435: So Much Idea in That Idea

Do we sweat the same way vegetables do? What should I do if a billionaire sits down at my dinner table? How do I feel sane in today’s world? Can you please tell my twelve year old son to go to sleep? How did we decide the geological time scales? When were chairs invented? How does John manage his fear of TB contamination? What is Salinger-ing? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected]. Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:13Hank 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 on an actual, physical couch together in Los Angeles, California. John, you know what the problem was? When Jacques Cousteau and Natalie Portman wanted to get married?

• 0:28John Green?

  What?

• 0:29Hank Green?

  But how would they mash their names together?

• 0:31John Green?

  Into a portmanteau.

• 0:34John Green?

  It's a good joke. It's a good joke.

• 0:38John Green?

  So we are in Los Angeles filming Ask Hank Anything and we decided that we would make a podcast while we're here on this couch.

• 0:44Hank Green?

  I would love... It would be so cool to do it like this. Except maybe not with four other people in the room.

• 0:50John Green?

  It would be great to do it like this every week, especially if you lived in Indianapolis. Because then I wouldn't have to leave Indianapolis.

• 0:56Hank Green?

  Right. I would just be there.

• 0:57John Green?

  You would be there all the time. We would do so much work. We'd be like Rhett and Link, you know? Just brothers.

• 1:03Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:04John Green?

  They're not brothers, but you know what I mean.

• 1:05Hank Green?

  They basically.

• 1:06John Green?

  I had a dream last night about Rhett and Link that they gave me really good advice and we were just hanging out like the old days. And they were like, "Man, you gotta take it down a notch." And I was like, "Thanks, Rhett and Link."

• 1:15Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:15John Green?

  I needed to hear that from you guys.

• 1:17Hank Green?

  If Rhett or Link said I had to take it down a notch, I'd be like, "Watch your own business." I'd be like, "Don't you talk to me about my notches."

• 1:25John Green?

  Hank gets so defensive when you tell him to take him down a notch.

• 1:28Hank Green?

  I do. I mean, well, the reason is, sometimes people are like, "Why are you doing all this?" And I'm like, "I don't know."

• 1:35John Green?

  Yeah. You can't answer the question.

• 1:36Hank Green?

  I need to rein it in.

• 1:38John Green?

  Yeah, you get defensive because you can't answer the question.

• 1:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, I do not feel like I am acting in my own best interests right now.

• 1:43John Green?

  Earlier today, and we'll get to your question soon, but earlier today Hank told me that he has a Hank's Channel video that he's very nervous about uploading because he's worried that it's gonna offend people.

• 1:52Hank Green?

  I don't think it's going to offend people, but people may disagree with certain portions of it.

• 1:55John Green?

  And then I was like, "So don't upload it."

• 1:57Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:58John Green?

  And you were like, "But I can't because it's a banger."

• 2:00Hank Green?

  It's just that people are wrong.

• 2:03John Green?

  Oh.

• 2:04Hank Green?

  And it's... The video is right.

• 2:07John Green?

  It's good to be you. It's good to be certain.

• 2:09Hank Green?

  There's just, there's a lack of nuance out there in the world.

• 2:13John Green?

  No, you don't say. On the internet?

• 2:17Hank Green?

  That's what my friends Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau have told me.

• 2:20John Green?

  Now, I don't want to get ahead of your joke, but isn't it impossible for Natalie Portman and Jacques Cousteau to get married?

• 2:25Hank Green?

  Because Jacques Cousteau is dead.

• 2:26John Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:27Hank Green?

  Yeah. I think that, I think that that's one of the problems with the idea.

• 2:30John Green?

  Yeah, but it's a good, it's a good joke. Let's answer this question from Bronwyn, who writes, "Dear John and Hank."

• 2:35Hank Green?

  Oh, wow, you can see that far?

• 2:36John Green?

  "When I'm cooking vegetables and they sweat, like, release water in the heat, is this the same way I sweat?"

• 2:41Hank Green?

  No.

• 2:42John Green?

  Bronwyn.

• 2:43Hank Green?

  No, no.

• 2:45John Green?

  It's not?

• 2:46Hank Green?

  I mean...

• 2:46John Green?

  Because we're releasing...

• 2:48Hank Green?

  What's the same?

• 2:49John Green?

  We're exposed to heat and we're releasing...

• 2:51Hank Green?

  Wet.

• 2:52John Green?

  Wetness in order to...

• 2:54Hank Green?

  Do you know that we are among the wettest?

• 2:57John Green?

  Like humans?

• 2:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:59John Green?

  Are among the wettest animals?

• 3:00Hank Green?

  Among the wettest of the dry animals.

• 3:01John Green?

  Is that true?

• 3:02Hank Green?

  We are among the driest of the animals, because most animals are wet, all, like, completely wet.

• 3:08John Green?

  They're surrounded by water.

• 3:09Hank Green?

  You want to hear my best joke from my comedy set I'm doing tomorrow?

• 3:12John Green?

  Yes, yes. Pitch me a, pitch me a joke cold, Hank. Nothing funnier than that.

• 3:17Hank Green?

  Well, it's related.

• 3:18John Green?

  Okay, give it to me.

• 3:19Hank Green?

  So it's, it's, I'm talking about how Neanderthals and humans are, are related.

• 3:24John Green?

  Was we intermated?

• 3:25Hank Green?

  Yes, and in fact, maybe Neanderthals never went extinct, we just merged with them.

• 3:28John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Hank Green?

  And then I say, "We," uh, oh, I gotta get it right.

• 3:32John Green?

  Yeah, you don't want to mess up the joke.

• 3:34Hank Green?

  That's, that's the, the exact wrong way to start the joke, is with the wrong word.

• 3:39John Green?

  Yep.

• 3:40Hank Green?

  "They are in us."

• 3:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:42Hank Green?

  Because we were in them.

• 3:44John Green?

  Okay, that's a good joke.

• 3:45Hank Green?

  Or vice versa, probably both.

• 3:47John Green?

  All right, well, I mean...

• 3:49Hank Green?

  Then I go on to wonder whether all of the human Neanderthal sex was straight.

• 3:52John Green?

  Well, I just want to get ahead of this real quick and tell you that if that's the best joke in your comedy special, I'm concerned.

• 4:00Hank Green?

  It's the only, like, joke joke. The rest of it is funny.

• 4:04John Green?

  It's the only ba-dum-bum joke.

• 4:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's the only ba-dum-bum. It's the only turn of phrase.

• 4:07John Green?

  Can't wait to hear how it goes. So, when you are a vegetable and you sweat, it's not like being a human who sweats?

• 4:13Hank Green?

  Uh, no, but we are, we are the sweatiest animal. I think that we are, like, we might be the sweatiest animal.

• 4:19John Green?

  Of all of them.

• 4:20Hank Green?

  Of all the animals.

• 4:21John Green?

  Because other animals do sweat.

• 4:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:23John Green?

  We're not alone in that.

• 4:24Hank Green?

  No, but we are covered in sweat.

• 4:26John Green?

  Interesting.

• 4:27Hank Green?

  Sweat holes.

• 4:28John Green?

  Interesting.

• 4:28Hank Green?

