423: Everything Old Is New Again

What is a nerdfighter? How do scabs work? How do I make my house feel like my home? Did John soft launch Keats & Co.? How much does the surface of the moon change over time? Do snakes take more time to digest their food if they’re bigger? How long is an era? …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. 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.

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon sometimes. And today, I wanted to tell John the new goal of mine, which is

• 0:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:27Hank Green?

  to become a bouillonneur.

• 0:29John Green?

  Ooh, where you have a billion bullions?

• 0:32Hank Green?

  I've been investing in a lot of stocks.

• 0:35John Green?

  Chicken, beef, vegetable, all the major stocks.

• 0:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:40John Green?

  You're becoming a bouillonneur. I like it. Now, the idea of this particular podcast, Hank, this particular episode, we're just gonna let you peek behind the curtain, everybody.

• 0:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:49John Green?

  The idea here is that this is a podcast that we, now that we're gonna be a weekly podcast again, we need to bank some episodes because Hank and I travel a lot. There's, we get overwhelmed by work. We're easily overwhelmed people. And so, the concept here is that this is one of those bonus episodes, but we're not supposed to reveal that. The producers went to all these extravagant lengths to make it look like this is a regular episode.

• 1:12Hank Green?

  It's a regular episode.

• 1:13John Green?

  But now we're pulling back the curtain. And they were like, hey, just don't do news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. But no, I'm going to do some evergreen news from AFC Wimbledon. I'm sure there's some evergreen news from Mars. I mean, Mars literally never changes.

• 1:25John Green?

  You can just be like, Mars continues to not have much of an atmosphere.

• 1:28Hank Green?

  One thing I'm confident of is that no one's heard this week's news from Mars or AFC Wimbledon until they listen to the podcast. So it's, it's gonna be news to them.

• 1:38John Green?

  Exactly. It's not like people are like, well, it's, it's Monday. Time to check in on my favorite fourth, third, third tier football club.

• 1:48John Green?

  Hank,

• 1:48Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:49John Green?

  I'm excited to do this one-off, secret

• 1:53John Green?

  Episode that nobody knows.

• 1:55Hank Green?

  We should have a term for it. We should like.

• 1:57John Green?

  We should have a term for it.

• 1:59Hank Green?

  Because we're gonna have to do, we're gonna do it a bunch. Now that we're gonna have to do it. I like, it's just a regular podcast episode. It's just that we can't do timely things. I can't tell you what's going on in the news today because that would be weird.

• 2:10John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, also because I'm not in that mood right now. I.

• 2:15Hank Green?

  I've thought about it enough.

• 2:17John Green?

  How about the timeless episodes?

• 2:18Hank Green?

  I'm feeling timeless today, John. I'm feeling like, uh, like someone didn't just say to me this morning, I saw a picture of you, but it was, it was such a young picture of you that I was a little thrown off. And then I looked at it and it was me as a 35 year old.

• 2:34John Green?

  Yeah, well, you're not 35 anymore. When you were 35, you had never had cancer.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  No, he was a, he was, I still have that jacket.

• 2:46John Green?

  One of the pleasures of adulthood is that you can say, I still have that jacket.

• 2:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm still that guy. I've got the same clothes that he had.

• 2:53John Green?

  We got an important question. It's from Felix. Felix writes, Dear John and Hank, I've heard you mention the term nerd fighter on the pod more times than I can count. What is a nerd fighter? And if I wish to, how do I become one? Memento vivimus Felix. I believe that means live in the moment. We live in a moment Felix.

• 3:13Hank Green?

  I assume that memento mori means like, remember you must die. Memento vivimus would mean remember you're alive or some, some.

• 3:20John Green?

  No, no, no. I think it means, I think it means we live in a moment.

• 3:23Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 3:24John Green?

  No, it does. It means remember you must live.

• 3:26Hank Green?

  Oh, that's nice. That's basically like saying a YOLO, but in Latin.

• 3:33John Green?

  Okay.

• 3:34Hank Green?

  A nerd fighter is not one who fights nerds, but a nerd who fights. And if you would like to be one, then you are one. These are all, these are the things that we would say in 2009 and 10, when nerd fighteria was just becoming a thing.

• 3:49John Green?

  Yeah. So the, the long backstory Felix is that in 2007, I was playing a video game at an arcade inside of an airport because there were arcades inside of airports in 2007. And I played a video game called Aero Fighters, but the font made it look like nerd fighters. And I made a little joke about that. And then people who watched our videos started calling themselves nerd fighters. And so if you came to this podcast via your podcast app instead of via the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, you have no idea what a nerd fighter is, just like you don't have any idea what we look like, like we're just voices to you. And to that, I would say, stay golden, pony boy, you know? Dawn goes down today and nothing gold can stay, except

• 4:32John Green?

  for you, Felix. You can stay golden. Do not get on the social internet. Do not find out about our YouTube channel. Do not, do not follow Hank on Twitter.

• 4:42Hank Green?

  Well, that's not going to do you any good. But we also got to recognize that lots of people who watch Vlogbrothers probably don't know what nerd fighters are, because it's not like we, it's not like we redefine the terms all the time.

• 4:52John Green?

  That's true.

• 4:53Hank Green?

  It's a mess. It's a mess out here.

• 4:55John Green?

  They figure it out from context, but it is true that it is a mess. It is hard to manage old viewers and new viewers constantly intersecting and interacting. And it's amazing to me that community can emerge out of such weirdness, but community nonetheless does emerge.

• 5:12Hank Green?

