443: A Top Podcast for the Elderly

Why do I have the desire to rebel against my parents? Why does pen on paper fade over time? Do we make new water? What is the scent of soaps and why do I want to eat it? How should I reveal that I can do the splits? Has there been any updates regarding Stars on Mars? …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 Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly 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.

• 0:11John Green?

  Of course, 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 dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, I actually have recently started to rent out one of my toilets to a British soldier.

• 0:27John Green?

  Well, you're a landlord.

• 0:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, but only for British soldiers, which is a real betrayal of my roots. I asked him and he said that he's a lieutenant.

• 0:37John Green?

  I like how you said it's a betrayal of your roots, as if like your ancestors participated in the American Revolution.

• 0:43Hank Green?

  We can't be providing quarter to British soldiers. That's like the main American thing.

• 0:47John Green?

  That is true. I mean, ostensibly, we also can't provide quarter to American soldiers.

• 0:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, that's also a big deal. Shouldn't do that.

• 0:55John Green?

  It is in the Constitution, so you've been illegally lieutenant-ing.

• 1:03Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, no, it's okay. It's okay as long as it's not forcible. It's just a betrayal of my roots. I'm okay. We had an amazing Project for Awesome. I chose a British joke because during the Project for Awesome, I was forced to speak in a British accent. And not just one, but many different British accents at random, flowing into each other without control for over a half an hour.

• 1:25John Green?

  Yeah, it was pretty impressive from what I saw of it, but not in a good way. It was impressive the way that like, like me doing an Olympic ski jump would be impressive. Like, you would be im-pressed.

• 1:38Hank Green?

  Yeah, an impression would be made.

• 1:41John Green?

  You would see a guy die.

• 1:43Hank Green?

  I made impressions. I thought you'd survive, but I bet your lower legs wouldn't.

• 1:48John Green?

  Based on my skiing results so far, which is that I got fairly badly hurt going 10 miles an hour down a green, I suspect that I would not do well with the Olympic ski jump.

• 2:00Hank Green?

  I give you a greater than 50/50 chance that you'd survive.

• 2:03John Green?

  Well, let's go ahead and not find out which side of the coin flip I land on this particular time.

• 2:11Hank Green?

  Yes, for sure. Don't do it. But I did, I did go off the ski jump of doing British accents live. In front of Demi Odiwibe, who is an amazing impersonationist, which was very embarrassing.

• 2:24John Green?

  Yeah, but you did your best. And a lot, it's like karaoke. You just really have to commit to it. Whatever you're doing in life, you have to commit to the bit. And the more embarrassed you feel, the worse you are because

• 2:37Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 2:38John Green?

  You've just got to be totally committed.

• 2:39Hank Green?

  I was committed. I went hard and all the British people in chat left, you know, they just left.

• 2:45John Green?

  They went to go to bed, which was probably the right call. It was late. It was a great project for awesome. We raised over $4.1 million for great charities like Save the Children and Partners in Health. Super proud of the whole team of people who work on the P4A every year. I got sick on the last day and I'm just now recovering, so.

• 3:02Hank Green?

  He's pushing through. He's been coffin during the pregame that we do where we get real, we do like a couple of beers. And then we make the podcast.

• 3:11John Green?

  We don't do beers because Hank can't drink. I would do beers. It's 1pm on a Wednesday. I'd have a beer, but Hank can't drink. So last night I slept 15 hours, which I didn't even know was possible.

• 3:22Hank Green?

  That's the way to do it. Congratulations.

• 3:25John Green?

  I was like a bear. I went to bed at 4:30 and I woke up at like 6:30.

• 3:30Hank Green?

  Wow. Yeah, that's what you gotta do sometimes.

• 3:33John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Hank Green?

  It's good for you when you're sick.

• 3:35John Green?

  Well, I feel a little bit better today. I still feel kind of crappy, but I feel a little bit better. I'm ready to do the pod though. I'm excited to be with you. I'm excited to be with our beloved listeners, our belikeed listeners, maybe.

• 3:46Hank Green?

  Our belikeed listeners, for sure. And so everybody, I know that we're out of date here, but everybody who showed up for the Project for Awesome, thank you so much. It was an absolute blast. It was a really wonderful time. And in those last two hours where I showed up early by accident.

• 4:02John Green?

  Well, you're going to show up early from now on because that was a transformational two hours. We raised like $400,000 in two hours. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  It was crazy.

• 4:14John Green?

  And not from any big donors, just from thousands of people donating all at once.

• 4:19Hank Green?

  As a studier of the Project for Awesome, I've been there for a lot of them. That is very weird.

• 4:23John Green?

  Yeah, no, this is our 19th Project for Awesome and we were pretty sure where we were going to land. And we landed somewhere that the Project for Awesome has never been before, which is pretty exciting. It was really fun. It was tiring. I wore a lot of wigs. It was great. But now, now we have to be professional podcasters again, Hank, because we have to provide America with its sleep slash gym slash dishes podcast slash hit podcast for teens.

• 4:50Hank Green?

  If only, John, we could be a hit podcast for the elderly as well. I mean, what is, what is it gonna have to take? We, we talk about our aches and pains. We talk about our, our, our diseases and our medications.

