419: A Soup of Letters

Can you help my public image as a superhero? How does the International Space Station have different countries all in one station? How does sunscreen work? If I eat at a restaurant by myself, how do I go to the bathroom without the waiter thinking I left? Where have all the NFTs gone? Am I more likely to be struck by lightning because I’m sitting in a metal wheelchair? …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.

• 0:01John 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 think of it, Dear John and Hank.

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions. They give you dubious advice and they bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John?

• 0:21John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:22Hank Green?

  I put two goldfish in a tank.

• 0:24John Green?

  Hmm.

• 0:25Hank Green?

  But neither of them knew how to drive it.

• 0:28John Green?

  It's a classic bad joke.

• 0:30Hank Green?

  It's a classic. It's, I'm not even sure.

• 0:32John Green?

  You're not afraid of repurposing it.

• 0:33Hank Green?

  I bet there's a better, there's a better format for it somewhere there.

• 0:36John Green?

  But you didn't find it.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  That's the version I remembered.

• 0:39John Green?

  Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.

• 0:40Hank Green?

  I knew that there were goldfish in the tank. How are you? How are you?

• 0:43John Green?

  Oh, good.

• 0:44Hank Green?

  What's it like in there? What's bouncing around in the old, the old John, John Green noggin?

• 0:49John Green?

  There's not a shortage of thoughts. I would say that there's not an insufficient number of thoughts.

• 0:53Hank Green?

  Too many thoughts.

• 0:54John Green?

  I've been, I've got a lot of thoughts right now. I've been, I've been writing a lot lately, which is really fun. But then the great thing about writing a story, when you're really into it.

• 1:02Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 1:02John Green?

  Is that it has nothing, I've realized in my old age, that it has nothing to do with what I actually want to do, which is make a gift for people, or whatever personal fulfillment I derive from, from writing stories and getting lost in them. The thing that, that I love most about the actual like drafting of a story.

• 1:20Hank Green?

  I cannot wait to hear what you were about to say.

• 1:23John Green?

  Is that I don't have to think about anything else. All the other thoughts are like, kind of pushed to the side because my main thought is, well, what should happen in the story? Or was that a good idea? Did I go down a bad path there?

• 1:35Hank Green?

  How do you, how do you keep all the other thoughts out? How do you keep focused on that?

• 1:39John Green?

  Well, when I'm really into a story, it's kind of the only thing I want to think about. So I'll be like, I'll be thinking of a bad thought or like a, like a recursive thought that I don't like having. And I'll be like, well, let's try to distract myself with the story. And then I'm like, oh yeah, here, that works. Here we are. We're in the story now.

• 1:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, because you're just like, you're just, there's so many problems and you, you know it really well too.

• 2:03John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Hank Green?

  Like you, you have this, you have this like sketch of what's going on in the moment that you are solving problems around and it's really complex. It's a very good puzzle.

• 2:13John Green?

  It's a very good puzzle and, and, and as a result, I think about the million words that might be next all the time. And it's very fulfilling to think about because when you find the right word or the right thing to happen next, that feeling of it clicking together is so good. I mean, it's such a high. There's no high like it.

• 2:32Hank Green?

  And then very soon after you realize that it, nothing works and everything is broken.

• 2:36John Green?

  Absolutely. Hundred percent.

• 2:38Hank Green?

  But then that's also, that's also a very compelling problem.

• 2:41John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no shortage of problems.

• 2:44Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm really, I'm, I'm in that too on my, on my nonfiction project where I am uh, really waffling back and forth between being like, oh, I know how to fix all of these problems and oh, there's no way to fix all these problems.

• 2:56John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, that is the nature of revision, right? Like you go back and forth between the poles of, I secretly think I might be a genius who's cracked a great code and I am actually and literally the worst writer who ever attempted to do this.

• 3:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:14John Green?

  It's fun.

• 3:15Hank Green?

  I mean.

• 3:15John Green?

  It's fun. Half of the time. Right now it's really fun for me to write.

• 3:19Hank Green?

  Good.

• 3:19John Green?

  And even though it's like frustrating sometimes and like, it's like do, like playing a video game or doing a puzzle, like it's frustrating and upsetting and I get really mad at myself and everything. I feel upset, but I still enjoy it, you know? I still like Red Dead Redemption two, even though it's hard to beat.

• 3:34Hank Green?

  Even the parts that are hard are like, I don't know, there's like, like a safety in them. There's control over it at least. Like it's, it's, it's a you thing rather than a whole world thing. We're so often asked to do whole world things or to imagine whole world problems. It's wild to like, go to a party and, and be like, all right, everybody enjoy your dip. And now we're going to like, talk about. Huge.

• 3:57John Green?

  The defunding of USAID.

• 3:58Hank Green?

  Huge global issues that we have no power over.

• 4:02John Green?

  Right.

• 4:03Hank Green?

  But like, but like, that's what we do. And like, I don't think it's wrong or bad to do that, but.

• 4:08John Green?

  No.

• 4:09Hank Green?

  Oh, boy.

• 4:09John Green?

  No, it does make me wish sometimes that I had more power, though, which brings us to our first question of the day from Clark, who writes, Dear John and Hank, if I were a famous.

• 4:17Hank Green?

  He has a lot of power.

• 4:18John Green?

  Alien superhero from Kansas.

• 4:20Hank Green?

  What?

• 4:21John Green?

  Perhaps with a mild-mannered journalistic alter ego.

• 4:25Hank Green?

  I call this.

• 4:25John Green?

  And I wanted to come on your podcast, Dear Hank and John, for advice on my public image as a superhero, a job that shares many similarities with online creators. What advice would you give me, pumpkins and penguins, Clark? Now, Hank, I never made this connection before.

• 4:37Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:37John Green?

  That we also have outsized power and it's very easy to misuse. Now, not as easy as Superman's situation, but.

• 4:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:43John Green?

  It's real.

• 4:44Hank Green?

  You know what has always struck me as a, as a possibility here?

