468: I Will Not Be Licking Any Doorknobs

How do trees decide where and when to grow their branches? How do I call out sick when I’m just exhausted by life? How biased is our understanding of prehistoric life based on the conditions needed to form fossils? How do I avoid spoilers during John’s book tour? What does it sound like on Mars? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected] Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:13John Green?

  Oh, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. Sorry, I was drinking Diet Dr. Pepper.

• 0:16Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions while drinking Diet Dr. Pepper, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, where did Noah keep the bees?

• 0:26John Green?

  Where did he keep the bees, Hank?

• 0:28Hank Green?

  In the archive.

• 0:29John Green?

  The archive.

• 0:31Hank Green?

  The archive.

• 0:31John Green?

  The archive.

• 0:32Hank Green?

  Archive.

• 0:34John Green?

  Well, I'll tell you what I like about that one. It's a good pun because you don't have to like mispronounce things a little bit to make it work. Like if you say archive-

• 0:43Hank Green?

  I did though. I did do that. I did. I gave it a little bit of a huh that I wouldn't normally do.

• 0:47John Green?

  But say archive. It still sounds like archive.

• 0:49Hank Green?

  The archive? Yeah, you'd get it.

• 0:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Hank Green?

  The archive. But that's way more than two bees. He's supposed to only take one of two of everything. And he doesn't even need to. He just needs an inseminated queen.

• 1:02John Green?

  There are a lot of different kinds of bees from around the world that he had to put in there. And there was, there could be no crossbreeding. That was not allowed. Noah specifically outlawed that before putting them in the archive.

• 1:16Hank Green?

  And the ants also were a huge problem because there's a ton of those.

• 1:21John Green?

  I mean, not to mention the land-based bacteria that he couldn't have known about because he lived before microorganisms.

• 1:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, but they can often go into a kind of ton state. You know, they go dormant and-

• 1:31John Green?

  Do you think they could make it 40 days and 40 nights?

• 1:33Hank Green?

  They can spore up, you know?

• 1:35John Green?

  Okay. All right.

• 1:37Hank Green?

  I don't know. I don't know. I do know that a queen ant has babies all her life, but only is inseminated once and just stores that sperm and keeps using it for years, sometimes over a decade. So I don't think that they all do it that way, but I, ants, ants are, they've got so many ways of living.

• 1:57John Green?

  So they only do it once?

• 1:59Hank Green?

  Some, yeah, during the flight.

• 2:00John Green?

  And the vast majority of ants, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, die virgins.

• 2:06Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, they're not. They're not for that. Vast, vast, vast majority.

• 2:11John Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:12Hank Green?

  Yeah. Bees too. That's not what it's about. Often times the bees die. So it's the males. They don't survive the act.

• 2:21John Green?

  Well, I'm not sure what to make of that, except that when Dad told me about the birds and the bees, he didn't mention any of that.

• 2:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Actually, don't teach them the birds and the bees. The birds, maybe. The bees, that's definitely not it. That's not-

• 2:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  That would, that would be a really weird place to start, you know? Maybe kick off some wrong ideas from the beginning.

• 2:45John Green?

  Where do babies come from? Well, first, Mom lays an egg.

• 2:48Hank Green?

  No. No, that's not how bees go. That's how birds go.

• 2:52John Green?

  We have a lot of, we have a lot of listeners with young children.

• 2:58Hank Green?

  It's true.

• 2:58John Green?

  And some of them listen to this podcast and what we've just done is make a problem.

• 3:03Hank Green?

  Possibly, but it's a problem that can be solved. John, recently I was at the Colorado School of Mines.

• 3:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Hank Green?

  Someone said my, my girlfriend-

• 3:10John Green?

  M-I-N-E-S.

• 3:14Hank Green?

  What did you think? Mimes?

• 3:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 3:17John Green?

  For a second.

• 3:17Hank Green?

  I was not at the Colorado School of Mines, though I would go if, if they invited me. And I was told by a person there that a girlfriend would cringe very much if I mentioned her name on the podcast and I forgot.

• 3:29John Green?

  Wow. And you're doing it?

• 3:30Hank Green?

  It might have been Stephanie.

• 3:32John Green?

  It might have been.

• 3:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:33John Green?

  Could have been another name.

• 3:35Hank Green?

  Could have been one of the other names. Yeah. So that's what you get. You know, you, sometimes you get a delivery, but not the one that you wanted. You get a low quality delivery.

• 3:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Hank Green?

  And I was like, there's almost, there's no chance I'm going to remember to do that. But then that came to mind just now.

• 3:52John Green?

  Speaking of travel.

• 3:54Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 3:55John Green?

  Uh, my book Hollywood Ending came out yesterday.

• 3:59Hank Green?

  Oh, wow. It didn't for us, but it did for them.

• 4:02John Green?

  That's right. And we are traveling the country celebrating. And by we, I mean myself and my publicist, to whom the book is dedicated, Elise Marshall Pfeiffer. That is how much I love my publicist. I dedicated a whole dang book to her. And we are traveling the country together. We are seeing the world. We are hoping to see you in towns like Portland, Maine, and Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, and many other locations. But most of all, we're hoping-

• 4:36Hank Green?

  Those are the ones that have not sold out yet, though, it sounds like.

• 4:39John Green?

  Yeah, I'm emphasizing the ones that haven't sold out because I get messages every day from people who are mad at me that the, about the ones that have sold out. So I don't want to say those towns again. Uh, we are really excited about the book, Elise and I, and hopefully other people.

• 4:57Hank Green?

  It's getting good reviews. The reviews are coming in.

• 5:01John Green?

  The reviews are coming in. It got starred reviews from both Kirkus and Booklist, which is a huge relief and encouragement. But you never know how people are going to feel about the book until they actually read it. So-

• 5:10Hank Green?

  Of course.

• 5:11John Green?

  There in listening land, where you have already pre-ordered the book from your local independent bookstore, signed copies are available now. You are engaging in a world that I wish desperately I was engaging in because I cannot handle anymore of the book not being out. I simply, I cannot get through this week with the book not being out, but I'm going to get through it anyway because as, as the great poet Robert Frost put it, "The only way out is through."

• 5:39Hank Green?

