Pod Insights Dear Hank & John 436: The Kelce Green Brother Bowl Brawl About this episode Can one physically de-escalate? Are my hands actually colder than other parts of my body? Why can I see my veins so well? What would the internet look like if it was a 3D space? How do I know if I’m doing enough for my students? What would it feel like to be hit by a gravitational wave? How do we know the distance between the Earth and the Sun? Do squirrels get bored? …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 Hank and John.
0:12 John Green? Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.
0:15 Hank Green? It's a podcast for two brothers. Answer your questions, give you D B's advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and A F C Wimbledon. John?
0:22 John Green? Yeah.
0:22 Hank Green? Do you know how you charge a plug-in Hondra Accord?
0:26 John Green? Hondra Accord?
0:28 Hank Green? Did I say Hondra?
0:29 John Green? Yeah, I think so.
0:30 Hank Green? Do you know how you charge a plug-in Honda Accord?
0:32 John Green? How?
0:33 Hank Green? Accord.
0:34 John Green? Oh.
0:37 John Green? It just smacks of the kind of laziness that we can no longer afford, Hank. We can't afford that kind of writing laziness because Hank and I have just found out something shocking.
0:48 Hank Green? We have. We have. I was telling Catherine about it last night.
0:54 Hank Green? We have been under the impression.
0:56 John Green? Yeah.
0:56 Hank Green? And a completely understandable one and with no, with no worry about this, but we have been under the impression that Dear Hank and John has been shrinking in viewership for a number of years.
1:07 John Green? Not just shrinking, to be fair.
1:09 Hank Green? Yeah.
1:09 John Green? We have been under the impression that we essentially make this podcast for ourselves and eight to 10 passionate letter writers.
1:16 Hank Green? We, we definitely know that there's a lot of people who write letters.
1:19 John Green? Yeah.
1:19 Hank Green? So we know, we know that it's, it's not a tiny group of people, but we had, we had thought that we were once a podcast that had like maybe 150,000 downloads. And then now we were a podcast that, you know, was more at 50 and was headed to 25.
1:35 John Green? Yeah. And we're not doing it.
1:36 Hank Green? This was the impression we had.
1:38 John Green? Obviously we're not doing it for the, for the likes and views since we didn't even know what the views were.
1:44 John Green? We do this because we love it. It's a chance to talk to people we find interesting about stuff we find interesting, et cetera.
1:50 Hank Green? We're such bad internet people.
1:52 John Green? Such bad internet entrepreneurs. We were just informed by the person who runs analytics at Complexly that in fact Dear Hank and John is more popular than our YouTube channel Vlog Brothers, which Hank and I think of as being very popular.
2:05 Hank Green? Yeah, sort of the primary thing that we do.
2:07 John Green? Apparently not, Hank. This is, this is the primary thing that we do.
2:10 Hank Green? Yeah, by a fairly wide margin, this is bigger. We, it's a lot of people here.
2:15 John Green? Yeah. So thank you. Slash, now we're gonna do a better job.
2:19 Hank Green? Yep, we're gonna change the whole thing.
2:21 John Green? Yeah.
2:21 Hank Green? We're professionalizing, dear Hank and John. We're gonna turn it into sort of a white collar business podcast. Cause that's where the best CPMs are. John, what's your best hustle bro piece of advice for the world? I'll give you mine first.
2:33 John Green? Okay, you give me yours first.
2:35 Hank Green? Smooth seas don't make great sailors, or something like that.
2:39 John Green? Okay, I like how, I like how you didn't nail the line. One thing about those bro podcasts is they nail the lines because they're so hyper confident in everything they say. And that's why you're like, oh yeah, I guess that's true. Like smooth sailing doesn't make for good sailors.
2:56 Hank Green? That doesn't. And I was like, you know what? I hate that, but also it's true.
3:00 John Green? I guess mine is like, why work hard when you could work smart?
3:04 Hank Green? Oh, I thought you were gonna say smart.
3:08 John Green? So it rhymes?
3:09 Hank Green? Yeah.
3:10 John Green? No, Hank, this is a serious podcast now. We can't afford any of that business where we're just making slant rhymes. We can't afford any of that.
3:17 Hank Green? Don't work harder, work smarter.
3:22 Hank Green? That's our, that's our new poster. It's us, two of us with coffees and business suits.
3:28 John Green? Smart workers.
3:30 Hank Green? Smart workers, hard turkers.
3:33 John Green? Just a couple of smart workers trying to make their way in the world. Okay, let's answer some questions from our listeners.
3:37 Hank Green? Wait, wait, wait, wait. What's a hard turker? Is that like a turkey? Is that a sculpted out of marble turkey? Can we get two sculpted out of marble turkeys? And we can say smart workers, hard turkers. And it's us in a photo shoot with turkeys?
3:52 John Green? I don't like anything about this idea. I like to yes and you when possible, but I find this idea to be a real waste of marble, if you will.
3:59 Hank Green? Okay.