• 5:02John Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:02Hank Green?

  You know?

• 5:03John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Hank Green?

  Look, the AARP is in my inbox. They're here.

• 5:06John Green?

  Oh, I'm a member of the AARP.

• 5:08Hank Green?

  They'll go as low as you'll let them.

• 5:10John Green?

  Yeah, no, you can join. It's like AAA. You just gotta pay your membership fee. But I'm a member of AARP because it got me a discount on my, on my, uh, phone that was worth more than the membership to the AARP. So I just joined. And I, look, I am 48. I'm not that far away from retirement. I just retired from Complexly, kind of. I don't get paid anymore.

• 5:31Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You aren't an owner? Um, I said this to Orin. I was like, what if I retired? And he was, he said, that would be bad.

• 5:40John Green?

  Oh, interesting. When I tell my kids I might retire, they're like, that would be great.

• 5:44Hank Green?

  Yeah. No, yeah. And I was like, why? And he was like, where would the money come from? And I'm like, oh, boy, I got news for you. That's not what it's about.

• 5:51John Green?

  No.

• 5:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:52John Green?

  No, it all goes back to our hit episode of the Future Podcast, Why Does Hank Green Want to Be Famous? But first, let's answer this question from Haviland, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm struggling a lot right now with morality, religion, personal beliefs and politics. It seems that every opinion my parents have on a particular stance, I seem to have the opposite. The subject line, by the way, is being a teenager is the worst thing that ever happened to my morality. This is a hit podcast for teens, Hank. We're addressing teen questions.

• 6:16Hank Green?

  Wow. Wow. That's a, that's a great subject line.

• 6:19John Green?

  I think this is because I'm getting older, but that itself doesn't fix the problem. How am I supposed to be myself if my parents disagree with everything that makes up myself? They still love me and that makes it even worse because I could tell them what I think, but they'll just discard it in the name of protecting me from influence. I was always a good kid. I always did what they wanted. I always used to agree with them. So why do I have this unquenchable desire to rebel against them? Teenagering is strange and I'm confused, Haviland.

• 6:42Hank Green?

  Wow, that is a remarkable amount of

• 6:46Hank Green?

  difficulty and also self-awareness.

• 6:49John Green?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, just you being aware of the fact that you're rebelling from your parents when you're a teenager is a huge amount of self-awareness. There's two potential things happening here. One is that it's completely normal. I remember like my therapist being like, when I was like 16, my therapist being like, "You're rebelling against your parents, and then when you're 20 or 21, you'll come back to them." And they, it was completely right. That is exactly what happened.

• 7:13Hank Green?

  I mean, I, I have this like, uh, frame for understanding this period of life where, you know, cultures have to evolve. Like, one of the things that you know, like, that you learn in evolutionary biology is that you don't want a rate of zero mutation. You don't want a rate of zero change. You want some amount of not-too-much change. And so you, you actually, like, the systems engineer ways to introduce change and to select for advantageous change. And that's wild. And I think the cultures do that too. And I think that, like, youth is about that. It's about, it's about testing boundaries, because if we never do, then we never change and we never evolve. And we need to, and we need to evolve a lot, you know?

• 7:56Hank Green?

  We need to change a lot right now, because we, we, like, all of the systems are built for a world that no longer exists.

• 8:01John Green?

  Yeah, so that's one thing. But the other thing is that maybe Haveland is coming to a place in themselves that is a true place.

• 8:09Hank Green?

  For sure, yeah.

• 8:11John Green?

  Sometimes the distance you create between your parents is not just a matter of, you know, developmental appropriateness. It's also because you are gonna have different values from your parents in some important ways. And that's a hard thing. Like, that distance being created is, is really difficult. You know, if, if our parents had been more religious, your... Atheism would have been really, really challenging for them, for you, for everyone involved. And that's, that's a hard part of growing up. It's not necessarily a tragic part of growing up. I know it's hard, but when you say it's the worst thing that ever happened to my morality, it could also be one of the better things that happened to your morality, because maybe you're coming into your own moral sense of the universe,

• 8:56John Green?

  and that's an important process for you. Like, the coolest thing about being a teenager to me is that you're asking those big questions about what it means to be a person, and what we owe other people, and what we owe ourselves. You're asking those questions about suffering and everything else, separate from your parents for the first time. And good parents encourage that, even if they land someplace that isn't exactly where you wish they'd land.

• 9:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, the hard thing about this is, nobody knows like, what's right. And like, your, your brain will tell you that you know, your brain will tell you that there's certainty. And when you're a child, you feel like your parents' version of reality is the certain reality. But all of us are, are like, struggling with the, the sense of our, our conception of the world, being a sort of defined reality that we think is real, and then also the knowledge that it might not be, and that we can pick and choose different ways of being and of understanding things, of having worldviews and having values.

• 9:55John Green?

  We can grow. We have to grow. Like, getting stuck with a certain worldview is bad.

• 10:01Hank Green?

  Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing I'd say, is like, be open and curious. That's the biggest thing. This is, this is the only thing that has brought me, like, freedom from the crushing weight of feeling like I am in a world that is unjust and immoral. And like, you know, not feeling that way, being like, that, that is the, that is the truth of the matter. And curiosity is the only thing that has, has provided me relief from that, and also data that makes it easier to understand how we ended up in that world. And like, it not being about evil, but it being about... Eight billion people all on the same planet trying to make life work for themselves and their family.

• 10:42John Green?

  Yeah, and in important ways, things are more unjust than they used to be, but also in important ways, things are less unjust than they used to be, right?

• 10:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:50John Green?

  Whether it's educational opportunities for girls or malnutrition, those things are better than they were when we were in high school.

• 10:56Hank Green?

  What I would say is continue to be curious about where your perspectives are coming from, and continue to be curious about where your parents' perspectives are coming from, and continue to be curious about like, all of the other people who are important to you too.

• 11:09John Green?

  Yeah, stay open. That said, I will tell you, Havilon, that being a teenager was actually the worst thing for my morality.

• 11:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:17John Green?

  It's so hard.

• 11:18Hank Green?

  Because there's no certainty anymore.

• 11:20John Green?

  Yeah, that's part of it, but part of it was that I just had a deep-seated urge to like, blow up my world and everything in it, and I don't know why. But like, I remember being on the like, back porch of our house in Orlando, and mom coming outside and saying, "You can't smoke cigarettes on the back porch of my house."

• 11:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:41John Green?

  And me like, taking a drag of the cigarette and saying, "What are you gonna do?"

• 11:46Hank Green?

  I had a backwards version of this, where I read this like, very sort of radical book, and it was one of the first like, nonfiction books I ever read.

• 11:53John Green?

  Oh, I remember.

• 11:55Hank Green?

  And I gave it to my parents.

• 11:55John Green?

  Everyone in the family remembers.

• 11:57Hank Green?

  I gave it to mom and dad, and dad read it, and he looked at me in the eyes and he said, "You don't believe this, do you?"

• 12:09Hank Green?

  Which is like, like, our dad is very understanding.

• 12:11John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, he makes space for people, but apparently not that much space.

• 12:15Hank Green?

  Looking back, and like, I still have that book, and I'm like, "Oh, wow, this book is designed to alienate you from culture and reality, to like, make you like, lose faith in everything." And, and, you know, because that can be very, it can be a kind of appealing. You know, like, like, the idea that everything good is actually bad, and everything bad is even worse than you think.

• 12:35John Green?

  Yeah, it's hugely appealing, especially when you're younger. And those ways of looking at the world have a ton of explanatory power, and any relatively simple worldview with a ton of explanatory power is gonna, is gonna get some traction.

• 12:48Hank Green?

  For sure.

• 12:49John Green?

  I have one more piece of advice, which is, don't read The Fountainhead. Moving on to this question from-

• 12:53Hank Green?

  It wasn't The Fountainhead, just for clarity. It's not the book that we're talking about with me.

• 12:57John Green?

  I know, I know.

• 12:58Hank Green?

  I don't want people to think that.

• 13:00John Green?

  Well, I mean, you know, The Fountainhead is a very influential book in a lot of smart people's lives. And so I shouldn't be as, as, I shouldn't be the way I am with it. But I am that way because I have a different worldview, because my parents and those around me had different worldviews. And I'm a product of circumstance, just like all of us. Moving on to this question from Isabel. Dear John and Hank, why does pen on paper fade over time? Why does anything fade over time? I too shall fade. Isabel.

• 13:33Hank Green?

  Top podcast for teens.

• 13:36John Green?

  And the elderly.

• 13:37Hank Green?

  And the.

• 13:38John Green?

  I mean, the elderly, the elderly have this on the mind, Hank. They're watching as their old manuscripts fade away. They're watching as their lives themselves fade away. It's hard out there for an elderly person like Isabel.

• 13:49Hank Green?

  Why doesn't, why isn't anybody writing editorials on top podcasts for the elderly?

• 13:53John Green?

  I don't know.

• 13:54Hank Green?

  I'm gonna do it. And we're gonna be number one.

• 13:57John Green?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 13:58Hank Green?

  That's all it takes. I'm gonna create a media outlet designed entirely to create, to create fake promo for myself, like, like any good, famous person would do.

• 14:09John Green?

  Have you seen these Facebook pages that have millions of followers that just report, not like fake news, but like fake fake news, like that, for instance, I died?

• 14:22Hank Green?

  Oh, no. Like, Facebook is a real no-go zone for me.

• 14:25John Green?

  They'll have an AI-generated picture of me inside a coffin, or they'll be like, Nicolas Cage, dead at 61. All the comments will be like, Nicolas Cage isn't dead. And then some of the comments will be like, RIP.

• 14:37Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:38John Green?

  And that's happening because it's not that hard to trick some people.

• 14:41Hank Green?

  No, yeah.

• 14:42John Green?

  But why does pen on paper fade over time?

• 14:44Hank Green?