  Yeah. You got it, John. You got it. It's scary. Um, I, I don't really know how to deal with fear. Um, I, I feel like sometimes I deal with it better and sometimes I deal with it worse, but sometimes I think that that's actually just that the fear was worse and/or the fear was less.

• 6:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Hank Green?

  Or like the problem was, yeah, it's like I get through it. I'm like, I handled that one. Okay. And it's like, actually, what was actually happening is that wasn't as bad as other things.

• 6:11John Green?

  A fear.

• 6:12Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:13John Green?

  Right. The possibility of that thing happening wasn't as terrible as, as I thought. And that's so true. And I, I mean, I have blown this whole, as often happens with anxiety, I have blown this whole Hollywood ending thing out of proportion. It's just a book. I've written seven of them before.

• 6:32Hank Green?

  And someday Jupiter's moons will melt, you know?

• 6:35John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, not just that, but the earth will maybe be consumed by the sun. So-

• 6:40Hank Green?

  Yeah. No, there's sort of simultaneous-

• 6:41John Green?

  I've got nothing to worry about in the scheme of things.

• 6:43Hank Green?

  Things get wetter at Jupiter as things get drier on earth.

• 6:46John Green?

  Yeah. So given the boiling of the oceans, I have nothing to be concerned about. And yet still I find a way. And indeed, like, given the scope of human suffering, I have nothing to be worried about. But I think because it's such a, making fiction is a vulnerable thing inherently, but this book in particular is, you know, raw against some of my vulnerabilities. And that's the nature of writing. That's the nature of trying to engage in creative expression at all, I think. But it's going to take a while before it stops feeling raw either way, like regardless of how the book is, is received. So yeah, I'm just taking it.

• 7:25Hank Green?

  Do you feel like a fake writer, John? You can't.

• 7:28John Green?

  Oh, I do. Absolutely. I feel like an imposter and like my, my being an imposter will be revealed to the world at any moment.

• 7:34Hank Green?

  So I recently heard somebody talking about writing on a podcast.

• 7:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Hank Green?

  And I was like, well, that's not what I do. So it's gotta be something, I gotta be doing something else.

• 7:43John Green?

  Oh, no, there's just, there's no one right way.

• 7:46Hank Green?

  They were talking about the craft and they were talking about the struggle and they were talking about how like you can't think when you're there. You just have to feel. And I'm like, oh, I guess that's not, I guess that's not what I do.

• 7:57John Green?

  I really dislike it when people talk about writing as if there's one way to do it. It's like when people talk about parenting as if there's one way to do it.

• 8:05Hank Green?

  It felt really judgmental in this particular conversation. Yeah. Um, like, like there's a bunch of people who aren't real writers. It's kind, was almost kind of the frame that they were talking in.

• 8:15John Green?

  Well, it's very possible that one of those people is not a real writer.

• 8:18Hank Green?

  I'm falling on the other side of it. I don't know. I, I, you know, I think about like art and design a lot because that's what I studied more in school, uh, in undergrad. And there's like this like part of creating visual systems that have utility. And there's part that's like creating visual systems that are like about what you gain from it and you never know what somebody's going to pull out of it. And so it's like, you know, these, this like art versus design thing. Like, design is often about, you don't necessarily want to make something beautiful. You want to make something that's useful. And sometimes I think about my writing through the lens where I'm like, oftentimes I am thinking of it mostly from the angle of how do I get this information into a person's head the

• 9:00Hank Green?

  best way and fastest and lowest barriers way possible.

• 9:05John Green?

  Yeah, I still believe in the old fashioned notion that art should be useful. Um, useful maybe in different ways than design is useful, but still useful. It's still helps us contextualize our selves in the universe, you know?

• 9:20Hank Green?

  Right.

• 9:21John Green?

  And-

• 9:21Hank Green?

  It could just, it could feel a little bit like if you're talking about, like there's, there's something more pure about the other thing.

• 9:28John Green?

  Right, but there isn't.

• 9:29Hank Green?

  But I don't want to, I, yeah, I don't want to, I don't feel that way when I'm making it. It's still hard. I'm still struggling. I don't know.

• 9:36John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, the last pure art was on cave walls. There's no, there's no purity in this game and it's not about purity. It's about trying to make stuff that allows people to visit rooms in their mind. They have no other way of visiting.

• 9:48Hank Green?

  I, I don't, that's a really interesting thought. I wonder how the cave wall art felt.

• 9:54John Green?

  I felt it, bet it felt pure as heck, Hank.

• 9:57Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:57John Green?

  I mean, I bet those people didn't feel like imposters. They were pure.

• 10:00Hank Green?

  No.

• 10:01John Green?

  It's so, it's funny how we romanticize the past. Cause of course they weren't like, they were, they were competitive and people would be like, oh, Olaf is terrible.

• 10:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, I could tell you for sure that it was about status to some extent. It was like, it was played some role in human structuring of, of their, of their society.

• 10:20John Green?

  Yeah. And Olaf would be painting his woolly mammoths or whatever. And people would be like, oh, those are great woolly mammoths. And Olaf would go to sleep at night staring at his woolly mammoths by the firelight and think, I am a complete imposter.

• 10:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's nothing, it's nothing like Philo's.

• 10:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Hank Green?

  So much better.

• 10:37John Green?

  Oh God. Well, and to be fair, Philo was a genius, you know?

• 10:42Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:42John Green?

  And Olaf was just sort of plodding around doing his best.

• 10:45Hank Green?

  Yeah. You ever think, man, it must've been hard to do humanity without words. They did that for a while.

• 10:54John Green?

  We did that for half the time, probably.

• 10:57Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:59John Green?

  Yeah, I bet we weren't as good at it.

• 11:01Hank Green?

  Do you, do you ever think that you're made out of, out of, out of words?

• 11:05John Green?

  No, I always think that I'm made out of meat.

• 11:08Hank Green?

  I think that I might be made out of both meat and words.

• 11:11John Green?

  Hmm. It's a beautiful notion, but I'm afraid you're mostly edible. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

• 11:17Hank Green?

