404: Die on Tuesday

Is the “Indianapolis Cocktail” actually served in Indianapolis? What do I do with my life? How do I entertain my friend in the hospital? What’s up with the lyrics in "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year?” …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.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:15Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, hello.

• 0:25John Green?

  Hi.

• 0:25Hank Green?

  Did you hear that the butter substitute companies are just doing really bad right now?

• 0:30John Green?

  No, do they have poor margins?

• 0:32Hank Green?

  They have very bad margins.

• 0:35John Green?

  Oh, okay. I was close.

• 0:38Hank Green?

  You were.

• 0:39John Green?

  I was on the path. Man, I've been reading this thousand-page history of the French Revolution.

• 0:45Hank Green?

  Uh oh.

• 0:45John Green?

  While I, I've been reading it with my ears while I sign my name over and over again. And I've never been so anxious. I mean, it's broadly true, and that's saying something because I'm, I'm, I'm an anxious person, but this, this history of the French Revolution's really got me stressed out, Hank, because just spoiler alert, I don't know how much you know about the French Revolution. It doesn't go great.

• 1:07Hank Green?

  It doesn't go great. No, not for really anybody.

• 1:10John Green?

  No, nobody, except arguably Napoleon, comes out on top in the French Revolution. And Napoleon, I mean, you know, dies in exile and everything.

• 1:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, long-term, it didn't work out for him either.

• 1:23John Green?

  No, but he dies in his bed, which is a relatively good outcome. If you're a major French Revolution figure and you die of so-called natural causes, you won the lottery.

• 1:33Hank Green?

  Huge.

• 1:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:35Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:36John Green?

  Like Monsieur de Lafayette of the revolutionary set.

• 1:41John Green?

  He, he, I think, I think he died of natural causes.

• 1:44Hank Green?

  Is that a Hamilton quote that I just was receiving?

• 1:47John Green?

  I think it was a little bit of a Hamilton quote, but no big deal. No big deal, man. I've, anyway, so I'm stressed out and I'm a little sad. I'm going to be honest with you. I feel, I feel, I feel sad and worried. I feel worried about the state of affairs on, on this.

• 2:04John Green?

  Our, our, our one and only planet.

• 2:06Hank Green?

  Yeah, it does feel as if we could have done a whole lot of a better job of making things work for people. And that might have made things a little bit better.

• 2:18John Green?

  I just wish we built systems that included more people.

• 2:21Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:22John Green?

  This is my major, my major issue with, with tuberculosis is not actually, I don't have any issues with the bacterium. It's, I don't love the bacterium.

• 2:31Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, if, if we could, if, if we could just get rid of the bacterium, that would be a huge win. It's just that.

• 2:40John Green?

  Except.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  It's not doing anything it shouldn't do.

• 2:43John Green?

  If we could get rid of the bacterium, it would be obviously a huge win, except we would have all these other healthcare inequities that would still be really real and that would be driving a, a huge percentage of human suffering and death.

• 2:54Hank Green?

  Right. And you can, and you also kind of can't blame a bacteria for doing what it's doing.

• 2:59John Green?

  Whereas you can blame humans for the things that they build, not that we, not that we didn't have good intentions or that like we're inherently evil. And I don't buy any of that. Like, I don't think we're good enough to be good or bad enough to be bad. But I think that we could, and sometimes we do, right? Like, we've built stronger systems that include more people, which is why when, the year I graduated from high school, something like 12 million kids under the age of five died and last year fewer than six million did. Like, that's because we built better systems. It's not that it's impossible. The reason maternal mortality is down 80% at Cuyeu Government Hospital in the last seven years is because we've built better systems, right? Like, it's not impossible. This stuff isn't impossible.

• 3:41Hank Green?

  That's the, and that's kind of the frustrating part.

• 3:43John Green?

  That's what's so frustrating.

• 3:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:46John Green?

  So, do you want to know Lafayette's full name?

• 3:50Hank Green?

  Hit me.

• 3:51John Green?

  Marie Joseph Paul Eves Roque Gilbert de Motey de Lafayette Marquis de Lafayette. He had, he got Lafayette in there twice.

• 4:01Hank Green?

  In there two times.

• 4:02John Green?

  And yes, I know, I know that I have good French pronunciation.

• 4:05Hank Green?

  Thank you.

• 4:06John Green?

  Or as they say in France, merci.

• 4:08Hank Green?

  Lafayette to the second, to the power of deux.

• 4:12John Green?

  Deux.

• 4:14John Green?

  I love a good French joke.

• 4:16Hank Green?

  Barely.

• 4:17John Green?

  When you just say something en français, I laugh. I just. Have I ever told you about?

• 4:22Hank Green?

  The joke is that one of the words was in French.

• 4:25John Green?

  Have I ever told you about growing up, going to high school in Alabama, about going to French Convention?

• 4:31Hank Green?

  You went to French Convention?

• 4:33John Green?

  Hell, yeah, I did.

• 4:34Hank Green?

  What was it called? Convention des Français?

• 4:37John Green?

  I think it was called the Estates General. Sorry, I'm reading too much history of the French Revolution. That's a joke only for French Revolution enthusiasts.

• 4:47Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's how I think the Estates General is how La Voie Cie ended up not making out of the French Revolution.

• 4:54John Green?

  It might have been the beginning of the story. It certainly wasn't the end. Anyway. Point being, you don't want to live in Paris in 1792 if you like being literally or figuratively attached to your own head.

• 5:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:10John Green?

  But the French Convention in my childhood, it looms large because everybody had thick southern accents. Because we were in Alabama, you know, and like. My French pronunciation is so terrible that my kids like run and cower in fear the moment I start to speak France, French and French.

• 5:31John Green?

  But you should have heard some of these kids. They'd be like, où est la bibliothèque?

• 5:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, you also had an American accent. You just had a different American accent. So it doesn't sound quite as ridiculous.

• 5:46John Green?