  I mean, it's so, so, like, the pen part of the ink, the ink part of the ink, the stuff that has color in it. So there's other, other pieces of the ink to make it like flow and stuff. But the part that's colored, it's a molecule and it is a color for god knows why. But it is only a color because of its specific shape and the way that the molecules are arranged. Hmm. I'm never gonna understand. I think I may have given up understanding why things are the colors they are. It's because they like absorb some wavelengths and reflect, but why? I'm like, aye, aye, aye, quantum effects, maybe. Anyway, the photons go in there, some of them get absorbed, some of them get reflected, and that's why it has a color. But some of them are getting absorbed, and when they get absorbed, that actually jiggles the molecules around

• 15:28Hank Green?

  a little bit, and over time, that can change their shape, and it can break them apart. And those new molecules that are different shapes or broken apart, don't have color anymore. And this won't happen if you keep them out of the light. So this is photodegradation, where it's the, it's really, the more light is hitting it is what's degrading it.

• 15:45John Green?

  So, the answer is light, Isabel, the visible reminder of the invisible light.

• 15:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:50John Green?

  This is why if you have a nice painting, like I've got a painting right now, and it's got some light on it, I'm not gonna lie. And if that painting were the Mona Lisa, people would be freaking out right now. People would be furious with me, and with good reason.

• 16:04Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:05John Green?

  Because you've got to protect, you've got to get the light just right. This is something museum curators do, like something Sarah did when she worked at a museum all the time, was like figuring out the right light so that you can see the art, but that you're not harming the art.

• 16:19Hank Green?

  Because you don't want to jiggle those molecules. They're jiggle.

• 16:21John Green?

  You don't want to jiggle those molecules with light.

• 16:23Hank Green?

  It's weird. They're just a bunch of particles and waves. That's all of it.

• 16:27John Green?

  That's everything that we're doing.

• 16:29Hank Green?

  Not that I have a solution to the problem of consciousness, just for clarity.

• 16:32John Green?

  Why is there light?

• 16:34Hank Green?

  Uh, what do you mean?

• 16:36John Green?

  Just what I said.

• 16:39Hank Green?

  We don't know, John.

• 16:40John Green?

  Really?

• 16:41Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, we know that, like, we know why, like, we know why photons are produced.

• 16:46John Green?

  Why?

• 16:47Hank Green?

  So there are atoms, you know about them? They have electrons. When energy comes into electrons, which are sort of like wobbling around the nucleus, those electrons gain energy, and that might, there might be a number of different ways that this happens. And they will like go up to a higher state of energy, and when they drop back down, they have to release that energy, and they release it as photons. Now, deeper than that, there's probably a, like, one or two levels down that a particle physicist or- Quantum physicist could tell you.

• 17:19Hank Green?

  But another level after that, it's really like, oh, because that's the way the universe is structured.

• 17:27John Green?

  And we don't totally know why the rules are the way that they are. And we don't even totally know why there is matter in the first place.

• 17:32Hank Green?

  Right. There is only matter because the rules are the way they are.

• 17:34John Green?

  But the photons don't have mass, right?

• 17:40Hank Green?

  They do not have mass.

• 17:41John Green?

  So they're not matter. They're something else.

• 17:43Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 17:45John Green?

  Light is not matter.

• 17:47Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. It's energy. It's just energy.

• 17:49John Green?

  I'm just going to stick with the T S. Elliott quote about how it's the visible reminder, the invisible light and move on from there. This next question comes from Eileen, who says, Dear John and Hank, I know about the water cycle. I even taught a rudimentary version to kindergartners for years. But here's the question that's been bothering me. Do we make new water? Or is the water we have just a really huge closed system? Really, I do. Eileen.

• 18:09Hank Green?

  Again, we could get into complexities here, but no, we mostly don't make new water like, like the, I'm going to even take out mostly. I'm qualifying here because there are like weird situations in which water gets made, but no, it's a pretty closed loop.

• 18:24John Green?

  Okay. So like, let me ask you a question, though. If a really icy meteor were to hit Earth, wouldn't that increase the amount of water?

• 18:32Hank Green?

  Yeah. So new water comes in in that way and it's a fair amount. And, and water also exits when, when water in the atmosphere can get broken apart again by photons. Uh, or high energy particles from the sun. And they can get broken apart. And I think that that can last. So like the hydrogen will float away. And even get like knocked into space. The oxygen, I don't think does get knocked into space because it's too heavy. So we, we can lose it that way. There's also like a bunch of. So there's a bunch of water on Earth that's not part of the water cycle because it's bound up in rocks in the mantle. And we think that there are some ways for that water to get out sometimes. Um, and that that might be part of how on long term geological scales, like the history of the Earth scales.

• 19:18Hank Green?

  We think that that might be an important contributor to the, the amount of water that is in the system.

• 19:21John Green?

  But the amount of water in the system is pretty stable. Like Jesus lived in a world where there was a pretty similar amount of water to where I live.

• 19:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you like grabbed a handful of water, almost, I, I would wager that like 99 plus percent of that water. Those molecules were water molecules when Jesus was around.

• 19:41John Green?

  Wow.

• 19:43John Green?

  So what you're saying is that I was baptized with the same water that Jesus was baptized with?

• 19:47Hank Green?

  You were 100%, like when you got baptized, some of those molecules were in the water that baptized Jesus.

• 19:55John Green?

  All right, can I go back further than that? Did, did a dinosaur drink my water?

• 19:58Hank Green?