  What they call them, the technical biological name is called a sweat hole. And we're just loaded with them. They're all over. It's, there is a name, but it's, it's some kind of gland. It's like apocrine, there's an apocrine gland that makes a certain kind of secretion. And there's another one that I can't remember the name of, and that's the sweat one. But anyway, we're very sweaty. It's a very intentional process that pumps or gets water across a membrane. It pumps ions across the membrane and then that draws the water out.

• 4:55John Green?

  Isn't a vegetable also just water coming out of the membrane?

• 4:58Hank Green?

  I guess, but it's not a, it's not a biochemically mediated system. It's not an intentionally done thing that has like mechanisms around it. It's like, it's getting hot and so it is, the water is getting energized and so it's leaving. We, I don't know if, would we do that if you heated a person up?

• 5:14John Green?

  Uh, that, that, that, moving on to the next question. Lilly writes, Dear Brothers Green, yesterday I was eating outside at a Chinese restaurant in London when Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, walked up to me and asked if the food was good and then if he could sit and eat with me and my friend.

• 5:29Hank Green?

  What?

• 5:29John Green?

  Photo attached so I don't sound crazy. And then to be fair, the photo is attached.

• 5:34Hank Green?

  But also I will make a note that Jensen Huang makes technology that makes it so that I can't trust that photo.

• 5:41John Green?

  That's a really good point.

• 5:43Hank Green?

  So how do I know?

• 5:44John Green?

  That's true. That photo-

• 5:45Hank Green?

  I attached a photo of Jensen Huang hanging out with me. Doesn't mean anything anymore. Now I have to zoom in on your shirt. This is some Chinese characters on this tea. Okay, if the Chinese characters on this tea are identical to the ones on this tea, I'm gonna call it, okay, it's, it's a real photo.

• 5:59John Green?

  Okay, so I also just trust Lilly. Lilly seems inherently trustworthy.

• 6:03Hank Green?

  But I'm telling you, I proved it with a photo, doesn't work anymore.

• 6:06John Green?

  It's true. We made small talk with him for about an hour about his dinner with the king, my recent graduation, and what to see in California, and then we all left. Only on the bus home did I really begin to process how strange it was to have dinner with one of the world's richest men.

• 6:19Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:20John Green?

  Now, all my friends are telling me I should have asked for a job or a large donation to charity or the secret to a lifetime of success. I suppose it is odd that all I got from the greatest proximity I may ever have to power is free Chinese food.

• 6:29Hank Green?

  Free food, he bought your dinner.

• 6:30John Green?

  Yeah. That's pretty nice, Lilly.

• 6:32Hank Green?

  Did you, did you get the nicest thing on the menu?

• 6:35John Green?

  Yeah, you should have gotten some real good stuff.

• 6:37Hank Green?

  I don't know, I honestly don't-

• 6:37Hank Green?

  I don't know how to leverage that.

• 6:39John Green?

  I feel you must also have odd conversations with people who are kind of from a different planet. What should I do next time a billionaire sits down at my dinner table? Pumpkins and penguins, Lily.

• 6:47Hank Green?

  This is frickin weird.

• 6:49John Green?

  It's Jensen Huang.

• 6:51Hank Green?

  I would never.

• 6:53John Green?

  Well, I mean, here's what I'll say. That's more human than I would have expected.

• 6:57Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:57John Green?

  To like make small talk with a stranger for an hour is pretty human. Billionaires billionaires are, I have a theory about this. Like billionaires are different from us because you have to be a certain kind of person to want to be a billionaire. Because when you are a billionaire, I've said this to you before, Hank, the easiest thing in the world is to become a multi multi millionaire.

• 7:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's it's it is an achievable goal. The steps are there.

• 7:21John Green?

  You could, if you're a billionaire, you can become stinking rich.

• 7:24Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:24John Green?

  And not be a billionaire. You can have the best of both worlds.

• 7:29Hank Green?

  You can get just right out of that line.

• 7:32John Green?

  Being a billionaire seems stressful. Every time you go out to dinner, you're just trying to have Chinese food.

• 7:36Hank Green?

  Well, that doesn't go away when you give the money away. Everybody's still like Jensen Huang.

• 7:39John Green?

  Maybe.

• 7:40Hank Green?

  I think so.

• 7:41John Green?

  Also, you got to quit being the CEO of Nvidia. That job sounds stressful.

• 7:44Hank Green?

  Oh, boy.

• 7:45John Green?

  Who would want that job?

• 7:46Hank Green?

  Just hanging out with Trump all the time?

• 7:48John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:49Hank Green?

  He's like, you're my favorite guy, Jensen Huang.

• 7:51John Green?

  And the king.

• 7:52Hank Green?

  And that king, whichever king, I'm not sure which king.

• 7:54John Green?

  I think it's King Charles the second, if I had to guess.

• 7:56Hank Green?

  The king?

• 7:56John Green?

  I mean, that's what it says.

• 7:57Hank Green?

  Of England? Where was she?

• 7:59John Green?

  They were in England.

• 8:00Hank Green?

  Oh, I don't know. Did they say that?

• 8:02John Green?

  Basically.

• 8:03Hank Green?

  I thought they were in Hong Kong.

• 8:04John Green?

  No, no, no, no, no. They implied that they were in London when they said they were in London.

• 8:09John Green?

  That was the giveaway.

• 8:10Hank Green?

  It says at a Chinese restaurant, though, so who's to know?

• 8:12John Green?

  In London.

• 8:12Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 8:13John Green?

  That's the key. That's the part that you missed.

• 8:15Hank Green?

  I guess they do have those other places.

• 8:16John Green?

  Yeah, so the king, I think, is the king of England.

• 8:18Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 8:19John Green?

  Yeah. So Hank, when you interact with billionaires, which you do.

• 8:23Hank Green?

  I've done.

• 8:24John Green?

  What is your overall approach? Because I never make a direct ask for charitable donations. I just try to emanate that that should be, here's, here's the thing. I actually, I think if if a billionaire gives all their money to charity, it just creates a new problem, which is that it creates all these like perverse incentives and like, uh, it's easy to stomp on work that's working, like it's just, it's a. Hard thing to do in a one hour conversation.

• 8:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:51John Green?

  But there are ways to do it.

• 8:51Hank Green?

  There's ways to do it. It doesn't happen in an hour.

• 8:53John Green?

  It doesn't happen in an hour.

• 8:54Hank Green?

  But you have like a responsibility to do the right thing with the resources you have.

• 8:58John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Hank Green?

  And it's tricky and like they've got a lot of demands on their time. They've gotten into the situation that they're in not unintentionally, you know?

• 9:07John Green?

  That's, I think that's a key insight is that nobody becomes a billionaire by accident.

• 9:10Hank Green?

  No. No, except for babies.

• 9:13John Green?

  Babies?

• 9:14Hank Green?

  Babies.

• 9:15John Green?

  Who are born billionaires?

• 9:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:17John Green?

  Oh, yeah, I don't think that should be possible. I'm just gonna say it. I don't wanna sound like too anti-billionaire.

• 9:23Hank Green?

  No, no, no.

• 9:24John Green?

  I'm there with you. I don't think there should be baby billionaires. Tiny little newborn baby billionaires.

• 9:28Hank Green?

