Pod Insights Dear Hank & John 431: The Complicated Dust of Earl Tupper About this episode How can I eat blocks of moldy cheese and it be delicious, but if I eat a moldy sandwich I die? Are there any experiences from the past 12 years that have shaped your current self? How do I make doing dishes less horrible? Is “up to 100% leak proof” some sort of marketing legal lingo? …Hank and John Green have answers!
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Hank Green? You're listening to a Complexly podcast.
0:09 Hank Green? Hello and welcome to Dear Ike and John.
0:13 John Green? Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and hey.
0:16 Hank Green? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John.
0:23 John Green? Yeah.
0:24 Hank Green? Orin asked me to name a country with no R and I was having a really hard time and then he just looked at me and he said, no way.
0:34 Hank Green? So.
0:35 John Green? Iceland.
0:36 Hank Green? Where are you?
0:37 John Green? First one that comes to mind for me.
0:40 Hank Green? Where have you been, John? What you been up to?
0:42 John Green? I have been in England.
0:44 Hank Green? Where are you going?
0:45 John Green? I'm going to the Philippines tomorrow.
0:47 Hank Green? Wow.
0:49 John Green? But I've been in England, traveling around with my family and Rosiana, seeing the beautiful English countryside, seeing Stonehenge, which was very moving. I saw the cathedral in Wells. Wells is where they filmed the film Hot Fuzz.
1:05 Hank Green? Wells famous for three things, the cathedral.
1:08 John Green? Yeah.
1:08 Hank Green? Hot Fuzz.
1:09 John Green? Yeah.
1:09 Hank Green? And also there's just a ton of Wells.
1:11 John Green? So many Wells. You wouldn't even believe it. They do have a lot of rain wells. That is literally what they're known for. So anyway, we were at this cathedral, walking around. It was beautiful cathedral. And ruined like everything by Henry VIII, founder of my church.
1:28 Hank Green? Yes.
1:29 John Green? Anyway, we're walking around the cathedral of Wells and there's all, you're basically walking on tombs, on gravestones. And it says, here lies the earthly remains or blessed to the memory or whatever, whatever. And one of them said, here lies the complicated dust of so and so.
1:48 Hank Green? Whoa.
1:50 John Green? I know. We're just complicated.
1:53 Hank Green? Did you take a picture?
1:54 John Green? I did take a picture. I'll send it to you.
1:56 Hank Green? Oh yeah. I want to do something with that. I don't know what.
1:58 John Green? I know, me too. I wanted to like name a band, The Complicated Dust. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to incorporate that phrase into every aspect of my being.
2:06 Hank Green? And also your tombstone potentially.
2:08 John Green? Here lies the complicated dust of John Green. He didn't want to be a bother.
2:16 Hank Green? He realizes the complicated dust of Hank Green. I just want people to like me.
2:23 John Green? That guy, that's true for me, too. I mean, he was desperate to be liked. I mean, truly, embarrassingly desperate to be liked. And he succeeded to some extent, but you know, never with enough people, never with enough people to fill the hole inside.
2:38 Hank Green? Could always have been more.
2:40 John Green? Could have been better liked.
2:41 Hank Green? Now he is complicated dust that people don't have actually that many feelings about.
2:46 John Green? Yeah, or none, you know, eventually.
2:48 Hank Green? Yeah.
2:48 John Green? Now he's just complicated dust that mostly is thought about by his grandchildren.
2:52 Hank Green? Increasingly simplifying dust.
2:57 Hank Green? Where we're all headed.
3:00 John Green? Oh, the complicated dust. I just thought it was. I thought it was beautiful, also beautiful. AFC Wimbledon won one of the games we went to and tied the other, but we'll get to that at the end of the podcast. We'll get to that at the end of the pod. It was a lovely trip and now I'm going to Philippines for TV stuff, for a big tuberculosis meeting, gathering lots of ministers of health and different folks, and also to see some of the work that my family and I have been supporting in trying to bring comprehensive tuberculosis care to parts of the Philippines without the support of USAID, because that has, of course, collapsed. So.
3:36 Hank Green? Yeah.
3:37 John Green? It'll be an interesting trip. It's a long way to go and it's a very brief trip. I'm only there for four or five days, but I'm really excited to go there and see some of the TV work up close. And that's what I've been up to. What about you?
3:47 Hank Green? I don't know, man. I took it, took it easy this weekend, went to see a play at the theater.
3:54 John Green? Nice.
3:54 Hank Green? Went to just like hang out with friends, just did that stuff.
3:58 John Green? Oh, that's great. So you were offline this weekend?
4:01 Hank Green? I don't know, I'm going offline. I wouldn't have been.
4:07 John Green? So you should have been offline this weekend.
4:09 Hank Green? I did actually. During Pizza Miss, I tried to not be using the major problem apps for me, you know, Twitter. I don't really use Twitter, but like the Twitter, the Twitters, uh, Boosky and Threads and Instagram and TikTok. And that was actually, I think that that was a good experiment that I enjoyed.
4:31 John Green? Yeah, but you're not going to keep up with it. You decided, you decided two weeks was enough.
4:37 Hank Green? What I've done is I've locked them. I don't get access to these, but I can like, open them for 15 minutes at a time. Have I talked about this?