  I was equally incomprehensible because my, my French would be like, où est la bibliothèque?

• 5:54John Green?

  I would just put marbles in my mouth.

• 5:56Hank Green?

  John, did you know that french fries aren't actually cooked in France?

• 6:00John Green?

  Are they not?

• 6:01Hank Green?

  No, they're cooked in Greece.

• 6:04John Green?

  Bon bon.

• 6:07John Green?

  I'll tell you what, I would have loved that. Let me rewrite that joke for you. Okay. Make it funny. Okay. Hey, did you know that french fries aren't actually, aren't actually cooked in France?

• 6:18John Green?

  See, it's funny now.

• 6:21John Green?

  He just puts something in French. If only I could do a Greek accent, which I, I don't even think I have access to. No, I don't think, I don't think you have that in the arsenal. Yeah. Certainly you don't have German in the arsenal. We all know that. I'm great in German. The pod already know that. All right. Let's answer some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Ren, who writes, Dear John and Hank, the other day I was looking for a blue carousel cocktail recipe to make a themed cocktail. And I came across something called the Indianapolis cocktail. The recipe is listed as one part blue carousel, one part vodka, one part half and half. I found this deeply upsetting. Well, I don't know why. It sounds delicious to me. I'm supposed to mix an orange flavored liquor with half and half? Is this a real thing often served in Indianapolis? Have you had one?

• 7:06John Green?

  22 years past my naissance, Ren. Nice. No, of course I have never had a cocktail that's one part, but first off, I've never had a cocktail that's one part blue carousel. I don't even know what that is. I wouldn't be able to pick it out of a lineup despite knowing that it's likely blue. It's blue. It's the blue one. It's a hundred percent the blue one. I have had blue carousel and I think that you should, all of us should go to the bar this week. If we're allowed and we should order a, and then say this name of your state. Can I get a Montana? Well, this is actually the name of my city. So you'd have to say, can I have the Missour? Can I get a Missour? I bet there's a Missour.

• 7:48John Green?

  Let me look. Well, I'm going to ask for an Indianapolis cocktail and I can guarantee you that not a single bartender in Indianapolis has ever heard of this thing. That sounds so bad. Blue carousel vodka and half and half. I mean, that's a lot of half and half. It's a huge amount of half and half. I bet it's good. I bet it's like a milkshake. I'm sure it is like a, it's like a vodka milkshake, which is a huge percentage of classic cocktails are, are versions of a vodka milkshake. So like they, they consumed so much half and half back in the old days.

• 8:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, somebody had to.

• 8:22John Green?

  What were they doing? How? They must have just moved constantly in order to stay relatively fit is my, my review of the old days.

• 8:30Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:30John Green?

  When I look at their recipes.

• 8:31Hank Green?

  Walking around.

• 8:33John Green?

  They were putting, they were putting like lard inside of gelatin.

• 8:37Hank Green?

  Well, John.

• 8:37John Green?

  And being like, here's your meat.

• 8:39Hank Green?

  I gotta, I got the, the thing is food, we have so much food now. It's so available. And we've done so much magic to it to make it taste like Cool Ranch Doritos.

• 8:49John Green?

  Yes, that's true.

• 8:50Hank Green?

  Which they just didn't have back then. I think.

• 8:52John Green?

  And so they had to suffer with half and half, which that was their version of Cool Ranch Doritos. They were like, oh, it's so creamy.

• 8:58Hank Green?

  Yes, the Cool Ranch Indianapolis is, that's, that's the, that's what that was.

• 9:04John Green?

  Now, now an Indianapolis cocktail with one Cool Ranch Dorito in it.

• 9:08Hank Green?

  That is how you have to serve it. We made a cocktail in, in, uh, in college that was, uh, grenadine.

• 9:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Hank Green?

  Beer. And then on top of that, it was some kind of like sweet, like sweet liquor, like schnapps or something.

• 9:27John Green?

  Oh God, that sounds terrible.

• 9:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't know why, but I liked it so much.

• 9:32John Green?

  Well, I mean, it just speaks to the fact that your brain wasn't fully developed.

• 9:36Hank Green?

  I think a big part of it. Yeah. Or I was like, wow, we made a thing.

• 9:41John Green?

  Yeah, I used to drink, um, the Alabama Slammer, as we called it, which was just Mountain Dew and vodka. Um, and I wrote in Looking for Alaska about this sort of most disgusting cocktail of them all, which was just half milk, half vodka that people would put in their quart milk bottles so as to go undetected or relatively undetected by authorities. This was at boarding school. Um, it's the equivalent of like prison hooch. Just, just milk and vodka and you would just drink it and you would, you'd have to choke it down. So I can only imagine that one part half and half, one part vodka and one part blue carousel also isn't delicious.

• 10:19Hank Green?

  I'm gonna try it. I, so I think we all know that milk and orange juice is bad because we all tried that as children. We're all like, well, these are the two main drinks. Let's put them together and see what happens. But I think if you took milk, but, but like a, like a orange sherbet is good. An orange ice cream is good.

• 10:37John Green?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 10:39Hank Green?

  So there's a way to get milk and orange together in a way that's not bad. And I bet.

• 10:45John Green?

  The people who invented the Indianapolis, they really figured out the ratios by having it be exactly one third of each of these things.

• 10:52Hank Green?

  Can we talk about the pronunciation of sherbet?

• 10:56John Green?

  I guess. Is there, is it in question?

• 10:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, bro. It's spelled S H E R B E T, as in sherbet.

• 11:06John Green?

  Wait, there's no R at the end?

• 11:08Hank Green?

  There's no R in sherbet.

• 11:10John Green?

  That's.

• 11:11Hank Green?

  What?

• 11:12John Green?

  It's sherbet.

• 11:13Hank Green?

  What?

• 11:14John Green?

  It is, it's sherbet. It's technically sherbet.

• 11:17Hank Green?

  What?

