464: Becoming a Meditation Podcast

Why did John go to a warehouse to sign more books? What other places in the galaxy could you drive the moon buggy? How do I handle the transition from High School to College? Why does the music in some toys slow down when the batteries start to die? Why do drunk people sound like they're talking slower? How can I teach myself how to type? What is the dress code for the hospital cafeteria? Why does the phrase “having your work cut out for you” mean what it does? …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.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, Catherine and I have been doing a lot of karaoke. And she, she said, Hank, okay, tonight, we're gonna do this, but you can't do Wonderwall again. And I said, maybe.

• 0:33John Green?

  And I said, maybe. Yeah, I got it. That's good. That wasn't terrible. That wasn't terrible. It's funny, because when we started-

• 0:40Hank Green?

  You did a rapid exhalation from your nose. I was surprised.

• 0:43John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, that's about as good as you're gonna get from me most days. How's it going, Hank?

• 0:48Hank Green?

  It's good. Were you gonna say something about when we started? Because when you arrived in the room, I was trying to see if I could do the joke by saying, and I said, maybe. But I like, you arrived right as I was doing that, and I chickened out.

• 1:07John Green?

  Oh, you didn't have the courage to go full Songster.

• 1:09Hank Green?

  No, yeah. Even, even when you were, just you were in the room.

• 1:13John Green?

  Yeah, I get it. I get it. Although ironically, you're willing to do things in front of 250,000 strangers that you're not willing to do in front of a friend of yours, which is-

• 1:23Hank Green?

  That's totally true.

• 1:25John Green?

  Yeah. Interesting. I would say it's an interesting development in human history and a very new one.

• 1:31Hank Green?

  We're learning about ourselves as individuals, as a species.

• 1:36John Green?

  I mean, until like 130 years ago, there was functionally no way for a human voice to be heard further from hearing distance.

• 1:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:52John Green?

  And here we are, inside your ears.

• 1:55Hank Green?

  A real crazy thing to be like, to be like, what if the, what if the musicians could come out of the box instead of being human beings? I don't know, man. I worry a little bit about, um, uh-

• 2:08John Green?

  Hank's about to come down. Anti-recorded music.

• 2:13John Green?

  He's, he's a proper Luddite now. He's coming anti-recorded music for you.

• 2:16Hank Green?

  We're going all the way back. I don't know if I'm good with zippers, John. I think we may be-

• 2:21John Green?

  Yeah, that was our, that was, that was our downfall, was the zipper. Oh, boy. It hadn't been for the zipper.

• 2:30Hank Green?

  I, I just want to make sure that we keep being people with each other. That's all.

• 2:35John Green?

  Yeah. I completely agree. I think we're gonna get, have to get offline to do that. The great, the great irony of the next 20 years is that it will be this, um, this offline-ification, I think, of-

• 2:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:47John Green?

  -discourse, because there will be no way to have discourse online except with, um, with bots.

• 2:53Hank Green?

  With bots. Yeah. I'm learning so much about myself, John. And, uh, and, and to the extent that my interior is replicated inside of other people, I do think that we need to get to take, to take steps.

• 3:11John Green?

  Take steps in which direction, Hank?

• 3:13Hank Green?

  Offline, John.

• 3:14John Green?

  In the offline direction. I couldn't agree more. I'm looking at a Ginkgo tree right now. I'm talking to my brother. I've got a good life. And I hope that y'all are doing okay wherever you're listening to this. I hope your back doesn't hurt like my back hurts. I hope you don't have any pain in your body right now. In fact, this is now becoming a meditation podcast, and the first thing I want you to do-

• 3:35Hank Green?

  I'm gonna do a body scan.

• 3:36John Green?

  -is take one deep breath in-

• 3:37Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 3:38John Green?

  Through the nose, and then out through the mouth.

• 3:45John Green?

  Doesn't that feel a little bit better?

• 3:47Hank Green?

  It does.

• 3:48John Green?

  Now, I want you to picture a tree, unless like me, you have aphantasia, in which case fortunately, you're staring out the window at a tree.

• 3:56Hank Green?

  Okay, I'm picturing a tree.

• 3:59John Green?

  All right, what color are its leaves?

• 4:00Hank Green?

  It's, they're green. I, yeah.

• 4:02John Green?

  It's not fall.

• 4:04Hank Green?

  No, I could do different, though.

• 4:05John Green?

  You wanna make it, can you make it autumn for me?

• 4:07Hank Green?

  Sure, yeah. There it is.

• 4:08John Green?

  Can you have the wind-

• 4:10Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 4:11John Green?

  Whispering through the trees?

• 4:13Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 4:17Hank Green?

  There's more than one tree?

• 4:22Hank Green?

  Now there's more than one tree? I mean, do you, how many trees do you-

• 4:25John Green?

  Hank, there's a whole forest of trees, and they are your fears. They are your fears, and they're, oh my God, they're alive! That's why they're red and yellow! Ah! All right, let's move on. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

• 4:37Hank Green?

  I love our meditation podcast where at any moment it could turn on you. This is an amazing idea.

• 4:45John Green?

  Your fears are real. Thank you for coming to my meditation.

• 4:48Hank Green?

  Oh, God, I had this idea for a Hank's Channel video that's just, uh, that's, it's just 10 hours of silence, but at random points, I tell you a fact.

• 4:58John Green?

  Yeah, I hate that idea.

• 5:01John Green?

  People would figure it out pretty quickly, I think.

• 5:04Hank Green?

  What do you mean, they'd figure it out?

• 5:06John Green?

  They'd look at where the little peaks are in the video watch.

• 5:09Hank Green?

  No, but like, that's the thing. You just let it play. There's this video, there's a similar thing, I don't know if you know about it, but it's just like 10 hours of silence interrupted by Pikmin noises.

• 5:18John Green?

  What's Pikmin?

• 5:19Hank Green?

  Pikmin are a cartoon video game character-

• 5:23John Green?

  Okay.

• 5:24Hank Green?

  -that, uh, grow in the ground and then become mobile, uh, on an alien planet that a man goes to and needs to repair his spaceship. And they make a little cute little noise. They go, me me, me me. And so there's just like silence, and then the Pikmin show up, and we play it in the house, and it's hilarious.

• 5:41John Green?

  All right. I mean, I'm gonna have to, that, that might be one of those you had to be there kind of things.

• 5:48Hank Green?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 5:50John Green?

  All right, let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Sarah, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but especially John, I saw you were signing 21,000 copies in a warehouse of your new book Hollywood Ending, out September 22nd. Also, you're going on tour. Tickets available at HollywoodEndingBook.com. I was wondering what the difference was between those finished books and the 85,000 tip-in sheets you signed in the vlog with his live streams. Are these books going somewhere different than the tip-in pages? Pumpkins and Publishing, Sarah. So Sarah, basically, what it, what it turns out is that we made a certain commitment to bookstores, that we were gonna get them X number of copies of the book.

