456: Talking About a Book No One Can Read

Why is the healing process always so itchy? Why are the acknowledgements usually cut out of audio books? How do I find time for writing as a busy and exhausted parent? When you look out an airplane window, why don’t the clouds look like they’re going by fast? How do I keep loving the media I love when it is being criticized online? …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?

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

• 0:13Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, my supervisor told me that I was just terrible at my job managing trains. And, and he said, what, have you been, been responsible for three derailments in the last year? And I said, it's just hard to keep track.

• 0:37John Green?

  Oh.

• 0:38Hank Green?

  I did, I did my best, you know? I was going off the top of the head there with that one.

• 0:42John Green?

  Yeah. Well, I, it never, it never really hooks me when you imply that you have a real job.

• 0:50Hank Green?

  Can't, it can't, that can't be. Uh, it would be, it'd be awfully weird if I was also managing trains.

• 0:57John Green?

  So listen, we have some breaking news for our listeners to the last few episodes. Hank has read my book.

• 1:03Hank Green?

  Ah, it's true. It's true, I have. It's true, I have. I've been, I've been overwhelmed with, uh, your book. Um, it, it's, it's, as mom told me, I've, I've never been so surprised by a John Green book. There is great plot, there's great twists, there's great mattering, et cetera.

• 1:24John Green?

  Well, thanks. I hope that, uh, I don't know if it's good or not to be surprised by a John Green book, but I feel like it's significantly plottier than a lot of your books. It is significantly plottier than a lot of my books. I decided to write a plot.

• 1:37Hank Green?

  Yeah. There are things, there's like little things that people are figuring out.

• 1:42John Green?

  I almost called it the trauma plot.

• 1:44Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, that, that, that makes sense.

• 1:47John Green?

  Yeah, cause it's about the trauma plot.

• 1:51Hank Green?

  I tell you, um, I don't know, you said something great to me recently, which is just like, uh, that, that, like, we've been lucky to avoid a number of fates.

• 2:03John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:04Hank Green?

  And, and we've met a lot of people who, who don't, don't necessarily feel as if they have suffered from the fates that they have met, but I, but like, it kind of feels like they have. And I don't know, I guess from an outside, it's, it's easy to feel different ways, but I'm just glad to be living this life.

• 2:22John Green?

  Yeah, me too. Um, I feel like I got out of fame.

• 2:28John Green?

  About as well as you can get out of it. Um, and the kids in the book aren't quite so lucky, but

• 2:35Hank Green?

  Indeed not.

• 2:36John Green?

  They also, you know what the book is really about in the end? And I've been thinking about this because I've been reading First Pass, you know, and that, that then, then you read it sort of separate from yourself and you read it as a book for the first time because it's laid out as a book and the font and everything. And I've been thinking that like, one of the hardest things about being a kid and learning too soon that adults are not always protectors is that when you're a kid, the only thing you have to give is love. You know, like you don't have resources, you don't have expertise or whatever, but you have your love. And when that's misused, it's so destructive and devastating.

• 3:22John Green?

  But what Kai and Juniper are after in the book is the kind of love that, that sustains you, that is enough, that, um, you know, they're both giving it and receiving it is enough on its own. And that's what the book's about in the end, which is, which is ultimately hopeful, but they have to, they, they go through some hard times for sure.

• 3:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, we're very lucky. Lucky, I mean, mom and dad are so good.

• 3:56John Green?

  Yeah, they're really good parents. We got, we won, we won the parent lottery. We also sort of won the spousal lottery.

• 4:02Hank Green?

  It's true. Yeah.

• 4:03John Green?

  So that really matters, I think, because, you know, when I was a kid, I had that, you know, sustaining love from my parents that a lot of people unfortunately don't have. And then, you know, for the last 20 years of my life, I've had this other relationship that's been really key to me being.

• 4:23John Green?

  Semi-functional.

• 4:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, we also won the brother lottery, but let's not talk too much about that. It would be too cute.

• 4:29John Green?

  Yeah, it's true. We did win that one as well. So, uh, things are, things are good. Life is good. Um, I'm, I'm really nervous about the book, but that's life, man.

• 4:42Hank Green?

  That's life. You gotta, you gotta put yourself out there. You gotta make stuff.

• 4:46John Green?

  I was hoping you were gonna say like, don't be nervous about this book, but instead you were like, yeah, I get it.

• 4:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, not because I don't think it's good. Just it's heavy. Yeah.

• 4:57John Green?

  Yeah. All right. I should say the name of the book. It's Hollywood Ending. It comes out on September 22nd. Signed copies are available for preorder now wherever you get your books. So let's answer some questions from our listeners.

• 5:08Hank Green?

  This first one comes from Hollywood Ending. I'd no, sorry. Petra is their name. Dear Anka John, I recently bought new shoes and I've ended up with a collection of scabs across my feet. It's made me wonder, why is the healing process always so itchy? I'm starting with a science question, John. It's almost like the body doesn't want to actually heal. Come on. Every time I scratch the scabs, sometimes I just can't help it. I end up with a wound and that has to start the healing process all over again. Not to mention the risk of getting infected. Why are our bodies sabotaging us in this way? It feels like a huge evolutionary design flaw. Thank you for your answer. I've been really scratching my brain about this. Petra. Don't scratch your brain, by the way. That's really to be avoided.

• 5:49John Green?

  God, that sounds painful.

• 5:52Hank Green?

  I actually bet you wouldn't feel it.

• 5:54John Green?

  Worse. That sounds worse.

• 5:58John Green?

  So Hank, I have a theory about this and you're gonna come up with some evolutionary reason why we have to itch or whatever, but like, I have a theory about this, which is that we often forget that evolution isn't finished. It isn't perfect. It got good enough. It was like, this is good enough to sustain this form of life and that's all we need to be. We don't need to be better than good.

