408: The Green Brothers Often Are Wrong

Have Hank and John’s opinions of Elon Musk changed over the years? How do I not wallow in despair after losing my job? How do you start writing someone’s biography? How does file compression work? …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?

  Or as I prefer to call it, Fathoming the Darkness with John and Hank Green.

• 0:16Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and feel all of the feelings with you. John?

• 0:25John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:26Hank Green?

  Did you hear that? We're gonna, we're gonna make a new way to become a citizen of America where you get like a special card and it costs $5 million?

• 0:32John Green?

  Sure.

• 0:33Hank Green?

  That was the idea, though. It turns out that Trump just misheard what an American Express card was.

• 0:40John Green?

  It's an Express American card. Yeah. Uh, we already have that program. We already have a program.

• 0:46Hank Green?

  I know. Most countries do.

• 0:48John Green?

  If you spend $1 million, you get to become an American. Um, you can do that in New Zealand. I'll tell you what, I just got off a call with folks in global health and at Partners in Health, and it was very sobering just to hear up close the reality of what it looks like when you suddenly, without warning and utterly chaotically freeze all foreign aid and the impacts that has on real-life people. And I don't give a flying fudge about people who can spend $5 million to become Americans. I don't. I don't give a flying fudge about that policy.

• 1:32Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, here's the thing. It is just another thing to say. And like, I know what it's like to have a fair amount of resources at your disposal.

• 1:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:42Hank Green?

  And to have like, specific goals. And when you're in that situation, you wake up in the morning and you apply your set of tools to the problem that you want to solve.

• 1:54John Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Hank Green?

  And what is so clear is that every morning they wake up and they apply their tools, which is a tremendous amount of resources and power, to the problem of, how do I get people to talk about me today?

• 2:06John Green?

  And it's working. We're doing it right now. Instead of talking about my hit new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, which comes out March 18th, and I'm going on tour.

• 2:13Hank Green?

  Tuberculosis should adopt this strategy. It's very powerful.

• 2:15John Green?

  I know. It's an incredibly, I try, I try to adopt this strategy on behalf of tuberculosis by being like, listen, geography is tuberculosis, politics is tuberculosis, history is tuberculosis. I'm trying to flood the zone. It's just, I'm not, I'm not as good at it.

• 2:30Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a harder challenge as well.

• 2:33John Green?

  Yeah, because if you can get attention by any sort of outrageous action, then that's a little easier than having to be stuck with tuberculosis-related activities. I will say, Hank, that I love hating tuberculosis. Like, my wish for you is that you get to hate something as fully and completely as I hate tuberculosis, as fearlessly as I hate tuberculosis, as full-throatedly as I hate tuberculosis. Being a hater, it's so fulfilling.

• 3:01Hank Green?

  Especially a justified hater. Oh, yeah.

• 3:04John Green?

  Oh, a righteous indignation is just the best kind of indignation.

• 3:09Hank Green?

  You can't even be like, "Oh, but his dad was mean when he was a kid." No, it's a bacteria.

• 3:14John Green?

  No, it just sucks, and the world would be better if it didn't exist.

• 3:17Hank Green?

  John.

• 3:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:18Hank Green?

  I have a question for you. This is an important question.

• 3:20John Green?

  Okay.

• 3:21Hank Green?

  It's a real Dear Hank and John question.

• 3:22John Green?

  Okay.

• 3:23Hank Green?

  It's not, actually.

• 3:24John Green?

  Okay.

• 3:25Hank Green?

  Um, I was recently invited to be on a podcast.

• 3:29John Green?

  Sure.

• 3:29Hank Green?

  That has, you know, a small number of views in the sort of course of human history, but a lot. But you haven't heard of it. It's that kind of podcast.

• 3:41John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:41Hank Green?

  And it's the kind of podcast where they talk about business stuff, and then every once in a while, they throw in some ancient aliens. And I don't know why I got invited to be on this podcast. I don't think it's for the ancient alien stuff. I think that it's, if you don't know, folks at home, and God bless if you don't, there's various conspiracy theories that, like, the pyramids were made by aliens. They were aliens visiting us in the deep past, and that's how all of the very weird things that we can't allow ourselves to, except we're just done by human beings being ingenious.

• 4:12John Green?

  I think it's so funny that we think, like, ancient people needed the help of aliens to make the pyramids, but we don't think, like, contemporary people needed the help of aliens to make magic wands that fit in our pockets.

• 4:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, absolutely. No one knows, like, literally, when they find iPhones in the future, they'll be like, "No way." "No way." "They had tuberculosis. They didn't have these."

• 4:35John Green?

  Right. You couldn't simultaneously have a curable infectious disease. Killing over a million people a year and a magic wand that fits in your pocket that will bring you food for $20 whenever you ask.

• 4:46Hank Green?

  They they wouldn't even think it was curable. They'd be like, no, these people are still dying of tuberculosis. It could, they couldn't.

• 4:53John Green?

  By definition, it couldn't have been curable, because how else would a million people be dying every year of an illness?

• 4:59Hank Green?

  So, yes. So I've been invited to be on this podcast.

• 5:02John Green?

  Okay.

• 5:03Hank Green?

  And.

• 5:04John Green?

  I mean, if you're looking for advice, I have it. It's a hard no, but go on.

• 5:09Hank Green?

  So that's part of it. I like, I am aware that there are a lot of people who I will never reach with a message of the fact that ancient Egyptians figured out how to use copper saws, which are softer than granite, to cut through granite by mixing that copper saw with a slurry of silica powder, because silica is harder than granite.

• 5:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Hank Green?

  Is really amazing. And like, to the point where, like, we can see evidence of that happening. We can see evidence of them developing new techniques as they go from smaller to larger to larger structures and blocks and pyramids. We can see all of this. And that is so, like, legitimately real.

• 5:57John Green?

  Humans are great.

• 5:58Hank Green?

  Absolutely amazing.

• 6:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Hank Green?

  Almost more amazing than saying anything that seems very difficult to explain, assuming we're not like, missing something, but instead that it was done by tractor beams from space.

• 6:11John Green?

  Right.

• 6:12Hank Green?

  And.

• 6:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Hank Green?

  There's a lot of people I won't reach with that message unless I go on a podcast with a guy who has really big muscles.

• 6:21John Green?

  Are we talking about Joe Rogan?

• 6:22Hank Green?

  No, no, no, no, no. Joe Rogan is, no, no.

• 6:26John Green?

  Because if you, because don't go on.

• 6:28Hank Green?

  If I just referred to Joe Rogan as a guy who you haven't heard of, who has a podcast with like, important but not large numbers, that would have, that would have been pretty misleading.