• 4:48John Green?

  Hmm.

• 4:48Hank Green?

  And I don't really know how powerful Superman is.

• 4:51John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Hank Green?

  Seems very powerful. Seems to be able to create energy from nothing. So to, to sort of violate the laws of thermodynamics a little bit. Though I don't.

• 5:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Hank Green?

  I don't know what the battery inside looks like. He obviously gets charged up by the yellow sun, so he's solar powered. But he can store a lot and he can do like heat vision. He can lift extraordinarily heavy things. I have wondered, and maybe somebody could do the math here or already has, whether Superman's best use could just be cranking a crank to make it so that we don't have to use fossil fuels anymore.

• 5:25John Green?

  Hmm.

• 5:26Hank Green?

  Or like, or like laser eyeing a boiler to boil water to power a turbine.

• 5:32John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Hank Green?

  That makes it so we don't have to use fossil fuels anymore.

• 5:35John Green?

  It's, it, it wouldn't make a great movie or comic book, but it would make a great use of one's life. Like, what do you do?

• 5:41Hank Green?

  I am essentially a nuclear power plant. Life. I think it would be so boring. And I think that this is, this is an important. I think ethical Superman question. Would it be okay for us to take one Superman and have him simply labor 24 hours a day? In order to like, make it so that we didn't have to do global warming anymore? And like, would Superman be ethically obliged to do that? Even meaning that he would never like, get to like, have a nice dinner with Lois Lane ever again?

• 6:10John Green?

  Well, let me submit that he would still get to have somewhat nice dinners. It would just have to be like, while doing the laser eyes into the wind, water turbine.

• 6:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, he certainly like, couldn't look at Lois during that process.

• 6:22John Green?

  That's a good point. He couldn't make eye contact.

• 6:24Hank Green?

  She's nice to look at and you don't wanna, you don't wanna fry her head off.

• 6:28John Green?

  Yeah, it's a Medusa situat- a classic Medusa.

• 6:32Hank Green?

  Yeah, reverse Medusa.

• 6:34John Green?

  The classic reverse Medusa.

• 6:36Hank Green?

  Yeah. We're like, we're like, he's a man and also a-

• 6:40John Green?

  She wants, but Superman can't look at you. I, I, I think there's a way to do that. And it would, listen, it would be a sacrifice by Superman, but isn't the whole theme of Superman that like-

• 6:50Hank Green?

  Very sacrifice focused.

• 6:51John Green?

  Great power must make a lot of sacrifices, et cetera?

• 6:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, but I don't wanna think about that too much because I would like to, you know, go to dinner.

• 7:00John Green?

  But then isn't it all, I think that you should go to dinner, but isn't it also? I mean, again, I don't wanna be comparing myself to Superman, but isn't it also our responsibility to not hoard wealth or power or any of the other gifts that have been bestowed upon us by the social order?

• 7:17Hank Green?

  This would be, if possible, the thing that Superman should do. Superman should distribute the value contained within him. He should not be the only one. Like, if it were possible, the ethical thing for Superman to do would be to take his power and distribute it among all people. And so, everybody was a little bit better. Instead of there being one Superman, there would be eight billion slightly better, slightly superer people. That, I think, is the correct, the correct, uh, because that, that isn't possible for Superman, but it is possible for, for me. Like, it's easy for me to like, hoard the attention of, of like, science communicators. So it's like, oh Hank, he's one of the like, top science communicators. But like, the thing I should be doing with that is saying, who are other people who I can like-

• 8:00John Green?

  Yeah, you should be lifting up-

• 8:01Hank Green?

  Mentor, uh, you know, shine lights on, et cetera.

• 8:05John Green?

  Yeah, and I, I in turn need to do that when it comes to global health and all the attention that's come to everything is tuberculosis, you know?

• 8:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:14John Green?

  Which I try to do, but I probably don't do enough of. And I didn't realize that this question about Superman was gonna lead to such a deep consideration of our life's work. But here's the thing, Hank. It's asking a lot of Superman to just stare all day at water, to heat the water, to provide power to the world. That's asking a lot of Superman. On the other hand, isn't it also asking a lot of Superman to be like, hey, take on all these supervillains and like, make sure that Earth stays?

• 8:46Hank Green?

  This is the real thing, because like, the splashy heroics.

• 8:50John Green?

  That's right.

• 8:51Hank Green?

  Are not the actual. Might actually do less good than than if Superman was just like infinitely cranking a crank.

• 8:59John Green?

  Batman is just a rich guy with an affinity for bats. I've been saying it for like 20 years and it's never been more true. And you finally just come around to my position.

• 9:10Hank Green?

  This is, this is the thing. We're talking about as if Superman, as if Superman were a real thing. Whereas in fact, both Batman and Superman are are metaphors for something larger than themselves, for something that is not contained within any single person.

• 9:24John Green?

  Not according to this email from Clark.

• 9:25Hank Green?

  Well, Clark is a different situation. Clark is a real person who has a real situation that they're dealing with.

• 9:31John Green?

  Which is that he is a famous alien superhero from Kansas.

• 9:35Hank Green?

  Yeah, different, different guy.

• 9:37John Green?

  Oh, that's a different guy.

• 9:38Hank Green?

  It's a different, yeah, the different guy.

• 9:40John Green?

  Totally different situation.

• 9:42Hank Green?

  Uh, like, there is, there is like a big Superman thing happening right now. And I am a little bit reading this, like, why didn't, why can't we get whatever his name is on the podcast to pretend to be Superman? What's his name? The new Superman?

• 9:55John Green?

  The only person who's in that movie, whose name I know is Isabella Merced, who's also the star of Turtles All the Way Down and plays hot girl and and is amazing in the movie and is just the best.

• 10:03Hank Green?

  David? What?

• 10:05John Green?

  Yep.

• 10:05Hank Green?

  David, what?

• 10:06John Green?

  Give it to me.

• 10:07Hank Green?

  Corin Sweat?

• 10:09John Green?

