of things going for it. We have a magnetic field that protects us from the radiation from the sun. We have more gravity, which also matters. We're closer to the sun, so the water is more likely to be doing all kinds of weird stuff, though you might think that it would evaporate more. But, and it indeed does. But the water on Mars, what we think happened is all the water on surface, on the surface, it was cold, but it can still sublime away because there's no atmosphere there. There's very little stuff in the air. And so

• 2:59Hank Green?

  that low pressure can just suck water vapor off of ice. And then that can be, I think, over time ionized and then basically blown away by the solar wind.

• 3:13John Green?

  Wow. So it just got, it got blown away by the wind?

• 3:15Hank Green?

  Well, not the wind, not like normal wind. I need you to be clear that this is not like...

• 3:19John Green?

  I understand. It's solar wind. Let me ask you a question about our magnetic field, since I just have learned that it's extremely important to our ability to continue being a going concern.

• 3:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:30John Green?

  Is that a forever thing? Are we gonna have a magnetic field forever?

• 3:33Hank Green?

  Magnetic field is a forever thing. There are times when it destabilizes.

• 3:38John Green?

  We're never gonna die. We'll always be here.

• 3:42Hank Green?

  When I say a forever thing, there is like a, there is an end to the Earth and you're well aware of that. But there are also times when the magnetic field can destabilize a little bit, which isn't great.

• 3:51John Green?

  Yeah. Has it destabilized in the last three weeks?

• 3:55Hank Green?

  Uh, not as far as I know, John. I haven't really been paying attention to the magnetic field news.

• 4:00John Green?

  So that's more of a, more of an internal experience than, than a, than an external one. Related question, since you brought up gravity, has gravity intensified lately? Because I've found it harder and harder to get out of bed.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  Feeling awful heavy. Uh, no, gravity appears to be the same, uh, really, really difficult to affect. We do blast some earth off of earth at a very slow rate. Also, there's always new earth coming to earth, which is wild. You know, we get meteorites and, and this is space dust. Uh, and so that's, that's cool. There's more earth being added and we lose earth, mostly not by launching it into space. We do lose a little bit of earth that way. Mostly we lose earth by, uh, it being just like on Mars, blown away a little bit, but it's just much easier for it to get stripped away on Mars, which used to have a magnetic field, but then lost it as it, as it cooled.

• 4:52John Green?

  But we won't lose ours.

• 4:54Hank Green?

  No, I don't think that there is a, a manageable time scale on which our magnetic field will go away. Our next question comes from Madison, who asks, dear Hank and John, a lot of my friends dislike Taylor Swift, and I'm a huge Swiftie. Sometimes they talk about how annoying and terrible her songs are.

• 5:09John Green?

  No.

• 5:10Hank Green?

  I still want to be friends with these people, but it's a little hard to listen to them disrespect my favorite singer ever. Please help. Not the capital of Wisconsin, Madison. Thanks for the clarification.

• 5:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Hank Green?

  Though I'm sure the capital of Wisconsin is a big Swiftie.

• 5:22John Green?

  Yeah, and probably suffers from other state capitals not getting it, you know?

• 5:27Hank Green?

  On the list of state capitals, that probably is like, uh, really with it, despite the fact that a lot of its peers are not. I think Madison's pretty up there.

• 5:37John Green?

  Oh yeah. Let's talk about the least hip state capital.

• 5:41Hank Green?

  Hmm, gotta be Tulsa.

• 5:44John Green?

  I don't know. Could be Pierre, South Dakota.

• 5:47Hank Green?

  Good point.

• 5:48John Green?

  What's Maine's? It's not Portland. It's something weird.

• 5:52Hank Green?

  Maine, uh, uh, it's, it's not, not Mott-Pelea, because that's Vermont.

• 5:58John Green?

  I mean, Montpelier is cool only because it's in, only because it's in Vermont. Augusta, Augusta, Maine, I bet is not a Swifty with its 18,899 people.

• 6:10Hank Green?

  You know who I don't trust at all is Tallahassee.

• 6:13John Green?

  Well.

• 6:14Hank Green?

  You never know what they're gonna, you never know what they're gonna do.

• 6:16John Green?

  No, I mean, Hank and I, I was just in Orlando giving a speech and I got to see my old friends who still live in Orlando and it's such a different city now.

• 6:26Hank Green?

  It is, yeah.

• 6:27John Green?

  But I still hate it so much.

• 6:32John Green?

  I can't help myself.

• 6:35Hank Green?

  I have heard that it is almost like less fun.

• 6:38John Green?

  No, no, no, it's really cool. Actually, like they, this, at least the Performing Arts Center I was at was very cool. I think there's a lot to recommend Orlando. I think it has, it has an MLS team, you know?

• 6:47Hank Green?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 6:48John Green?

  Look, I live in Indianapolis. I'm not in a position to look down on anybody.

• 6:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:52John Green?

  Right? Like geographically. Orlando doesn't have any topography, but at least it's warm sometimes.

• 6:59Hank Green?

  Yeah. I think that if I, if I was gonna have a state capital, watch my child.

• 7:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Hank Green?

  Like as a, like, you know, even, even for like a week.

• 7:08John Green?

  Not Tallahassee, that's for sure.

• 7:13John Green?

  No.

• 7:14Hank Green?

  I, I think, I think Madison might be up there.

• 7:17John Green?

  No.

• 7:17Hank Green?

  I know Helena wouldn't be.

• 7:19John Green?

  No, not Helena.

• 7:20Hank Green?

  Helena, Helena, Helena would like do a great job until Helena fell asleep.

• 7:25John Green?

  I might trust Indianapolis.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, strong, steady. Is Indianapolis the capital of Indiana?

• 7:32John Green?

  It is. It is. It's a great, great point of pride for us. They drew a line down, down the vertical of the state and then the horizontal of the state and looked for a river and there they made Indianapolis.

• 7:46Hank Green?

  That's amazing.

• 7:47John Green?

  It is a made from scratch city entirely because it is in the center of Indiana.