• 6:21Hank Green?

  Oh, my God. So you had to sign more than you thought you were gonna have to sign?

• 6:25John Green?

  Yeah, because I also have to sign all the books for the tour, um, many of which I'll sign the day of the tour, but some of which, because of scheduling reasons, couldn't be signed the day of the tour, so had to be signed in advance. So if you think about the 105,000 copies that are going out into the world that are signed, like 25,000 or 30,000 of them are for, are for the tour. Hopefully, 35,000 or 40,000 are for people who pre-ordered at HollywoodEndingBook.com. And then there has to be a certain number left over for the bookstores to have, that they can put out on shelves.

• 7:01Hank Green?

  Put on shelves.

• 7:01John Green?

  Yeah. So the only way that we could reach that number, because we ran out of time, basically, was for me to go to the warehouse in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and sign my name over and over again. But I have to say-

• 7:12Hank Green?

  Sign actual books.

• 7:13John Green?

  Sign actual finished books. I have to say, I had an awesome time. And one of the people who flew in from Maryland, because they have a deep understanding of how these signings have to work, to sign 7,000 books in a day-

• 7:24Hank Green?

  They're like a consultant.

• 7:24John Green?

  -was named Megan, and she's a huge Dear Hank and John listener.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  Oh, hello, Megan.

• 7:29John Green?

  Yeah, hey, Megan. How's it going? So it was a really cool experience. I got to see where books are birthed. I also got to see where they go to die.

• 7:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:38John Green?

  So there's a room-

• 7:39Hank Green?

  You showed us that.

• 7:40John Green?

  The pulping room, where there's a little machine, and your book goes on a conveyor belt, and it either gets shooked one way, in which case it goes back into the warehouse storage, or it gets shooked-

• 7:52Hank Green?

  And there's like, who, what's the machine that decides this?

• 7:55John Green?

  So you scan the barcode as you put the book on the little conveyor belt, and then it gets on the conveyor belt, and the, by scanning the barcode, the, the machine has an algorithm that has determined whether or not your book goes, uh, back into warehousing, because it costs a certain amount, you know, to store a book, or if it's, uh, cheaper and better to just recycle it, in which case it gets shooked over to, to that section. And the first time I toured the warehouse back in like 2015, they were showing me this process, and they were like, of course, your books never get shooked over to be destroyed. And I was like, oh, thank goodness. Yeah, I mean, I am pretty successful right now. Like, Fallen Our Stars is still a number one New York Times bestseller, et cetera.

• 8:37John Green?

  And then I watched as a copy of Paper Towns got shooked right into the machine that kills it.

• 8:44Hank Green?

  They're like, see here's boop.

• 8:47John Green?

  Oh, action.

• 8:48Hank Green?

  Oh, it turns out Paper Towns, people don't really want that one.

• 8:51John Green?

  And then you go into the room and there's literally like a machine that rips apart the books and eats them and then spits out, like literally sort of poops out a cube. And as the cube gets pooped out, people, people put it into, uh, you know, people with forklifts and everything, put it into a certain section of the book recycling area. And then all that gets recycled and you know what it gets turned into?

• 9:15Hank Green?

  Toilet paper.

• 9:16John Green?

  Toilet paper.

• 9:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:19John Green?

  Literal toilet paper.

• 9:20Hank Green?

  We don't need to cut down those old.

• 9:21John Green?

  Wonderful. I'm so happy.

• 9:23Hank Green?

  I would, I would buy for a good store, I would buy book toilet, actually I wouldn't. Now, now that I've heard it come out of my mouth, people don't, it doesn't actually sound nice.

• 9:32John Green?

  People want it.

• 9:33Hank Green?

  I don't want, I don't want to know where the toilet paper comes from. I want to know that it doesn't come from trees. Aside from that, I don't actually want to say, everybody, it's so environmentally friendly.

• 9:42John Green?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 9:43Hank Green?

  It's from destroyed literature.

• 9:45John Green?

  This one has the new John Green book in it.

• 9:49John Green?

  Uh, so occasionally I'll, I'll have someone, uh, email me or, uh, or post a review or whatever in which they're very angry. And they say, I wouldn't wipe your butt with, I wouldn't wipe my butt with your book.

• 10:00Hank Green?

  Really?

• 10:01John Green?

  But they have.

• 10:03Hank Green?

  Maybe.

• 10:04John Green?

  They have Hank.

• 10:08Hank Green?

  Somebody who said that has.

• 10:10John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I probably have.

• 10:14Hank Green?

  Hilarious.

• 10:16John Green?

  So that's the deal with Hollywood ending. It comes out on September 22nd. If you're in, if you're in Portland, Maine, Tucson, Arizona, if you're in New York City, if you're in Birmingham, Alabama, there are still tickets left for the tour. You can get them at Hollywood ending book.com. So excited to go on tour. You know who I'm going to have as my special guest in Birmingham, Hank?

• 10:33Hank Green?

  Sarah Yerst Green.

• 10:34John Green?

  God, how do you know all this stuff? Who, who do I have in Maine? Man, you don't know that one.

• 10:40Hank Green?

  Don't know that one.

• 10:41John Green?

  Lily King, author of Heart the Lover. I'm so excited to meet her. Also got you in San Diego, but that one's almost sold out. So no need to talk about it.

• 10:49Hank Green?

  Good. Good work. Good work us. John, do you want to answer some questions from our, oh, we already, we already started.

• 10:56John Green?

  Already started.

• 10:56Hank Green?

  We already did one. I gotta do another one. It's from Elliot who asks, Dear Hank and John, I took a trip to the moon and Mars on a rocket ship and I drove my moon buggy on both.

• 11:04John Green?

  Yep.

• 11:04Hank Green?

  What are the other things in the solar system that I could drive my moon buggy on? What about in the Milky Way? I know that I can't ride it on gassy planets. Also, how fast can the moon buggy go on Mars? Future news from Mars correspondent Elliot almost four.

• 11:19John Green?

  Okay. So here's my guess, Hank. There comes a certain size. So there's a lot of stars in the Milky Way Elliot, like hundreds of billions. And so there are probably, there are, there are a lot of planets orbiting those stars and some of them are rocky and some of them are gaseous and et cetera. But like, I think there's a Goldilocks zone for your moon buggy where it's not too, the planet can't be too small. And the planet also can't be too big. And the planet has to be relatively solid.

• 11:48Hank Green?