4:00 John Green? But more to the point, Hank, now that we are a serious hit podcast, which we've been for some time, but now that we found out about it, we can't be making any jokes about hard turkers.
4:11 Hank Green? But I think that's such a funny word.
4:13 John Green? It doesn't matter how funny you find it, Hank. This is a serious podcast now.
4:17 Hank Green? I agree. I agree. It's a serious podcast and I need you to say hard turkers as many times as you can in as serious a way as you can.
4:25 John Green? All right.
4:26 Hank Green? Not, not, you know, not right now, just, you know, in the next year of my life.
4:30 John Green? Got it. Mission accomplished and advanced. This first question comes from Lorena who writes, "Hi John and Hank. My German boyfriend once called an escalator that descends a descalator. I know you can de-escalate a conflict or a dangerous situation, but can one physically de-escalate? Now, I can't get this word out of my head because why wouldn't we specify when an escalator is going up or down? Are the Germans just better at describing things than we are? Not a truck, Lori?" First off, Lori, yes, the Germans are better at describing things than we are. Secondly, I like the idea of calling it when it's going down a descalator and calling it when it's going up an escalator, because that's what we're doing. We're descending or escalating.
5:09 Hank Green? Well, yeah, one thing I know is that when I'm on an escalator going down, I'm not escalating.
5:13 John Green? No, you're de-escalating.
5:15 Hank Green? Things are descalating slowly.
5:17 John Green? Well, unless you're in England, in which case things descalate at a pretty significant pace.
5:22 Hank Green? Really? Are there are there descalators faster?
5:24 John Green? Like three or four times as fast.
5:26 Hank Green? What? I've been to England several times and I've never been descalated rapidly. Not that I know of.
5:31 John Green? Well, then you've never been on the tube.
5:33 Hank Green? Oh, you mean the you mean the subway ones? The ones that go into the tube? Those ones are fast and it is a little unnerving. And also, they're very long. They make me think all kinds of crazy thoughts about how big the earth is.
5:44 John Green? Yeah, no, and we're not even getting into the mantle yet. That's still crust.
5:48 Hank Green? What should we call the standing desks that go up and down?
5:52 John Green? I think you call it an escalating desk and a descalating desk. It does both.
5:55 Hank Green? Okay, it escalates and descalates?
5:57 John Green? Yeah. Think about everything else that escalates and descalates. Why do we call an elevator an elevate-ore when it also descends?
6:06 Hank Green? It's a it's a descendedator.
6:07 John Green? It's a descalator.
6:08 Hank Green? No, it's very obviously not a descalator. An escalator and elevator are different things. That's why they have different names.
6:15 John Green? At any rate, Hank, I think we have once again solved a linguistic problem because we are a serious podcast that solves serious problems. And now we can move on to this question from Sophie who writes, "Dear John and Hank, when my cold hands touch my own leg or stomach, they feel very cold." Are they actually that much colder than my leg skin or stomach skin? Or is it a trick of the fleshy thing inside of my skull? Cold hands, Sophie.
6:36 Hank Green? They're definitely colder. I mean, everything is a trick of the fleshy thing inside of your skull, Sophie.
6:41 John Green? Oh, that's so true. Like, cold itself is an idea that exists inside your head, Sophie. I mean, it exists to stop you from dying. It is doing important work, but it is a mind thing.
6:51 Hank Green? Yeah, and so like, it's really, it's a, it's about differential. So the question of like, hey, should it be five degrees that feels this cold? Or should it be two degrees that feels this cold? Is it a little bit of a sort of a, an overreaction for my stomach to be so freaked out by the fact that my hands are a mere, you know, five degrees colder? It's all just tricks that your flesh is playing on your flesh.
7:11 John Green? That's so true. It's not a trick that your flesh is playing on you because arguably you are the flesh.
7:18 Hank Green? I think that it's very important, and I could be wrong. I think it's very important to be people.
7:24 John Green? Oh, I mean, Hank, we, we don't talk about this enough. We are organisms. We're mammals. All of your friends are mammals.
7:32 Hank Green? I don't know if it's possible that we don't talk about it enough. I feel like it comes up every episode, but yes.
7:36 John Green? Well, I, I, I still don't think.
7:37 Hank Green? All of your friends are mammals, except for the ones that are fish.
7:40 John Green? Except for the reptiles and the fish and so on. And like, they are also your friends. I'm not trying to, I know whenever I talk about this, people write it and they're like, that's turtle erasure. My best friend is a turtle. I'm sorry. All of your friends are organisms.
7:52 Hank Green? Ah, God, whenever people say organism, I remember early in TikTok, I made a video that, that said, uh, everything you've ever eaten was an organism.
8:00 John Green? Hmm.
8:00 Hank Green? And then someone stitched me in an accusing tone. She said, are Polly Pocket shoes an organism? Which I thought was very funny.
8:13 John Green? Remember when that kid who lived next door to us swallowed a penny and his parents completely freaked out and took him to the emergency room? And the emergency room is like, what do you want us to do?