  Indeed. This next question comes from L, who asks, Dear Jenkinhan, how do scabs work? Is that something I'm supposed to know by now? I never watched them close enough to understand how it turns back into skin. Like, am I layers? Not M, N, O, or P, L. It's from L. John, do you know what a scab is?

• 5:31John Green?

  It's, uh, it's layers, man. Our skin has layers.

• 5:34Hank Green?

  It actually is like a pretty specific thing, which is just like a, uh, dried up blood clot.

• 5:40John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Hank Green?

  Which is gross, but that's what it is. I wanted to talk about this question because I have a theory that I want to run by you.

• 5:46John Green?

  Oh, great. I love, I love it when you have theories about biology.

• 5:50Hank Green?

  Well, I, I have a hypothesis that I don't know how to test.

• 5:55John Green?

  Okay.

• 5:56Hank Green?

  It goes like this. You know how you like to pick scabs?

• 5:58John Green?

  Love it.

• 6:00Hank Green?

  But they tell you not to pick scabs.

• 6:01John Green?

  They do, but they're, they're full of it. They, they also tell you all kinds of things that don't make any sense.

• 6:07Hank Green?

  Well, sometimes I, I've done it before, like where I pick a cap, a scab too soon, and then I'm like, oh, now I have to grow another scab.

• 6:12John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:13Hank Green?

  So, but like, why did I want to do that? Why am I compelled to do this thing that is, I, I think not advantageous?

• 6:19John Green?

  Right. Well, I mean, buddy, when you find out that humans behave in ways that aren't always advantageous to them, your mind is going to be blown.

• 6:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, but like there's, there's some, there's some reason, right? There's like a reason why we act in all these unadvantageous ways.

• 6:34John Green?

  I don't know. I don't know that there's always a reason.

• 6:38John Green?

  Put me at a blackjack table and there's not always a reason.

• 6:41Hank Green?

  Sure, there's not always a reason. Oh, man, that reminded me of a video I want to do and another hypothesis I have about how gambling hacks masculinity. But we're not going to get into that.

• 6:50John Green?

  We're not going, I don't want to go there right now.

• 6:52Hank Green?

  This is another one. This is, I was hanging out with Dr. Pimple Popper at VidCon.

• 6:57John Green?

  Wait, you hung out with Dr. Pimple Popper?

• 6:59Hank Green?

  I hung out with the real Dr. Pimple Popper.

• 7:01John Green?

  Sarah, Hank met Dr. Pimple Popper.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Was she popping pimples?

• 7:06John Green?

  Sarah wants to know if she was popping pimples.

• 7:08Hank Green?

  She was not. Dr. Sandra Lee was not currently popping pimples, but we were talking about being on YouTube for a very long time.

• 7:14John Green?

  She took a break from popping pimples to talk to Hank about being on YouTube for a very long time. I can't just keep repeating the conversation, so we'll catch up on this later.

• 7:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:23John Green?

  Ah, Sarah is very impressed that you met the actual, real-life IRL Dr. Pimple Popper.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. She was fun to hang out with. You know, I ran, I was like, why do you think people like popping, the pimple popping? She was like, it's just satisfying, you know, it's just a very satisfying thing. I was like, like, why? Why is it so satisfying? And she was like, I don't know, like, that I, you know, I found this thing and people like it. I get to do my job and I get to, you know, but still a dermatologist is my main, my main gig. And I also have this like weird side thing. And here's my theory, though. Pop, pimple popping, scab picking, I think that, that even booger picking, picking the boogers of your children. Some people find that very satisfying. I, I think that this all comes down to parasites.

• 8:06Hank Green?

  So parasites, traditionally, like skin parasites for primates, very big deal, very big part of your life. Trying to get them off. This is why we have itch, like why itch is such a huge thing. You don't think about it, but we have like a whole system for pain, which makes sense. Cause you're being.

• 8:24John Green?

  We have a whole system for itch that is, that doesn't do any good, except maybe for parasites.

• 8:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. And, and so I think like all of itch exists to help you with parasites. And I think that also the, the scab. Picking reflex and the satisfaction of pulling out a big booger or picking off a piece of scab or popping a pimple is all deeply tied back into the the sort of evolutionary imperative to remove parasites from yourself and others.

• 8:52John Green?

  Like hookworms.

• 8:53Hank Green?

  Well, mostly I think bugs.

• 8:55John Green?

  Okay.

• 8:55Hank Green?

  Ticks and lice.

• 8:57John Green?

  Sure, sure, sure. Like, it's about nitpicking.

• 9:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:00John Green?

  We pick each other's nits. It brings us joy. And other primates do it, too. I'm going to ask you a follow up question, which is, does this perhaps explain why every night around 10:30 PM, when I should be like getting ready for bed, the Instagram, because I don't use TikTok anymore. It's too, it's too hard of a drug. I use the slightly softer drug of Instagram.

• 9:23Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 9:23John Green?

  The Instagram algorithm is like, hey, it's 10:30. Time to show you some earwax removal videos.

• 9:29Hank Green?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Because that's what you'd be doing normally at 10:30 right before bed is you'd be like making sure that your partner

• 9:36John Green?

  picking the nits.

• 9:37Hank Green?

  Doesn't have any bugs on them and they'd be doing the same to you. And I think this is also why when we're falling asleep, it's like suddenly, oh, itch. I have an itch. I have a sudden itch.

• 9:45John Green?

  Hmm.

• 9:46Hank Green?

  Because you're very sensitive to itch when you're falling asleep because you don't want a bug to be in there.