• 11:18John Green?

  I told you.

• 11:19Hank Green?

  I just Googled it.

• 11:20John Green?

  It comes from the Persian word sharbat.

• 11:22Hank Green?

  Well, I'm.

• 11:22John Green?

  It doesn't, even, even, even the word it came from doesn't have an extra R in it.

• 11:27Hank Green?

  Well, that doesn't surprise me at all. We're always adding stuff, but we didn't add the thing. Why is it called sherbet? If it has no R there.

• 11:35John Green?

  It's originally a fruity, non-alcoholic drink.

• 11:37Hank Green?

  That's what it's called, right?

• 11:39John Green?

  No, it's called sherbet.

• 11:40Hank Green?

  But, but do other people call it sherbet?

• 11:43John Green?

  Or is that just me? Do you have rainbow sherbet or do you have rainbow sherbet?

• 11:47Hank Green?

  You have rainbow sherbet.

• 11:48John Green?

  I think you have rainbow sherbet.

• 11:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, sherbet.

• 11:51John Green?

  Cause sherbet, sherbet does not sound like an ice cream related phenomenon.

• 11:58John Green?

  Sherbet sounds like the last name of the guy who sells you insurance.

• 12:07John Green?

  You know?

• 12:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:08John Green?

  Like, have you, have you gone to see sherbet about that?

• 12:10Hank Green?

  Yeah. The pronunciation with the additional R as a second syllable pronounced sherbet is less commonly used.

• 12:17John Green?

  Less commonly?

• 12:18Hank Green?

  What happened to me?

• 12:19John Green?

  In what world?

• 12:21Hank Green?

  Well, we need to put this in the census this year. What, I feel, I feel like I've never heard sherbet in my life. Maybe I just think they're saying it weird.

• 12:32John Green?

  Is it not sherbet? Wait, hold on.

• 12:34Hank Green?

  No, it's definitely not sherbet.

• 12:35John Green?

  It's sherbet. It's sherbet. Well, just because we're in French pronunciation land, it's sherbet.

• 12:41Hank Green?

  Do the French.

• 12:43John Green?

  That's what you needed to do.

• 12:44Hank Green?

  Sherbet orange.

• 12:46John Green?

  Sherbet orange. Why could I only do it when I'm like grumbling?

• 12:49Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 12:51John Green?

  Je vais à la bibliothèque.

• 12:57Hank Green?

  Oh, well, you know, we didn't want French listeners, anyway. They've all left.

• 13:02John Green?

  Anyway, now that the French people are gone, let's talk trash about them.

• 13:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Hank Green?

  I think that they came out of it great, you know?

• 13:12John Green?

  Out of the revolution?

• 13:13Hank Green?

  Eventually.

• 13:15John Green?

  Well, that's a little bit like saying, I mean, yeah, after like 30 years of European wide war, they came out of it okay.

• 13:24Hank Green?

  Long. That's like only a third of a person's life.

• 13:27John Green?

  Hundreds of thousands of people died.

• 13:30Hank Green?

  It wasn't a third of those people's lives.

• 13:34John Green?

  It was terrible.

• 13:37John Green?

  It was a catastrophe.

• 13:38Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 13:39John Green?

  So many people were separated from their heads needlessly.

• 13:43Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, some good heads got separated.

• 13:45John Green?

  Oh, anyway, sherbet, sherbet, sherbet.

• 13:50Hank Green?

  Sherbet, sherbet, sherbet, sherbet. We're gonna have to live in that. I mean, if you work at an ice cream shop, write in, let us know what the situation is. Read the pronunciation at your door.

• 14:01John Green?

  Yeah. Do people say, can I have some orange sherbet?

• 14:04Hank Green?

  They obviously do. A port of Merriam-Webster, I'm the weird one.

• 14:09John Green?

  Let's answer this question from Shay who writes, Dear John and Hank, what do I do with my life? Great. Just what I was looking for Shay, a little more existential uncertainty.

• 14:19Hank Green?

  What do you do with your life?

• 14:20John Green?

  I'm a college sophomore and I'm expected to pick a major in a few months. I don't like any of these majors. This is making me crash out. Since this is a podcast for teens and this is a top issue for teens, I couldn't think of a better place to ask. Nothing else to say Shay.

• 14:32Hank Green?

  I forgot we were a top podcast for teens.

• 14:35John Green?

  We are. Yeah. People say that about us all the time. It's not just that one article. I hear it a lot. Teens come up to me, the young people of America come up to me and they don't say I love Crash Course. They say, you know what I love? Dear Hank and John. A comedy podcast for teens.

• 14:50Hank Green?

  Thank you. It had helped me so much get through AP Chem.

• 14:53John Green?

  I mean, if you think about it, Hank, it's kind of amazing. I wrote one of the bestselling novels for teens of all time.

• 14:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:59John Green?

  And then I made the best podcast for teens of all time.

• 15:02Hank Green?

  You're the Teen Whisperer.

• 15:05John Green?

  That's what the New Yorker said uncomfortably. I did not like that. That was, that was the headline of the New Yorker profile of me. And I did not love it.

• 15:12Hank Green?

  I pulled that one out of the deep recesses.

• 15:15John Green?

  Yeah, I did not love it. I asked the, I asked the person who wrote the article, are you responsible for that headline? I don't remember what they said. Anyway, what should, what should she do with their life?

• 15:28Hank Green?

  Look, um, the world is very interesting and it can be hard to get into the headspace where you accept the interestingness of all of the, of all of the things, especially when they're all sort of like staring at you in the face equidistantly. They're just all there looking at you and being like, uh, look at the surface of me and only at the surface of me. I would suggest going to look at, uh, we, we do have a thing at youtube.com/studiehall called Fast Guides, which talks about all of the different majors, what you can, sort of a lot of the main majors, what you can get out of them, what sort of like a future might look like, et cetera. My thing that I always try, like, want to cultivate and

• 16:11Hank Green?

  suggest people try to cultivate is like the ability to be interested in a thing. And uh, that can of course be very difficult when you're in a sort of uh, non psychologically safe situation, which it kind of feels like you are when you're being forced to pick a major. But um, I think that trying to be open to that stuff and trying to just like be the kind of person who would be into it and trying that identity on for a second can be really valuable. It's been really valuable for me.