• 7:51Hank Green?

  Yeah. Missoula, Missoula had a real reason for being here.

• 7:56John Green?

  What is Missoula's reason for being?

• 7:58Hank Green?

  It's like where three rivers come together.

• 8:00John Green?

  Ah.

• 8:01Hank Green?

  You know?

• 8:02John Green?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 8:02Hank Green?

  Useful.

• 8:03John Green?

  Indianapolis has a river and everybody assumed it was navigable, but it turns out it's about six inches deep, so.

• 8:09Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, none of our rivers are navigable either, but they are useful for various reasons.

• 8:14John Green?

  We used to be the largest city in the world not on a navigable waterway.

• 8:18Hank Green?

  And then China happened.

• 8:21John Green?

  And Phoenix.

• 8:27John Green?

  So what was the question?

• 8:30Hank Green?

  Phoenix, was Phoenix a capital? What's the capital of Arizona?

• 8:34John Green?

  They don't have a capital. They've chosen to do without.

• 8:38Hank Green?

  They really don't like, they were like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know, is this worth it?

• 8:44John Green?

  Don't.

• 8:45Hank Green?

  Everybody, everybody wants to do the same thing. Our capital is the first letter in Arizona. The A.

• 8:55John Green?

  Our capital is the idea of dryness.

• 8:58Hank Green?

  Our capital is the way your nose feels.

• 9:00John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. You know how you have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning in order to exercise outside here in Arizona?

• 9:07Hank Green?

  That's our capital.

• 9:07John Green?

  That's our capital.

• 9:10Hank Green?

  The capital of Arizona is, is sand. I hate sand. It's coarse, gets everywhere.

• 9:17John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Sand is the most overrated of the major rocks.

• 9:23Hank Green?

  Uh, I think, I think, yeah, I think for sure. I mean, people love a sand. Uh, there's like, it's like one of the main attractions.

• 9:34John Green?

  They talk about white sand beaches being like above everything else.

• 9:38Hank Green?

  I mean, I'll tell you.

• 9:39John Green?

  You're just walking on tiny rocks.

• 9:40Hank Green?

  We have a lot of, we have a lot of actual rock beaches in Montana. Those are all of our beaches are, are real rocks. And I will say it's terrible.

• 9:49John Green?

  Now, let me push back against something that you just said.

• 9:52Hank Green?

  What?

• 9:53John Green?

  Which is that you have beaches.

• 9:56Hank Green?

  We call them beaches.

• 9:58John Green?

  You don't have a beach, Hank.

• 10:00Hank Green?

  And sometimes they are sandy, but they're always mixed together with, with large rocks.

• 10:05John Green?

  Yeah. Now, that's worse than a regular, than a, than a beautiful white sand beach in say a Cocoa Beach, Florida, or whatever. I'm trying to bring back the Floridians.

• 10:13Hank Green?

  Is famously a pebble beach.

• 10:15John Green?

  Yeah, that's okay. A pebble beach is all right. I, I'm not saying you can't have a rocky beach. You absolutely can. I'm just saying you can't have one in Montana.

• 10:24John Green?

  Dude, we landlocked.

• 10:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's like the, we have like river beaches and lake beaches.

• 10:28John Green?

  Oh, okay. Both the major kinds.

• 10:33John Green?

  Madison, you have to tell your friends not to yuck on your yums, man.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  I got, I don't know, yeah.

• 10:40John Green?

  It's, it's not their job to tell you that the thing you like sucks.

• 10:44Hank Green?

  But they're not necessarily saying it to Madison. They're saying it to each other. And this is, and it's like a strange.

• 10:51John Green?

  It's an important point.

• 10:52Hank Green?

  It's like a strange cultural signifier, too. It's like, like a group of people who likes to be mean about anything.

• 10:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Hank Green?

  That isn't like a, anything other than, it's not like a, a danger or like cruelty. It's Taylor Swift. She's just making music.

• 11:11John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Hank Green?

  She's a human being with opinions, but she's not like, trying to, she's just trying to bring people together, seems like.

• 11:19John Green?

  I think that is certainly her intention, but then also people are brought together by like being in opposition to stuff. I remember, look, I've never been Taylor Swift. Okay?

• 11:27Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:27John Green?

  But I do remember when people kind of define themselves either by liking my books or by disliking my books, especially young people. You know, it's an important thing when you're young to be able to identify by what you like, but also by what you don't like. And this is something I just had to get used to, that like, they weren't thinking about me as a person who wrote books. They were thinking about me as a social identifier, that you were either on this side of the camp or you were on that side of the camp. And if you liked John Green books, this meant X and Y and Z about you. And if you didn't like them, this meant A and B and C about you.

• 12:03Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 12:03John Green?

  And like.

• 12:04Hank Green?

  That's tricky if you're in that social situation where that's, because like it's an in-group, out-group identifier. And so if you are one of the people who like, like, you're just like, I, I don't feel like I can be a part of this group. So what you gotta do is you gotta do a, you gotta do a conversion. You gotta get in there. You gotta get one of them. You gotta get one of them, lock them in a car with you.

• 12:26John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Hank Green?

  Uh, and

• 12:28John Green?

  Play Tortured Poets Department, start to finish.

• 12:30Hank Green?

  Just be like, you're gonna like one of these songs.

• 12:33John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Hank Green?

  Or just like one song over and over again. You gotta get a good introduction Taylor song.

• 12:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Hank Green?

  And you gotta, you just gotta force it. You just gotta, you gotta make somebody love something they don't love. That's how it works.

• 12:43John Green?

  So here's my counter argument. I don't actually think they don't love Taylor Swift.

• 12:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:47John Green?

  I think they don't love the fan community around Taylor Swift. I think they don't love

• 12:51Hank Green?

  They don't identify with the vibes.

• 12:54John Green?

  They probably find aspects of Taylor Swift's public presence annoying or, or, or overbearing.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  There's an awful lot of Taylor Swift to not like any of it, but

• 13:04John Green?

