459: Electric Meat (w/ Kal McRaven!)

Has poop always been funny? Why does my cake mix have high altitude instructions? What breakfast foods won’t you get sick of? What percent of my car should be computer? …Hank and Kal 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.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Or as I like to think about it, Hank and Cal.

• 0:15Hank Green?

  It's a comedy podcast where two brothers and sometimes two friends answer your questions, give you abuse advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, but don't always do that either. Cal, I just found out Canada isn't real.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  No way. What are you talking about?

• 0:30Hank Green?

  They say that it's all maple leaf.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that one's really bad. Oh, man.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 0:38Hank Green?

  I mean, it's bad enough that I'm worried.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  It's a hit to the chest.

• 0:42Hank Green?

  A solid 30% of people have no idea why that's even a joke.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's...

• 0:49Hank Green?

  I apologize. Thank you for joining. I'm sorry people cannot see your wonderful situation that you have, including what appears to be a full-on arcade game claw machine.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  It's like a whole claw machine. I am addicted to claw machines, so I thought, why not bring the addiction a little closer to home? That's what they always tell you in the meetings after all. That's what you're supposed to do. So, yeah, and now what this has done is it now allows me to basically have no limit to the amount of small plastic plushes that I can buy. So that's great.

• 1:24Hank Green?

  Because you can always put them into the claw machine.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  I can always just throw them in there into just like this growing pile of stuff that I don't need, which is awesome.

• 1:33Hank Green?

  Have you gotten very good at claw machine? Can you get better?

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yes, actually, especially if you're going to the same place over and over again and you kind of get a feel for their machine.

• 1:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. So like the machine that I regularly go to is a boba tea shop that's super close to my house. And so I've done it enough times to know. Yeah, yeah, just because they're obviously not overpricing the drinks enough. So they gotta get their margins in somehow. And it's really great because I've learned that the claw actually jerks forward when it goes down. And so now like I'll be...

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Coaching the kids that are over there like, hey, hey, move it back just a little bit, just a little bit. There have been a few times where, where a doe eyed two year old has watched me win something that I worked really hard to get. And I've had to relinquish the prize just because they are just so, so mournful, those mournful eyes watching you.

• 2:30Hank Green?

  Amazing. It's like, it's like you caught the ball at the baseball stadium. You gotta give it to the kid, except that you paid. It's like if you paid to catch the ball at the baseball stadium and then you have to give it to the kid.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  It's rough. It's rough, but you gotta do it. You gotta do it.

• 2:45Hank Green?

  Do you know what a two year old looks like?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  A two year old? Oh, I guess it's been a while. Well, no, this was definitely a two year old barely talking.

• 2:52Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Barely talking, barely talking. Still enough, uh, dexterity to reach out grabby hands and look very sad.

• 3:01Hank Green?

  Definitely not gonna play the claw machine game by themselves. I, I, I applaud you for, but I, I will say, having seen.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Well, don't applaud me. I'm, I'm writing it off on my taxes, so it ultimately benefits me.

• 3:15Hank Green?

  I see. I don't know that that is, I'm not, I'm not a tax advisor, but don't do that. That seems, uh, I, I guess unless it's a piece of, uh, of content you're gonna make in the future.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  I mean, technically now it is.

• 3:30Hank Green?

  You've done it. Success.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  And now I'm logging off. Hank, thank you so much for being a part of this. This is all I needed. Three minutes and 42 seconds in. This is all I needed. Thanks.

• 3:40Hank Green?

  I appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show. We wildly enough just recorded another podcast together and then I was like, hey, can you do yet another thing? And you said, yes. I'm very grateful.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I always enjoy another appearance in the Hank Green Extended Cinematic Universe.

• 3:59Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I'm kind of like that cameo that pops in and everyone's like, oh, that was such a cash grab. I can't believe I did that. Definitely should have brought that in.

• 4:08Hank Green?

  Oh, man. I'm paying you so much for this.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  If y'all don't know who Cal is on YouTube, Funky Frogbait makes videos about the videos, largely. You're making videos about the videos, which I also do quite a lot, I'll be honest. We're looking at-

• 4:26Speaker 01

  There's just so many of them.

• 4:28Hank Green?

  We're looking at the way people are acting on this here internet and having, having a couple of things to say to them.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. Some sternly worded things sometimes, maybe even a finger wag occasionally, but, but all, all in good faith, all in good fun.

• 4:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. So, uh, thank you for coming on Humans. Uh, that was a really good time and thank you for coming on Dear Hank and John. Uh, I have so many questions. Cal, thank you so much for going through and, and, and finding the ones that you like the most. I'm going to ask some of your favorites. This one is from Becca who asks, Dear Hank and Cal, has poop always been funny? This might sound like a joke question, but it's serious. Have, have humans always found potty humor and everything that goes along with it funny? How has humor evolved through history? What about human sexuality? Have we always found humor in bodily functions? If so, why? Thank you for your answers, Becca. Man, I did a little deep dive.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  My favorite question that was asked, I, which is great. We're, we're, we're starting off really strong. Um, I think from what I know and from the reading that I've done, absolutely the short answer is a resounding yes.

• 5:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, seems like, seems like there's, there's like the first joke that we have written down was like a Sumerian fart joke, which is not entirely clear from reading it what the joke is, but it's, it's, it basically says like, since time immemorial, uh, oh God, I gotta read it actually. Sumerian fart joke.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  I had, I had, I had to, I had to write notes because I was like, oh, I'm finding too much stuff. There's no way I'm going to remember everything.

• 6:07Hank Green?

  Do you, uh, did you, did you discover this as well?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Um, so I actually kept my research a little bit closer to texts that I was already pretty familiar with. Um, so I actually focused on something not going back quite as far, uh, kind of around, uh, 1300s, 1400s, so kind of medieval.

• 6:27Hank Green?

  Oh yeah, Chaucer is all about the fart joke.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's exactly why I brought up the Canterbury Tales. Oh my God. Can I please relay my favorite story from the Canterbury Tales?

• 6:38Hank Green?