  You might make the case there shouldn't be billionaires.

• 9:30John Green?

  But I know for a fact there shouldn't be tiny little newborn baby billionaires.

• 9:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, you shouldn't, you shouldn't like, like your head's half out and it's like, just happened.

• 9:39John Green?

  You are.

• 9:39Hank Green?

  That's what it happened. Pachang!

• 9:41John Green?

  You're the seventh richest person in the world, baby.

• 9:44Hank Green?

  Before, right now, you were just a, you were just a baby. But now?

• 9:48John Green?

  Oh, now you're very wealthy.

• 9:49Hank Green?

  Now you're a Walton, baby.

• 9:51John Green?

  You're a Walton. What would you have done if you were Lily? I think Lily handled it great, actually.

• 9:54Hank Green?

  No, I think you do exactly what Lily did. Like Jensen Huang isn't gonna, because he sat next to you, give you a hundred thousand dollars.

• 10:02John Green?

  Or a job.

• 10:03Hank Green?

  I mean, unless you like are a chip designer.

• 10:07John Green?

  Are you a chip designer? Is that what Nvidia does? I've always wondered.

• 10:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, they, they, they don't even make chips.

• 10:12John Green?

  What do they do?

• 10:12Hank Green?

  They, they draw them.

• 10:14John Green?

  Is that true?

• 10:15Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 10:16John Green?

  They draw them?

• 10:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, they, they like do the design of the chip. So like how the chip, and look, I don't.

• 10:22John Green?

  I mean, we're getting outside of our area of expertise here, everybody.

• 10:25Hank Green?

  But yeah, I, I used to think that they made the chips, but they don't. There's a separate company that makes the chips. They just like send the chip companies what they would like the chips to look like and do.

• 10:34John Green?

  Nvidia is an artist company?

• 10:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, they're a bunch of, they're just a bunch of artists.

• 10:38John Green?

  Yeah, okay, all right, cool, cool, cool. So that's, so we agree that Lily handled it well. How do you handle it when you are with someone who lives on a different planet?

• 10:46Hank Green?

  Um, I had a experience recently where I was, I knew that we were at Complexly, we were pitching a foundation that is run by, is a billionaires foundation.

• 10:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:57Hank Green?

  And I was just doing my thing, like I was giving the presentation I was giving, and then I found out after the fact that the guy was in the room. And I didn't know, because I couldn't, I wasn't in the room. It was like a Zoom meeting with the camera on the wall, there was like 15 people in the room.

• 11:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Hank Green?

  And I was, yeah, I was like, that's probably for the best.

• 11:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Hank Green?

  That I just didn't know.

• 11:16John Green?

  Right. The best thing is to treat people like they're normal people.

• 11:20Hank Green?

  Unless you like really want them to know that they are doing the wrong, like a bad thing. But if I'm gonna ask them for money, that's not really the vibe I'm trying to give off.

• 11:28John Green?

  That's right. Did it work, by the way?

• 11:29Hank Green?

  I think so. I think so. It's, it's a little bit down the road. And in general, what I do is like, set the golf ball on the tee in the meeting, and then afterward, that's when you try to hit the golf ball. You send them to ask.

• 11:41John Green?

  I see.

• 11:42Hank Green?

  But I will, here's what I wanted also to talk about. Last night I was, I had my cabbie was, had been driving in LA for like 50 years.

• 11:48John Green?

  Right.

• 11:49Hank Green?

  And so I asked him like, what are your like weird cab driver stories?

• 11:52John Green?

  What's your takeaway?

• 11:53Hank Green?

  And he just like unloaded on me with some weird cab, like stories of people he's driven around over the years.

• 11:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Hank Green?

  And you know what occurred to me in the midst of those, is that like, I could be way weirder.

• 12:04John Green?

  Oh yeah, I mean, I agree, and it's important to remember that like, whatever it is that you said to the cabbie that you like think about at night.

• 12:13Hank Green?

  Oh boy.

• 12:14John Green?

  The cabbie doesn't think about you because there's so many weirder people.

• 12:16Hank Green?

  There's weirder, there's weirder things.

• 12:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Hank Green?

  And like, and it almost made me kind of want to be a little weirder.

• 12:22John Green?

  No.

• 12:22Hank Green?

  No, I asked him like, what are his best fares? And he gave me stories like, every one of them was su, I asked for best, and he gave me weird.

• 12:31John Green?

  Right.

• 12:31Hank Green?

  And I'm like, I guess it's just the ones that are the best stories.

• 12:34John Green?

  Right.

• 12:35Hank Green?

  And so part of me is like, I should probably be a little weirder.

• 12:38John Green?

  Yeah, to be a best fare. But you have to, you have to understand that being a best fare and being a worst fare are precious close to each other.

• 12:44Hank Green?

  And different for different cab drivers, I'm sure.

• 12:46John Green?

  That, that is, that is a thin, thin line.

• 12:50Hank Green?

  Oh yeah.

• 12:50John Green?

  So you gotta be careful there.

• 12:51Hank Green?

  But I'm not gonna be.

• 12:52John Green?

  I know, you're gonna be weird.

• 12:54Hank Green?

  I'm gonna get in the cab and I'm gonna get in the front seat, I'm gonna sit next to him and be like, Rhett McLaughlin told me to take it down a notch in my dream, so I'm taking it up three notches in your cab!

• 13:05John Green?

  That's just the energy that a cab driver wants, Hank. After a long day at work.

• 13:09Hank Green?

  You know who Rhett is, right? From YouTube?

• 13:11John Green?

  You know Rhett? Of AndLink?

• 13:17John Green?

  All right, we got another question from Abby who writes, "Dear John and Hank, how do I feel sane in a world where it feels like everything I see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda?" Oh, Abby. Everything you see is put out with some sort of motive and agenda. "I like to think of myself as a well-read person who does their research, but I'm struggling right now to find the truth in a sea of disinformation. I'm too tired to think of a sign-off Abby." Now, I know you have important feelings here, Hank, because you feel like the trust in institutions and in trustworthy people is undermined by the structures of the internet.

• 13:46Hank Green?

  Oh, I do.

• 13:47John Green?

  I know you do.

• 13:48Hank Green?

  I do feel that way.

• 13:49John Green?

  And you're right. You're right. But you're also wrong.

• 13:50Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 13:51John Green?

  Because this was always the case. There was always a motive and an agenda. Every newspaper had a motive and an agenda. It had a motive in terms of whose op-eds it published and whose it didn't. Every CBS Evening News had a motive or an agenda. There was never a time without motives.

• 14:08Hank Green?

  We all have things driving us.

• 14:10John Green?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:11Hank Green?

  I don't know that free will exists.

• 14:12John Green?

  Well, let's not get... Abby did not actually ask about that. That's more of a Hank Green question.

• 14:17Hank Green?

  But that's like underneath all of it. It's like, everybody's got all... like, making all these choices. I'm like, "Are they?"

• 14:23John Green?

  Well, okay. All right, let's try to go one layer up from that if we could. You freak.

• 14:33John Green?

  And maybe just talk about Abby's particular question, which is, how do you find the truth in a sea of disinformation?

• 14:40Hank Green?

