401: Goodreads Therapy

Why are people on Goodreads so angry? Can you gift a subscription on good.store? Can I read Everything is Tuberculosis if I’m squeamish? Are there different levels of oxygen in the atmosphere during different seasons? Is it true that ponderosa pines can’t reproduce without wildfires? …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. Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:11John Green?

  Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John in Darkness.

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know that they also had an election in Sweden and the CEO of IKEA won?

• 0:26John Green?

  Did he?

• 0:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, he's still assembling his cabinet, though.

• 0:29John Green?

  Oh, takes a while.

• 0:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:33John Green?

  Famously takes a while.

• 0:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:36John Green?

  If he wants to have a real good argument, I suggest that he try it out with his spouse.

• 0:40Hank Green?

  I, I, for a second, I was like, where is IKEA from? Is Sweden right?

• 0:47John Green?

  Sweden's right, I think.

• 0:48Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 0:49John Green?

  It's got Swedish vibes, anyway. They have got the meatballs there.

• 0:52Hank Green?

  They got the meatballs. That's, that's a confirmation.

• 0:55John Green?

  They don't have, they don't have meatballs in Norway. They don't even, Norway hasn't even heard about meatballs yet.

• 1:00Hank Green?

  Nordish meatballs? No, that's not a thing.

• 1:04John Green?

  Wait, you call people from Norway nordish?

• 1:06Hank Green?

  What are they called?

• 1:07John Green?

  Norwegian?

• 1:08Hank Green?

  Nor-

• 1:13Hank Green?

  I guess.

• 1:15John Green?

  I mean, you can call them nordish if you want. They are from the great Nord.

• 1:18Hank Green?

  Well, that's right. It's called Nord, the North. And also, it's Swedish meatballs. They're not sui-wegians.

• 1:25John Green?

  What's a sui-egian?

• 1:27Hank Green?

  It would be what they were called if it was like Norwegian.

• 1:30John Green?

  Oh, okay. I got it. I got it. Wouldn't they also then have to include the other one, Finland?

• 1:36Hank Green?

  Fin-wegians.

• 1:38John Green?

  Fin-wegians. Fin-wegius, Fin-wegius meatballs. Sound delicious. I'm glad that we're talking about something stupid.

• 1:46Hank Green?

  Are Swedish Swiss?

• 1:47John Green?

  No, Switzerland is Swiss.

• 1:50Hank Green?

  Okay, of course.

• 1:51John Green?

  Swedish people are Swedes.

• 1:52Hank Green?

  That's a very, that's a typical American problem there.

• 1:56John Green?

  So just to clarify, people from Denmark are Danish, people from Switzerland are Swiss, people from Finland are Finnish, and people from Norway are Norwegian.

• 2:04Hank Green?

  Do you know what Finnish meatballs are?

• 2:07John Green?

  What?

• 2:07Hank Green?

  Already done. Do you know what Swiss meatballs are?

• 2:09John Green?

  What?

• 2:10Hank Green?

  They got holes in them. Okay, let's do the podcast.

• 2:16John Green?

  It's the little things that bring me joy right now, like the idea of Swiss meatballs. I bet they have meatballs in Switzerland. There's a hundred percent chance. Oh, for sure. There's no way that like the idea of circular meat hasn't reached Switzerland. Yeah, you just ball it up. It's like, oh, this is like a sausage, but way easier. I feel like it was a hell of a point by the Swedish people to to try to take ownership over the concept of meatballs.

• 2:42John Green?

  All right, Hank, our first question speaks to contemporary culture in a deep and profound way, without addressing politics specifically. And it's from Ally who writes, Dear John and Hank, why are people on Goodreads so angry, potentially an ally, but always an ally?

• 2:58Hank Green?

  It's, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this. I didn't, first of all, didn't realize people on Goodreads are particularly angry. I've read my Goodreads reviews of my books. Some of them are certainly angrier than I would expect them to be.

• 3:10John Green?

  You're more likely to get upvoted, you're more likely to get upvoted for a low star review than a high star review a lot of times, especially if it's a really good low star review, for lack of a better term.

• 3:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:25John Green?

  Like entertaining.

• 3:26Hank Green?

  The the number one one on an absolutely remarkable thing for a long time, it may still be, is one that was just like, another YouTuber book. And it was just, it was like, it really like, it was bad. It was, I found it to be intolerable. I was like, this is a terrible take. But if you hadn't read the book, I could see how it would land well.

• 3:48John Green?

  Well, it is another YouTuber book.

• 3:49Hank Green?

  It is.

• 3:50John Green?

  And you're right, most of the people doing the upvoting haven't read the book. So I think that's another factor, right? Like, they're looking to see if they should read the book. And in many cases.

• 3:58Hank Green?

  They do want to know that.

• 3:59John Green?

  When I'm looking at Goodreads reviews, I'm partly looking for reasons not to read the book, because I already have plenty of books.

• 4:04Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:05John Green?

  And so if somebody offers me an easy way, like another YouTuber book, I'll be like, all right, I got it.

• 4:10Hank Green?

  Oh, man, it's still there. It's still on top, John. Well.

• 4:13John Green?

  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let's read our top Goodreads reviews. What a good idea for today.

• 4:18Hank Green?

  I just want to, it's so snarky.

• 4:22John Green?

  All right, here's the top review for the Anthropocene Reviewed.

• 4:24Hank Green?

  It's gonna be way better than mine, but okay.

• 4:29John Green?

  It is way better. It's actually very, very, very flattering.

• 4:32Hank Green?

  Ah, good for you.

• 4:34John Green?

  I'll read you my first one star review if you want. Those are, those are always bangers. Those are the only ones I'm interested in.

• 4:38Hank Green?

  The, the solid 1% of people who really hated it?

