418: Fifty-Three, That’s It For Me

What ages should I look out for? How common are tongues? Should I send a wedding invite to a celebrity? How do I avoid getting discouraged and giving up on my dreams? How do we know there aren’t more elements? How do I connect with my classmates when we are in different stages of life? …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. 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.

• 0:09John Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12Hank Green?

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

• 0:14John 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, one time, the milk, I threw it right past my friend.

• 0:29Hank Green?

  I did. It did, and it splattered all over the wall. And, and then she said, "Why did you do that?" And I said, "It was past your eyes, milk."

• 0:38John Green?

  Oh.

• 0:39Hank Green?

  I don't know. I didn't have one, so I just had to, I just had to grab that one out of somewhere.

• 0:43John Green?

  Ever tell you my favorite joke about the pig?

• 0:46Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 0:47John Green?

  Guy from the city goes to visit his brother, who's a farmer, and the guy from the city notices a three-legged pig. You know this one?

• 0:55Hank Green?

  I don't think so.

• 0:57John Green?

  Guy, guy says, "Hey, why you got a three-legged pig?"

• 1:02Hank Green?

  Uh-oh. This is starting to sound familiar.

• 1:05John Green?

  The farmer says, "Oh, Bessie? Oh, Bessie's an incredible pig."

• 1:08Hank Green?

  I mean, Bessie's like, "That's a cow name."

• 1:10John Green?

  Not this pig, Hank. This pig is named Bessie.

• 1:12Hank Green?

  You know what I like about my jokes is that they're over by now.

• 1:14John Green?

  Yeah, that wasn't a great joke, but to be fair, most of them are. How, how are you doing?

• 1:18Hank Green?

  I'm good. Can I hit you with an idea I have?

• 1:21John Green?

  Of course. Is it a million-dollar idea?

• 1:23Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 1:24John Green?

  Great.

• 1:25Hank Green?

  Wine is over.

• 1:27John Green?

  Wine is over? If you, like, the way war is over if you want it, like John and Yoko?

• 1:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, so wine is over. This is the first, this is the first half of my idea. You know what? You know wine?

• 1:39John Green?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:40Hank Green?

  They're like, "Here it is."

• 1:41John Green?

  Intimately.

• 1:42Hank Green?

  It's, "Here it is." It's this special grape juice that we, that we did magic to so that it makes you feel weird. And some of it's like, some of it's like $10, and some of it's like $1 million.

• 1:54John Green?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:55Hank Green?

  Wine is over. People are done with wine. People don't want wine anymore.

• 1:59John Green?

  I think wine is not over, but, okay, go on.

• 2:02Hank Green?

  Wine is over. Why, I, look around. Look at the grocery stores. There's no wine anymore. Wine is over.

• 2:06John Green?

  No, wine is not over. Wine might be declining among the youths, but wine is not over.

• 2:11Hank Green?

  But go on. There is definitely an actual thing happening where wine is declining among the youths. The wine decline, as they call it. I think, did, we used to go over to our friends' houses with a bottle of wine. You know, it's like, "You invite me over, I'm gonna bring a bottle of wine." That's what you do. You go to the store, you get a bottle of wine. One, people don't want goods anymore. They want acts of service.

• 2:30John Green?

  Hmm.

• 2:31Hank Green?

  So we have to do a little thing for our friends. Two, people don't drink as much anymore. So like bring in alcohol, maybe only on behalf of the people who even want any wine. Three, wine was always dumb. It was always a bad idea. It was always stupid. It's just grape juice. And it's all, everybody built up this fancy stuff around it. And I know there's gonna be some sommeliers listening to this and some vintners listening to this, and they're gonna be mad at me.

• 2:52John Green?

  You're throwing some people's livelihoods under the bus right now.

• 2:54Hank Green?

  Wine was always dumb. It's always been dumb. I've always, it's always.

• 2:57John Green?

  I completely disagree. I love wine, but go on.

• 3:00Hank Green?

  Now, what we're gonna, what the new thing, the new big hip thing that everybody's doing is they're making at home, on their own, they're making bespoke iced teas. And they're bringing that over to drink with their friends.

• 3:17John Green?

  Using tea, no doubt, from good dot store.

• 3:19Hank Green?

  Using tea from good dot store. Oftentimes, some of the delightful decaffeinated varieties we have, because you're going over for an evening with friends, you don't necessarily wanna be juicing yourself up.

• 3:31John Green?

  I like it.

• 3:32Hank Green?

  Getting gacked, as they say in my, my friend group.

• 3:35John Green?

  Uh, getting geeked, as the kids apparently say, uh, over July 4th. Uh, Alice said to mom, I think dad is geeked.

• 3:44Hank Green?

  Oh, cuz you were drunk?

• 3:45John Green?

  Well, I had had some wine. I wouldn't say I was drunk, but wine is not over in our house.

• 3:50Hank Green?

  Gacked is when you're over caffeinated.

• 3:52John Green?

  Oh, I, I see. Okay. And geeked is when you've had some wine. So anyway, I, I don't dislike the idea because it's good for good dot store and what's good for good dot store is good for the world. But wine is definitely not over, but I, I kinda do know what you mean because I recently went to this young person's party. I was with my friend Nat Wolfe, who was in the Faulkner Stars and Paper Towns movies. And Nat's just one of my favorite people. And he was like, listen, I don't wanna stop hanging out with you, but I have to go to my friend Olivia's birthday party. You should come with me. And I was like, do I know your friend Olivia? And he was like, nah, but she's cool. She'll be fine with it. She'll be fine with some 47 year old guy she's never met showing up to her birthday party. And she was, to be fair. Olivia was very polite and a lovely, lovely person.

• 4:31Hank Green?