  Yeah. And then eventually we'll get back to the Sumerian fart joke.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Of course. Yes. It's quite related, actually. Um, it's, it's also fart related. So the Canterbury Tales is considered a very foundational, uh, piece of like English literature. There's a lot of scholarly debate on whether the work is complete, um, what order the work should be, you know, organized in. Um, but the basic, uh, story that we have is that a bunch of pilgrims gather in an inn. There are a bunch of people of very different social classes and backgrounds and the innkeeper proposes a, uh, storytelling competition because back then people didn't have TikTok, uh, couldn't just pull out their phones and avoid eye contact. So that's what they had to resort to.

• 7:24Hank Green?

  That's what, that's what TikTok was. It was telling tales in inns.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's the perfect start of a D and D campaign, by the way. Canterbury Tales is basically the beginning of a D and D campaign.

• 7:36Hank Green?

  You've got everybody's backstories.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. No, it's so great. So the, the stories range so much in their subject matter, but also in, uh, their rating, uh, from PG to rated R.

• 7:51Hank Green?

  All the way out.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  All the way out. So the first tale, I believe, or first, if, if you are going to, you know, go by the most scholarly assumed, uh, which story should go first was the knight's tale. Um, it's a very pious story, but immediately after that, we get the miller's tale, which has everything. It has cockle-dry. It has farts. It has so, it has pranks, pitfalls. It is basically like the medieval. Equivalent of like a car crash compilation or like a people falling down compilation.

• 8:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, this is like exactly what happened to YouTube. Like everybody was like, we're gonna use this for good. And people are gonna learn from each other, become more empathetic. And then immediately it was like, I'm gonna do this prank and you're not gonna believe it. I'm gonna fill this mayonnaise jar with yogurt and buy it at the store. And then eat directly out of the top of it in front of the cashier, which actually is one of my favorite prank videos of all time. Nobody gets hurt when you fill a mayonnaise jar with yogurt and then eat it in front of them. Everybody's happy.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Confusion is the best result of a prank. Confusion, just pure confusion. The Miller's Tale, if I could just give a brief rundown, because so many things happen in it. Basically, you've got old guy, young wife, young hot wife. Everybody really wants to get their move in on this young hot wife. And so what happens is one of these men, I believe his name Nicholas, yes, Nicholas, he does convince her to have an affair. And so they're sneaking her out a little bit. And then, of course, he wants to have a big bedtime. He wants to be able to sleep in the house. He doesn't want to just sneak around. He wants to feel, he really wants to feel like the guy. And so in order to do this, he tricks the old husband into,

• 9:36Speaker 01

  because he's, he's studies the start. He's a very scholarly person. So he convinces the husband that there is a massive flood coming, a deadly flood. And so in order for him to be safe, all three of them need to suspend tubs from the ceiling of their barn, put supplies in these tubs and then themselves sleep in these tubs so that when the flood comes, they can cut the ropes and float away. So he convinces this is the case. And so the husband does that. And then the two affair partners, they sneak down from the barn loft, they go do their thing in the house while the, while the, while the older husband is asleep. And while this is happening, another man, because man, she, the aura she must have had, the.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  The men that were just so enamored with her, in the middle of having an affair, another man climbs up to the windowsill, also begging for her attention. And she says, I'll only give you a kiss. And what does she do? She sticks her out the window. And he kisses that instead. It is like the most like, you would never, it's so easy for us to assume that like medieval people were so very toity and pious. It is like literally the lowest brow humor you can possibly think of. He's upset. He goes and he says that he's gonna go get like a hot poker. So he goes to the blacksmith and literally gets a hot poker to stab her with.

• 11:04Hank Green?

  I can't believe you made me kiss your nowadays. That's great.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  I know. It's like they weren't quite, they weren't quite at that level yet. At least not, at least not in polite conversation perhaps. So this time Nicholas sticks his out the window and like a Tommy, Tom and Jerry episode, he gets poked with the poker, but not before farting in the other guy's face. So the story ends with the husband, the old husband, hearing the scream, freaking out, thinking that the flood has come. He cuts the rope and falls to the ground and breaks his arm. And the whole town comes out and laughs at him. And that's the end of the story.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  So if you want to know how lowbrow and sexual and dirty that humor used to be, fart jokes, jokes about body parts, it's been around for

• 12:00Hank Green?

  The whole time.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  The whole time.

• 12:01Hank Green?

  The whole time. So the Sumerian joke, joke in quotation marks is, "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial, a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." I'm a little confused by the double negative in this, but I do, I do get that it is funny when a young woman farts in her husband's lap, or that she's working very hard to not. Like it's funnier to think, okay, here's this young wife. She's perfect and she like, everybody's like happy and they're trying to be perfect for each other. And she has to fart so bad. And she's just trying to be like playful and fun in her husband's lap, in her husband's lap in ancient Sumer. And she's just like, God, I need to fart so bad.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Wait, so it's a double negative as in like

• 12:45Hank Green?

  I just, I'm a little confused. So like something which has never occurred since time immemorial, a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. I guess indicating that the young women have always been farting in their husbands laps.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just, they, they do be farting apparently. I think, I think, I think that's cute because it's like, there's kind of just like an acknowledgement of human nature that crosses. And it's also kind of interesting because that statement kind of is, is circul- is cir- circling the same conversation that we're having, which is, you know, how long have we been farting? And how long have we been finding that funny and doing that?

• 13:23Hank Green?

  God, yeah. Farting has been funny the whole time. I know that the question in particular was about poop and we spent all of our time talking about farts, but I will say a well-known Hank take is that farts are just thin poop.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like a fart is just like the appetizer to a poop. I feel like they're, it's the, the, the precursor, the announcement, you know, et cetera.