  Yeah. Those are your big, those are your big concerns. If you're going to moon buggy, you're going to want to not sink into the surface because then you're inside the planet and that's not where you want to be Elliot. And then number two, you don't want it really, honestly, you don't want it to be too heavy because then your moon buggy might break. You might be squished.

• 12:04John Green?

  If it's too light, what if your moon buggy hits, hits, hits a bump and then shoots off into space?

• 12:10Hank Green?

  Yeah. This is a concern if it's very, very small, but you don't even have to leave the solar system to get a bunch of good candidates. Like obviously you don't want to go to, I mean, you can, if you want to go to Venus and drive your moon buggy on the surface. It's just going to be very hot.

• 12:23John Green?

  Could you?

• 12:23Hank Green?

  If you, what?

• 12:25John Green?

  If you had like, uh, you know, heat shield, imagine Elliot's moon buggy has a heat shield, which I'm sure it does.

• 12:29Hank Green?

  Like Elliot's moon buggy is very advanced.

• 12:32John Green?

  It's not too gaseous to, to, to.

• 12:34Hank Green?

  No.

• 12:34John Green?

  Drive on Venus?

• 12:36Hank Green?

  No.

• 12:37John Green?

  Oh, cool.

• 12:38Hank Green?

  And as long as you could keep the, keep the outside outside, you're good.

• 12:41John Green?

  And Mercury probably would be fine.

• 12:44Hank Green?

  Mercury's fine, but kind of boring. But I think you should go out to those, people are not going to be surprised by my take here. You should go out to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. You go to Titan, you go to Enceladus. Titan is very weird. Titan is icy, uh, planet with, I say planet, world with, uh, liquid lakes of hydrocarbons, like methane and ethane. So like the natural gas that you burn in your stove, but like liquid and raining down from the sky into rivers that flow into lakes.

• 13:13John Green?

  Well, you're really going to need your, uh, heat shield out there, even though it's cold.

• 13:16Hank Green?

  You're going to need the warm, yeah, the warm shield. You're going to need to keep the outside of Titan outside for sure. And then there's like, there's icy ones that, that are like shooting, like geysers out from internal liquid oceans. You gotta go there Elliot, you gotta tell us what you find. We don't know a lot about these places. We're sending a probe to Titan fairly soon. That's going to be there in like eight years, hopefully. And it's going to be like a octocopter that's going to fly from place to place and sample a bunch of different weird chemistry things going on on Titan. So there's all kinds of, you got, you gotta remember that people tell you about the eight planets. And then there's also Pluto, but then also there's all these moons, there's all these dwarf planets. They're all rocky and there's like cool stuff to do on them. Got to go to Europa.

• 13:58John Green?

  Could you go to Jupiter or is it, if it were solid or is it too big? Would you get smushed?

• 14:05Hank Green?

  Oh, it was both, both problems. Yes.

• 14:08John Green?

  So even if it were solid, you would still get smushed because it's too big?

• 14:11Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:12John Green?

  Okay.

• 14:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, it'd be too, I think it'd be too many G's for the, for the moon buggy. And that's really, that's a really hard problem to solve.

• 14:20John Green?

  I've always felt like Jupiter was my

• 14:25John Green?

  planet of last resort.

• 14:27Hank Green?

  What do you mean? Like in terms of ones you, you would live on?

• 14:30John Green?

  I mean, like if you pitched me, if you told me like, we have the, the resources and the ability to take you anywhere in your moon buggy. Jupiter would be last on my list.

• 14:41Hank Green?

  I gotta tell you, John, that's because you're thinking of Jupiter as a planet. And this is my big argument. I'm going to have, I have a video coming out about this.

• 14:49John Green?

  Okay.

• 14:49Hank Green?

  Jupiter is not primarily a planet.

• 14:51John Green?

  It is a planet.

• 14:52Hank Green?

  But it's primarily a system of worlds. Just like the solar system is a system of worlds. And so you totally want to go to Jupiter because it's got so many good moons.

• 15:03John Green?

  I want to go to the moons of Jupiter. I don't want to go to Jupiter itself because I would be crushed. I would be crushed by the G's.

• 15:12John Green?

  So I don't want to check, whereas I do definitely, I definitely want to go to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, but Jupiter is the last planet on my list to visit.

• 15:21Hank Green?

  Jupiter system is really high up there for me.

• 15:24John Green?

  But not Jupiter itself. I noticed you're not talking about the planet.

• 15:28Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, like it's just a big ball of gas.

• 15:30John Green?

  Yeah, I know. It's not a good idea to hang out there.

• 15:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Hank Green?

  I don't know. I'm just feeling, being mean to Jupiter, but Saturn system also very interesting and apparently much more dynamic than one would expect. Like things like seem to still be going on there, which is strange.

• 15:45John Green?

  Cool.

• 15:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:47John Green?

  So there you go. We can't wait for you to travel the world in your moon buggy. And I, by world, I mean worlds.

• 15:52Hank Green?

  The worlds. And then eventually you hit it head out into the rest of the solar, the, the, the Milky Way and the man, you'll have nothing. No shortage of potential targets.

• 16:02John Green?

  Yeah, it's going to be a great adventure, your whole life, man. I'm excited for you. Congratulations on getting to almost four. All right, Hank, we have another question from anonymous who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'll be starting college soon and I'm pretty nervous. I'm not worried about the academic part necessarily because I've always been good at school. No bragging anonymous. But I am worried because I know it's going to be different from high school, but I don't know how I'll handle it. Any advice you have, dubious or otherwise, would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, anxious ants in my pants.

• 16:27Hank Green?

  I feel like I remember remembering college at this point.

• 16:31John Green?

  Oh, you don't even remember it directly. It's more like a memory that's been recalled so many times. It's like looking at a photograph. You're like, oh yeah, I remember that, but you just remember the photograph.

• 16:40Hank Green?

  I worry about that, but I'll say, I don't remember being very intentional about figuring out how to make friends, but I did make friends anyway. And I made great friends.

• 16:50John Green?

  I remember on the first day of college, there were all these icebreakers on my hall where like the resident advisor was taking in these, you know, freshmen shaking like a dove. We called them freshmen. I apologize. First years shaking like a dove. And everybody just kind of became friends because what else are you going to do?

• 17:11John Green?

  You sort of become friends with the people on your, on your hall, if you're in a, in a dorm. And otherwise you become friends with the people in your classes and it works out. It is really scary. I remember that so vividly, not because I have a photograph of it, but because it was so scary. It was really overwhelming. And then at first also I was trying to fit in so hard that I would be like, I'll drink, I'll do whatever. Like I'll, you know, stay out late and not do my homework. And then eventually I realized like there were, there were better ways to do college.