4:44 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:45 Hank Green? This is nice for me because it means that I can like go in and do DMs and then I get sucked into it. But then it's like, hey buddy, it's been 15 minutes.
4:51 John Green? Is there any way, and I'm just going to throw this out there. And I know this is now primarily a podcast where Hank and John fret about technology. But is there any way that you could go to these people you DM and say, I have this other way of contacting me called an email address?
5:07 Hank Green? Honestly, a lot of people who I DM don't email. It's wild.
5:12 John Green? Right, because they're young and full of promise and.
5:16 Hank Green? And like, why would they? Right. So they just have like, they just have like five to 10 separate services where they DM people. And I'm like, this is not better.
5:24 John Green? Hank.
5:25 Hank Green? Yeah.
5:25 John Green? I have to ask you a question. It's from Amelia. She writes, Dear John and Hank, I have a few questions about mold. This is what I know. Mold is bad. Mold is penicillin. Penicillin is good. Mold on bread is gross. Mold on cheese is delicious. Why? How can I eat blocks of moldy cheese and it's divine? But if I eat a moldy sandwich, I die. How does it work? Thanks a million, Amelia. Amelia, thank you for addressing this with the proper level of panic, which is that one time, probably 20 years ago, I ate a, a, a piece of a sandwich and then looked down and saw there was mold on what remained of the bread. And I still think that's going to kill me.
6:00 Hank Green? Yeah.
6:01 John Green? I still think I'm going to die from that.
6:03 Hank Green? I, uh, so, I mean, mold, you can think of it like complicated dust.
6:12 John Green? Except it's more alive than complicated dust.
6:15 Hank Green? That's the whole thing, John. But there's, there's so many different molds is the, is the answer to the question. And through trial and error, we have found molds that make cheeses better, but are not dangerous to us.
6:27 John Green? Mm hmm.
6:28 Hank Green? That's basically it. And, you know, wildly like penicillin mold, like the mold that creates penicillin, I think it's called penicillium, can be one of the molds that is like on moldy bread. But like, you don't necessarily want to put a bunch of penicillin in your body when you don't need it. But you also don't want to have all the other stuff that comes along with that. So like mold can create like special mold toxins. They're called mycotoxins. They can be quite bad for you, but some molds don't make them. So that's, that is why. And that is why it's like, okay, to eat the things that are moldy that we have honestly, through trial and error, figured out are okay. There was not like a scientist back in the day who did a bunch of math and spectroscopy.
7:08 John Green? Right.
7:08 Hank Green? They just ate it. And if they got sick, then they didn't eat it again.
7:11 John Green? Right. Did you know that the vast majority of the world's penicillin stock descends from the mold on one cantaloupe in a Peoria, Illinois grocery store?
7:20 Hank Green? Yeah. Isn't that cool?
7:22 John Green? That's my favorite fact.
7:23 Hank Green? It's also true of, of gerbils.
7:25 John Green? What do you mean?
7:26 Hank Green? The vast majority of gerbils in America are descended from like five gerbils that got brought over.
7:32 John Green? Oh, okay. I thought you, I thought you meant they were all descended from a gerbil in a Peoria, Illinois grocery store. And I was like, what a coincidence. What a productive grocery store.
7:42 Hank Green? Peoria really needs to get on the map. We gotta make up the biggest ball of penicillin mold and gerbils.
7:50 John Green? Gross.
7:53 Hank Green? That's probably a bad idea. I don't like that.
7:55 John Green? That might be the worst combo I've ever heard of. All right. Let's answer another question, Hank.
8:02 Hank Green? Basically, in mold, you don't want chaos. You don't want whatevers around. You want specific situations. That's my answer to you.
8:08 John Green? Okay. That's quite beautiful.
8:10 Hank Green? This next question comes from Danielle, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm a longtime nerd fighter. And because of that, I can remember when John put out a Vlogbrothers video in 2013 called Perspective. That was a response to Hank asking. Asking how long people thought a million seconds is. In this video, John remembers what his life was like one million imagined seconds ago, 12 years ago. I can honestly say this video changed my life and is a piece of media that I come back to whenever life gets hard and I need a bit of hope. Recently, I was looking at this video and I realized it came out almost exactly 12 years ago.
8:43 John Green? Wow.
8:44 Hank Green? Now that we have millions more seconds of perspective, I wanted to see if there is any experiences from the last 12 years that you can now see shaped your future slash current self. Thank you for the video, always screaming and Dan yelling.
8:59 John Green? I have never made a video that so many people responded to so generously over the last 12 years. So it's nice of you to go back to that video, Danielle, and I feel really lucky that I got to make that one. I was uncomfortable making it, I remember, because it was so personal, you know, and like usually my videos aren't that personal. But sometimes that's the stuff that people respond to the most. In fact, often I think that's the stuff that people respond to the most, which is dangerous because it means that you can let go of pieces of yourself that you want to keep private in an attempt to, you know, have people like you or, or try to make something that's helpful or whatever. But I'm really glad I made that one. It's nice to hear that it's been helpful to you. The biggest thing that's happened for me in the last one million imagined seconds, and I think a million seconds is actually like 13 days, not 12 years.