  This first question comes from both Adriel and Madeline, who asks, dear Hank and John, how do trees decide where and when to grow their branches? We are lucky to live in a neighborhood with lots of big old trees. And one tree in particular, uh, has us wondering about this. For almost six years, we've lived here and all of its branches have been higher than the two-story house next to us. And the trunk doesn't show any sign of lower branches that have been removed. But for the last six months or so, a handful of branches have started to sprout much closer to the ground and we're wondering why there, why now? Thanks and DFTBA pumpkins and penguins, Adriel, who is four and a half years old, and Madeline, who is 37. I recently was talking to a plant biologist, person who studies plants.

• 12:00Hank Green?

  And she was explaining to me how plants work. And it really drove home the fact that multicellularity happened more than once. And the way they do everything is fricking weird.

• 12:14John Green?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think I knew this. Multicellularity happened more than once? Like we went from single-celled organisms to multi, multicelled organisms three different times?

• 12:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I actually don't know for sure that it was only three times, but plants, animals and fungi all, all did it separately.

• 12:31John Green?

  So prokaryotes, eukaryotes and?

• 12:34Hank Green?

  They're all eukaryotic.

• 12:37John Green?

  You're telling me that eukaryotic animals happened three different times?

• 12:41Hank Green?

  No.

• 12:42John Green?

  You're telling me that eukaryotic organisms happened three different times?

• 12:45Hank Green?

  Eukaryotes happened first and then the eukaryotic cells split into three different, but that happened before multicellularity. And then multicellularity emerged multiple times from the eukaryotic lineage.

• 12:57John Green?

  All right. So let me, let me just get the lay of the land here. We've got prokaryotic organisms, which are one, one-celled.

• 13:04Hank Green?

  Yes, but also so are many eukaryotic organisms.

• 13:07John Green?

  Right. But all prokaryotic organisms are one-celled. Then we've got three different kinds of eukaryotic organisms. Trees, humans and other, and fungi.

• 13:20Hank Green?

  Yes, except that you gotta say multicellular, eukaryotic organisms. Cause if you don't, there's a bunch of others. There's lots of single-celled eukaryotes.

• 13:29John Green?

  We evolved to have more than one cell three different times, but we only evolved to go from prokaryotes to eukaryotes once.

• 13:37Hank Green?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:39John Green?

  Wow. That cell that swallowed another organism and formed the first eukaryotic cell was the most important cell ever.

• 13:51Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that there, there are, there are other cases to be made that are, that happened earlier on, but yeah, definitely, uh, on the, on the, anytime anybody's fighting about the sort of most important thing that ever happened, the transition to eukaryotic cells is a really big deal. Um, and it turns out I've just Googled this, that there are a bunch of others, up to and maybe beyond 25 different times, eukaryotic cells evolved into multicellular organisms. Uh, like there's some various algies that are different.

• 14:23John Green?

  Boring.

• 14:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know. Um, some slime molds that, that are multicellular. But yeah, plants are these big macroscopic, multicellular, eukaryotic organisms that became, that, that figured out how to be big macroscopic, multicellular organisms completely separately from us. And they do it very differently from us. Like the fact, we, we have these very regimented, strict body plans. Like every single descendant of a fish that lives on earth. And this is not quite true actually. But has basically the same body plan of like head at the top, butt at the bottom, arms and legs, uh, or like four arms and legs.

• 15:11Hank Green?

  Now whales have lost those, snakes have lost those, but that, they, they don't get more. There's none with like six. You don't get a dragon that has arms and legs and wings. That's like not available. Yeah, that's why there's no dragons. Um, there might, there could have been wivvorns, but we got bats instead.

• 15:27John Green?

  Right, right.

• 15:28Hank Green?

  For a bunch of reasons that I have been trying to figure out in a script that I have titled, Why Are There Bats? But, um, that's not important, but there are lots of, so, so they decide, they, they figured out their body plans in, in like totally different ways. And there's a bunch of different ways that this happens, but I'll just give you one, which is that you don't want a branch coming out right next to another branch. And so the end of a branch or other portions of the branch can actually release a hormone that travels into the body of the tree and suppresses the growth of new branches around the branch. And that's just like very different from how we would do it, you know? Um, and, but they do have hormones, uh, that, that are just convergently evolved.

• 16:11Hank Green?

  So they have these ways that your, their bodies signal itself to do and not do certain things. And that allows them to, to function correctly. Now, in the case of this tree that is causing this confusion in your neighborhood, Madeline, I don't know what's going on there. You need a plant biologist. It's super confusing. And when I talk to plant biologists, I'm like, oh, plants are aliens.

• 16:34John Green?

  Hmm.

• 16:35Hank Green?

  They are, they are like a whole different way it happened.

• 16:38John Green?

  Mm-hmm. They are essentially, and in fact, I would argue that we are the aliens, because this is mostly a plant planet insofar as it is a macroscopic organism planet.

• 16:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, for sure. It's, it's, it's kind of the how you measure is, can be weird. But yeah, I mean, it's mostly a bacteria planet.

• 17:00John Green?

  How are you gonna measure and find more people?

• 17:02Hank Green?

  I'm not saying that it's plants. I'm thinking bacteria.

• 17:06John Green?

  Well, I just, I just said macroscopic.

• 17:08Hank Green?

  Okay. Sorry. I missed that. Um, there's also a case to be made that like, a tree is just sort of like a living skin over a giant skeleton. So there's like not much that, not that much of a tree that's actually alive. Nothing like the actual mass of the tree. But we don't need to go there. I find it so cool. And the more you look, the more interesting it gets. And that is just how I keep feeling about the world is like if we're, it, I find so much joy and curiosity and hope in looking closer.

• 17:40John Green?

  Yes, yes, absolutely.

• 17:43Hank Green?

  My, uh, the instinct that is brought to me by my culture is to look very broadly. And I get that. But there's so much of my like actual hope and, and knowledge comes from looking closer.

• 17:55John Green?

  All right, Hank. Well, I'm staring out at a beautiful ginkgo tree right now with newfound respect, even if I still didn't understand why they have branches, uh, down low and, and sometimes don't. This next question comes from Joey who writes, dear John and Hank, life has been exhausting me and I could really use a day or two off. How do I intentionally get myself just sick enough that I can call out all of my obligations, but not so sick that it's bad? Should I start licking doorknobs? Unfortunately healthy. Joey, Joey. Joey, take a.

• 18:23Hank Green?

  Joey.

• 18:24John Green?

  Take a lesson off Ferris Bueller, my man.