• 6:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. No, I think that, I think that there's like, that is certainly one line of thinking on this topic particularly where it's like, okay, so what's happening is there's a bunch of immune cells doing immune cell things. And when they do their thing, they release histamine and that has advantages for wound healing and stuff, but it also makes it itchy. And, and, and like that. Should, like in an ideal world, maybe those two things wouldn't be tied together, but they are. But there's like a reason why this itchiness happens, that maybe just to call attention to, to a part of the body that needs some assistance.

• 6:56John Green?

  No.

• 6:56Hank Green?

  But it's just not a good, it's just not like a good signal.

• 6:59John Green?

  I don't agree. No, because all it does is reopen the wound.

• 7:02Hank Green?

  Right. No, I don't mean in like the, in, in the, in the situation of a-

• 7:06John Green?

  Oh, you mean cellularly?

• 7:08Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, like itchiness sometimes provides an advantage. Like if you get, if something's currently biting you, you want to be like, ah, and like, like know that that's going on. But then like your immune cells are just making a thing happen that is not, in this case, providing any value. There might be some value to sort of being aware of the injury, but like you'd think that pain would do that on its own. You wouldn't need itchiness to go along with it.

• 7:32John Green?

  I think the itch instinct is so overrated.

• 7:36Hank Green?

  It's just so, like, it's so not understood. It is a real mystery.

• 7:40John Green?

  And it's misery.

• 7:42Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:43John Green?

  Like, people who itch all the time, it's misery.

• 7:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:48John Green?

  You know this because you've had shingles for the last-

• 7:49Hank Green?

  My shingles continues to itch. Um, and it is not so bad that I am in anything like misery. I can, I can mostly not scratch it, but, um, it's crazy and it was so much worse.

• 8:01John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Hank Green?

  It was bad. And indeed I did injure myself through scratching, which is not uncommon with shingles.

• 8:06John Green?

  Wow.

• 8:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:08John Green?

  Wow. Yeah, it's real. I mean, it, it, I'm sure it's possible to resist the urge to scratch an itch. I've just never done it.

• 8:16Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's possible to do it, uh, when the, like when it's a mild itch, but like eventually it gets so intense, like it's crazy. You're just completely, there's no way to control the body.

• 8:29John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 8:31Hank Green?

  It's such a strong impulse.

• 8:33John Green?

  You know what else is a strong impulse, Hank?

• 8:34Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 8:36John Green?

  The impulse to write acknowledgements when you write a novel. This next question comes from Hallie, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I just finished listening to the audiobook of the glass house, the glass hotel. Sorry. Sorry, Emily St. John Mandell, uh, which is very good. And I realized that I have not heard the acknowledgements read as part of an audiobook. Why are the acknowledgements always cut out of audiobooks? John said he might not do acknowledgements in his new book Hollywood Ending, available for preorder now. Thank you, Hallie. But have all his previous acknowledgements already been cut from his audiobooks? Thinking of all the people who have been thanked in print, but not through audio, hallelujah.

• 9:09Hank Green?

  I had never even noticed. I feel like sometimes there's acknowledgements in audiobooks.

• 9:14John Green?

  Very rarely.

• 9:15Hank Green?

  Usually not, yeah.

• 9:16John Green?

  Usually there are not acknowledgements. And I remember with the, if I remember correctly, with the Fault in Our Stars audiobook, they had me come in and read the little author's note, which was like an attempt to scold the reader away from reading my biography into the novel, which of course

• 9:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:31John Green?

  was wildly unsuccessful.

• 9:32Hank Green?

  Best of luck.

• 9:34John Green?

  Um, I've thought about writing a similar one, scold the author's note for this novel and realized that I have no chance of success.

• 9:43Hank Green?

  I don't know. I don't know. You can communicate something. I, but like, you don't, you also don't want to end like, ruin the end of the book, you know? It's like the book should be about the book and not like turn the page and then suddenly I'm drawn out of it. That's what I would worry more about.

• 9:57John Green?

  That's why the acknowledgements in this book are very brief, and I think they're going to be on the copyright page. Now, the copyright page is

• 10:03Hank Green?

  Oh, in the beginning.

• 10:03John Green?

  The copyright page is pretty full.

• 10:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:06John Green?

  So I don't exactly know what I'm gonna do. I put the acknowledgements at the beginning of Looking for Alaska, my first novel, and I thought that worked pretty well. Cause I just, what I don't like is you get to the end of a novel and you're having this experience, like if it works, right? Like the great thing about reading a novel is you get to the end of it and you wish you could spend more time with these characters and like you're really grateful to have met them and like you feel really moved and you feel like you're living in a fictional universe and you're inside of someone else's mind and it's just a magical feeling. And then you turn the page and it's like, my agent is amazing.

• 10:40Hank Green?

  I've got two, I've got two solutions for this problem that I'm excited about.

• 10:44John Green?

  Okay, give it to me. Cause I, I need this advice right now.

• 10:47Hank Green?

  So one is you put the acknowledgements right in the middle of the book. You're like, alright, so just, just while, like, so, so we're in between part one and part two, when you've sort of like

• 10:59John Green?

  A huge cliffhanger.

• 11:00Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, at a moment when you've got them. You know, you're like, I don't want to interrupt you at the end of the book. I want you to have some time to think, but while I've got you, my agent is amazing. And then, but my second idea is for the audiobook specifically. Here's my idea. I like this idea. You have the characters from the book do a podcast about all of the people that you want to acknowledge.

• 11:25John Green?

  Oh, that's good. It's good. It's like a 40 minute add on to the, to the original book in which.

• 11:33Hank Green?

  You just like hire some actors to play the part of the characters.

• 11:37John Green?

  Already hired actors to play the parts, right? So like Hollywood ending has two narrators.

• 11:41Hank Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 11:42John Green?

  And there's going to be two narrators for the audiobook, I assume. And then, so you just have them have a conversation about how great my agent is. Jodi Reamer, by the way, she is great.

• 11:51Hank Green?

  Exactly. Yeah. Yes. A hundred percent that. Uh, but they could also talk about some other stuff, other book stuff. It's like, it's like a podcast epilogue.

• 12:01John Green?