  That's, that, that's what I would say is that like, I mean, Taylor Swift's a great songwriter objectively. It's like, it's like you can not like Billy Joel, but Billy Joel's a great songwriter.

• 13:16Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 13:18John Green?

  Anyway, we're moving on. Madison, you have our condolences.

• 13:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that that's the main thing. It just sounds hard.

• 13:24John Green?

  Yeah, that does, that doesn't sound easy.

• 13:26Hank Green?

  Sounds annoying, honestly, is how it sounds to me.

• 13:29John Green?

  Hank, I've got this question from Vivian that's gonna absolutely blow your mind.

• 13:32Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 13:34John Green?

  And I don't think you have an answer for it. I think Mr. Science Man is gonna be stumped.

• 13:37Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 13:39John Green?

  Hello, Vivian writes. I've recently noticed that in the soap dispensers at my school, all the bubbles are the exact same size. I'm not used to seeing uniform bubbles, so I was wondering why this happens, or for that matter, why bubbles in other solutions are often different sizes. I've attached a soap bubble picture for your reference, and this is a picture of Purell Healthy Soap. And if you zoom in, all the bubbles are the same dang size. And I don't mean like similar sized. I mean, they look to be uniform, like bubble wrap.

• 14:08Hank Green?

  Oh, I know exactly why this is happening.

• 14:11John Green?

  I don't believe you.

• 14:12Hank Green?

  I do. So the, so this is not the bubbles that are being formed as the soap is being dispensed, which is what I thought. This is bubbles that have formed on the surface of the Purell dispenser. And I, I, you know, when I say I know exactly why this happening, of course I do not know, but I have a strong theory. And it is that these bubbles are not forming on the surface spontaneously. There is a leak in the soap dispenser somewhere. Or when it is used, a little bit of air gets let into the soap dispenser.

• 14:46John Green?

  And it's the same amount every time.

• 14:48Hank Green?

  Air every time.

• 14:49John Green?

  It's the same amount of air every time.

• 14:52Hank Green?

  Yeah. So there's like some way that air is being introduced to the the soap bulb to the soap holder that is above the soap dispenser. And that way that it's being introduced is being introduced. And, you know, and I'm sure that there's like a different amount of atoms in each one, but it's very consistent.

• 15:12John Green?

  I just had a pretty good idea, I think.

• 15:15Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 15:16John Green?

  For I think I had a million dollar idea. I think I had a business idea.

• 15:19Hank Green?

  I have I had like three today. So hit me.

• 15:21John Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:22Hank Green?

  It's time for a million dollar idea. Another million dollar.

• 15:25John Green?

  Dollar idea. Hey.

• 15:26Hank Green?

  Oh, man, they made us stop doing that because people kept waking up. We had a segment years ago where I'd introduced a million dollar idea, but people didn't like it because it was too obnoxious.

• 15:37John Green?

  No, people like it when we're nice and calm, but still funny. But like, not so funny that they can't fall asleep.

• 15:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:43John Green?

  This is basically one of those weird sleep podcasts.

• 15:48Hank Green?

  Tell me if you're a weird sleep podcast listener.

• 15:51John Green?

  Oh, I, by the way, when I said weird sleep podcasts, I didn't mean that disparagingly. I am myself a weird sleep podcast listener. But here's my million dollar idea. I think it's so beautiful, the idea that the same bubble is made each time, that it's the same size of a bubble. And I love the idea of being able to sell such bubbles that are the exact same size as all the other bubbles. But this is why it's a million dollar idea. You sell the bubble, but you don't actually like send anybody a bubble because then it would it would burst, of course, right? Like, so you just you sell the concept of the bubble. Like you like, almost like how you buy a star, but you didn't really buy a star because stars aren't for sale. Like, stars don't know about private property. But but you can buy

• 16:34John Green?

  a star in the Milky Way galaxy for like 50 bucks or whatever. And that's a million dollar idea. Why not be able to buy a bubble that exists for only a transient moment in time?

• 16:43Hank Green?

  I have I have no idea what you're talking about.

• 16:46John Green?

  I'm talking about buying a bubble that's the same size as all the other bubbles. And you own that bubble.

• 16:52Hank Green?

  Like an NFT?

• 16:53John Green?

  But by the time the bubble would get to you, it would have disappeared anyway. So you never actually get sent anything, but you still owned the bubble. It's not quite an NFT for the record. That, that's a bad idea.

• 17:04Hank Green?

  Maybe it's non-fungible in that every bubble is different, but it's a non-fungible.

• 17:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Hank Green?

  It's an NFT T and the T stands for temporary.

• 17:13John Green?

  It's a non, it's a non-fungible temporary token, but you don't actually get a token.

• 17:18Hank Green?

  It's a, it's a, it's a non-fungible ephemeral.

• 17:21John Green?

  Non-fungible ephemerality, an NFE.

• 17:23Hank Green?

  A non-fungible ephemerality.

• 17:26John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Hank Green?

  And.

• 17:27John Green?

  What do you think?

• 17:28Hank Green?

  I like this. We should sell them during the project for awesome, which just happened.

• 17:33John Green?

  I think the project for awesome is over as this is being, as this is being aired.

• 17:36Hank Green?

  Yes, it is.

• 17:37John Green?

  Well, that was a great answer to the Purell question, Hank. I was expecting that to take longer, but it reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by Purell Soap. Purell Soap, when there's a slight leak in the soap, it leads to, yeah, it's a real sponsor.

• 17:50Hank Green?

  That's a real, that's a real company.

• 17:52John Green?

  Thanks for, uh, thanks for all your financial support and your frankly, uh, emotional support.

• 18:01John Green?

  I'm a big fan of your product.

• 18:04Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

• 18:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Hank Green?

  Making you immune to the noises that surround you since time immemorial.

• 18:18John Green?

  And of course today's podcast is brought to you by Taylor Swift, who brings great weather wherever she goes and, um, and, and is a fan of the pod as well as fanned by the pod.