  I mean, we could look at a situation and be like, "Okay, well, the news isn't gonna publish a story unless a bunch of people wanna read it. So why would I believe that the news is telling the truth when I know that they're just trying to get people to read stuff?"

• 14:53John Green?

  Right.

• 14:54Hank Green?

  Like, when we look at layers of incentives. If there's like a person on Instagram who's like brand-new to getting attention on the internet, they might actually, to the average person, seem like their motives are more pure. But actually, like, they're not. They have the same incentives to get people to look at the stuff that they're making.

• 15:11John Green?

  And they might have fewer guardrails as well.

• 15:14Hank Green?

  They probably have way fewer guardrails, especially because it doesn't really matter to them... Like, they don't know how close they are to getting something wrong and having their reputation ruined. And also, like, their reputation won't really get ruined if they get something wrong, because they're just a person.

• 15:31John Green?

  Right.

• 15:31Hank Green?

  Whereas, structures, like a newspaper.

• 15:35John Green?

  The CDC's website.

• 15:36Hank Green?

  The CDC's website, the BBC, you know, SciShow, like, like, things that have things to protect, they have this incentive to not mess up, because people take it really seriously when they do mess up.

• 15:49John Green?

  But they will still mess up.

• 15:51Hank Green?

  But they will still mess up.

• 15:51John Green?

  Because that's the nature of being made out of, made out of humans.

• 15:55Hank Green?

  Yeah. But, but I think that, like, there are institutions that have stronger incentives to not mess up.

• 16:01John Green?

  Right.

• 16:02Hank Green?

  And so we should look at the institutions that have strong incentives to not mess up. And then when they're, like, slow, or they're un, like, not focused on the, they're not focused on the same things that everybody else is focused on, maybe it's because, like, they have an incentive to be a little more stodgy.

• 16:20John Green?

  The only thing I'd say about this, Hank, is that you can't trust the CDC's website the way that you could trust the CDC's website five years ago.

• 16:28Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, now.

• 16:29John Green?

  There are ways that the CDC's website is actually unreliable. And so if the institutions that are the sort of paragons of reliability, the place that you tell people to go to get information you trust are not trustworthy, I understand Abby's question.

• 16:45Hank Green?

  Oh, I understand the question. It's so hard.

• 16:48John Green?

  It's really hard.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  This probably isn't Abby's problem, but like, in general, we have, right now, a much easier time trusting individuals than we do trusting institutions. And I think that individuals are actually, usually, worse. I know that that's, that's the case for me. Like, I know that I, when I make a video, like, SciShow catches more flack than I do, but they work much harder on fact-checking than I do.

• 17:08John Green?

  Right.

• 17:09Hank Green?

  And, and I'm like, this is, like, really disappointing for me. This is, like, kind of scary, that, like, it's so much easier for individuals than for groups of people, when groups of people do a better job. And, like, not perfect, like, mess, surely mess up, yes. But, you know, I don't know.

• 17:26John Green?

  Well, it's a good question, Abby. We don't have a good answer.

• 17:30John Green?

  How about this question from Amy who writes, "Dear John and Hank, can you please tell my 12-year-old son to stop listening to you under the covers and go to sleep? No one listens to mom. Amy."

• 17:38Hank Green?

  What's your go-to bedtime song, John?

• 17:40John Green?

  Amy, I wish I could do that, but I can't. Because I don't want your kid to go to bed.

• 17:43Hank Green?

  Amy, I wish I could do that.

• 17:46John Green?

  But I can't.

• 17:47Hank Green?

  But I can't. What's the next line?

• 17:49John Green?

  Because.

• 17:50Hank Green?

  Because.

• 17:51John Green?

  I need.

• 17:52Hank Green?

  I need.

• 17:53John Green?

  Your son.

• 17:53Hank Green?

  Your son.

• 17:54John Green?

  To listen to my podcast.

• 17:56Hank Green?

  To listen to my podcast some more. Here's the ads.

• 18:00John Green?

  Because that's how I get paid, Amy. That's how I get paid, okay? How do you think I cover myself in those Dear Hank and John riches? With your 12-year-old son's ear attention? Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Amy's 12-year-old son. Amy's 12-year-old son, the literal source of all income for this podcast.

• 18:20Hank Green?

  Rocking out under the covers. I hope that it's not freaking you out too much over here with the various existential dreads.

• 18:28John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Seagrass. I don't know why, it just felt right.

• 18:35John Green?

  It was an apropos of absolutely nothing.

• 18:38Hank Green?

  No, it wasn't a callback in any way.

• 18:40John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by the CEO of Nvidia. The CEO of Nvidia having pannacotta with the king.

• 18:46Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by my cab driver, who's been driving around Los Angeles since 1976. He did not use the GPS. He took me right to my hotel. I just told him the name of it and he went to it. It was amazing and he's retiring this Christmas.

• 18:59John Green?

  Well, congratulations to him.

• 19:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:01John Green?

  Are you gonna retire?

• 19:02Hank Green?

  Never. When I'm his age? He was 80. I was like, my god, man. That's a lot.

• 19:09John Green?

  All right, this question comes from Catherine. He writes, "Dear John and Hank, I recently gave up social media." No bragging, Catherine. Classic Catherine brag. "I recently gave up social media and..." "...and I've taken to scrolling through Wikipedia when I'm having difficulty sleeping." What a great solution.

• 19:24Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 19:25John Green?

  "My latest deep dive has been the flora and fauna of the Miocene epoch." Epoch?

• 19:30Hank Green?

  Epoch.

• 19:30John Green?

  I kind of went halfway between.

• 19:31Hank Green?

  That's, you know, I don't know.

• 19:33John Green?

  "I noticed that various epochs have different lengths of time and it got me thinking, how did we decide how long each Earth eon, era, period, epoch, etc. is? Who chose all the geological time scales, cutoffs, and why? Uncreative sign-off, Catherine." Now Hank, this is something I know a little bit about.

• 19:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:50John Green?

  Because it turns out that if you really want to piss off geologists, you should call your book The Anthropocene Reviewed.

• 20:00John Green?

  And you should say that the Anthropocene is the geologic term for our current historical moment.

• 20:04Hank Green?

  They don't like that.

• 20:06John Green?

  They don't like that.

• 20:06Hank Green?

  They don't like it. I think that there's a good chance that we are at a transition and that this will be a new.

• 20:14John Green?

  Uh, that is certainly my contention.

• 20:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:16John Green?

  But I'm not a geologist. If there's one thing I've learned from the geologists, it's that I'm not one of them.

• 20:20Hank Green?

  So the answer to the question, uh, like, who chose these things and why? Here's the answer.

• 20:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Hank Green?

  People, and for a good reason.

• 20:31John Green?

  Well, the answer is people, right? There is like a literal group of geologists who decide these things.

• 20:35Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 20:36John Green?

  Yes, and they had a vote on whether we're in the Anthropocene.

• 20:38Hank Green?

  And they're like, nah!

• 20:39John Green?

  Not yet.

• 20:39Hank Green?

  That doesn't count.

• 20:40John Green?

  Not yet.

• 20:41Hank Green?

  That's not a thing.

• 20:42John Green?

  Maybe soon.

• 20:42Hank Green?