  Oh yeah. So the further back you go, the more true it is. Like you and I probably weren't baptized in the same water because it didn't have time to spread out. Though we were both, I think baptized-

• 20:08John Green?

  Baptized at the same church, which-

• 20:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:10John Green?

  Means maybe-

• 20:11Hank Green?

  Would more likely, yeah. But the more time, the more space you give it, the more the water has time to mix up.

• 20:17John Green?

  It's like how everybody is descended from Genghis Khan.

• 20:21Hank Green?

  Yeah. I don't think that everybody is, but, but, but like you go back further than Genghis Khan and it's like, yeah, everybody's descended from anybody who has descendants still.

• 20:28John Green?

  When I drink dinosaur water, does that mean that the dinosaurs are sort of still alive inside me?

• 20:35Hank Green?

  No.

• 20:36John Green?

  But I am the result of their chemistry, Hank.

• 20:39Hank Green?

  But you do have, so it's not the water, but you do have a common ancestor with dinosaurs. And so in that way, the dinosaurs are still alive, alive and part of you. Though that common ancestor was not a dinosaur.

• 20:49John Green?

  Okay. So the dinosaurs are still with us in a manner of speaking.

• 20:53Hank Green?

  No, the dinosaurs are still with us. Absolutely. Like the thing about-

• 20:56John Green?

  Well, because of birds, because all the birds.

• 20:58Hank Green?

  The thing about theropods is that like they are still here. Everybody treats this like a fun little science fact, but they are dinosaurs. Like the theropod dinosaurs are still around and there's lots of them. And they're, they're like, there's like lots of them. They're like way, I think there are more of them than there are mammals.

• 21:16John Green?

  Really?

• 21:17Hank Green?

  I think so.

• 21:18John Green?

  And these are, uh, these are birds?

• 21:21Hank Green?

  Yes. There are significantly more species of bird species than mammal species. Um, and then individuals also, there are more. I mean, there might be more chickens. There might be more like theropod chickens than there are humans in America.

• 21:35John Green?

  Yeah, there are a lot of chickens. I mean, no, no doubt. Um, not necessarily a good gig.

• 21:41Hank Green?

  Oh my God, at any given point, there are well over 1.5 billion chickens in America.

• 21:47John Green?

  Wow. I mean, I don't know about you, Hank, but I just saluted the flag.

• 21:54Hank Green?

  Yeah. Do you know, like, didn't, wasn't like Hoover before, uh, before he crashed the entire economy and everything, everything got destroyed?

• 22:02John Green?

  It's a little bit of oversimplification, but yeah, what was the slogan?

• 22:06Hank Green?

  I think it was like something and a chicken in every pot. And we did get that.

• 22:10John Green?

  Yeah. No, I mean, if anything, right now, we've got five chickens for every pot.

• 22:14Hank Green?

  We got so many chickens per pot. There are more chickens than pots.

• 22:18John Green?

  I just read a book that was a little more generous to Hoover than my previous books I've read about the Great Depression. It seems like, I mean, two facts about the world, Hank.

• 22:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:29John Green?

  One, the world runs like on, on the confidence that the world will continue to run. And two, at any given moment, we are way, way, way too confident. And when we become too, too confident, the confidence fails to deliver and there's a big crash and then we lose all our confidence and it takes like a decade to regain it.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  Yikes. I'm not, I'm not ready for that.

• 22:54John Green?

  It happened in 2008. You lived through it.

• 22:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, I definitely, like, like, really, let's make it so that it happens every 80 years.

• 23:02John Green?

  Oh, yeah. I'm a big believer in not having two once in a lifetime events occur inside of a single lifetime because otherwise it undermines the idea of a lifetime. Okay? It drives me crazy when they're like, oh, we had 600 year floods this, the last 100 years. No, we didn't. We had one. We had 100 year floods.

• 23:20Hank Green?

  You did your math wrong somehow.

• 23:22John Green?

  We had five what used to be 100 year floods, but things changed. Okay?

• 23:26Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:26John Green?

  So I have already lived through one once in a lifetime financial crisis. If there's another one, I throw out the whole concept of once in a lifetime.

• 23:34Hank Green?

  Which reminds me, John, that this podcast is brought to you by Once in a Lifetime Events. Once in a Lifetime Events, sometimes they should not happen once in a lifetime.

• 23:43John Green?

  Yeah. Today's podcast is of course also brought to you by, uh, your teenage morality, your teenage morality information.

• 23:50Hank Green?

  This podcast also brought to you by Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover, apparently not as bad as you think.

• 23:56John Green?

  Well, no, I want to be clear, bad.

• 24:01John Green?

  I'm not coming down pro Herbert Hoover. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Light. Light, it exists.

• 24:09Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. I do very much like opening up my closet and finding an item that I know is gonna be both comfortable and I'm just gonna look good in it. It's gonna go well with my khakis, or my jeans, or my third kind of pant that I have like a pair of orange pants. Just things that make getting dressed easier. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool. And the styles are timeless, and they're versatile, and they're designed to become dependable pieces that you reach for day after day. This morning, I put on this jacket that I'm currently wearing with just a white t-shirt,

• 24:50Hank Green?

  and I knew immediately, this is gonna work. I went downstairs, and Catherine was like, "Look at that nice jacket. Where'd that come from?" You know where it came from? It came from Quince. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for the quality, not the brand markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know that it was Dear Hank and John. It's a good way to support the show. I feel like I should say it's Q-U-I-N-C-E. I guess it's pretty easy to spell, Quince. Quince.com. I feel tempted to make up a tagline for

• 25:34Hank Green?

  them, but that's not what they want me to do. I shouldn't do that.