  Corn sweat, like the thing that happens that causes heat waves where the corn evaporates? And that causes his name is, his name is David Corn sweat?

• 10:18Hank Green?

  It's Corin sweat, S W E T. His name is David and literally looking at that guy. He looks like Superman, but did not have his name in my head. That's new. I know Rachel Brosnahan, who's Lois Lane and she was.

• 10:32John Green?

  Sure, she's great.

• 10:32Hank Green?

  Miss Maisel.

• 10:33John Green?

  Yeah, but most importantly, Hank, Isabella Merced from the movie Turtles All The Way Down plays hot girl.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  Yes, a person you personally know is a Superman.

• 10:42John Green?

  Well, she's a hot girl.

• 10:43Hank Green?

  That's similar.

• 10:44John Green?

  The whole point of this conversation, Hank, is, is two parts. One, Isabella Merced is amazing. Two, you and I and everyone else who has a modicum of power in this world need to think carefully about how we deploy it.

• 10:59Hank Green?

  It's true. It's stressful, but it's true. This next question comes from Parker who asks, hello, how does the International Space Station have different countries all in one station? Don't some of these places not like each other? I wonder at night if they all share a meal together once in a while. It must like get lonely up there.

• 11:18John Green?

  You're hanging out all the time, man.

• 11:20Hank Green?

  Peter Parker, they are, there's no option to be alone on the space station.

• 11:25John Green?

  No, it's not. If you are like me and you really enjoy spending 12 to 14 hours a day by yourself, this International Space Station is not for you.

• 11:32Hank Green?

  Not a good place. You want to smell everybody else's sweat? That's where you want to be. Up on that ISS.

• 11:40John Green?

  Wait, would you smell everybody's sweat? Is there, there's not that much bacteria in space, right? That's one of the few charming things about it.

• 11:46Hank Green?

  Oh, that's adorable.

• 11:48John Green?

  Is there a lot of bacteria in space?

• 11:50Hank Green?

  You know what has bacteria on it that you cannot scrub of bacteria?

• 11:54John Green?

  Human skin. I know, but like, can't you, can't you sort of minimize it? Doesn't it die over time in space?

• 12:01Hank Green?

  No, no, no, it's really, it's really quite bacteria-y up there. In fact, it becomes a problem where they have to like, anything that's wet, it can get like, it can get moldy. Yeah, it's not, it's not a pristine environment up there. I'm sorry to say. But in addition to that problem-

• 12:17John Green?

  This is great for me, actually, because now I have one more reason not to go to space.

• 12:22Hank Green?

  In addition to that problem, there is the problem of, of the two big nations that built the space station together being the United States and Russia, who are not good friends.

• 12:32John Green?

  No.

• 12:32Hank Green?

  And, and, and part of the idea of the space station was if we do this thing together, maybe it will be some joint project. It's good to have a joint project for, you know, like a peace vibe.

• 12:45John Green?

  Ultimately, this is why we created our YouTube channel, Vlog Brothers-

• 12:50Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 12:51John Green?

  -in the first place, was to have a shared project-

• 12:53Hank Green?

  So that we would stop being at war.

• 12:55John Green?

  -so adversarial.

• 12:56Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:57John Green?

  Like, no more war, peace through projects.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, and it was good because it really did stop me from annexing several parts of various countries.

• 13:08John Green?

  Yeah, no, I was on a bad path before we started Brotherhood 2.0, for sure.

• 13:12Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:13John Green?

  I don't know if I was on the annexing countries path, but in general, I wasn't on a good path.

• 13:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, I was doing a lot of attempted regime change, nation building, that kind of thing.

• 13:22John Green?

  Hard to resist.

• 13:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, surrogate wars.

• 13:25John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, talk about using your power smartly.

• 13:30Hank Green?

  But it's really, yeah, things have calmed down between the two of us.

• 13:33John Green?

  Between, I thought you were gonna say between the US and Russia, and I was like, ah, you know.

• 13:39Hank Green?

  Pretty much not.

• 13:40John Green?

  Kind of, you know, up and down.

• 13:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that it, I think that in this, that it has probably been a net benefit to international relations. Uh, but when things get bad between the US and Russia, which they did, uh, things get worse on the space station. Like, it becomes harder for the astronauts and cosmonauts to work together. They do have lots of things that they can't say to each other, which I think is fascinating. Like, you're living in a, basically a space trailer with a bunch of people that you like, have to be very careful what you talk with them about.

• 14:11John Green?

  Do they have rules about that? Like, you're not allowed to talk about politics?

• 14:15Hank Green?

  Well, they have rules like you're not allowed to talk about certain science and technology things.

• 14:20John Green?

  Oh, because you can't share that with your buddy because they're state secrets. Wow.

• 14:25Hank Green?

  I'm sure that they they attempt to not talk about politics, but it has, I think. Uh, there is awareness that at certain times it has infected politics and it has made things harder up there.

• 14:35John Green?

  I think it'd be weird to like, I don't know how the updates work. I don't know how the news updates work. I don't know if they just get updates every time. There's a new cosmonaut, but that would be the best way to get it, right?

• 14:45Hank Green?

  I don't know that I would want a cosmonaut. I probably would want someone who's a little less connected to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia.

• 14:53John Green?

  No, no. All right. Okay. It's an astronaut, but that astronaut comes to my house and they're like, hey, you won't believe it. Uh, the CEO of this AI company got caught canoodling on a Coldplay cam.

• 15:07John Green?

  And I'll be like, this is the kind of news I want and the way I want it delivered.

• 15:10Hank Green?

  I mean, I tell you what, I can't imagine living in a world where I didn't hear about that.

• 15:15John Green?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I I hardly heard about anything else for a couple of weeks there.

• 15:20Hank Green?

  We do. We do love a, we do love a moment.

• 15:23John Green?

  We love a moment. We love to see the mighty fall.

• 15:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I simply don't go to Coldplay concerts.

• 15:31John Green?