• 9:49John Green?

  I mean, it's a good theory. Again, I do not know how to test this hypothesis, but it's high quality. This question comes from Anon, who writes, Dear John and Hank. In two weeks, we'll be moving into the house my boyfriend inherited from his father. We've done some renovations, but it's still the same house his dad died in. More even than that, it's the house his dad lived in. There are so many memories and feelings. Do you have any advice for moving into our house, not the ghost of his dad's house? Thanks for getting me through this hard time. Anonymous.

• 10:15Hank Green?

  Hit me with this, John. I think that it's time for wallpaper to come back big.

• 10:23John Green?

  Oh, wallpaper is back. I mean, among the, among the, whatever the interior design version of literati is, wallpaper is all the way back. I was just visiting our cousin Grace, who is a brilliant designer. And Grace had all kinds of wallpaper and it looked great. And I commented to Grace, I was like, you know, When I was a kid, wallpaper was on its way out. And now wallpaper is coming back in. And she said, everything old is new again.

• 10:48Hank Green?

  Everything. So, yes. So go old. You think you want to make this place look new? No. Shag carpet. You need, you need one of those like, uh, living rooms that you have to step down into for some reason.

• 11:00John Green?

  I do love those sunken living rooms.

• 11:02Hank Green?

  Sunken living room. You, what a, you need some, some, some wood paneled walls with a vertical panels. Not the horizontal panels.

• 11:10John Green?

  Right.

• 11:11Hank Green?

  That was cool in 2000. No.

• 11:13John Green?

  No, this is, we're going back to vertical panels. I'm gonna push back on all of those recommendations. And I'm gonna say, white walls, gallery style, like you're in a museum with lots and lots of art. Now, it doesn't have to be expensive art. You can go to student art shows, get art for $12.

• 11:31Hank Green?

  Yes, but you still have to frame them. So you have to give a frame tip, John. And that frame tip is always by standard sized art. Do not ever need to get someone to frame something unless you got the budget for it. Because you do not know how expensive that is until the first time you walk into a frame shop and you walk out with a look in your eyes. Like you just saw God. Like, it's, it can be, it's intense.

• 11:54John Green?

  It's true. You don't have to frame all your art. If you get a painting, a lot of times you don't frame that. So, um, yeah. You know, you don't have to frame everything you get. If you get your Hanwha fish painting at the Project for Awesome every year, and then you don't have to frame that necessarily. Because that's a painting. It looks good just hanging on the wall. It is good to get standard art sized frames. However, you can also have some matte, you know, like if it's not a standard size, you can just have a frame that's bigger than the artwork and has some, some background.

• 12:21John Green?

  Paper. Anyway, I think that you should like, because once you put up your own art, the walls stop being your boyfriend's dad's walls and they start being your walls. This is, this is what I believe.

• 12:33Hank Green?

  Also, you can frame things that aren't art. You do this. I was inspired by this. You, you have records, you have like old notes from people that mean a lot to you. You have just photographs of, of, of things that happened, like not necessarily like beautiful artistic photographs, but like things that Mean something.

• 12:51John Green?

  Yeah, or photographs that you took.

• 12:53Hank Green?

  We all, yeah, exactly. We have like a billion pictures on our phones. And it turns out that turning those into big, like, physical objects is not that hard.

• 13:02John Green?

  No. So this is what I would invest in if I were you is like stuff on the walls. Because stuff on the walls changes the walls in a way that like changing the walls doesn't, if that makes

• 13:12Hank Green?

  How do you lay it out? Do you just like put one up and then start building around it? Or do you like lay it out on the floor? Because Catherine's a big layer outer on the floor person and she doesn't like my vibe of being like, I don't know. Let's just see what happens. If we have to do a second nail, we do a second nail.

• 13:25John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, my number one recommendation on that front anonymous is to marry a noted American museum curator.

• 13:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's, that's worked out well for you.

• 13:36John Green?

  So I don't know if there's another way. And Dr. Pimple Popper enthusiasts, I mean, Sarah contains multitudes. I don't know if there's another way, but that's the way I do it. So like, I have very little say. I mean, sometimes Sarah will ask me like, do you think this looks good here? And I'll be like, yeah, it does. But I, yeah, I don't know how to do that stuff, but you can figure it out together. You figure out what looks good to you.

• 14:00Hank Green?

  Or you could always like go watch old episodes of Trading Spaces because everything old is new again. And those episodes are now very old. And then you're gonna like, watch this interior designer like spackle hay to the wall for some reason.

• 14:14John Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Hank Green?

  Worst thing I've ever seen, but that's gonna really not remind you of anything to do with anybody. But like the own, the mistakes that you have made.

• 14:23John Green?

  Some of those little episodes of Trading Spaces where they're like, we have a budget of $1,200. So what we've done is we've bought $1,200 worth of hay and we're now spackling it to the walls. And I'm like, well, how, who paid for the spackle? So like, I don't even trust the, I don't even trust the budget, let alone the, anyway. We're, we're getting, we're getting, we're getting off track here, Hank. We got it. We got to get to this question from Emily.

• 14:47Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 14:48John Green?

  Emily writes, Dear John and Hank, I like listening to old episodes of your podcast. Thank you, Emily. They're, they're great. And we play new ads, so it's all the same to us. Everything old is new again. In fact, the episodes from 10 years ago, solid gold. I mean, some of those.

• 15:04Hank Green?

  My God, 10 years ago.

• 15:06John Green?

  Back in the day, we were so funny. So much funnier than we are now.