• 18:27Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by the A in Arizona. It's the capital of Arizona.

• 18:33John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Hank Green?

  It's Phoenix.

• 18:36John Green?

  You know what? I just realized there's two As in Arizona.

• 18:40Hank Green?

  You don't know which one.

• 18:42John Green?

  Oh, you can't find out.

• 18:44Hank Green?

  They'd actually do it on both sides because it looks like the, a valley between mountains.

• 18:48John Green?

  It's like Schrödinger's capital, you know?

• 18:52John Green?

  It could be either of them, could be both, could be neither.

• 18:54Hank Green?

  I almost choked.

• 18:56John Green?

  It wasn't even a good joke, but I appreciate that I almost took you out.

• 19:01Hank Green?

  Cause it starts with the same noise as cat.

• 19:05John Green?

  All right, let's get to this question from Sarah, who says, "Hello, brothers. This question has been weighing on my mind off and on for several years now. Why don't people who are offered bribes just take the bribe and not do the corruption? I get it might be a moral issue, but is it illegal to just take a bribe and not do the corruption? What's the briber gonna do? Tell someone? I would look this up, but I have a job where there's a not impossible chance that someone could offer me a bribe, and I don't want that coming up in my search history lest I be accused and not even get 50 bucks out of it, hoping I can give you some Sarah Tonin." Oh, Sarah, I need it.

• 19:38Hank Green?

  Yeah, boy. You know, I'm not, I'm not really sure how bribes work. Have you ever been bribed, John, or attempted to be bribed? Have you ever bribed?

• 19:48John Green?

  No, no, I've never. Well, I think the Russian government technically attempted to bribe us, but we didn't really get the memo.

• 19:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, we missed out on it. They might yet come knocking.

• 19:57John Green?

  They might, but they were more trying to bribe us with our, like, they were more trying to get us to be quiet about certain issues that are important to the Russian government.

• 20:07Hank Green?

  More threatening, huh?

• 20:08John Green?

  Yeah, it was more of a threat than a bribe. I've never been bribed that I can think of.

• 20:12Hank Green?

  I don't think I've ever been bribed.

• 20:15John Green?

  But then again, would I confess to it?

• 20:17Hank Green?

  Good point.

• 20:18John Green?

  You know?

• 20:19Hank Green?

  Good point.

• 20:20John Green?

  So there's two reasons you, you, you get bribed, right? One is to do something, and then if you don't do the thing, generally, the person who's bribed you has some kind of power as well, right? Like, the power to shoot you, or the power to get you in trouble.

• 20:41Hank Green?

  Sometimes criminals. The other thing is that bribery...

• 20:44John Green?

  I would argue they're always criminals.

• 20:47Hank Green?

  Not, I mean, yes. In some circumstances, in some places in the world, bribery is like part of the... Structure of some systems and so

• 20:59John Green?

  Cost of doing business.

• 21:00Hank Green?

  You just do it and and like and oftentimes the sort of bribe and the result of the bribe happen very close to each other. So like

• 21:08John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Hank Green?

  Kind of immediately. It's like I like I need to be able to do this thing. And they're like, okay, yes, you can do this thing.

• 21:14John Green?

  Right.

• 21:14Hank Green?

  That's not tend to be how it works in the US. There is an amount of like,

• 21:18John Green?

  No, here the bribes are at much larger scale.

• 21:21Hank Green?

  They are. Many, many fewer, but larger amounts.

• 21:27John Green?

  I don't even know if there are that many fewer.

• 21:30Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 21:31John Green?

  Well, I had a friend from the Global South tell me once that they thought building permits were just like very advanced forms of bribes.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  And they, if you don't, if you aren't careful. So I imagine there's an amount of like, repeat business is valuable to the bribe taker.

• 21:49John Green?

  Oh, yeah, that's good.

• 21:50Hank Green?

  If you don't, if you, if you don't actually do the thing, then it's not going to not going to come back. Like maybe, you know, for like a building permit being a good example, like, you know, you're not going to know to bribe the guy unless he's taken some bribes before.

• 22:03John Green?

  Right.

• 22:04Hank Green?

  You're not going to do it if you didn't actually make the building permit happen faster.

• 22:09John Green?

  You're not going to, you're not going to go in for your second bribe unless the first bribe goes according to plan.

• 22:14Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 22:15John Green?

  And so if you're like a corrupt inspector or whatever,

• 22:20Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:20John Green?

  you, you've got to get a reputation and part of how you get the reputation is by doing the corruption.

• 22:26Hank Green?

  You have to do the yes.

• 22:27John Green?

  I like it. I like it. We're really thinking this through.

• 22:30Hank Green?

  Really thinking it through. It's a capitalist enterprise bribes. And so if the person doesn't make the money, you didn't actually provide the value. So you kind of, you kind of have to actually actually do the thing in order to be worth the bribe.

• 22:44John Green?

  What would anyone even bribe me about? You know, like, I'm gonna bribe you.

• 22:49Hank Green?

  I thought about like when people

• 22:50John Green?

  To make you say, I'll give you an example. I'm gonna bribe you to make you say that you like Carl's Jr. Burgers even though you don't. And that's called a brand deal. That exists.

• 22:59Hank Green?

  That's yeah. I was thinking about people who have like wanted me to promote them. As individuals before and

• 23:07John Green?

  But that's again, that's a brand deal.

• 23:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's a little different. I guess a brand deal that isn't disclosed is just a bribe.

• 23:14John Green?

  A brand deal that isn't disclosed is just a bribe. That's right. You you you take the money, you do the corruption. And you don't you don't reveal that you did the corruption.

• 23:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, especially with politics, like there are like there are like brand deals, which we do not, for clarity, take nor has ever anyone ever even offered us one, which makes me think, oh, okay, I've never had one offered to me.

• 23:39John Green?

  Yeah, I was offered one. I was offered to do a TikTok for a candidate for high office, not president, but but significant office. And it was a brand deal. They were going to pay me. And I was like, ah, the vibes feel off.