• 18:28Hank Green?

  It is possible. You know, I have to be a simple lie. Um, or.

• 18:34John Green?

  It's not even a lie. I don't feel well. You don't feel well, Joey. I can tell you, you just said life has been exhausting you. You're unable to appreciate the beauty of a ginkgo tree. We've all been there. You need a day off.

• 18:48Hank Green?

  Yeah. You could take a little bit of, uh, like, like a little too much Miralax and be like, ah.

• 18:54John Green?

  Oh.

• 18:56Hank Green?

  I'm just really, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a fountain right now. And just the morning really, you know? If you're sick in the morning, you can't go in for the rest of the day. Uh, and.

• 19:06John Green?

  Yep.

• 19:07Hank Green?

  Yeah. And nobody ever, nobody ever checked diarrhea, you know?

• 19:11John Green?

  No. If you have a diarrhea illness, they genuinely don't want you coming into work, regardless of where you work. There's a joke about this in Turtles All the Way Down, where, uh, Daisy works at Chuck E. Cheese and she says, if you even imply diarrhea, they tell you to stay home.

• 19:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:27John Green?

  Um, that has been my experience. I, I, I don't think you need to go the full Miralax route personally. I mean, you can, if you're a really honest person, but I think you could just say.

• 19:39Hank Green?

  Take a normal dose and then accidentally take it a second time. And then you can't go into work in the morning.

• 19:45John Green?

  You can't. It's true.

• 19:50Hank Green?

  It's surprisingly gentle stuff, actually. I've had a lot of good experience with Miralax.

• 19:55John Green?

  And then you can get into the details of it with your boss and be like, oh, God, I think I took too much Miralax yesterday.

• 20:03Hank Green?

  It's like, I'm not going to be productive in the space. You know, whatever you have me doing, I just won't be particularly good at it.

• 20:10John Green?

  I'm sort of in the opposite position right now, Hank, where for the first time in a few months, I can't have anything bad happen to me for about 24 days.

• 20:20Hank Green?

  I thought you were constipated.

• 20:22John Green?

  No, that is actually something that I keep between me, myself, and my family, not something that I bring up on a podcast.

• 20:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, I was surprised.

• 20:30John Green?

  It makes you unusual among internet creators, but there are places where I choose to have a private life.

• 20:38Hank Green?

  I'm actually in the opposite position right now. I am so stopped up.

• 20:45Hank Green?

  I took too much Imodium and it's a problem. I don't know what to do.

• 20:49John Green?

  I have to stay healthy and uninjured for 24 days.

• 20:53Hank Green?

  This is always really scary.

• 20:55John Green?

  It is.

• 20:56Hank Green?

  When like the world depends on your body hanging on.

• 21:01John Green?

  Yeah. And the last week of tour, you are hanging on.

• 21:05Hank Green?

  You are. I don't know how people do this, you know? Like Taylor Swift's got like a billion dollars riding on not getting diarrhea.

• 21:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Hank Green?

  It's just like, you just have to live that life. Like, what, like, you know? I don't know.

• 21:18John Green?

  Yeah. No, I'm saying I'm worried about disappointing 2,000 people. She disappoints like 80,000 if she gets sick.

• 21:24Hank Green?

  Oh, my God. And then she has to figure out how to do the whole thing again, probably, to make it up.

• 21:29John Green?

  Right? Yeah. So I'm going to do my level best not to get sick. I'm going to take precautions. If you see me wearing surgical gloves, just know that that's part of the look.

• 21:42Hank Green?

  That's part of it. John Green, not licking any doorknobs.

• 21:47John Green?

  I will not be licking any doorknobs this coming month. This next question comes from Maya, who writes, Dear John and Hank, how biased is our understanding of prehistoric life based on the conditions needed to form fossils? I know that fossils only form under some really specific conditions, but those conditions don't occur in some ecosystems. How skewed is our perception of prehistoric life on Earth due to these limitations from trilobites to triceratops? Maya, Maya, I have a hilarious story about this before Hank gives you the scientific answer. So if you go to the Indiana State Museum, which I really recommend, it's the history of the state of Indiana, but it goes back further than when Indiana was formed as a state in the 19th century. It goes all the way back to

• 22:26John Green?

  the beginning of Earth, but only takes as its area of purview, the current state of Indiana. Okay. So like, that's the thing you need to know about the Indiana State Museum. So the Indiana State Museum has all this information about 3 billion years ago and 1 billion years ago and 600 million years ago. And then the glaciers descend and they don't retreat until 12,000 years ago. And so the whole age of the dinosaurs, et cetera, they're just like, we don't know. We don't know what happened in Indiana.

• 23:04John Green?

  All that stuff got scraped away when the glaciers receded and we don't know.

• 23:08Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. So there's like a thousand different ways that this bias shows up. One of them is that we look for dinosaurs in places where we've found dinosaurs before. So you're like, you're like, this is a great place for dinosaurs. And you keep finding them. You're like, well, we're just going to keep looking here. There's, but there's a bunch of others. So like, as you say, the conditions for fossils to form is a real problem. And there's a bunch of reasons. So I was working on this bat script and...

• 23:36John Green?

  You and this bat script? You're promoting this bat script more than I'm promoting my new novel Hollywood Ending that came out yesterday.

• 23:42Hank Green?

  I think I might pass it off to Sasha as well. Like, I might not actually finish this bat. I'm like, it's too much. Somebody take this away. So anyway, there, like certain bats, the kinds of bats that eat insects fall into lakes a lot, and so they fossilize really well. But fruit bats, they tend to die where there's a bunch of like, like in tropical rainforests, where there's a huge amount of, like, everything's getting scavenged, nothing's fossilizing. And so we don't know what's up with fruit bats. They're just not in the fossil record. We think, like, it could be that they evolved relatively recently, but it could be that they just did not fossilize well. And when we look and ask, like, there's a couple of ways to like, ask the question. And one way to ask the question is, okay,

• 24:25Hank Green?

  there's about this many species on Earth right now. We can assume that there would be about that many species on Earth during the age of the dinosaur and any given year. And when we look that way, nothing makes sense. It's just way too many species. So...

• 24:38John Green?

  Oh, interesting.

• 24:39Hank Green?