• 4:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Hank Green?

  They, so they can take up all the space in your head?

• 4:45John Green?

  It's from Deborah who writes, "This is a collection of personal essays, personal essays by John Green, "in which he basically just ponders humanity and rambles endlessly about arbitrary topics like "scratch and sniff stickers, air conditioning, and the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. "What's to give one star to, Deborah? That book sounds awesome."

• 5:02John Green?

  "It's pretentious with a sparse sprinkling of insight here and there." Again, you've described my favorite book. I found myself thinking, "Who cares?" multiple times throughout the book. You're welcome, Deborah. You're welcome.

• 5:15Hank Green?

  Well, here's the number one review, and it is a one star review, and I'm sure it's resulted in a solid 2% decrease in the overall sales of the book. This one guy Tucker, who says,

• 5:26John Green?

  Tucker.

• 5:27Hank Green?

  "A conversation between me and my publisher." Publisher, "So Hank, you want to write a book?" Hank, "Yes, my brother wrote a bunch, which means that I can too." Publisher, "What do you want it to be about?" Hank, "I want it to be about aliens." Publisher, "So like The Fifth Wave?" Hank, "Kind of, but let's remove all the violent parts." It's nothing like The Fifth Wave!

• 5:44John Green?

  It couldn't, it could not be more different from The Fifth Wave. I mean, that is the most ludicrous, like, that's a person who's only ever read two books. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but they've only ever read your book and The Fifth Wave, and they compared those two books. I've read The Fifth Wave. I reviewed The Fifth Wave. You, Hank, did not write The Fifth Wave.

• 6:05Hank Green?

  Publisher, it goes on for a long time.

• 6:08John Green?

  Uh, that's, I think we got, I think we got the,

• 6:10Hank Green?

  I think we got the picture.

• 6:11John Green?

  I bet there's some solid one star reviews of The Fault in Our Stars. Oh yeah, it's the, the, um, the very first review is a one star review.

• 6:19Hank Green?

  Of The Fault in Our Stars?

• 6:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Hank Green?

  Wild.

• 6:22John Green?

  "This is good. This is therapy. Writing, cheesy, emotionless, terrible. "Want to hear some favorite quotes of mine? "Why compare your thoughts to stars and constellations? "It doesn't make any sense."

• 6:31Hank Green?

  Wow, this is the top review?

• 6:34John Green?

  "How uninteresting. That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt." Yeah, that's the thing about chocolate. It demands to be eaten.

• 6:39Hank Green?

  What?

• 6:40John Green?

  Mmm.

• 6:40Hank Green?

  That's, no, no, no. In a very different way does chocolate demand to be eaten than pain demands to be felt?

• 6:47John Green?

  Yeah, actually, like you can not eat chocolate. That's one of the defining characteristics of chocolate.

• 6:52Hank Green?

  That's a great example of why pain demands be felt is a great sentence because chocolate doesn't actually demand to be eaten. It asks, it asks, but it can just sit there. Whereas pain, you can't not feel.

• 7:03John Green?

  Hmm. Well, to be fair, the person who wrote this was probably angry and like didn't like the book and that's okay.

• 7:09Hank Green?

  But no, what about all the people who upfaded? I don't care about the people who wrote the bad reviews.

• 7:14John Green?

  It's the people who upvoted it.

• 7:15Hank Green?

  What are they thinking?

• 7:17John Green?

  It's the people who upvoted. That's true. It's true. But here's the thing. Here's the truth is of why Goodreads is angry is the same reason why Twitter is angry is the same reason why Reddit is angry is the same reason why Facebook is angry. It's not unique to Goodreads and like we're having it, we're having a good laugh here slash a therapy session. But there is this structural problem with the social internet that rewards anger and outrage and horror and disgust over nuance. And that is reflected on Goodreads as it is everywhere on the internet.

• 7:48Hank Green?

  What if it's not? So I don't think it's just the internet. I think it's that I think it's any, any media and it is, it has it always been thus. But I think that right now we have very few defense mechanisms when it comes to sort of like seeing the parts of our brain being manipulated by the internet because like it's so new and we don't have social features for it. But, but like it has always been thus. I do think that it is like it's.

• 8:11John Green?

  It has always been thus, and that's a great point.

• 8:14Hank Green?

  But, but I think that it is now like that at the speed of light.

• 8:18John Green?

  And so it's always been thus in the sense that like when I reviewed books for book lists, I reviewed hundreds and hundreds of books for book lists. And when I reviewed books for them, the books that I didn't like always got like flattering letters. People would be like, what a great review. And it would just be me like kind of snarking on a book. And because there's something enjoyable about a takedown. There's something lovely about it, especially the more something is revered, the more the takedown of it is pleasant to us. And so that's another factor here. I think you're right that it's always been thus and like that's always been a thing. But you haven't read me the first one star review of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. By the way, these are two of my favorite books. You can't do it.

• 9:02John Green?

  I'll do it for you if you don't watch out.

• 9:04Hank Green?

  This one is too, it feels too true.

• 9:07John Green?

  Oh, no.

• 9:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:10John Green?

  What? First off, that book has a 4.7 overall rating on Amazon.

• 9:16Hank Green?

  I know, I know.

• 9:17John Green?

  People love it.

• 9:17Hank Green?

  I know, and it's the top reviews are all five stars.

• 9:20John Green?

  Oh, yes. 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4. Somebody criticizing the cover, which, fair enough, although I like the cover for the record.

• 9:33Hank Green?

  I talked to a marketer recently, and he was like, "I loved your book so much, and you named them so poorly." And I was like, "Okay, thanks."

• 9:41John Green?