• 23:53Hank Green?

  Not only do I not want you to give me money for this, I would prefer you just never do that ever.

• 24:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Hank Green?

  It feels so it's not illegal, but like

• 24:05John Green?

  It's like buying an advertisement. It's the same thing as buying an advertisement.

• 24:08Hank Green?

  I know. How did we get into this business?

• 24:11John Green?

  I don't know, man. I have a lot of regrets. We said we should have CGP graded and made like one video every two years that doesn't have our face in it about postal codes.

• 24:21Hank Green?

  Oh, God, I mean, some days, some days, but then other days, I'm glad that we have the thing that we have.

• 24:26John Green?

  I love my job and I love our community, but I do not love the broader like, uh, social network of influencers.

• 24:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:34John Green?

  Is that fair?

• 24:35Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's fair. And it used to be that like I liked most of the people I met from the this world. And now I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 24:43John Green?

  Well, for one thing, we're in our 40s and they're all 12.

• 24:48John Green?

  So you shouldn't like them.

• 24:50Hank Green?

  I can still I enjoy hanging out with all kinds of different people.

• 24:56John Green?

  No, but like I have I have different values from like most most 23 year olds. Of course I do.

• 25:02Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 25:02John Green?

  Like I had different I have different values from my 23 year old self. Very different values, actually.

• 25:08Hank Green?

  But there is something to be said for the the fact that like early YouTube, that it was just like that. The audience was different because it was people who were like early adopters of a technology, which both selected for. People who are more likely to have like educated parents because they had high-speed internet before anyone else.

• 25:28John Green?

  Right.

• 25:28Hank Green?

  And also like were more likely to be like, I'd like to experience a social situation in which I am alone.

• 25:36John Green?

  Right.

• 25:37Hank Green?

  And now there's just like a lot of.

• 25:40John Green?

  Yeah, now it's everybody. But yeah, but what I'd say is that it's very easy to nostalgicize the early internet. And like the early internet had had a lot of problems, had all the same problems that the current internet does. It just had a very different scale.

• 25:53Hank Green?

  Does not have all the same.

• 25:54John Green?

  It's just on a different scale. It absolutely had like, it absolutely had political.

• 26:00Hank Green?

  I think that I think that at some point.

• 26:02John Green?

  Extremization and like polarization and all that stuff.

• 26:05Hank Green?

  But at a point, a difference in scale does become a different difference in kind.

• 26:10John Green?

  Well, I mean, the scale is very, very different, right? Like, um, yeah. It used to be that there were 42 people who worked at YouTube and I knew all of them. And there was a 0% chance that any of them were going to be in the Oval Office making policy pronouncements. And that's no longer the case.

• 26:34John Green?

  Okay.

• 26:35Hank Green?

  There was a question that was that touched on this. Do you want to do that one?

• 26:38John Green?

  Sure, if you want to.

• 26:39Hank Green?

  It's from Nicole, who asks, hi to both Greens. In light of certain events, I'm really questioning the platforms I use. I used to feel like at the end of the day, matters of social media weren't worth stressing about on a personal level, but I was wrong. So my question is, do we continue to use platforms owned by oligarchs in hopes of fighting misinformation? Or do we take our quote liberal beliefs to quote safer spaces like Blue Sky? I've found so many creators and small businesses that I love interacting through Instagram, but it doesn't feel right to be there anymore. Any and all thoughts appreciated. Stressed and depressed, Nicole.

• 27:16John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, there's two schools of thought here, or there's many schools of thought. There's the Daniel Biss school of thought, my friend, the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, who maintains that when you bring your bucket of clean water to the toxic soup of the internet and you tell yourself that you are going to make the water less toxic with your bucket of clean water, all you're actually doing is raising the level of the toxic soup.

• 27:38Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 27:39John Green?

  Because your water is getting mixed in with the piss and vinegar of the larger thing.

• 27:45Hank Green?

  I'm not sure that I think, and I might be wrong about this. I'm not sure that I feel that way necessarily about Instagram. Like, there's, so like, is Instagram a bad place to be because it is, has a negative overall effect on society? Or is Instagram a bad place to be because I just don't want to enrich the, like, the people who own Instagram? And those are like two, like, very different questions to me.

• 28:12John Green?

  I think it's pretty difficult. Look, if you can go to goodstore right now, you can have the rare commercial experience where you're not enriching a billionaire, but that's a pretty rare experience.

• 28:22Hank Green?

  Well, I don't think it's necessarily that it's like.

• 28:24John Green?

  You can get, I understand that not all billionaires are the same.

• 28:28Hank Green?

  There was, yeah, there was a time when it felt like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg, who knows? And now it's like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg does whatever he wants to get more power.

• 28:37John Green?

  He's a moth that flies to the light of power, which is the least interesting thing that you can be in this world.

• 28:42Hank Green?

  But, boy, is that all of them.

• 28:45John Green?

  Yeah, well, I don't think you can get that much power unless you're a moth that flies to the light of power for the sake of itself, rather than considering why you would want power. Because if you consider why you would want power, it turns out you don't want an infinite amount of it.

• 28:58Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 28:59John Green?

  And so the people who accrue a near infinite amount of it are the people who don't think very hard about why they want it so much, but instead are too busy focused on trying to get it. That's my theory, anyway. I guess, like, my counterargument to you, Hank, is that, like, yes, there are, there are, there are big differences. You know, there's a difference between somebody who spends $100 billion trying to alleviate poverty and somebody who spends $0 trying to alleviate poverty. And there's a very important difference. We should celebrate those differences where we see them, I think.

• 29:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:34John Green?

  I just think that it's really hard, like, I don't know who the owner of Blue Sky is going to end up being. I don't know what Blue Sky is going to end up doing in the world. Like, I empowered Twitter hugely at a time in my life where I thought Twitter was basically a net positive for humanity. And I could never have foreseen the Twitter of today, which is a, in the best case scenario, a toxic soup fueled entirely by obscene advertising, like literally obscene, you know?

• 30:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:05John Green?