  Do you have a favorite audiobook narrator?

• 12:04Hank Green?

  Uh, no, no, no.

• 12:05John Green?

  Okay. So I do. And I'm trying to get, I'll, I won't say her name, but it's a her. I'm trying to get her to do the juniper parts of the Hollywood ending audiobook.

• 12:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:18John Green?

  And I am so stinking nervous. I feel like I'm trying to like cast a movie with, I don't, you know, Julia Roberts or Laura Dern or whatever in it. You know, like, like I'm going, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm swinging for the fences here, Hank.

• 12:37Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I sent Helen Hunt my, my book and I told her she would be great for the agent in that book. Jennifer Putnam. And she was like, I hate her. That would be great. I would love to play that part.

• 12:50John Green?

  She read the book?

• 12:51Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 12:52John Green?

  Helen Hunt read your book?

• 12:54Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 12:55John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 12:56Hank Green?

  Yeah. So, so if, if, if, uh, so, so I guess whoever put, takes the book out next to try and get it made into a.

• 13:04John Green?

  Has Helen Hunt already attached?

• 13:06Hank Green?

  Helen Hunt's attached.

• 13:07John Green?

  I have, um.

• 13:10John Green?

  Our shared agent in Hollywood, Cassie Eveshevsky, who's also great. She deserves to be in the acknowledgements, even though she won't be because there will be no acknowledgements. Maybe this is the acknowledgements episode.

• 13:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:22John Green?

  Maybe I'll just do acknowledgements here. I want to acknowledge Hank Green, my parents. They did a great job. My spouse, my children, who sacrificed so much in the writing of this book, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway.

• 13:37John Green?

  Cassie is always like, why are agents in all books always such terrible people? Because, you know.

• 13:45Hank Green?

  Cassie's not a terrible person.

• 13:46John Green?

  Cassie's not a terrible person at all. And, and in fact, like she read my new book and she was like, she was like, well, I mean, I loved it. But I, and I, and I did feel like you at least made the agent a human.

• 14:01John Green?

  And I was like, thank you, Cassie. And she was like, I didn't always like him, but I liked him occasionally, which is more than can be said for most agents in books.

• 14:09Hank Green?

  I mean, I remember my VidCon's agent, Brent, reading my book. And, and I, I was like, does this sound like something agents would do? And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:20John Green?

  Oh, yeah, no, I mean.

• 14:21Hank Green?

  I do all, I do any of that.

• 14:23John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Hank Green?

  Not just other agents, me.

• 14:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:30John Green?

  What does Matthew Malone say in Hollywood ending? They're snakes, but they're my snakes?

• 14:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:38John Green?

  But they're only your snakes so long as they think that you're.

• 14:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:41John Green?

  Worth it.

• 14:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, Matthew Malone doesn't have to worry about that anymore.

• 14:45John Green?

  He sure doesn't.

• 14:48John Green?

  He's got it all figured out.

• 14:50Hank Green?

  He's, he's done it.

• 14:51John Green?

  He's done it. He made it. He made it to the top of the mountain. Um, we're talking about a book no one can read for three months.

• 14:59Hank Green?

  But, but the pre-orders are very important. So if you're feeling at all excited about it.

• 15:03John Green?

  Pre-orders are very important. All right. This next question comes from Jess. He writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a mom with young, four young kids. Oh.

• 15:11Hank Green?

  Ah, you know.

• 15:13John Green?

  That's great. I mean, it's exciting. It's fun.

• 15:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, Benjamin Franklin's mom did it.

• 15:19John Green?

  Yes, but I, I think to get to Jess's question, we'll find that Benjamin Franklin's mom had to make a lot of sacrifices in the process. I've always been a writer and writing is such a bone deep desire that I can't let it go, but how do I do it? I have no time. When the kids do go to bed, I'm exhausted, so I can barely write or read or anything that would be deemed productive. I know y'all don't have four kids, but parent to parent, how do you do what you love when you also love your kids and want to give them your best? No rest, just Jess. It's a good name to put the sign off.

• 15:49Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. I have, I have no idea how, what it would be like to be a parent or mother of four young children. Uh, but I do know the feeling of being like, I, I thought I was going to write today, but I, I am so bone tired. I just, it's just not going to happen. Yeah. And that's like, that's just a truth. And that's like, that can be a limitation of life. Like, sometimes a problem exists and it is not really there to be solved and there's other value. But it does sound like you really want to be doing this. I find with a, a, a surprising amount of creativity in storytelling, which, and almost like, I, I remember.

• 16:34Hank Green?

  I used to tell Orin a story every night that I just sort of make up on the spot. And, and I, I recently asked him if he like missed those stories because he's like getting older and like, we don't tell those kinds of stories anymore. And we read like, you know, chapter books and, and he was like, yeah, like, like no more bugs. And I was like, oh, that's the one that stuck with you? And, uh, which was about a space station. And, and that was like literally me telling a kid version of a book that I was writing and probably will never finish. And, uh, and that was like really interesting work to try and tell the kid version. Because it like, set me up to explore the, the story in a different way and explore the universe in a different way.

• 17:17Hank Green?

  And, uh, and like also the physical space of that world, you know, like of the space station. And, and, and it was like pretty inspiring to me. Now, it's not the same as sitting down and writing all that stuff down, but it is like kind of still doing the work.

• 17:35John Green?

  Well, hopefully it exercises some of the same muscle, right? And then also allows you to build a little bit of a world so that when it comes time to. Or when you do have time to write, if you have time to write, then you can do that.

• 17:49Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:51John Green?

  Practically, you know, when my kids were really little and Crash Course was taking off and taking up a huge amount of time. And the kids were not, I mean, they're still not self sufficient, but like they're, they would argue that they're self sufficient. You know, like, um, and that was not always the case, like when the kids were like two and six and I was spending all day on Crash Course and had absolutely no time to write. I did write less, right? Like functionally, I think you're right, Hank. Like I wrote less and that's okay. And but the way that I kept the muscle exercising was one, telling stories and two, waking up early. And

• 18:35Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:35John Green?