  Was it a famous Olivia that I know of?

• 4:34John Green?

  I don't think so, but I wouldn't totally bet against it. You know, I don't have a good eye for famous people. There were a bunch of famous people at the party. And so it's very possible that she's a famous person and I just don't know who she is.

• 4:44Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 4:44John Green?

  Um, one time I talked to, uh, Bella Hadid for 45 minutes. And at the end, Sarah said, how was Bella Hadid? And I said, who's Bella Hadid? So, you know, anything's possible. Was her last name Rodrigo? No, no, it wasn't Olivia Rodrigo. I would have recognized that person. Anyway, Olivia was super cool. A bunch of nice people at the party. But I'll tell you what, there were not a lot of alcohol. They had like two bottles of wine for like 20 people and the bottles of wine weren't getting drunk till John Green showed up. Yeah. And the amount of iced tea at this party was unhinged. Or it certainly should have been, you know? All like hip Hollywood people are just drinking iced teas. We're drinking good dot store iced tea. That's right. Olivia and Nat and all the other hip

• 5:28John Green?

  Hollywood people were drinking good dot store iced teas. All right, Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Grace, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know you're a hit podcast for teens, but I'm hoping you can help out a young adult. Oh, don't worry, Grace. We're also a hit podcast for 20 somethings. I remember once in an old episode, in an old episode, John remarked that he disliked being 13 almost as much as he disliked being 23. I remembered that mostly because I also really hated being 13 and thought that I should probably watch out for 23. Well, now I am 23. And while I don't think I tried to make this a bad year, it has sucked pretty bad, definitely among my least favorites. So my question is, are there more ages I should watch out for? Is 33? Okay. How about 43? Hoping for a little bit of me, Grace.

• 6:13John Green?

  I don't mean, 43 was pretty bad for me. Oh, yeah, that's when you got the cancer. I don't want to say that you're always making it about cancer, but. I was just thinking of 43, you know? I think 33 was really pretty good. 33, things were pretty stable. I think I was on my feet. I think I was doing all right. What year was that? That was 14 years ago. So that was 2011. Yeah, I mean, things were fine. I was writing the Fault in Our Stars. Actually, actually, actually, 33 was really bad. I just remembered. 33 was so I needed my gallbladder out. I was in a terrible headspace. I lost like 40 pounds. I wasn't doing good at all, Hank. I was like, I it felt like to get

• 6:54John Green?

  to get that book out of me like I was like drowning or something. It was just horrible. Grace, maybe the issue is numbers that end in three.

• 7:04Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's a it's a cycle. Thirteen, bad. Three, I don't know, three is pretty good from what I could tell.

• 7:11John Green?

  I don't know. I don't know. I think you got a lot of anger built up and you don't have a good way of expressing it.

• 7:15Hank Green?

  Not sure what to do with it. It is a very transformative time, because.

• 7:18John Green?

  Yeah. I remember when Alice was three, we called her our three-nager.

• 7:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:23John Green?

  She acted like a little teenager. So three, thirteen, twenty-three, thirty-three, forty-three, you get cancer, Grace, not to not to concern you. Or half of us did anyway.

• 7:34Hank Green?

  Fifty-three?

• 7:36John Green?

  That might be it for me.

• 7:40Hank Green?

  That's that's the rhyme. Fifty-three, that's it for me.

• 7:45Hank Green?

  It's actually where it's actually where nowadays, in the new in the new way, we're going to take all the politicians when they hit that age. And just put them out to pasture. That's it. They gotta eat grass now.

• 7:57John Green?

  Well, in that case, we won't have a Congress.

• 8:00Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, it's gonna be a weird Congress.

• 8:02John Green?

  Gonna have like four members of Congress. I I I think that in general, the hardest years. And of course, it depends person to person, like Sarah had a great middle school experience. Lots of people have great middle school experiences. But I think the end of middle school, which is when you're about thirteen, the beginning of proper adulthood, whenever that is for you, like early twenties for most people. Is really hard. And then, at least, I I I'm not that old, Grace, but like, at least after that, for me, it's gotten better. Like, things have been bad, but they've never been as bad as they were before. I watched Harvey when I was twenty-five.

• 8:36Hank Green?

  Twenty-three, it's weird. It I don't, it was very bad for me.

• 8:40John Green?

  Oh, the worst.

• 8:41Hank Green?

  It's just so, I mean, you know, obviously, people take lots of different paths, but like, the if you kind of graduate from college. After like with four years right after high school, then like, that's the year where you're like out in the world trying to figure things out. And that's both like socially very weird because your friend groups might have fractured and gone all over the place. And it's, of course, professionally and economically very weird because it's like, all right. Go make money now. Figure that out.

• 9:11John Green?

  Right. Yeah, I think in general, what we want as humans is to be accompanied and to accompany those we love through the trials and travails of humanity. And that is really hard when you don't have like stable, long-term relationships. And a lot of times you don't when you're that age because a bunch of your relationships is just fractured as a result of moving or as a result of other people moving. And then you've got the issues that come with being early in your career and being treated often not very well. You know, like I remember my teacher, Wendy McLeod, my theater teacher in college, said, you know, you, you, you've sort of been a somebody here at Kenyon

• 9:54John Green?

  for the last four years and you're about to be a nobody. And that was very true.

• 9:59Hank Green?

  Well, luckily I was, I was like a nobody at school, so that was good.

• 10:03John Green?

  I, I, I wanted to be, I wanted to be Kenyans. I wanted to be like locally famous very badly. It's recently come to my attention that in general, I wanted to be famous very badly, which is hilarious because of course I know of no one who's less equipped to be famous or indeed enjoyed it less. But I did want to be famous so badly. Like somebody sent me a piece I wrote in 2003 where I was talking about how I would do anything for fans and it was so, God, it was so cringy.