• 16:39John Green?

  Hank, I remember when I was a sophomore in college, back in the halcyon days of yore, when everything was done on typewriters, or as my daughter recently asked me, um, did you have telephones in college?

• 16:53Hank Green?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:54John Green?

  Yes, I had telephones, but it's a fair enough question. I mean, I didn't have the internet, which is a bigger deal than telephones.

• 17:00Hank Green?

  To someone that when I, that I almost burned my dorm room down because of a light bulb. And they were like, what happened to the light bulb? And I was like, light bulbs used to be very hot.

• 17:09John Green?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 17:13John Green?

  Anyway, when I was a sophomore in college, I had to pick a major and I basically had to decide based on what classes I'd already taken. And I'd only followed my curiosity and passion up to that point.

• 17:26Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:26John Green?

  And it turned out that the only things I could be, the only things I could major in were English and religion. Now, you may be in this position and not know it, Shay, in which case, the

• 17:35Hank Green?

  Look at that.

• 17:37John Green?

  In which case, the answer is just ask your academic advisor what's still available to you and then choose from that tiny list.

• 17:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and do whatever costs the least amount of money.

• 17:52John Green?

  Absolutely.

• 17:53Hank Green?

  Do your best to not add that fifth year.

• 17:55John Green?

  Do not pay extra. Do not pay extra for a major. I did add a fifth year, but it was only because I got whooping cough. Is there anything more predictable than me getting whooping cough?

• 18:09Hank Green?

  Which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by Whooping Cough. Whooping Cough.

• 18:12John Green?

  Nice.

• 18:13Hank Green?

  Still there, still there.

• 18:16John Green?

  Yeah, it's vaccine preventable, but you actually have to get a booster if, and I'll tell you what, it sucks. I, I lost a whole semester of, I would cough until I vomit. I mean, it's, it's very, but the best part about getting whooping cough was that I became very interesting to the Knox County, Ohio Department of Public Health.

• 18:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:39John Green?

  And I just most of all, Hank.

• 18:41Hank Green?

  Where'd this come from?

• 18:43John Green?

  I just want people to think that I'm special.

• 18:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:47John Green?

  And the Knox County Department of Public Health treated me like I was very special indeed.

• 18:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:52John Green?

  Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by the French language, la langue française.

• 18:57Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 19:00Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by the Indianapolis.

• 19:03John Green?

  It's got a lot of half and half.

• 19:07Hank Green?

  And a Dorito right on the rim.

• 19:11John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by John's first novel, Looking for Alaska. John's first novel, Looking for Alaska. Maybe a little too autobiographical in retrospect.

• 19:22Hank Green?

  Does that guy get whooping cough in that book?

• 19:24John Green?

  No, cuz I, he doesn't. So, there you go.

• 19:29Hank 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 gonna look good and be easy, and it's gonna take care of itself, and I'm not really gonna have to worry about what pants or shoes I'm gonna wear with this. It's just gonna look good. I'm gonna 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 and cut the middlemen

• 20:13Hank Green?

  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, cuz that's a good way to support the show. This episode of Dear Hank of John is brought to you by Factor.

• 20:52Hank 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 factory 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.

• 21:36Hank Green?

  And like then I don't have to cook for either of us. Factor has heart smart options like the green goddess barramundi 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 deahank50off to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That's code deahank50off at factormeals.com.

• 22:20Hank Green?

  Dear Hank, five zero off at factormeals.com. See the website for more details.

• 22:26John 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 series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character along with mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to to get relief even when that relief never actually comes.

• 23:09John Green?

  The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP exposure and response prevention therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment and it has transformed my life. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP 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.

• 23:53John Green?

  Oh, all right. Let's answer this question from Emily Hank, who writes, Dear John and Hank, one of my closest friends will have to undergo a pretty massive surgery next month, and he will be in the hospital for at least a month afterwards. I was wondering if you have any dubious hospital entertainment advice for me to bring my friend during his recovery period. I plan on buying embarrassing balloons and sneaking in some good snacks, but beyond that, I'm stumped. Cutesy curtsy from Emily.

• 24:12Hank Green?

  Nice. Magic, the gathering.

• 24:18John Green?

  Oh, I was gonna recommend more mobile games.

• 24:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, mobile games are very good, but you can't.

• 24:25John Green?

  You can just like sit there and play together.

• 24:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:28John Green?

  Like Among Us.

• 24:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, do Among Us.

• 24:31John Green?

  Like a local game of Among Us. Include the nurses, they're not busy.

• 24:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's, certainly he will be playing a lot of mobile games regardless. And in that respect, I recommend Marvel Snap, which just never stops. You can, you never stop. It's always, it always gets harder and you can always get better.

• 24:51John Green?

  Got you through chemo.

• 24:52Hank Green?

  They got me through chemo. And now I am not playing Marvel Snap anymore.

• 24:57John Green?

  No, I mean, we've got so much crap going on, it's ridiculous.

• 25:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, it's been.

• 25:02John Green?

  Said the guy who spent six hours this morning signing a piece of paper over.

• 25:06Hank Green?

  Look, that's one of the things you got going on. You, you are dedicated to the bit, but also, I don't know, you're like dedicated to, to, to investing a lot in the written word, you know?

• 25:21John Green?

  I might be reaching the end of this bit, I have to tell you, Hank.

• 25:24Hank Green?

  You say that every time, I have to tell you.

• 25:26John Green?

  Seven hundred thousand signatures in, I'm starting to realize that maybe this isn't the best possible use of a human lifetime. But then I think about how delighted I always was to get signed books, how like great that felt.