  I woke up early because I wanted to.

• 18:40John Green?

  But it's really, really hard when the kids don't go to bed till 11 to wake up at six or five or whenever you have to wake up to get an hour to write. But I do find that an hour is often enough.

• 18:49Hank Green?

  Right.

• 18:50John Green?

  If I can find an hour, it gets me, that gets me the thing that I need in order, not, not necessarily about finishing a book or publishing a book or whatever, but like the thing that I need to feel well, like just as I have a bone deep desire and can't let it go and like it would feed that, that need.

• 19:08Hank Green?

  Right. Yeah. Um, also, speaking of Helen Hunt, she was on my podcast. It'll be the episode, not this week, but next. Uh, but I talked to her and, and she yelled at me for having never read Bird by Bird. So I started, I've started reading Bird by Bird and I would suggest Bird by Bird.

• 19:25John Green?

  By Anne Lamott?

• 19:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, when it, when it comes to, uh, figuring out how to, how to like make in a busy world.

• 19:32John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. In that book, she talks about emptying the well, which is a metaphor I use a lot.

• 19:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Hank Green?

  It was crazy getting yelled at. She yelled at me so much.

• 19:43John Green?

  Did she? Was she anti Hank Green?

• 19:45Hank Green?

  No. She, what she, what she said was like, you know, everything I don't know, and I know everything you don't know. She was like, you know, nothing. You know, nothing about literature. It's, I was like, you are correct. That is right.

• 19:57John Green?

  You do know nothing about literature. That's true.

• 19:59Hank Green?

  She kept being shocked by this.

• 20:01John Green?

  Yeah, you are not, um, well, I was gonna say you're not well read, but in fact, you're just differently read, right? Like, it's not that you don't read, it's that you uh, read different stuff than Helen Hunt and I read. And

• 20:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't think Helen Hunt's read, there is no anti-memetics division. Like, that's just not

• 20:21John Green?

  Right, exactly. Exactly. So, so there's a different, there's just a different canon, and that's okay. I'm not gonna yell at you about that.

• 20:30Hank Green?

  Thank you. I appreciate it, and I would not expect you to. This next question comes from Bailey, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm a flight attendant and I often find myself staring out of the windows of planes. I'm wondering why, if we're traveling at such high speeds, does it not look like we are speeding past the clouds? On takeoff and landing, you can tell we're going extremely fast, but no matter how close the clouds seem to be, we just drift through them. Boeing really fast, Bailey.

• 20:58John Green?

  I have noticed this as well, and I have no idea what's going on, because you're not always traveling in the direction the clouds are traveling.

• 21:06Hank Green?

  No, no, no, that's not it. Sometimes you're traveling the opposite direction.

• 21:09John Green?

  Yeah, like when you're going into a headwind or whatever. So not only are you going 700 miles an hour, but there's like a 200 mile an hour headwind, and yet it looks like the clouds are just floating on past.

• 21:19Hank Green?

  They do, even when you're quite close to them. So like, so there's, there's a few things, DeBocchi and I yelled at each other about this. We, we could not figure out the answer to this question.

• 21:29John Green?

  You've been having a lot of fights with women.

• 21:33Hank Green?

  We didn't, we didn't yell.

• 21:35John Green?

  Okay.

• 21:36Hank Green?

  We, uh, we disagreed.

• 21:38John Green?

  With a different, different set of language.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  Helen yelled at me.

• 21:41John Green?

  Helen Hunt screamed at me and then Duboki and I were having a massive argument and I'm like.

• 21:47Hank Green?

  Had a real blow up over cloud speed.

• 21:51Hank Green?

  So, so we're not sure. One thing to note is that you are not going full plane speed when you're going through clouds pretty much ever. So cruising altitude is going to be way up above the clouds that you tend to fly through. You're going to slow down a long way a lot on the way down, or you're going to be in the process of speeding up on the way up when you actually go through the cloud layer that you tend to will go, go through on a plane. So you're not going a full 500 miles per hour. Regardless though, even on the ground, you're going much slower than that and it feels like you're going very fast. I think that, that this is in large part because we know what it's, it looks like to go fast on the ground. We know what all the stuff looks like when it's speeding past. But we don't know what clouds look like. Like we wouldn't, we don't know what clouds would look like if we were going slow.

• 22:36John Green?

  No.

• 22:37Hank Green?

  Weirdly structured. They're not human scale objects.

• 22:42John Green?

  What did Duboki say? Cause I'm inclined to agree with Duboki.

• 22:48Hank Green?

  Um, Duboki said that it is difficult to find a reference point for your speed.

• 22:54John Green?

  That feels more right to me.

• 22:56Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 22:56John Green?

  Than we're used to because, because when I'm driving on the highway, the trees are going by very, very fast because I have a reference point in the tree. The cloud is so big and diffuse that I don't have a reference point within the cloud. If there was like, you know, a, a, a dot of pink within the cloud, it would zoom past the.

• 23:18Hank Green?

  Right. Yeah.

• 23:19John Green?

  The airplane, but there is no dot of pink.

• 23:22Hank Green?

  And these things are, are related in that like if, if I think that if we kind of had a scale for what a cloud actually looked like.

• 23:31John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Hank Green?

  Then maybe it would feel faster, but they're so big that we don't get it.

• 23:37John Green?

  That's what I think.

• 23:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:38John Green?

  I think you're entering into, I mean, I think like I, I saw a Tik Tok, so.

• 23:46John Green?

  I hate myself already. I hate myself three seconds into this.

• 23:49Hank Green?

  I knew it.

• 23:49John Green?

  See a TikTok?

• 23:51Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 23:52John Green?

  I saw a TikTok. That a cloud weighed like 1.1 million tons.

• 23:57Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:58John Green?

  And I was like, which cloud?

• 24:00Hank Green?

  Right, for sure.

• 24:01John Green?