• 10:29Hank Green?

  You talked about this last week. I don't.

• 10:31John Green?

  I can't get over it, Hank.

• 10:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:32John Green?

  Can't work my way through it.

• 10:33Hank Green?

  The, the, yes, reading the professions of our former selves is, I, I don't, I don't mean you and me, I mean, like everybody is very weird.

• 10:42John Green?

  Horribly uncomfortable.

• 10:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:44John Green?

  Horribly uncomfortable. To see what you wanted when you were 23 and what you want now. Uh, this is the terrible thing about the internet, right? Is that it preserves all of this. Like otherwise it would only be preserved in my journals or whatever. And I could at least deny it, but.

• 11:00Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, I think that most of it isn't even preserved in journals and we don't just deny it. We would not believe it.

• 11:10John Green?

  Yeah, I know. I was genuinely surprised to read these words I wrote in 2003. I was like, there's no way I thought that. That's crazy. That's, that, that's not me at all. That's not anywhere like the me I understand myself to be and indeed understand myself to have been then.

• 11:25Hank Green?

  I once watched a movie with Catherine and she was like, we've seen this movie before. And I said, no, we haven't. And she was like, well, I have. And I was like, okay, we must have seen it. You must have seen it and I didn't see it. And then. Two full years later, I found an old blog post where I review the movie.

• 11:45John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, memory is weird that way, right? Like, we think of memory as being reliable or as somehow at least being like our testimony about the past. But in fact, like, memory is is Swiss cheese, like, and and and what we do, both like, we don't remember much of what happened, but also like what we do remember is not really what happened. Instead, as as I wrote in An Abundance of Catharines, what we remember kind of becomes what happened.

• 12:14Hank Green?

  Not great. Doesn't seem like that's how it is, but it is. And and man, do we not have any idea how any of that works? So it all makes everything, nothing about the brain doesn't make sense, because nothing about the brain does make sense. So you could tell me anything, and I'd be like, sure.

• 12:28John Green?

  Right, right.

• 12:30Hank Green?

  People ask me questions about the brain and deer hanging John questions. I'm like, no, that's not happening. I'm not answering your brain question. I don't know. I don't know what's going on in there.

• 12:38John Green?

  Anyway, Grace, you're gonna be okay, not in the short run and not in the long run, but in the medium run.

• 12:42Hank Green?

  John, this next question comes from Anastasia, who asks, Dear Jenkinhan, hope y'all are well. I'm lying in bed late at night, and a thought has struck me. Tongues. How common are they? How many animal slash beings out there have tongues? And are we humans in the minority? Did we all just evolve to have tongues and tongue-like body parts? Do they all serve the same purpose? Not in the other Asia. Anastasia. Tongues.

• 13:09John Green?

  Well, first off, obviously, we're in the minority, because most life is plants.

• 13:14Hank Green?

  Plants don't have tongues.

• 13:16John Green?

  And plants, unless Hank Green is gonna go on one of his crazy Hank Green rants, where he's like, you know, actually, trees do have tongues. They have tongues called zyllum and floum. Unless he's gonna do one of those things, trees don't have tongues.

• 13:30Hank Green?

  As far as I know, insects don't have tongues either, which, though I wouldn't be that's another most of the things, you know?

• 13:39John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:40Hank Green?

  So I don't I don't think that they do. A lot of vertebrates have tongues. Now, interestingly, I just made a video on Hank's channel a few weeks ago about. The transition from life in the water to on land. And when Tabuki and I were looking at this, it seems like this was another thing that the land did. Because fish don't really have tongues. They have tongue-like things that are sometimes used to manipulate food, that are sometimes used for chemo-reception, like taste. Uh, but they're, they're just like little nubs. And they most, but like, and the reason is water is much more viscous than air. And so in order to like, get food into the fish, they just like suck water in and it pulls everything with it for the most part.

• 14:25Hank Green?

  And so it's a lot easier to move stuff around in water than it is to move stuff around in air. And so you, once you get that, once you're like out of the water, you have to like move things around in your mouth. Uh, in the air and the, the water can't like play a part in that.

• 14:41John Green?

  Well, it kinda can, it kinda can play a part in it, right? Because it's easier to swallow a pill with water than it is to swallow a pill dry.

• 14:47Hank Green?

  Exactly. Yes. Yes. Good, good, good point. And a good illustration of the reality of the.

• 14:53John Green?

  The fact that we brought the water along with us, basically we are still water creatures. It's just we're living on land.

• 14:59Hank Green?

  So the tongue, once it did evolve, which it mostly didn't do in water. Um, though it, it, and, and it's not entirely clear, even if the tongue structure that fish have is related to the tongue structure that land vertebrates have, but, uh, it did a bunch of, a bunch of different stuff. So as you can see, like snake tongues mostly don't do any manipulation. They mostly taste the air.

• 15:23John Green?

  Sure.

• 15:24Hank Green?

  And, you know, like.

• 15:26John Green?

  Dog tongues are mostly there for panting.

• 15:28Hank Green?

  Dog tongues do serve a panting purpose, but also like a water lifting purpose, which our tongues don't do. But also a swallowing purpose. And then human tongues, human tongues, I hadn't thought about how many jobs they do.

• 15:41John Green?

  How many job, I mean, I feel like the main job they do is the talking job and the swallowing job.

• 15:45Hank Green?

  Well, but they also did tasting job.

• 15:48John Green?

  Oh yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a job. It's a minor job, but it's.

• 15:51Hank Green?

  It's a, no, it's a super important job. It helps you not eat poison, which kills you.

• 15:54John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. No, like I said, it's a minor job, but it's a job.