• 25:43John Green?

  Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NoCD. So you may know that I've had obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a kid, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. I lived with intrusive thoughts and the compulsive behaviors I used to manage those intrusive thoughts for many years without treatment. OCD is not just anxiety. If you have those what-if intrusive thoughts, and you cannot close the loop on them, and you find yourself in thought spirals, you Might have OCD. And it's not the organizing stereotype you've heard. It's a persistent, unwanted series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character, along with mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to to get relief, even when that relief never actually comes.

• 26:25John Green?

  The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment, and it has transformed my life. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP therapy, who meet you in live, face-to-face virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone. So if you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at NOCD.com. That's NOCD.com.

• 27:09Hank Green?

  All right, John, let's do another question. It comes from Haley, who asks, Dear Hank and John, what is the scent of soaps like Irish Spring and Palmolive? And how do they achieve it? The only word I could think of to describe it is "fresh," but that's not really a scent. Also, why do I want to eat it so badly?

• 27:25John Green?

  Oh, that makes one of us. I got soap put in my mouth when I was a child.

• 27:30Hank Green?

  Oh, did you?

• 27:31John Green?

  Not by my parents, but by my best friend's parents.

• 27:34Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 27:34John Green?

  When I cursed.

• 27:35Hank Green?

  That's awful brave.

• 27:37John Green?

  I know, yeah, that's a...

• 27:39Hank Green?

  That's definitely not a thing I would do.

• 27:41John Green?

  No.

• 27:43John Green?

  Like, come home from a sleepover and be like, "Oh, yeah, I did slightly abuse your kid last night."

• 27:48Hank Green?

  I will totally discipline a child that is not mine. I'm not afraid to tell them that they need to behave more different.

• 27:56John Green?

  Yeah, tell them with words, but not with shanks.

• 27:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, when I think of discipline, I do not think of causing them physical harm.

• 28:03John Green?

  Yeah, so anyway, I don't remember liking that taste at all, actually. I remember being like, "Oh, man, I really shouldn't have used the "S-H" word in front of that guy."

• 28:12Hank Green?

  Boy, yeah. Did you tell mom about this?

• 28:15John Green?

  I don't remember.

• 28:16Hank Green?

  John, there is a ton of stuff that goes into soap to give it those smells. There's maybe one called linol... linololol? Or linololol? Oh, God, how would you even say that?

• 28:30John Green?

  You're doing a great job, just keep trying.

• 28:33Hank Green?

  It's L I N A L O O L. Maybe it's just like linolul.

• 28:38John Green?

  Linolul.

• 28:40Hank Green?

  Linolul, but usually with these, it's like leno, uh, lenolol or something like that, but I don't know.

• 28:46John Green?

  At any rate, that's what they put in it.

• 28:48Hank Green?

  The way that they describe this is fresh, which is so weird to me because like, what does that mean? I think that what it means is it's like, it smells like fresh produce or specifically fresh citrus.

• 29:00John Green?

  Hmm. Yes.

• 29:03Hank Green?

  So like, if you walk into the part of the grocery store where the citrus is, you will get this smell.

• 29:08John Green?

  I think that there's definitely a citrus element, but that doesn't cover the entire spectrum of Irish spring. Irish spring also has some spring forest in it.

• 29:16Hank Green?

  Yeah. So that's, that's, um, that there is a, there is a thing called hexylcinemol. And that has like a green, leafy smell that is also in the Irish spring. And that probably also adds to the, the freshness. What they call this is synthetic ozonics. So it smells like the ozones that are produced by life, but they're synthetic.

• 29:37John Green?

  Interesting.

• 29:38Hank Green?

  Yeah. So that's like, that's like kind of the, the freshnesses.

• 29:42John Green?

  As you know, Hank, I've been trying to work with sun basin soap to recreate the smell of my childhood dorm room. My high school roommate had a special deodorizer that we use to mask the smell of cigarettes. And it's the best smell I've ever encountered and I would like it to be a sun basin soap smell. Sun basin soap has all these like fancy, nice, you know, classy smells. Nice citruses, nice, uh, Christmasy smells, whatever, whatever. I, I wanted to smell like my high school dorm room.

• 30:19Hank Green?

  Could you put a little bit of, uh, burnt tobacco in there?

• 30:22John Green?

  No, no, no. Minus the tobacco, obviously.

• 30:26Hank Green?

  I mean, unburnt tobacco has a lovely smell.

• 30:28John Green?

  It does. It does.

• 30:30Hank Green?

  But yeah, the, uh, there is.

• 30:32John Green?

  But that's neither here nor there.

• 30:35Hank Green?

  I don't know what you're talking about. That is not my experience.

• 30:38John Green?

  Well, thank God I quit a long time ago.