8:22 Hank Green? Yeah, that's, that's, that's, um, super fine.
8:27 John Green? To surgically remove the penny? Or you want him to like poop it out and you like save the penny? Like, that's up to you. That's not really an emergency room thing.
8:36 Hank Green? Yeah, what we could do for you is tell you this is fine, which is is great. You know, I often want people to tell me that it's fine. In fact, every day, every moment of every day, if only someone could tell me it was fine. And I could believe them.
8:50 John Green? I was gonna say, the key is actually being believable when you say it, which is hard.
8:54 Hank Green? Yeah, yeah, it's hard.
8:56 John Green? All right, Hank, let's answer another question. This one from anonymous who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm writing to you anonymously today because I want to reveal an insecurity I have, but I'm too scared to share with anyone in real life and you guys are just on the internet. Actually, anonymous, get this, we are huge.
9:11 Hank Green? On and off the internet.
9:12 John Green? I can see my veins really clearly. I know this is written slash audio, so just bear with me. It's winter and I'm noticing I can see my veins really well, a little too well. Now all I can notice are the purple veins down my legs and little splotches of squiggles. Is this just because I'm getting older and when you get older, your skin gets thinner and veins become more flashy? I don't think I'm dying, but I'm struggling to adjust in the shower to seeing all my veins in my legs. Pumpkin pie and penguins, anonymous. Now Hank, you give the medical answer and I'll give what I think is the answer.
9:39 Hank Green? Oh, you want me to go first?
9:40 John Green? I want you to go first.
9:43 Hank Green? I was like, I was like, all right, perfect. I get a little time to prepare while John talks out of his butt.
9:50 John Green? Kelsey brothers never have this problem. I mean, the Kelsey brothers, their professional hit podcast would never do what we're doing.
9:57 Hank Green? Yeah, but but like, but but who's doing it right? Because of course, our audience is bigger than the Kelsey brothers. So we have to be the ones that are better than them just by virtue of the size of audience. And don't you come at me with, no, no, Hank, they're actually much bigger. I don't believe it. I don't believe it.
10:13 John Green? They're bigger, both physically and in terms of podcasts.
10:17 Hank Green? You don't think you could take a Kelsey?
10:19 John Green? Um.
10:20 Hank Green? You don't think that Hank and John Green against Travis and John Kelsey would win?
10:24 John Green? Jason.
10:26 Hank Green? I was pretty, I was close for a guess.
10:29 John Green? You were close for a guess.
10:30 Hank Green? You don't think that Hank and John Green would win?
10:32 John Green? In what contest exactly? Like Scholars Bowl, maybe?
10:38 John Green? I think it'd be about 50 50 on Scholars Bowl. What, American football? No, I think we would lose in a two on two American football match against them.
10:47 Hank Green? I don't know. How, how big is Travis Kelsey?
10:49 John Green? Big enough. I mean, he could definitely, he's bigger than you.
10:52 Hank Green? I'm confident that Travis Kelsey could really obliterate me.
10:56 John Green? Yeah, Hank, Travis Kelsey could tackle you, no problem. And then he could beat you up to his liking.
11:01 Hank Green? I would become a condiment.
11:03 John Green? He wouldn't do it because he's, he's, he seems like a nice fellow, but like, he, he absolutely could. Like, that's the reality that we've been living with since middle school.
11:13 Hank Green? Yeah, like if, if, if the world depended on it and I was anti-world and Travis Kelsey was trying to save the world, I would lose.
11:21 John Green? Yeah. Unless.
11:23 Hank Green? Unless.
11:24 John Green? It was Scholars Bowl competition and then I think you'd have a chance.
11:28 Hank Green? Yeah, much closer. Not guaranteeing anything, but much closer.
11:32 John Green? No, no, because they got a lot of sports questions in those Scholar Bowls and I bet those Kelsey boys are good at those.
11:39 Hank Green? We know, we know nothing. So your, your, your skin does get like, kind of, it gets paler, of course, in the wintertime.
11:45 John Green? Yeah, but it does also thin out over time, right?
11:48 Hank Green? Because, well, it thins in the winter specifically because there's less, like, your body pulls blood out. Uh, so like the, the warm blood, like all those blood vessels are constricting because it's, you don't want to lose heat to the air. You're, you're, you can be more pink in the summertime because your body is trying to lose heat, but you are more pale in the winter. So that's interesting. That's actually like a, like a direct connection to cold. And so that's going to make your blue veins stand out a little more. Your skin also does thin as you get older, but I don't know if that's the thing. What I would like to say is that it's fine. And I wouldn't just like to say it. I am saying it. It's fine. It's like eating a penny.
12:30 John Green? It's a little different, but I think what's happening is that you probably partly there's seasonal changes, there's changes in your life, et cetera, but you're also partly noticing something that was maybe always there that you're just noticing differently because your brain has decided to latch on to it and make it something that you're self-conscious about. I truly don't think this is something that you need to be self-conscious about.
12:53 Hank Green? No.