• 17:41Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, we, I mean, we, I've, I've was, I feel like I was in like a explicitly substance-free dorm, not intentionally, but just like that's the, and it didn't-

• 17:54John Green?

  That's where they put you.

• 17:55Hank Green?

  Would have been fine either way. But, but, and so I ended up with a bunch of people who were not very substance-y. And that was great. But really, it was like making sure that I tried to say yes to stuff.

• 18:12John Green?

  Right, join clubs, all that.

• 18:14Hank Green?

  Didn't let my, like, my brain get in the way of that. But I remember, I mean, what I really remember is like feeling unsure socially, and also unsure romantically a lot, being like, this person, I thought that they liked me, but they hate me. A lot of that vibes.

• 18:32John Green?

  Yeah, not having those grounding relationships is so difficult. That's why I wanted to write about being in your early twenties in Hollywood ending is because when you're in your early twenties, a lot of times, because you're out of college, you still have your friends from college, but they may not be in the same city as you. They may not have the same stuff that you're doing. Like, whenever you enter, in some people, for some people, it's before, you know, some people don't go to college. So for some people, it's after high school. For some people, it's after grad school. But like, whenever you enter into an environment that is fundamentally different from the one that came before, it doesn't happen that often in a human life. Like, it's not that often

• 19:11John Green?

  that you, you know, are, are making the decisions that are gonna end up shaping at least the first part of your career. It's not that often that you're thrust into a world with no idea how to make friends. But like, the beginning of college and the end of whatever formal education you do are both times like that. And that's what makes them very rich for writing about, even if it makes them sort of miserable to live through.

• 19:35Hank Green?

  That's what I worry about, worry about those ages a lot, John. It's hard. And it's such a weird-

• 19:41John Green?

  Those are hard ages.

• 19:42Hank Green?

  A weird time to be a person, and especially, I feel like, a young person.

• 19:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Hank Green?

  More power to you. Thank you, anonymous. And I'm sorry about the ants in your pants. John, this next question comes from Charlotte, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm a new mom, and with that comes toys that light up and sing. My baby loves pushing buttons and dancing to the music, so the batteries do die out quickly. My question is, why do some toys start to slow down music and pitch like they're being possessed by the devil? And then if you leave it a few minutes, it can perk back up again. It's like the battery's got a second wind. Thank you for keeping me company during my late night nursing sessions. More princess than spider, Charlotte. Isn't this so bizarre? Like, this seems to me-

• 20:27John Green?

  I've known about this, but I, because I've experienced it, but I've never stopped to be curious about it. And now that I have, I am astonished, because it does feel like batteries are getting a second wind. Before we answer the question, I just want to state for the record that there, there are two phases of a human life. The phase where you use a regular number of batteries, and then the phase where you are surrounded by a lot of children and you use an astonishing number of batteries. So many batteries. I mean, I, I haven't, now that my kids are 13 and 16, I haven't used a battery in a decade.

• 21:02Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, like, things have also changed. Now, like, things recharge more often. Like, I'm sure a lot of the, the things that Alison and Henry have, do have batteries, and they just, they just recharge. Whereas children's toys, just lots of swapping. And man, yeah, the number, like, the way I bought batteries changed so much. Like, it used to be that I'd buy four batteries.

• 21:25John Green?

  And now-

• 21:25Hank Green?

  And then for the last nine years, I've been buying-

• 21:28John Green?

  I'm buying 60 batteries at a time.

• 21:29Hank Green?

  It's ridiculous.

• 21:31John Green?

  I'm like, what's the most you got, Costco? Give me, give me all your batteries.

• 21:35Hank Green?

  So, so this is true. And it, I don't, we didn't, Deboki and I did not get to a, like, satisfactory answer here. I have a little information.

• 21:44John Green?

  Interesting.

• 21:45Hank Green?

  But what's so fascinating to me about this is that it seems like the thing that you would say happened, like, if you were to guess, it's like, the thing will get slower and sluggish. But like, that is what happens.

• 21:59John Green?

  That's what happens.

• 22:00Hank Green?

  Like, I, like, I would think that would be like a TV trope. That'd be like a thing that, like, writers would say happens, not a thing that actually happens. I would think it runs out of batteries, and it, at like, one moment, it can power the device, and the next moment, it can't anymore.

• 22:16John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Hank Green?

  But from what I can tell, and, and don't take this as gospel or anything, there's, there's like voltage that comes out of the battery. And, and at the beginning, it has a nice steady voltage. And, and then as it starts to run out of juice, it like, not only doesn't just have like the power inside of it, it also like can't get up to the voltage, but it's still able to produce some electricity. And that voltage is actually like interpreted by the toy as like a kind of clock for running the whole mechanism. And, and so as the voltage goes down, like, the speed at which all of the things also goes down. And that will happen over time. And then if you turn it off for a little while, and then turn it back on, the voltage can kind of spike back up again before starting

• 23:01Hank Green?

  to, once again, decline. And so it's, like, whatever it is, it seems tied to the voltage. And the fact that the voltage is tied to, like, the speed at which the toy runs itself, is, is, it seems like maybe just the cheapest way to do it.

• 23:18John Green?

  Hmm.

• 23:18Hank Green?

  Like, to do it differently would require more equipment.

• 23:21John Green?

  Okay.

• 23:23Hank Green?

  So, but like, I think that's adorable. Like, that's the world that we actually found ourselves in, where like, the talking dragon that reads stories gets slower and slower, and its voice gets deeper and deeper until it finally loses power. Like Johnny Five in the classic-

• 23:40John Green?

  The classic American film.

• 23:41Hank Green?

  80's movie Johnny Five? I don't, the battery's not included. No, that's a different one.

• 23:46John Green?

  I've got a strong suspicion that the Johnny Five movie does not hold up.

• 23:51Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, I think that that's right, John.

• 23:54John Green?

  I'm not even sure we should mention it on the podcast.

• 23:56Hank Green?

  Short Circuit is what it's called.

• 23:57John Green?

  Short Circuit, that's what it was called. Oh, man. Yeah, I would say dig that one up if you want to understand some of Hank and I, but don't dig it up. Don't.

• 24:09John Green?

  I have a related question, Hank, from Chris, who writes, Dear John and Hank, thanks for the podcast. No question, just a funny. I'm listening through the back catalog, and one of, one day I thought you both sounded really weird, almost like you were a little drunk. And then I looked at my settings, and so I had you set to 0.8 speed. Why do drunk people sound a little slow? Guess I do have a question. Peace, Chris.

• 24:28Hank Green?

  I think it's the voltage.

• 24:32Hank Green?

  So Deboki and I looked into, no.

• 24:36John Green?

  Did Deboki not look this one up for you?