  I mean, these transitions usually are thousands of years.

• 20:46John Green?

  Right.

• 20:46Hank Green?

  Between the epochs.

• 20:47John Green?

  Right.

• 20:48Hank Green?

  And so, it would be ridiculous to call us in a new one when it's only just begun.

• 20:53John Green?

  Well, the thing is, the Holocene is not that old.

• 20:56Hank Green?

  Oh, okay, and so they're like, you can't, you can't start a new one?

• 20:59John Green?

  So we're currently, according to the geologists, in the Holocene.

• 21:02Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:03John Green?

  Which started at the end of the last ice age, so it's only like 12,000 years ago.

• 21:06Hank Green?

  Right, well, maybe they were wrong about that one.

• 21:08John Green?

  That's, that's my contention.

• 21:10Hank Green?

  That one should, they should, they should just bump that one up.

• 21:13John Green?

  Rename the whole thing the Anthropocene, because we were doing, we were doing significant interventions into the landscape 12,000 years ago.

• 21:20Hank Green?

  Oh yeah, we were doing, when?

• 21:21John Green?

  We hunted woolly mammoths to extinction, etc.

• 21:24Hank Green?

  What are the, what are the contentions for the start of the Anthropocene? Cause there's this one that I have thought of that's like a real weird one.

• 21:32John Green?

  I think, uh, one is the explosion of the first nuclear bomb.

• 21:35Hank Green?

  Oh, okay, sure.

• 21:37John Green?

  Because that's a moment that had some real geologic impact. You know, a lot of things floating around these days have a little more radiation in them. That's one I've heard, but I've heard a bunch of them.

• 21:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think, I feel like you could do it at a number of different points when it's like, oh, we're having a big impact now. The thing about the radiation is, it's gonna be very visible.

• 21:53John Green?

  Right, for a long time.

• 21:55Hank Green?

  In the geologic record.

• 21:56John Green?

  So the answer to why is that there are always these big changes.

• 22:00Hank Green?

  There are big changes.

• 22:01John Green?

  Big changes.

• 22:02Hank Green?

  They matter a lot.

• 22:02John Green?

  Like, the comet was a big change. Remember that big comet?

• 22:05Hank Green?

  Like it was yesterday.

• 22:06John Green?

  Yeah, well, I mean, geologically, it sort of was.

• 22:09Hank Green?

  Not that long ago.

• 22:10John Green?

  Not, only 250 million years ago? What was it? No, 64 million years ago?

• 22:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, sixty-five, sixty-six.

• 22:16John Green?

  Functionally yesterday.

• 22:17Hank Green?

  Yeah. You know what I think about sometimes? You know, at the end of the Ice Age, when the glaciers were retreating and there were these giant lakes?

• 22:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Hank Green?

  Glacial lakes, like my town was under a big lake.

• 22:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Hank Green?

  There would be these ice dam breaks where these giant lakes, like the size of the Great Lakes, would suddenly outflow to the ocean.

• 22:35John Green?

  Wow.

• 22:35Hank Green?

  And they would be, you know, you like see a huge boulders that were carried down by these ice flows that are like still standing there to this day. And I think about like that people, because this didn't like happen regularly. It happened like every few hundred years.

• 22:50John Green?

  Right.

• 22:50Hank Green?

  And so they just like have set up their lives. And then suddenly just like a wall of water and like every, like every one they knew.

• 22:59John Green?

  And all of their collective memories.

• 23:00Hank Green?

  Are all gone.

• 23:02John Green?

  Yeah, or if anybody survived, they would be like, if like a small community survived, they would like tell that story for hundreds of years.

• 23:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:09John Green?

  And be like, this weirdest thing happened.

• 23:11Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:12John Green?

  Yeah, you know what I think about? I think about the little stand of forest behind my house, near my house, that has been there for, since the last Ice Age. Twelve thousand years, continuous forest, just doing forest stuff.

• 23:26Hank Green?

  Just doing forest stuff at it?

• 23:27John Green?

  And all of it would still be forest, except most of it is Indianapolis and McDonald's.

• 23:32Hank Green?

  Well, I think McDonald's is also Indianapolis.

• 23:35John Green?

  Well, my point is that most of it is McDonald's.

• 23:37Hank Green?

  Oh, that particular stand is mostly McDonald's now?

• 23:40John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Hank Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:41John Green?

  And it's a Crown Liquors as well.

• 23:43Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 23:43John Green?

  It's got a liquor store, Domino's Pizza.

• 23:45Hank Green?

  Is there a pet store next to like a Christian bookshop?

• 23:48John Green?

  No, but that's a deep cut.

• 23:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, it is.

• 23:49John Green?

  It's a reference to a story I wrote in high school that nobody listening to this podcast has read.

• 23:54Hank Green?

  No, that can't, not available.

• 23:56John Green?

  No, no, the only copies have been burned. It only exists inside Hank's memory. It was called Rosenthal Square. It was about a mini mall.

• 24:04Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:04John Green?

  Where there was a Christian bookstore next, and they were all squatters, remember?

• 24:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:08John Green?

  It was a Christian bookstore that was next to a pet store.

• 24:11Hank Green?

  I don't think I knew what a squatter was.

• 24:12John Green?

  Yeah, they all, none of them had leases or anything. It was an abandoned mini mall that they'd turned into a commercial enterprise. It's a pretty funny bit, actually.

• 24:21Hank Green?

  It's a good bit.

• 24:21John Green?

  It's not a bad bit.

• 24:22Hank Green?

  You could bring it back.

• 24:25Hank Green?

  Could I?

• 24:26John Green?

  I mean, I'll tell you what, I never abandoned an idea all the way.

• 24:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:29John Green?

  I used to have this, I've had this idea for a story for years that's a sequel, a sequel to a book that doesn't exist.

• 24:34Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 24:34John Green?

  And these characters like, the characters like survive the book and enter our world. And I can't let go of that, even though I know it's not a very good idea.

• 24:42Hank Green?

  And well, I mean, it is, it is a very good idea. That's the problem.

• 24:46John Green?

  Right. It's a good idea that I can't execute.

• 24:48Hank Green?

  It's just so much idea. There's so much idea in that idea.

• 24:51John Green?

  There's, there's too much idea in it. It's like vampires in high school. Great idea, almost too much of an idea.

• 24:58Hank Green?

  That works every time.

• 25:00John Green?

  No.

• 25:00Hank Green?

  What do you mean?

• 25:01John Green?

  As far as I'm concerned, it only worked once. Twilight.

• 25:04Hank Green?

  Buffy.

• 25:04John Green?

  Hmm.

• 25:05Hank Green?

  Buffy?

• 25:06John Green?

  Hmm.

• 25:07Hank Green?

  Buffy works twice.

• 25:08John Green?

  Some people call it the poor man's Twilight. Anyway, let's move on to this story from Sophie who writes, Dear John and Hank. When were chairs invented? They must have been sitting on rocks and logs since lizard times, but when were chairs? Lizard times, this is a great phrase.

• 25:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, there weren't any, there weren't any lizards sitting on chairs, that's for sure.

• 25:25John Green?

  We must have been sitting on rocks since lizard, I mean, to be fair, lizards do sit on rocks.

• 25:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:31John Green?