12:54 John Green? There's not much you can do about it. I mean, if you have varicose veins, there are treatments if you really care about that stuff. But also, like, it's not something that other people are thinking about in all likelihood, because other people are too busy thinking about their own veins. It reminds me of that one time, Hank, and I don't know if this is for the podcast. You know what I'm gonna tell you?
13:14 Hank Green? No, not yet.
13:16 John Green? Okay, so one time we had a meeting with a very high-level YouTube executive, and I did not understand the timing of the meeting, and so I showed up to the meeting intoxicated.
13:29 Hank Green? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:31 John Green? Couple of years later, I had another meeting with this person, and I was like, "Listen, it tortures me every day, so I just have to tell you, I didn't understand what time our meeting was." And so when I got there, I was intoxicated, and he was like, "Oh, I thought you were gonna mention my sweating."
13:50 Hank Green? His sweating.
13:50 John Green? Yeah, he was like, "I was sweating so much."
13:52 Hank Green? We're all caught in our own situations.
13:54 John Green? We're all caught in our own situations. Although, you can rely on that a little too much, for sure. Don't over-rely on, "Don't worry, they're not thinking about me," because then they will start thinking about you.
14:05 Hank Green? Yeah, one thing that made me think that is, one day, and I don't think this was about me, but one day I showed up at the gym, and there was a new sign that said, "Please wear deodorant."
14:15 John Green? And it's hard to interpret that as being about anyone other than yourself.
14:20 Hank Green? It's so strange to have a job where people do actually go on the internet and talk about me, because that does make me feel like people are always thinking and talking about me.
14:30 John Green? Well, and I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to resist the urge to find out what people are saying, because if in middle school you told me, like, "Not only are people talking about you, but you can easily access what they're saying," I would have been completely unable to resist the urge to check. Now I am 48 years old, and so a little bit better at resisting the urge to check, but it's still there.
14:51 Hank Green? Do you ever get the feeling that the these systems are not built for humans?
14:55 John Green? Uh, they're definitely not built for the benefit of most humans.
14:58 Hank Green? Yeah, they're built to sort of utilize humans for sure.
15:03 John Green? I guess I was gonna, I was gonna say this whole thing has been great for Elon Musk, but then I paused and realized that actually this whole thing has not been great for Elon Musk.
15:11 Hank Green? No, depends on what you mean.
15:14 John Green? Like, he's wealthy, but I don't know that he's experiencing a lot of deep fulfillment from his relationships.
15:19 Hank Green? Yeah, I gotta make my, I don't know when this episode's gonna came up, but I gotta, I gotta make my 2026 bingo card.
15:24 John Green? Oh, yeah.
15:25 Hank Green? I did it last year. I find it to be a lot of fun.
15:27 John Green? Yeah.
15:29 Hank Green? And that thing that you just said reminded me of a thing that I, I kind of wanna put on my bingo card, which is a prediction of a, of a true crash out by a top tier tech CEO.
15:40 John Green? A true crash out. I mean, what, what's a bigger crash out than accidentally buying Twitter for like $40 billion and then ruining it?
15:48 Hank Green? That's a pretty big crash out. He was like, I'm gonna do this. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't wanna do this. And they were like, well, buddy, you're gonna do it anyway.
15:56 John Green? He was like, no, it was a bit like we would be. We would be like, oh, no, we were just kidding, Jack. Like, we're obviously not gonna buy Twitter for $40 billion. Like, that was a bit.
16:04 Hank Green? And Jack Dorsey was like, no, no, I think he's gonna do a pretty good job.
16:08 John Green? And, and he, he has done a good job of, I mean, look, it's not like Twitter was good before. Now Twitter is just worse.
16:17 Hank Green? At least there was a reason to leave.
16:19 John Green? At least there was a reason to leave.
16:21 Hank Green? Okay, this next question comes from Ruby, who asks, Dear Hank and John, while doing my daily jaunt of doom scrolling, I stumbled upon a lovely and wholesome corner of the internet. It got me thinking about that phrase, corner of the internet. And what would the internet look like if it was a 3D space? It couldn't be a room, is there not enough corners? Even oddly shaped rooms like churches only have so many corners. Is it a giant maze with riddles? Something unfathomable? I've really backed myself into a corner with this one, Pumpkins and Penguins, Ruby.
16:50 John Green? I think of it as more like a 20-sided die.
16:53 Hank Green? Oh, yeah?
16:54 John Green? Or even 100-sided die, where there's a lot of corners, but it's basically a sphere.
16:58 Hank Green? I don't know. I, I like, some of these corners are pretty inaccessible and they're like very small and some of them are bigger and more available, like, like a bismuth crystal, where there's lots of, lots of little nooks and crannies.
17:10 John Green? I wanna stay in a nook for the rest of my life, a little nook of the internet. I don't What I've, what I'm realizing in my old age.
17:18 Hank Green? You don't want to put a limit on that? You don't want to say like, I'm gonna nuke it up for the next two years, but then.