  Oh, it's somebody who loved the first book and didn't like the second book. It's boring. This book took me about a month to read. Nice slay books, but this one I could barely get through 15 pages at a time. Fair enough. I mean, I think it's so, like, the voice is very similar to the voice of the first novel.

• 9:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 10:00John Green?

  I don't agree with that. I respectfully disagree.

• 10:04Hank Green?

  But yeah.

• 10:04John Green?

  But that's at least, like, that is at least a thoughtful take.

• 10:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:08John Green?

  That's a thoughtful one-star take.

• 10:10Hank Green?

  It is the experience they had, unlike Tucker, who appears to have not tried hard.

• 10:16John Green?

  Yeah, well, or like, went into it ungenerously, because here is the truth of any book in any media, right? We need the reader, or the viewer, or the listener, or whatever, to be generous, to bring their whole self to it. And that's asking a ton, and a lot of times you can't bring your whole self to a book, because you're feeling snarky and angry, and you're disgusted with the world, and so like, that seeps into your reading experience.

• 10:38Hank Green?

  I bet also that, like, you may, maybe you sort of like, get a reputation for doing the snarky Goodreads reviews for a little while, you know?

• 10:45John Green?

  And you're good at it. If you're good at writing snarky Goodreads reviews, you're good at it.

• 10:50Hank Green?

  Yeah. So I do think that there is a human nature thing to, like, looking at the takedown, and being like, "Oh, I gotta up with that." Especially when it's of, like, and I get it, like, I also, I knew going in that I was, you know, I was gonna be seen as a YouTuber writing a book. I wasn't like John, you wrote books before you were a YouTuber.

• 11:15John Green?

  Right, right. But even so, I'm often seen as a YouTuber who writes books, because people don't know that I wrote books before I was a YouTuber.

• 11:22Hank Green?

  That's funny.

• 11:24John Green?

  Which is fair. I mean, I'm fine with it.

• 11:26Hank Green?

  At this point, you are a YouTuber who writes books.

• 11:28John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, writing, nothing slows me down quite like YouTubing. So I, I want to be known as a YouTuber who writes books. Otherwise I'm wasting a bunch of my time on YouTube.

• 11:38Hank Green?

  If I'm an author who YouTube's, then I've got, I'm real slow.

• 11:43John Green?

  I'm going, I, I'm definitely doing everything backwards.

• 11:48Hank Green?

  I do love making a YouTube video though, John.

• 11:51John Green?

  I do too. I do too.

• 11:53Hank Green?

  But I don't know, it just like, it does, I, I don't know. I've been thinking a lot and this video hopefully will be out by the time this podcast comes out, but I've just been thinking a lot about how the current, like how any big change in media in like the, in, in how human communication works, um, has an inevitable backlash against, um, kind of everything, you know, just like any, anything that is perceived to have power or, um, anything that is perceived to be a threat.

• 12:28John Green?

  Yeah. And, and, and whenever technology democratizes, there is a anti-intellectual, anti-institution response to it that we've seen, you know, going back to the invention of the printing press.

• 12:44Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 12:45John Green?

  That we are experiencing now. And, um, I'm not enjoying it very much.

• 12:51Hank Green?

  Fine. As, as a member of the intellectual class,

• 12:57Hank Green?

  I don't like it.

• 13:00John Green?

  I don't really think of myself.

• 13:01Hank Green?

  As an effete liberal, this is annoying to me.

• 13:03John Green?

  Professor, I'm not a member of the intellectual elite. I'm a dad in Indianapolis.

• 13:07Hank Green?

  As, as a soft-handed man in his basement with his art collection.

• 13:12John Green?

  Well, I mean, I guess guilty.

• 13:20John Green?

  Do you want me to talk about the Amule piece behind me?

• 13:27Hank Green?

  I got some new art recently, but it's not in, it's not in this room. It's a, it's a, it's the viral hippo, the viral, the pygmy hippo, but being piloted as a submarine by other viral baby hippos. It's just

• 13:41John Green?

  Oh.

• 13:42Hank Green?

  Very good.

• 13:43John Green?

  That sounds great, man. Um, you and I have different tastes in art, it sounds like, but I'm glad that we both find stuff that meets our needs.

• 13:51Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's the same person who did Beanie Sanferbs.

• 13:54John Green?

  I love Beanie Sanferbs.

• 13:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:57John Green?

  Um, yeah, that's great. I love that you're buying art. It makes me so happy to hear. Um, I always say this, but like art does not have to be expensive. It does not have to be fancy. It only has to bring you joy.

• 14:07Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I mean, uh, Sophie's work is, brings me great joy. It's not very expensive. It's sort of, I think it's in the hundreds, you know?

• 14:16John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Hank Green?

  But the, uh, just

• 14:19John Green?

  Which is expensive, just to be clear.

• 14:20Hank Green?

  But it's not, yeah, I think that there's much

• 14:22John Green?

  But it's not like, uh, it's not like buying a Warhol or something.

• 14:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. And the, uh, the, but so much joy, so much joy.

• 14:31John Green?

  Yeah. And I guess art doesn't have to only bring you joy. It can also bring you curiosity or interest or intrigue, but it, if it brings you something, whatever it brings you, that allows you to keep coming back to it and like experience richness from it, like living with it for years, then like, that is good art. That's the definition of good art. Like

• 14:48Hank Green?

  Right.

• 14:48John Green?

  Good art doesn't have to be like valuable to the market.

• 14:51Hank Green?

  And also, if you love art, you should let the artists know that you love it because their top Goodreads review probably is mean.

• 14:59John Green?

  Probably so. Uh, anyway, thanks, Ally, for giving us that opportunity to work through some of our Goodreads related trauma. All authors have some. Um, and I apologize to the people who gave my books one star reviews on a couple of levels. First off, that I disagreed with your review so vehemently. And secondly, I apologize because I'm sorry that you had to buy a book you didn't like. I feel guilty. I hope you like my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. More signed copies available wherever books are sold.