• 25:41Hank Green?

  Oh, is that like over the course of your career, you mean?

• 25:44John Green?

  Yeah, I signed, I signed 150,000 of The Fault in Our Stars. I signed 200,000 of Turtles. I signed 250,000 of the Anthropocene Review, and now I'm, I've, I've calmed it down to 100,000 of Everything is Tuberculosis.

• 25:57Hank Green?

  Ooh, John.

• 25:59John Green?

  I, you. But yeah, I, I mean, I do want to be a good steward of this book because I think it's important. Oh, that reminds me, during this history of the French Revolution, do you know what I learned? And I realized that we're ignoring this question, which is a very good question, but one of the things you want to do when your friend is in the hospital is share with them exciting tuberculosis news by reading them out loud, my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis.

• 26:21John Green?

  Guess what was caused by tuberculosis? Not really, but a little bit.

• 26:24Hank Green?

  The French Revolution?

• 26:26John Green?

  La Revolution de France.

• 26:28Hank Green?

  My god.

• 26:30John Green?

  I know, it's so good. It's good when I do it as a full accent, like when I try to actually do the accent, but it's also good when I just do it in American. Both are so good. Anyway, I feel like I've been talking this entire podcast, but it's because you don't have the document, so you can't actually read the question.

• 26:46Hank Green?

  I did just, I did just finally get it open.

• 26:49John Green?

  So anyway, right before the fall of the Bastille, which was this big thing, you know, like the Bastille prison, which actually had a total of like six or seven prisoners. It wasn't, it wasn't quite the, um, there were a lot of conspiracy theories right before the French Revolution, not to freak you guys out.

• 27:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:07John Green?

  There's a lot of conspiracy theories, a lot of like lack of faith in like public, public declarations and institutions, and instead believing sort of fringe news sources that were just using emerging technologies to reach large audiences. Again, not to freak you out.

• 27:24John Green?

  And as a result, you know, people, people believed that the Bastille prison was like full to the brim of political prisoners. It turns out that just wasn't the case. Anyway, right before that, Louis XVI, the king of France, who, and, and his wife Marie Antoinette, who were obviously going through a hard time because, you know, some of this revolutionary fervor was also anti

• 27:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:50John Green?

  monarchical fervor.

• 27:52Hank Green?

  I can understand that, yep.

• 27:54John Green?

  And his son, who at the age of seven, his oldest son, who, who was to become the next king of France, died of tuberculosis. And he was devastated. It wasn't like the, the standard king thing where they're not involved in the raising of their children and so they don't feel that much when they die. Marie Antoinette and Louis were extremely involved in the raising of this child and were absolutely devastated. They had to leave Versailles. They were so upset and, and grieve in private. And then while they're grieving in private, all of this revolution stuff is happening. They're completely unprepared for it. They never really recover emotionally from this devastation. And they they really spend the next like three years, both of them just very sad. And like, obviously, they're sad about lots of other things, too, because they're they're

• 28:39Hank Green?

  Pretty stressful time.

• 28:40John Green?

  Falling apart.

• 28:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:41John Green?

  Huh?

• 28:41Hank Green?

  Pretty stressful time with the whole monarchy falling apart.

• 28:43John Green?

  Pretty stressful time.

• 28:44Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:44John Green?

  Wouldn't wouldn't recommend being an absolute monarch in seventeen ninety or any time, really. What a bad gig.

• 28:52Hank Green?

  No, bad gig.

• 28:54John Green?

  Over.

• 28:54Hank Green?

  Real, real lucky if you get out. And a lot of lot of lot of pressure. And and also, they didn't even have like pizzas.

• 29:02John Green?

  No. And so many princes want to become king. What the hell is wrong with you?

• 29:06Hank Green?

  Don't do that.

• 29:07John Green?

  You've got the good life.

• 29:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:10John Green?

  Why do you want the power? Everyone wants the power. It's so overrated.

• 29:14Hank Green?

  Very weird.

• 29:16John Green?

  Anyway, tuberculosis, tiny ancillary contributing factor.

• 29:21Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:22John Green?

  In the French Revolution that I didn't know about.

• 29:23Hank Green?

  You know what?

• 29:24John Green?

  It's not in my new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, because I didn't know about it.

• 29:27Hank Green?

  Didn't know it back then.

• 29:27John Green?

  Because there wouldn't have been room for it.

• 29:29Hank Green?

  I uh, I I think tasks are really good. So I don't know if there's like a um, I back in the day, we used to have a lot of photographs. So this would be a great task is to like, like, take the box of photos and be like, put these in like, order, in some kind of order, like, just things to do. Um, craft projects, you can bring like, old, old magazines that you buy at an antique store and then like, do collage art with them. Like, stuff to do, stuff to make, like, like, use, like, ways to be useful is really good. But also just conversation. Um, like, like, like, talk about the news of the day, chat.

• 30:09Hank Green?

  Um, have fun, like your friends the way that you always like your friends, but just to do it in a different room.

• 30:15John Green?

  Yeah, make fun of each other, you know, like, don't be afraid to make fun of each other.

• 30:22John Green?

  When when I had meningitis, my best friend, Chris, burst into the room after I was finally, like, properly hospitalized. And the first thing he said to me was, I could never have seen this coming.

• 30:40Hank Green?

  It's real weird to be John because it's like, what is it like to be a hypochondriac who actually gets weird illnesses all the time?

• 30:48John Green?

  Thank you. It is, it is very strange. And that is precisely how Sarah and I have the same doctor, and that is precisely how Sarah explained me to our doctor.

• 30:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:59John Green?

  She said, you need to understand that John has an obsessive fear of illness, but does also get sick.

• 31:08John Green?

  I think it's great. I made it to 47. If I make it to 77, even better, but I, I, let it be known that this is itself a miracle of modern medicine.

• 31:17Hank Green?