• 13:47Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. It seems related. There is a theory in humor, the, the, the sort of, but the benign transgression is what it's called. So like a true transgression is something that's going to aggravate you and like, but finding a way to do a transgression in which everyone is aware that there like no harm was actually done. The response we have to that is this weird, like, how did this evolve evolutionarily? Like lots of, lots of animals have benign transgressions and don't think anything of them. It's just like, oh yes, people or the other animals poop and fart and I poop and fart. And that's not like a part of my,

• 14:30Hank Green?

  like inner life. I'm not thinking about the pooping and farting. I'm just like existing. But with us, there's this benign transgression thing where it's like, it seems like it may be a kind of thing that we evolved in order to have a way to, to display intelligence to potential mates or to our social group to like build status by being like, I can do something very clever. I can do something that is transgressive, but it is not harmful. And we had like, like a little evolutionary arms race about it. Because it's like growing antlers, except for, so growing antlers is a way of like displaying how strong and tough and successful you are. But this is a way of displaying, you know,

• 15:11Hank Green?

  humor is a way of displaying how like clever and smart you are with true social proof. Like, you can't do good humor unless you're pretty clever.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, 100%. And there's also like the thing of like, you know, it takes a smart person to play dumb really well, when it comes to like the acting side of that.

• 15:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  The people that can, you know, in improv, in like movies, or whatever the medium might be, it takes generally a pretty smart person to kind of interact with stupid humor in a way that kind of walks the line of offensiveness, but also is, I mean, I think of Patrick from SpongeBob, for example. The early, the first season of Patrick's character, especially, most of the time, the joke is funny because the joke is clever. It's just the stupid character delivering on that joke. I also think too about like how, with that, with that question of like how these things evolved and stuff. I do wonder if cultural differences play a role in this?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Like, I, my understanding is that certain cultures don't, in certain cultures, sarcasm, for example, or like irony, or exaggeration are not perceived to be quite as innocuous as they may be in our culture, where it's kind of just a flippant thing we do. In other cultures, there might be a little bit of a disconnect there. If like an American's like, you know, tries to engage with that level of like sarcasm or irony, or, you know, like, you know, exaggerating something that might not mesh as well in a, in a different culture. So that's also something that's, that's really interesting to me.

• 16:45Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but also interesting that like ancient summer, which is like presumably pretty different from the year 2026 in America.

• 16:55Hank Green?

  Farts were still funny.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the fart remained despite all, despite all the differences.

• 17:02Hank Green?

  Farts were still funny.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  The fart is the, is the key similarity.

• 17:06Hank Green?

  Yeah. So it seems like we've been up to it for, for a while. Um, okay. Cal, we got a question from Katerina who asks, Dear Hank and Cal, I'm making carrot cake from a box. As box cakes are the best. And the box says, high altitude, 3,500 to 6,500 feet. Stir one tablespoon of all purpose flour into dry cake mix. Why does my altitude matter when making a cake? I know things like change at altitude, but how? Also, what if I'm above 6,500 feet? Can I make a cake? Is there a limit? Thanks. Baking a cake on a mountain, Katerina.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Katerina, it matters so much. It matters so much.

• 17:44Hank Green?

  Did you just look this up?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  I literally, when I read this question, I also became so fascinated by this because I was like, oh yeah. Like I understand that baking changes at different altitudes. But I have like no clear cut way of explaining why or how to, to another person. And that kind of revealed a gap in my own knowledge that of course made me deeply uncomfortable because that's how my brain is. Um, I, do you have anything to add? Cause I could just go through some of the stuff that I was able to pull up.

• 18:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, the big thing is to remember is that like, air is around and it's, it could be different from place to place. And it matters, like the amount of air, it seems like it's constant, but indeed it is not.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, from what I could tell, like it affects so many different steps of the baking process.

• 18:32Hank Green?

  It does.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Um, let's see.

• 18:34Hank Green?

  It does. I live, I live at high elevation.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I was gonna ask, are you affected by this?

• 18:38Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's a pain. Like making beans, you can't pay attention to the instructions on the beans bag. It's going to be like two hours longer because water boils at a lower temperature.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Right, right. And isn't, I think I was looking up too, and it's like evaporation is, goes at a faster rate.

• 18:55Hank Green?

  It evaporates faster.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  I think for baking specifically, some of the tips I saw, which were really interesting, so the biggest changes is because of the air pressure.

• 19:03Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  And that affects the leavening a lot.

• 19:07Hank Green?

  The little bubbles that form in the, in the cake. So what you want is cake that has like a good, spongy texture. Um, and so they've, they like, through centuries of hard work and experimentation, we have found the right ratios of everything. But one of the things that's in the ratio that you don't realize is the air pressure around. So if you've ever like seen the experiment where somebody takes a balloon, like a, like a deflated, but with a knot tight in it balloon and put it in a vacuum chamber.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I haven't.

• 19:40Hank Green?

  That has, that like, has no air in it, or it doesn't appear to have any air in it, you put in a vacuum chamber, but you tie a knot in it. As the air gets pumped out of the chamber, the balloon inflates. The balloon does not have more air in it. It is just that the air around it is pushing on it less. And so it is the air that's in there expands and pushes the balloon out. In that same way, if you are at a higher elevation, it's closer to a vacuum. You could think of it as a spectrum toward a vacuum. And those little bubbles, the air that gets created by the yeast or by the baking soda, the, the gas in those bubbles. There's less air pushing down on it. And so the bubbles will form too fast and too big. And they'll break the structure of the cake and the cake will collapse.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot of what I saw was like the issue with like the structure of the cakes collapsing. If you don't make those adjustments, even things like because of the increased evaporation, it like causes the sugar concentration to be higher. And then if the sugar concentration is higher, you know, it's, it's gonna weaken the structure of the cake. Um, a lot of other tips I saw, um, you need less baking powder, less baking soda.

• 20:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Because things rise way quicker.

• 20:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  And so you don't need as much. Um, and yeah, from what I saw, it's just basically you have to do a little bit of science. You just have to do a lot of trial and error because one thing I didn't know, it's, it's not a clean cut at this elevation, do it this way, at this elevation, do it this way. From what I was able to see, I was like looking at, uh, King, hi, KingArthurBaking.com. Apparently, um, even like micro environments on the same mountain can require different adjustments to the baking. And so I think to answer their other question, like, can you bake over 6,500 feet? Um, I think it would just involve a lot more of those trial and error adjustments as you continue to go higher and higher.

• 21:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. There's a point at which, uh, like it'd be very hard to bake a cake in a pure vacuum. Um, so

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:43Hank Green?

  I, I, I'm, I'm up to being convinced that it's possible.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  That sounds like a cool YouTube video I'd watch at 3am.