  Since lizard times. When were chairs as we know them today invented? When does a structure you've decided to sit on become a chair?

• 25:37Hank Green?

  Oh no, we're not gonna go there.

• 25:39John Green?

  We're not gonna go there. Pumpkins and Sitting Penguins, Sophie.

• 25:42Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:42John Green?

  So Hank.

• 25:43Hank Green?

  This is wild. It wasn't until the 1950s.

• 25:46John Green?

  It's true.

• 25:46Hank Green?

  They did not do chairs.

• 25:48John Green?

  We actually had an atomic bomb before we had a chair.

• 25:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. All those atomic scientists, they all sat on rocks.

• 25:54John Green?

  Or they did squatting.

• 25:55Hank Green?

  Like warm rocks, like lizards. They all had hemorrhoids because their diets were so bad.

• 26:00John Green?

  Is that true?

• 26:00Hank Green?

  So they sat on warm rocks.

• 26:01John Green?

  Wow. Fascinating. That's not true, Sophie, just in case you weren't sure. Uh, the first.

• 26:08Hank Green?

  I actually don't, I can't confirm or deny whether the hemorrhoids thing is real.

• 26:11John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Hank Green?

  They didn't, I don't think they wrote about that.

• 26:14John Green?

  No, it wasn't covered in, uh, how to make an atomic bomb or whatever.

• 26:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, with that, the, the Christopher Nolan movie.

• 26:20John Green?

  Oppenheimer?

• 26:20Hank Green?

  Oppenheimer.

• 26:21John Green?

  I love that you called that the Christopher Nolan movie.

• 26:23Hank Green?

  I couldn't remember what it was called.

• 26:24John Green?

  Not the Oppenheimer movie. Somewhere, Robert Oppenheimer is absolutely spinning in his grave. That man needed nothing more than for you to know his name and you didn't know his name.

• 26:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:34John Green?

  It's literally the only thing he wanted out of the world.

• 26:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, and you don't get it, not from me, lizard man, warm rock sitter.

• 26:41John Green?

  So 4,500 years ago, we have evidence of chairs.

• 26:44Hank Green?

  What? Did you Google this?

• 26:45John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Hank Green?

  I don't believe him.

• 26:48John Green?

  I did.

• 26:49Hank Green?

  I don't believe him.

• 26:50John Green?

  You could Google it while I talk about it. I looked this up. Forty-five hundred years ago, we have evidence of chairs in ancient Egypt. But interestingly, chairs have been invented independently of each other several times. So the Aztecs had chairs, the Egyptians had chairs, the Northern Europeans had chairs, separate from the Egyptian chairs.

• 27:11Hank Green?

  Frustratingly, this is correct.

• 27:12John Green?

  I don't know. I told you. I looked it up.

• 27:16Hank Green?

  You're doing the work out here.

• 27:17John Green?

  I'm out here doing the work, Hank, answering Sophie's question like a proper podcaster, which I totally am.

• 27:22Hank Green?

  So convergently evolving into chairs.

• 27:26John Green?

  Same thing with agriculture.

• 27:27Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:28John Green?

  We invented agriculture repeatedly, many different times in many different places.

• 27:32Hank Green?

  Fabric, too.

• 27:33John Green?

  Fabric as well.

• 27:34Hank Green?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:34John Green?

  Oh, man. Humans are weird.

• 27:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:37John Green?

  Humans are super weird. Let's answer this question.

• 27:39Hank Green?

  What did we do? How did we make the chairs? Why do we need chairs? We couldn't. Squatting's hard. And sitting. Ow, my butt.

• 27:45John Green?

  Sitting is better. Sitting is better than standing.

• 27:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, but like just sitting on the ground.

• 27:49John Green?

  Yeah. No, you want a nice, comfortable sit. That's why we invented chairs.

• 27:53Hank Green?

  Man.

• 27:54John Green?

  And it's been a great invention.

• 27:55Hank Green?

  Good job.

• 27:56John Green?

  We're in a room right now with three different people who are sitting in chairs.

• 27:59Hank Green?

  Four.

• 27:59John Green?

  I can't see the fourth.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  There's lasers back there. I don't know.

• 28:02John Green?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, five.

• 28:04Hank Green?

  What was that?

• 28:05John Green?

  Five. There was a surprise. Fifth person emerged from the ether.

• 28:08Hank Green?

  They're dark. It's dark back there. There's big lights. As for what makes a chair a chair.

• 28:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Hank Green?

  There's a Michael Stevens Vsauce video about this.

• 28:16John Green?

  Is there really?

• 28:16Hank Green?

  And you can be like, oh, turns out chairs don't exist.

• 28:19John Green?

  Well, nothing exists if you dig deep enough.

• 28:21Hank Green?

  Well, it's not just that they don't exist. It's that you, there isn't a definition for a chair that works.

• 28:27John Green?

  Well, neither is there a definition for a sandwich that works.

• 28:30Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 28:30John Green?

  That's why we have hot dogs and debates.

• 28:32Hank Green?

  Yes. Words, man.

• 28:34John Green?

  Categories are problematic.

• 28:35Hank Green?

  They're really just there to be useful, and they feel like they're there to be definitive, but they're just there for when they're useful.

• 28:42John Green?

  Almost everything that feels like a dichotomy is in fact a spectrum. But let's move on to this question from Courtney before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, who writes, "John. Just John."

• 28:52Hank Green?

  Oh, weird.

• 28:53John Green?

  My favorite kind of question. "I was just watching the video you made in the Philippines about tuberculosis. How do you visit places with so many folks with active TV without putting yourself at risk? Do you take preventative meds when you travel? Also, on a more personal level, how do you manage your own fear of contamination on those trips? Yes, it's spelled like the Kardashian, Courtney with a K." Well, how else are they gonna be all K's, K-K Kardashian?

• 29:13Hank Green?

  I don't, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 29:16John Green?

  Oh, it did.

• 29:17Hank Green?

  They could have been named normal things.

• 29:19John Green?

  They are named normal. What did you just say to our friend Courtney who listens to podcasts every week?

• 29:24Hank Green?

  That's normal. What's not normal is like giving your kids a letter that they all have to be.

• 29:30John Green?

  Like giving, giving your seven kids, all, all naming them like James, Jim, Joey, Jamel, and so on?

• 29:36Hank Green?

  Well, look, now it's fine. I think maybe I have something in particular against the Kardashians.

• 29:41John Green?

  I think that's what it's about. I think you have some Kardashian vibes that you need to work on.

• 29:44Hank Green?

  It's because of what they did to Bajor.

• 29:46John Green?

  What's Bajor?

• 29:48Hank Green?

  Where the Bajorans are from.

• 29:49John Green?

  Who are the Bajorans?

• 29:51Hank Green?

  Laser got it, so that's the only important thing. This is a Star Trek reference.

• 29:55John Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:56Hank Green?

  There's a species called the Kardashians.

• 29:58John Green?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 30:00Hank Green?

  They did an ethnic cleansing on the planet of Bajor.

• 30:02John Green?

  Okay, well, that, I mean, the expectation that you had that people were gonna be able to get that reference is not quite as bad as the expectation you had that people were gonna get the reference to a story I wrote in high school that literally no one can read, but it's almost that bad. Courtney, to your question, I do not take preventative meds. There really, there is preventive therapy for TB, but you only take it.