  I tell you what, it's, it's amazing that you're just a bunch of like trillions of cells all working together to be one thing. I've been a little bit, a real little bit down the rabbit hole of the self lately, John.

• 31:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Hank Green?

  And, uh, boy.

• 31:34John Green?

  There's not much there when you dig deep.

• 31:36Hank Green?

  It's a lot. I think there's a lot of different things that actually don't know about each other.

• 31:41John Green?

  Well, yeah, maybe that's a better way of describing it. Tell me more about that.

• 31:45Hank Green?

  Well, you'll, you'll see my video, which comes out today, but will have been out for a while when this video, when this comes out. But, um, there's just like, he like, there's, there's like the different parts of me that control my attention. There's parts that I control and parts that I don't control about that. And, and I don't think that those two have a good relationship with each other.

• 32:11Hank Green?

  Or, or even know that they exist, like they, they, they don't seem to know that they exist, like the, like above that level, I know that they both exist. But then there's like, but like, and then there's like the piece of me that's thinking, like that's doing the thinking. There's the piece of me that's doing the observing. They seem different. Well, now that I'm like, looking at it, like it, and I feel like it's just sort of all tied together by, there's like a thinking part that's sort of creating a narrative that ties them together, but they aren't necessarily that.

• 32:46Hank Green?

  I think that that's just sort of like a good convenient story. And there's also like the body and this and like the sensations of the body, which also I sort of like tie into that broader idea of the self. And then there's all my experiences and memories, which I tie into the broader idea of myself. And I just think that they're all different things.

• 33:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Hank Green?

  And then I'm just like doing some mental gymnastics to tell a story that they're all one Hank.

• 33:12John Green?

  Well, maybe consciousness is a lie that we whisper to ourselves to stay sane, as a great writer once wrote.

• 33:19Hank Green?

  I think, you know what I think here? So I think that, what?

• 33:25John Green?

  It was me.

• 33:25Hank Green?

  It was you. That you were the great writer?

• 33:28John Green?

  Oh, no.

• 33:30Hank Green?

  The teen whisperer said that?

• 33:32John Green?

  Oh, no. I don't know if you just heard that.

• 33:34Hank Green?

  I know.

• 33:35John Green?

  Don't worry about it.

• 33:36Hank Green?

  We're not just worry about it. Um, I, can I tell you what I I've started to think about consciousness?

• 33:42John Green?

  Yeah, sure.

• 33:43Hank Green?

  So I don't know if this works because consciousness appears to be a little bit of an unsolvable problem, but.

• 33:49John Green?

  It's a lie that we tell ourselves to go on.

• 33:51Hank Green?

  Yeah, right. Says thus says the teen whisperer and.

• 33:56John Green?

  Please, please, when I say things, always say thus says the teen whisperer. Please like walk around like, like the, like the king's guard. And every time I make a proclamation, shout thus says the teen whisperer.

• 34:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:14John Green?

  All right, go on. What is, what is consciousness?

• 34:16Hank Green?

  Well, I just, I don't know that this is what consciousness is, but I think it's a thing. So when, uh, when an organism is exists inside of an environment, it must, uh, get data about that environment and react to it. Whether, even if that's like the simplest thing of like swimming toward the light or swimming toward the sugar or whatever that, that bacteria do. Um, and then like, we have a much more complicated version of that where like we take in information about our world and then we react to it in very complex ways. But I think that there's a level deeper in organisms that have consciousness where there is an experience of the internal environment of the self. There's experience of the experience. There's like this meta experience thing and that feels a little bit like what consciousness is.

• 34:59Hank Green?

  It's like the part of me that is witnessing myself and witnessing like the things going on in the brain. And that just seems to have been something that evolved because it is like when the self becomes an advanced enough environment, there be there, there start to be advantages to witnessing and reacting to that environment. The environment of the internal self and that I don't know like how that works. I don't know like what system actually creates that, but it makes sense to me that it would evolve. Because the self is an important enough environment that we now inhabit. We inhabit both like our world and we inhabit ourselves.

• 35:39John Green?

  Right. I, okay, I'm, I'm into this, but it doesn't shake my belief that actually consciousness is definitionally beyond the comprehension of consciousness.

• 35:54Hank Green?

  Hmm. I don't think so. I think that we'll get there eventually, but.

• 35:57John Green?

  No, not me, man. I think, you know what I think we're gonna find out?

• 36:01Hank Green?

  That there's souls exist.

• 36:03John Green?

  All along.

• 36:07Hank Green?

  Well.

• 36:07John Green?

  You know.

• 36:08Hank Green?

  You know, it would be boring if we agreed about everything.

• 36:11John Green?

  They were made out of electrical impulses, but they were souls.

• 36:14Hank Green?

  Can they leave the body?

• 36:17John Green?

  Oh, no.

• 36:18Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 36:19John Green?

  Uh, not as such. No. Yes. Hmm. Can they leave the body? You mean upon death? Is that your question?

• 36:27Hank Green?

  I mean, anytime. I mean, it can like, if I feel like if it could happen at death, it could happen other times.

• 36:32John Green?

  Yeah, it can't happen on a Wednesday. Everyone knows that.

• 36:36Hank Green?

  Die on Tuesday, says the teen whisperer.

• 36:42Hank Green?

  Make sure not to leave this world on a Wednesday.

• 36:47John Green?

  You get to, you get to heaven and it's just six sevenths of people and God's like, yeah, I don't know, man. I, uh,

• 36:53Hank Green?

  I made this rule early on. I don't really know.

• 36:56John Green?

  Listen, I didn't even make the rules, actually.

• 37:02John Green?

  That's what's so wild.

• 37:03Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:03John Green?

  Is that I, I constructed a box and I could only, I could only interact inside of that box.

• 37:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:09John Green?

  And there's a lot of things outside of the box, unfortunately, and one of them is Wednesday.

• 37:15Hank Green?