  I certainly one strategy. Um, there's, there's other ways to avoid that fate as well, including canoodling with your spouse. All right, Kat has written to say, Dear John and Hank, I don't understand how sunscreen works and I'm afraid I never will. Now, Hank, I never had this question until I read this question, but now I also have this question.

• 15:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:50John Green?

  I I have no idea how sunscreen works. Why does it only last for two hours? Why do I have to put it on 15 minutes before I go outside? Does it last longer if I'm in the shade? Why doesn't my cat need it on her ears when she sunbathes? Confused cat. I don't know any of the answers to any of these questions.

• 16:03Hank Green?

  Well, I luckily I have answers to all of them.

• 16:07John Green?

  Great.

• 16:07Hank Green?

  Imagine you painted your uh, skin with just like a cream that is like purple. Like you, like you could see how the light wouldn't get to your skin and thus couldn't damage your skin.

• 16:19John Green?

  Like if you're getting ready for a college football game and it's north, the Northwestern Wildcats. Or as um, big time fans call their children, Wildcat White.

• 16:32Hank Green?

  That's good. That's good. I remembered that. For the people who weren't here last week, don't worry about it.

• 16:40John Green?

  No, it's just a reference.

• 16:41Hank Green?

  But the thing is that purple might not actually do it. So different wavelengths of light are absorbed by different, you know, molecules and are transparent to others. So you've got reflection happening, you've got absorbing happening, and you've got like transparency happening. And what sunscreen is, it is something that is either like reflects ultraviolet light or absorbs ultraviolet light, but is mostly transparent to visible light. So you are putting a cream on your skin that if you saw in ultraviolet would look like a color. It would either look like it was reflecting and so it was, you know, that reflected color would look like it was dark because it was absorbing energy.

• 17:24Hank Green?

  And the reason why you have to reapply it is because, one, like there's a thing where you have to like wait for a little while while the the thing that is dissolved in evaporates away and it sets. So it isn't as good at being a sunscreen before the solvent evaporates and it sets. And then second, over time, it breaks down. It breaks down specifically because oftentimes it is absorbing a lot of energy and that can actually heat those, or I guess, yeah, it can increase the energy inside of those molecules and they'll break down. And then they'll also just break down over time, generally being exposed to air.

• 17:57John Green?

  It's the same situation that I'm in, breaking down over time when exposed to air.

• 18:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, well.

• 18:02John Green?

  Sorry, what about the cat?

• 18:03Hank Green?

  It's better than not being exposed to air. The cat also probably could get a sunburn on the inside of their ears, but just doesn't because they're probably too clever to let their ear get exposed to sunlight for too long. But there are sunscreens that are for use by pets. Lemon had like a hairless belly. And so we, you know, you might want to put sunscreen on that hairless belly because they can totally get sunburns. And same with like a hairless cat, but you've got to be careful about what sunscreen you use because you don't want, you know, there's certain ones that you wouldn't want going inside of a pet.

• 18:36John Green?

  That is super helpful. And now I know how sunscreen works. I have another question for you. It comes from Emily who writes, Dear John and Hank, I really enjoy going to restaurants by myself for a nice meal. However, what do I do if I want to get up to go to the bathroom mid meal? Do I have to tell the waiter I'm going to the bathroom like I'm in high school? I don't want them to think I'm running out on the bill. I live in Southern California, so I rarely have a jacket and I'd rather not leave a bag behind. So far, my solution has been to hurry up and get out, but that's no fun. Dubious advice requested at your earliest convenience. Emily.

• 19:04Hank Green?

  I mean, they're not your, they're not the boss of you.

• 19:07John Green?

  Well, but what if they take away your food when you go to the restroom and start to clean up your plate and they're like, oh, this person Emily's done eating.

• 19:13Hank Green?

  There's got to be, there's got to be like a, like a sign language of forks and knives, you know, like where you put your knife matters.

• 19:19John Green?

  I think there's a very simple solution here.

• 19:21Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 19:22John Green?

  That's a complicated solution.

• 19:23Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 19:24John Green?

  I think the simple solution is what I call the Hans Christian Andersen. So every night before Hans Christian Andersen went to bed, Hans Christian Andersen would put a little sign on his bedside table that said, I only appear to be dead because he had a catastrophic fear of being buried alive in his sleep.

• 19:42Hank Green?

  Which is a thing that would happen.

• 19:44John Green?

  I mean, not that often, but it was, it actually, it was like a 18th century European collective delusion that this was a common phenomenon that like people would regularly be buried alive.

• 19:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, I remember being told that like when they were stitching up body bags on ships, they would pass the last thread through the nose of the deceased to ensure like if they, if they were still alive, then, then there would tear up. That probably seems like that would be from the same collective delusion.

• 20:15John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be fair, like it would be terrible to be buried alive. Don't get me wrong, but like you don't need, you know, like objectively, you don't need to leave a, I mean, obviously now we have heart monitors and whatnot, but even so you don't need to leave a note by your bedside table. However, I think you do need to leave a note on your table that you just keep with you in a little pocket somewhere in your bag, where you're just like, hey, I only appear to be gone.

• 20:41Hank Green?

  Right. And if you, if you forget your note, you can spell it out in noodles on your plate. Ooh, or if you got that alphabet soup stuff, you can just use the alphabet.

• 20:52John Green?

  Fancy restaurant.

• 20:53Hank Green?

  Can I get the soup with noodles that are in the shape of little letters, please?

• 20:57John Green?

  I believe it's made by a chef called Boyardi.

• 21:02Hank Green?

  What's the French word for soup, John? Do you know?

• 21:05John Green?

  A soup.

• 21:07Hank Green?

  A soup de alphabet.

• 21:14John Green?

  That reminds me of when I was trying to speak French when we were in France. And my family was with me and I was trying to ask someone for something, a taxi. And my entire family just abandoned me. They just like slowly walked backwards away. As I was trying to speak French because they found my accent so humiliating. They were like, it sounds like you're making fun of French people. And I was like, I do not know what you are talking about. Why were you, why were you doing that? Je vais à la bibliothèque. And they were like, that sounds German?