• 24:37Hank Green?

  No, no, we didn't. No.

• 24:39John Green?

  Okay.

• 24:40Hank Green?

  No, I mean, I think that, like, I do think that the, like, the, like, the motor signal, like, the neuron signals do not travel as well.

• 24:50John Green?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. That's also why you can still have something of a whole thought when you're intoxicated, but it can be hard to express the thought in a timely fashion. I think it's the nervous system. I mean, alcohol is a chemical that, you know, addresses, that attacks whatever your verb is, the nervous system. And so you slow down a little bit.

• 25:11Hank Green?

  Effects. Yeah.

• 25:13John Green?

  Effects, that's the word I was looking for.

• 25:14Hank Green?

  This also happens to me when I'm very cold. My, when my lips get cold, I literally cannot talk at the same speed. And I'm like, apparently-

• 25:23John Green?

  Interesting.

• 25:24Hank Green?

  That, like, it's all, apparently, I'm made out of meat.

• 25:28John Green?

  It is really hard to reconcile yourself to the meatness of it all, to the fact that our thinking parts are edible.

• 25:36Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:39John Green?

  Anyway, that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by our thinking parts. Our thinking parts edible.

• 25:44Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by Moon Buggies. They aren't just for the moon.

• 25:50John Green?

  No. Soon they'll be for Mars, hopefully. Today's podcast is also brought to you by starting college. Starting college, little piece of advice for you. Don't pee on the bathroom door. Pee in the urinal.

• 26:04Hank Green?

  Oh, okay. I like, I like that advice, John. And this podcast is also brought to you by wiping your butt with Paper Towns. Wiping your butt with Paper Towns. You might have done it.

• 26:16John Green?

  Oh, man, that's-

• 26:22John Green?

  It's good stuff, Hank.

• 26:23Hank Green?

  That's, it's, it's a bit of a shock. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Wayfair. There are a number of objects in my home that I have been extraordinarily well-served by, maybe for 15 or 20 years. Like, a pair of fake leather upholstered stools that I've had forever. But they've seen better days. They maybe need a little bit of a refresh. Good news, Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. You can use filters, customer photos, and more than 20 million verified five-star reviews to confidently find the right fit for your home. And now those stools that I had 15 or 20 years ago,

• 27:07Hank Green?

  I don't have those. I have different stools that are very comfortable and look, let's just say, better. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

• 27:33Hank 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. I went downstairs, and Catherine was like, look at

• 28:18Hank Green?

  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. I shouldn't do that.

• 29:06Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor. Factor makes chef crafted, dietitian designed, ready to eat meals. So you don't have to choose between real food and convenience. You can have both real food and convenience, which is good because I will choose convenience every time, even if convenience is just peanuts again, literally. I eat a lot of peanuts. Factor meals are ready in two minutes and I'm not joking there. They are ready in two minutes and they require no prep and no cleanup. So even the days when your schedule is completely out of control, eating well is still achievable. But here's a secret I have for you. Sometimes I actually do introduce cleanup artificially. I will move it from the Factor container onto a plate so I can feel like I'm having

• 29:51Hank Green?

  a real meal and that's fine. And then I have one plate to clean. I don't have a bunch of pots and pans to clean though. Every week you will find over 100 nutrient dense menu items to choose from and new options like salmon burgers, shredded pork, collard greens and more. Plus add-ons you'll crave like pumpkin flavored cheesecake and protein shakes. 97% of users agree that Factor meals help them live a healthier life. So you can feel confident that you're doing something good for yourself with every meal. True story, right now I do not have any Factor meals in my fridge and I am hungry and I'm about to go inside and absolutely rummage for something and I'm sad about it. Some current Factor meals include chicken taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema.

• 30:36Hank Green?

  This is making me so hungry. Onion portobello burger with potatoes and white cheddar. That's right, they can help you go vegetarian or eat less meat. You can also have golden corn and shrimp risotto with Brussels cabbage and pepper medley. But I can't because I'm allergic to shrimp. Let's eat real. Head to factormeals.com/dearthank50off and use code DEARHANK50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year. While supplies last until October 31st, 2026. That's code DEARHANK50OFF at factormeals.com. Dear Hank, 50 off at factormeals.com. See the website for more details.

• 31:18John Green?

  Speaking of shocking questions, we have one from Lauren who writes, Dear John and Hank, so I'm wondering if you can help me. My dad got me a computer so I can type my stories because he refused to let me keep typing on my phone. And I'm wondering if you know a way to teach yourself how to type? At school, we don't have computers. We have iPads and I know how to type on that, but I'm completely clueless here. So how do I learn to type? Tearing up while typing, Lauren, PS, how does a mouse work? Like I get how you use it, but why is it when I pick it up, it doesn't move the arrow? But when it's on the desk, it does move the arrow. What is happening there? Oh God, Warren, we're so old. Oh no, Lauren, I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

• 31:56Hank Green?

  What's happening? Did you type this? Did you type this whole email on your phone?

• 32:01John Green?

  Probably, probably.

• 32:05Hank Green?

  Do you type emails on your phone, John? I feel like I never write. I'm like, no way. I gotta wait till I got my real computer keyboard.

• 32:12John Green?

  Sometimes when somebody sends me an email that's good news and I can reply to it quickly, I'll just reply with two exclamation points like, oh, you won the Ohio book award. Exclamation point, exclamation point.

• 32:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta, I gotta get like some good memes for situations like that where I just like real like a macro to drop in some kind of celebratory cat.

• 32:33John Green?

  You know, the line from, you know, the line from, you know, hmm, it's not Good Will Hunting. It's not Backcountry Pass. It's Brokeback Mountain. Okay. I got there. Backcountry Pass would be a great name for Brokeback Mountain for the record.

• 32:56Hank Green?

  Now we have to leave it in. We have to leave in the part where I'm thinking.

• 33:01Hank Green?

  That's, I love when brains do that. When you're just like, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get to.

• 33:07John Green?

  The only way for me to get there is to play the game. My brain will only let me play the game. In Brokeback Mountain.

• 33:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's like when I went to the, up to the person at the theater and I asked for two tickets to Steve Zissou's aquatic adventure.

• 33:24John Green?

  Yes, indeed, indeed. So in Brokeback Mountain, there's that great line where Jake Gyllenhaal says, I wish I knew how to quit you. And every time my, anyone texts me about the signing issue, about signing too much, I just reply with that, that gif that I have loaded up and ready to gif.

• 33:42Hank Green?

  Great. Got to gif that gif, got to gif that gif.

• 33:46John Green?

  You gotta do both because both pronunciations are acceptable. So the reason the mouse doesn't work is that it needs pressure.

• 33:53Hank Green?