  And then you, then you'd be like, who made you God? And it turns out it was Wednesday. The idea of Wednesday created God, but he couldn't let God see him.

• 37:28John Green?

  That's right. Just like Moses was afraid to look God in the face, God was afraid to look Wednesday in the face.

• 37:37Hank Green?

  Die on Tuesday.

• 37:42John Green?

  Great. Now I'm going to die on a Wednesday and everyone's going to be like, oh, yeah. Poor guy.

• 37:47Hank Green?

  The last thing he ever wanted.

• 37:49John Green?

  Good place. I, I do think that there, as you know, I do think that there's a soul. I, I don't care if it's a construct. Like, I don't care if we constructed the idea of the soul or if it's really real. I don't make a distinction between those two things because I don't find the question interesting personally. It doesn't like affect my theology or anything, but I don't think that, um, I don't see how the soul exists independent of the body. Which is not to say that it can't, but I just don't see how it could.

• 38:18Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:19Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, that, and I guess.

• 38:21John Green?

  Of course it doesn't make sense.

• 38:22Hank Green?

  We might align pretty tightly then.

• 38:25John Green?

  Yeah, I think in a lot of ways our, our ways of thinking align and, and, and, and what's different is our frames.

• 38:32Hank Green?

  For sure.

• 38:32John Green?

  Yeah. Speaking of frames, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, let's answer one more question. It's from Sam who writes, Dear John and Hank, the Christmas Carol, it's the most wonderful time of the year, contains the following lyric. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.

• 38:49Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:50John Green?

  Ghost stories. Glorious ancient Christmases. What on earth is this referring to? I think therefore I, Sam. Sam, it turns out that your name specific sign off really got into some of the topics on today's podcast.

• 39:02Hank Green?

  Indeed. John.

• 39:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Hank Green?

  Is, is it just the Christmas Carol, the one with the ghosts and the Scrooge?

• 39:10John Green?

  I don't think so. I think that ghost stories were a thing around Christmas, which is why Charles Dickens used them. I think ghost stories predate the ghost story that is a Christmas Carol. What is it called?

• 39:25Hank Green?

  I don't know.

• 39:26John Green?

  The Christmas Carol?

• 39:27Hank Green?

  Kittens Christmas.

• 39:29John Green?

  What I, how have I forgotten the name of that?

• 39:32Hank Green?

  It's called A Christmas Carol.

• 39:34John Green?

  It's A Christmas Carol. That's what got me. That's what got me off. It's not claiming to be The Christmas Carol. It's not. This is, that would be a weird thing for it to do. Having heard my rant about prepositions, I wonder if it's time for my rant about definite and indefinite articles. But no, I don't think it is. I think then instead we should focus on Christmases long, long ago, which I don't think is about ancient Christmases. Do you think?

• 39:57Hank Green?

  Uh, long, long ago, I think is about Christmases many, like several generations back.

• 40:04John Green?

  Oh, I think it's like Christmases when you were a kid.

• 40:06Hank Green?

  Oh, I think it's like Christmases when my granddad was a kid.

• 40:11John Green?

  Well, what were those Christmases like? Did they get cigarettes when they were seven years old under the tree?

• 40:16Hank Green?

  I bet they told ghost stories long, long ago.

• 40:20Hank Green?

  So whenever this song came out, which let's just say it was being sung by a man who was a, like a middle-aged person in the 50s or 60s, because that's when all of this, all the Christmas songs were written. This person is thinking of Christmases long, long ago.

• 40:34John Green?

  Not all of them, but yeah.

• 40:35Hank Green?

  All of them, except for that one.

• 40:38John Green?

  I think Joy to the World, Good King Wenslos.

• 40:41Hank Green?

  Okay, those ones don't count. Those aren't, those aren't Christmas, those are Christmas carols. I'm talking about Christmas hits.

• 40:48John Green?

  You're talking about Christmas bangers.

• 40:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:51John Green?

  Well, in that case, some of them were written by Wham in the 70s.

• 40:55Hank Green?

  No, that, that's the only, the only outlier. That one and the other one.

• 40:59John Green?

  What about Mariah Carey?

• 41:00Hank Green?

  That one, that's the other one.

• 41:04John Green?

  It's all, it's all outliers. There's outliers in every direction, but the point is all of them were written in the 50s by middle-aged people.

• 41:11Hank Green?

  But you can tell by listed, like just hearing it in your head that this one was written around then. It was a 50s, 60s Christmas pop.

• 41:17John Green?

  So what, how old is the Christmas that they're imagining?

• 41:21Hank Green?

  What?

• 41:22John Green?

  How old is the Christmas they're imagining? The Christmas is from long, long ago.

• 41:26Hank Green?

  That is just before they can remember Christmases. So I'm saying that that person was probably 45 in 1950. And so the Christmas they're imagining is at the turn of the century. It's like 1900 or like 1890. That's when they told ghost stories, but they don't do it anymore.

• 41:44John Green?

  Okay, I like it. I love this answer. I love the fact that it's speculative, which means that it's going to reach more people and be understood as true by more people than if it were evidence-based. And then I love, I love the answer because it has a kind of internal reason to it, even though it's backed up by no evidence whatsoever.

• 42:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:08John Green?

  I'll tell you what, I haven't heard anything as compelling since you told me that those New Jersey drones were definitely aliens.

• 42:15Hank Green?

  That's not what I said. For clarity, by the time this comes out, everybody's going to know that the New Jersey drones were a bunch of drones driven around by a bunch of YouTubers.

• 42:24John Green?

  No, they're not.

• 42:25Hank Green?

  Just YouTubers who figured out how to build a big drone.

• 42:29John Green?

  All right, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Do you have any news from Mars this week?

• 42:34Hank Green?

  I do have news from Mars, John. Perseverance, the rover, landed in a crater.

• 42:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:41Hank Green?