• 15:27Hank Green?

  Nice.

• 15:28John Green?

  I'm not afraid to get in some promo.

• 15:30Hank Green?

  Don't, don't ever be afraid. He's signing like mad, everyone, like mad.

• 15:35John Green?

  I am, I am looking right now at 29,300 signed sheets of paper.

• 15:41Hank Green?

  That's good. You're doing a hundred?

• 15:42John Green?

  Yeah, I'm doing a hundred.

• 15:44Hank Green?

  You're almost at 30%.

• 15:47John Green?

  Long way to go. What's your next question?

• 15:49Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Jess, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I just emailed the good people at good.store about this, but I figured I'd ask you as well. My partner, Peter, and I are hoping to add a coffee subscription from the delicious Keats & Co. Coffee and Tea Company, available at good.store, you know how to get your question read, to our wedding registry, so that we may enjoy delicious coffee, congratulations Jess, every morning while supporting efforts to fight tuberculosis in Lesotho. I was wondering if you are planning to add a way for people to gift a subscription for a set period of time. Thank you for all that you do. Coffee and quandaries, Jess. We don't have a way right now, and we probably won't for this Christmas, but I think that we've got some ideas about for how this is going to work in the future, and I'm pretty sure that it, there will be options like that soon.

• 16:33John Green?

  But this holiday season, while we're in self promo mode, good.store has everything that you need for the holidays for gift giving, whether it's for your wedding registry or anything else. We've got sock bundles, we've got coffee bundles, we've got tea bundles, we've got bundles that involve tea and socks. You've got to check it out at good.store. We've also got amazing soap, like artisanal, really wonderful, skin nourishing soap. Good.

• 16:58Hank Green?

  Dot Store. And, there's a coupon code. If you use SAVE10, you can save 10% off any order under $50 or over $50. And with SAVE20, you can get 20% off any order over $100. And we got like lots of ways to get up to $100 to do a lot of your Christmas shopping all in one place. And all the profit goes to make the world a better place.

• 17:22John Green?

  Or shopping for other holidays.

• 17:24Hank Green?

  It's true. I do tend to say Christmas.

• 17:27John Green?

  Yeah. No, I'm part of the war on Christmas, Hank. You're an atheist, so you're allowed to say Christmas. But as a Christian, I think I have to say that there's lots of other winter holidays.

• 17:35Hank Green?

  All right.

• 17:35John Green?

  This next question comes from Sarah, who writes, Dear John and Hank, and Rosiana notes, there have been several questions about like about this. I'm excited to read Everything is Tuberculosis, available for preorder now. Y'all really do all the promo for us. However, I don't do well with descriptions of blood, guts, and/or medical procedures. So I was wondering if you would recommend this book to somebody who's interested in the history, social justice, and public health spaces, but it's a little squeamish. Pumpkins and Penguins, Sarah. Sarah, you have nothing to worry about. I am also very squeamish. If there is anything, like the only thing that I put, there was a squeamish paragraph in the book, but I cut it and I replaced it with the sentence, "Surgery was generally fatal."

• 18:13Hank Green?

  So now you know what that's like.

• 18:16John Green?

  Why get into it when I can just say surgery was generally fatal?

• 18:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, I had a, I had a moment like that when I was writing, uh, while I've been writing my, my book about cancer, where I got feedback from Catherine that was like, you can't put that in. That's too bad.

• 18:31John Green?

  Yeah, it was, it was, it's a little more squeamish than everything is tuberculosis, but it's still not that squeamish, your cancer book.

• 18:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:38John Green?

  And anyway, that's not available for pre-orders. So why are we even talking about it?

• 18:41Hank Green?

  There's some squishy bits, but there's not like the thing I, yeah, I took out a thing that was just like, I wanted to make it clear how bad cancer has always been. Um, and it used to be worse.

• 18:51John Green?

  It, it is still real, real, real bad if you don't get treatment.

• 18:55Hank Green?

  Yes, it's extremely bad if there is no treatment available.

• 18:58John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Hank Green?

  Um, it is also bad no matter what.

• 19:02John Green?

  It, I was just talking with a friend about you having cancer.

• 19:06Hank Green?

  Hmm, me too.

• 19:06John Green?

  And he was like, it's so weird that Hank had cancer. And I was like, I know. That's what everyone says to me is that it's weird. And I'm like, yeah, no, it is. It was weird.

• 19:17John Green?

  That's one word for it. I don't know if he experienced it as weird, but it was weird from the outside.

• 19:22Hank Green?

  No, there were definitely moments where I was like, this is happening? Question mark. This, I, that seems wrong. Um, and now, even now I have that where I'll, I'll have a moment where I'll be like, God, last year felt like, just like, feels like it was hard for some reason.

• 19:37John Green?

  Didn't get as much done as I would have liked to.

• 19:41Hank Green?

  Why do I have this sense of-

• 19:42John Green?

  What could I have been doing?

• 19:43Hank Green?

  Of last year just being really hard.

• 19:45John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Hank Green?

  It's weird how the mind works.

• 19:49John Green?

  It is weird, uh, especially how we remember pain and trauma and how like we call it to mind, but also can't.

• 19:56Hank Green?

  Yeah. And also that our bodies continue to carry around the history because like I, I now have a bunch of problems I didn't have before.

• 20:05John Green?

  I know.

• 20:06Hank Green?

  And, and also I have problems that I used to have that I don't have, which is wild.

• 20:11John Green?

  I know.

• 20:11Hank Green?

  It's a whole new body.

• 20:13John Green?

  Not a whole new body, but it's definitely different.

• 20:16Hank Green?