  That seems like a, you know, I've seen. I've seen little clouds and I've seen big clouds. And so I Googled it and I did a little bit of research and turns out like clouds can weigh 1.1 million tons. They can also weigh other weights because it depends a lot on the cloud.

• 24:16Hank Green?

  Sounds like you've looked at clouds from both sides now.

• 24:18John Green?

  I've looked at clouds.

• 24:20Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 24:20John Green?

  Both sides now.

• 24:23Hank Green?

  Yes. The big and small. So one of the things that you could do to see how fast you're going on a plane is if you find your the plane's shadow on the ground and then you're like, look at us going.

• 24:31John Green?

  But you can't do that if you're in the clouds, buddy.

• 24:34Hank Green?

  It's true. It's true.

• 24:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Hank Green?

  But, you know, if you're on, if you work on a plane, then you're gonna get the out opportunity sometimes. I like the idea that the flight attendants are looking out of the plane and being like, oh, look at the.

• 24:45John Green?

  Well, it's just nice to be in, to remember that flight attendants are also astonished by the miracle of flight.

• 24:51Hank Green?

  Uh, yeah, I certainly am.

• 24:54John Green?

  I am. Every time I get on an airplane, I'm like, this is amazing. I hope I don't crash. And this is amazing. I just want you to know, by the way, that if I die in an airport or on an airplane, I died doing something I hated.

• 25:09John Green?

  Something that like.

• 25:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:11John Green?

  I did way more than almost every other human being, but I never really enjoyed.

• 25:17Hank Green?

  I do. I like, I like being the, the part where you're pretty close to the ground, especially if you're over a city. I like that part.

• 25:25John Green?

  Yeah, it's nice to see. It's nice to see the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from above and everything, but like, and I'm very, very grateful for the well-trained pilots and flight attendants who make travel safe and comfortable and everything. It's not, it's not that I'm not grateful for it. I'm incredibly grateful for the fact that it no longer takes eight days and, and the entire Oregon Trail to get to, uh, Los Angeles from here. But more than eight days, actually, 40 days, whatever. I haven't played Oregon Trail in a while. Point being, I'm very grateful, yada, yada, yada. I am. I just have never learned to love.

• 26:03John Green?

  Being in a metal cylinder, 35,000 feet above the air, uh, ground with 250 strangers.

• 26:12Hank Green?

  Yeah, I guess I can see that.

• 26:15John Green?

  You want to know something amazing, Hank?

• 26:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, sure.

• 26:18John Green?

  Before we move on from this, and this will amaze Jess as well.

• 26:22John Green?

  I have a real shot this year of achieving the top status, like the diamond status on all three major American airlines.

• 26:35Hank Green?

  Oh, God.

• 26:36John Green?

  United, American, and Delta. I already have it on Delta. I'm already platinum on American, and I'm platinum on Sil- on, uh, on, uh, United.

• 26:46Hank Green?

  Oh, God. It's fu- like, I, I only, I almost always fly United, and I'm nowhere near. I, what are you doing?

• 26:54John Green?

  Going to England.

• 26:56Hank Green?

  Oh, watching football.

• 26:58John Green?

  Yeah, that'll do it. But also, like, I, you know, I'm gonna go on a book tour, so I'm gonna take like 40 flights in 30 days.

• 27:05Hank Green?

  Oh, you're not, you're not getting a, you're not getting a bus?

• 27:07John Green?

  I asked for a bus. They said no.

• 27:09Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 27:10John Green?

  They said it's very inconvenient to try to organize a tour around where a bus can go in eight hours.

• 27:17Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, it's somewhat inconvenient, for sure.

• 27:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Hank Green?

  Um, and I guess you don't have to, like, bring all your musical equipment with you the way that bands do.

• 27:26John Green?

  No, I don't have that excuse.

• 27:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:29John Green?

  So no bus for me this time. It's gonna be United, American, and Delta.

• 27:32Hank Green?

  You should have more paraphernalia. You should have, you should have, like, pyrotechnics. You're sorry, I have to be in a bus. We gotta bring the pianos.

• 27:41John Green?

  Remember in 2012 when we toured the country in a Sprinter van and we, uh, we had all that merch that we were using to essentially pay you because you weren't getting paid for the month and a half or whatever that we were on the road?

• 27:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:55John Green?

  And so you would get the, you'd get the money from selling T-shirts and CDs?

• 27:59Hank Green?

  I loved it.

• 28:01John Green?

  Did you?

• 28:02Hank Green?

  I loved it. I did.

• 28:03John Green?

  Let's do it again, man.

• 28:05Hank Green?

  No, I didn't love it that much.

• 28:07John Green?

  You didn't love it that much.

• 28:11Hank Green?

  We are going to be doing a fancy live event and I'm going to be doing a fancy live event in Los Angeles coming up, but I can't tell you about it yet.

• 28:19John Green?

  Whoa, I didn't, I don't, I haven't heard about this.

• 28:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, you know about it.

• 28:23John Green?

  I can't hear about it. I don't.

• 28:23Hank Green?

  It's a Complexly thing. It's the Complexly thing. You know about this. You know it?

• 28:28John Green?

  Nope. Don't, don't know about this. And cut.

• 28:46John Green?

  Oh, interesting.

• 28:48Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:48John Green?

  All right, cool. And we're back. Hank told me what it was. It sounds exciting.

• 28:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that it will be a very good time, but it will also be a fundraiser, so the tickets will cost money.

• 28:59John Green?

  All right. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Things Hank Hasn't Announced Yet. Somehow, a list longer even than the things Hank has announced.

• 29:10Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by the miracle of flight. The miracle of flight. That's enough.

• 29:19John Green?

  And today's podcast is brought to you by being a parent with, of four kids. Being a parent of four kids, you still need to feed the meter, but it's hard.

• 29:30Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by agents. They're snakes, but they're my snakes. 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 going to be both comfortable and I'm just going to look good in it. It's going to go well with my khakis or my jeans or my third kind of pant that I, I have like a, or 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.

• 30:13Hank Green?