• 21:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was interesting to try to make a vacuum chamber that could handle the, the baking temperature of a cake. Seems possible, though making one that you could see it to would be very hard. Anyway, that's me trying to now think of how

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Well, now that's your next video. That's your next video.

• 22:07Hank Green?

  But yeah, the, the, uh, it's, it's, so, so the thing that they say, the easy thing to do is just like toss a little more flour in, because that's going to create more potential structure. But yeah, all these things like less gas, more structure, like some, some changes in the sugar, more water, because the water's going to evaporate faster.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I think you also need to bake at a higher temperature, I, I believe, in order so that structures don't have as much time to sink.

• 22:33Hank Green?

  Right.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  But then that also creates a cascading domino effect of other changes you have to make because of that.

• 22:39Hank Green?

  It just reminds you how hard we've worked to get to where we are. Baking seems very simple because they just put it in a box. But it's complicated and they, we've been working on it for a long time. We didn't used to have baking powder. We used to have to enlist the yeast in this process. It's very tricky. Now we're dealing with microbes. We didn't even know what they were.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  You gotta think if you were just like a random like peasant some time ago, like trying to bake goods, you either had to do whatever your grandma said worked for her the thousands of times that she figured it out, or you kind of just had to trial and error it.

• 23:16Hank Green?

  I think it was.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  You had word of, you had word of mouth to go off of, but you didn't have like these neat, exact instructions. I'm sure it was a lot more kind of figuring things out.

• 23:28Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, it was more figuring things out, but people talked all the time. They were telling each other stories about farts.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Hank Green?

  And they were telling each other recipes about cake.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Speaking of gas.

• 23:39Hank Green?

  There was a lot. There was a lot of, like, I just, you know, that, that, the, the sort of like recipe book that we have now is an interesting thought. Like, when was the first recipe book? Probably not that long after the first printed book, or maybe before.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I would imagine it would have been one of the most important things to start writing down. But then again, sometimes humans' order of priority does not make a ton of sense. For example, we have a super ancient fart joke.

• 24:09Hank Green?

  We do. We have a similarly ancient, though not quite as ancient recipe. I've just looked it up and.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. How old?

• 24:16Hank Green?

  Yeah. A 1700 B.C. So pretty long.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Sick. What is it written on? Is it?

• 24:23Hank Green?

  Clay tablet.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Clay? I was about to ask, is it clay? That makes a ton of sense.

• 24:27Hank Green?

  Yeah. I can't figure out what it is for, though. I'm looking.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  There's no way someone hasn't tried it. There's too many recipes.

• 24:35Hank Green?

  Of stews or broths with brief directions.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Stew. This is the, ah, stew has anchored humanity through some of the darkest times. Are you, are you up to date on the perpetual stew?

• 24:50Hank Green?

  Oh, I know of perpetual stews.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are people on Instagram that are that are doing it. There's one called Stuthius. It has a name. Stuthius is, Stuthius has been black for a long time.

• 25:04Hank Green?

  Black is not a color I want for a stew.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:07Hank Green?

  Is Stuthius okay?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I hope Stuthius is not giving people any incurable diseases. My understanding, though, is that the concept of a perpetual stew is a real thing, potentially, that inns and taverns would have. So it just would be something that if, you know, a traveler randomly came in, you know, you just spoon up what's been continuously cooking.

• 25:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's just always hot forever, which like that keeps it safe. I mean, if it's if it's above the boiling, if it's boiling or simmering, then that's not going to be dangerous to eat. At the same time, there's an amount that you can boil a chicken that's too much. Like, I've I've make stock. I love this is a thing that I do.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I'm a big. I rue the day when I when I wander into the tavern and I get that one piece of chicken that's been sitting at the bottom of the perpetual stew for a week. You know, you don't want to be that guy.

• 25:59Hank Green?

  I mean, like, eating in other countries is always a little surprise. Can't not always. Can can often be a little surprising with regards to the amount of bones I'm dealing with. American food, we're really like, let's make sure that none of those bones are in there. We're gonna have, we're gonna make boneless wings, which is not a possible thing. That's a chicken.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  I love my adult chicken nuggets. And I need you to back off, Hank. I need you to back. No, but I actually, okay, here's my kind of controversial take on that, like the the American obsession with bonelessness.

• 26:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I actually feel like it's more dangerous because the amount of times I have been served something that is provided under the conditions that it has no bones. And I therefore have eaten it with reckless abandon and then quickly discovered that it did, in fact, have bones. I feel like if you already know that the food has bones in it, you will eat the food more carefully and not get stuff lodged in your throat and not like have a really scary moment in the middle of a sushi restaurant and debate whether or not you have to immediately call 911.

• 27:04Hank Green?

  Tell you what, man.

• 27:08Hank Green?

  Fish bones are no joke.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  They're scary. Oh my God. It's literally like a little tiny razor blade and you kind of just, I'm like, okay, did it get down far enough where the stomach acid is going to take care of it? Or am I going to be in the ER for a while? It's, it's a bad moment. It's a bad moment.

• 27:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. I had a friend who had like a giant abscess in his intestines and he didn't know what it was, thought it might be cancer and there was like a whole process. And then finally they figured out, and they're like, we don't know what happened, but maybe like a fish bone. And I'm like, what? That can happen?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Wow. Wait, so it was just like the body becoming irritated and kind of building a wall around the-

• 27:47Hank Green?

  And then there was an infection and then it kept like walling off the infection and the infection kept growing inside of the walled off area.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  That is so cool from like the, the fact that like, that whole time he didn't realize that his body was protecting him.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  Oh yeah. He was like fine.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  A life threatening infection for so long before it finally like, it just couldn't keep building anymore.

• 28:07Hank Green?

  Literally got too big. It started to block stuff and then it was, he was not fine anymore.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  That's so cool.

• 28:13Hank Green?

  Your food can't get through you. It's not pleasant. Um, but yeah, I am fascinated by being made of meat. And then-

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Hey, can I tell you something? I've never felt more made of meat than the, the past few months. I, I have felt so, so-

• 28:30Hank Green?

  Oh, I bet. Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Strongly how meat like I really am at the end of the day. It's surgery, surgery will do that to you. It really makes you realize that you are just-

• 28:41Hank Green?