• 30:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:41John Green?

  All right, Hank. Before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we've got to answer this question from Miriam, who writes, Dear John and Hank, inspired in part by the fiddle player that wrote to this podcast years ago, I decided not to tell my mom that I've been trying to learn the splits, because I thought it would be funny to just suddenly be able to do that. I'm very nearly there, and now I'm wondering, how can I make the reveal? Any ideas? Ideally, something where I can warm up first, committing to the splits. Miriam.

• 31:05Hank Green?

  I've got, it's easy. It's easy. You're gonna, you're gonna be doing a, you're gonna be doing a funny dance in, in your socks, in your awesome Sox Club socks.

• 31:16John Green?

  Yep.

• 31:17Hank Green?

  On your, on, on some slippery floor, on the tile, on the wood, on the linoleum, and you're gonna be doing a dance, and then, and, and for your mom, and then you're gonna act like you fell.

• 31:27John Green?

  Yes.

• 31:28Hank Green?

  And you're gonna do the splits.

• 31:30John Green?

  And then you're gonna go, huzzah!

• 31:34Hank Green?

  I don't know if you're gonna go, huzzah.

• 31:35John Green?

  The other thing I was thinking is maybe you could do a, you could go to your mom and say like, what's that song? It's like, hello, my baby, hello, my... Then your mom says, darling, and you're like, what's the end there? And you're, she's like, hello, my ragtime gal, and then you're doing the splits.

• 31:53John Green?

  It's good stuff. It's good stuff, Miriam. I really need an update. I need an update of your mom being duly shocked when you do the splits.

• 32:00Hank Green?

  Can we do another question that is inspired by an old episode of Dear Hank and John?

• 32:04John Green?

  Sure, of course.

• 32:05Hank Green?

  This is from Eliza. This is amazing, and I, I can't believe that we have never gone deeper into it. Dear Hank and John, over the summer, I've been listening to old back catalog Dear Hank and John episodes with my parents. Thank you for all of the joy that you guys have brought. The family, episode 371 from May of 2023 is a banger. You spend the first half discussing the meaning of life and the second half pitching a horror film called 44 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of mosquitoes.

• 32:29John Green?

  Oh, God.

• 32:30Hank Green?

  But the Mars news from that episode comes in the form of an announcement of a new reality TV show called Stars on Mars. I had completely forgotten about this, where celebrities vote each other off of a fake Mars.

• 32:44Hank Green?

  Since this was the last regular show before a six-month break, there's never been an update for how Stars on Mars fared. And I would love to know if there has been any notable news on this subject you wanted to share, Martian pumpkins and space penguins, Liza. Hank, while you had cancer, what happened to Stars on Mars? The whole thing happened, John. Stars on Mars happened. They did it. They made Stars on Mars. And it was, it was, it was completely and totally a 12-episode series that was made for one season and then never again. Wow. They flew these celebrities to Cooper P D, Australia, and each cycled the group

• 33:27Hank Green?

  elected a base commander who would assign tasks to complete around the compound. And the base commander would not be able to be, like, voted off. And the base commander also selected another celebrity to be the mission specialist who helped oversee stuff. And, and some names of the people on this show, we have Bruce Willis's daughter, Tallulah Willis. We had the guy who played McLovin, Ronda Rousey. We have Lance Armstrong. Ronda Rousey. Lance Armstrong was on the show. Andy Richter was on the show. Yeah, we saw legitimate celebrities, some people I've never heard of, like Cat Cora, who was on Iron Chef. Oh, she was a big star.

• 34:07Hank Green?

  There's also a Real Housewife of Atlanta. There's several professional sports players, like Marshawn Lynch. What is wrong with Lance Armstrong, that he wanted to do this despite being a wealthy person? I am not sure. I am not sure. We also had Adam Rippon. The Olympic figure skater was on it. Who won? He was the winner. He won. Adam Rippon won. Yes. McLovin was voted out on episode one.

• 34:36Hank Green?

  John, you know how like Jenny Nicholson will do like a four hour long?

• 34:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Hank Green?

  YouTube video about, I mean, I, I really wanna be that guy so bad right now. I wanna watch this and I wanna tell the whole story of the whole thing.

• 34:54John Green?

  I bet you could get Lance Armstrong to co-host it with you. That guy seems willing to do anything.

• 35:02Hank Green?

  I mean, I bet I could get Adam Rippon to do it.

• 35:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Hank Green?

  Oh, man.

• 35:06John Green?

  This is great. This is gold, man. Stars of Real Housewives of Atlanta. I mean, everybody.

• 35:12Hank Green?

  Everybody.

• 35:13John Green?

  I can't believe Marshawn Lynch did this. Marshawn Lynch, also a person with adequate funds.

• 35:19Hank Green?

  Probably doing okay.

• 35:21John Green?

  Wow.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:23John Green?

  That's great.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  Mars, it happened. It happened. Tallulah also, Willis, did not last long.

• 35:28John Green?

  Nope. Richard Sherman, great cornerback, not apparently a great Martian. He was out in the third episode.

• 35:35Hank Green?

  And then who is, who is our fourth episode loss? It says Tom. Tom Schwartz from Vanderpump Rules. The, the, one of the only people on this list who does not have a Wikipedia page.