  This morning, I put on this jacket that I'm currently wearing with just a white t-shirt and I knew immediately, this is going to work. I went downstairs and Catherine was like, "Look at that nice jacket. Where'd that 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

• 30:56Hank Green?

  easy to spell Quince. Quince.com. I feel tempted to make up a tagline for them, but that's not what they want me to do. I shouldn't do that.

• 31:09John 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

• 31:50John Green?

  never actually comes. 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 n-o-c-d.com. That's n-o-c-d.com.

• 32:37John Green?

  Somebody observed to me at a wedding recently where there were a bunch of agents and all the agents looked exactly like agents, like, you know, some of them were in suits and some of them were in dresses, but they all looked exactly like agents, that no one looks more like themselves than an agent, which I just think is so deeply true.

• 33:02John Green?

  But it's for a limited audience.

• 33:03Hank Green?

  I feel like we're being very, it's, we're being mean, but at the same time, they're doing fine.

• 33:08John Green?

  Yeah, by the way, agents listening to this are just nodding along, Hank, in their literal suits.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:16John Green?

  With their haircuts they got in the last two weeks.

• 33:22Hank Green?

  My accountant is like that. I've never seen him without a fresh cut.

• 33:26John Green?

  I'll tell you what, I am impressed against my will by people who always have a fresh cut.

• 33:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, I gotta ask him. I've never really thought about that before, but I saw him at the grocery store yesterday and I was like, there he is, looking fresh.

• 33:41John Green?

  All right, we got another question. This one's from Mary who writes, Dear John and Hank, recently a book I liked was called out on Tumblr. It's not my favorite book and some of the criticisms are reasonable, but it's very clear that a lot of the criticism is bad faith, or more generously, people who don't understand that their opinions are not universal. It's been bringing up a lot of unpleasant thoughts, like what if the author chooses not to write the sequel to what if I try to make something I like and end up being dog piled for it being imperfect, to if there's any point being on the internet at all, when it always seems to turn out like this. It does always seem to turn out like this, doesn't it, Mary? Like, no matter how much a book is loved, or how much a TV show is loved, or how much an actor is loved, it does seem like there's always a dog pile on the other side of it unless your dolly partner, Keanu Reeves.

• 34:27Hank Green?

  They've figured it out.

• 34:28John Green?

  Yeah, but I bet it's very possible that in between, in the five days between when we record this and when it gets uploaded, it's dolly partner, Keanu Reeves will do something terrible and everybody on Tumblr will hate them. Anyway, Mary writes, as experts on Tumblr hate.

• 34:45John Green?

  And experts on seeing someone you care about get hit with unfounded criticism. Do you have any dubious advice? I wish this topic was more Mary.

• 34:53Hank Green?

  Aw, cute.

• 34:56John Green?

  Well, Hank, what do you think? I mean, when a book I love gets called out on Tumblr, I just, I have to confess that I love the book a little more quietly because I don't want to, I don't want to be that person who catches all the strays, as the kids say.

• 35:12Hank Green?

  Yeah, no one likes catching strays, which makes it harder to love things in public generally. Like even if you, even if you haven't heard criticism of something, you're like, I don't know, is there somewhere a bunch of people who like are telling me that this is actually a bad thing?

• 35:25John Green?

  Right.

• 35:25Hank Green?

  And so that, that can be tricky and then you don't, you don't ever get to love stuff in public. And, and I've certainly posted about like my appreciation for something and then been told that, in fact, I shouldn't be appreciating it. Though I am very online, everybody. You probably don't have to worry about this, but it's a messy world. The, the first step for me is like checking in and being like, okay, how do I actually feel about this? This is very hard, of course, because if it's inside of the sort of circle of, of, you know, the mosh pit of frustrations and good and bad faith criticism, it's like one of the hardest things about being an internet person is knowing when the criticisms are good faith and, and even when they're bad faith, when like, you know, nonetheless, maybe

• 36:10Hank Green?

  there's like a nugget of truth there that you have to take seriously.

• 36:13John Green?

  Right. A bad faith criticism that you can learn from, that you need to learn from is actually not that rare. But it's really hard to disentangle all those threads when someone is being kind of, kind of mean.

• 36:33Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. This is, so here's something that I think about in this space. When somebody is like a really big and powerful deal in the world, it's, there's both incentive and like reason to ask, you know, is this like, could this, could this be, you know, having a harm that we don't, wouldn't initially imagine?

• 36:53John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Hank Green?

  But it feels like that now happens at every level, like, or that people think that, that like a book is a big deal when it's not, you know?

• 37:03John Green?

  Right.

• 37:04Hank Green?

  It could, it could be a big deal in a very small community and then you end up sort of treating something like it's the Da Vinci Code when it is in fact, you know?

• 37:13Hank Green?

  Uh, some example that I'm not going to give because I don't want people to think I'm pointing out a bad book. Um, or it could also seem like this is the kind of content that's just easier to pay attention to. Like, like, hearing this thing you thought was good is actually maybe bad. It's just something it feels like I must be compelled to check on that.

• 37:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Hank Green?

  And so that stuff thrives and it grows and, and people find that they, that, that like, you know, when you're making on the internet, the things that you feel compelled to make do tend to be the ones that get viewed more. And that's a frame that gets viewed more and it just feels like that it feeds itself in a way that is not, um, productive and also like makes the universe scary. It makes it scary for the creators. It makes it scary for future creators. It makes it scary for, for people who love things.

• 38:05John Green?

  Right.

• 38:06Hank Green?

  It's not great. I don't know what to do about it, but it's not great.

• 38:08John Green?

  It also becomes a barrier to creativity in a profound way that, you know, you have the little bird sitting on your shoulder whispering, don't cause harm.

• 38:22Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 38:23John Green?

  And

• 38:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:24John Green?