  You're gonna go in there and-

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Electric meat.

• 28:43Hank Green?

  Take parts out of me.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Which is the name of a punk band that I'm starting. By the way, you, no one can take electric meat. That one is mine.

• 28:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. This is, it's all we, it's, yeah, it's, it's overwhelming. I feel very much that way after having gone through cancer. Where I'm just like, I'm just a bunch of frickin' cells, man. And they're all thinking, uh, or not all of them, or some of them, or they're all working together to create some kind of consistent theory of mind. Um, and like very, uh, very, very much more, uh, few, I, I feel much more like a, like biology than I did before.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've spent, I think in ways it's good. I think I've spent a lot of my life very disconnected from my body and very cerebral and up here all the time.

• 29:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And I think going through, you know, any number of different kinds of health issues that someone might go through, in some ways it's terrifying and existential, but in other ways, it does really connect you, I think, to this, oh, I'm, I'm an animal. Like, this clothes and these plastics and these, if you drop me naked in the forest somewhere, like, I am basically

• 29:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  no different than any other living organism in that environment. Uh, this is all just trappings of intelligence at the end of the day.

• 30:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Um, scary, but it's cool.

• 30:03Hank Green?

  I love the, I love the thought of an alien coming to Earth and being like, look at all of these animals. And then like, but this one with the headphones is interesting.

• 30:15Hank Green?

  The rest of them don't have headphones.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Know about this one.

• 30:18Hank Green?

  Yeah, they're like immediately, like, if you're wearing the clothes, if you've got the, like, I feel like eyeglasses, you're like, oh, those ones are special. Those ones are like, those ones are doing some weird stuff. They, they can't see anymore, but they're making it so that they still can.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's something wrong with that.

• 30:37Hank Green?

  What's going on there?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Why, why are they, why are they trying so hard? Uh?

• 30:45Hank Green?

  They seem like very well fed, but still very anxious.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like these ones with the glasses seem to be overcompensating for something. I don't, why are they behaving that way?

• 30:54Hank Green?

  Why are they so stressed out when they have enough food?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:00Hank Green?

  All right. Molly asks, Dear Hank and Cal, I'm running out of breakfast foods to eat. Nothing sounds good to me. I have gone through all of the generic breakfast food options. I'm in need of creative options. What are some of your favorite things to eat for breakfast that you don't, uh, get sick of after two weeks? Pumpkins and penguins. Molly.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Molly, I'm so opinionated about this. I'm so opinionated about this.

• 31:23Hank Green?

  Do you have, do you have like regulars or?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  There is only one correct answer to this question. And it is the bagel sandwich.

• 31:32Hank Green?

  Oh, a bagel sandwich.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Because a bagel sandwich can be anything. It's literally impossible to get tired of it. You can do sweet bagel, savory cream cheese. You can do savory bagel with sweet cream cheese. You can do any number of different combinations of proteins, vegetables, schmears, sauces, anything. And, and we have funny names for all these different types of, of combination of bagel and other stuff. And it's really, and sometimes we put all of the stuff on it and we call them everything bagel. It's so, it's so great. Molly, you'll never get bored.

• 32:11Hank Green?

  I like this because what, what you're saying to me right now is as long as it's bagel, it's breakfast.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I, I do think so. And so bagel, bagel protects you from executive dysfunction during mealtimes for half of the day. And then sandwich carries the torch until evening. Because sandwich then becomes non-breakfast.

• 32:34Hank Green?

  Sandwich. What I'm hearing is that you're probably a pretty big fan of sandwiches.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And that's, it's great. The bagel allows me to consume sandwiches at a time that is generally not considered as appropriate to consume sandwiches.

• 32:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Passionate about this.

• 32:51Hank Green?

  I like that because, because you can, you don't have to get tired of it. Because like a, like a, like a blueberry bagel with cream cheese is very different from like a spinach herb bagel with turkey and cheese. But they could both be breakfast.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:07Hank Green?

  Cause they're bagels.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  And they're so holdable.

• 33:10Hank Green?

  Totally different things.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And they're so, they're so good for, um, eat, uh, uh, dietary restrictions as well. Like I've had really slapping gluten free bagels, which I, I have not been as impressed with other gluten free offerings. But a gluten free bagel, I, I, and then you can go super vegan with it as well. There's, there's just, even Molly, I don't know what's going on in your life. Maybe, maybe the, the options are limited. The bagel sandwich can be there for you. I promise.

• 33:37Hank Green?

  I, so my, my breakfast situation is a little embarrassing.

• 33:43Hank Green?

  Because I don't know, I, I, look, I shouldn't, I shouldn't prejudge. Let me know if this is embarrassing.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:50Hank Green?

  I put yogurt and milk, protein powder, maple syrup and Cheerios into a bowl and then I stir it up. And it is my favorite thing in the world.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  That's, ah, you see, you primed me for it to be embarrassing, but then you didn't need to prime me. Like, it was still, like, it, wait, so, sorry. So it's, it's yogurt?

• 34:12Hank Green?

  Yogurt.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Cheerios, is it Cheerios, he said? And then maple syrup?

• 34:16Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And then milk?

• 34:17Hank Green?

  And protein powder.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  And protein powder. So it's like you're, you're, you're basically just make, making really thick cereal. Why do you need your cereal to be so thick, Hank?

• 34:27Hank Green?

  I like, I like it, I like, I like it thick. I don't know what to say.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Wait, but no, I, I will say, Hank, I have never heard of anyone doing that before. It's like, I, I really, I mean, you are a very special guy in that respect.

• 34:41Hank Green?

  It's evolved over the years, you know? It was at first, it was just.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  What's the process? What's the evolution there?

• 34:45Hank Green?

  Well, it was at first, it was just yogurt and then, uh, and then I was like, eh, eh, and, and then I was like, you know, and somebody like one time was like, you can put maple syrup in yogurt. And I did that and I was like, oh, this would be good with Cheerios. And then I was like, oh, like it's a little too thick. And so I started adding, adding milk. And then I was like, ah, everybody says you should eat protein now. So I put the protein powder in there. I was like, actually, that makes it better. It makes it like thicker. It's like more my, my breakfast cereal.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  So it's too thick? And then it was?