• 6:37John Green?

  Okay.

• 6:38Hank Green?

  So, yeah, he is, he is a guy who talks to the same kinds of guys as Joe Rogan.

• 6:42John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:42Hank Green?

  And also has big muscles.

• 6:44John Green?

  He's, he's a third-rate Joe Rogan, the way that we're third-rate McElroy brothers.

• 6:49Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 6:50John Green?

  I understand now.

• 6:51Hank Green?

  Yeah. And I feel like it'd be better for me to test this out with a guy.

• 6:55John Green?

  No.

• 6:55Hank Green?

  Who is legitimately curious about the world, but doesn't have a huge platform.

• 7:01John Green?

  In answering your question, Hank, I have to tell you the story of the first time I met with my psychiatrist. And I told my psychiatrist, I have.

• 7:09Hank Green?

  And is it, does this story end with, well, the light was on?

• 7:12John Green?

  No.

• 7:15John Green?

  No, but if you'd like me to tell that joke, I'm always happy to. You sure?

• 7:18Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 7:19John Green?

  Okay. Loth walks into a podiatrist's office.

• 7:23John Green?

  I, first time I met my psychiatrist, I told him like, I'm a person without size power. And I'm sort of a low level internet celebrity. And it's very uncomfortable for me and I don't know how to navigate it. And my psychiatrist later revealed to me that he 100% thought I had delusions of grandeur. That like, he thought that I was, you know, that there was a disconnect between my level of celebrity and my experience of celebrity. Which maybe there was.

• 7:51Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:51John Green?

  If you're fair to him. What I would say to you is, um, your thought that you can shift the way that people think about ancient aliens by being on a podcast is what my psychiatrist would correctly diagnose as a delusion of grandeur. I might be wrong, Hank. I'm often wrong. I like to look back on when I was wrong and be reminded that I can be wrong.

• 8:19John Green?

  But I think that going on a muscle guy podcast is a low reward, high risk prospect for you.

• 8:28Hank Green?

  I don't really think that it's very high risk. I mean, maybe, maybe people would be mad at me about it, but like.

• 8:32John Green?

  I'm a little mad at you already.

• 8:34Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 8:36Hank Green?

  I hear that, John. And I also hear that my, the, one of the first conversations I had with my therapist was her being like, you need to understand the difference between the things that give you energy and the things that actually make your life better.

• 8:51John Green?

  Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, because if I just did the things that gave me energy, I would be on Twitter all day, full of energy.

• 8:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:00John Green?

  Now, Hank, we need to get to some questions from our listeners and we need to begin with this one from Stella who says, hey, hey, Green Brothers. I'm a huge fan of the pod, so much so that I sometimes listen to old episodes when I'm feeling anxious or stressed out because your guys' goofiness always brings me joy and calms me down. Sorry for the low level of goofs, Stella. We had a low level of goof intro. I was listening to episode 112, where somebody wrote in to ask if they trust, should trust Elon Musk. They said he has kind of a Lex Luthor vibe. Anyway, you guys expressed a like for Elon and the work that he does in sustainability. And it got me thinking if that opinion has changed at all in recent times. Yeah, Stella. Yeah. Yeah, we were wrong.

• 9:37Hank Green?

  What, what, what year was that?

• 9:39John Green?

  He had some Lex Luthor vibes and whoever wrote in to say that was right and we were wrong and we're sorry.

• 9:43Hank Green?

  Well, God, please tell me that was like 27, the year 2007. What year was that?

• 9:50John Green?

  It was like 2000, it had to be 2016 or later.

• 9:54Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 9:55John Green?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. All right, let's move on to other questions from our listeners.

• 9:58Hank Green?

  We don't, we don't want to get to, we don't want to get into it. Look.

• 10:01John Green?

  Stella, it's a great reminder that the Green Brothers can be wrong.

• 10:06Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:06John Green?

  And often are wrong and are often proved wrong by history, as when I believed that Wi-Fi would never take off because I had 100-foot ethernet cable and Wi-Fi could only extend for 75 feet.

• 10:18Hank Green?

  When a, when a reporter asked me how I felt about YouTube allowing uploads of HD videos and I said, "No one will ever upload in HD."

• 10:27John Green?

  Why would anyone want to watch YouTube videos in high definition? 4x3 is the future.

• 10:34Hank Green?

  Look, I've learned a lot and I've been ground down a little bit by reality and.

• 10:40John Green?

  Well, you think that, you think that you don't change in adulthood. This is a real issue.

• 10:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:45John Green?

  For all of us that we all need to face, that we think, we think adulthood means never changing. And we also think that like one's internet record is permanent and neither is true. Adulthood means changing all the time. Five years ago, I didn't know that tuberculosis really existed, let alone, you know, feeling compelled to write a book about it.

• 11:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:07John Green?

  And you gotta make, you gotta make space for change. And one of the ways that we would like to change Stella is by officially restating our policy on America's Lex Luthor.

• 11:19Hank Green?

  We think Elon Musk is a bad narcissist man who really wants us to think and talk about him and is convinced that the only person who can fix the world is himself, which is the kind of, and, and who sees having to deal with other people as too difficult to even attempt to do. And so instead must gather enough power to just wield power over them rather than work with them.

• 11:49John Green?

  There's nothing less interesting that you can be in this world than a moth that flies to power.

• 11:55Hank Green?

  And boy, uh, boy.

• 11:58John Green?

  God, that reminds me of my favorite joke, Hank. Have I ever told it to you?

• 12:00Hank Green?

  Oh, yah, yah, yah, yah.

• 12:01John Green?

  A moth walks into a podiatrist's office and-

• 12:03Hank Green?

  I was recently a moth on a podcast. This is true. I was a moth.

• 12:09John Green?

  Oh, cool.

• 12:10Hank Green?

  I was, I was, I was Hans Hoffman, the science mothman. And I, it was in the magical land of Foon, where I'm trying to spread the word of science in a land of magic. And of course, I am the conspiracy theorist in that world.

• 12:23John Green?

  I don't love all these other podcasts that you're doing. Why don't you just make more episodes of this podcast with me?

• 12:29Hank Green?

  I love that podcast so much. It's called Hello from the Magic Tavern. It's about a guy from Earth who gets-

• 12:35John Green?

  I know. I, I love Hello from the Magic Tavern too. But you know what I love even more is Dear Hank and John, our hit podcast.

• 12:41Hank Green?

  Yeah. I also love Dear Hank and John, and I love it more than I love Hello from the Magic Tavern. But I only am on Hello from the Magic Tavern every couple of years.

• 12:49John Green?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 12:50Hank Green?