• 30:25Hank Green?

  Do you take anything for like various others?

• 30:29John Green?

  No, I mean, sometimes you take malaria meds if you're traveling in a high malaria community, but like, no, not really. And I make sure my vaccines are up to date, yellow fever, all that stuff.

• 30:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:39John Green?

  But you're taking on a certain amount of risk when you meet with people, but like, not, not, not a high level of risk. I wear a mask if I'm talking with someone who has active TB, but you're not taking on a lot of risk. And the thing I remind myself of is the people who are really taking the risk are the people who live in a community that has a high burden of tuberculosis, and that is a risk that they're forced to take. And so the risk that I take is miniscule compared to that, and it doesn't really, and so, and, and my OCD is well enough, is, is treated well enough at the moment, so that's not a big problem.

• 31:14Hank Green?

  Is there an amount of, a lot of people have TB, but it doesn't get active? If you aren't living, if you have enough food, if you...

• 31:22John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so between a quarter and a third of all people have a TB infection.

• 31:26Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 31:27John Green?

  On Earth, but most of them will never get sick. And you're right, that the main risk factor, or one of the main risk factors is malnutrition. So about a little over half the people who get active TB this year will also be malnourished.

• 31:38Hank Green?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:39John Green?

  And so diabetes is also a big risk factor, HIV infection's a big risk factor. So there are risk factors, and I have, I'm relatively low on the risk factor scale. So that's another thing to consider. But in general, you know, like, it's, um, it's, it's like being, being with any sick person. It's so easy to make people feel othered and marginalized and pushed to the edge of the social order. And that's the last thing that I want to do. And when people are generous enough to be able to talk to me about this highly stigmatized illness. And so, yeah, it's not a big deal to me.

• 32:09Hank Green?

  Right. Do you, I hadn't thought about this, uh, but, but now I am thinking about it. How hard is it to be writing about this topic that is pretty complex and has a lot of experts in the field? How worried were you publishing the book?

• 32:25John Green?

  Pretty worried that the experts would be like, this guy's.

• 32:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, just some guy, yeah.

• 32:30John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, that's why I had a lot of experts read the book, Hank.

• 32:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:34John Green?

  But yeah, I mean, I definitely worried that they would be like, this guy's just some guy. And this book isn't that deep, but it was not intended to be that deep. If you want to, if you want to deep dive into TB, there's lots of books.

• 32:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:44John Green?

  If you want, um, my, my hope was to make something that would be, appeal to a broad audience.

• 32:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:49John Green?

  Yeah, but anyway, that's the, that's the answer to that question. Maybe we should do one last question, Hank.

• 32:53Hank Green?

  Okay, what do you got? You got anything?

• 32:55John Green?

  Oh, we have, we have an important correction to make.

• 32:57Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 32:58John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 32:59Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 33:00John Green?

  Hank, this is a classic Hank Green error.

• 33:03Hank Green?

  Oh, God.

• 33:03John Green?

  Dear Brothers Green, in last week's episode, turtle etiquette.

• 33:06Hank Green?

  Turt etiquette.

• 33:06John Green?

  Turt etiquette. Someone wrote in with a question that ended, what organs do we actually need? And after some debate in which various organs were deemed necessary or not, Hank proclaimed, brain, heart, lungs. John followed up with, I think you also need a kidney long-term. And I agree that all those organs are necessary, but you missed the largest of all organs.

• 33:21Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 33:22John Green?

  Skin.

• 33:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:23John Green?

  No, no. That is, that is a mistake that you made that you need to be contrite for.

• 33:28Hank Green?

  Fine.

• 33:29John Green?

  Now, Hank, this is your whole problem.

• 33:31Hank Green?

  Skin is very important.

• 33:32John Green?

  Your inability to show contrition when you're wrong.

• 33:34Hank Green?

  Well, it's just that, is, it's, is it an organ? I know it's an organ.

• 33:39John Green?

  Google it.

• 33:41Hank Green?

  It's the largest organ.

• 33:43John Green?

  It's the largest organ.

• 33:44Hank Green?

  It's an important part of the immune system. Temperature regulation, very important, sweating.

• 33:48John Green?

  Yes.

• 33:48Hank Green?

  It's a very good sweater.

• 33:49John Green?

  Dana.

• 33:50Hank Green?

  Full of sweat holes.

• 33:51John Green?

  You were right, and Hank was wrong.

• 33:52Hank Green?

  You were right, I was wrong.

• 33:53John Green?

  Dana has, for some reason, included this cute picture of...

• 33:56Hank Green?

  A lot of pictures of penguins.

• 33:57John Green?

  Dana hugging a penguin.

• 33:58Hank Green?

  Yeah. It's not a real penguin.

• 34:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Hank Green?

  It's... But inside that penguin, do you know who's in there?

• 34:03John Green?

  Hmm.

• 34:03Hank Green?

  Jensen Huang.

• 34:04John Green?

  Okay, one more question.

• 34:09John Green?

  From Nella, then we'll get to the news from our ZNFT holder, which is the reason everybody comes to this podcast.

• 34:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, of course.

• 34:14John Green?

  Nella writes, "I'm listening to episode 392. My first language is Spanish. What is Salinger-ing? I am writing the word as it appears on the transcription. I used to think I was good at English." Nella.

• 34:24Hank Green?

  He made that one up, don't worry.

• 34:26John Green?

  Yeah, Nella, you are good at English, very good at English. I just made up a word. So there's this writer, J.D. Salinger, who had a public life. He was the author of this book, The Catcher in the Rye, that became a very popular book in the United States. And like, it became a complete phenomenon. And then he disappeared, sort of, into a semi-reclusive life. And he no longer had a public life. He had a very private life for the last, like, 60 years of his life. And when I refer to Salinger-ing, I refer to me leaving behind my public life for a private life.

• 35:03Hank Green?

  Yeah. What did he do? Did he go to parties?

• 35:06John Green?

  He wrote a lot. He taught at a high school. And he wrote a lot. He wrote a lot about Hinduism.

• 35:13Hank Green?

  Did he have to, like, people like come and try to get him?

• 35:15John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:16Hank Green?

  Like, at his class in high school?

• 35:18John Green?

  You know, people were very protective of him in his community. In the same way that people are fairly protective of me in Indianapolis.

• 35:24Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:24John Green?

  I once, uh, I once had somebody come to my house, and they were like, "I thought you lived here, but when I asked one of your neighbors, they said you didn't." And I was like, "Oh, that's very nice of my neighbors."

• 35:34Hank Green?

  And maybe you should have taken the hint.

• 35:38John Green?

  Well, they were invited to my home.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 35:41John Green?

  They didn't come to my home. No, no, no, no. They were invited to my home.

• 35:44Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 35:44John Green?

  Which is important.

• 35:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:45John Green?

  Very important distinction.

• 35:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. This is, everybody should pretend to be a vampire. You can't come over unless you're invited.

• 35:52John Green?

  That's right. That's... Not sure exactly how that's like being a vampire.

• 35:57Hank Green?

  That's the thing. You're not allowed to come in. Vampires can't come in unless you invite them.