17:23 John Green? I don't wanna, I don't think I ever want to go back. The whole thing, the whole teeming ocean of internet is just not for me, Hank. Like, I don't do well there. I get seasick.
17:32 Hank Green? It is a disorienting place. And if, if there could be a best thing, I would think that that thing would be occupying a few lovely little nooks, so you can go from one to the other.
17:44 John Green? Sure, but like, the thing isn't to spend every day doom scrolling.
17:48 Hank Green? No, it definitely isn't.
17:50 John Green? And yet I do a tremendous amount of that.
17:52 Hank Green? Yeah, the thing is probably to just be on it less in total. And, and, and I wish that there was any incentive to build systems that actually helped people use them in a more healthy way.
18:05 John Green? Well, that's what Focus Friend is. That hit the Google Play Store's 2025 App of the Year.
18:08 Hank Green? That's true. And we also did win the Cultural Impact Award this year from Apple, not to brag.
18:13 John Green? Tim Cook wrote you a little note.
18:16 Hank Green? He, he, he signed a little note that someone wrote. I agree with you.
18:19 John Green? Well, he signed it, though.
18:20 Hank Green? He did? I got Tim Cook's signature. I'm somewhat confident that he will not crash out in the next year.
18:25 John Green? Hmm.
18:27 Hank Green? Seems like a stable guy. I wouldn't be surprised if he quit.
18:30 John Green? No, that would be the ultimate stable guy move.
18:32 Hank Green? Yeah, that's a stable guy move.
18:34 John Green? Uh, we spend too much time talking about billionaires, Hank, which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by regular people. Regular people, that's who listens to this podcast, unless we have a billionaire listener, in which case, buddy.
18:46 Hank Green? Do we? I deal for you. Yeah. This podcast is also brought to you by my own veins. My own veins. Suddenly, they appear.
18:56 John Green? And today's podcast is brought to you by the Kelsey Green Brothers Bowl Ball. That's the Kelsey Green Brothers Bowl Ball.
19:06 John Green? Brawl.
19:06 Hank Green? Bowlball?
19:07 John Green? Bowl brawl.
19:09 Hank Green? Bowl brawl brawl.
19:11 John Green? Give me, give me, give me one more chance, Hank. And today's podcast is also brought to you by the Kelsey Green Brothers Bowl Brawl. The Kelsey Green Brothers Bowl Brawl, coming to theaters near you in 2027.
19:24 Hank Green? It would be a hit.
19:26 John Green? It would be a hit.
19:26 Hank Green? We did, we did a stream with the Kelseys.
19:29 John Green? Yeah, I mean, they would be like, this is charity. Like, we're only doing this to support these, these nice fellows. But little do they know, like, they would also get a big hit out of it because it turns out our podcast is huge.
19:40 Hank Green? Huge. And speaking of, this podcast is also brought to you by Hard Turkers. I'll tell you what, those Kelsey brothers, they're a couple of hard turkers. I'm gonna make this happen, John.
19:49 John Green? You're really working on it. All right, Hank, let's answer a serious question from Laura, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a nerd fighter since the days of giraffe sex and beyond. I started college in 2020 and graduated this year and was lucky enough to accept a job as a teacher at one of the schools where I did my student teaching. I now teach fifth grade math at a low-income inner-city school that unfortunately already had a reputation for poor math skills. We have a state coach for our math department and she is lovely, but I can't help but feel this pressure to try and teach these kids math. I know this isn't the most important thing they're gonna learn in their lives, and so I try to include life lessons on topics like empathy and equitability and just give them overall safe spaces to be a kid. But how do I reconcile the fact that I'm attempting an almost impossible job that will have such monumental impact on their adult lives? Am I properly screwing them up? How do I know if I'm doing enough?
20:34 John Green? Patience and pre-tests, Laura. So Laura, I, I don't know how to answer the question around like teaching to the test or, or, you know, getting kids to learn math. Certainly you're more of an expert in that than I am. But what I do know is that in life, it is incredibly, incredibly hard to feel like you are doing enough. Uh, because there are so many problems and the closer you get to those problems and you're pretty close up to problems that are affecting a lot of kids in your community, the closer you get to those problems, the harder they are to solve, not the easier they are to solve, right? Like, anybody can solve that problem from 30,000 feet up, but you're trying to solve it on the ground every day with the kids in your classroom,
21:17 John Green? and that's a much different task. It's a much more important task, even though the progress that you will make will be incremental and insufficient and frustrating.
21:26 Hank Green? And I guess the other thing I'd say is that you don't, like, nobody ever gets to see the world that would have been without your work, you know? Like, you don't, like, no one ever gets to see the kid who would have disengaged if you hadn't, like, spent that extra effort on them, or the kid who hated math and stayed hating math, or would have hated math if you hadn't taken that extra effort or been extra gentle with them. That's, like, always, like, a hard part about problem solving is that, you know, there's all these little things that happen and we never really understand all of the problems being solved because you're doing it, you're doing the work. And so, it's hard, it's hard
22:09 Hank Green? to imagine the impact when you, you never get to see the counterfactual.