  So it might be that there were fewer species, or it might be that our understanding of that era is just extremely incomplete, or it might be some combination of both of those things. So it seems like there's way more species right now than there ever were during the age of the dinosaurs. And it might just be that that's true, that there's more diversity, but...

• 24:57John Green?

  Well, we just engaged in this bias earlier in this very podcast, talking about cave paintings, where the reason cave paintings have been preserved is not because they were art, but because they were painted on cave walls. There was no doubt art made by humans that wasn't painted on cave walls. It could have been painted on canvas. Who knows? Maybe it was painted on stretched woolly mammoth canvases.

• 25:24Hank Green?

  Oh, for sure.

• 25:25John Green?

  And maybe they invented abstraction long before Hilma af Klimt came around. Who knows, right? But like, we have no way of knowing because it wasn't preserved, whereas cave paintings, some of them have been preserved. So we don't know how long humans have been making art. We don't know what kind of art humans made. We only know a small, probably, selection of the art humans have made.

• 25:54John Green?

  It gives me hope, though, Hank, that, you know, in the distant, distant future, almost everything will be lost, the way that almost everything from the past has been lost to us. I think more will be preserved just because we do a better job now of preserving things, passing things down through generations. But still, like, a lot of stuff gets lost, you know? Like, the novel written by our great uncle is mostly lost.

• 26:22Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 26:22John Green?

  There are a couple of copies floating around, but only a couple. And that was only 70 or 80 years ago. Here's something I like to think about. There's no way you or I can compete against Faulkner, Toni Morrison, you know, Colson Whitehead, Ernest Hemingway, whoever you want to cite, right? Like, we just, we can't. And that's okay. We're doing something else.

• 26:46Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 26:46John Green?

  But what if 12,000 years from now, an absolutely remarkable thing just happens to have survived and Shakespeare's plays don't? And people are like, man, this stuff from 12,000 years ago, it was incredible. Like, they were already thinking about technology.

• 27:07Hank Green?

  This is written in 2017 and it's sort of like a little bit about AI.

• 27:12John Green?

  And 12,000, exactly.

• 27:14Hank Green?

  A little bit about me, the AI, who's the only thing alive now.

• 27:18John Green?

  So 12,000 years from now, I'm saying it's perfectly possible, although very unlikely, but possible, that you will be considered the greatest literary genius of our time just because nobody else made it, right?

• 27:30Hank Green?

  It's got lost.

• 27:31John Green?

  Yeah. Like, there are all these references to great poets other than Ovid, but their work was lost. And so we don't know, we don't know much about how great they were.

• 27:40Hank Green?

  Ovid's the greatest poet. I'm sorry, he did it.

• 27:42John Green?

  Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, that's something, that's, that's a, when I'm feeling really down and I feel like a complete imposter, I like to remind myself that maybe all the people who are better than me will just be forgotten.

• 27:54Hank Green?

  Wow. That's, wow, I don't like to think about that.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  That's wild. Somebody, somebody quit, cast John's books in bronze. Do them in copper, something that lasts.

• 28:09John Green?

  Make a Rosetta Stone of them, like, one page in Greek, same page in Romanian, same page in whatever language the AIs you're going to use. Yeah, do it that way.

• 28:20Hank Green?

  Neuralies.

• 28:21John Green?

  Neuralies, right?

• 28:23Hank Green?

  Which reminds me, John, that this podcast was brought to you by Olaf the Cave Painter. Olaf the Cave Painter, we remember his work purely because it's the only stuff that stuck around.

• 28:32John Green?

  Yeah. Maybe people were looking at cave paintings back in the day and they would be like, these are so bad.

• 28:39Hank Green?

  Compared to the stuff we're doing in fiber, this sucks.

• 28:42John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, our, our tapestries are astonishing.

• 28:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:48John Green?

  And resting in their beauty. And these cave paintings are just studies for those tapestries.

• 28:54John Green?

  Today's podcast also, of course, brought to you by trees. Trees, they're a whole different thing.

• 29:00Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by the first you carry out, without whom there would be no trees.

• 29:05John Green?

  Indeed, indeed. Big deal, the first you carry out. And today's podcast is brought to you by taking a little too much Miralax. Taking a little too much Miralax, can't go to work.

• 29:15Hank Green?

  Don't do this, everybody.

• 29:17John Green?

  No, just don't go to work. I mean, I don't want to be that guy, but like, take the day off if you don't feel well.

• 29:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, if you don't have, if you don't have any vacation days.

• 29:25John Green?

  I just think like, an occasional mental health day, I say this as somebody who's about to take 25 flights in 24 days, an occasional mental health day can be very valuable.

• 29:36Hank Green?

  I do like a weekend.

• 29:38John Green?

  Well, I'll have one in November.

• 29:43Hank Green?

  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, I don't have those. I have

• 30:26Hank Green?

  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.

• 30:50Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. I do very much like opening up my closet and finding an item that I know is gonna be both comfortable and I'm just gonna look good in it. It's gonna go well with my khakis, or my jeans, or my third kind of pant, that I have like a, 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,

• 31:31Hank Green?

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

• 32:15Hank Green?

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

• 32:24Hank 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

• 33:08Hank 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. This is making

• 33:53Hank Green?

  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 31, 2026. That's code DEARHANK50OFF at factormeals.com. Dear Hank, five zero off at factormeals.com. See the website for more details.

• 34:36Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Amy, who asks, Dear Hank and John, but mostly John, I will be attending your Portland, Maine bookstore stop. Bookstore, book tour stop with my partner. He also just read Heart the Lover in preparation and sobbed.

• 34:50John Green?

  Oh my god. So good. Lily King is so great. I can't wait to be on stage with her. I'm so nervous. Talk about somebody who can't feel like an imposter. There's no way Lily King feels like an imposter, but the rest of us do.

• 35:01Hank Green?

  After listening to you so vehemently avoid spoilers while promoting your book on the podcast, I'm very nervous that the book talk will inevitably spoil some of the book.

• 35:10John Green?

  Hmm.

• 35:11Hank Green?

  I often go to the movies without even watching a trailer. Are there parts during the show that I should plug my ears? Should I show up and get the book and then scurry out of there? Although that would be sad, because I would be excited to see you and Lily King talk about books and writing. Nervous in Maine, the way life should be, Amy.