• 21:51Hank Green?

  I just don't have the gift of accents, man. But you were trying, you were trying to speak in French. The word, the words were French.

• 21:57John Green?

  Oui.

• 21:58Hank Green?

  Were you, okay, you weren't speaking in an aggressive French accent in English.

• 22:02John Green?

  No, that would be stupid. That would be so offensive.

• 22:09Hank Green?

  Now that is offensive. That, that is hashtag problematic. Like, I bet in 10 years, when the culture shifts a little bit, people will go back and listen to that and be like, oh, boy.

• 22:19John Green?

  Yikes, yikes, jeez, jeez.

• 22:23Hank Green?

  Anyway, potage aglief. I think I searched for soup of letters.

• 22:29John Green?

  A soup of letters is called a potage aglief?

• 22:31Hank Green?

  Potage aglief.

• 22:33John Green?

  That's so much better than a soup of letters.

• 22:35Hank Green?

  Yeah. Potage aglief is basically, it's basically what most of Twitter is.

• 22:42John Green?

  I would go.

• 22:46John Green?

  Made my whole living on potage aglief.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  It's been a while since somebody got a TV show from their potage aglief work. Is that like my dad says?

• 22:59John Green?

  You can still occasionally get a book deal from your potage aglief, but it's hard to get, hard to get a TV show these days. Potage aglief genuinely sounds like something I would order at a fancy French restaurant. Like if it was on the menu, I can't speak French. I'm terrible at it. So I'd read it and I'd be like, that sounds great. Like, I love a, I love a soup. I love a noodle.

• 23:17Hank Green?

  And then they'd be like, here it is from our chef. Breyardie.

• 23:23John Green?

  I believe it's.

• 23:24Hank Green?

  Breyard. Breyard. Well, we are, let's move on.

• 23:29John Green?

  Okay. All right. Fair enough.

• 23:31Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Matty who asks, Dear Hank and John, where have all the NFTs gone?

• 23:36John Green?

  Oh, Jesus. They're still there, Matty. They're just less valuable.

• 23:41Hank Green?

  They are. Yeah. Theoretically, like, when is NFT rot begin? Where like really the computers that store all of the blockchain data, like, nobody can be bothered to maintain them anymore. And every monkey is just a monkey again.

• 23:53John Green?

  I don't know. I mean, the thing about NFTs is that like their price goes down, but the price of Bitcoin and ETH, whatever that is, goes up so much. That like, I bet there's some stability to the price, just because like the price of.

• 24:07Hank Green?

  If the price is in either.

• 24:08John Green?

  One ether keeps going up and up and up. I don't closely follow the NFT market and that's, that's just where I'm at in my life.

• 24:16Hank Green?

  Good for you.

• 24:17John Green?

  And I'm, and I'm really glad that all the people who came to Hank and me and said, you should sell NFTs for Crash Course, to fund Crash Course, that we didn't do that.

• 24:27John Green?

  Because I think that.

• 24:28Hank Green?

  They went hard and a lot of people who were like, were like trusted partners.

• 24:33John Green?

  So many smart people that we really like told us to sell NFTs and, you know.

• 24:37Hank Green?

  And I was just like, man.

• 24:39John Green?

  Make a killing.

• 24:39Hank Green?

  And the nice thing about having Nerd Fight area as our audience, John, is that it was not like a, should we, shouldn't we? What should we do? I'm not sure. It wasn't like a hard choice for us. We were like, no, no, no. That won't work for us. Thank you.

• 24:54John Green?

  Yeah, it's just like, I mean, we don't always understand our audience. Like there are times when we get it wrong. But like after 20 years.

• 25:00Hank Green?

  Like potage aglief, yeah.

• 25:05John Green?

  They didn't find that as funny as we did.

• 25:11John Green?

  They didn't enjoy that bit nearly as much as we did, but that's okay. Sometimes you, sometimes you make stuff for yourself, Hank. But after 19 years, I feel like it's not just that we know them very well. It's that they know us very well. So like their expectations are set in a certain direction and like that direction is not an NFT direction. And so we just kinda, we just kinda understood that. And so even though there were all these people telling us, this is a great idea. We were like, ha, I'm not quite sold. And I don't mind like not being in the first wave. If, if something does end up catching, catching on and making sense. Like I never really understood NFTs well enough to have an opinion, negative or positive about them. But like my, my overall, my overall opinion was like, if I don't understand this, I don't want to participate in it.

• 25:54Hank Green?

  I really never got it. Like people kept explaining it to me and I was like, it sounds like what you're saying to me is that I could sell something purely to make money and it will add no value in any way to anyone's life, except that I will get wealthier. And that I was just like, that's not how things work in my head anyway.

• 26:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Hank Green?

  That does remind me.

• 26:13John Green?

  That's sort of how collectibles work though. I mean, a lot of.

• 26:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, yeah. Which I also don't like necessarily.

• 26:19John Green?

  I don't really, I don't really get. Yeah. It's just not, it's not that I'm opposed to them. It's just, I don't, I don't.

• 26:23Hank Green?

  I mean, I love my Crash Course coin collection, I'll say, but like it represents something to me, you know?

• 26:28John Green?

  Yeah, well, that's adding value to a thing. Like that's like making a gift to a thing so that the thing can do cool work in the world, which I'm sure some NFT projects were, I just didn't understand them.

• 26:40Hank Green?

  Every year we do a Crash Course coin. People are like, oh, it's not an NFT. And I'm like, oh my God.

• 26:45John Green?

  No, it's a coin. We, we minted in Arkansas.

• 26:48Hank Green?

  Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is actually brought to you by Crash Course NFTs. Crash Course NFTs, I don't know, man. I guess maybe just, uh, we'll.

• 26:59John Green?

  We're not ruining anything out.

• 27:00Hank Green?

  We're not ruining anything out. We'll take any way to fund Crash Course.

• 27:04John Green?