9:43 John Green? So just to be clear, don't, don't use my math. But two things, the sort of parallel tracks of my life. One is going up to the top of the mountain and then down the other side of it. Because the Faulkner Stars movie came out almost exactly 11 years ago. Then secondarily, raising kids from the age of, in Alice's case, one to the age of 12, which has been way more interesting than all the fame in the world. Way more instructive, way more difficult, way more fulfilling, all of that stuff. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, all that. And I think the biggest thing I've I've learned is that the thing I thought I always
10:26 John Green? wanted, which was to be really properly famous, I don't want. And the thing that I do want, which I always thought was kind of cliche and lame, is to have a family and spend lots of time with them.
10:43 Hank Green? Yeah, I mean, the biggest perspective shift for me was definitely having a child over the last 12 years. And, you know, there's, there's this thing that I read a dad say that like when, after he had a child, he was like on the floor, like on the like the little play mat, you know, that's just there to keep him off the carpet and and pick up any drool. And he was just like looking at this kid and and he like noticed, he like looked back on on like the last, you know, 15 minutes of his life and he was like, wow, this is like the first time I felt like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And maybe in my whole life, like since, since being a child, you know, like as an adult, I've never really known I was doing the right thing, but like right now I know I'm doing the right thing.
11:28 Hank Green? That like resonates a lot. And yeah, and so there is something, something super very nice about having things like that in your life.
11:38 John Green? Yeah, I think having organizing principles in your life is super important and obviously like kids don't exist primarily to be an organizing principle.
11:45 Hank Green? Nor are the the only one, yeah.
11:48 John Green? Nor are they the only one, yeah, exactly. But they can be one. And then there are also a side of, you know, joint rapture and shared attention, which is, you know, which again, kids are not the only form of joint rapture, but for a lot of people, they are one. So yeah, that's been the biggest, I guess, perspective shift in my life is that what I thought I wanted, I got a lot of. And usually if you get a lot of what you think you want, it's good, right? Like you want money and you get a lot of money and that's good. I wanted fame, I got a lot of fame and it wasn't so great.
12:24 Hank Green? Very similarly, the sort of moments when I was like worried that I might not have like as much time as I thought I was gonna have, because it's always gonna come to this.
12:34 John Green? Oh, you always gotta bring up having cancer. It's cancer this, it's cancer that.
12:39 Hank Green? I remember really specifically like noticing at one point that I wasn't worrying at all about any of the stuff that I thought I might be worried about. I wasn't worried about like, oh no, I won't get to see like the new scientific advances, like what gravitational wave detection will allow us for the understanding of the big bang, or you know, what interstellar objects will allow us for the understanding of other star systems. And so I thought I might have been worried about like missing stuff in terms of like the progress of humans. That wasn't on my list at all. I thought I was gonna be worried about like my like the sort of legacy of the businesses and of the, you know, the YouTube stuff and all of that. I wasn't even worried about that. I was worried about like my son not having a dad. Like that was a hundred percent of it.
13:24 John Green? Right.
13:25 Hank Green? And like, the wild thing is, like, he doesn't get a dad as much as he'd like one, like even though I'm gonna be fine.
13:33 John Green? Right.
13:34 Hank Green? And so like, that's very, that's very clarifying.
13:37 John Green? Yeah, it is. Clarifying is a good word.
13:40 Hank Green? And like, sometimes he doesn't get like the dad that I'd like him to have because I'm like stressed out. And so like my fuse is shorter, or you know, my capacity for paying attention is is smaller, or I'm like looking down at my phone too much. So like all that stuff, I'm like, it's really nice to have had, there's, look, we, everybody wants to like make a good thing and do a bad thing. And so I recognize that I'm doing that. But it is nice to have had a moment where I have that clarity. I really did have to ask myself, like, what does a shorter time, like, what would it mean to me? And, and the answer was very clear, in terms of like what actually mattered to me.
14:24 John Green? And yet, we're still on TikTok.
14:26 Hank Green? I just, I just uploaded one just now.
14:29 John Green? Oh, God, I can't.
14:30 Hank Green? I wonder how it's doing.
14:32 John Green? Oh, no. I mean, at least I'm not uploading, you know, at least I'm just downloading. I'm just ingesting, which is its own problem for sure. But at least I'm, at least I'm not also feeding them.
14:46 John Green? Let's answer this question from Lark who says, Dear John and Hank, every time I do the dishes, I feel as if I'm walking into the infernal pits of hell to fight a battle in which I will never triumph. Washing Tupperware is my Sisyphean task. Even with the cleaning gloves and a long handled sponge, it still feels impossible to get things clean enough in a reasonable amount of time and I end up scrubbing forever. How do I make doing dishes less horrible? Is there something wrong with me? Soap suds and Sisyphus, Lark? I can relate to this. I now enjoy doing the dishes, but I used to hate it. I used to put it off. I used to delay it. I used to like-
15:15 Hank Green? Teach me your ways.
15:17 John Green? All right. Here's the thing. You gotta be in a house. First off, you have to be somebody that doesn't, doesn't love being overstimulated.
15:25 Hank Green? Okay.
15:25 John Green? Which you probably can't relate to, but I don't love being overstimulated.