• 15:58Hank Green?

  Yeah. And then there's the, there's all the like recreational activity that they engage in as well. But

• 16:04John Green?

  Are you talking about French kissing?

• 16:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think so, and etc. Yeah.

• 16:09John Green?

  How long uh has French kissing been a thing?

• 16:13Hank Green?

  You know, John, I've I do not know. Do you want to do you want to check it out while I talk a little bit more about tongues?

• 16:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Hank Green?

  So a tongue is a hydrostat, which means that it is it is inflated by and moves around in part through the action of filling up with fluid, which is wild. There is a case to be made that it is a tentacle. And that makes me think that uh that that another species like a space alien seeing us for the first time would hate them. Would be like, oh, my God, they think it's totally normal that there's a tentacle in the middle of the face. The use of the tongue to evolve to be able to be an information communication device, absolutely wild, not what it was for, not what it evolved for.

• 17:00Hank Green?

  And now we have made it so that a huge portion of our brain is dedicated to the movement of the tongue so that we can speak. Wild.

• 17:07John Green?

  Yeah, it's super important because if we couldn't speak to each other with our tongues, we'd have to use our hands like they do in American Sign Language, which we would eventually, I think, have still gotten to language, but it would have been a very different kind of language.

• 17:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:21John Green?

  So the term French kissing has only existed since the early 20th century, Hank. And it came from the fact that the British and the Americans just felt those French were very libertine and not at all buttoned up. And so it was called a French kiss. Not unlike how the Italians called syphilis the German disease and the Germans called it the French disease and the French called it the German disease.

• 17:48John Green?

  But kissing with tongue has been around for a very long time, at least as long as language. So it is it is referred to in texts that go back at least 3,500 years. So, you know, it's been a

• 18:00Hank Green?

  Probably the whole time.

• 18:01John Green?

  It was it was probably part of the human story from the beginning.

• 18:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, there are, I think I read at some point, there are some folks who don't kiss. Like some cultures where kissing isn't a thing.

• 18:13John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:14Hank Green?

  But, you know. I bet we've been recreating with the tongue for a long time.

• 18:20John Green?

  Great. This next question comes from Chelsea who writes, Dear John and Hank, my partner and I are getting married in a few months and we've begun the stressful process of preparing invitations. We've compiled what we consider to be a fairly well thought out list of family and friends. However, no fewer than five people have insisted that we send an invite to the singer whose concert we attended on our first date. This seems utterly bizarre to me. Is it normal to send invites to celebrities or public figures who are absolutely never going to show up? Should I be sending invites to Brennan Lee Mulligan and the Seattle Kraken and Ben and Jerry? Not the football club, Chelsea. P.S. You're totally invited. And then there's a link. I'm going to the link right now.

• 18:53Hank Green?

  Well, so it's not, it's not weird to invite us, but it's weird to invite Brennan Lee Mulligan and Seal.

• 19:00John Green?

  Apparently.

• 19:01Hank Green?

  Musician.

• 19:02John Green?

  Seal. It was definitely Seal. It was definitely a Seal concert. You're so right.

• 19:08Hank Green?

  Kiss, Kiss by a Rose in the Gray. And that's.

• 19:11John Green?

  Let me see where these people are getting married. See if we can make it. Ooh, I'm not available to go to Seattle, but I am available to get something off your registry.

• 19:21Hank Green?

  Ooh.

• 19:21John Green?

  I'm gonna rent you a cabana.

• 19:23Hank Green?

  We're gonna get a lot of questions, you guys. We're gonna get a lot of wedding questions soon after this, these shenanigans John's pulling right now.

• 19:32John Green?

  Oh, hold on. I'm, I'm putting in my credit card number.

• 19:38John Green?

  What do you think, Hank? Should you invite celebrities? I've, I invited a celebrity to my wedding, but they didn't come.

• 19:42Hank Green?

  I think that it's about fun, you know? I think it's if you think that if you and your partner think it's fun to be like, oh, let's, but you're not, you know that they're not gonna show up. But I get wedding invitations.

• 19:53John Green?

  Yeah, I get wedding invitations too. I've never showed up to one, but I, I, I, I used to say in an early episode of Dear Hank and John, I was like, oh, I'll totally go. But now I'm like, ah, it's a little awkward if you don't know anybody at the wedding. I, in fact, I just officiated a wedding last week. And I, we didn't know anybody at the wedding, but it was fine because Sarah was there and like I was the officiant. And I knew the couple.

• 20:15Hank Green?

  You were doing a thing.

• 20:15John Green?

  It's weird if you're going there and you don't know the couple.

• 20:18Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, you don't want to like distract from the event of the day, you know, if Jeff Goldblum's at your wedding, then it becomes all about Jeff Goldblum.

• 20:24John Green?

  All about Jeff Goldblum.

• 20:26Hank Green?

  Especially because of how he's going to be dressed, which will be immaculate and quite attention grabbing.

• 20:31John Green?

  A white tux just there, and it's not even a black tie wedding. It's just, that's the only thing he has to wear to a wedding.

• 20:38Hank Green?

  No, he's got like a floral tux.

• 20:40John Green?

  Yes, a tux of the rainbow, but, um, but it's very floral and it's definitely got a cummerbund, not a belt.

• 20:48Hank Green?

  It's a, it's a tongue tux. It's just, it's very, you, you wouldn't know unless you looked up close. But it is, it is a tux that features the, all of the variety of vertebrate tongues.

• 21:00John Green?

  It's called tongue mammals of the world. You can only get it at jeffgoldblum.com.

• 21:04Hank Green?

  The tongue, the tonguecedo.

• 21:06John Green?