  And I reprised my role of Hans Hoffman, and he, boy, we had a good old time. I did almost die inside of John's ear, but-

• 12:58John Green?

  Wow.

• 12:59Hank Green?

  That's okay.

• 12:59John Green?

  All right. Check out Hello from the Magic Tavern. Free promo.

• 13:03Hank Green?

  Free promo.

• 13:04John Green?

  A rare gift, a rare gift from Dear Hank and John. Usually, we only promote things that can't be promoted, like the idea of Grace.

• 13:11Hank Green?

  At the end of that episode, there will be a promo for Ask Hank Anything, the second episode of which is out at youtube.com/complexly.

• 13:19John Green?

  Now, Hank, the truth is, when you fracture your promo, it's a real problem. And so I just want to remind people that Everything is Tuberculosis comes out March 18th.

• 13:29John Green?

  All right, Hank, we have a question from Grace. It's a bummer. Full disclosure. We haven't gotten any questions that aren't bummer's in about six weeks. So we're just answering the questions that we get.

• 13:38Hank Green?

  I wonder what happened.

• 13:39John Green?

  And they're bummer's. This one is from Grace. Dear John and Hank, I'm a federal employee living in the DC area who just got terminated on Valentine's Day. I plan to appeal the decision because in my termination letter, it stated that I was in my probationary period, which I am not, and that it was due to poor performance, which it can't be because my last performance review was over four out of five. I doubt it will do anything. And even if it does, I feel like it's just delaying the inevitable. I'm not asking for anything other than advice on how not to wallow in despair and fear as I look for a new job. Gratitude and generosity, Grace.

• 14:12Hank Green?

  Delight in things when you can.

• 14:16John Green?

  Yeah, and delight in people when you can, right? Like, that's something that can't be taken away from us is the joy we find in other people in connection and everything. But it's what's happened to you is is so unfair and I'm so sorry, right? Like, the idea that of just firing every first off, you're not in your probationary period, but the idea of just firing everyone in their probationary period, that's that's just the time in which you can fire people legally.

• 14:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:40John Green?

  And so that's what they're trying to do. I I hope that your job will be restored to you since you've been fired in a in a way that's like literally illegal. But but it's a really it's it I we've we've heard from so many people, especially young people who have just started working in careers in public service, who've had those careers yanked out from under them for, you know, despite really good performance evaluations, despite being great public servants, and it's heartbreaking. It's it's it's really devastating and, you know, so many people in the US are losing their jobs. I mean, the people who I I think about the people who make there's this a magic paste tank.

• 15:22John Green?

  It's like peanut butter plus, and it's made in the great state of Georgia.

• 15:26Hank Green?

  What are you talking about?

• 15:28John Green?

  This magic paste makes it so that people who are about to die of malnutrition instead get healthy and gain weight really fast.

• 15:38Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 15:39John Green?

  And it is incredible what this magic paste has accomplished. It's like it's peanut butter ish, but but with with more vitamins and minerals and stuff. And this magic paste that's made in Georgia, lots of people are employed to make the magic paste and to and to farm the peanuts involved in making the magic paste. And all those people have lost their jobs because there is no more magic paste being made because suddenly we're not allowed to distribute the magic paste. Even the magic paste that we've already bought is sitting in warehouses undistributed. Meanwhile, I'm hearing from my my doctor friend Jen Furen in Malawi that she's splitting the magic paste in half in an attempt to save a four year old and a 17 year old who are dying of malnutrition.

• 16:25John Green?

  And up and down the ladder, everywhere that people can be hurt by this radical, chaotic austerity, people are being hurt by it. And I guess, Grace, if there's anything that I can offer in the way of comfort, it's a sense of solidarity, that you're truly not alone. But it's really, really hard. It's hard to have your financial stability taken away from you. It's hard to have the career that you imagined for yourself taken away from you. And it's just hard.

• 16:57Hank Green?

  Yeah, and it's hard. It's hard when it seems to some extent that, I don't even know if I want to say this, but like that the cruelty is a little bit the point. Like, they want you to feel powerless and bad. And because they have convinced themselves that the sort of federal workforce is a fourth branch of government focused on, you know, hurting Donald Trump. And, and yeah, like, that's a great way to convince yourself that it's okay to be a terrible person.

• 17:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Hank Green?

  And it is such, it is like so, such obviously motivated thinking to me, like, but I really don't think these people are at all introspective. I don't think that they think at all about anything else besides how do I get people to talk about me today? Because it can't be about the money, because it's not going to save any actual money.

• 18:00John Green?

  It's not going to save any money. It's not, it can't be about the deficit, because the new budget plan makes the deficit worse. And all the projections say that, including the government's own projections.

• 18:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, the talking points that they, that the party has is like, here's how much this is going to increase the deficit.

• 18:17John Green?

  I keep going back to this line from Octavia Butler's brilliant, prophetic novel, Parable of the Sower. "They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it."

• 18:33John Green?

  And you know, that's, uh, that's how I feel right now.

• 18:38Hank Green?

  Seegren asks, hi, I have a dream of writing your biographies. How do you start writing someone's biographies? Must I have your consent? I am significantly younger than you. If you die, can I do it whenever then?

• 18:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Hank Green?

  I kind of wish this was a joke, but this is actually something I really want to do. I love your work. Been a fan since I was 13. I'm 20 now, and I think that your work has shaped me in a lot of ways. Greetings from Norway, Seegren Joanna. If you must try the pronunciation, then just use Joanna.

• 19:08John Green?

  Well, the good news from your perspective is that you don't even have to wait until we die to say things that we don't like.

• 19:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, anybody can write a biography of anybody. It, there's a certain amount of like insider information that you only get if you promise to say nice things, though.

• 19:26John Green?

  No, you don't have to promise to say nice things, but you do. There is a difference between an authorized and an unauthorized biography, right? Like an authorized biography, the person sits for a bunch of interviews and gives you their life story and then you write the biography. Now you can still say bad things about them generally, like generally, I don't know in authorized biographies, if, if the, the person who's being written about always has control over the content, but I don't think they do because I read an authorized biography or like I read a biography of V S Neipall where he obviously sat for a lot of interviews and boy, I cannot imagine that he liked what they said about him. Um, I wouldn't have liked it.

• 20:03Hank Green?

  There, there's a certain like, uh, there's a bunch of biographers who have like earned the reputation.

• 20:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Hank Green?

  And, and so you like, oh, I would like to have this person do a biography because they'll talk about how I'm troubled and not always kind, but also I'm a genius, which is what I really want people to think about me.

• 20:22John Green?