• 15:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, John's been on, I gotta, I gotta remind everybody, John's been on book tour for three straight months. He does not remember how to make a good podcast for getting back into it.

• 15:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Hank Green?

  He's doing great. How long ago was that? Who knows? It's, it's a timeless episode.

• 15:24John Green?

  That's right. Wherever and whenever I am, I've been on book tour for three straight months.

• 15:29Hank Green?

  Probably gonna upload this like next week. Like, that's how soon.

• 15:33John Green?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna need a break, Hank. To be honest with you, just halfway through this episode, I feel like, I don't know if I can do another.

• 15:39Hank Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:40John Green?

  All right. I was listening to old episodes of the podcast and, and in it, John pitches a, a million dollar idea for a tea subscription service. One, is Keats and Co. a million dollar idea yet? And two, was it already in the works? And this was some kind of soft launch or a subtle wage, way to gauge community interest? The episode came out February 17th, 2020. Now Hank, on February 17th, 2020, there was a lot we didn't know that we were about to find out.

• 16:05Hank Green?

  Indeed.

• 16:06John Green?

  But one of the things that we definitely, in my opinion, did not know is that we were going to launch a tea company, right?

• 16:12Hank Green?

  No, no, no, we did not. No.

• 16:14John Green?

  So I just had that idea.

• 16:15Hank Green?

  You just had that idea. And is, and is it a million dollar? If you count all of Keats and Co., if you count the coffee, it's definitely a million dollar idea.

• 16:22John Green?

  It's a million dollar idea in sales. It's not yet a million dollar idea in donations.

• 16:27Hank Green?

  No, no.

• 16:27John Green?

  Just the tea.

• 16:28Hank Green?

  That is often what people mean. It's important to recognize the difference between gross and net, which I always forget the difference between, even though I'm a 45 year old businessman.

• 16:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Hank Green?

  Um, yeah.

• 16:43John Green?

  I'll grant you that you're a 45 year old man, but I don't know that you're a 45 year old businessman.

• 16:50Hank Green?

  I'm really glad you picked up on the schwa there, but I-

• 16:52John Green?

  Yeah, I love a good schwa.

• 16:54Hank Green?

  For whatever reason, businessman sounds wrong to me, but businessman sounds correct.

• 16:59John Green?

  Yeah. It reminds me of one of the all time great Jay-Z lines, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business man."

• 17:07Hank Green?

  You could've do the schwa on both.

• 17:09John Green?

  I could've, but I didn't.

• 17:11Hank Green?

  You did. I'm not a businessman, I'm a businessman.

• 17:15John Green?

  Ever since, ever since you said that I don't know how to pod anymore, I've, I've decided to get funny again.

• 17:21Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 17:24Hank Green?

  I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings.

• 17:26John Green?

  It didn't hurt my, I don't have any, I don't have any feelings left after three months on book tour. There's nothing, there's nothing in me.

• 17:32Hank Green?

  Good. It was, I was at VidCon at some point in the past.

• 17:37John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:37Hank Green?

  Could be, could have been six months ago, who knows?

• 17:40John Green?

  I mean, really, we always make the podcast in the past. That is the nature of time.

• 17:44Hank Green?

  It's true, it's true. We don't, it's not like we upload the day after we record. And, and everybody was like, where's John? Why aren't you doing a live hearing in John at the VidCon? And I, luckily, we had the, the, the book tour as a very good excuse. The first time when someone asked, I was like, I don't know, I don't think he wanted to go.

• 18:02John Green?

  I would have loved to go, I'm just so tired.

• 18:04Hank Green?

  The second time I was like, oh, right, he did just finish the book tour, so I can say, oh, he just finished his book tour. He's so tired. And then they're all like, was it like two weeks? And I'm like, no, John was at the UN on his book tour. He was in, he was in Lima, Peru, touring tuberculosis hospitals on his book tour. Like, it was a weird book tour.

• 18:23John Green?

  It was a multi-continent book tour, and usually when you have one of those, you don't have a book about tuberculosis. But, um, yeah, it was cool. I mean, it was a really cool experience. I'm really grateful for it. But I'm mostly grateful for the fact that I actually came up with the idea for Keats & Co. tea subscription, not you.

• 18:40Hank Green?

  Good for you, John.

• 18:41John Green?

  Could have sworn it was you.

• 18:42Hank Green?

  I think at this point in our brotherhood, there's no idea that isn't both of us.

• 18:46John Green?

  That's so true. We probably had like talked about it the week before as like, as like a vague concept to go along with the awesome socks club. And then, you know, then I pitched it or something, who knows? Point being, Keats & Co. makes the world's best tea, and you can get it right now by Googling Keats & Co. Now, if you're driving, pull over, okay? Don't look at your phone right now, okay?

• 19:10Hank Green?

  It's so good. It's great tea.

• 19:11John Green?

  But it is really good tea, like it's worth pulling over for.

• 19:14Hank Green?

  I always forget until, until I have to, until I have to have like the kind of tea that they sell at the grocery store. Cause it's like at the hotel or it's at a friend's house. I always forget how good Keats & Co. is. And then I'm like, oh, man, now I'm drinking this.

• 19:30John Green?

  Yeah, it's pretty good. It reminds me actually that today's podcast. Is in fact brought to you by Keats and Co. Keats and Co. 100% of profit to charity and 100% of tea into your mouth.

• 19:43Hank Green?

  This field cop podcast is also brought to you by Haywalls. Haywalls. Where did they get that spackle?