  Some of it is like, good, right? Like you don't want to cause harm, especially when you're going to write a book that's going to have outsized impact. Um, or it might have outsized impact and you don't usually know if you're going to do that when you're writing a book. So like, it's not just that people say, oh, this book is bad, which is what used to happen, right? It used to be like in the, in the eighties and nineties, people would fight over whether books were bad. Whether or not they achieved their literary ambitions, whether or not. But now they more, we more discuss whether or not a book is harmful. And that's a much harder conversation to have because if you're saying that like, a book caused harm, it becomes much harder to defend the book.

• 39:03John Green?

  But also, um, it just, it, it, it takes it out of the world of a literary conversation and into the world of, you're either making someone's life better or you're making someone's life worse. And if you're making people's life worse, it's not just that your art is bad, it's that your art probably shouldn't exist.

• 39:20Hank Green?

  Right. Yeah, I mean, it's like everything on the internet, I feel like it's pushing it to the to the highest level of intensity.

• 39:28John Green?

  Yeah, well, which makes sense, right? Because it's at the highest level of intensity that we pay the most attention. And especially because the sort of like semi-professional provocateurs, who the only way they get attention is by pushing the envelope, by claiming increasingly, you know, sort of out their arguments or whatever. Like, I think about this in the context of my lieutenant governor, my nemesis, Micah Beckwith, who recently said that schools teaching that hate is bad is one of the worst things that ever happened in America. Because I guess he's he's pro hate, broadly speaking. Micah Beckwith is one of those like fourth tier Tucker Carlsen's that wants to be Tucker Carlson when he grows up, but like when he goes to sleep at night, he secretly knows that he doesn't have whatever meager

• 40:13John Green?

  talents Tucker Carlson possesses, so it's not gonna happen for him.

• 40:16Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:17John Green?

  And and the only job he's ever had, literally, is a library board where he banned books all day, and then he somehow finagled that into being the lieutenant governor of Indiana. And

• 40:29John Green?

  Sorry, I lost my temper.

• 40:30Hank Green?

  I think I think he's probably thought about this some, everybody.

• 40:34John Green?

  I'm sorry, I lost my temper.

• 40:35Hank Green?

  So he was so so he, yes.

• 40:37John Green?

  He came out pro hate, Hank. He came out in favor of hatred, a bold political position. But one of those things that when you're a professional provocateur, you have to push it further and further and further, and eventually you push it there, right? You push it to the place where you're because because ultimately, he's just a moth that flies to the light of power. And the the light of power tells him, push it further and further and further, no matter how far you have to push it to continue getting attention, because attention is the currency.

• 41:06Hank Green?

  I was talking to a professor at a fancy business school, and she was saying that, like, this is the first time, this is like, the worst it's been with kids not feeling that they can speak in class.

• 41:20John Green?

  Hmm.

• 41:21Hank Green?

  Like, they're they're scared to to have opinions out loud.

• 41:25John Green?

  Hmm.

• 41:25Hank Green?

  And I remember being like, you know, not not quiet, but like scared to have opinions out loud. Like, it's always a little scared to speak publicly. But but now she's just like, she can't, it's it's increasingly difficult for her to inspire conversation. There will be times when like two or three kids will come to her. Like they can have those conversations where it's like, like, like very small groups. But in front of a whole classroom, people just don't feel safe to do it. And I, I, I bet it's not, but I bet like, I worry that we have been trained by the internet to keep our dang mouths shut. Because we never, we never quite know what could be the fiery pit that we kick.

• 42:08John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, look, some of it is good.

• 42:10Hank Green?

  I, I Yeah, for sure.

• 42:12John Green?

  Push back against that. Some of it is good. Like you don't want to be hurtful. You don't want to cause harm with your comments in class or in a book or whatever.

• 42:22Hank Green?

  Right. I mean, I think that like you, in a book, like, but in class, like, I think that, I think that you should be able to say a dumb thing and learn why it's dumb. Instead of just keeping it to yourself and, and holding on to it and, and feeling like, like this loathing that you can never say the true thing. Because when you say the true thing out loud, often, or the thing that you think is true out loud, oftentimes what you find is that it's more complicated than that.

• 42:46John Green?

  Yeah, but you have to be able to say it out loud in order to understand that it's wrong. And yeah, I think to some extent that's true in making art as well. Right. Like you have to be able to take risks. You have to be able to be wrong. You have to be able to be dated. Because you, you're trying to speak to your moment, not to any other moment. And so I think that's what we've sacrificed in the pursuit of, you know, that, that we, we, we cause less harm with the way that we talk about each other and ourselves.

• 43:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, and I've certainly read things, read a book and then read an analysis of a book and been like, oh, wow, I bet I would have seen this through different eyes if I wasn't a white guy. And so I'm glad that I got that perspective.

• 43:31John Green?

  Right. Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean, I, you know, I, the way that I read has changed so much and in such a positive way as a result of being exposed to different lenses of literary criticism. But that only happened because I was allowed to be wrong, because I was allowed, because I, because I had a, because I was allowed to have a starting point, you know?

• 43:57Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 44:00Hank Green?

  I do hope that the sequel gets written, Mary.

• 44:04Hank Green?

  And I do think that there's some value to being on the internet. I suppose.

• 44:09John Green?

  I also hope the sequel gets written, but I'm not sure about Hank's second point.

• 44:14John Green?

  I'm genuinely not. I don't know.

• 44:15Hank Green?

  I agree. I mean, look, here's what I, here's what I think. I think that the internet is very dangerous and in, and in 200 years, we'll be glad that it happened. But for now, it's a real mixed bag.

• 44:26John Green?

  I don't think it's good to be, I think if you can not be on it, you should not be on it.

• 44:31John Green?

  But I know that you think it's more complicated than that. But it's interesting. I'm willing to say my opinion about the internet in a way that I'm not willing to say my opinion about a lot of things.

• 44:39Hank Green?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 44:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Hank Green?

  I was just thinking about that with, with Spotify. So I was like walking up the stairs of my house and I was thinking about Spotify and how people are like mad at Spotify for not giving enough money to artists and.

• 44:52John Green?

  Oh, God.

• 44:53Hank Green?

  Think.