• 35:29John Green?

  So, it's a great question. There are inevitably spoilers when you talk about a book. Like, even when I read from the first chapter, that spoils the first chapter, right? So like, that, that's just part of it. And it is what it is. I have one bit in the show that's a tiny spoiler, but only for like, the first 30 pages, you know? Which I think is fine. I actually am more bothered by the like, flap copy that talks about something that doesn't happen until 100 pages in the book. That bothers the heck out of me.

• 36:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:10John Green?

  And I really don't like doing that. I'm okay with like, the first 30 pages. I think it might even be the first 15 pages, you find out that, I'll just tell, I'll just tell you the spoiler, Hank.

• 36:22Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 36:23John Green?

  You've read the book twice. You, you're not gonna be spoiled. But very early on in the novel, you're told that Juniper is not making Andy Warhol Never Gets Old as the only film she'll ever make, right? Like, she's this part of a career, and she's trying to set up her next thing. And as she tries to set up her next thing and figure out what her next thing is gonna be, she reads this novel called Gods of Andromeda. That's like a big epic fantasy novel that's very matriarchal, where women are the rulers and, and men are mostly sort of male handmaids. And she's interested in the book. Like, I, that, but that's not a spoiler. That happens on like, page 20. So there is a reference to that.

• 37:07Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 37:08John Green?

  That story, Gods of Andromeda, in the show. But that's the only thing that would count as a spoiler.

• 37:13Hank Green?

  Even in the conversation part, though?

• 37:16John Green?

  In the conversation part, I think we'll talk more about themes than we will about like, what happens in the story.

• 37:21Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 37:23John Green?

  I don't like talking, I really hate spoilers. Because here's my feeling. So this nice person has agreed to come see me in person, has paid 40 bucks or whatever to come, probably more than that, to come see me in person. And most of what they're getting out of that-

• 37:40Hank Green?

  And you don't get the book until you get there.

• 37:43John Green?

  Exactly.

• 37:44Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:44John Green?

  You don't get the book until you get there. And you want, part of what you want is that feeling of like, reading in community, that feeling of being in community with other people who also share an affinity group with you or whatever. And I, I don't want to take that away from people. I want them to have the opportunity to read the book in community. I want them to have the opportunity to like, read the book with their partner and like, talk about it with their partner. Like, that's such a, that's, there's two things that can happen when you, when you write a book that are the greatest honors to me. And one is when your book inspires other art, like whether it's fan art or fanfiction or whatever. And the other is when your book is read in community, whether that's in a classroom, or by a couple, or, or by a book club or whatever. Those are the coolest things

• 38:29John Green?

  that can happen. I don't want to spoil that. So I'm gonna try really hard not to have spoilers.

• 38:34Hank Green?

  Okay. All right. Well, I'm glad that you're going to Portland, Maine.

• 38:40John Green?

  I'm excited. I haven't been to Portland, Maine for a show, ever.

• 38:43Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, I guess me either. I go to Portland, Maine, not unusually, because I have family there.

• 38:49John Green?

  Yeah, and we try, although we don't always succeed, not to mix family and work too much.

• 38:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, indeed. All right, we got a question from Michael, Hank, who writes, Dear John and Hank, what does it sound like on Mars? It occurred to me today, as I was sitting in the shade of a carob tree, listening to the sounds of birds chirping and leaves. Michael, come on, man, your life is too good. Your life is too good, sitting in the shade of a carob tree. Did you, did you take a double dose of Miralax this morning? Be honest with me.

• 39:20John Green?

  Listening to the leaves rustling in the wind, that these living things make sounds, and that exists in my mind as a kind of background noise to which I hardly ever pay attention. That's such a good observation, Michael.

• 39:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:31John Green?

  I think of these sounds as a kind of quiet, but of course, they aren't really. It makes me wonder what the sounds on a lifeless planet would be. I imagine one could hear the weather, maybe. Can we know what Mars sounds like, listening carefully, Michael?

• 39:46Hank Green?

  Oh, we can, you, you can go listen to Mars right now, Michael. We've recorded the, the Perseverance Rover has recorded Mars, and it sounds like wind, as you might.

• 39:56John Green?

  It does. Is it sound like, uh, is it, is it constant wind? Like, is it a windy planet?

• 40:02Hank Green?

  Uh, it's, it's a windy planet. I don't think that it's always windy. Um, but yeah, you can hear, you can, you can go and hear its sound on Mars. Now, it does have some, some qualities that are different. So that, you know, the, the rustling of the wind in your ears is like a weird turbulence effect.

• 40:20John Green?

  Can you even hear, can you even hear wind?

• 40:23Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 40:23John Green?

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna be a Buddhist here, Hank.

• 40:25Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 40:25John Green?

  But if a wind winds, and there's no one there to hear it, does it actually make a sound?

• 40:30Hank Green?

  Well, but we're talking about a situation in which Michael is there to hear it.

• 40:34John Green?

  No, we're not.

• 40:36Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 40:36John Green?

  Michael just said, what does it sound like on Mars?

• 40:39Hank Green?

  Well.

• 40:39John Green?

  He's not proposing going to Mars.

• 40:40Hank Green?

  The Perseverance Rover's microphones are there to hear it, and they send it back to us digitally.

• 40:45John Green?

  Okay. All right. But, but I'm just saying, like, without perseverance there, so without the wind to hit something.

• 40:53Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 40:53John Green?

  That then becomes sound.

• 40:55Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 40:57John Green?

  Wind doesn't make a sound, does it?

• 41:00Hank Green?

  I actually, I'm not sure if what's holding you up is that, uh, i- is that they're needing to be a conscious observer?

• 41:09John Green?

  No.

• 41:10Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 41:11John Green?

  No.

• 41:11Hank Green?

  Then yes, wind does make a sound. So wind, wind as it goes around things, as it hits stuff?

• 41:18John Green?

  Emphasis on things, emphasis on things, but what is it hitting?

• 41:21Hank Green?

  It's hitting rocks. It's hitting, yeah.

• 41:24John Green?

  All right, there's rocks.

• 41:24Hank Green?