  I invited the New Yorker writer Henrik Hertzberg to my wedding because it was in a copy of his book, Politics, that, um, I asked Sarah to marry me. He signed the book, Dear Sarah, Will You Marry John Henrik Hertzberg? And so I thought it would be nice to invite him. And then he wrote back, which was nice. I mean, looking back, it was nice of him even to, even to write back, right? I mean, it was nice of him even to RSVP, no? But when he wrote back, he said, of course I cannot attend your wedding. Of course.

• 21:37Hank Green?

  That's very nice though.

• 21:38John Green?

  Of course I cannot attend your wedding. What do you mean, of course you cannot? I, I cannot attend your wedding would have been adequate. Of course, you speck of dirt. I cannot attend your wedding.

• 21:50John Green?

  But it is nice to be known, even by such a speck. I am a man and you, sir, are an ant. And so of course I cannot attend your ant wedding, full of other ants. I'd get bitten and dirty.

• 22:06John Green?

  I couldn't even fit in. I couldn't fit into your wedding venue of ants.

• 22:12John Green?

  What is this? What is this? A wedding for ants?

• 22:18John Green?

  I can't even fit in the colony. Oh, man. I think my presence would just be a distraction. It would be weird if there was a man at an ant wedding, right? Like,

• 22:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:28John Green?

  It would be weird. And I'm sure that's how he was thinking about it.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  And probably because the queen would be like, what are you doing at the ant wedding? I'm the queen. You cannot just attend, mere man. You're not even part of a super organism.

• 22:45John Green?

  Well,

• 22:46Hank Green?

  And I'm the leader of this super organism. My genes are in all of them.

• 22:50John Green?

  I do think that humans are ultimately a super organism, though, you know, like we are deeply connected to each other.

• 22:56Hank Green?

  When do we get there? When do we realize, you know?

• 22:59John Green?

  When do we start acting like a super organism?

• 23:01Hank Green?

  I've, I've always felt that at some point in the future, we, like, if, if, if aliens saw us, they'd be like, oh, my God, that's so cute. They think they're individuals.

• 23:10John Green?

  And I think they would, they would also think it's so cute that they think the point of life is mere competition and haven't yet figured out that their secret power, their superpower is in fact cooperation and collaboration.

• 23:20Hank Green?

  And, and the only way they have ever done anything ever.

• 23:23John Green?

  The only way they've ever gotten anything done.

• 23:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:26John Green?

  Yeah. Or the, the most, I, I, competition gets things done, but the most effective way we've gotten things done is through collaboration and through, through thinking of ourselves as a super organism, through thinking of ourselves like as a single species.

• 23:38Hank Green?

  And no, and nobody ever competed alone, like, except in sport. And even in sport, they didn't compete alone. Like, even in solo sport, there's all of the, the infrastructure and the coaching and the, the,

• 23:50John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Hank Green?

  the people around you supporting you. And, yeah.

• 23:52John Green?

  Yeah. Well, and if you're like, if you're the only human on Earth, there's no reason to run a fast 100-yard dash, you know, other than to evade cheetahs.

• 23:59Hank Green?

  That's very true. That's very true. I mean, yeah, I mean, co-op, co-op, competition exists in super organisms, you know?

• 24:07John Green?

  Sure, of course. Yeah, I'm not saying, I'm not saying get rid of competition. I'm saying understand that lifting up humanity is way, way cooler than lifting up any individual within humanity.

• 24:18Hank Green?

  Definitely true.

• 24:20John Green?

  Anyway, Chelsea, enjoy your cabana on your honeymoon, because I just got it for you.

• 24:25Hank Green?

  This honeymoon is cabanas, C-A-B-A-N-A-S. It's cabanas, C-A-B-A-N-A-S.

• 24:33John Green?

  That reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by Chelsea and Benjamin's Cabanas. Chelsea and Benjamin's Cabanas.

• 24:40Hank Green?

  They're cabanas. This podcast is also brought to you by the Tongue Sido, available at jeffgoldblum.com. It's all tongues.

• 24:48John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is additionally brought to you by the ages of 13, 23, 33, and 43. Not recommended.

• 24:54Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by the end of wine. The end of wine. The age of tea is here.

• 25:01John Green?

  It'd be great if we could catch a big wave like, like the size of wine with our tea.

• 25:07Hank Green?

  That's what I'm saying. I mean, in fairness, tea is and has always been bigger than wine.

• 25:13John Green?

  That's true. That's a good point. It's just like you can charge $100 for a bottle of wine. It's hard to get $100 out of a bag of tea, but we're gonna try over at Good Dot Store.

• 25:22Hank Green?

  I don't, that is for clarity, not the current business model. You could get tea for less than $100 in Good Dot Store.

• 25:28John Green?

  All right, Hank, let's go to a serious question. This one is from Anna, who writes, Dear John and Hank, my name is Anna, and I graduated college a few years ago with a degree in wildlife biology. I love nature. I wanted to devote my time and energy to conserving our natural world, but it's become quite difficult for me to get into grad school or get a wildlife job of any kind due to gestures broadly. I applied to 15-plus grad programs and 20-plus jobs and got rejected from everything. I was wondering if you had any advice for me on how not to get discouraged and give up on my dreams. I'm thinking of pivoting and getting Pilates instructor certified. Anna, like from Frozen, Anna, or Anna.

• 26:02Hank Green?

  Is it? Which way is it? Is it Anna in Frozen? I think it is.

• 26:05John Green?

  I think it is. Sorry, sorry, Anna. I missed that one the whole time.

• 26:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, brutal, brutal, brutal.

• 26:13John Green?

  Yeah, it's such a hard time right now to get into anything that's been defunded by the US government or like where the funding is suddenly precarious. And that includes everything related to... Climate action, it includes everything related to health. It includes everything related to our natural world.