• 19:52John Green?

  And today's podcast is additionally brought to you by Nerd Fighters. Nerd Fighters. Felix, just for future reference, it's all one word.

• 19:59Hank Green?

  And finally, this podcast is brought to you by the scab. The humble scab upon your arm, flaky and brown, reminding your ancient brain of some kind of infectious parasite that you must remove.

• 20:14John Green?

  It's beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful sponsor read there, Hank.

• 20:19Hank Green?

  That's, well, that's, I mean, that's how they wrote it. So.

• 20:23John Green?

  Just doing what I was told to do.

• 20:25Hank Green?

  You have to, you have to read parts of the ads verbatim, and that was one of the verbatim parts. So.

• 20:29John Green?

  Yeah, they, they asked that you trail off in the middle of your sentence and then recover.

• 20:35Hank Green?

  It's written there in, in italics.

• 20:38John Green?

  Trail off and then in italics, recover. All right. We got another question from Kiran. Dear John and Hank, how much does the moon's surface change over human time scales? Since there's no atmosphere and no wind on the moon. Oh, right. When there's no atmosphere, there's no wind.

• 20:52Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 20:54John Green?

  I was just outside today. It's like, it's, well, I can't tell you what the temperature is because this could be.

• 21:02Hank Green?

  It had a temperature. Outside had a temperature.

• 21:04John Green?

  Outside had a temperature and the temperature was improved by the wind. And I thought to myself, man, without the wind, life would be unbearable. Anyway. Anyway, life would be unbearable on the moon. I think we all already know.

• 21:15Hank Green?

  This podcast is brought to you by the wind. Without the wind, life would be unbearable.

• 21:19John Green?

  It's true.

• 21:20Hank Green?

  How much would you pay for the wind?

• 21:25John Green?

  Exactly. If, if, if wind were commodified, right? Like, we would all pay taxes for wind.

• 21:30Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:31John Green?

  We would all agree that, like, wind is worth investing in. Anyway, I figure the surface must stay basically static. When I look at the moon, am I seeing mostly the same exact atoms up there as people did a thousand years ago? Kirin?

• 21:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, a thousand years ago, yeah. I, I mean, things move around, uh, atoms change, like, things get, like, it's like the solar wind hits the moon and, and that can ionize stuff. But that's mostly already happened to the top layers. It's pretty static situation. Now, things have changed, of course, the first time we, like, we changed the moon, so we, we crashed stuff into it fairly regularly. The first, like, human-made crater on the moon is from the 50s.

• 22:14John Green?

  Oh, wow. And we've crashed a number of, uh, rovers on the moon in an attempt to not crash them.

• 22:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's, uh, always a little bit delightful to watch those moon buggy videos. Uh, is that what you're talking about? Or are you talking?

• 22:25John Green?

  No, no, I was talking about all the probes.

• 22:27Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, the more recent rover, yeah, the actual rover. So certainly every time you land something on the moon, it changes the moon. Uh, we will occasionally be like, well, we don't want this thing sort of hanging around in space forever. And also, if we could just, like, toss some dust up, we can do spectroscopy on that dust, and then we can learn something about the moon that way. So we intentionally crash things.

• 22:46John Green?

  So we'll intentionally crash stuff into the moon?

• 22:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:48John Green?

  Wow, humans are wild, man.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  I know.

• 22:51John Green?

  Uh, that's pretty cool to know.

• 22:54Hank Green?

  But then also other things crash into the moon. So just like, like, meteors hit Earth, they hit the moon.

• 22:58John Green?

  Sure, sure. But it's mostly the same atoms as it was about a few years ago.

• 23:02Hank Green?

  Mostly, yeah, yeah, very little change.

• 23:03John Green?

  This is something I think about a lot because I live in a part of Indianapolis that's near a floodplain and as a result has a small forest that has been around for 12,000 consecutive years since the last. Glacier retreated from this part of the world in in the last ice age. And I think about it because like the there's a continuous story of trees and shrubs going back 12,000 years, which of course is a blink of time in the history of life on Earth. But it is a very long time in the context of like the United States, right? Like, uh, it's sixty times longer than the United States has been around or something like that.

• 23:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, it's it's about it's about half the time, maybe, that humans have been in North America.

• 23:53John Green?

  Yeah, there have been trees on this land for a very, very long time, including like oaks and maples and like similar trees to the trees that are around now. And that just blows my mind that like I am a very temporary visitor to a very old forest that hopefully and like probably because of just geographic realities will be around for a very long time after I'm gone. And so really, I'm not the like, and I realize this is a comedy podcast. I apologize for going in an existential direction, but like it is me. I'm not really the like owner of those trees.

• 24:35John Green?

  I am the like, I am a temporary participant in their very long story.

• 24:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, especially because they're not they're not going anywhere because it's all floodplain.

• 24:44John Green?

  Yeah, they're not going anywhere. You can't, I mean, you could cut them down, but like, why would you do that?

• 24:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, nobody's, nobody's gonna want to, yeah.

• 24:50John Green?

  Hopefully.

• 24:51Hank Green?

  That would be a weird thing to do.

• 24:52John Green?

  So, yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful, man. Makes me so happy to know that there are forests that have been around for 12,000 straight years.

• 24:59Hank Green?

  But also like there's something crazy about that in that, um, you know, we think about the moon as being very stable and the earth as being very dynamic, both because of of wind and water and plate tectonics and and also because of life, like life changes earth a lot.

• 25:14John Green?

  Right.

• 25:15Hank Green?