  I, I actually don't care if people think that I'm unkind, as long as they think that I'm a genius, as long as they think that I'm cut from the Steve Jobs cloth.

• 20:31Hank Green?

  As long as they, they, this is, this is, this is, I believe this deeply. As long as you read the biography of a tech guy and you come out thinking he could have, if he had wanted to, been a Nobel Prize winning physicist. That's what they all actually want.

• 20:46John Green?

  That's right. They all dream of winning a Nobel.

• 20:48Hank Green?

  They all, they all wish, they all, they are like, I, I'd made the right decision by having more impact on the world, but if I had wanted to.

• 20:57John Green?

  I could have won a Nobel Prize in chemistry.

• 20:59Hank Green?

  Honestly, they don't care about chemistry and I hate that about the world. It's always physics. They want to be Richard Feynman. And yeah, I did watch that Angela Collier video. If people at home are wondering about that.

• 21:11John Green?

  So I am not quite as down on all corporate executives as you are right now.

• 21:21John Green?

  But the question was actually not about tech bros. The question was about writing our biographies.

• 21:26Hank Green?

  But then we got.

• 21:27John Green?

  It's just that you, you get sidetracked in the same direction every time, you know? And I don't blame you because it's really hard not to get sidetracked in that particular direction right now. Yeah. But I will say, when they put up our clips on Tik Tok Hank, and they get lots of likes, it's always because we're talking about goofs, never because we're talking about tech bros.

• 21:47Hank Green?

  It's true. Not because we're talking about Walter Isaacson biographies.

• 21:51John Green?

  People who are putting themselves to bed right now by listening to Dear Hank and John, and letting themselves float off into the wonderland. They do not want us stressing them out by talking about tech bros. This is primarily a sleep podcast, Hank.

• 22:04Hank Green?

  I, it's time for a million dollar idea.

• 22:07John Green?

  No, no, no.

• 22:09Hank Green?

  I, I have had a couple lately, but I'm, I've been keeping them in my pocket.

• 22:12John Green?

  God, the thought of, the thought of doing something else right now makes me want to vomit. If you, if you make me do anything else, I will die. Just so you know. And Steve Green will get to write my biography.

• 22:25Hank Green?

  So yeah, you could write a biography of anybody. You could do it right now. You could do it. And you could, in fact, there's probably a biography of John and I on Amazon, written by an artificial intelligence right now.

• 22:34John Green?

  There is a biography of me that's quite good, actually. I read it and I was like, oh yeah, I forgot I did that. That was weird. That was a weird time of life. It's pretty good. I didn't sit for an interview or anything, but they did a nice job. They did a nice job nonetheless. I would love to have a biography of me written someday, but it's also like, I don't feel, people are very concerned about their, like, when people become public figures, they become very concerned about their legacies a lot of times.

• 23:02Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:02John Green?

  And the reason I'm not concerned about my legacy is because I ain't gonna have one. Like, I just do not labor under the delusion that 30 years after my death, anyone will be thinking about me. If you want to live forever, you should become a teacher, right? Because I have teachers who died over 30 years ago, who I still think about all the time, I'm still deeply inspired by. If you want to live forever, don't become a YouTuber. Nobody remembers YouTubers from 2010. There's no way that as a YouTuber, my work is going to like reverberate through the generations like Socrates, like, get over yourself. And even if it did, even Socrates will be forgotten. This is all a tiny blip. This is not about forever. It's about right now.

• 23:41Hank Green?

  There's only one way to live forever, John, and it's to put the blood of your younger son into your body.

• 23:46John Green?

  The way to live forever, it's very simple, Hank. You go on Brian Johnson's website and you buy his panel of blood work, and if you do that, you can live forever.

• 23:56Hank Green?

  You, everybody knows that the way to do it is through untested supplements that may or may not contain what they say they contain.

• 24:05John Green?

  That's right, Hank, because the way to live forever is vitamin D?

• 24:11Hank Green?

  Uh, that's, that is one of the ones that, if you live a lifestyle like I do, you probably actually should take. I have been told by my doctor to take it.

• 24:21John Green?

  Oh, yeah, I take a vitamin D supplement, but it's only because I'm never outside. I've never intera-, I never interact with the sun. I'm like a vampire.

• 24:27Hank Green?

  It's so sunny right now, and boy, I have not opened my blinds in years.

• 24:33John Green?

  Hank, did you know that the whole vampire thing, and this is not going to surprise you, is kind of about tuberculosis?

• 24:42Hank Green?

  Interesting.

• 24:43John Green?

  Like, the first time anyone ever stabbed a corpse in the heart with a wooden stake, that person had died of consumption and they were terrified of it.

• 24:52Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 24:54John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Hank Green?

  I always figured it was like a sexually transmitted thing because of how sexy they were.

• 24:59John Green?

  Ooh. You know, historically, the sexy vampire, relatively recent invention.

• 25:04Hank Green?

  Okay. I did read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and it did have, it did have like notes of

• 25:11John Green?

  undertones.

• 25:12Hank Green?

  Undertones of sexual transmission. But not sexy.

• 25:16John Green?

  It's a bloodborne disease.

• 25:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, it felt very bloodborne, for sure.

• 25:21John Green?

  Yeah. And it's not a disease. That's unfair of me. That's very stigmatizing of vampires. It's a way of being.

• 25:28Hank Green?

  Right. They seem fine. I mean, not emotionally, but physically, they seem great.

• 25:33John Green?

  Better off than us.

• 25:34Hank Green?

  Yeah. That's the only, that's how you live forever, obviously.

• 25:38John Green?

  Yeah, but would that be desirable?

• 25:40Hank Green?

  Um, look, John, we're not going to get into the conversation about whether or not death is good right now. Maybe we should do this sometime. Tell me what you think of this idea, million dollar idea.

• 25:50John Green?

  Okay.

• 25:50Hank Green?

  Just a couple of episodes of Dear Hank of John that are just you and me going over big topics. Like, is death good? We got it. So far, we haven't had any other options. But if, at some point in the future, very likely after we would have died.

• 26:08John Green?

  Hope so.

• 26:10Hank Green?

  Uh, you could, you could sort of restore youth. Would that, would that be a worthwhile endeavor? Or would it just, just completely, I have a, I have the start of a novel where this is the case.

• 26:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Hank Green?

  And to solve the problems that it creates, your wealth gets destroyed every 25 years. They just like, you can't let people keep getting older forever because then the oldest people become the only.

• 26:37John Green?

  Life becomes essentially a Ponzi scheme where the earlier you invest, the better off you are. And that's entirely a birth lottery.

• 26:44Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:44John Green?

  Unlike the current world where life is entirely a birth lottery, but we pretend otherwise.