• 26:33Hank Green?

  And it affects both the job market and the grad school market because, one, there are fewer grad school spots because there's less funding. Two, there's fewer grad school spots because there are people in the situation where they're like, well, I can't immediately get into the workforce. Another option is grad school. And so there's more people competing for fewer spots. This is not to say that you can't get into grad school ever. That's one thing that I would say to anybody in that situation. There are lots of different schools. There's smaller schools. There's next year. You can reach out to faculty directly before applying sometimes to tell a story,

• 27:17Hank Green?

  tell them why their work appeals to you personally. That can help. And was there something about Pilates in there?

• 27:26John Green?

  Yeah, Pilates, pivoting to become a Pilates instructor.

• 27:30Hank Green?

  And then last, you can do all of that. You can be aware of and focused on your future in conservation while getting certified to be a Pilates instructor and doing that work, which is good, important work.

• 27:46John Green?

  Yeah. No, I mean, Hank loves his Pilates classes.

• 27:49Hank Green?

  I do love Pilates. And also I have seen how much it has helped a lot of people who I know who have had various limitations on their abilities.

• 27:57John Green?

  It can give you freedom from chronic pain, which is, I think, one of the greatest gifts that you can give a person. So there's no hierarchy of jobs like we've been told. This is a falsehood that exists inside of our mind that we have created in our brains. It's not real. Any work that eases the lives of others is good work.

• 28:23Hank Green?

  Yeah. And the ability to stay interested and focused on conservation, like that work is going to continue to exist. And I think it's going to continue to get more important. I think that this. I mean, I'm an optimistic person, and maybe I should just say that I hope, but I hope that this is not a permanent situation because conservation matters a lot and it will matter more in the future. We are going to need to figure out what to do with a lot of, a lot of shifts coming up, you know, like the population of the world is not increasing at the speed that it once was. We are continuing to be very efficient at agriculture and so like, we have to figure out a bunch of stuff to do with a lot of land. And that land management

• 29:08Hank Green?

  is going to be a bunch of human decisions and a lot of hard work by humans. So just like, stay in touch with it, stay connected to it, but like, it doesn't need to immediately be your career, but it, it is a passion. And I, you know, don't advocate for giving up a passion just because it's not a career.

• 29:24John Green?

  Yeah, I also just want to make sure that we're not minimizing how much this sucks.

• 29:28Hank Green?

  It sucks so bad.

• 29:30John Green?

  How many people it sucks for, because we hear a lot of, we hear a lot of this in our inbox and, um, you know, it's really a hard time to be a young person in the workforce. It's hard to be a person entering the workforce. Um, it's hard to be a person, uh, for a lot of people, especially in the US right now. And so we, um, yeah, it just, it's, sometimes we don't know what to say, to be honest, because, um,

• 29:54Hank Green?

  I mean, I, I hope that there is a huge, that Nerd Fight Area just takes over the entire Pilates infrastructure of America.

• 30:01John Green?

  That would be awesome. That'd be amazing. The Pilates infrastructure and the, the wedding infrastructure, like, how cool would it be if, like, Nerd Fight Area infiltrated the, the wedding industrial complex, you know?

• 30:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:14John Green?

  Uh, I had, I had two friends get married in the last week. One got, one got married in a courthouse, one got married in a very nice museum. And, um,

• 30:21Hank Green?

  Whoa.

• 30:23John Green?

  And they both had, they both had really good experiences that were right for them. You know what I mean? It's great. I freaking love a wedding, Hank. I can't help myself. I love a wedding.

• 30:33Hank Green?

  Me too. Me too. I haven't gone to a wedding in so long. All my friends got married.

• 30:37John Green?

  I hadn't been to a wedding in seven years. And then I went to a wedding and I was like, oh, God, I love a wedding. Even when I have to wear a black tux, I love a wedding.

• 30:45Hank Green?

  I know. I feel like I should get married again. We should, we should both do it. We should like, do like a, like a

• 30:50John Green?

  Recommitment ceremony?

• 30:52Hank Green?

  All four of us. Yeah.

• 30:54John Green?

  Sarah has said that she doesn't believe in getting married a second time to the same person.

• 30:58Hank Green?

  Who doesn't?

• 30:59John Green?

  My wife.

• 31:00Hank Green?

  Oh, I didn't hear.

• 31:02John Green?

  A key, a key figure in your plan?

• 31:04Hank Green?

  Dropped out. I thought maybe it was gonna be Jesus or something and I was gonna be like, come on.

• 31:09John Green?

  Oh, no, Jesus. Jesus is good with it. I talked to him about it once.

• 31:13Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Raquel, who asks, Dear Hank Tastic and John Tacular, how do we know that there aren't more elements we're missing out there that just aren't on the earth? The universe is very big. Couldn't there be some random element never before seen on earth that would be super hard to synthesize on earth? Just vibing out there on the edge of infinity? Are we missing out? Not yet in the table. Raquel-ment.

• 31:36John Green?

  Oh.

• 31:36Hank Green?

  I mean, once you thought of that, you had to ask the question.

• 31:40John Green?

  Hank, are there elements or possible elements that we haven't identified yet, or have we gotten all of them?

• 31:46Hank Green?

  We got all of them. So

• 31:47John Green?

  Are we sure?

• 31:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:50John Green?

  Because you think you have all the Pokemons and then they invent new ones.