  It's a, I ship a thesis to the whole thing. I replaced every molecule during chemo. It's just a whole new body.

• 20:22John Green?

  It's a whole new you, except it's, to me, it's a very recognizable version of you.

• 20:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, no.

• 20:26John Green?

  But to get to the point.

• 20:27Hank Green?

  What, what am, what, can we do it? What am I? Can we? What am I?

• 20:34John Green?

  Is that a question for the pod?

• 20:35Hank Green?

  Well, one of the

• 20:38Hank Green?

  one of the things that I that I noticed during cancer was when sort of looking more directly at my mortality is that a lot of the me's that have existed in the past are already dead.

• 20:49John Green?

  Yeah. That's true. And there's no bringing them back.

• 20:53Hank Green?

  No, they're gone, gone. I can't. There's so much of my life I do not remember. The majority of it.

• 20:59John Green?

  Not just that, but even if you whatever you do remember, you can't return to that self. Right? Like you can't. It's the old problem of like, you go back to your high school, but the problem is that the high school is still there, but you aren't.

• 21:10Hank Green?

  Yeah. I don't even know if my high school is still there, John.

• 21:14John Green?

  I suspect it is.

• 21:15Hank Green?

  My middle school isn't. They knocked that one down.

• 21:16John Green?

  Don't take this the wrong way, but Florida isn't exactly like carving up with new school buildings right now.

• 21:22Hank Green?

  You're right. It is there. I did check recently. I went there. I went there on my book tour.

• 21:27John Green?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, that was weird.

• 21:29Hank Green?

  It was weird.

• 21:30John Green?

  I was with you.

• 21:30Hank Green?

  Everything had changed. Like, all the doors were in different places. It was very disorienting.

• 21:33John Green?

  I just remember, like, I got within, like, 500 yards of that place and my armpits started sweating like crazy. And I never even went to school there.

• 21:44Hank Green?

  Oh, man.

• 21:45John Green?

  The last time I went back to my old high school, I ran into a friend of mine from high school who was walking her dog on campus because it's this like big sprawling boarding school campus. And she said the most profound thing to me. She said, this place saved my life. And then she paused and said, and also it did a lot of other things.

• 22:04John Green?

  And I was like, yes.

• 22:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:07John Green?

  That's it. I've been waiting for somebody to explain my relationship with high school and it's just been explained.

• 22:13Hank Green?

  Oh, a lot of other things.

• 22:16John Green?

  Lot of other things as well.

• 22:17Hank Green?

  Which reminds me that this podcast is actually brought to you by a lot of other things.

• 22:22John Green?

  Yeah. Additionally, today's podcast is brought to you by one star Goodreads reviews, one star Goodreads reviews. They will be read by the author.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  Especially the top, the top ranked one.

• 22:34John Green?

  Oh, I've read all of them. I sorted by one star so that I can read all the one star ones. I'm not interested in the five star ones. They're not true.

• 22:44Hank Green?

  They're just being polite.

• 22:45John Green?

  They're just being polite. They're not telling me the secret truth that I'm worthless. And anyway, the funny thing about one star Goodreads reviews is that they're not trying to tell you that you are worthless as an author. They're just trying to say that they didn't like your work. But I'm conflating that, which is unfair of me. Yeah. What else is this podcast brought to you by?

• 23:05Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by good.store. It's actually brought to you by good.store. The coupon code SAVE10, save one zero to get 10% off any order over $50 and save two zero for 20% off any order over $100. Good.store.

• 23:20John Green?

  And finally, this podcast is brought to you by the new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. If you can do it, I can do it too.

• 23:29Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank of John is brought to you by Quince. The things that you want in your closet are the things that when you open your closet, you think this is going to look good and be easy. And it's going to take care of itself. And I'm not really going to have to worry about what pants or shoes I'm going to wear with this. It's just going to look good. I'm going to look put together. And Quince specializes in finding that kind of thing to sell on their website. They focus on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, Italian leather, all timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Their cashmere sweaters start at $60, and everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories

• 24:12Hank Green?

  and cut the middlemen out so that you can get luxury, quality pieces without the luxury price tag. And when it comes to gifting, Quince actually has a lot more than clothing. You've got fine jewelry. You've got leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, plenty of ways to find something special for everybody on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. 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 as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Dear Hank of John, because that's a good way to support the show. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor.

• 24:52Hank Green?

  There's so many meals that we have to work on and enjoy this holiday season, and that's exciting. We get to have these big, important meals. But also, there's a bunch of other meals that have to get done in addition to them. And let's be honest, if you're me and there's no Factor meals in the fridge, some of those meals are gonna be leftover Halloween candy. There's a lot going on, and that can make it hard to eat well. So, bring Factor into your life. Factor is made with good, high-quality ingredients, and these meals are ready in two minutes, whether it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping. There's no prep, there's no cleanup, there's also no effort. Occasionally, I'll have like an extra Factor meal in the fridge, and I'll realize, I can feed this to my child. It's good for him.

• 25:37Hank Green?

  And like, then I don't have to cook for either of us. Factor has heart smart options, like the Green Goddess Barimundi with tomato, rice, peas, kale, and green beans, or the enchilada-style chicken and sweet potatoes. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber-packed fruits and veggies, and healthy fats. You can try them out, your heart and your taste buds will be happy with you. 97% of Factor users agree that Factor meals help them live a more nutritious life. So yeah, Factor supports your everyday health and your long-term health. Let's eat real. Head to factormeals.com/dearhank50off and use the code DEARHANK50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That's code DEARHANK50OFF at factormeals.com.

• 26:20Hank Green?

  Dear Hank, 5-0 off, at factormeals.com. See the website for more details.

• 26:26John Green?

  Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NoCD. So you may know that I've had obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a kid, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. I lived with intrusive thoughts and the compulsive behaviors I used to manage those intrusive thoughts for many years without treatment. OCD is not just anxiety. If you have those "what-if" intrusive thoughts, and you cannot close the loop on them, and you find yourself in thought spirals, you might have OCD. And it's not the organizing stereotype you've heard. It's a persistent, unwanted, serial... A series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character along with mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to to get relief even when that relief

• 27:08John Green?

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

• 27:53John Green?

  All right, Hank, we got another question from Zinnia, who writes, "Hi, John and Hank. I'm eight years old and I'm sending this from my mom's account with her permission. In school, we have been learning about photosynthesis, and my teacher said that trees suck the chlorophyll from the leaves into their trunks during the autumn so they can survive the winter. This is why the leaves turn colors and fall off. I think leaves are responsible for releasing oxygen, too. Does this mean there's less oxygen in the air during fall and winter? How do we breathe without leaves? Not a tree, but, named for a plant, Zinnia."

• 28:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, so the way that it works, and I'm going to give you a secret insight that you will not get until you go to college, Zinnia.

• 28:31John Green?

  Wow.

• 28:31Hank Green?

  Which is that the amount of oxygen in the air is actually really well-balanced and does not tend to go up or down that much in any given moment. Because what happens is the trees suck carbon out of the air and they build themselves out of it. Trees are largely made of carbon molecules, and they build themselves out of that carbon, and then the carbon in the air is connected to oxygen. So they keep the carbon and they let the oxygen go. But when the trees fall down and they rot or burn, that carbon gets re-released, and the oxygen from the atmosphere either rots or burns. That would recombines with that carbon and gets released as carbon dioxide.

• 29:13Hank Green?

  So there's this constant cycle going on and the actual sort of like stable amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is because of the very rare circumstances where the carbon doesn't get re-released. And that happens either when stuff gets buried so deep that the oxygen can't get to it, like the carbon and the oxygen can't meet up again. Or if it ends up at the bottom of the ocean and there the oxygen also can't reach it. So those rare circumstances are the only reason why we have an excess amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and that allows all animals to exist.

• 29:49John Green?

  Wow, that's pretty mind blowing. Now, is there anything that we could do to mess with this incredibly complicated, sweet, sweet balance that nature has managed to achieve, resulting in there being too much, for instance, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

• 30:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, but that actually doesn't result in there being not enough oxygen in the atmosphere, interestingly.

• 30:10John Green?

  Oh.

• 30:11Hank Green?

  So what does happen is that in the past, old carbon got buried and didn't get access to oxygen and so it stayed there and it turned into coal mostly, but also another thing that we burn and we burn them combining oxygen and then that creates more CO2 than we have previously had and CO2 is opaque to infrared light. So certain wavelengths of light get blocked by it. It gets absorbed like a black T-shirt on a summer day and that increases the temperature of the atmosphere and of the planet. But that doesn't actually.

• 30:45John Green?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 30:45Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 30:46John Green?

  So the amount of oxygen is pretty steady right now?

• 30:48Hank Green?

  The thing is that like the, the amount of carbon dioxide is extremely low. So adding a little bit has basically doubled the amount, whereas the amount of oxygen is extremely high. So taking a little bit out hasn't really had any effect on.

• 31:02John Green?

  Got it.

• 31:03Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:03John Green?

  Okay, that's helpful to understand. I have one last question related to this.

• 31:10John Green?

  None of this has addressed Ziniya's question.

• 31:13Hank Green?

  What was the question? Oh, there is a little bit less oxygen. At some times of the year and and a lot more.

• 31:20John Green?

  Is it because the leaves turn colors and fall off?

• 31:22Hank Green?

  It is because the plant isn't doing photosynthesis.

• 31:26John Green?

  Oh.

• 31:26Hank Green?

  And and also, as they.

• 31:28John Green?

  Cause the leaves turn color and fell off.

• 31:29Hank Green?

  Leaves rot as they get broken down by by funguses and microbes and stuff. They that that results in oxygen combining and creating CO2.

• 31:40John Green?

  There's two things that blow my mind about this. First, that trees are made mostly out of air. They're mostly made of processed air.

• 31:47Hank Green?

  Absolutely bizarre.

• 31:49John Green?

  And that implies, of course, that air is a thing and not just a thing. Like, air is air is made of stuff.

• 31:57Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 31:58John Green?

  Air is air is a soup. It's just a very thin soup.

• 32:01Hank Green?

  It's a pretty thin soup and thicker than than you realize when you're driving at 70 miles an hour down the road. But the the weirdest thing about air being a thing is that we didn't figure it out until like after America existed.

• 32:16John Green?

  Yeah, well, why would we? It doesn't make any sense that air would be a thing. It makes sense that air would be the opposite of a thing because you can't smell it or smell.

• 32:23Hank Green?

  I guess, but if you stop breathing, you die immediately. So that makes me think that air is definitely something because if I don't put it into me, I die faster than any other way.

• 32:36John Green?

  Also, now that I think about it, you do smell it.

• 32:39Hank Green?

  A little bit sometimes.

• 32:41John Green?

  Yeah, no, I mean, that's what smell is, is.

• 32:46John Green?

  Scent that traveled through the air.

• 32:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:48John Green?

  Into your nose or whatever.

• 32:50Hank Green?

  I don't know how they thought about scent back in the day. I don't know what the natural historians, the original scientists.

• 32:55John Green?

  But yes, fascinating. They didn't know they didn't know that air was made out of stuff. But then, on a day to day, minute to minute basis, I don't think about the fact that air is made out of stuff. I assume air to be kind of the opposite of a thing.

• 33:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:07John Green?