22:13 John Green? A lot of times, too, with teachers especially, you don't get to see the rewards because the rewards are reaped, like, decades later, right? Like, I still think about my elementary school teachers and my middle school teachers, but at the time, they had no reason to believe that they were positively impacting my life, not least because I was so unbearable to have in the classroom. So, like, it took decades for that work to pay off, but I think it did pay off in me.
22:39 Hank Green? All right, this next question comes from Henry, who asks, Dear Hank of John, when two black holes orbit each other, they create waves in spacetime called gravitational waves. What would it feel like to be hit by a gravitational wave? Would time slow down? Would I be pushed back? And most importantly, could I surf it? Wave hello, wave goodbye, Henry. You are regularly hit by gravitational waves, in fact, and you do not notice.
23:03 John Green? No, I feel it. I feel it every time.
23:06 John Green? My life is nothing but being hit by gravitational waves and people are like, why are you anxious? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. Maybe because I just got hit by a gravitational wave.
23:15 Hank Green? The fabric of space and time has wobbles in it.
23:19 John Green? Exactly. I live with wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff all the time, literally.
23:25 Hank Green? The part where time wobbles is really bad.
23:28 John Green? Yeah.
23:29 Hank Green? I'm like, just, you can know about, you could keep figuring this stuff out, absolutely, but like, let me have times when it is not a part of my life, which for clarity is most of the times. But and I of course do love the fact that we are exploring this stuff. And there's much that we will continue to learn from gravitational waves. But I do think that if you were really close up to two black holes that are colliding, if you were right up on it, it would, I think, definitely have an impact on your body that would be very negative. But also, you would be experiencing other more negative impacts on your body from the energy being released by the black holes. So.
24:08 John Green? Why, Hank, whenever you talk about astronomy or geology or whatever, why is the bodily impact always negative? It's always, it's a very, I find that you're a somewhat negative person when it comes to the effect that space has on the human body.
24:24 Hank Green? Well, are you saying that like, maybe it might be like a good homeopathic treatment? Like, you know, if you got like a little bit of systemic inflammation, maybe you want to be really near a black hole collision?
24:35 John Green? That's what I'm wondering. Are there ways in which it's beneficial to the human body? I saw the Martian.
24:40 Hank Green? What?
24:41 John Green? Yeah.
24:41 Hank Green? Did the Martian man, did he, I can't remember his name, Scott Watney?
24:46 John Green? Yeah, I think his name was actually Matt Damon.
24:51 Hank Green? That's, that definitely is true. Did, did Matt Damon come home stronger from Mars?
24:56 John Green? Oh, for sure. Emotionally.
24:57 Hank Green? Smooth sailors don't make straight seas.
25:02 John Green? That's what they say. That's what they say.
25:04 Hank Green? I think that the Martian soil was quite bad for him. The thing is, John, what what our bodies want and like is the typical situation. And so when you ask like, what would it, what would it be like for the bodies to be in an atypical situation? Mostly, the answer is not great.
25:20 John Green? All right. Counterpoint. We live in lots of different climates and life expectancy is about the same regardless of what climate you live in.
25:29 Hank Green? All those climates are so close to each other. They're almost identical.
25:32 John Green? You can't say that living in Dubai is like living in Greenland.
25:37 Hank Green? It's like much more like living in Greenland than living like in the ocean.
25:42 John Green? That's true.
25:42 Hank Green? Or like inside of a volcano.
25:45 John Green? That's true.
25:46 Hank Green? Though inside of a volcano, very cool place to have a little house.
25:50 John Green? I've heard that it's a very warm place to have a little house.
25:53 Hank Green? Good point. They're always building supervillain lairs inside of volcanoes, but they would just be sweaty all the time and potentially dead.
26:00 John Green? Not worth it.
26:01 Hank Green? Not worth it.
26:02 John Green? But then again, if supervillains acted rationally, Hank, we would live in a different world where Twitter had different ownership.
26:08 Hank Green? Where would the best supervillain lair be? Would it be like the inside of the giant clock that Jeff Bezos built? That feels like a pretty good lair.
26:16 John Green? What about Mark Zuckerberg's lair on Kauai?
26:19 Hank Green? That's a good lair. Like, that's what, that's what a villain actually would do. Like, you put it in a cool spot. That is a volcano, though, I have to say.
26:26 John Green? Yeah. No, he's doing both. I mean, he's.
26:31 Hank Green? He looked and he said, why not both?
26:34 John Green? If anything, it's a little cliche.
26:36 Hank Green? It really is. I can't believe he built his lair in a volcano.
26:40 John Green? I know. Thank God.
26:41 Hank Green? Oh, my God.
26:42 John Green? He's a piece of work. He might crash out in 2026.
26:44 Hank Green? It's possible. It's on my bingo card.