  It's like going through the, it's going through the space between rocks and, yeah. The way that it would, like, go through, you know, the, the tree branches and make a noise here. There's stuff, there's enough stuff that there would be the turbulence that causes the wind noise, which I actually don't know where that comes from. Um, like the whistling of the wind, is it, what's hap, what's happening there? It's just, like, when I whistle, what's happening? What does that make a noise? I don't know. This is, I bet, I bet there's fluid dynamics involved, and that's one of the ones I don't look at.

• 41:57John Green?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 41:59Hank Green?

  That and optics, count me out. So that, that's primarily what you're gonna hear. Now, the, the sound that's made somewhere else and traveling to you is different from, like, the wind rustling in your ears. That stuff's gonna be really faint, because Mars has a very thin atmosphere and sounds are carried through the air. Also, the, the actual content of the atmosphere affects what sound waves pass more easily through the air. So a carbon dioxide atmosphere is gonna be able to carry higher frequency sounds less effectively. Don't ask me why, but that is a thing, according to NASA.

• 42:36John Green?

  So they really like bass, they really like bass on, on carbon dioxide planets?

• 42:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, you won't get as much whistle, whistle noises, higher pitched noises will be, won't travel as far. So it will be, it is actually, like, literally a different sound. If you were standing there, talking to a person, you would hear it very differently than if you were on Earth. Now, you would also asphyxiate immediately, but if we imagine that part isn't happening, then it's still a big problem.

• 43:00John Green?

  Wow. I don't wanna go there.

• 43:04Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, in addition to asphyxiating immediately, uh, a bunch of other bad things would happen. Also, cold, cold air carries sound more slowly, which you would only really not notice at a distance.

• 43:16John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. I'm still a little stuck on whether or not wind makes a sound if no one is there to observe it.

• 43:23Hank Green?

  Well, that's just, that's just, the, I, I feel like we're having an old conversation. This is, this has never felt answerable to me.

• 43:32John Green?

  No, I just, I, I, I understand that. It's like, the tree falling in the woods is a, is a unanswerable question. I'm saying, like, does wind make a sound? If you, if you take off your spacesuit.

• 43:47Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 43:47John Green?

  And you blow into the air, the vacuum of space.

• 43:52Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 43:53John Green?

  That breath continues forever, right? Because there's nothing there to stop it until it hits, uh, I don't know, Jupiter or something.

• 44:00Hank Green?

  The particles will bounce off of each other, so it'll spread out. But yeah, they will have, have a collective direction of momentum, and I guess a lot of the air will keep going in a direction.

• 44:09John Green?

  If I'm three feet away from that, when that burst of air hits me, I'm gonna hear something, but the reason I'm gonna hear something is because it hit my body, my ears.

• 44:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:22John Green?

  If it doesn't hit a body, it makes no sound, right?

• 44:25Hank Green?

  If it doesn't hit.

• 44:26John Green?

  It doesn't hit a rock or, or a person.

• 44:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know for sure, but I think you're right.

• 44:32John Green?

  So wind itself is soundless.

• 44:35Hank Green?

  Wind is soundless. It's the thing where the wind hits stuff that makes sound. Yeah, I think so.

• 44:41John Green?

  Wow.

• 44:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:44John Green?

  Just think about that, Hank.

• 44:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, I just sort of like imagining a column of wind.

• 44:51John Green?

  Wind is silent, except that Earth life makes it loud.

• 44:56Hank Green?

  Well.

• 44:57John Green?

  Give me my metaphor.

• 44:59Hank Green?

  Stuff makes it loud.

• 45:03John Green?

  Oh, thanks for coming to my party. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we gotta get to one, one thing here.

• 45:09Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 45:10John Green?

  It's from Paula. Paula writes, Dear John and Hank, I have a correction. You know how we love corrections on this podcast, Hank.

• 45:15Hank Green?

  I, I feel like, I feel like I've been out of my depth several times today, so.

• 45:20John Green?

  I'm sure we'll get lots of them. As an adoring listener of your show, I was super excited to hear my country's own Theresa Mannion quoted by Hank on episode 466, "Don't make unnecessary journeys, et cetera." However, critically, Theresa is from Ireland, not Scotland.

• 45:36Hank Green?

  Oh, did I say Scotland? Oh, no.

• 45:38John Green?

  Now, I don't know, Hank, how closely you've followed politics over the last few centuries, but that's a mistake they don't love you making.

• 45:48John Green?

  That clip is a precious Irish artifact.

• 45:50Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 45:51John Green?

  Paula goes on.

• 45:52Hank Green?

  It is.

• 45:52John Green?

  This may be a mix-up to rival the Irish settlers, Irish settlers confusion on a previous episode of the pod.

• 46:03Hank Green?

  Oh, no. I need to, I need to stay friends with the Irish. It's important. They're my exit strategy.

• 46:14John Green?

  It reminds me of when I had a, uh, Polish doctor in Chicago, and one time I asked if, because I, I speak a little bit of Russian, I asked if she was Russian, and she said, "This is the worst thing you could have said to me."

• 46:31Hank Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 46:34John Green?

  Yeah. Okay, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Let's start with the news from AFC Wimbledon, because it's good, question mark, question mark, question mark. AFC Wimbledon can't seem to stop winning football games.

• 46:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, they're scoring goals.

• 46:47John Green?

  Well, one at a time, but we're keeping clean sheets, which is the important thing. We beat both Bromley and Doncaster in the last week, rocketing us up to seventh place in the, uh, still early days of the League One season.

• 47:02Hank Green?

  What?

• 47:02John Green?

  We are.

• 47:03Hank Green?

  That's wild.

• 47:04John Green?

  We are defending really well, but most of all, we have this new goalkeeper, who's an old goalkeeper, Joe Bersik. He, he was a child for us. He started playing for us when he was like 10, and then he left when he was like 17 to go play for fancier clubs. But now, at the age of 26, he is back on loan, temporarily playing for AFC Wimbledon, and he is playing lights out. He made nine saves against Doncaster, the most saves by an AFC Wimbledon goalkeeper, uh, since I believe 2019.

• 47:36Hank Green?

  Whoa, right.

• 47:38John Green?

  Yeah, he's crushing it.

• 47:39Hank Green?

  You needed those saves.

• 47:40John Green?

  We needed those saves, and some of them were very good. So shout out Joe Bersik. And then the other thing I wanna mention is that our women's team is playing amazingly well. Our women's team, uh, is currently fourth in the table, uh, and, uh, have been playing also lights out. They won their most recent game 2-0 against Rayal Bedford, which is a hilarious name for a, uh, for a soccer team, but anyway.