• 31:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, they, I would love it if they could invent, and they kind of can invent new ones wildly, that, so there's, so an element, you can't like fit one between hydrogen and helium, right? Because an element is just the number of protons in the nucleus. So if you have one, you're hydrogen. Doesn't matter what else is going on. You know, even if you have no electrons, then you're a hydrogen ion. And if you have two, you're helium. If you have three, you're lithium, et cetera. All the way up to over 100. And so there's not like any hiding in the middle. That's one thing we know. And there was this period of time when we discovered elements, the way that You would imagine us discovering elements like we went out into the world and we were like,

• 32:35Hank Green?

  oh, this thing is different. This is this is like irreducible and it's a different thing. And then they had to like, figure out where it fit on the table by doing a bunch of really careful measurement. And and as they did that, they like filled in all the gaps of the table. And everything like kind of made sense. And then there was a period of time where discovering elements was a totally different thing, where you took two atoms ish, there's lots of ways to do this, but you took basically, you took two things and you smash them together really hard. And hopefully, if you do it right, you will get one of these like, super heavy elements very, very briefly. Because once and once a nucleus gets to a certain number of protons and neutrons, and they have to have the neutrons to keep the protons from

• 33:20Hank Green?

  pushing each other apart, the nucleus is too big. It can only exist for a very brief amount of time. And it wiggles itself apart. It just like wobble, wobble, wobble. And then it becomes too. And it, you know, it fizzes, it fizzes. It's like becoming too famous. You just can't hold the center for for very long. And then you wobble, wobble, wobble until. Unless you're Taylor. Explode. Something's holding that that nucleus together. Sometimes it happens, but very, very rarely, very rarely. So the there is, there is like a a thing that people imagine that perhaps there is some island of stability, where if you get a nucleus a certain size, it won't wobble itself apart. If you get it super, super big, we're pretty sure that that isn't the

• 34:04Hank Green?

  case, one. And we're almost certain that that couldn't happen naturally, that it would have to, it would have to happen in a laboratory. Because the things that would lead to it happening could not happen naturally. And this is like a weird thing about Earth. The things that happen on Earth just don't happen other places. Like, the hottest place in the universe, and the coldest place in the universe are both on Earth. And that's very weird.

• 34:32John Green?

  What?

• 34:33Hank Green?

  I just made fireworks go off. I don't know how, but that was, that was just such a, that was such a truth bomb that my camera was like fireworks.

• 34:42John Green?

  Tell me, tell me, explain this to me, how the hottest place in the entire universe and the coldest place in the entire universe are both here.

• 34:50Hank Green?

  Well, first cold is like, is, is pretty rare. Like, like it gets down to like close to absolute zero in natural situations, but getting down to like very close to within like fractions of fractions of

• 35:05Hank Green?

  degrees from absolute zero is not something that happens naturally. So that, that definitely is on earth and at any given time, it's, it's in a laboratory somewhere. And there are some time, like there, there are records we've set that are much colder than anywhere else in the universe, but they don't tend to last very long, but at any given time, there's some, some lab on earth.

• 35:24John Green?

  Unless there's some other smart species that got slightly closer to absolute zero.

• 35:28Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 35:28John Green?

  Yeah. Your point is, your point is taken. I get, I get the cold. But the hot makes no sense to me. I mean, we're talking about, I, I know something that's extremely hot that's in our neighborhood that's, that's not on earth. It's called the sun.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  Yeah. And on the very middle of it, crazy, crazy hot. And then it's pretty easy to make the case that like the hottest thing that's ever happened in the universe has been like a particle accelerator. So, so things sped up to very near the speed of light and then crashed into each other.

• 35:54John Green?

  That's hotter than the sun.

• 35:56Hank Green?

  That's hotter than the core of the sun. Yeah.

• 35:58John Green?

  Wow. Wow. All right. I mean, that's pretty wild. That is pretty wild. Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to answer one more question from Megan who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been accepted into my local university's animal science program. Congratulations, Megan. I'm a first generation college student and super proud of myself for taking the steps to get there. However, I'm a 31 year old with a middle schooler and a kindergartner who also works as a custodian in the animal science building. How on earth do I not make things awkward when my peers and professors eventually notice that I am also the cleaning lady? How do I connect with my classmates when we are in such different places in life, parenting and panicking? Megan.

• 36:35Hank Green?

  Megan, Megan, weird animal masks.

• 36:41John Green?

  It's a good solution. It's a good, and not, not, not during the custodian job.

• 36:46Hank Green?

  No class.

• 36:53John Green?

  No, I think, I mean, it's a great solution, but I actually think the solution is probably just to be like, hey, I have both of these jobs. Isn't that incredibly impressive?

• 37:07Hank Green?

  Never complain again, other students.

• 37:10John Green?

  Do you have, do you have two, two full-time jobs? Or is that just me?

• 37:14Hank Green?

  And, and also two children?

• 37:16John Green?

  And also two children? Or is that just me? Um, I feel, when I was in college, I went to a college that was almost entirely young people and was like, almost entirely residential, like students who lived on campus, a small liberal arts school kind of place. And, but there was one student there named Dan, who was also a security guard, which is even like more awkward, Megan, because like, he's essentially arresting you.

• 37:41Hank Green?

  To tell you to do stuff.

• 37:42John Green?

  That's to like, he has to be like, you're, you're too drunk and now we have to take you to the hospital kind of thing. Um, and, and yet, uh, Dan was awesome and all of us looked up to him and all of us thought like, which was true, that like, Dan had an amount of wisdom that we would never have, or at least like, certainly that we could never imagine having. And so I think you bring something to those, those classroom experiences that the, the other people don't have. And so even, even as I totally understand feeling nervous about it, you also have to remember that like, there's, uh, there's, there's a benefit to being you that they, that, that, that other people from different experiences don't have.

• 38:23Hank Green?

  Right. So first of all, shame dies in the light. You know, don't put on an animal mask.

• 38:29John Green?

  Don't put on an animal mask.