15:29 Hank Green? Okay.
15:30 John Green? Then you have to live in a home with two loud children that are overstimulated.
15:39 Hank Green? You have to, you have to, you have to make the not dishes part worse and then the dishes part will be better.
15:45 John Green? Gets better, gets better. And then you have to have these miracle devices called Bluetooth headphones that shut out the world and allow you to just listen to a podcast while you do the dishes.
15:58 Hank Green? That is the main thing. And like, here's, here's the other main thing. I cannot allow myself to think about how I have done the dishes a billion times in my life and will do them a billion more.
16:09 John Green? Right.
16:10 Hank Green? Like, that's, that's like textbook, I've just made my life worse with a thought I didn't need to have.
16:16 John Green? My whole, that's, I mean, that, you could put that on my tombstone.
16:21 Hank Green? Yeah.
16:22 John Green? That's all I do all day.
16:25 Hank Green? Yeah. So I'm sorry. I probably do that to myself a fair amount, but just like the reality that they, that will, I will always be doing dishes. It's just, there's always going to be dishes in the, in my future. But yes, I do think that a pair of headphones and a nice YouTube video where I learn about like some things that prehistoric humans did, or like what's up with the climate.
16:51 John Green? Hank and I both love a 45 minute YouTube video analyzing the remains of one prehistoric human.
16:59 Hank Green? Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, of course. Just give me that. Put that stuff in my veins.
17:04 John Green? It's the only thing that's in both of our algorithms that we definitely agree on. Like, I'm watching AFC Wimbledon highlights, he's watching climate change videos.
17:11 Hank Green? Yeah.
17:12 John Green? But we're always both watching those prehistoric human videos, man. We love them. We love. What was, what was going on with Neanderthals and modern humans? Hmm. I don't know. Let's spend 45 minutes speculating.
17:23 Hank Green? What's, what's all the stuff? What's all the data we have and what, what different guesses can we make from that?
17:27 John Green? Well, that was the coolest part of my trip to England, Hank, was the, and I know we're getting away from the dishes here, but was the history of it, like walking on a street that people have walked on for 800 years. And largely it's the same street and the houses are the same houses. Uh, going and visiting the, the Roman baths and seeing that, you know, 2,000 years ago, people were engaging in community in these interesting, odd, ritualized ways. And here we are still trying to do that, although now mediated by, uh, by large corporations instead of by empires. All that stuff. I mean, it was just so, so cool to be in the places where those things happened and like learning about them.
18:10 John Green? It was, it, it felt like a, like a prehistoric humans YouTube video, but, um, that you can walk through.
18:16 Hank Green? What if?
18:17 John Green? Yeah.
18:18 Hank Green? We could feel that way about Tupperware.
18:20 John Green? That's a great idea, Hank. What if, Lark, instead of thinking about how terrible it is to wash the Tupperware, you think about what a gift it is to wash the Tupperware?
18:27 Hank Green? What a, what a magnificent thing that exists and didn't use to.
18:33 John Green? Lark, do you even know the fascinating history?
18:35 Hank Green? Yeah, let's talk about Mr. Tupper, John.
18:37 John Green? Oh, Tupper was a fascinating guy.
18:42 Hank Green? You, you Googling right now?
18:44 John Green? Earl Tupper.
18:47 Hank Green? We know so much about Tupper. Give us a second and we'll tell you about all the things we know about Earl Tupper.
18:53 John Green? He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire.
18:55 Hank Green? Give me one moment. Just, it's coming to me. It's coming to me. Steady, steady. Worked for the DuPont Chemical Corporation. It's all coming together.
19:06 Hank Green? There was, uh, did you, did you know about the story of Brownie Wise?
19:10 John Green? No.
19:11 Hank Green? Brownie Wise was the person who made Tupperware work. So Tupper created these things. He was like, look, look, look, we've got this plastic, we've got this need. I can make these beautiful works of art, these like lovely objects that are also very functional. But like, how do you sell them when you're just a guy? Well, Brownie Wise is the one who figured it out, is the one who like started the Tupperware Club thing? Where like you, a woman gets to go to other women, of course, because this is the era that we're in right now, and say like, look at this thing that can make your life better and it's lovely and it's easy.
19:42 John Green? Right. And then the host of the Tupperware party would make a little bit of money selling Tupperware, but the Tupperware Corporation would make a lot of money selling Tupperware. That was the, and I remember like even when we were kids, our mom would host a Tupperware party, like when she needed a little bit of cash.
20:01 Hank Green? I did not know that.
20:02 John Green? Oh, yeah. And like sometimes like Melanie would have a Tupperware party.
20:06 Hank Green? Yeah, I believe that. Or like Avon.
20:08 John Green? Yeah, it's probably before your era.
20:12 John Green? But like with Avon, you had to make a kind of commitment. There was a multi-level marketing aspect. With Tupperware, you're literally just selling Tupperware and you get a percentage of the proceeds and they bring in a Tupperware salesperson, a Brownie Wise, if you will. And, um, because you host it, you get a little bit of the cash. That's what I remember anyway. And it worked great. It was, so think about that. Think about the fact that we used to, we used to not have refrigeration. And I don't mean like used to like 600 years ago. I mean like used to in the living memory of some humans.