  But there's also something very stable, like wildly stable about life as a as a system that is just sort of like been perpetuating itself for

• 25:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Hank Green?

  billions of years, for for three or four billion years. I don't know, man. I just feel like nobody, nobody thinks about it.

• 25:31John Green?

  This is a hankering mind blower, like that that really the story of life is one continuous story that goes back, you know, billions of years.

• 25:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, to like a substantial portion of the life of the universe.

• 25:43John Green?

  Right. And that there's this like sort of film on Earth on near the surface of Earth that is that is life and we are part of that film, but like a relatively insignificant part.

• 25:57Hank Green?

  And I could make, I would make the case that that life is going to outlast like you can. It may, it may not, but you could make the case that life will outlast the sun.

• 26:08John Green?

  Shut the front door.

• 26:10Hank Green?

  I'm, I'm looking forward to making that video.

• 26:12John Green?

  No.

• 26:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:14John Green?

  Respectfully, how can life outlast the sun?

• 26:17Hank Green?

  Well, hit me with why it can't.

• 26:19John Green?

  Because the sun is going to consume the earth.

• 26:23Hank Green?

  But it might not.

• 26:24John Green?

  It probably will.

• 26:26Hank Green?

  We're not, we're not sure how big the, the red dwarf is going to get now. If it, if it does actually, like if we're inside of the photosphere of the sun, that's going to sterilize the planet.

• 26:35John Green?

  Thank you. Thank you for that basic. You're like, I mean, the oceans are going to boil for sure, but like, I guess if we're inside the sun, that will be bad for life.

• 26:47Hank Green?

  That is literally my position. So I think the oceans could boil and there be no water left on the surface. And there's still be life on the planet because we keep finding life deeper in the earth. And that life feeds on radioactive decay that is going to be continuing to happen for many more billions of years than the lifetime of the sun.

• 27:10John Green?

  Is it possible that Edmund Halley was right when he thought that there were little people in an earth inside of the earth?

• 27:19Hank Green?

  No.

• 27:20John Green?

  And we just haven't dug down deep enough?

• 27:21Hank Green?

  But bacteria for sure.

• 27:23John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I have to say, and I was going to say no disrespect to bacteria, but actually lots of disrespect to them. I know. What about the helpful bacteria?

• 27:33Hank Green?

  Well, also like, what about, you know? Everything is descended from single celled organisms. So come on.

• 27:40John Green?

  Play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But point being, everything is everything interesting is descended from uninteresting life and and bacteria are.

• 27:50Hank Green?

  That doesn't mean that they are uninteresting and they are kind of uninteresting.

• 27:53John Green?

  They're a little less interesting.

• 27:54Hank Green?

  These ones like, like these bacteria like replicate like once every 200 years. They're very slow livers.

• 28:01John Green?

  Wow. That's kind of mind blowing. Anyway, point being, I didn't mean all the bacteriologists are going to write in and say, actually, bacteria are very interesting. I'm sure that they are. And listen, I wrote a whole book about a bacterium called Everything is Tuberculosis. I can't tell you when it came out, but it came out in the past.

• 28:20John Green?

  It's still out, presumably, depending on when this is uploaded. Maybe, maybe this is being uploaded in the distant, distant future and all the Earth's oceans have boiled and tuberculosis is no longer a relevant fact.

• 28:33Hank Green?

  I have definitely made banked Vlogbrothers videos that have never been released where I was like, I'll just have this one just in case and then I forget about it.

• 28:40John Green?

  Are you serious?

• 28:41Hank Green?

  There's like videos on the Vlogbrothers channel, unlisted, that will never be released and that I will never remember.

• 28:47John Green?

  You make so many videos. Like, I make a video on Tuesday, every Tuesday, and just barely get it out. And you make so many videos.

• 28:58Hank Green?

  I've recorded eight videos this week and it's Wednesday.

• 29:02John Green?

  Jesus, man.

• 29:04Hank Green?

  Which Wednesday? Who knows?

• 29:07John Green?

  So, point being.

• 29:08Hank Green?

  A bunch of more side shows, just so everybody knows. But point being.

• 29:11John Green?

  That's a relief. Point being, the interesting thing about life, I mean, there's a lot that's interesting about life, but one of the interesting things about life is life finding a way to make itself known to itself through analysis, through the scientific method, through human consciousness, whatever. And like, that won't survive the ocean's boiling, I don't think.

• 29:33Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that it's really, it is important for, for me, to help, to help, uh, spread the word.

• 29:43John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Hank Green?

  As they say, that, uh, that, that life.

• 29:49Hank Green?

  Isn't only one kind of thing.

• 29:52John Green?

  Right. One, that life isn't only one kind of thing. And two, that life has proved extraordinarily adaptive over billions of years.

• 30:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:00John Green?

  And like, I think that we are quite, probably quite temporary. Like, we are a brand new species. There's very little, there's no evidence that we will live to become an old one. But like, we're a tiny part of the story of life. The idea that like, life itself is going to collapse as, as, as a concept.

• 30:20Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:21John Green?

  Due to human intervention is just wrong.

• 30:23Hank Green?

  Right.

• 30:23John Green?

  Like, it's, I understand, it gives us too much power. And I think we need to like, acknowledge that we are very, very powerful, but also acknowledge the many, many ways in which we just aren't that powerful.

• 30:33Hank Green?

  This should be the last chapter of our book, but, but also because this is a thing we disagree on. Uh, like, where you think that we are, we are gonna be pretty temporary, and I think that we're gonna be pretty long-lived.