  That's what it's become. And so, you know, that's not, that's not, that's not what I thought I was empowering when I empowered it. I think, I mean, I go back and forth on this, but I still, I still think that there are benefits to being in, in a space with like-minded people. I do not think that the internet exists to try to convince other people that they're wrong. I just don't. I don't, I don't think it works at that. I don't think it's good at that. I don't think in 280 character bits, we can argue our way into a more just or equitable society. I just don't because I've, I've been there for 20 years and I've seen it get worse, not better.

• 30:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. And like, the question is, would it have just gotten, would it, would it have gotten worse faster if people weren't doing the marketplace of ideas version of yelling at each other and, and seeing what works? But like, I don't know. The tools are so powerful that I don't know how to live in a world where they become less powerful. They're just like very, they're very, they're designed to be addictive and compelling.

• 31:13John Green?

  Whichever new one comes out, whatever its ownership structure, it's only going to work if it's addictive.

• 31:18Hank Green?

  Right. Yes. It cannot compete.

• 31:20John Green?

  Because we already have really addictive ones. So it has to be more addictive.

• 31:23Hank Green?

  More, yeah.

• 31:24John Green?

  It has to be better at capturing and fracturing your attention than whatever came before it.

• 31:30Hank Green?

  Or our defense mechanism somehow to kick in and be like, ugh. Like, that's how I feel on threads where I'm like, this is like, like, I just found myself watching a video of a person like spinning a top on a weird table for like a long time. And I don't like that was not

• 31:50John Green?

  Like a Beyblade?

• 31:51Hank Green?

  Yeah, but it was like a Beyblade, but it wasn't a Beyblade.

• 31:54John Green?

  Okay, because I'll watch competitive Beyblading all day.

• 31:57Hank Green?

  It was more boring than that. Um, and, uh, and, and almost like a lot of the content is so intentionally trying to lead me to keep watching for one more second.

• 32:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Hank Green?

  There's this guy who makes these videos that are like, he like does stencils, uh, on walls in his house. It's like, you know, he makes cool stuff, but the way that it works is that he's always almost showing you what it looks like, but stopping you from seeing it. And I'm like, this is manipulative, like, like, and, and the, but the only reason it's on my feed is because it's manipulative.

• 32:36John Green?

  Right.

• 32:36Hank Green?

  Ultimately, it's not his fault. It's the fault of the algorithm that are incentivizing him to make something that will keep me watching, but not because I'm enjoying it, because I just want to just show me the thing. And, uh, and, and like, do eventually, because this is how I have felt, like, I'm on Blue Sky and I'm like, this feels a little bit better because it doesn't feel as much like something that is just trying to suck me dry. Uh, it, it feels like it has a, like a lighter grip on me, which makes me feel better using it. And does that like, I will, I, there's this great video that I watched

• 33:19Hank Green?

  recently. I can't remember the name of the creator. Um, and, and she was talking about how she broke her social media addiction and it was by just deciding to never use anything that went on forever. So anything that kept going forever was not allowed.

• 33:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Hank Green?

  And that's everything. Like, that's, that's almost like there's, that thing happened where it used to be that like your feed would eventually be, be at the end of it, but like, that's the first thing they got rid of.

• 33:50John Green?

  Right.

• 33:50Hank Green?

  And, and so that's the thing that she was like, I will like, I've created a bunch of systems so that I can go to my favorite subreddits without them infinite scrolling. And I can do like, you know, I go to Wikipedia and I like read the top Wikipedia article of the day. I don't read anything that doesn't have a bottom. The New York Times has a bottom.

• 34:09John Green?

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's great advice. I can't follow it because I'm addicted to the internet.

• 34:15Hank Green?

  So, yeah, at the moment.

• 34:16John Green?

  I'm addicted to the scroll. I'm addicted to the, to the swipe.

• 34:20Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:20John Green?

  But.

• 34:21Hank Green?

  So there's, I mean, there's so many different things to consider. There's like the, the impact that the actual value you bring has, which is ultimately very small on an individual level. There's the, uh, there's the impact of like the cultural change, which is I think much bigger and something I worry a lot about. And then there's the impact on you as a person, like, a, and I think that if there is, that you have to consider the value being brought to you as well as the value that you individually bring.

• 34:47John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times, if you consider the value brought to you carefully, you come to the conclusion that there's not that much value.

• 34:55Hank Green?

  It actually can be negative. Yeah.

• 34:57John Green?

  Technology is really good at solving the problems that technology creates, right? It's a little bit like alcohol in that respect.

• 35:05John Green?

  And the issue with that, in my experience, is that like, say you're lonely. Well, there's like a solution to loneliness in your pocket, um, or a solution to boredom in your pocket.

• 35:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:15John Green?

  That is unbelievably good at solving for boredom and loneliness. Right? Like, the best thing ever, the best invention in the history of it, except that it makes loneliness worse.

• 35:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, people actually report less loneliness now, even though they spend more time alone, which is.

• 35:31John Green?

  And I think like experience.

• 35:33Hank Green?

  Amazing.

• 35:33John Green?

  A, a deeper kind of loneliness that's much more problematic for their overall mental health.

• 35:38Hank Green?

  They, they are, they do not experience less depression. They experience less, they report less loneliness.

• 35:42John Green?

  Yeah, and I'm sure like I always wanted to write for the Anthropocene Review to review of boredom. That was gonna begin boredom was because boredom doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. Unless you live in a world without social media. Like you do not have to, I don't have to be bored walking up the stairs. I can load Instagram and like walk up the stairs with entertainment at my, in my hand. And then, and that's in your ankle pays the price. My ankle pays the price. It's a beautiful metaphor that I still haven't fully recovered from. John twisted his ankle going down the stairs. I was going up the stairs, actually, it was more humiliating and I was looking at my phone, of course. What else are you gonna look at? The inside of your own brain.

• 36:25John Green?