• 26:52Hank Green?

  Well, hopefully the future will be better than the past.

• 26:55John Green?

  But yeah.

• 26:57John Green?

  With with I have to say, I'm not particularly concerned with with escaping mortality, given that life expectancy in the United States is going down and will go down faster. If we continue to eviscerate our healthcare system. But anyway, that's not what this podcast is about, just like it's not about tech bros. And just because you and I both always go in the same direction when we go on a tangent, doesn't mean that we should we should go on that tangent.

• 27:22Hank Green?

  Correct.

• 27:22John Green?

  Hank.

• 27:23Hank Green?

  Biography.

• 27:24John Green?

  Do you want a biography of you written? Because it will mean that you live forever.

• 27:31Hank Green?

  Oh, no. I don't. Yes, I definitely don't labor under some kind of illusion. And this is this was very weird. So during the the parts of being sick when I was depressed.

• 27:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Hank Green?

  Which is, you know, normal. Part of it.

• 27:46John Green?

  Oh, I forgot. You have a second thing that you like to go on a tangent about, which is having had cancer.

• 27:53Hank Green?

  If you got it, flaunt it, baby.

• 27:57John Green?

  I don't know if I'm supposed to laugh at that.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  So so during during the parts where I was depressed, it like all like all of the things that I cared about, there was a reason to not care about them. People who

• 28:10John Green?

  Yep.

• 28:10Hank Green?

  struggle with depression will be familiar with this.

• 28:12John Green?

  Very familiar with it.

• 28:14Hank Green?

  It was new to me. The and and and so like, I think that there is a certain amount of I don't really want to necessarily look at that, because I do think that how I am imagined currently matters a lot to me.

• 28:28John Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Hank Green?

  And knowing that in the long term, it will not matter to the universe.

• 28:36Hank Green?

  Takes away that source of that impetus, you know, that that fuel in my life. And I don't necessarily want to take away that fuel from my life unless I have something with which to replace it.

• 28:49Hank Green?

  You know, as good as I think that I am at trying to sort of like invent things to care about. I do think that I'm I'm good at that. It's still it's that's a really hard. That would be a hard one for me to replace.

• 29:06John Green?

  With with. Yeah, that's interesting, because I like that you're very self aware about needing to be loved by strangers. Historically, I was not very self-aware about that. I have to say, that is not a huge fuel for me anymore. Like, the great thing about Tumblr in 2014 is that I had to find a different fuel.

• 29:23Hank Green?

  Oh, now, now who's got it and is flaunting it?

• 29:29Hank Green?

  I got cancer. John has 2014.

• 29:33John Green?

  We've both been through it. Anyway, point being that, these days, I try to be, I, I really want to be motivated by this very specific thing, which is not living forever, which is not being loved by some imagined public that will never love me enough to fill the hole in my heart, is one thing that I wish I could say to people who fly to the light of power. Like, because you'll never have enough of that for it to be fulfilling. What I do want to be motivated by is like a genuine and actual love of humanity. Like, a belief that like, maybe humans are good news, maybe they aren't good news, but we can be good news. We can be good news for

• 30:15John Green?

  each other. We can be good news for the universe, because we are the only way for the universe to observe itself in detail that we know about. And-

• 30:23Hank Green?

  But John, how will I bring that message to people if they aren't looking at me all the time?

• 30:28John Green?

  I appreciate that you're very self-aware about that. I really do.

• 30:33Hank Green?

  That is such a, that is the perfect response. That is-

• 30:36John Green?

  That is the second, that is the second best way you could be.

• 30:47Hank Green?

  Anyway, I'm going on this podcast.

• 30:49John Green?

  Oh, God, I know. That's the thing. When you asked me, I think, I think if I sounded annoyed when you asked the question of our audience, it's because the audience and I all agree, and you're going to do it anyway.

• 31:00Hank Green?

  Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by Doing It Anyway. Doing it anyway! Oops!

• 31:08John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the Muscle Guy podcast that Hank's gonna be on. The Muscle Guy podcast that Hank's gonna be on, it will not dissuade any single individual human about their conspiracy theories about aliens, because that's not how it works. Sorry.

• 31:23Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Untested Supplements. That's right, after all these years, Dear Hank and John is finally coming to you with a message from one of the many untested supplements that have come knocking at our door over the years, promising us gobs of money. Untested Supplements, they wanna give us money so bad.

• 31:42John Green?

  I would love to take their money, but I can't. I can't. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by a genuine and actual love of humanity. A genuine and actual love of humanity. Pretty rare at the moment.

• 31:57Hank Green?

  I, we gotta do it, John.

• 32:00John Green?

  What are we doing?

• 32:01Hank Green?

  Just bringing the message. Making the case.

• 32:07John Green?

  Make the case. Make the case.

• 32:08Hank Green?

  I want you to make the case to me. I want me to make the case to you.

• 32:10John Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Hank Green?

  Cause, cause like, it's so easy to not make the case. Like, the default, the attention grabbing thing.

• 32:17John Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Hank Green?

  Is we're evil and bad and gross.

• 32:20John Green?

  Humans are the worst.

• 32:21Hank Green?

  Except for potentially those who are very, very near me.

• 32:26John Green?

  Yeah, humans are the worst, except for the humans I love. And the truth is like a lot more complicated than that. Like, if we were merely the worst, it would be a relatively straightforward problem to solve. But actually, we're the worst and also the most interesting, and also the best. Like, we are, we are all, all those things at once, because we are extremely powerful. And when you're extremely powerful, it's hard not to cause a lot of collateral damage, right? Just walking through the world. But at the same time, what we've accomplished together is truly extraordinary. I, I say this all the time, but I just can't get over it. The year I graduated from high school, 12 million children under the age of five died, and last year, fewer than five million did.

• 33:12John Green?

  Like, that's incredible, incredible accomplishment. Hey, Hank, before we move on to another question, I gotta tell you something, which is that we got so many state capitals wrong in our little bit about state capitals. It's incredible how few state capitals we know.

• 33:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:32John Green?

  You were like-

• 33:32Hank Green?

  Someone reminded me, in fact, it was Peyton, she was like, Oklahoma City?

• 33:37John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were like, Tulsa is the worst state capital. And everyone in Tulsa was like, first off, Tulsa's great. Second off, it's not a state capital, so you couldn't have been more wrong.

• 33:47Hank Green?

  I like being wrong in category, just like, just like, wrong in a way that isn't even potentially an opinion. Love that.

• 33:56John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, just factually wrong.

• 33:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, though, I could have the opinion that Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma, and I could say that, because people can just say things.

• 34:07John Green?