• 30:44John Green?

  Oh, man. I mean, I wish there was a way to make money on that bet. Like, I can get this podcast renamed Dear John and Hank.

• 30:50Hank Green?

  And there really isn't. There really isn't. It only pays out if I win.

• 30:55John Green?

  It only pays out if you win. And it doesn't pay out to either of us, but to our distant, distant descendants.

• 31:00Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 31:06John Green?

  I love that idea, though, that like, it's like, all right, well, it's a hundred bucks. And people will be like, what's a hundred bucks?

• 31:15Hank Green?

  Totally, totally. If we last a while, money definitely won't be a thing anymore.

• 31:19John Green?

  No.

• 31:20Hank Green?

  I can't, I can't wait for money to not be a thing, but I know that it won't happen in my life.

• 31:24John Green?

  Well, we don't know what's gonna replace it. We don't know. The Star Trek predictions for how life is gonna go have not all proved correct so far.

• 31:31Hank Green?

  No, Irish reunification was supposed to happen last year.

• 31:35John Green?

  Oh, really?

• 31:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:36John Green?

  Well, let's, um, let's stay out of that one.

• 31:42Hank Green?

  In Ireland, you know what I learned about Irish reunification?

• 31:48John Green?

  I don't, I don't want to participate in this conversation.

• 31:51Hank Green?

  Here's, here's, well, it's, it's every, everybody's got an opinion and nobody has the same one.

• 31:57John Green?

  Okay, let's answer another question from our listeners before my, our dad calls us.

• 32:04Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Callie, who asks, dear Hank and John, my partner is getting a snake soon. And there is one question he has not been able to answer for me. Do snakes take more time to digest their food if they are bigger and longer? Does it take longer to move through or does the tummy just get faster? This is dire, Callie. It is dire because if this person is buying a snake, they should be able to answer this question.

• 32:30John Green?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, I could, we had a snake when we were kids, blue green.

• 32:33Hank Green?

  We did, and we should have taken better care of it.

• 32:37John Green?

  Oh, he lived a good life, not a long life, but a good life.

• 32:41Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, possibly because we were feeding it too much. Snakes are wild and indeed they, it's, it's, I think, probably less a function of the length of the snake than it is the size of the meal, but in general, longer snakes.

• 32:59John Green?

  Jesus Christ, I mean, it's almost impossible not to, that's what she said, just what you said.

• 33:04Hank Green?

  You're doing great, John.

• 33:08Hank Green?

  I was, I had no idea I was doing it, just for clarity.

• 33:12John Green?

  Okay.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  The size of the meal, and so a large meal will take a very long time to digest. And it's usually consumed by a bigger, longer snake. So bigger, longer snakes tend to eat far less. In fact, they can eat, like a large female anaconda can eat as little as like two or three meals a year. Which is wild because.

• 33:35Hank Green?

  I mean, that sounds miserable. I love eating meals.

• 33:38John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, there's also a lot of other things about being in anaconda that I don't understand how I would feel about, right? Like slithering. When I try to slither, I mean, you should see.

• 33:48Hank Green?

  I bet I would love slithering. That sounds awesome. Through the swampy swamps? That sounds amazing. I'd love that.

• 33:55John Green?

  Oh, that sounds like just a contamination nightmare.

• 33:58Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:59John Green?

  I don't know. I mean, but if I was a snake, I wouldn't be myself. Instead of having all that anxiety, I would just be like, I'm a snake.

• 34:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think they probably get worried. Probably around like month five of between meals.

• 34:11John Green?

  Yeah. I'm, I, listen, man, I do not, like, just in case God is listening, I do not wish to be reborn as a snake.

• 34:19Hank Green?

  Is that how God works?

• 34:20John Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, God's a huge reincarnation nerd.

• 34:23Hank Green?

  Okay, that's great. I love the idea that you get reincarnated as a snake and then you like do a good enough job and then you go to heaven and then you're just like, I'm a snake for eternity.

• 34:34John Green?

  Why did I do such a bad job as a person and such a good job as a snake?

• 34:38Hank Green?

  You get invited up to heaven and like, at the pearly gates, instead of Saint Peter, it's just a bunch of rats and they're like, eat us.

• 34:46John Green?

  Or it's like Snake Saint Peter and Snake Saint Peter is like, you did such a good job.

• 34:52Hank Green?

  You did such a good job.

• 34:54John Green?

  Which is all we want to hear in the end. You know, like, all I wanted, I actually.

• 34:58Hank Green?

  That's heaven. Heaven is just an authority figure saying, good work.

• 35:02John Green?

  Heaven is hearing that you did a good job. I don't even need it to be from an authority figure. I just need somebody to tell me I did a good job. Isn't that what Peyton told you when you told her that you had cancer and everything? She was like, you're doing a really good job of this. And that's all you needed to hear.

• 35:17Hank Green?

  Uh huh. Yeah, no, broke me in half.

• 35:20John Green?

  Oh, yeah. Let's not, let's not do that again.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 35:24John Green?

  This next question comes from Harriet, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm listening to the radio while driving and the presenters are having a very long chat about what era they are in. Callers are phoning in to share their eras. One caller is in a shorts era and another is in a mushroom era. My question is, how long is an era? How long will the shorts wearing and the mushroom eating have to last to qualify? And what era are you both currently in? Swing low, sweet Harriet.

• 35:47Hank Green?

  Minimum length of era is say on three.

• 35:51John Green?

  One, two, three, six months.

• 35:54Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 35:54John Green?

  You said six months?