  And when I do think about the fact that air is made out of stuff, you know what I mostly think about? I think about the fact that air is alive. It is alive with bacteria, but especially alive with viruses. And I am inhaling thousands of them with every breath. And they just don't happen to be viruses that make me sick.

• 33:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, that doesn't that doesn't tend to enter the brain for me.

• 33:28John Green?

  Oh, really?

• 33:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, I do.

• 33:29John Green?

  Well, I recommend thinking about it as often as you can.

• 33:31Hank Green?

  I wonder I wonder how many viruses get get lifted high enough in the atmosphere that they could. They're pretty heavy compared to most molecules. So I doubt they could get like pushed out of the earth. It makes me wonder.

• 33:44John Green?

  How many viruses do I inhale a day?

• 33:50Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, that's gonna be a, you're not gonna-

• 33:53John Green?

  Every day you breathe in over 100 million viruses.

• 33:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, you're not gonna have a good scale for how many that is, though. That sounds like a lot.

• 33:59John Green?

  That's a lot, Hank. I don't need to know. It's 100 million. The fact that I don't get sick out of any of those 100 million viruses most days is miraculous to me.

• 34:08Hank Green?

  Well, most viruses aren't human pathogens.

• 34:10John Green?

  You're telling me if they were, I would have 100 million of them in my body every day.

• 34:14Hank Green?

  You also, I mean-

• 34:14John Green?

  But it is still, it is weird that you inhale 100 million viruses a day. That is objectively weird. If you told that to somebody from the 18th century, they would be like, what now?

• 34:24Hank Green?

  They'd be like, what is a virus?

• 34:25John Green?

  Yeah, and then they would be like, are viruses alive? And you would be like, well, that's complicated. And they would be like, the idea of being alive is complicated? And you'd be like, yeah.

• 34:34Hank Green?

  Yeah. Turns out, turns out, once you get low, everything turns into a fuzzy line.

• 34:41Hank Green?

  That's what that song, Get Low by Flo Rida, is about.

• 34:45John Green?

  I believe that is correct.

• 34:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:47John Green?

  What is the, what is the chorus of that song?

• 34:49Hank Green?

  Shorty, shorty had them apple bottom jeans and the boots with the fur. And that's about, the boots with the fur are about the fuzziness of the lines between things. Like, is it boot or is it air at that point?

• 35:02John Green?

  Let's answer this question from Ben before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Ben writes, "I really like hearing Hank talk about trees, like, a lot." I figured this is on topic.

• 35:10Hank Green?

  Wow, then we have the episode for you!

• 35:12John Green?

  "I just read in a textbook that ponderosa pines can't reproduce without wildfires, which seems a little far-fetched to me. Is it true? Can you explain the process that makes these fires necessary for their reproduction? Never currently am. Ben." That's good, Ben. That's good.

• 35:26Hank Green?

  Um, so when there is a fire, it's a good time to be a seed.

• 35:33Hank Green?

  So that's why this happened. So there is, there is an evolutionary pressure towards only releasing your seed from a, from a pine cone when there is a fire, because otherwise, most of the seeds will not be able to get any sunlight. So if they only pop out right when there's a fire in an area where there are frequent wildfires, which a lot of the Mountain West is like this, then, uh, then, then the seed will only release when there's a fire. And that means bloop. Suddenly you, all of the seeds, all at once get to try it out at the moment when there's actually space in the canopy for sunlight to reach them. Cause if you're getting, if you're just doing it all the time, then you're wasting those seeds because there's no way any sunlight's going to get down there because it's a crowded

• 36:16Hank Green?

  little business in a forest and it takes hard work to become a big old tree.

• 36:22John Green?

  Wow.

• 36:23Hank Green?

  So yes, that is the case. I don't know if there's like, never been a ponderosa pine tree that grew without a fire. Like that, that's, that does seem maybe a little bit far fetched to me, but like the cones are designed to release their seeds when there is a fire.

• 36:36John Green?

  Wow. Fascinating.

• 36:38Hank Green?

  Designed, evolved to.

• 36:41John Green?

  Well, two schools of thought. And you're apparently part of the, part of one of them that surprises me. All right, Hank, it's time to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, beginning with the news from AFC Wimbledon.

• 36:52Hank Green?

  I have to add a correction.

• 36:54John Green?

  Okay.

• 36:55Hank Green?

  I actually looked deeper into this and it looks like ponderosa pines aren't actually particularly like this. There's lots of pine trees that are like lodgepole pines, but ponderosa pines tend to, uh, release their seeds when, with other environmental triggers besides fire. So.

• 37:09John Green?

  Oh.

• 37:10Hank Green?

  Correction.

• 37:10John Green?

  So, so that was just, you corrected yourself mid podcast.

• 37:15Hank Green?

  I did. Well, I, I was like, I gotta, I gotta check that. And I did.

• 37:19John Green?

  Oh, okay.

• 37:20Hank Green?

  While you were talking about something.

• 37:22John Green?

  Cause I was talking about AFC Wimbledon, which is when you usually do your fact checking.

• 37:27John Green?

  And fair enough. America's favorite fourth-tier English soccer team lost 1-0 to Grimsby Town over the weekend, but before that, we played of all teams Milton Keynes in the first round of the FA Cup. The FA Cup being, of course, a win-or-go-home knockout competition that involves all the teams in England and is separate from the league campaign. And in that game, we won 2-0. And not only did we win, but also Milton Keynes got a red card. And who should get that red card? But our former player Connor Lemon High Evans, who left our team for their team, thereby becoming a villain of the highest order. It's a heel turn for the ages. And he got a red card. And we were delighted to see him sulk off

• 38:12John Green?

  the field in appropriate misery. It's our first win at the Stadium MK, the quietest place on earth, some would say, in a number of years. And I am very excited about it. So yes, we lost 1-0 to Grimsby. We lost 3-2 to Port Vale. We're only 13th in the league. We don't look likely to make the playoffs. But we've already beaten Milton Keynes twice this season, and it's only November.