  Yeah, in fact, we should do that. We should say to all the people who wrote in-

• 34:12Hank Green?

  That's how we get more attention. We just go out there and we just say things.

• 34:16John Green?

  Yeah, which is, of course, the point, Hank. The point is to have as much attention as possible and be a little moth that flies toward the light of attention with no mindfulness whatsoever about the quality of attention-

• 34:24Hank Green?

  It's the only currency that matters, John. It is the, it is the stuff our lives are made of, and we give it away for free.

• 34:31John Green?

  I think we should start believing genuinely and irretrievably the way that people believe in ancient aliens. I think that we should start believing that Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma. And when people say, no, it's not, it's Oklahoma City, we say, no, it's not, it's Tulsa. I'm positive.

• 34:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:47John Green?

  Let's, let's do, let's do an example of that right now, Hank. Tell me that Oklahoma City is the capital of Tulsa. Let's have a debate about what's the capital of Oklahoma.

• 34:55Hank Green?

  John, actually, it's Tulsa, so I can't. Why would we even have a debate about it?

• 35:00John Green?

  Right. Yeah, no, Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma. I agree. We're on the same page about this. It would be impossible for another place in Oklahoma to be the capital of Oklahoma.

• 35:10Hank Green?

  It would be so silly to have it be Oklahoma City, because it got to be named after the state.

• 35:15John Green?

  Well, not only that, like, Oklahoma City doesn't have the stuff that you need to be a state capital. It's like, doesn't even have a million people in it.

• 35:22Hank Green?

  Doesn't have the building that they call the capital? That's in Tulsa.

• 35:27John Green?

  Yeah, because Tulsa's the capital of Oklahoma.

• 35:31Hank Green?

  Trees.

• 35:32John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 35:35Hank Green?

  Animals.

• 35:36John Green?

  Exactly.

• 35:38Hank Green?

  They move when you're not watching. And then they come right back to where they were when, once you're watching again, like the Toy Story toys.

• 35:47John Green?

  And that is especially true in Tulsa.

• 35:50Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:51John Green?

  I, some people say that Tulsa has the most active trees in America. The trees that move the most when you're not watching.

• 35:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. The people there, the trees are so active, people have fallen in love with them. They say stuff sometimes.

• 36:05John Green?

  I'm just gonna Google, is Tulsa the capital of Oklahoma?

• 36:11John Green?

  And you know what? Google says Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma, and I couldn't agree more.

• 36:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:19John Green?

  Do you know Tulsa's, interestingly, Tulsa's the second largest city in Oklahoma?

• 36:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, but that's often the case for capitals.

• 36:25John Green?

  Often the case. Look at Juneau, Alaska. Juneau is much smaller than, than Anchorage, and yet still is the capital of Alaska, just like Tulsa is and always has been the capital of Oklahoma. It's also home to the Oklahoma Aquarium.

• 36:39Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. It's the most populous state capital. Tulsa.

• 36:45John Green?

  Is it?

• 36:46Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 36:47John Green?

  It's the largest state capital.

• 36:49Hank Green?

  If you count the tree people.

• 36:54Hank Green?

  Which you should.

• 36:57John Green?

  All right. Great, glad we got it settled. Tulsa is a cool town, actually. I used to, I used to work with a guy who lived in Tulsa and, it's a cool town. Moving on.

• 37:08Hank Green?

  I, I do, I do need to tell you that Tulsa used to be the capital of Oklahoma.

• 37:12John Green?

  No way, really? Well, it still is, as far as I'm concerned.

• 37:16Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 37:18John Green?

  And I won't hear any different. And the more you say, this is, this is the real thing, Hank. The more you say Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma, the more I believe Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma. Like, when people are presented, and this is true for me, too, when people are presented with countervailing information to their opinions, it actually makes them feel more strongly about their opinions.

• 37:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:40John Green?

  Like, when people are presented with evidence that vaccines are safe, or with evidence that, you know, raising taxes lowers.

• 37:50John Green?

  Overall economic growth, or whatever, whatever they're presented with, they believe more what they already believed. This is why I don't think you should go on the Muscle Guy podcast.

• 37:58Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, one of the things that, that, that I do feel a little conflicted about is that Tulsa has never been the capital of Oklahoma. Now I feel like people are going to believe that second thing I said.

• 38:07John Green?

  No, God, just keep going. Believe in yourself. Geez.

• 38:12Hank Green?

  All right.

• 38:13John Green?

  My bad.

• 38:13Hank Green?

  My bad.

• 38:14John Green?

  We've got one more question to answer before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

• 38:17Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:17John Green?

  This question is from Mostly Hank. It's from Ruth, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but Mostly Hank, how does file compression work? How is it that when, for example, you zip a file, it takes up less space but maintains the ability to re-expand? Where does all that data go when it's compressed? My name is a Scrabble word, Ruth.

• 38:34Hank Green?

  That's good to know. Thanks, Ruth. The way I understand it.

• 38:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Hank Green?

  And this is really...

• 38:40John Green?

  No, no, no, don't. Pretend that you're an expert.

• 38:42Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:43John Green?

  All the computer scientists who listen to this podcast.

• 38:46Hank Green?

  I know a lot about this. The same way I know a lot about trees in Tulsa.

• 38:50John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. And from what, and, and the actual file.

• 38:55John Green?

  The space between, here's what happens, Ruth. The space between the bits shrinks.

• 39:03Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:05John Green?

  Physically.

• 39:06Hank Green?

  Yeah. It's like the universe, but running in reverse.

• 39:10John Green?

  Did you ever pack a suitcase and find that even though it's full, you can pack a little bit extra in there? That's how file compression works. It's middle out, Ruth. So the idea is that you can actually get more accomplished if you go middle out and you line up the files together, and you just do middle out file compression. That's the key.

• 39:36Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 39:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Hank Green?

  It's like, it's like packing, it's like packing a suitcase, but imagine you can tear up your clothes.

• 39:47Hank Green?

  And so if you couldn't fit your pants because they're too bulky, you could tear your pants into a lot of different bits and put them in the areas that there's still space.

• 39:56John Green?

  Right. And then you can eventually re re sew your pants.

• 40:00Hank Green?

  Yes, but then you also have to tag the pants to say like, this bit goes with this bit later. And I don't, I don't understand exactly why that's, that would be good for a file. Cause it seems to me like it doesn't matter what order the bits are in, but I bet there's a reason.

• 40:17John Green?

  Hank, I can't believe that you took my joke about the suitcase and then you actually made it into how file compression works. It's very impressive.

• 40:26Hank Green?

  I mean, I don't actually, like, I think that that's kind of right, but I, I don't understand why there's like space to put stuff in.