• 36:00John Green?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 36:01Hank Green?

  That's one of the many laws.

• 36:02John Green?

  That's one of the rules.

• 36:02Hank Green?

  Yeah. But I don't know. It's probably not consistent.

• 36:04John Green?

  What happens to them? Do they turn to dust?

• 36:06Hank Green?

  They just can't walk. There's like a barrier.

• 36:07John Green?

  Oh, there's like a barrier?

• 36:08Hank Green?

  Magic.

• 36:09John Green?

  Oh, that's kind of nice.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:11John Green?

  Not that familiar with vampire, I want to have to confess, except that it all does boil down to tuberculosis.

• 36:15Hank Green?

  Of course it does.

• 36:16John Green?

  You know? Bloody mouths, white skin, pale skin, all that stuff.

• 36:20Hank Green?

  The Kardashians as well.

• 36:21John Green?

  Were they vampires?

• 36:23Hank Green?

  All based on tuberculosis.

• 36:24John Green?

  Is that true?

• 36:25Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 36:26John Green?

  Okay, let's move on. The news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon failed to lose a football game for the first time in a while, which is great. However, they also failed to win.

• 36:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, but they succeeded in scoring a lot of goals.

• 36:39John Green?

  They scored three goals.

• 36:41Hank Green?

  And each time they scored one of those goals,

• 36:43John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Hank Green?

  it made them in the lead.

• 36:45John Green?

  It's true. They went up 1-0, then they went up 2-1, then they went up 3-2. But sadly, each time they scored... How do you know all this about AFC Wimbledon?

• 36:52Hank Green?

  I looked at the little piece of information that Google gives me.

• 36:56John Green?

  Well, at any rate...

• 36:57Hank Green?

  Tells you when the goals got scored.

• 36:58John Green?

  Marcus Brown scored a great goal, Ryan Johnson scored a great goal, Danilo Orsi scored a goal, and Wimbledon should have probably won.

• 37:05Hank Green?

  But that one wasn't great. That one was not that great.

• 37:07John Green?

  Actually, it wasn't that great. It was just kind of poked it in from two yards out kind of thing.

• 37:11Hank Green?

  Yeah. Got it in there.

• 37:13John Green?

  Obie doesn't listen to the podcast and doesn't feel offended.

• 37:15Hank Green?

  All goals are great.

• 37:16John Green?

  All goals are good.

• 37:17Hank Green?

  Except for own goals.

• 37:19John Green?

  3-3 the game ended. It was a six-goal thriller.

• 37:23Hank Green?

  3-3?

• 37:24John Green?

  3-3. That's...

• 37:24Hank Green?

  Doesn't happen a lot.

• 37:25John Green?

  That's a big scoreline for us.

• 37:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:28John Green?

  It was away from home against a pretty good team, Huntersfield, so I'll take it. I'll take it all day.

• 37:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:32John Green?

  Huntersfield were in the Premier League not that long ago.

• 37:34Hank Green?

  They make those good turkeys.

• 37:36John Green?

  Do they? I think that's an American company.

• 37:38Hank Green?

  It's the Hutter Rights.

• 37:40John Green?

  Oh, okay. You, Hank, your references in this episode have been way, way too narrow.

• 37:47Hank Green?

  Just for clarity, I've recorded three episodes of Asking Anything.

• 37:50John Green?

  I can tell.

• 37:50Hank Green?

  And we rolled straight into this.

• 37:52John Green?

  Yeah, well.

• 37:52Hank Green?

  So I'm scraping whatever I got off of the gray matter here right now.

• 37:57John Green?

  You're doing a great job. What's the news from Mars?

• 38:00Hank Green?

  Well, in Mars, we've got lightning.

• 38:02John Green?

  I heard.

• 38:04Hank Green?

  There's lightning, there's Mars lightning.

• 38:05John Green?

  Mars lightning?

• 38:06Hank Green?

  So there's wind on Mars.

• 38:08John Green?

  We know that.

• 38:08Hank Green?

  There's storms on Mars.

• 38:09John Green?

  I mean, are there, there's no rain.

• 38:11Hank Green?

  There's dust storms on Mars.

• 38:12John Green?

  Right, so how do you have lightning?

• 38:14Hank Green?

  And these dust particles, they rub against each other and there's the electrons around. And eventually, it turns out, probably lightning hap- well, definitely lightning happens. They were using Curiosity, I think Curiosity, to detect by both the sound.

• 38:29John Green?

  Sound of lightning?

• 38:29Hank Green?

  Look, usually I have notes, but I don't have notes.

• 38:31John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Hank Green?

  I think that they could hear the sound and they also were like detecting like the electrical signals of the lightning. They detected something like 55 lightning strikes.

• 38:39John Green?

  Wow.

• 38:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:40John Green?

  During one storm?

• 38:41Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 38:42John Green?

  Okay.

• 38:42Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 38:43John Green?

  Very impressive that there's lightning on Mars. It makes Mars feel more like earthy to me.

• 38:49Hank Green?

  Also a little scary, but you know what? No fires.

• 38:54John Green?

  Nothing to catch.

• 38:55Hank Green?

  Nothing to catch. I've been trying to figure out whether or not a planet can have fire without life.

• 39:03John Green?

  Oh, interesting. Can a planet have fire without life?

• 39:07Hank Green?

  Cause all the fire on Earth.

• 39:09John Green?

  Is life?

• 39:10Hank Green?

  It's pretty lifey. And also the oxygen on Earth is very important for the fire and all of that oxygen is lifey.

• 39:17John Green?

  It's life-ish, but it's not life necessary.

• 39:20Hank Green?

  It's made by life.

• 39:22John Green?

  All the oxygen was made by life?

• 39:23Hank Green?

  All our oxygen made by life.

• 39:24John Green?

  Is that true?

• 39:25Hank Green?

  It is not a long-lasting molecule.

• 39:27John Green?

  I'm breathing oxygen that was made by other stuff?

• 39:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:30John Green?

  That's a little bit of a mind blower for me, Hank.

• 39:32Hank Green?

  You, this is like elementary school. It comes from the trees.

• 39:36John Green?

  I didn't pay attention in school.

• 39:40Hank Green?

  This is, this is great. I'm glad. It's a good partnership. It is. We learn, we learn a lot from each other. There's a smart one and there's a, there's, there's the other one. I don't know which one I am. Well, thanks for coming to our podcast. It was edited by Ben Swartout and it's produced in part by Hannah, who's here.

• 40:00Hank Green?

  We use, we do have a credit list, but it's not here. So we're gonna cut to a version of that, that we recorded at a different time. You can email us at [email protected]. That's where you can ask questions. Without those questions, there's no podcast. And if you wanna see a visible version of this, there's the Patreon at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. That money goes to support Complexly, which makes Crash Course and SciShow and a whole bunch of other cool stuff on the internet. This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

• 40:50Hank Green?

  I'm so tired. Well, now you have to record a Vlogbrothers video.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Is it Perseverance Rover?

• 40:56Hank Green?

  It was Perseverance? It was Perseverance. Who go, did you Google that? No, we'll leave that in the end. We'll leave that. Yeah, we'll just, we'll just edit that on to the end.