  I usually just put a podcast on for the stairs. Yeah, sometimes I'll listen to the rest of history or something while, while walking up the stairs. But I need something, Hank, I can't like, can't make it all the way up the stairs with nothing. Yeah, that's the whole stairs. All right, Hank, we're gonna transition into the week's news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. But we're gonna transition with a question. Okay. From Shelby, who writes, Dear John and Hank. I know you sung the praises of the Wimbledon commentators in the past, but today is my first day watching a game on Don's TV and I must say I was not disappointed. They're delightful and made the viewing experience very enjoyable. Now Hank, one of the commentators, this guy Mikey T, he's one of those people who has a perfect memory.

• 37:05John Green?

  Okay. So he remembers, yeah, yeah, so he remembers every game Wimbledon have ever played. Both Wimbledon FC going back to 1887 or whatever, and AFC Wimbledon starting in 2002. And so he'll be like, of course, on April 11th in 2004, we were playing Charlton Town. And we won 4-1 with goals from this person, this person, this person and this person. And he can do that for any day, forever. That's wild. Shelby also says, I also must say, I was not disappointed by Joe Louis's thighs. One can only wonder. Whoever has been. One can only wonder why he opts to wear his shorts like that. What a guy, although if I had footballer thighs, I too would bear them more often.

• 37:49John Green?

  Question, I understand why we don't like the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes, obviously. But what is their problem with us? Their manager and players seem filled with malice for AFC Wimbledon, but like, why? It's not like we stole their team.

• 38:06Hank Green?

  What a fantastic metaphor for the whole situation.

• 38:11John Green?

  I know. I thought you might like that. I thought you might find that internet relevant.

• 38:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, you do something mean to someone and then it makes you hate them more because they hate you for it. You're like, I didn't even mean to make you mad. Why are you so mad at me?

• 38:25John Green?

  Yeah. Why are you being, all I ever did was not want to lose my football club.

• 38:32Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, I have a story, which is, I once watched, so I used to live in a house that was like three houses on one lot and were all ruined by the same landlord. And my landlord came over one day, he was doing yard work and the guy who rented the back house, my landlord asked him, he's like, hey, did you pull up those flowers that were in the back? And he was like, you mean the weeds? And my landlord was like, no, the flower, because my landlord used to live in this house for clarity. He's like, no, the flowers. And, and, and the guy was like, I pulled up some weeds. And my landlord said, well, those were the flowers that my wife and I planted from the seeds that were thrown at our wedding. And, and the guy said, well, now you're making me feel bad.

• 39:19John Green?

  You've told me that story so many times before, but it never stops being good because, because the villain is of course perceives themselves as the hero, as one must.

• 39:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:30John Green?

  Right? Like as, as one inevitably does. And so if you're in Milton Keynes, you see this football club that everybody has a soft spot for, that everybody's always making fun of you about. And you hate them because you hate them, because they're so self-satisfied, because they're, because honestly, probably partly because they've been so successful and you haven't been. You know, like when this all happened back in 2002, Milton Keynes were in the third tier of English football. 24 years later, they're in the fourth tier of English football. Like they haven't had a good run. We went from the ninth tier to the fourth tier. So we've had a really good run. So maybe that's part of it. But I also think there's an element of like, my, my, my enemy is my enemy.

• 40:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, oh, of course. If, if, yeah, if we're in a, if, there's no such thing as like a one-sided rivalry in sports.

• 40:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Hank Green?

  And if there was, you wouldn't like that.

• 40:22John Green?

  Generally, if someone hates you, there's a little part of you that hates them back, and you don't even know why.

• 40:26Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 40:26John Green?

  Like, there was a little part of me that hated the kids on Tumblr in 2014 who hated me, even though, like, they were just kids.

• 40:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:34John Green?

  You know, they're fine.

• 40:36Hank Green?

  Well, also a rivalry at some point.

• 40:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Hank Green?

  You want that. You want a rivalry.

• 40:41John Green?

  You want a rivalry. I, I, I think you probably want it to be slightly less intense than the rivalry between Wimbledon and Milton Keynes.

• 40:48Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:49John Green?

  Yeah, I, I do. I mean, I would like that. I don't, I, I can't see how it can get less intense because the feeling on our side is that they shouldn't exist.

• 40:59Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, that's, yeah. No, that is, now, now we're getting into some real, right, real, real, uh, deep, high conflict territory.

• 41:08John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard, it's a conflict that's hard to resolve. Um, anyway, Wimbledon played yesterday, Hank, as we're recording this, and they won 3-0.

• 41:18Hank Green?

  Nice.

• 41:19John Green?

  Against Crewe Alexandria, which again, seems like a made-up place.

• 41:23Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, and it's, they're, they're a rowing team, so they're not very good.

• 41:29John Green?

  Well, I felt, I have to say, I felt a little bit bad for Crewe Alexandria. They got a red card in like the 30th minute that was also a penalty, and it was maybe the softest red card I've ever seen, and I'm saying that as a Wimbledon fan.

• 41:41Hank Green?

  That's how I felt in the first half, like, the first, like, play of the Super Bowl was like a total botched call on the Eagles, and, and I was like, oh, come on!

• 41:50John Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Hank Green?

  Like, this is the Super Bowl, and the Eagles were like, no, it's no big deal, we'll figure it out.

• 41:54John Green?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, the Eagles turned out, they, they were able to overcome that obstacle just fine.

• 41:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:59John Green?

  And unfortunately for Crewe, they were not able to overcome the obstacle, and we scored three goals, one from our captain, Jake Reeves, and, uh, and then a third goal, uh, from the great Matty Stevens, who's now scored 19 goals this season.

• 42:13Hank Green?

  So we had a goal before the penalty?

• 42:16John Green?

  No, we had the penalty, then another goal from Matty Stevens and a goal from Jake Reeves.

• 42:20Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 42:20John Green?