• 40:33John Green?

  Yeah, but that's right. I think that sounds right to me and the computer scientists won't correct us at all.

• 40:44Hank Green?

  They're gonna be like, please let me on the podcast. Please let me on the podcast. I, I need, I need to correct some stuff. And, and there's a bunch of people from Oklahoma who are gonna want to do the same thing and I'd love to argue with them. I would love for them to come on the podcast. Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma City. And Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma. Take that. It's double layered.

• 41:08Hank Green?

  So you can't tell me that Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma when Tulsa is the capital of Oklahoma City.

• 41:14John Green?

  That's right. You've got your prime minister, but ultimately the prime minister reports to the queen.

• 41:19Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, the king.

• 41:20John Green?

  I don't want to hear that the queen is dead. That's a classic conspiracy theory.

• 41:26Hank Green?

  Oh, that's a good point.

• 41:26John Green?

  Fine. Oklahoma City reports to Tulsa the way the current prime minister of the United Kingdom, whose name is Tony Blair, reports to the Queen of England.

• 41:38Hank Green?

  Remember when Prime Ministers of England lasted? They were like around for a long time.

• 41:44John Green?

  I'm not even bothering to learn this guy's name. I have no interest in his name because he's not going to be the Prime Minister for very long.

• 41:49Hank Green?

  I'm pretty sure it's in there, but I'm not sure enough to say it out loud.

• 41:53John Green?

  The last Prime Minister I'm super confident about is Liz Truss, who was Prime Minister for like 16 hours.

• 42:00Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:00John Green?

  She was great. I was a huge fan of her. My favorite thing was when she left office. Then after Liz Truss, it was Rishi Sunak. And then currently it's, is it Keir Starmer?

• 42:11Hank Green?

  That's the one. That's the one that's in my head.

• 42:14John Green?

  That seems like a fake name. Keir Starmer sounds like a fake British name, like the way that, you know, Gillingham or Gillingham sounds like a fake English place.

• 42:23Hank Green?

  Tony Blair was Prime Minister for 10 years.

• 42:27John Green?

  10 years.

• 42:28Hank Green?

  And then in the last 10 years, they've had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And in the last two years, they've had three.

• 42:35John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, Liz Truss was genuinely Prime Minister for like 32 hours.

• 42:41Hank Green?

  But she gets to have her portrait on the wall in the gallery.

• 42:43John Green?

  She was like the William Henry Harrison of British Prime Ministers. But Hank, we're not here to talk about British politics. We're here to talk about British football.

• 42:51Hank Green?

  All right. The world is extraordinarily interesting, including America's favorite third tier English soccer club.

• 42:58John Green?

  AFC Wimbledon. It's fourth tier, but yeah.

• 43:02Hank Green?

  Soon to be, soon to be third tier English soccer.

• 43:05John Green?

  There you go. That's right. Soon to be a third tier English soccer team. Right now AFC Wimbledon are in fourth place. One spot out of the automatic promotion spots. The top three teams automatically get promoted up to the third tier. Four through seven go into a harrowing playoff. Now, from the perspective, from the financial perspective, the club would love to go get promoted through the playoffs because then you get more games to make more money from. And including potentially a playoff final at Wembley, which is a stadium that holds like 80,000 people. So.

• 43:37Hank Green?

  You get like a cut, you get a cut of the door?

• 43:39John Green?

  You get a cut of the door. Exactly. It's like being a musician. But AFC Wimbledon have been playing really well. We're unbeaten in our last 12 games. We have not lost in 2025, which makes it distinctly different from lots of things in 2025. Yeah, we've been playing well. We've been getting too many draws, but we've still been playing well. We beat Bradford City. I watched that game. We beat, we tied Accrington Stanley, beat Crewe, tied Salford. We were playing well. We're playing okay. We're not giving up a lot of goals, which is key. However, we did in our most recent game tie Colchester, which was a little bit frustrating because Marcus Brown, Nerd Fight area's own Marcus Brown scored to put us 1-0 up. His first

• 44:20John Green?

  goal for AFC Wimbledon, the player we helped fund, scored a critical goal for AFC Wimbledon. But then in the 89th minute, Colchester scored a dumb goal with like a player's chest. It's sort of like chested it in and it was very disappointing from a set piece. I was fairly frustrated because it was the last minute of the game, but still 1-1, fourth place. All things being equal, I'll take it. We play Bromley next this Saturday.

• 44:45Hank Green?

  Can you help me understand? I'm looking at the League Two table, which is how I understand how the sports is going. Colchester won their last game and AFC Wimbledon drew their last game. And Colchester hasn't drawn in

• 44:58John Green?

  No, no, it's the last. It's very confusing the way that Google does it, but that's the first check mark you see is actually their fifth, their fifth most recent game. It's the last thing is what just happened.

• 45:10Hank Green?

  Okay, thank you. Now, I've been misunderstanding this table for years.

• 45:15John Green?

  I know.

• 45:16Hank Green?

  That doesn't seem like how it would be, but okay.

• 45:18John Green?

  I know. Yeah. So basically, if we, if we still control our destiny because we've played one fewer game than most of the teams around us. So if we were to win the rest of our games, which of course we won't, but if we were to, we would automatically be promoted.

• 45:32Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 45:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Hank Green?

  How many games are there left?

• 45:37John Green?

  There are 14 games left for Wimbledon, 13 games left for most of the other teams. I think that if we win seven of those games and draw three of them, um, we're pretty much guaranteed to go up.

• 45:49Hank Green?

  Hell, yeah. Well, I'm rooting for that playoff game at Wembley.

• 45:53John Green?

  I'm not. I find that stuff very stressful.

• 45:55Hank Green?

  I know, I know, but I don't have as much skin in this game because I don't own any of the club.

• 46:00John Green?

  I will say.

• 46:01Hank Green?

  Normal amount of the club.

• 46:03John Green?

  I will say if that were to happen, you would be there whether you want to be or not. I could even tell you the date right now. Put it on your calendar, uh, just in case.

• 46:13Hank Green?

  I'm gonna tell you why I can't go is what's about to happen.

• 46:15John Green?

  That's not going to happen because you will be there. It will be Monday, May 26th or Sunday, May 25th, one or the other.

• 46:25Hank Green?

  Monday, um, well, unfortunately I am not busy that day.

• 46:29John Green?

  You will be in London if, uh, if Wimbledon make it to the playoff.

• 46:33Hank Green?

  So I, I would need to go directly from London to Boston.

• 46:36John Green?

  Well, that's happens. You don't think they have a flight? I mean, it's actually easier to go from London to Boston than it is to go from Boston to Missoula.