26:46 John Green? Fernando and Kalina ask, Dear John and Hank, it's 3 a.m. and we're driving across Texas. My husband and I were wondering, how do we know the distance from here to the sun? It's not like we sent a person or a probe to measure it. So is it some kind of math? Pumpkins and Penguins, Fernando and Kalina. It's always some kind of math, Fernando and Kalina. Always, always.
27:05 Hank Green? Math and cleverness. So we had already figured out the ratios between a bunch of the bodies in the soil. Solar system. So we knew like, like the ratios of their orbits to each other, but we didn't have like the miles to put in there. So weirdly, the moment we figured out how far away the sun was, we also figured out how far away like a bunch of other planets were. You just had to like plug it into the ratios. But the way that we figured out how far away the sun is, very cool, you could do it yourself.
27:31 John Green? Okay.
27:32 Hank Green? Uh, so two people in very different places on earth. So imagine a person at the north pole and a person at the south pole, though this was not the case. You could do it from any two distant locations on earth, uh, are looking at the sun through a telescope. And Venus moves in between us and the sun and occludes the sun a little bit. To the person who's at the very top of the earth and the one at the very bottom of the earth. They're actually going to see Venus at a different spot on the sun because they're like, they're like far enough away. That from their perspective, Venus is on one point in the sun. And then you mark down exactly where, how it crosses the sun.
28:11 Hank Green? And then from there, you can do math to determine, uh, based on how far away you are on earth, how far away the sun is.
28:18 John Green? Okay. I mean, I'm going to believe that without really understanding it.
28:23 Hank Green? I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure that that's right. I could, I could probably do a better job of explaining it, but that's. It was some kind of parallax thing like that. Parallax is like a big deal for us figuring, for ways to figure out how far away things are.
28:34 John Green? Okay.
28:34 Hank Green? And then also, this does not work for the sun, uh, but we can tell how far away stars are because the earth is in different places. Throughout its orbit, sometimes the earth is in one place and sometimes it's like really far away from where it was. And so you can look out and see stars moving in relationship to each other.
28:52 John Green? Hmm. It is pretty mind blowing to me that we know like how far away the stars are from us in Orion. Like Orion's belt, you know, like you know how far away those stars are. And the fascinating thing to me is that in addition to not being close to us, they're not close to each other.
29:09 Hank Green? No, no, no, no.
29:11 John Green? It just appears that way to us.
29:12 Hank Green? Yeah. Yeah, isn't that cool? They're just like, one of them's like closer but smaller and the other, and they're all like similar brightnesses, but they are not.
29:19 John Green? Yeah, but like one of them is like 200 light years away from the other, or whatever.
29:24 Hank Green? Yeah.
29:24 John Green? More than that, probably. It's wild. The universe is astonishing and a little bit terrifying, which I think is why this last question before we get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon is so important for us to answer. Hank from Laura, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm an avid runner, although I live in a small city, so my route is almost exactly the same day in and day out. Because of this, I've gotten very familiar with the squirrels who live in the park near my house. In my many years of frequenting these furry little guys, I've never seen a squirrel who looks anything but panicked and twitchy. Do squirrels get bored? Nuts about the pod, Laura. No, I think they're panicked and twitchy the whole time.
29:58 Hank Green? No, I think that they're, I think that they get chill as long as they're feeling real safe, which they are not, as long as they are on the ground.
30:07 John Green? Maybe, maybe they have chill moments, but like I don't.
30:10 Hank Green? I see a squirrel in a, in a tree with its little tail curled over, just sitting there.
30:16 John Green? Yeah.
30:17 Hank Green? You know, but definitely if I'm around, they're panicked and twitchy, because I could eat them.
30:22 John Green? Yeah, they should be panicked and twitchy. I mean, that, that, that would be my response. It's like, the reason squirrels look twitchy all the time is because like, the world is out to get them and will succeed. The same reason we should kind of be anxious all the time. Now, I don't think it's actually helpful to us to be anxious all the time, but like, I think on some level, it's appropriate.
30:39 Hank Green? I think that it was especially like, used to be even more appropriate, and we are still living with a body that evolved for that situation.
30:46 John Green? Yeah, I mean, not only are we living with a body that evolved for that situation, you would argue that we are in fact that body.
30:52 Hank Green? I don't know, man. It's all metaphors. I'll tell you that.
30:55 John Green? Oh, of course, it's all metaphors, but you can't convince me that my, my whole, uh, my whole self is contained in this bacterial colony. I just won't believe it.
31:03 Hank Green? Oh.
31:04 John Green? Doesn't resonate with me as a metaphor.
31:06 Hank Green? I mean, look, I'll agree with you in that it doesn't exist in the bacterial colony, but only in that it doesn't exist.
31:13 John Green? Well, I would argue, and I mean, not to get too metaphysical or theological about it, but I would argue that part of the human soul exists in relationships. So it exists outside of the self in the sense, or outside of the body, in the sense that it exists in the space between people who share love.
31:32 Hank Green? Yes, I would agree with you, but with different words.
31:35 John Green? All right. Thanks. I win.