• 38:31Hank Green?

  Yeah. Second, um, the professors, I think will, will like be amazed by you and very supportive of you, if, unless they suck. Um, and then third, like, as far as like, being a peer with your peers, you're not going to be the same peer. Like, you're not going to like, have the same relationship as if you were in the exact same moment of life. So you, you like, you have to, uh, you have to like, be a, be a good presence, in the same way that they are going to be a good presence. And like, there can be like, lots of productive relationships and connection there, but it just won't be the same thing. You know, like, you're not going to be going out to the bars or whatever is happening. Maybe sometimes, but not in, not in the same way when you're in a different, you know,

• 39:16Hank Green?

  time in your life and you've got more people to take care of.

• 39:18John Green?

  I don't know. I don't know, Megan. I went to I went to Olivia's birthday party. Anything is possible. Anything is possible.

• 39:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:27John Green?

  All right, Hank. Speaking of anything being possible, what's the news from Mars this week?

• 39:32Hank Green?

  Oh, boy, we have good Mars news, John. So this week in Mars, researchers have gotten the first visible light picture of an aurora on Mars, which I didn't even think was possible. And this news came to us via the email inbox from a listener, Helene, who said the researcher, Elise Knutson, who works on this at my university, I know her and I'm sharing because I'm very proud of my colleague. And it's very cool that Mars gets auroras, not from Troy, Helene. So auroras are are different on Mars. Mars does not have an electric magnetic field. So the way that it works on Earth is that they like come in at the poles.

• 40:15Hank Green?

  And that's why they're at the north and south. There's like some local magnetic effects on Mars. But mostly it's just coming straight into the planet. So it's more dispersed and so harder to see. But then also, there's much less atmosphere for the aurora to be visible in, like much less.

• 40:32John Green?

  So that's why I would have thought it would be impossible.

• 40:34Hank Green?

  You got to do a lot of work to be able to see auroras on Mars. So the measurements of auroras on Mars so far have been done in the UV spectrum and to get measurement of an aurora in the visible spectrum. Knutson had to keep track of solar storm alerts and look through situations simulations of how the storms like will show up around the solar system. So basically, like had to wait for a really big solar storm that was gonna hit Mars. And in March of 2024, the Sun released a solar flare that was perfect. But things were still really stressful because they had to coordinate with people in charge of the Perseverance rover to see if they could

• 41:17Hank Green?

  use the camera on the rover to actually take the picture and also do all sorts of calculations to make sure the camera would be in the right position. Luckily, it all came together and it happened. Here's a quote from an article. When I opened the file, I immediately saw that this was what we had been waiting for. I was sitting next to my colleagues and tears streamed down. I couldn't say much as this was classified at the time, so I couldn't really talk about it. And it was my 30th birthday. It was all the ultimate birthday gift from Mars. You know, it wasn't our 33rd birthday. That would have been some bad outcome.

• 41:52John Green?

  Exactly, exactly. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon have played their preseason match against Watford, who are in the championship, Hank, a division above us. And we tied 1-1. Now, it was a lucky tie. We had some good saves from our new goalkeeper, Nathan Bishop. But we tied, we tied 1-1, and that's good. Also, the AFC Wimbledon women's team, who are also in the third division, their schedule just came out. They will start the season August 17th against Real Bedford, which is a phenomenally good name for a football team. Real Bedford, it's great. I love it.

• 42:34Hank Green?

  What? I don't understand. Where's the Real?

• 42:37John Green?

  Established in 2005.

• 42:38Hank Green?

  Are they Portuguese?

• 42:40John Green?

  Or Spanish? Maybe, maybe, maybe it's an all Spanish expat team. We don't know, Hank. We don't know the details. The point is, we'll be taking on Real Bedford on August 17th, and the schedule goes from there. Very excited. And we're still waiting to see if we sign any more players.

• 43:00Hank Green?

  Are you sure that it's not just Real Bedford?

• 43:02John Green?

  I'm pretty sure it's Real Bedford, Hank, because that's way, way funnier. Why would you not have the funny option?

• 43:09Hank Green?

  I mean, Real Bedford is also funny because it implies that there's some other Bedford that was like, no, we're Bedford. No, we're Real Bedford. It's like AFC Wimbledon being like.

• 43:18John Green?

  Right, right. No, we're the real Wimbledon.

• 43:20Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:20John Green?

  Although there is a Real Salt Lake, and they go by Real Salt Lake. Like, that's the MLS team.

• 43:25Hank Green?

  Fascinating. Yeah. No, I guess there's like, I could see it. You know, you just take that, take that term.

• 43:31John Green?

  Take that term. Anyway, the women's team and the men's team both start their seasons in August. I'm excited. In the meantime, I'm hoping that the, both teams actually sign some more players, but especially the men's team. It's not clear, clear to me exactly where the goals are going to come from, but that's okay. I mean, who needs goals?

• 43:51Hank Green?

  When does the season start?

• 43:54John Green?

  For the men, it starts, I think, on August 9.

• 43:57Hank Green?

  Oh, OK, so that's soon.

• 43:59John Green?

  Yeah, we only have, we only have a little more time to wait, my friend.

• 44:02Hank Green?

  Well, congratulations for being in the next league up.

• 44:08John Green?

  I'm excited.

• 44:09Hank Green?

  Whichever one it is.

• 44:12John Green?

  Good for you, Hank. Good for you. You're getting there. You're getting there. Thanks, everybody, for listening to our podcast. We really appreciate your questions. Thank you for emailing us at [email protected].

• 44:23Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Chris Ankiko.

• 44:26John Green?

  Thank you, Chris.

• 44:27Hank Green?

  It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medich. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Trakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Grape Gonna Roll Up. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.