• 48:06Hank Green?

  Rayal Bedford, that is very funny.

• 48:08John Green?

  Let me make sure that's what they're called. It is really funny. Rayal Bedford, yeah, I didn't make that up. It's so good. It's so good, Rayal Bedford. Like, I mean, it reminds me that AFC Wimbledon, when they were first, when, in 2002, when the club had to reform because of the Milton Keynes tragedy, um, they, uh, they wanted, they asked what the new club name was gonna be, because they couldn't say Wimbledon FC, because Wimbledon FC had moved to Milton Keynes, according to the English FA. And so they wanted to say Rayal Wimbledon, and the guy who was taking the application just shook his head and said, "No."

• 48:48John Green?

  So they were like, "What about AFC Wimbledon?" And he was like, "All right."

• 48:52Hank Green?

  Wow, weird.

• 48:52John Green?

  And that's how AFC Wimbledon got their name.

• 48:54Hank Green?

  It's too much power for one man to hold.

• 48:56John Green?

  Indeed, indeed. So, all good news on the AFC Wimbledon front. Now, I will say, between when we are recording this and when it will come out, a critical juncture in the AFC Wimbledon season is coming, which is that this Thursday, or last Thursday, if you're listening, uh, AFC Wimbledon will be playing at Plough Lane, the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes, the most important game of our season. Uh, and, uh, we'll see how it goes. I want to beat those franchise so bad.

• 49:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:31John Green?

  So bad.

• 49:32Hank Green?

  John, you know how, how I watch AFC Wimbledon, as I look at the scores, and then I'm like, mm, they beat that team. They sound like, and I, I was like, Doncaster, that sounds like a legit one. That sounds like probably one of the really good teams.

• 49:45John Green?

  Yep.

• 49:45Hank Green?

  And I looked them up, and they are the last place team in the league.

• 49:48John Green?

  Haven't won a game yet.

• 49:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:50John Green?

  And we barely beat them. They, they dominated us, is the truth. They had those nine shots on goal, all of which were stopped by Joe Bersik. So, yeah.

• 50:00Hank Green?

  Really, they gotta kick that ball harder, apparently.

• 50:02John Green?

  We got it. We, we've got a ways to go, but as my friends reminded me, six games into the season, we only need 40 more points to survive.

• 50:12Hank Green?

  Okay. I don't know. That seems like a lot.

• 50:17John Green?

  No, I mean, if we average, if we just draw the rest of our games, we'll, we'll escape relegation.

• 50:22Hank Green?

  Right. I feel like that would be true of all the teams.

• 50:25John Green?

  Nope.

• 50:26Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 50:26John Green?

  Not true for Doncaster.

• 50:30Hank Green?

  All right. Well, this week in Mars news, John, China is continuing its work on the Qianwen Three Mars sample return mission. They want to launch in 2028. They want to bring samples back to Earth by 2031, which would put us to shame. It would be very embarrassing for the US's sample return attempts, which we keep saying we're going to do. And then the price of it continues to increase, embarrassingly so. And, and then the Irish newscaster says, don't make unnecessary journeys.

• 51:04John Green?

  And it does, and it does start to feel like an unnecessary journey.

• 51:07Hank Green?

  Yeah. And NASA's like, I guess. So the Qianwen Three mission is going to be looking for signs of weird life, actually. And the researchers are looking at finding candidate sites for the mission based on things like the chance of maybe there being ways to preserve biosignatures. There's also a plan to construct a, quote, planetary protection laboratory as a two-way system to both Earth and the samples to, to make sure that there's no possible cross-contamination. Because this is a big problem. If you want to find life on Mars, you just end up finding a bunch of life and you're like, well, what if that's just Earth life that got on board somehow? So this is a tricky thing. And, but they are working on

• 51:51Hank Green?

  it. And it's exciting. 2031 would be a big deal. I encourage them to put us to shame.

• 51:59John Green?

  I believe it's possible, Hank. Just as long as it doesn't happen with humans before 2028, I'm good with it.

• 52:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, John, I, I have given up.

• 52:10John Green?

  Well, there, there could be a miracle, you know? You never know. There's always the possibility of a miracle.

• 52:15Hank Green?

  I, I keep being told that five years from now, all diseases will be cured. And if that's the case, I saw somebody, like somebody who's taken seriously, say that the probability of there being a Dyson sphere in 2030 is above 10%.

• 52:35Hank Green?

  And I was, I was just like, man, if there is a bet, I would take.

• 52:39John Green?

  Yeah, exactly. If I could take a bet. I mean, I, I, I think the probability, the thing is like curing the disease, this is me banging on my drum, I know, but like curing the diseases is one thing. I actually think we could cure all this, not with, not by the end of the decade, but like, we could cure all diseases within 100 years.

• 52:58Hank Green?

  For sure. I agree.

• 52:59John Green?

  Getting that cure to the people who need it requires systems and structures and infrastructure that we just seem completely unwilling to engage with. Like, we're perfectly willing to engage with endless spending on data centers. We are unwilling to engage with spending on structural and systemic infrastructure that will allow us to actually get stuff to people.

• 53:24Hank Green?

  There's a real sense that everything is defined by technology and that, that like the entire world is just the technology and its effects. And I just, it seems like not hard to see how that's not the case. Like, it seems like pretty obvious.

• 53:44John Green?

  Well, it's only obvious if you don't spend all day looking at technology and thinking about technology. But I do wish that folks who do spend all day looking at technology and thinking about technology would spend a week in a deeply impoverished community, trying to understand how technology actually touches the lives of people living in poverty.

• 54:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 54:07John Green?

  But that's neither news from Mars nor AFC Wimbledon, so we should probably end the podcast.

• 54:12Hank Green?

  Or is it really news?

• 54:14John Green?

  No, not really news.

• 54:16Hank Green?

  Things people we've known.

• 54:17John Green?

  Yeah, we've known that, we've known that for like, five or six centuries.

• 54:21Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 54:22John Green?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Hank Green?

  Well, John, this podcast is edited by Linus Obden House. 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 Bradley. Our editorial assistant is Deboke 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.