• 44:53John Green?

  Are you coming in with a hot take? Even after my Micah Beckwith hot take? That wasn't enough? You're coming in with a secondary hot take?

• 44:59Hank Green?

  I think that there's every legitimate reason to.

• 45:01John Green?

  You're gonna come out pro Spotify?

• 45:03Hank Green?

  To critique Spotify, though I think that we should also critique the labels that take a lot of money when maybe they don't so much deserve it. But, uh, but, but I, I just like compare that to the critiques that we gave to Napster, which did not exist and gave artists literally nothing. And when Metallica was like, you guys need to stop stealing music. It's bad. We were like, Metallica sucks now.

• 45:26John Green?

  Yeah, we were like, Metallica is a bunch of sellouts.

• 45:31John Green?

  I know. I know. It's true. We were really like in college, I was really strongly pro Napster.

• 45:39Hank Green?

  Yeah. And now, and now we're like, I can't believe a company pays artists, but not enough.

• 45:44John Green?

  And Napster destroyed a lot of careers. It really did.

• 45:47Hank Green?

  And there's so many, so many people who, who got distribution on Napster and, and thus have like a little piece of the cultural imagination, but like, made a whole fat goose egg from it.

• 45:59John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, and I would be resentful if I was one of those people, right? Like, I mean, uh, my books are widely pirated, but only because they're widely sold. And in the case of Napster, stuff was widely pirated that also wasn't widely sold.

• 46:14Hank Green?

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. So many people were just Napster artists. Yeah.

• 46:17John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like they were selling like a million tickets to shows and stuff like that either.

• 46:23Hank Green?

  How would anybody find out about them? Yeah. I don't know. That's not what we were doing. We, yeah.

• 46:28John Green?

  Right.

• 46:29Hank Green?

  It's, it's, it's just that, that parallel is interesting to me in as much as like, we should understand, one, you know, that, that critiquing a corporation is, is valid. But two, like, the, the structures that make us not like something are, are different from the structures of whether or not they cause harm.

• 46:50John Green?

  And also the times change so much.

• 46:54Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 46:54John Green?

  Like so much changes with different, in different moments and, and with different perspectives. And it's easy to lose track of that and think that like my current time and my current worldview is the only worldview I'll ever have and is completely and totally in line with reality.

• 47:11Hank Green?

  Sure, yeah.

• 47:12John Green?

  And that's just not the case.

• 47:13Hank Green?

  Right. Like, we were wrong about Napster, and I hate saying it. I hate saying it. But we were like, I was like, no, this is fine. I can tell because I like it.

• 47:31Hank Green?

  I was just, I'm like, I was wrong. I was like.

• 47:34John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, lots of things that feel good are bad. Take it, take it from me as a former smoker.

• 47:43John Green?

  Lots of things that feel good are bad and really, really hard to quit. And, uh, the internet is one of them, for me, anyway. All right, Hank, it's time to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's the news from Mars this week?

• 47:55Hank Green?

  In Mars news, scientists have used crystals to learn more about changes in Mars's ancient climate, and they did it by holding the crystal up to their heart and asking, "What?" That's not what they did. Curiosity Rover has been collecting samples from Gale Crater for a long time, and scientists have studied these samples and found that they had a crystal called hematite, which was not surprising because these crystals tend to form in the presence of water activity. But they also found that the crystals were bigger in samples collected from lower elevations compared to ones at higher elevations. It is crazy how much we can learn from all, like such tiny amounts of data that we get from these

• 48:37Hank Green?

  rovers. So they found that at lower elevations, there was less of a mineral called geotite than usually forms alongside hematite. And together, those results suggest that the deepest parts of Gale Crater probably had warm groundwater that could have been present for up to 4.7 million years. And at these lower elevations, the warmer water would have caused geotite to turn into hematite, accounting for the lack of geotite in the samples. Also, the warmer water would have also caused smaller crystals to dissolve and drive the creation of bigger crystals, which means the upper layers of Gale Crater were probably colder and had less water, which we see in the smaller crystals and

• 49:19Hank Green?

  the increased geotite. So we can kind of like see what it was like in the crater millions of years ago.

• 49:26John Green?

  Wow. That's really cool.

• 49:29Hank Green?

  And it was wet and warm in the bottom.

• 49:31John Green?

  That's really cool. That's really cool. Well, the news from AFC Wimbledon, I want to focus on the women's team in this update because two absolute AFC Wimbledon legends are leaving the club this summer. First, Ashley Hinks, who scored 145 goals in 135 appearances. Hank? Incredible, an incredible return on her goal scoring exploits, just incredible. And after five seasons, Ashley is leaving AFC Wimbledon, I assume for bigger and better things.

• 50:12John Green?

  A number of the women's players are leaving, but I wanted to highlight that one. It's gonna be, it's gonna be tough, man. I mean, AFC Wimbledon's women's team just barely stayed up, and they are also losing their coach, their longtime coach of 10 years, Kevin Foster, who was actually nominated for manager of the month in April for basically keeping them up. And when you lose your manager and your best player, or at least one of your best players, or a couple of, few of your best players, it can be hard. The hope that I have is that, you know, it's also an opportunity to refresh, to make new investments, to find, you know, the next generation of star women players, but it's

• 50:55John Green?

  hard to replace 145 goals in 137 appearances.

• 50:59Hank Green?

  Wow, that's crazy numbers.

• 51:02John Green?

  Yeah, it's crazy numbers. That's proper, proper good. Proper good. So, very grateful, very grateful for 10 years of Kevin Foster and five years of Ashley Hanks. And I know that, I know that we'll still have a good tier three team next season somehow. And they will definitely wear partners in health on the back of their shorts, Hank, because Rosiana and I sponsor the women's team.

• 51:31Hank Green?

  Everyone listening, if you've ever sent a question into Dear Hank and John, thank you for your question. I'm sorry that we don't answer most of them, but we answer many of them, and we need a pool to draw from, so please send your questions to [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Linus Obenhouse, it was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.