  Today's podcast is of course also brought to you by Space Station Sweat. Space Station Sweat as drenched in bacteria as any other.

• 27:12Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Corn Sweat. It's a separate kind of sweat. That is both a part of Superman and a real thing that corn plants do that increases the humidity and changes the weather of the Midwest.

• 27:24John Green?

  And most importantly, today's podcast is brought to you by Suft Alphabet.

• 27:28Hank Green?

  Oh, God.

• 27:29John Green?

  Did I go Italian?

• 27:31Hank Green?

  You were all over the place, I think.

• 27:34John Green?

  This is the problem.

• 27:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:37John Green?

  Sarah always makes fun of me for the time I ordered, I'm sure I've told this story on the pod before, but for the time I ordered a Sprite at a convenience store in Berlin, and I said, "Ein Sprite bitte." Sarah's like, "Oh, my God."

• 27:51Hank Green?

  Oh, God.

• 27:52John Green?

  Just say a Sprite, please.

• 27:53Hank Green?

  A Sprite.

• 27:54John Green?

  So bad.

• 27:55Hank Green?

  Ein Sprite. I have a thing that I want to tell you about.

• 27:59John Green?

  Great.

• 27:59Hank Green?

  Have I told you about, I think I've told you something about this. So you know how the phone is a little much?

• 28:04John Green?

  Oh, it's way too much.

• 28:06Hank Green?

  It always, it's always saying like, "Hey, what's up? I'm right here."

• 28:10John Green?

  Yeah. "Hey, hey, hey, hey, have you checked me?"

• 28:12Hank Green?

  Yeah. And also, like, I, many times in my life, I would like to sort of like carve off a moment of time, whether it's five minutes or 45 minutes, to just like, not be so connected and maybe be working on my book, or maybe be, you know, reading a magazine, something.

• 28:30John Green?

  Sure.

• 28:30Hank Green?

  Just something, a little bit less spiky in the sensation department.

• 28:35John Green?

  Yep.

• 28:35Hank Green?

  So my friend, Bria, is an app developer, and I was talking to her about her work, and we decided to work together, and this is like kind of a soft launch announcement.

• 28:46John Green?

  Are you serious?

• 28:46Hank Green?

  Started to work together, yeah, on a thing. It's called Focus Friend. And here's, do you want to hear how Focus Friend works?

• 28:52John Green?

  Yeah, I can't believe you didn't tell me about this.

• 28:54Hank Green?

  Do you not know anything about this?

• 28:56John Green?

  No, you've been working on a whole project not only without me, but without informing.

• 29:00Hank Green?

  You know, I think I told you about this a little bit. I think you approved your bean.

• 29:04John Green?

  Oh, well, I don't know what a bean is.

• 29:06Hank Green?

  Yeah. Oh, maybe you didn't approve your bean. Well, anyway, you're, you're gonna approve your bean shortly.

• 29:13Hank Green?

  So.

• 29:13John Green?

  That's, that's a sentence I've never heard before.

• 29:16Hank Green?

  The, the Focus Friend is a bean who lives in your phone. And and the bean gets distracted when you get distracted by your phone. So if you're using your phone, then the bean is distracted. But if you would like to set up the bean to be able to focus and the bean knits. And so the bean wants to focus on knitting socks and scarves. And if you let your bean sit in your phone and just focus and do not distract your bean. And you can also use the app to specifically block apps on your phone so that you can't open them. Then you can, of course, turn it off if you need to, though the bean will then be disappointed. The bean can knit some socks or scarves and then you can trade the socks and scarves for things to decorate the bean's room with. And that's Focus Friend.

• 29:59John Green?

  Wow.

• 29:59Hank Green?

  It's just like a tool to to help me not use my phone for a little while. And I've also found that it has been helpful for Orin when he's working on his homework. I'm like, hey, I'm going to set the bean for, you know, 20 minutes. And during that time, we're going to do your math homework and.

• 30:14John Green?

  Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. So you set the you set the bean for a certain amount of time?

• 30:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, you can you can choose the amount of time and the longer, the more socks and scarves you get.

• 30:22John Green?

  OK, that's what that was. But I don't I don't get rewarded just for not looking at my phone. I have to set the timer.

• 30:30Hank Green?

  You have to set the timer, yeah.

• 30:32John Green?

  OK, I like it. I like it a lot. I think it's a great idea. Is it free?

• 30:36Hank Green?

  It's free. It's free. There is it. There are like things you can buy inside of it to help fund the existence of the app, but it's.

• 30:42John Green?

  How do you make? How do you make money? How's how's it a million dollar idea?

• 30:45Hank Green?

  In order to do the app blocking.

• 30:48John Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Hank Green?

  Which was complicated, you have to pay a subscription or a one time thing. And then also you can buy skins. So you can buy a little Hank Bean or a little John Bean.

• 30:57John Green?

  Oh, nice.

• 30:58Hank Green?

  Can look like us.

• 30:59John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I I approve it. I you don't have to ask me again. I you you you're good. Thanks for checking in with me. It's a great idea. Focus Friend. So can you download it in the App Store now?

• 31:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's in both both the Apple and the Android app stores. It is available now. In fact, Bria just texted me that we're being featured. John didn't have his phone. He's he walked away.

• 31:19John Green?

  I didn't have my phone. I I always put it away before I before I'd make the pod because I have such a problem with my phone. But now I have Focus Friend to keep me to keep me happy and healthy. Focus Friend by Hank Green.

• 31:30Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 31:30John Green?

  Get. Oh, it's very cute. The art is adorable.

• 31:33Hank Green?

  It's very cute. That was part of the goal.

• 31:36John Green?

  Yeah, I like it. Okay, great. I'm gonna give it a try. Um, thank you for creating a free app that I can use called Focus Friend by Hank Green. Hank?

• 31:44Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 31:45John Green?