20:41 Hank Green? Yeah.
20:41 John Green? Almost.
20:43 Hank Green? It turns out that this was like all Brownie Wise's idea and she did it without even the Tupperware people knowing about it.
20:49 John Green? Is that true?
20:50 Hank Green? Yeah. She like went and sold, because she was selling brooms and she was like, this product is better. And so she like bought a bunch of Tupperware and started selling and she made like a hundred and $50,000 in the first year. And then, uh, and then she, she also had a bunch of complaints about them. She was like, you guys sent me the wrong stuff sometimes. And that, the like Tupper was like, okay, come over, we'll talk. And, and she was like, you guys need to do parties.
21:13 John Green? Yeah.
21:13 Hank Green? So it's all Brownie Wise, man.
21:14 John Green? Yeah, there you go.
21:15 Hank Green? We're gonna make a whole podcast for you. You're gonna do the dishes and all you're gonna hear about is Brownie Wise. Also, what a name.
21:22 John Green? He died on vacation. Got to watch out for that.
21:25 Hank Green? Yeah, well, that's what happens when you when you gamble too much, they kill you.
21:29 John Green? Did he gamble too much?
21:31 Hank Green? Yeah, the gambling debts caught up with him and I'm making this up.
21:34 John Green? Oh, OK. I was like, what? This isn't on Wikipedia at all. He had a heart attack.
21:40 Hank Green? Yeah, it was poison. They poisoned him.
21:42 John Green? Big plastic got to him?
21:44 Hank Green? It turns out, yeah. And now it says, here lies Earl Tupper, the complicated dust of Earl Tupper, in a coffin that goes boop. The coffin, the burps, patented burp.
21:55 John Green? Yeah, I mean, you could do worse than a plastic coffin. The truth is, the coffin doesn't matter much, Hank. The complicated dust will find a way.
22:01 Hank Green? I don't know. I wonder if he's particularly well-preserved, having been buried in a giant Tupperware.
22:06 John Green? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by the giant Tupperware that contains the earthly remains of Earl Tupper.
22:16 Hank Green? Could I get one?
22:17 John Green? Yeah, I mean, you'd have to design it. And if you call the Tupperware company and you say, hey, I'm Hank Green, and I want to be buried in Tupperware.
22:26 Hank Green? I want to do a brand deal. It's gonna be so weird.
22:28 John Green? I want to do the last brand deal of my foreshortened life.
22:34 Hank Green? This podcast is also brought to you by Chaotic Mold. Chaotic Mold, the bad kind.
22:38 John Green? And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the Cathedral at Wells. The Cathedral at Wells. They call it that because it's got a lot of wells.
22:46 Hank Green? And this podcast is brought to you by Complicated Dust. Complicated Dust, everything you care about.
22:54 John Green? Boy, thanks, Hank. A quick correction coming out of the ad break. Earl Tupper lived in Costa Rica at the end of his life. He didn't die on vacation. I just am terrified of dying on vacation. That's what that's about.
23:08 Hank Green? Let's get into it. What's worrying about that to you, that they have to like, put you on a plane in a bag?
23:14 John Green? Yeah, and just like, it really ruins the vacation for people. It might even ruin the idea of vacationing for people. And as we've previously discussed, I don't want to be a bother. And I feel like it would be a tremendous bother if they had to put me on a plane and whatnot.
23:27 Hank Green? There are probably certain vacations where they have like, solid procedures for this.
23:31 John Green? Cruise ships.
23:32 Hank Green? Yeah. And that's a good place to die, because they got a whole system.
23:36 John Green? I don't want to die at sea. If I die at sea, then on my Wikipedia page, not to make this about legacy, but on my Wikipedia page, it's going to be like, died, like, Southern Pacific Ocean.
23:47 Hank Green? That's Dope. That is so dope. That is so dope.
23:51 John Green? I wanted to say that I was born in Indianapolis and I died in Indianapolis and make it seem like I lived here my whole life.
23:56 Hank Green? Listen to this sentence. John Green, born in Indianapolis, died in the Southern Pacific Sea, buried in Indianapolis. That's amazing. James Whitcomb Riley could never.
24:09 John Green? That's the guy who's buried at the top of the hill in Indianapolis, the highest point in Indianapolis. Until I get buried on top of him. Cause you love him so much. Oh, no, no, he's my great rival. He wrote Little Orphan Annie.
24:24 Hank Green? Enemies to lovers, that's what I'm saying.
24:28 John Green? Enemies to buried right next to each other. Yeah.
24:34 John Green? No, I um, I do love the idea of being buried on top of James Whitcomb Riley. It would be the ultimate comeuppance, literally.
24:41 Hank Green? And then someday at 2300, there's some big Indianapolis author.
24:46 John Green? Yeah, maybe bury him on top of me.
24:48 Hank Green? Like, nobody even knows who John Green is. They've all, they've forgotten about James Whitcomb Riley at this point.
24:53 John Green? Yeah, yeah. It's inevitable. It's inevitable. And that's what, that's what time does, Hank. Time.
24:59 Hank Green? It's inevitable. It is, it is, uh, it is both horrifying, but also freeing.