  No, they're lasers now. There's no ball.

• 33:56John Green?

  They don't have, they don't have little ball mice anymore.

• 33:59Hank Green?

  We had, there hasn't been ball mice for, mice have not had balls since the early 2000s.

• 34:05John Green?

  I use a track pad, always have.

• 34:08Hank Green?

  Really?

• 34:08John Green?

  Yeah, I've always edited vlog videos on a track pad.

• 34:11Hank Green?

  John edits on a laptop. This drives me insane. I edit with a mouse and a tour box.

• 34:17John Green?

  I don't even know what a tour box is.

• 34:20Hank Green?

  I know, of course you don't. Why would you?

• 34:23John Green?

  Yeah, I'm just editing happily on my laptop. Yeah, it's fine to use a track pad. It goes, it doesn't take me that long.

• 34:29Hank Green?

  I love my tour box so much. It's so great.

• 34:32John Green?

  Okay, but let's get back to Warren's question.

• 34:34Hank Green?

  Just the only way to learn how to type is to type. It's just like how you didn't used to know how to type real fast on your phone until you did it. So you have to do it. That's the only way to do it. There are typing like games and websites that you can go and use, but like really the thing is to do it.

• 34:48John Green?

  I think the thing is to stare at the keyboard and type and type your stories. The hard thing is that while you're getting used to it, Lauren, when you're typing a story, you're going to find that your brain goes faster than your typing. Whereas in your, in your phone, that's probably not the case because you've, you've trained your brain and your thumbs to type at the same speed. But eventually your fingers will catch up and when they do, you'll actually be able to express yourself probably even more clearly than you can on your phone. So I think overall it's good news, but it is, it's, there's an adjustment period for sure. And that's what you're going through, but just keep those fingers on ASDF, JKL, semi phone and you will be fine.

• 35:27Hank Green?

  You're gonna have to learn how to do this eventually. This is a good reason to learn how to do it and it's, uh, not that. I don't know. I don't know. I have, do your kids type, John?

• 35:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  Warren doesn't type, but he's nine.

• 35:41John Green?

  My kids type. They don't, they don't type with the flu, they don't type 110 words a minute like I do, but they type.

• 35:48Hank Green?

  Well, I also don't type 110 words per minute and never will. And I think I'm more like 60 or 70. That's crazy, John.

• 35:55John Green?

  Well, I just, I like to bang on my literary keyboard.

• 35:58Hank Green?

  I mean, it's not like you've typed more than, I mean, you probably have typed more than me.

• 36:02John Green?

  I don't know. That's a great question. I think you've probably typed more than me.

• 36:06Hank Green?

  You typed 110 words per minute way like a long time ago.

• 36:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Hank Green?

  So like I've definitely typed as much as that guy when you were 18. I'm just, I just don't have a good, fine motor control.

• 36:16John Green?

  Yeah, no, that's all right. There's no, you don't get a prize for typing fast.

• 36:21Hank Green?

  Well, you type faster though, so that's nice.

• 36:24John Green?

  That's true, but remember we're not being obsessed with productivity anymore.

• 36:28Hank Green?

  Are we not?

• 36:30John Green?

  No, we're not.

• 36:31Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 36:35Hank Green?

  I, I, I was given by we, my parents, we had a number of difficulties. My parents and I, when it came to me being capable of certain important academic things. One of those things was writing and I just had, because my motor control was so bad and, and one of the things they, the people at the therapy place said was you gotta get this kid a computer as fast as possible. And so being able to transfer over to a keyboard from having to actually manipulate a pen really early was super valuable to me and something that would not have been available if I'd been born five or 10 years earlier.

• 37:18John Green?

  Yeah, it's like now things are very different for people with serious dyslexia because of the proliferation of audiobooks and other audio based tools for reading.

• 37:28Hank Green?

  So it's, it's good. I'm glad that we have these tools, but I cannot imagine.

• 37:33John Green?

  I wish we used them better.

• 37:34Hank Green?

  Keyboard. I wish we used them better, but like we're idiots. We're a bunch of animals trying to.

• 37:41John Green?

  We're a bunch of meat based monkeys with guns.

• 37:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. Those are so fun.

• 37:50John Green?

  Well, that makes one of us.

• 37:51Hank Green?

  One time a friend of mine was like, you can't really say that you don't like guns. You never like shot them. And I was like, yeah, because I don't wanna like, like I don't, there's all kinds of fun stuff that I don't want to do because I think it's bad.

• 38:06John Green?

  Yeah, that's a bad example. It's like you can't really be opposed to nuclear warfare when you haven't shot off a nuke in your life. Like that feels good.

• 38:14Hank Green?

  It's exciting to do.

• 38:15John Green?

  It's a power trip. Power trip to drop that bomb. Uh, yeah, no, I can, I can say that I don't like all kinds of things that I've never personally encountered. All right, let's answer this question from Kirby who writes, Dear John and Hank, do I need to wear day clothes when I go to the hospital cafeteria? I essentially live in the hospital now. I've been here six weeks with no sign of leaving anytime in the next three to four months. My newborn son is in the critical intensive care unit and so here I am. I have free reign of the hospital, not being a patient myself, but when I'm hungry at midnight and want to go get chicken strips and ice cream, I repress the urge because I don't want to go amongst all the doctors and nurses in my PJs and fuzzy socks and warm robe. This is their workplace and they all look so professional and put together. But I've lived here for six weeks and time doesn't exist here. Are there rules about this?

• 38:58John Green?

  Does decency demand that I get fully dressed to go down 15 floors and get hospital food? Advice appreciated, Kirby.

• 39:06Hank Green?

  Well, I'm sorry that you live in a hospital now. This is awful, but I'm glad that you're handling it with the spirit of what's the correct decorum.

• 39:13John Green?

  And thank you for reaching out to your favorite etiquette podcast to find out the answer.

• 39:17Hank Green?

  Yeah, the hospital etiquette podcast, Dear Hank and John.

• 39:22John Green?

  Now, I actually worked in a hospital, so I feel like I am more of an expert than Hank is on this topic.

• 39:28Hank Green?

  I have never lived in a hospital. I've only, I've been to them a bunch, but.

• 39:33John Green?

  So you've never like stayed the night for six weeks in a row?

• 39:36Hank Green?

  No, me neither.

• 39:37John Green?

  Correct. Yeah, that sounds rough, Kirby, but having worked at a hospital and having been one of those people who had to wear fancy clothes, like I wore a tie and a button down shirt and my powder blue Chaplain jacket and slacks and everything. Having been that person, I can tell you my own opinion, which is that if I saw you in the hotel cafeteria at midnight in your fuzzy pajamas, eating chicken strips, I would, one, not bat an eye, and two, if I did bat an eye, it would be to think to myself, oh, man, that's gotta be rough. I hope they're doing all right. I might even come up and say, as a chaplain, who I had to be outgoing

• 40:21John Green?

  back then, I might even come up and say, like, how's it going today? I would certainly never comment on or think about the fact that you were wearing pajamas.