• 35:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And then it needs to be more thick? I feel like we went.

• 35:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, it was a, it's like a different thick.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Okay. I'm gonna have to take your word for it.

• 35:22Hank Green?

  There's, there's a, there's a wide, there's like different varieties of thickness, you know? It's not all the same.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  So you're, so you're on that protein powder thing?

• 35:29Hank Green?

  I'm, I do, I do tend to have some, some protein powder every day because I feel like it's very hard otherwise to get to the amount that I feel I should be getting to, which is probably, probably made up, but.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  What type of, what type of protein powder? This is how we, this is how we tee up our next sponsorship.

• 35:45Hank Green?

  They sell it at the store.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Hank, it's time to tee up our protein powder sponsorship that we have.

• 35:51Hank Green?

  This podcast, this podcast is indeed.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  I have so much money on the line for this.

• 35:54Hank Green?

  It's brought to you by the cheapest protein powder at the grocery store. The cheapest protein powder at the grocery store. It's the one that Hank gets.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Now with 15% less lead, which is great. This podcast is brought to you by Perpetual Stew. The stew is so old. The stew is so old and black. And the aroma emitting from it is frankly disturbing. Somebody, can stews live? Should it die? Should we kill it? Perpetual stew.

• 36:27Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Vacuum Cake. The Vacuum Cake is made in a vacuum in my oven, maybe for a future YouTube video.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And we might see Hank explode on camera. That's the pull. That's the draw. That's how we watch the video.

• 36:42Hank Green?

  That's a good point. I am now less excited about making this video. Leave that one up to William Osman or something.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  There's gonna be so many views. That thumbnail is gonna go crazy.

• 36:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, me with like fingers missing. Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  This podcast is brought to you by kissing [BLEEP]. You ever, you ever try to, you ever try to kiss a woman who's actively having an affair with another man while her man is sleeping in a barn? This, this product is great for you. It's, it's a poker with lips on the end of it so that you can potentially field away kisses of surprising nature. You can, you can kind of field the kiss first.

• 37:22Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  To make sure that you have the right end of the person sharing the kiss with you. And if you don't, no harm, no foul.

• 37:30Hank Green?

  Well, I thought if you don't, you've got your poker right there.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. The lips open and then the hot poker comes out. So it's, it's, it's, it's a dual purpose.

• 37:38Hank Green?

  Right.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  It's a dual purpose thing.

• 37:41Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I mean, I don't, I don't know if this is gonna be a successful product, but they bought a sponsorship, so we read it.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  They're paying us money, so we're saying what they told us to say.

• 37:51Hank 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, I have like a, 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 and I knew immediately, this is gonna work.

• 38:34Hank Green?

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

• 39:18Hank Green?

  I shouldn't do that.

• 39:24John 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.

• 40:07John 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.

• 40:29Hank Green?

  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, no CD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started at n o C D dot com. That's no C D dot com.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Wait, so do you eat that breakfast every day? Are you like a this is my breakfast kind of person?

• 40:56Hank Green?

  I'd say that is on the days when I eat breakfast, which is not every day, like sometimes I'll just have a banana. But on the days when I eat breakfast, I'd say that's like 60% to 70%.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Okay, that's pretty consistent.

• 41:09Hank Green?

  The other days are when I'm going fancy and having eggs.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 41:13Hank Green?

  Which I love. I love eggs. I love eggs and toasts.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  I kind of like breakfast and lunch are always in matrimony in brunch for me because I usually, if I eat breakfast, it's really late and it's basically a lunch and it has lunch like qualities to it usually. And also I've often found that if I put off, don't, don't tell, don't tell the doctors about this one that, you know, because I know that breakfast is most poor meal of the day. I sometimes will not eat until noon. Yeah. Because I find that I do some of my best writing when my stomach is as hungry as my brain is for getting things done. I don't know. Maybe it's like when my body is breaking down food. Maybe it's like distracted by that process. I don't

• 41:58Speaker 01

  know. But sometimes when I have food, I'm just too full and happy and I can't, I can't write and be happy.

• 42:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, the blood's down there digesting food. I need it up here.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need as much as I can get.

• 42:12Hank Green?

  I need to digest my thoughts. That's interesting. I used to not eat before noon, but then I had a child and everything changed.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that changes. Yeah.

• 42:20Hank Green?

  Now, like I'm up at seven, like I can't, I can't not eat before noon if I'm up at seven. Yeah. I used to wake up at 10 and I'd be like, I didn't eat before noon. It's like, yeah, you were, you woke up at 10:15.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Unconscious. So I don't know what you're bragging about.

• 42:35Hank Green?

  All right. This next question, Cobb's from David, who asks, Dear Hank and Cal, I recently saw some debate on the internet's worst corner, the Hellscap formerly known as Twitter. The debate was around wanting a car to be 0% computer. I was curious, what is the appropriate amount of percent computer for my car to be not on a Space Odyssey, David?

• 42:57Hank Green?

  I do think the cars are too much computer now.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I agree. I, there are certain features that I think are kind of controversial, like some people love them, some people hate them. I personally cannot stand the push to start. I know a lot of people love the push to start. Here's my story about why I don't like the push to start. So at some point I had, I was using, you know, you get two sets of car keys, right? And so at one point, I put my car in the garage, did not bring my car keys, uh, or left my car keys in the cup holder and left them in the house. Did not realize. Um, and then later on, I accidentally grabbed my other set of cars, car keys to go out to my car.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And because it's a push to touch, like push to start operation or everything, um, that's, as long as the keys are in the vehicle, the, the car will push to start. And that's how that works. So for a while I am not, not to my knowledge, but I am using quote unquote, a set of keys. While another set of keys is actively the cup holder. So I have two sets of cars in the car. At some point, I forget my car keys, but I go into my car, which has a set of car keys that I have forgotten about. And I start my car, I drive all the way to the store, come back, but I don't, I don't have my car keys. And so I am freaking out. Later, this story is so convoluted, but I'm getting to the point, I promise we can cut this out.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  I, I need to share this story because it's so insanely embarrassing and stupid. So I freak out. I eventually find the other set of car keys and I'm like, okay, I didn't lose my car keys. But all the while, the push to start is feeding this delusion because the only requirement for the push to start is that the keys are in the vehicle.