  It was a crater that, as we have discovered, was an ancient lake bed. It has had big floods happen inside of it. It's got all kinds of weird, obviously sedimentary deposits. It's very exciting. But over the course of its mission, which has been for quite a while now, it has been driving uphill to get to the rim of this crater, which is called Jezero Crater. And now it is there. It has arrived. It has successfully reached the rim of Jezero Crater, which is kind of a wild thing to be able to do, because sometimes I kind of picture the craters as having these sort of steep-walled cliff faces. But you can actually just drive out of this one on a big dune of sand. And now it's up there and

• 43:24Hank Green?

  it sent out back some pictures of it looking down into, across all of its tracks that it has left on Mars, and down into the crater where it was, it landed back years ago. And now it's out, and it can sort of like look across the Martian landscape in a different way. And the great thing about this, the trip up the crater, is that it was sort of also a trip through the life of Mars, because there's all these different layers of sediment and layers of like things going on that was, you could sort of see.

• 44:00Hank Green?

  In the, in the different deposits at different levels of the crater. But now it's out and I'm not actually sure what they're planning to do from here. I just was excited that it got out. My God, it was a long walk.

• 44:11John Green?

  It's got to feel like a huge accomplishment from the perspective of the scientists driving that rover to get out of that crater.

• 44:17Hank Green?

  Get out of that crater, see what's up there.

• 44:19John Green?

  Yeah, I've had a few moments like that in my life where I emerged from the crater and I was like, look at this landscape.

• 44:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:26John Green?

  This is beautiful.

• 44:27Hank Green?

  It has driven over 30 kilometers on the surface.

• 44:30John Green?

  Wow, that's a long way.

• 44:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:33John Green?

  And yet, at the same time, it's this tiny portion of Mars.

• 44:36Hank Green?

  Not a lot of Mars.

• 44:37John Green?

  If you told me that a rover did that in the United States, I wouldn't be that impressed.

• 44:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, like, oh, so like it went to Walmart?

• 44:45John Green?

  Right.

• 44:48John Green?

  In America, that'll barely get you to the nearest McDonald's.

• 44:51Hank Green?

  Certain spots, for sure.

• 44:54John Green?

  Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is also glorious and portends a bright future. AFC Wimbledon defeated Harrogate Town. Harrogate Town, a classic, classic, seemingly made up place. Harrogate Town fell to Wimbledon at Harrogate 3-0. Josh Kelly scored the opening goal. It was a beautiful deflected shot, classic League Two. It might have hit seven players on the way into the net. And then John Joe O'Toole, the man so nice, they named him twice, rose like a great loaf of sourdough in, at a corner kick and headed the ball home gloriously.

• 45:35John Green?

  And then Matty Stevens scored in the 50th minute to seal the 3-0 victory. It was, it was comprehensive, Hank. That's how I would describe it. And now Wimbledon are in sixth place with 18 games played, a little over a third of the way through the season. Wimbledon are in the playoff spots and I have to confess that I have been looking to see when the playoffs will be and if they will interfere with my book tour for everything is tuberculosis. Because if they do, I face a stark choice, which is fly all of the people who bought tickets to London.

• 46:16John Green?

  Or abandon them.

• 46:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 46:21John Green?

  It's gonna be a tough one. But yeah, I'm really excited. Wimbledon are doing really well this season. No fear of the bottom of the table, only looking up, only feeling good things.

• 46:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 46:31John Green?

  Only sensing the brightness of the future.

• 46:33Hank Green?

  That's not how it's been every year.

• 46:35John Green?

  In stark contrast to the way I feel overall.

• 46:37Hank Green?

  So I can't but notice, looking at the League Two table, that MK Dons are just below AFC Wimbledon, and they have not lost any of their last five games that they have played.

• 46:48John Green?

  No, they're on a good run.

• 46:50Hank Green?

  They've got a good new coach and who, you know, sold his soul to the devil. So what are you gonna do? But he's performing well. And but you know what, Hank? In the end, in the end, it always turns out the same way for the franchise. They've lost to us twice already this season. I look forward to beating them a third time come early next year.

• 47:14John Green?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Hank Green?

  And and and if we have to face them in the playoffs, which would be an absolute horror, we will do so. Well, and here's what I have to say, John. When you get promoted this season, you have to get promoted along with Grimsby Town, because that's my favorite.

• 47:32John Green?

  Love playing Grimsby Town. Love.

• 47:34Hank Green?

  Grimsby Town.

• 47:36John Green?

  Love the grimmest of the Bs.

• 47:38Hank Green?

  Grimsby.

• 47:40John Green?

  Yeah. Is that your is that your Grimsby accent?

• 47:42Hank Green?

  That's why they talk there. Yeah.

• 47:48John Green?

  Grimsby.

• 47:50Hank Green?

  Good old Grimsby.

• 47:51John Green?

  It's just a lot of it's just a lot of consonants in a row. Yeah, Grimsby would be a great team to get promoted this year. If the four teams that got promoted were Walsall, Port Vale, Grimsby, and AFC Wimbledon, I would be very happy, because then I'd get to play, you know, up in League One, we could have another great series of names, and we wouldn't have to deal with Milton Keynes. How glorious would it be to have a season where we don't play them?

• 48:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 48:18John Green?

  But we'll we'll see. The the the season is yet to be decided. That is what makes football so thrilling. It is theater, improvisational theater, in which neither the actors nor the audience know what is gonna happen.

• 48:33Hank Green?

  Beautiful, John. Well, thank you for making this podcast with me. And everybody, thank you for sending in your questions about the podcast. Wait, I was.

• 48:43John Green?

  For the podcast, I would say.

• 48:45Hank Green?

  See, it's very hard. Prepositions are challenging.

• 48:50Hank Green?

  If you want to send your questions to us, that is [email protected]. We don't have a podcast without your questions and we very much enjoy them. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhau. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals-Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Trakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola, as they say in our hometown,

• 49:15John Green?

  don't forget to be awesome.