25:05 John Green? Yeah, it's beautiful.
25:06 Hank Green? All this stuff I worry about. Everybody's gonna forget about this. Just try, just trying to do the, the things. Gotta stay focused and not let the, the little boy who got bullied in middle school always be in charge.
25:18 John Green? I do think that you and I would be vastly different people if we hadn't been severely bullied in middle school.
25:25 Hank Green? Yes. It is amazing the extent to which so much of my skills were built specifically to deal with that.
25:33 John Green? Yeah, like, I don't think Vlogbrothers would exist. I don't think Crash Course would exist. I don't, I, I, I don't.
25:40 Hank Green? John Green pro bullying. John Green pro bullying. That's all I'm hearing right now. Put it on Twitter.
25:46 John Green? Oh God, please don't put it on Twitter. I'm hard anti-bullying. Um, I think the world is, is better with less bullying. Don't put anything about me on Twitter. Don't, don't tweet.
25:57 Hank Green? You know how they like that, like the, the new AI slap videos, like to some, some people like Brian Cranston had to come forward and be like, you need to stop letting people make things with my face. I want that, but like just for all of Twitter. Like you can, you can write about me in the news, but oh my God, how do I keep my name off of that website?
26:15 John Green? Oh, there should be the right to be forgotten on Twitter. Anyway, this next question comes from Mindy who writes, Dear John and Hank, I am a sleep deprived new mother. I'm currently staring at a box of diapers that says up to 100% leak proof. Meanwhile, my washing machine is washing a load of clothing that in fact was leaked on. I'm confused about this wording. I seem to see it a lot for diapers and feminine hygiene products. Is this some kind of marketing legal lingo? Is it supposed to be tricking me? Is there some kind of statistical jargon they're using? Are they taking advantage of my sleep deprived brain? Up to 100% leak proof. Might as well say our diapers might not leak at all, or they might. Pumpkins and pooping penguins, Mindy. What a phrase. Up to 100% leak proof. Also potentially 30% leak proof. We can't make any promises and so we're just gonna say up to.
27:00 Hank Green? The version of this that is the most like magical to me is that GEICO could save you up to 16% or more on your car insurance.
27:08 John Green? Up to 16% or more.
27:10 Hank Green? Yeah. And I just have to call out this, the, of all of those words, the one that is most interesting to me is 16.
27:19 John Green? Mm hmm.
27:20 Hank Green? Because apparently that number could have been anything.
27:23 John Green? Cause it also could save you up to 14% or more.
27:25 Hank Green? Or probably 70% or more.
27:27 John Green? Sure.
27:27 Hank Green? They always say up to 16% or more. And I-
27:31 John Green? They used to say up to 15% or more, but they've recently gone up a notch.
27:34 Hank Green? Oh, did they?
27:34 John Green? Yeah.
27:35 Hank Green? And soon it'll be 17. This was part of the plan the whole time.
27:39 John Green? Yeah. It's classic inflation.
27:42 Hank Green? Up to 16%. Yeah. Up, up to 100% leak proof is definitely saying these diapers sometimes don't leak. And which is, which is, I think, a pretty low bar.
27:52 John Green? Guess you'd be the bare minimum. Um, if, if your child has a small P, this may not leak. Well, thank you. That is, that is what I was going for.
28:02 John Green? Up to 100% leak proof. Incredible.
28:04 Hank Green? Incredible.
28:06 John Green? If I were sleep deprived and a new mom like you are, Mindy, I would be apoplectic at that language. I would be writing Huggies, an angry letter. And it would just say, "Up to?" question mark, question mark, question mark. Sincerely, Mindy.
28:25 Hank Green? Yeah, you're gonna have to set up like a auto emailer that sends that, hey, for all 18 years of your child's childhood life.
28:37 John Green? Up to, up to 100% leak proof. You come do my frickin laundry.
28:45 Hank Green? Was there a space on the package that you felt like should have words on it? That's all that seems like to me.
28:51 John Green? Mindy, I have known my spouse for 24 years, and I have seen her happy and sad and tired and not tired. I've seen her jet lagged. I've never seen anything ever like those first few months of taking care of a child.
29:10 Hank Green? Yeah.
29:11 John Green? And I think that you need to take all of the difficulty that you're experiencing right now and all of the sleep deprivation, and you need to take it on a mission to destroy the Huggies corporations up to 100% leak proof language. I think you need to go hard on this one.
29:28 Hank Green? And it can't be a legal thing, because that's the reason why they've done this. You know, they specifically made it fine to put on the packaging. Instead, it just has to become grinch. It has to be embarrassing, and they need to feel bad.
29:40 John Green? Exactly.
29:41 Hank Green? Catherine and I were just having breakfast, and there was a mom with her three kids, and one of them was very small. And they had their dog, and the dog was tied up outside, which is, you know, there's a whole situation at that place for that specific use. But then she left without the dog, because of course she did, because she got a baby and two kids.
30:00 John Green? Oh, gosh.
30:00 Hank Green? And they were like gone, and she had to come back from wherever she was.
30:05 John Green? Oh.
30:06 Hank Green? And get the dog. And I was like, that is absolutely where you're at, you know? It is so hard.