31:38 Hank Green? Which is really, really a lot of how, how, why, why we get along so well, you know? Like, absolutely, that is correct. But that, that further to me emphasizes that it is an illusion. But, but absolutely, that is true. Like, my self definitely extends outside of myself and into relationships, which certainly exist in a non-physical way and in a metaphorical way, like in an imagined way. But like, imaginary things are real.
32:03 John Green? Are real. Like, lots of things that are imagined are real.
32:06 Hank Green? Correct.
32:07 John Green? Like, human rights. Super real.
32:10 Hank Green? Like, most of the most important things.
32:12 John Green? Yeah. Love. Super real.
32:15 Hank Green? Yeah.
32:16 John Green? All right, Hank. Having established that you believe in a human soul, which is a surprise to all of us, let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
32:24 Hank Green? The news from Mars, John. These, these folks. So there's a, a body called the U.S. National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. And they would like people to go to Mars. And they have put out a report talking about why people should go to Mars. And there's a bunch of reasons why people talk about why people should go to Mars. So that we can set up a colony and become a multi-planetary species to prevent the extinction of humans, which I would argue and have argued is a little bit silly, because we've got a really good planet right now, and I don't have any faith in a group of humans being able to survive long-term on Mars without us here on Earth. But the reason
33:06 Hank Green? that they have cited as by far the most interesting and important reason to send people to Mars, I'm very interested in and kind of excited. Excited by, which is to see if there was once life on Mars. Very specifically that goal. Now, they also assessed some different possible crude campaigns. So how would that actually work? The highest ranked one would look for an exploration area with a near surface glacial ice that could have signs of life. It would also send astronauts for 30 days, Martian days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery and then a 300 Martian day long crude mission. So starting out with a quick one and then a long one. Other campaigns include building
33:47 Hank Green? drilling rigs to find liquid water that might have life in it. But there's also a lot of like not included stuff in the report, like what specific exploration zones would be or ideas for protocols that would keep people safe on those missions, which is going to be tricky.
34:05 John Green? Yeah, I can imagine.
34:06 Hank Green? Harder than we thought it was gonna be. And we thought it was gonna be really hard.
34:10 John Green? There's just 300 days is a long time.
34:13 Hank Green? It's very short.
34:14 John Green? Well, it's a long time to live somewhere other than Earth.
34:18 Hank Green? Yeah, no, it's a long time and not a very long time.
34:21 John Green? But I mean, a lot can happen to you in 300 days when you're on Mars.
34:26 Hank Green? Yeah.
34:27 John Green? It sounds stressful to me. It's I don't think I'm gonna do it. And it's looking less and less like it's gonna happen by 2027. I'll tell you that.
34:33 Hank Green? Seems unlikely. Now that we know that our podcast is such a hit, I don't think we should change the name.
34:37 John Green? Oh, I completely disagree. I think that we should take a risk. See if we can rebuild an audience from scratch.
34:44 Hank Green? Yeah, put it on a new RSS feed. Be like, everybody join us over here.
34:49 John Green? Now it's Dear John and Hank, everybody's brand new podcast.
34:52 Hank Green? We're gonna re-nookify.
34:55 John Green? We got, we got too big and we're starting over. All right. The news from AFC Wimbledon is terrible.
35:01 Hank Green? Oh, I thought it was good.
35:03 John Green? No, we just lost yesterday to Exeter City, arguably the worst team in League One. Now we're down in ninth place after 18 games. I'm starting to get a little worried, Hank, because we're in ninth place, which is comfortable, but like, we don't look good. Now, the counter argument is that Johnny Jackson, Johnny Jackson, AFC Wimbledon's manager, said after the game that half the squad was really sick and it wasn't unusual starting lineup. And it turns out that even some of the players who played were really sick. Like, there's a stomach bug or something going around the AFC Wimbledon locker room. And so maybe that's why we didn't play well, but we did not play well. Now in the previous game, which did not matter, because it's in something called the Vertu Trophy, which does not matter. It's a nothing trophy.
35:48 Hank Green? Yeah.
35:49 John Green? We won 5-1.
35:51 Hank Green? Yeah, I saw that one in my, in my app and I was like, all right, but it didn't matter.
35:55 John Green? We had four goals scored by Academy graduate Aaron Sassu. He scored more goals that day than in his 85 other appearances combined. So good run for Aaron.
36:06 Hank Green? We're not playing him right. Maybe we should play him differently.
36:10 John Green? He didn't play at all on Tuesday, I suspect because he was part of the group that had the stomach bug.
36:15 Hank Green? Yeah.
36:15 John Green? But hopefully he'll be back on Saturday when we play Mansfield Town.
36:20 Hank Green? All right, Mansfield Town. And everybody wash your hands.
36:23 John Green? Wash your hands for the full 20 seconds, y'all. Sing yourself the happy birthday song.
36:27 Hank Green? Scrub those fingertips.
36:28 John Green? See, we, this is an advice podcast, a proper, proper advice podcast about hand washing management.
36:35 Hank Green? And hard turkers. 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 Hals-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trukravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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