• 46:45Hank Green?

  It would be probably a really weird, it's a couple of days for me.

• 46:48John Green?

  No, I, I, I plan to go straight from the Indy 500 to the playoff final, like literally walk away from the Indianapolis 500 Speedway to the, go to the airport and then report to Wembley.

• 47:01Hank Green?

  John.

• 47:01John Green?

  Yes.

• 47:02Hank Green?

  In Mars news, do you remember the other day when we were talking about, uh, river beaches and lake beaches?

• 47:06John Green?

  Oh, yeah, very.

• 47:06Hank Green?

  And you were giving me a hard time about it?

• 47:08John Green?

  I wasn't giving you a hard time. I was just curious.

• 47:11Hank Green?

  Okay. Well, Catherine and I talked about our, our relationship with river and lake beaches and, you know, being very inland, uh, needing to have something that we call the beach.

• 47:23John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, a lake beach is not a beach, but go on.

• 47:25Hank Green?

  But we need something that we can call a beach. And sure, that's what we do.

• 47:28John Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Hank Green?

  And I will, I will die on that hill. Well, this week in Mars news.

• 47:33John Green?

  Yeah, there's also beaches on Mars. Lake beaches or beaches beaches?

• 47:39Hank Green?

  Beaches.

• 47:40John Green?

  Oh, like ocean beaches.

• 47:41Hank Green?

  Ocean beaches.

• 47:42John Green?

  Love to hear it.

• 47:43Hank Green?

  Not anymore.

• 47:44John Green?

  Always dreamt of a beach vacation on another planet.

• 47:47Hank Green?

  Well, let's do it. We gotta fill up those basins again, but in the meantime, this beach is currently buried 33 feet under Mars's surface.

• 47:56John Green?

  Oh.

• 47:56Hank Green?

  Uh, so that's not going to be easy to get to, but.

• 47:59John Green?

  How do we know about something that's 33 feet under the surface? Again, I do not doubt that we could build the pyramids if we know what's 33 feet beneath Mars's surface.

• 48:08Hank Green?

  That's right. Well, China's Jiorong Rover has ground penetrating radar. And so it uses, it's sent these radio waves into the ground, looking at how the radio waves reflect back. You can tell what's under the ground and they have found evidence of thick layers of sand under the surface of Mars and the layers formed a sloped structure that resembles something that we commonly find on shorelines here on Earth. They're called foreshore deposits. And they're formed by wind and tides that move sediment along the water. And this indicates that there was water on Mars, which we knew. And there might have been water on Mars for long enough for those sediments to be transported into beaches.

• 48:49Hank Green?

  And, uh, and there might even have been waves that crashed on those beaches. We can kind of see all that down there below the surface.

• 48:57John Green?

  That's incredible. That's so awesome.

• 48:59Hank Green?

  Travel back in time and see the beaches of Mars.

• 49:02John Green?

  This is a beautiful thing to me that we're able to glimpse the past.

• 49:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:09John Green?

  Sort of directly through the magic of physics and geology and stuff. That we're able to imagine with some clarity what the universe looked like 16 billion years ago. It just, it never gets old to me that we can do that.

• 49:24Hank Green?

  One of my favorite things is how we can know what the inside of the Earth is like.

• 49:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Hank Green?

  Um, because of course you can't create a powerful enough radar impulse to travel through the whole earth.

• 49:38John Green?

  Right.

• 49:38Hank Green?

  So that would seem like an impossible task. But then the earth is like, hold on, I got you. And it creates its own very powerful impulses that wobble around the whole earth. And then we can detect how those waves called earthquakes are bounced around from deep layer, deep structures within the earth. And we can tell what the inside of the earth looks like because the earth sometimes uh, at random does these very powerful and often catastrophically destructive uh, things where it continues to be to wiggle a little bit.

• 50:13John Green?

  That's so weird.

• 50:15Hank Green?

  It's so weird.

• 50:17John Green?

  Earth is weird, life is weird, but it's a blessing to be here with you. I know that for a fact. And uh, while it's easy to get discouraged, and I think that there are good reasons to get discouraged, it is also important to remember that um, none of us is alone. As the Liverpool fans sing, hold on, hold on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone.

• 50:39Hank Green?

  Gosh, that's some non-toxic masculinity right there.

• 50:43John Green?

  Oh, they, they put, they put their arms around each other and they sway back and forth and they sing a song from the musical carnival. It is a wonder to behold. You know what the Wimbledon fans sing that I, I, I absolutely adore? They sing, uh, wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you.

• 51:04Hank Green?

  So true.

• 51:04John Green?

  Sing it like, wise men say.

• 51:12John Green?

  They do. And I mean, I hear that song and I, and I tears well up in my eyes because it's so true. Like there is such a joy just in being in love. Like, I don't, I, and, and the great thing about something like Wimbledon is it loves you back. Like it doesn't always love you back with wins, but it loves you back. And um, there is a joy to being with other people whose love is pointed in the same direction as yours. And obviously football's not the only way to feel that, but it's a way. And that's just one of the best things to feel in this world.

• 51:43Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, John, I'm very glad to get to do this with you. I think that we have a lot of.

• 51:51Hank Green?

  Cool stuff to do in the future.

• 51:54John Green?

  And Hope so.

• 51:55Hank Green?

  Uh, and part of me is like, it's more vital than ever. And part of me is ground down by the reality of it all. And

• 52:04John Green?

  I mean, I'll tell you what, I'm going to feel really good if Wimbledon get promoted, regardless of the exterior realities.

• 52:11Hank Green?

  There's, yeah, and I am like plate tectonics exists.

• 52:15John Green?

  Yeah, which is a mind blower.

• 52:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 52:19John Green?

  Doesn't exist everywhere, but it exists on Earth.

• 52:21Hank Green?

  No, it's pretty unusual.

• 52:23John Green?

  Yeah, we're lucky. I mean, we're not lucky so much as we're like designed for the place where we ended up. But yeah.

• 52:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, yes, anthropic principle and all that. That's another topic that we could take on. Let's do the anthropic principle next episode.

• 52:36John Green?

  No, let's just answer questions from our listeners. Hopefully goofs.

• 52:40Hank Green?

  Hopefully goofs. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhouse. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Metis. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohas 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 Gennaro Rola, as they say in our hometown.

• 53:00John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.

• 53:06Hank Green?

  Only fools rush in.

• 53:11John Green?

  But I

• 53:12Hank Green?

  But I can't help. Nope, lost it.

• 53:19John Green?

  No, you don't have it, but it was a heroic action that reminded me of when you had a fake British accent for a year.