• 44:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Fast forward, I at some point come out to my car and it has been rummaged through.

• 44:51Hank Green?

  Oh no.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  And I'm like, oh my God, how is that possible? My keys are in the house. It's because the keys were sitting in the car holders. The person was able to yank it.

• 45:02Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And that person could have easily driven off with my car.

• 45:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Because the keys were sitting right there in the cup holder. I could have easily had someone take my car for a joyride. All this to say, sometimes I think that things that make these newer software based cars more convenient also make us dumber and batter about being drivers, I think is my concern.

• 45:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Cause I felt dumb and bad, Hank. I felt dumb and bad.

• 45:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, I love my car keys in my car. My car was basically unlocked for months is what you're telling me.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 45:36Hank Green?

  So, I mean, this is, this blows my mind. There are now cars that you don't have push to start. They just, so some EVs, you just get in them and they're on, which I'm kind of like, okay, I guess. Like if I don't have to like, think about the fact that I'm gonna like, get the engine revving. You just get in and you just put it in driver reverse and you just drive away. You don't have to start the car or stop the car. It knows you got in, which is because there's a computer connected to the door, also connected to the keys. And so they know the keys are in the car. It's a lot. My car, so here's one thing I know for sure. There shouldn't be a motor in the door handle.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely not. Yeah.

• 46:20Hank Green?

  That's just like way too much stuff could go wrong there. I don't need that.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  That makes me deeply uncomfortable.

• 46:24Hank Green?

  And I've got my car right now has motors in the door handles. Like you walk up to it and the door handles are like, and I'm like, I feel like that's entirely to be impressive in the year 2022. And it's 2026 now and it's already like, God, I do not want that. Like now the door is just more expensive. You've made the door more expensive. And if I like hurt the door somehow, that's gonna, I like, I don't want to total my car by getting a ding in the door, you know, and like breaking the, the motor that's in the door handle. No, I just want to pull on a door handle like a man. Like a hu, not a man, but like a human.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Hank reveals toxic masculinity on the Hank and John podcast. I was a witness. I was there.

• 47:06Hank Green?

  I wanted, I wanted, I want the door to be so heavy. Only a strong man can, I can't let a woman into a car. It's only for men.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Opening the door for her because I love women too much to let them open doors by themselves.

• 47:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Hank Green?

  You're taking away, you're taking away, it makes it worth being a man. What are we even for anymore? Uh, so that's not the concern that I have. I, there's just, there is, I, there's too much that's controlled inside of the screen. There's a button in my car and I don't know why this button exists, but if it's a physical button and you can accidentally hit it and it limits this, the top speed you can go, which is horrible because I accidentally hit it and I'm like, why can't I suddenly go faster than 20? That's dangerous.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, it's that? I was gonna ask, so what is the threshold about that button?

• 48:03Hank Green?

  No, it's like wherever you are at the time. It likes, I think that's how it works.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:08Hank Green?

  It's happened a couple of times and I'm just like, ah, and I have to like stop and be like, what the heck is going on in my car?

• 48:13Speaker 01

  The one thing that made me feel like, ooh, my car definitely has too much percent of computer is when the big screen in the front of it will suddenly be like, oh, there's an update or something. And like, certain things will be suddenly unavailable to me without warning. And it's like, ah, like I, I've never, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 48:33Hank Green?

  Now.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, just do car unless there's a problem, do car. Um, I also think too, like, I, I sometimes make myself like physically look back when I back up and things like that, even though I have the big screen there, just as I'm worried about like not knowing how to do that. You're supposed to. I also too, I think the big problem that I, I like tactile buttons. I like, um, physical things where I touch them and it make, it make the good sound and it's, it's great. I, I like having a big, um, like I love actually being able to pull a car into drive. Uh, my partner has a car where that is a series of buttons. You don't actually have the stick. It is the series.

• 49:17Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  I, I hate, I like, it's, it's, it's changing and modifying things that were not.

• 49:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  If it ain't broke, don't fix it is kind of my mindset.

• 49:27Hank Green?

  Can I tell you, so like I, I find that people think that they took away the buttons because it makes, because it's like fancier to have the buttons not be there or like they like people like they, the designers were like, we need to make it look sleeker. And so we're going to take away the buttons.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Like a minimalism kind of push.

• 49:47Hank Green?

  That might, that might be the reason why they got away with it, but it's actually cheaper to make a car without the buttons.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 49:55Hank Green?

  Are expensive. And so they don't want the buttons in there. That like, so they like found a way to just not let to be like, oh, the car is like minimalist. And we're, and also it's also cheaper. Like also, we have these like fewer parts.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  We're gonna sell you less for more and you're gonna like it.

• 50:11Hank Green?

  Do injection molding for, yeah, yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I need, I need the buttons. I need the stick. I need the, and I really, I, so I guess getting to the, what is the appropriate percentage? I would say, I think that's going to depend on the person. Obviously, if you have any kind of, you know, disabilities or something like that, maybe there's, these more, more smart cars are going to be a little bit more comfortable for you and your lifestyle. I think this is a person to person thing. For me, I feel like my percentage is quite low, lower than what I have now. It's definitely lower than what I am currently dealing with. And I think I've not owned that many cars in my life. I think this has been like my biggest, like, this is the smartest car I've ever had. And that was very much like, okay, no, that's too smart for me. So I now know what my limit of smart is

• 51:00Speaker 01

  or computer is in the car for sure.

• 51:03Hank Green?

  So like my car will tell me if I'm maybe going to rear end somebody, which like has never happened when I might actually rear end somebody. At the same time, it only has to save me from rear ending somebody like once in a thousand times for it to be very worth it, you know? Um, but so I've gotten this like alarm several times and I'm like, I am driving completely normally. And I'm well aware of how close that car is in front of me, but the, um, the, there's also, it has like lane keep, you know, where it's like, if you start, if you don't turn on your turn signal and you start to go to another lane, it will physically not allow you to do that. And I'm like, ah. I guess I should have turned my turn signal on, but geez, that's a, that feels like an overreaction.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  I think like, yeah, aside from like the braking, like before, like immediate impact.