  We have a question from Sophie who writes, "Dear John and Hank, today I got caught in heavy rain. I live in Britain, so that's not surprising, but what did surprise me was the concerned stranger who, upon hearing thunder, asked me if I would be okay in a storm because my wheelchair is made of metal. This isn't something I had ever considered before, but now I can't stop thinking about it. Am I more likely to be hit by lightning because I'm sat in a metal wheelchair? Is there anything I can do about this? Soggy, Sophie."

• 32:09Hank Green?

  I love the Britishness of "I'm sat in a metal wheelchair."

• 32:12John Green?

  I mean, yes. Here's the thing, Sophie. I don't know the science behind this. That's why we have YouTube science educator Hank Green here, but I'm gonna tell you my guess.

• 32:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:23John Green?

  My guess is you've got two things going for you. One, no metal, as far as I know, is touching the ground, right? What's touching the ground is actually rubber, which is great news for you from a nearby lightning strike perspective, because rubber does not conduct electricity. Number two, I would guess that you're actually less likely to be struck directly by lightning because you're statistically speaking, probably, I would imagine, lower to the ground sitting than people who are standing.

• 32:58Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 32:59John Green?

  So I actually think this concerned stranger was way out of, way out of whack.

• 33:03Hank Green?

  Well, John, I will tell you that you're probably right, but also you should, everybody, including people in wheelchairs, should, should go inside when there is a thunderstorm. I think that you're probably right, that there would be a little bit of protection from the small amount of plastic slash rubber, because I think the front caster wheels are usually like a polymer, which is gonna be a little more conductive than the rubber of wheels, of the back wheels. But I, in both of those cases, the metal is quite close to the ground. That's not a huge gap for it to jump. So you could still be at risk. In fact, we found an example of a person being struck by a, by a lightning in a wheelchair. They were under a tree, reading the Bible. And were struck by lightning and were dead for four minutes before being revived by paramedics.

• 33:48John Green?

  Oh, but then they were fine.

• 33:49Hank Green?

  I mean, no, it sucks to be struck by lightning generally.

• 33:53John Green?

  I'm not saying it was a good Wednesday.

• 33:55Hank Green?

  They were still alive, but they spent a hunk of time in the hospital after. So, so it just like all lightning strikes, not great.

• 34:02John Green?

  I mean, you know, the shock of that is that my understanding of the Bible was that the one thing that couldn't happen to you while reading it was getting struck by lightning. I thought that was sort of a guarantee against getting shot out of a lightning barrel.

• 34:18Hank Green?

  That's why they got all those guys on the, on the golf course that are golfing while reading the Bible. Yeah.

• 34:23John Green?

  Yeah, that's why you read the Bible while you're golf. Don't, obviously, if you can be inside during a lightning storm, you should be inside.

• 34:29Hank Green?

  Yes, and that is what we discovered. It is certainly possible to be struck by lightning while you are on a wheelchair, though it may, you may have a lower risk, but still, not none.

• 34:37John Green?

  I'm just saying that Stranger was also out in the rain.

• 34:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, they, they also, there's no way in which these two people were not basically in the same circumstance. You are a conductor, like you're, you're made out of salty water.

• 34:51John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Hank Green?

  So like you are just as bad, like you're, you're also a bit of a lightning rod standing there.

• 34:56John Green?

  I cannot get past the idea that I am the ocean, that I dragged the ocean out of the ocean and made the ocean just come with me.

• 35:09Hank Green?

  Since, since publishing this video, there is, and I think that I'm going to make this update in a video that I upload soon, but I think, well, I know that we are actually descended from a freshwater fish. So like the first land fish was a freshwater fish. So really what we pulled out with, to, to come with us onto land was like swampy lake, like stagnant.

• 35:35John Green?

  Nasty, nasty swamp water.

• 35:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, swampy, like, like low, shallow.

• 35:42Hank Green?

  Hmm. Well, yeah. So that's what that's what we that's what we brought out with us, which is a little less beautiful, but also I think just still beautiful wetlands, you know, there's nothing wrong with a wetland. Um, but yeah, that's what we brought out. Otherwise we'd be a lot saltier. Um, and it turns out that there's a bunch of reasons why, uh, it it was easier for fish that were adapted to living in in like the variable environment of a of shallow water. Had an easier time getting onto land than fish adapted for the ocean because ocean very consistent temperatures comparatively compared to a shallow, uh, freshwater situation. Also, uh, freshwater can have very different salinities, very different oxygen concentrations. So handling that variation

• 36:25Hank Green?

  was like a step toward being able to handle the variation of moving on to land.

• 36:29John Green?

  Hmm. Fascinating. Well.

• 36:32Hank Green?

  I could, I I don't know, man. I'm obsessed with this now.

• 36:35John Green?

  You know what else is fascinating?

• 36:36Hank Green?

  What?

• 36:37John Green?

  AFC Wimbledon, America's favorite third tier English soccer team.

• 36:40Hank Green?

  Yes, I'm sure.

• 36:41John Green?

  We don't have enough players. I mean, there's a lot of concerns at the moment, uh, in the AFC Wimbledon fandom community about two things. One is that we just don't have enough players. Presumably we're going to sign some, but the season does start in one week. It it starts, uh, five days from the upload of this podcast. So that's a little bit of a concern.

• 37:02Hank Green?

  Who do we, who, there's got to be some folks out there who are just kind of like resting, right? There's like some really good soccer players who just are like, I don't know.

• 37:09John Green?

  There's a bunch of soccer players who are just resting, who are free agents.

• 37:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:13John Green?

  Who just need to just need to get hired somewhere. There's a bunch of soccer players who need to go on loan from bigger clubs, need to go on loan.

• 37:20Hank Green?

  Does that tend to be like a like a last minute thing? Like, is it like a like a last five day rush to build the whole team?

• 37:26John Green?

  I don't remember this in past years, but I'm going to not worry about it because I trust our director of football, Craig Coke, more than I trust my own family.

• 37:36John Green?

  Including you.

• 37:37Hank Green?

  All right.

• 37:38John Green?

  So I'm

• 37:39Hank Green?