• 40:30Hank Green?

  Yes. Yeah. And so I think, I think that it comes down to like your level of comfort with the situation. I think it might be more how you feel.

• 40:38John Green?

  I think you've just gotta wear the PJs.

• 40:40Hank Green?

  Okay, John thinks you should wear the PJs. I think you should get dressed to the nines. I think you should shine up those shoes, tap dance your way all the way to the cafeteria.

• 40:52John Green?

  Yeah, that's, that's the mood.

• 40:55John Green?

  The only other thing I'd say about this is that if anyone gives you flack, you gotta tell them about this podcast. Just tell them to listen to the podcast.

• 41:03Hank Green?

  No, no, yeah, you'd be like, look, I got permission from two guys.

• 41:06John Green?

  I asked two guys.

• 41:07Hank Green?

  Both of them agreed.

• 41:08John Green?

  One of whom worked in a hospital for six months, 25 years ago.

• 41:15John Green?

  I cannot believe that was over half my life ago. Like, that is so mind blowing because it feels so present in my life every day, but it was over half my life ago. Those early twenties, man, they stick with you.

• 41:26Hank Green?

  They do. I, I feel like 46 is hitting different from 45. I feel like 45, I was like solidly 40.

• 41:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Hank Green?

  And 46, I'm like solidly 50.

• 41:40John Green?

  Well, you're certainly in your mid 50s, right?

• 41:43Hank Green?

  Well, 40s.

• 41:44John Green?

  Mid 40s. Sorry, I was getting ahead of myself. You're certainly in your mid 40s.

• 41:47Hank Green?

  I just like, there's a real sort of like multiply this number by two kind of vibe to being in your 40s.

• 41:56John Green?

  Oh, yeah, because people keep saying you're middle aged, but when you multiply your age by two.

• 42:00Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 42:03John Green?

  Doesn't feel like you're in the middle as such.

• 42:07Hank Green?

  Look, it's still like, it's still in the middle. If you divide them, if you divide it up into thirds.

• 42:15John Green?

  What is our life expectancy? Can you remind me?

• 42:18Hank Green?

  If, if you're in your, if you're still alive when you get to like 50, your life expectancy is late 80s?

• 42:25John Green?

  No.

• 42:26Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:27John Green?

  No way.

• 42:28Hank Green?

  I mean, the average, the most common age of death is?

• 42:32John Green?

  Okay, I've got it. 80. 80.

• 42:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's a bunch of different numbers. There's a bunch of different ones to look at it.

• 42:39John Green?

  If you're a man and you're 45, well, I put in 48, actually, and then I looked at the actuarial life table of remaining number of years, according to the Social Security Administration, and I got 80. So if it's 80, Hank, like, not only am I in the second half, I'm in the fifth, eighth.

• 43:00Hank Green?

  Wow, John, you really gotta like, make sure you divide everything up so that you could keep, keep your head on exactly where you are. That's gonna be super relaxing.

• 43:11John Green?

  Sorry, I'm spiraling. What were we talking about?

• 43:13Hank Green?

  Imagine a tree. Picture a tree. It's fall.

• 43:18John Green?

  So I've got one World Cup when I'm 52, 56, 60, 64.

• 43:22Hank Green?

  You're trying to figure out how many World Cups you got left, John?

• 43:25John Green?

  I got eight, if I make it through the summer of my 80th year.

• 43:30Hank Green?

  You got eight World Cups?

• 43:31John Green?

  I got eight World Cups left if I make it through that summer.

• 43:35Hank Green?

  I gotta tell you, you're gonna be, look, they're gonna, they're gonna figure out this whole death thing.

• 43:40John Green?

  Oh, yeah, they are. They are. Of course they are. It's not like that's been an interest of humans for 50,000 years or anything.

• 43:47Hank Green?

  My favorite part about people thinking that they're gonna fix death is that, is that they're like, no, this time it's for real.

• 43:56John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this isn't Ponce de Leon looking for the fountain of youth. This is a whole other thing.

• 44:01Hank Green?

  Whole different thing. That guy, idiot.

• 44:04John Green?

  He was crazy.

• 44:05Hank Green?

  He was, he was, he made all that up.

• 44:10Hank Green?

  Why was, why was he so obsessed with that? I don't understand.

• 44:12John Green?

  He didn't have unregulated peptides to help him.

• 44:15Hank Green?

  I mean, a peptide, it starts with pep.

• 44:21Hank Green?

  Do you think that's part of it? Do you think that's part of peptides?

• 44:24John Green?

  I don't know. I don't think you can compete with my favorite peptide, Dr. Pepper.

• 44:28Hank Green?

  You know, it actually just occurred to me that the pep in Pepper and Dr. Pepper is about a little bit of pep in your step.

• 44:37John Green?

  Correct. There is no, there is no pepper in Dr. Pepper.

• 44:40Hank Green?

  That's not where the pep and peptide comes from. Do people think that peptides are like a tide of pep?

• 44:47John Green?

  Yeah, I figure that it's just like having a million cups of coffee, like a tide of pep just washes over you.

• 44:53Hank Green?

  I'm terrified that the reason that peptides are popular is in part because they start with the word pep.

• 44:58John Green?

  I don't think it's impossible. I don't know much about the unregulated world of peptides, he said with considerable pride, but I wish everybody the best.

• 45:08Hank Green?

  All right, John, before we get to Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we have a last question from Sarah, who asks, Dear Hank and John, something that always confused me was the phrase, having your work cut out for you. Seems to me that would be a good thing, like somebody else got your work started or cut out for you. I would think that this makes it easier and faster, yet the phrase means that you have a lot of hard work ahead. Why does this phrase mean what it does? Pumpkins and penguins, Sarah. We're so weird. We just say these things. I think I do.

• 45:39John Green?

  I know why it is. So you tell me what you think.

• 45:42Hank Green?

  Well, we, DeBocchi and I tried to track it down, and we think that it's like at the, at the textile factory.

• 45:50John Green?

  Right, at the tailor or the textile factory.

• 45:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's like, yeah.

• 45:55John Green?

  The pieces are cut, but then the hard work, which is sewing, is still to come.

• 45:59Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 46:00John Green?

  And so you've got your work cut out for you.

• 46:01Hank Green?

  You've got like a stack of pieces that's all cut out. That's all cut out for you.

• 46:05John Green?