• 51:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  I think, um, I, I am worried about the direct intervention.

• 51:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm so like, I get it.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Computer.

• 51:59Hank Green?

  I get that the, the cars will be safer in the future, but they are so much computer. And there's a piece of me that like thinks that somebody will come up with a car, particularly like maybe even an EV, it's just like very minimalist and there will be like a big market for that. It'll like do one thing, which is drive, you know? It's just gonna be like a drive car. Um, I think there's companies working on cars like this that are just like, look, maybe it's gonna be cheaper if there's like a lot less going on in this car.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  That too, but I'm also seeing like this in, in my generation and younger specifically, I'm definitely seeing a pull towards maximalism and a romanticization of aesthetics from the seventies and eighties. So I do wonder if there would be a market for basically reskining modern cars to look like how cars used to. Cause I, I feel like there's a lot of people in my generation and younger that are definitely like pulling away from minimalism and getting very tired of minimalism and, and, um, have started really romanticizing like the way older vehicles looked, the color, the shapes, the individuality. So I do wonder if there's gonna be a bit of an interesting push and pull.

• 53:07Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  There perhaps, which I think would be very cool. I'd be down with that.

• 53:10Hank Green?

  If you could see, if you could see the video that's happening right now, you might notice that neither of us seem particularly interested in minimalism.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Certainly, certainly not. I bet there's maximalists of every generation. I do think, I do think though there, I am seeing more of a, a larger pull.

• 53:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Away, which, which I think happens every like 10 years or so, there's like minimalism, maximalism, and they kind of just trade turns. Whatever your mom did is not cool. Do the opposite.

• 53:41Hank Green?

  Yeah, a little bit of that for sure going on. I, I, there was that, I don't know if you were culturally aware at the Marie Kondo moment. I have no idea how old you are. Do you know who Marie Kondo is?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  The name kind of sounds familiar.

• 53:54Hank Green?

  She was, she was like a, like a minimalism influencer and she wrote this book that I don't remember the name of, but the idea was you should like take objects and you should like hold them to yourself and be like, does this spark?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Oh, does it spark joy? Yes.

• 54:06Hank Green?

  And if it doesn't spark joy, then you're like, why would I have this in my life? And I'm like, literally, I do that. And I'm like, yeah, it does. It like super does.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's, that's how I generally feel. I think it's, it depends. I think for, for some people, like my background and like your background, that amount of like clutter and color and little tiny dusty objects would be a source of stress. Whereas for me, I look at that and I'm like, oh, that's my stuff. I like my stuff. I can see my stuff. My stuff's there. Nobody else has my stuff. It's right there. Cause I put on the shelf that that's where the stuff is. But for other people, it's like, oh, like this thing is slightly dusty or this thing is slightly out of position and that can be kind of a source of stress.

• 54:50Hank Green?

  My wife definitely finds the, the office to be stressful. She's like, she's like, I can't really spend time happily in there.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people in my life that, that feel very similarly. I think it really just depends on whether stuff is a source of stress or.

• 55:08Hank Green?

  Right. Especially with like, should it, is, is, is it all right? You know, Catherine Kuzma has like the vibe of like, is everything like in its proper spot right now? And that's not a thing that happens in this office. Things aren't in their proper spot. I mean, I do have like labels on my drawers at least to tell me what goes in what drawer. But other than that.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  I would love a, a label maker. That would be great. I should.

• 55:31Hank Green?

  Oh, I mean, mine's just masking tape with Sharpie on it. Cal.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great. That's great. My handwriting is terrible though. I feel like I would bother me to have to see examples of my own handwriting around me at all times. I think that I would find that upsetting.

• 55:44Hank Green?

  Again, another problem I do not have. Cal, we usually end this podcast with news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, but we're simply not going to do that today because I have no idea when this episode is going to come out. I think early July, probably. If you would like more of Hank and Cal, there will be an episode of Humans with the two of us where we get into what you do. I appreciate you coming on to Dear Hank and John and just chatting and hanging out. What else you have going on?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so I have a funky frog bait channel where I post commentary content. I do media analysis. I also do analysis of social media trends and controversial slash interesting internet figures. I also have a channel called Funky Frog Plays where I stream video games and post edited videos of those streams. And I have a really exciting announcement, which I believe if this is coming out in early July, it will be officially announced. But I'm going on tour. My tour is called the Internet Kid. If you are someone that can in any way relate to the experience or find interest in the experience of being a incredibly sheltered child that also simultaneously has completely unrestricted access to the internet and everything within it

• 56:53Speaker 01

  and how that can have effects on you as you grow into adulthood.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Please come. If you also just find that idea amusing and want to gawk and point and laugh, also please come. Your money tastes the same to me. And also, if you just enjoy, it's gonna be a weird fun show. We're gonna be doing some musical stuff. I'm gonna be singing. I'm gonna be doing a bunch of crazy stuff on stage. It's gonna be some stand up.

• 57:19Hank Green?

  Variety show, is it stand up?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit of stand up, a little bit of variety, a little bit of music. It's gonna be very, very fun. It's the most experimental thing I've ever worked on and I'm super, super excited.

• 57:28Hank Green?

  That's awesome. Where can we go to find out about that?

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Information will be all over my Instagram and my YouTube channels. And yeah, you should look for a city near you over there.

• 57:41Hank Green?

  Well, thank you for coming on. I'm excited.

• 57:44Hank Green?

  The stand up is such an interesting thing to go from what we do to doing the thing on a stage. And I really enjoyed that. And I'm really glad that you are doing it also.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, I think I'm coming from a little bit of a different direction. Whereas a lot of content creators in my position are moving from screen to stage. My experience has kind of been stage, screen, and then back to the stage. So it feels a lot like kind of coming home a little bit. And that makes me. Really, really happy.

• 58:15Hank Green?

  That's awesome. Thank you to everybody who sent in your questions. You can send them to [email protected]. That's where we that's without that, what, what do we even have? Nothing. There's a bunch of good ones that we didn't get to, but we'll put them in the next week. 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.