  Certainly to run a football team.

• 37:41John Green?

  But so, yes, no, no offense. I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I think that you would be a terrible football team owner. Um, I, the other thing about AFC Wimbledon right now is that we're losing all of our games in preseason, but I'll remind you, we lost all our games in preseason last year and got promoted. So maybe this is a good sign.

• 37:59Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:00John Green?

  But yeah, we just, we just got absolutely swallowed by Millwall and we also lost to Sutton United, who are currently, I think in the fifth tier. So it's not great, but it's just preseason. It doesn't count, but the games that do count start August 1st. So very, very soon.

• 38:18Hank Green?

  Well, I have faith in Clay Caldwell that he will get you straightened out.

• 38:26John Green?

  Yeah. Craig Cope. Yes. Go ahead. Give me your Mars news.

• 38:29Hank Green?

  Okay. And news from Mars. We think that Mars may have been even wetter than we previously thought. So, uh, we've been looking at ancient river channels in an area of Mars. It's called Noachus Terra, I think is how it's pronounced. So, uh, they, they look at these areas and they can see the sort of thickness of sedimentary layers that were laid down because what happened is these sedimentary layers got laid down and they actually ended up being tougher than surrounding areas, areas. So they end up, instead of being like these, what you would imagine a river, riverbed, like kind of a depression in the ground, they end up being these big things that stick up out of the ground because it's been eroded around it. And the sedimentary layers is like there on

• 39:13Hank Green?

  top, which is really cool.

• 39:15John Green?

  That's kind of beautiful to imagine.

• 39:17Hank Green?

  It is. And yeah, I mean, hopefully one day people will see it with their own eyes, John, in the year 2027.

• 39:24John Green?

  Yeah, or, or later.

• 39:27Hank Green?

  And they, uh, so they, they did a bunch of like analysis of how this would have had to have happened. And what this indicates is that there was a lot, a lot of precipitation over a long period of time. So obviously Mars looks a very specific way now and has looked that way for, you know, billions of years. But, uh, there was a period of time where Mars appears to have been quite wet for a, like with a full on hydrological cycle for a lot of time. Now, I was not able to ascertain from this recent, uh, research, how long that was, like is a long time, five million years or 500 million years? Pretty big difference between those two things, but.

• 40:06John Green?

  Yeah, that's not quite, it's not quite the range I was hoping for.

• 40:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure I would, I would wager that if I was better at reading this kind of paper that I would, I would be able to figure that out, but I was not able to. We keep like, having discovered that Mars was lifeless, like that was our first, like in the sixties and seventies, we're like, oh, turns out, big desert ball, nothing going on there. But ever since then, like, step by step, it continues to be like, oh, like more hints that Mars was quite Earth-like at one point in its history.

• 40:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Hank Green?

  Thus, thus it would not be too surprising if, if we one day found that life had independently evolved there, or had arrived from Earth, or vice versa, and, and was, was, was at one point, there was sort of like some, some living systems on Mars.

• 40:56John Green?

  Is it possible that the life on Earth came from Mars? Or is that, does that not work out with the timing?

• 41:03Hank Green?

  No, it's totally possible.

• 41:04John Green?

  Wow. So we could be sort of like one continuous living system.

• 41:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:10John Green?

  That's interplanetary.

• 41:11Hank Green?

  Across multiple planets, yeah. Yeah, could even, could even be seeded from like a Jupiter moon, you know?

• 41:18John Green?

  In which case, I would submit, and I think you'll agree with me, that all this talk about humanity becoming a multi-planet species would actually sort of be old news.

• 41:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, there is, I think, a case to be made that, that humans are, you know, not separate from, but distinct from just life.

• 41:39John Green?

  What? Sorry, I don't, I, say that again?

• 41:43Hank Green?

  I, I think that, that, that you could say that there is a category that includes all life and humans, and then there's a category that just includes humans, in which case, we have never been them. Like, the category that just includes humans.

• 41:53John Green?

  You're saying that all life, that humans are so different from all other forms of life, that, that, that there's a category that just includes humans, that includes no other life forms? I can't believe you're saying this at the end of the pod. You're throwing an absolute bomb. It's like when you told me that you developed an app without consulting me and made a version of me in the app.

• 42:15Hank Green?

  That is a bean. Yeah.

• 42:17John Green?

  That is a bean.

• 42:17Hank Green?

  Like, well, look, I know, I know that there is a category that just includes humans. You know, it's Homo sapiens. Like, there is, there is a category. And then there is probably a broader category that includes people. And that's going to include Neanderthals and, and Florisiansis and, and maybe, maybe it could also include dolphins. Maybe it could include, you know, some, some other, like, persons, Chewbacca, you know? But, but yeah, I, I mean, I would love to have a, a long chat with you about the things that make humans different and whether they're worthy of, of like a significant distinction or not. But maybe not right now.

• 42:55John Green?

  Yeah, we can't do it right now because I'm super into Focus Friends, your new app. I got distracted looking at it. Ironically. I wasn't listening to what you were saying.

• 43:04Hank Green?

  Like, I gotta see my bean.

• 43:06John Green?

  Cause I was focusing on your, on your new app, which is about being able to focus.

• 43:12Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, you gotta, you gotta do, you gotta do a bunch of stuff.

• 43:16John Green?

  You gotta set it up. But once you set it up, now I just, now I can't touch my phone for 30 minutes. And if I don't touch my phone for 30 minutes, I get a bunch of scarves or socks or something.

• 43:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. And then you can spend those on decorations.

• 43:27John Green?

  I'm excited.

• 43:28Hank Green?

  Well, bean's room.

• 43:29John Green?

  It's fun. All right. Thank you, Hank. Thank you for podding with me. Thank you for making apps. Thank you for never not working.

• 43:35Hank Green?

  I'm always up to something. Everybody, thank you for sending us your questions at [email protected]. Without your questions, we would not have a podcast and it's a lot of fun to read through. This episode was edited by Ben Swordout. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trakavarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.