• 38:39Hank Green?

  All right. You're just gonna keep doing that?

• 38:43John Green?

  It feels like a success, Hank. Every time we beat the franchise.

• 38:46Hank Green?

  Was it very sort of red card-centric that win?

• 38:49John Green?

  It was very yellow card-centric. I would say there was a fair amount of tackling going on.

• 38:53Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:57John Green?

  We don't like them. Like, it's not like a... It's not a joke. Like, our players are told to not like them.

• 39:03Hank Green?

  They go harder than they would normally?

• 39:05John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. And they celebrate. The way they celebrate, like, the way they celebrated the first goal was epic trolling. Like, I think it was Matty Stevens, and he just, like, held his arms out in front of the smattering of Milton Keynes fans who filled that three-quarters-empty stadium. And he just, like, held his hands out and just, like, listened to the abuse being flooded his way and just smiled.

• 39:34Hank Green?

  Well, John, in news from Mars, I don't know if you know this, but one of the chief proponents for getting to Mars very fast is now basically gonna be President of the United States. So that's great for everybody, right?

• 39:48John Green?

  Can we double the bet? Is there some way that I can get more money by people not making it to Mars by 2028?

• 39:55Hank Green?

  Uh, other Mars news. So we know that the Ingenuity helicopter did a ton of missions. It did over 70 missions. It was all over that that planet. And one of the things that it did, because it could, is it flew over to the place where the the thing that lowered the actual rover onto the planet went and crashed after successfully lowering the rover. And it went over there and it took pictures of it. And those pictures, we got some of them, but now they have like time to send more. And we so like, there's just really great pictures of the crash site with the parachute

• 40:36Hank Green?

  stretched out behind it and the just gorgeous. I mean, it's very weird to see like wreckage on an alien planet. And that wreckage, because Mars is geologically stable and not not at all geologically active, it will be there and also further away from the sun than us. It will be there for a very long time, just being proof that we were here.

• 40:58John Green?

  Yeah. It's nice to think that 2 million years from now sentient raccoons might make their way to Mars and be like, oh, my God, guys.

• 41:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:11John Green?

  Have we got some news? We haven't found life on Mars, but we have found humans.

• 41:17Hank Green?

  Yeah. They went to Mars. Maybe they know a little bit about us, but they didn't realize that we were that good.

• 41:23John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll be super impressed. They'll be like, it's incredible that this species that went all the way to Mars then collectively

• 41:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:32John Green?

  ended itself so spectacularly.

• 41:34Hank Green?

  And then and then they'll learn from our mistakes and they will become the great civilization that takes over the galaxy.

• 41:43John Green?

  Yeah. From your lips to God's ears, buddy. We got to hope, Hank. And one way that we hope now is in other species becoming the dominant species.

• 41:53Hank Green?

  John's been having a not great.

• 41:57John Green?

  Had a rough couple of weeks, guys, if I'm being honest with you.

• 41:59Hank Green?

  I don't think that either of us have been doing doing super great.

• 42:01John Green?

  Doing that good, but I feel like I've been winning the the suffering Olympics for the last 10 days or so.

• 42:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's for sure.

• 42:08John Green?

  Not to brag. But here we are, and I'm glad to be with you. Thanks for podding with us.

• 42:15John Green?

  I'm only winning the suffering Olympics in comparison to Hank, just to be clear. I'm not winning them overall.

• 42:21Hank Green?

  Good, John.

• 42:22John Green?

  It's a two-person Olympics. I either have gold or silver, and right now I have gold, but next week, I'm sure Hank will get gold again.

• 42:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. I've had the We're Here newsletter last week, I wrote about-

• 42:35John Green?

  You wrote so beautifully in the We're Here newsletter. It was one of my favorite pieces of writing that you've ever done.

• 42:40Hank Green?

  Oh, thanks. Well, the one after that, I wrote about how I constantly, because of the structure of the internet, I'm like on the lookout for some, like a way I could make someone mad.

• 42:53John Green?

  Oh, interesting.

• 42:53Hank Green?

  Like, I can't talk about raking the leaves without, like, making an excuse for why I'm raking the leaves, because some people think you shouldn't rake leaves.

• 43:00John Green?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand what you mean. And so like, when I said that I'm winning the suffering Olympics, I immediately corrected myself, because somebody's gonna write in and be like, in fact, you are not winning the suffering Olympics, which, to be fair, is true.

• 43:12Hank Green?

  It's, I feel like it's, we have been so trained by the top reviews on Goodreads that we aren't capable of ever just freaking talking without also being spared.

• 43:25John Green?

  I can't even fully criticize the reviews I don't like on Goodreads, because I feel bad for the people who wrote them, who are probably nice people, who didn't expect to be in the situation that they ended up in.

• 43:35Hank Green?

  Yeah, for sure. I did a video where I analyzed a bunch of bad takes on Twitter, and at the end of it, I was like, I really should have blocked out those people's names.

• 43:43John Green?

  You should have. All right, Hank, thanks for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening, and more importantly, thanks to everybody for listening generously. We do really appreciate it, and we recognize that it makes a big difference in the experience of the podcast, not just for its listeners, but also for its creators.

• 43:59Hank Green?

  Yes, which then has loops back around. And again, if you haven't gone, it's good.store, and the coupon codes are SAVE10 and SAVE20. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhouse, it's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish, our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell, it's produced by Rosyana Halsroeho and Hannah West, our executive producer is Seth Radley, our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti, the music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

• 44:33Hank Green?

  It's just Gunarola. Everyone thinks that his name is the great Gunarola.