30:14 John Green? I tried to stay up with Sarah for like the first few nights after Henry came home. And like when she was feeding, I was like, oh, just stay up with you. And I think on like night one, maybe, maybe night two, she was like, this is worse. Having you here is worse. Um, because now you're complaining about being tired and like, I don't want to hear it at all.
30:35 Hank Green? There's a future in which like, maybe it will be nice if one of us is well rested during the day.
30:40 John Green? Oh God, it was, I mean, I've just felt awful for her. Okay, let's, uh, Hank, we got to get to the all important news from Mars and ASC Wimbledon. But first we got to do something else, which is that we need to read this email from Robin, who writes, Dear John and Hank, Hank is not, not pivoting to balls. He has been obsessed with a big ball for decades. It's called Mars. Do not pretend he has newly expressed interest in big balls when he has in fact downgraded into an interest of much smaller big balls, pumpkins and spherical penguins, Robin.
31:09 Hank Green? I mean, I guess, but Mars is really not the biggest ball of anything.
31:13 John Green? Yeah, that's true. It's not the world's biggest ball of anything, except for it is the world's biggest ball of Mars.
31:19 Hank Green? It's definitely the universe's biggest ball of Mars.
31:23 John Green? Right.
31:24 Hank Green? Yeah.
31:25 John Green? People have written in with many suggestions.
31:28 Hank Green? For balls.
31:29 John Green? For big balls that we could make.
31:32 Hank Green? Tell me your balls.
31:34 John Green? Um, Bren suggests, uh, the human experience cocktail ball, hope and despair. You write your biggest reason for hope and your biggest reason for despair on two separate sticky notes and add them to the ball.
31:44 Hank Green? Yeah.
31:46 John Green? Scott suggests the world's largest ball of existential dread on a piece of scrap paper. Write what's troubling you about being a piece of the universe that knows it's part of the universe and glue it to the ball.
31:55 Hank Green? This is so good. So this is like taking the 1950s version of big balls and making it like upgrading it for that 2025 mind. You know, it's not just, I don't want just want tin foil and rubber bands. No, let's have it be a human collaborative experience, the biggest ball of dread in Minnesota.
32:13 John Green? The biggest ball of dread in Minnesota. Vanessa proposes the world's largest ball of Band-Aids, unused.
32:20 Hank Green? Okay.
32:21 John Green? They're self adhesive, so low work for Hank. Bring a bandage. Stick it on done. I like that as well. And Rebecca suggests, I think nerd fighting should work toward creating the world's largest ball of stickers. This is another very collaborative one.
32:32 Hank Green? Yeah.
32:32 John Green? I love that with the world's largest ball of paint, people who visit can add their own layers and stickers can work similarly. Each sticker telling its own story. Someone could add a sticker that they've had since they were a kid, but never found the right place to put it. A sticker from the banana they ate that morning, a bumper sticker from their university, or all of those Yeti stickers that were sent to them when they registered their fancy new coffee mug in 2021. What sticker would you add to the world's largest ball of stickers? If you needed to add a sticker today, best wishes, Rebecca. I think my answer would be one of my remaining Olivia Rodrigo stickers that I received as a Olivia Rodrigo superfan from Olivia Rodrigo's publicity team.
33:09 Hank Green? Dive mola.
33:11 John Green? What?
33:11 Hank Green? Dive mola.
33:13 John Green? Well, I don't know what that means.
33:14 Hank Green? This is the dive mola. It's the dive flag, but it's a mola mola.
33:17 John Green? Oh, sorry. You're, you're, you're doing something visual. I, this is an audio podcast, Hank.
33:22 Hank Green? Yeah, I was expecting you to like respond to it, look at it and tell me what it looks like.
33:26 John Green? No, I was reading the document, but yeah, it looks like, I can't really see it because, yeah.
33:32 Hank Green? It's dive mola. It's made by, it's made by my friend who works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
33:38 John Green? It's cute. I love it. I think we should have, make the world's largest ball of stickers and the world's largest ball of Post-Its containing reasons for hope and despair.
33:45 Hank Green? I think that, uh, I think we're, I think that it's, there's not enough weird. I think there's, we need more weird.
33:50 John Green? Yeah. I really like some of these ideas. I do not have the bandwidth to execute them right now, but if you out there want to make the world's largest ball of stickers, I think there has never been a better time.
34:00 Hank Green? Put together the project plan, you know? What do you need? You need a place to put it. So that is tricky.
34:05 John Green? To put it. That's, that's number one, but that's really all you need. Other than that.
34:09 Hank Green? We also, you need some amount of like, uh, engineering prowess to like, have a, a way to have a ball that stays there. Uh, and even if it gets very large and heavy, you're still like, good. Maybe even a way to like, get it out into a bigger building eventually. I think the large balls. That problem several times where they're like, this ball is now too big for this building and we don't know how to get it out.
34:29 John Green? Yeah. The world's largest ball of paint has its own dedicated building, which I think is a smart solution. All right, Hank, we got to get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first. AFC Wimbledon, what is happening? I rode the train back from Plymouth, where I went to an away game with my family. I rode the train back with Johnny Jackson, AFC Wimbledon's coach.
34:48 Hank Green? You were hanging out with Johnny Jackson?