  And then you're just like, well, I guess I got my work cut out for me. Now it's time to do some really intensive labor.

• 46:12Hank Green?

  Right. So like almost every phrase that isn't to do with boats, it is to do with textiles.

• 46:21John Green?

  Oh, interesting. Give me another textile phrase.

• 46:24Hank Green?

  The word shuttle, John, that's a thing from textiles. It goes back and forth. The word rocket, also another way to get to space, also comes from textiles. You can be on tenterhooks. That's a textile thing.

• 46:36John Green?

  I always thought that was a slaughterhouse thing.

• 46:38Hank Green?

  No, yeah, you'd think, but no, tenterhooks are like a thing that, they're like a sharp thing that was used to do something to wool. And, and so a thing that you wouldn't want to be on. You can, you can be dyed in the wool, of course.

• 46:54John Green?

  Sure.

• 46:56Hank Green?

  There's spinsters, old ladies who are just apparently only good for spinning yarn. You can lose the thread, people are always losing the thread. Yeah.

• 47:05John Green?

  Sure. Sure. You can find a needle in a haystack.

• 47:08Hank Green?

  You can. Yeah. What are needles for? You can be cut from the same cloth.

• 47:12John Green?

  There you go. This is good stuff, Hank.

• 47:14Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:15John Green?

  All right, it's time to transition to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first. AFC Wimbledon season has started at last.

• 47:21Hank Green?

  They're playing, they're playing sports.

• 47:22John Green?

  Now, Hank, we've got a problem. Sports is back, which is a huge relief. The six weeks between the World Cup and the start of the AFC Wimbledon season were as desperate as anything I've ever experienced in my life, but now we're back. We have a big problem, which is that we seem to be selling players because we have to, to make enough money to pay for our new players, but we don't have that many new players.

• 47:46John Green?

  And I'm very concerned. We have, we have, I think, the lowest budget in the league again, 24th out of 24. And I'm trying to think of ways to not have the lowest budget in the league, but it just feels very difficult right now. It feels like every dollar that can be squeezed out of the stadium is being squeezed out of the stadium. So it's kind of a hard time for AFC Wimbledon, reflected by our first result of the League One season, which was a 3-0 defeat to Huddersfield Town, in which it looked like we could have lost by more. And also, they got a red card after 28 minutes and we still lost 3-0. So.

• 48:19Hank Green?

  Oh, gosh.

• 48:20John Green?

  Not great. As I said to my friends on the group chat, if we play 11 versus 10 every game, we might be all right.

• 48:29Hank Green?

  Oh, boy.

• 48:30John Green?

  Unfortunately, you usually play 11 against 11.

• 48:32Hank Green?

  What are you gonna do about it, John?

• 48:35John Green?

  Well, Hank, you know, there are pockets into which one can dig.

• 48:41Hank Green?

  Well, not mine.

• 48:43John Green?

  I know. I've already asked.

• 48:47Hank Green?

  So is there, is it just like the right call to not spend the money right now?

• 48:55John Green?

  I mean, they're gonna get that Hank Games without Hank money, you know, the John's Channel revenue. That could be, that could be transformational if John's Channel blows up.

• 49:05Hank Green?

  And so what we need is John's Channel to blow up. This is so weird. You're so weird. You've been doing this for so long.

• 49:09John Green?

  Except I've learned over the years that I actually don't want to fly that close to the sun. So I want John's Channel to stay a pretty small deal. I, I think, we'll see. There's still two weeks left before the, the transfer deadline and hopefully in those two weeks, we'll be able to figure something out.

• 49:26Hank Green?

  Okay. Well, I am hopeful for you transfer. I hope that you get good transfers, I guess.

• 49:36John Green?

  Me too. Me too. I hope we can buy some players. What's going on in Mars?

• 49:40Hank Green?

  Japan has unveiled the spacecraft for their upcoming Martian moons exploration mission. So they're going to go to the moons of Mars. So not to the moon or to Mars, but to the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. It's they're, they're actually gonna land on Phobos with a rover. It's gonna, it's a little rover. And we were just talking about moon buggies on very light, like things with very small gravity. So I'm like, I don't like, I don't know how this is gonna work, but it's a little rover and it just seems like it's gonna be really bouncy for it because it's a very, very small object. And it's gonna try and actually grab a piece of the moon and send it back home. It will land in Australia.

• 50:21John Green?

  Whoa. It's gonna pick itself up off the gravity of that little?

• 50:25Hank Green?

  No, it's not gonna take its whole self. It's gonna send some, a little piece back.

• 50:29John Green?

  How's it gonna do that? Is it just gonna like use a slingshot?

• 50:33Hank Green?

  Ah, I bet there's, I bet there's some rocketry involved, but I actually don't know. I did not look into it.

• 50:39John Green?

  Well, we'll figure that out. That'll be for next week.

• 50:43Hank Green?

  And then it will also be sort of like looking at Deimos rather than, rather than landing there. So yeah, we're gonna learn more about Phobos and Deimos, which are weird. So they like, they have very circular orbits around Mars, but they look like they're asteroids. Captured asteroids usually do not have like, like very simple circular orbits. And so we don't really know how these things happened and we're curious about that. So that's

• 51:09John Green?

  So it might've been asteroids that got close to Mars and just got caught in its orbit.

• 51:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's the most likely thing that happened, but they act awful weird.

• 51:17John Green?

  They might be like pieces of Mars that got shot off like arm.

• 51:20Hank Green?

  Yes. Yes. Okay. That's really the two options.

• 51:22John Green?

  Hopefully we'll be able to figure that out. That would be a cool thing to know.

• 51:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. I'm glad we're gonna go see those moons.

• 51:27John Green?

  Hank, before we go, just real quick, do you have like $400,000 you could loan AFC Wimbledon?

• 51:36Hank Green?

  Look, John, I like that you said loan, but no.

• 51:43John Green?

  Which one are loans? Are loans the ones that get repaid or?

• 51:46Hank Green?

  Loans are the ones that don't. Can't remember.

• 51:50Hank Green?

  I guess it depends. I guess it depends. I guess it depends what I'm gonna bring.

• 51:54John Green?

  Just a little joke for the end of the podcast here.

• 51:56Hank Green?

  Break some AFC Wimbledon kneecaps about it.

• 52:02Hank Green?

  What's the interest rate? Maybe I am interested.

• 52:05John Green?

  It's not that good.

• 52:10Hank Green?

  Oh, God.

• 52:11John Green?

  All right. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to everybody who supports the podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn. And most of all, thank you for your emails. We cannot make a podcast without them. You can email us at [email protected].

• 52:25Hank Green?

  This podcast was edited by Linus Obenhouse. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna Metish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Ganna Rola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.