  So it was a good performance, but all three of those goals came against 10 men. So maybe not that impressive. However, Wimbledon are up to fourth place in the League Two table. I got to see Wimbledon beat Bradford City a couple of weeks ago. I was in England with my friends. I wanted to take my closest friends from Indianapolis to England and show them the magic of AFC Wimbledon. And they really loved it. We got to hang out with Marcus Brown, the guy we helped sign, and also with Joe Lewis, another guy I helped sign. And we got to hang out with Jake Reeves, the captain of the football club. So it was a really fun time, got to meet with the manager. And AFC Wimbledon even brought me a bottle of champagne, which I appreciated and drank.

• 43:05Hank Green?

  Well, it's tight up at the top of the table, John.

• 43:07John Green?

  Very tight.

• 43:08Hank Green?

  Looking at the, looking at the points.

• 43:09John Green?

  Very tight.

• 43:10Hank Green?

  It's, it's within three for the top nine teams, except for the one, except for Walsall, who's in the lead. Despite the fact that they have not won a game in the last five games.

• 43:21John Green?

  No, Walsall haven't been playing very well, but they had such a big lead that it doesn't seem to matter much.

• 43:26Hank Green?

  Are they a recent arrival into this, this league?

• 43:31John Green?

  They're a big club. There's no reason why Walsall shouldn't be in League One. But we'll see. I'm very, we still have a game in hand over most of the teams around us. I feel really good about this season. It feels special. This feels like a special group of players. Most of all, I'm relieved not to be worrying about relegation.

• 43:47Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 43:48John Green?

  But yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's 16 games left to play, so that's a, a lot can happen in 16 games. But I've definitely got my tickets on April 18th in case something special happens.

• 43:57Hank Green?

  John, you know how you solve the rivalry with MK?

• 43:59John Green?

  How?

• 44:00Hank Green?

  You just eliminate them. You just, to the point that, that they're not even within two leagues of you.

• 44:09John Green?

  That is the hope.

• 44:11Hank Green?

  And then, and then you don't have to worry about all that tension.

• 44:13John Green?

  We don't ever, ever have to play them again. Wouldn't that be lovely? Indeed, if we get promoted this season, we won't have to play them next season because they're not going to get promoted because they aren't having a very good season. So. How do they like them apples?

• 44:28Hank Green?

  In the news from Mars, we're still, let's talk about water as we discussed from a question earlier. So two recent exciting results about Mars's water. The first is that scientists found evidence for clay materials on Mars's surface. Clay, probably one of the most underrated of the rocks. Scientists think that there was once a large body of water in the northern part of Mars, which is now mostly eroded, low-lying plains. The top of, like, the top half of Mars is like much lower down than the, like, in elevation. But there are also like mounds in that area and looking at data from different orbiters, scientists have been

• 45:13Hank Green?

  able to identify these layers of clay materials which would have formed when there was running water mixing with the rocks. The second thing comes from curiosity, which found, this is a rover, I don't feel like I had to explain that, but maybe I did, which found two sets of ancient wave ripples on Mars's surface in the Gale Crater. The ripples are evidence that there was some kind of standing water in the area. And they're under like two, they're a bit under two inches apart and around a quarter inch high. And based on those measurements, scientists can actually calculate that they are the result of an ancient lake that would have been about 6.5 feet deep in that area. Wouldn't have been able to tell you that we can figure that out by looking at ancient ripples in sand.

• 45:57John Green?

  Does this mean potentially that when we go to Mars, as we inevitably will before 2028, does this mean that when we go to Mars, we will potentially be able to throw pots from Martian clay?

• 46:10Hank Green?

  I bet we could not just throw pots. Like, I think that one of the things people really want to do is like build buildings with it because you need to figure that out. You need to be able to have structures and you don't want to have to bring them all with you.

• 46:23John Green?

  Yeah. So we could build some like clay homes that probably have pretty good radiation protection.

• 46:30Hank Green?

  That is also important. Yes. The thing about living on Mars is that it's going to be very underground, probably.

• 46:35John Green?

  Yeah. Well, the other thing about living on Mars is that it's not going to be something I have to worry about.

• 46:41Hank Green?

  That's right. I think that.

• 46:45Hank Green?

  There's a couple of things I know about Mars that I feel like everyone ignores. That just makes it way, way worse.

• 46:52John Green?

  Which are?

• 46:53Hank Green?

  Uh, I think the radiation. People don't think a ton about the radiation. But then secondly, the, the sort of chemical composition of the dust, which isn't just rock, it also has some stuff in it that is biologically active in humans and can cause all kinds of problems. And if you can't keep the dust out and the dust is poisonous.

• 47:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Hank Green?

  That's bad.

• 47:17John Green?

  Yeah, it just, it feels like we've got a great planet. Like, it's hard to overstate how good Earth is for us, almost as if we evolved for this air.

• 47:30Hank Green?

  And if the trick, if what you really want to do is find life, Europa's probably a better bet anyway.

• 47:36John Green?

  You really think so?

• 47:38Hank Green?

  Yeah. And so, I mean, certainly in terms of like currently existing life, but like, there's like active hydrothermal vents in the liquid water ocean on Europa, as we believe.

• 47:49John Green?

  Wow.

• 47:50Hank Green?

  So.

• 47:50John Green?

  Well, Europa is really far away, to be fair.

• 47:53Hank Green?

  And also that active hydrothermal vent is under 30 kilometers of ice, which is not easy to get through, but sometimes it spews itself up onto the surface and then you can study that stuff.

• 48:01John Green?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Hank Green?

  I'll tell you later about how we think that, maybe I'll do it in the Patreon livestream we're about to do, about how we might be able to discover signs of life, if not life, quite soon, actually, on Europa.

• 48:12John Green?

  But we need to go make that Patreon livestream for our patrons, so we've got to go. Thank you for podding with me, Hank, and thanks to everybody for listening. The capital of Arizona is an A, but we can't say which A.

• 48:25Hank Green?

  That's right. Hey, y'all, if you want to email us your questions, we don't have a podcast without that, it's [email protected]. Thank you to everybody who sent some in. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhouse, it's mixed by Joseph Tuna Metish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley, our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown.

• 48:51John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.