• 35:46John Green?

  Brutal, brutal, hard out there for a Tom. So Hank, it's now time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon, lost to the top, top of the table Cardiff yesterday. They lost 4-1, which if anything was a scoreline that flattered them. But that, that's not the kind of game that's gonna define our season. The kind of game that's gonna define our season is beating Reading 3-2 and tying with Barnsley 3-3. So in this Barnsley game, we went down 2-0 after 13 minutes. And I don't think AFC Wimbledon have come back from 2-0 down in like seven years. But we did. We came back and we were actually ahead 3-2. But then Barnsley scored in the 82nd minute, tying the game. And thereby we just got one point out of that. We're currently six points clear of relegation.

• 36:30John Green?

  There's five teams between us and relegation. And so, I don't know. I'm not brimming with confidence, but we're doing our best.

• 36:39Hank Green?

  Just to remember that there's a reason why those teams down there are down there.

• 36:42John Green?

  Part of the reason they're down there and not lower is because they tend to beat us. But yes, that's true. There's a reason those teams are down there. And look, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings a tune without the words. And there's every reason to believe that here in the last 15, 16 games of the season, we can pick up the four or five wins we will need in order to survive.

• 37:03Hank Green?

  Well, John, in Mars news, we're still having Mars news that's moon news because that's, that's our step, you know, we're gonna go one step at a time.

• 37:11John Green?

  Yes.

• 37:12Hank Green?

  And first we'll be on the moose, moon. So as we are recording this, so God knows what happened, but NASA is carrying out its second wet dress.

• 37:24John Green?

  What? Is that like a dress rehearsal?

• 37:27Hank Green?

  It is.

• 37:27John Green?

  Do they call it the wet dress?

• 37:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. So they're actually putting fuel into the tanks. So that's a

• 37:34John Green?

  I'm not here to tell NASA scientists much, but I am here to tell them to rename the wet dress.

• 37:40Hank Green?

  I think that they more commonly call it the wet dress rehearsal.

• 37:43John Green?

  It doesn't matter. That's not any better.

• 37:47Hank Green?

  Well, the, uh, so the first one got cut short because there was a, a leak in the liquid hydrogen tank. Uh, that's no good. Easy to have a leak in liquid hydrogen, a lot of pressure and very small molecules that you're dealing with. They've also sealed up some of the problematic parts and they did a partial fill. If it goes well, Artemis 2 should launch as soon as March 6th. And I'm ready, John. I've got a, I've got a YouTube video all queued up for it, actually.

• 38:12John Green?

  Wow. Good. Well, it'd be great to shoot around the moon again. It's been a while since we saw the back of the moon as people.

• 38:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 38:20John Green?

  Been a long time for this species.

• 38:21Hank Green?

  I should get one of those astronauts on, dear Hank and John.

• 38:24John Green?

  You should. I'll take the week off.

• 38:25Hank Green?

  But instead, John, we've got Adam Rippon. He's joining us right now.

• 38:32Hank Green?

  What was it like to be the final star on Mars? What did you get? Did you get a, did you get a Mars?

• 38:38John Green?

  Did you get a promise from Elon Musk that he was gonna let you be one of the first Martians?

• 38:42Hank Green?

  God, what do you get? Do you think the person who gets voted off early is actually the one who, who like most wins? Cause it's like you get your appearance fee.

• 38:50John Green?

  I think you get paid by the week.

• 38:51Hank Green?

  Ugh, really? You must get like a bonus for showing up in the first place.

• 38:56John Green?

  I wonder what the prize was.

• 38:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:58John Green?

  What did they get? A mission patch called brightest star.

• 39:02Hank Green?

  There was no monetary prize for winning the reality competition. They were paid for their participation. The final challenge involved constructing a satellite tower to broadcast a message to Earth. Wow. Oh my God. The brightest star in the universe. Winning Stars on Mars was amazing, but the real prize was all the incredible friends I made. Not being cheesy, just let me be earnest on Instagram for once, says Adam Rippon 129 weeks ago. I'm so grateful for all of the time I got to spend filming this show. Just imagine that Adam is here. I laughed, I cried, I won. Thank you to everyone who put so much work and made this crazy show a reality. The cast, the crew, everyone. Last but not least, I love you, William Shatner. He did, he got us a patch.

• 39:46John Green?

  Yeah, you got a patch. I mean, ultimately, you do that kind of thing for the experience of doing it, right?

• 39:53Hank Green?

  It's gotta be.

• 39:53John Green?

  And you might say yes to that. I wouldn't be shocked if you said yes to that.

• 39:56Hank Green?

  Not right now, but like, there's a version of me.

• 39:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Hank Green?

  For sure. There was a time when I, like, being on Wipeout was a dream.

• 40:04John Green?

  Oh, God. Hank Green wanting to be famous. A subject for a future podcast.

• 40:09Hank Green?

  I don't think that Wipeout is the path.

• 40:12John Green?

  Thank you for podding with me. Thank you to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at [email protected].

• 40:18Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Ben Swerdout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medich. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gennaro La. And as they say in our hometown,

• 40:34John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.