34:50 John Green? He just signed a new contract.
34:52 Hank Green? I feel like he's too big of a deal to like spend time with you.
34:54 John Green? Oh, no, no, he was, he was on the train with all the fans.
34:58 Hank Green? Amazing.
34:58 John Green? He was just on the train on the way back home. He was, and he's a, he's a lovely man. His, his coaching team is lovely. I got to talk to Bezo, the goalkeeping coach. It was great. Anyway, um, I was like, what do you attribute this to, Johnny? Because we have the lowest budget in League One. We have basically the same players who finished fifth in League Two last season. What do you attribute this astonishing success to? Because we beat Plymouth 2-1. We tied the previous game against Port Vale 1-1. We're unbeaten in seven games, Hank. We're in fourth place, one point off first place in League One. And we're a third of the way through the season. This is impossible. What is happening is, is just impossible.
35:39 John Green? And he said, I attribute it to togetherness. But he said it while looking at me with his ice cold, steely, blue eyes. And I believed every word that came out of his mouth. I love that man so much.
35:49 Hank Green? Mm hmm.
35:50 John Green? Hope he's not listening. It'd be awful.
35:54 Hank Green? So the togetherness is working. Several times you've gone from 1-0 down to 2-1 up.
35:59 John Green? Yeah. So in that game, we went from 1-0 down to 2-1 up. And it was actually-
36:02 Hank Green? That must have been a very exciting one to watch.
36:03 John Green? My son, Henry's eighth AFC Wimbledon game and his first ever victory. So when we went 1-0 down after six minutes, he looked at me and he was like, I knew it. And I was like, don't give up. We can come from 1-0 down and win 2-1. And that's exactly what we did. Goals from Omar Bougiele and Nerd Fight Terry Azon, Marcus Brown. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. I just, and then to be on a three and a half hour train ride home, it's a long train ride. My kids didn't have the best time, but I had the best time because I was just talking to all the Wimbledon fans. I would go from car to car and like chat with people and get their thoughts on the game. And it was just, oh God, it was so awesome. I love that football club so much. I wish for everyone in the world, something that means to them what AFC Wimbledon means to me.
36:46 Hank Green? I wish we could put it in a ball and make it-
36:48 John Green? I wish we could put it in a ball, the world's largest ball of love orienting in the same direction.
36:56 Hank Green? Uh, there's so much happening in Mars news. I'm gonna, there is still 3I Atlas Mars news, but I think that it's, I think I've done so much of it. I want to talk about volcanoes instead.
37:07 John Green? Okay.
37:08 Hank Green? So there's some, some new research. I was looking at, uh, some weird stuff about Mars. So particularly like a bunch of mice, uh, mice.
37:17 John Green? Whoa.
37:18 Hank Green? There's a huge ball of mice. It's a real big surprise. Uh, ice, ice at the equator.
37:24 John Green? Ice.
37:25 Hank Green? So the, the research is suggesting that, that ancient volcanic explosions on Mars left huge ice deposits hidden at the planet's equator, which is not where you would expect water to persist because it's like
37:38 John Green? Like under the surface?
37:40 Hank Green? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it got buried after like various things. So this was really early, uh, relatively early. So like four to three billion years ago, um, it would have blasted water vapor up into the sky and then it would have like fallen back as snow or rain and then turned into ice. And, uh, even a single three day eruption could blanket lots of nearby regions with up to 16 feet of ice. And over millions of years, many eruptions, uh, that, that might mean a lot of buried ice near the equatorial plains, which would explain a bunch of mysterious hydrogen detected by orbiters near Mars's equator. So the signals could mean that there's a lot of ice down there, or it could just
38:23 Hank Green? mean that there's like hydrogen rich, uh, minerals. Either way, if the ice exists, that would be very helpful if ever people were there because equator would probably be a slightly better spot than other places on Mars. And you do want there to be ice if you're going to be living on Mars.
38:38 John Green? Just because it's warmer?
38:40 Hank Green? Yeah. So the equator is a slightly better place because it's a little warmer.
38:42 John Green? I, I would submit, I would submit it's still not a great place. I would submit it's still not, it doesn't have much of an atmosphere.
38:49 Hank Green? Really one thing we're learning, uh, as we learn more about Mars is even worse than we thought in terms of places you want to hang out.
38:57 John Green? Less desirable for humans even than we initially imagined.
39:01 Hank Green? Yeah.
39:01 John Green? Well, I wish you lots of luck. I, I still think that we've got a good chance, one of us of living to see a human on Mars. I do not think it's going to happen in 2028.
39:10 Hank Green? Uh, I think you're right, John. It's 2025 and like barely.
39:16 John Green? Yeah, that's true. The window is closing. I wouldn't put it past certain billionaires just throwing somebody up there as a sort of hail Mary. But hopefully that won't happen because that would be very dangerous.
39:30 Hank Green? That does seem dangerous, yeah.
39:31 John Green? Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at [email protected] .
39:38 Hank Green? I'm Hank and he's John.
39:41 John Green? That's great. You've never done that one before. People who don't watch us on YouTube have been wondering for years.
39:48 Hank Green? Yeah. This podcast is edited by Ben Swardout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hall, Strohass, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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