• 35:56Hank Green?

  I said six. I think like that's not that different for me.

• 35:58John Green?

  Yeah, I think like as long as my era lasts a full season.

• 36:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:02John Green?

  Cause like I don't want to be in my shorts wearing era in January.

• 36:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:06John Green?

  Although I know some kids who are. Do you remember like, did you have a kid like that at your school? We had a kid.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:11John Green?

  Wore shorts no matter how cold it was.

• 36:13Hank Green?

  And like, there's like a whole vibe in Montana where it's like, which kid can handle the cold best?

• 36:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Hank Green?

  And they're always like, some of them I feel like are, are like trying to brag and be like strong and just grin and bear it. And some of them I think are just snakes. They just.

• 36:31John Green?

  They're just, they just don't feel it.

• 36:32Hank Green?

  Cold and they don't like, I was like, like bringing a bunch of kids over to the house and there's this kid. He's got all of his coat and his gloves with him. It's cold. It's middle winter. He could put it on. He just is not.

• 36:45John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Hank Green?

  Wearing Crocs.

• 36:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  I'm in my Crocs era, by the way.

• 36:48John Green?

  Wow, that, that's an era.

• 36:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:51John Green?

  It's gone on at least for six months.

• 36:53Hank Green?

  It has.

• 36:54John Green?

  That's great.

• 36:54Hank Green?

  It may be approaching a year now.

• 36:56John Green?

  Don't you have a sponsored relationship with Crocs?

• 36:59Hank Green?

  I was sponsored by Crocs. I no longer am, but.

• 37:02John Green?

  Okay.

• 37:03Hank Green?

  It, it, it stuck. It stuck. I got them on right now.

• 37:09John Green?

  I try not to have any of those brand relationships, but then sometimes I do, I do, I do eventually have.

• 37:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, you'd never want to have a, a Dr. Pepper's brand deal. That would be.

• 37:19John Green?

  In fact, right now, I'm wearing, uh, this is not actually Hope Plumbing, our local plumbing company. I'm wearing a shirt that says Hope Plumbing on it. So obviously I'm willing to be sponsored for nothing. I'm willing to support Hope Plumbing just because I, I, I know one of the plumbers there.

• 37:34Hank Green?

  You like to be plumbed. Wait, no.

• 37:36John Green?

  Heyo.

• 37:36Hank Green?

  It's like a word for like having someone ask you a lot of questions and learn a lot about you.

• 37:40John Green?

  I understand what the word means.

• 37:42Hank Green?

  Okay. What era are you in, John?

• 37:46Hank Green?

  I'm in my Hank's Channel era, that's for sure.

• 37:48John Green?

  Oh my god, you love making a video right now. You're in your YouTube era.

• 37:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:52John Green?

  To a remarkable degree.

• 37:53Hank Green?

  I've left my TikTok era.

• 37:54John Green?

  Yes.

• 37:55Hank Green?

  I'm leaving behind my, I've left my Twitter era. I'm leaving behind my microblogging era in total.

• 38:00John Green?

  That's great. And entering back into your YouTube era. It's 2007 all over again when you didn't microblog or post on Instagram.

• 38:07Hank Green?

  I went to VidCon, I hung out with Tyler Oakley. I'm in my YouTube era.

• 38:09John Green?

  You're in your YouTube era. I like it. I am in my fiction writing era.

• 38:15Hank Green?

  Oh, oh.

• 38:16John Green?

  After years and years of writing nonfiction, I am writing stories again, and it's very fun.

• 38:22Hank Green?

  Just like I'm making YouTube again.

• 38:23John Green?

  Exactly. Everything old is new again.

• 38:25Hank Green?

  Everything old is new again. Title of the timeless episode. Wow, that's weird. That actually is about timelessness.

• 38:31John Green?

  It is about timelessness.

• 38:32Hank Green?

  Whoa.

• 38:34John Green?

  I mean, we just.

• 38:35Hank Green?

  We didn't even do that on purpose.

• 38:36John Green?

  We intentionally created a beautiful arc in this podcast that we knew about from the beginning.

• 38:42Hank Green?

  That's right.

• 38:42John Green?

  And nothing was improvised, and everything was building toward this moment where we transitioned to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

• 38:49Hank Green?

  All right.

• 38:50John Green?

  Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon is that AFC Wimbledon is fundraising, you'll be surprised to learn, because as a fan-owned club, we have no other way to pay for players. So AFC Wimbledon has released a video and a series of other things that say we are fundraising, and we need to come together to become members of the Don's Trust to support AFC Wimbledon in any way possible. And if you're in a position to co-own this football club with me, you should go to afcwimbledon.co.uk/membership and learn more.

• 39:26Hank Green?

  All right. Well, in timeless news from Mars.

• 39:29John Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Hank Green?

  Everybody always is like, they've, this isn't so much a thing anymore. But for so, so many years, people would be like, they found water on Mars. We've found water on Mars a long time ago. We've always known that there's wa, not always, but we've known that there's water on Mars for a long time. There's water ice. And there are even, what are like hydrated minerals, where you have like a clay that is bound up with water molecules. And those water molecules can't freeze, but they are so liquid, they're just in there. But they are available if you would want would try to like, uh, do a number of things to try and get them out if you wanted that water. And then there's also probably some massive subsurface lakes that we're not entirely sure.

• 40:09Hank Green?

  And then there's also these like weird streaks that occasionally appears appear seasonally that some people think might be sort of salty, like very salty water streaks that that happen on steep slopes. And, uh, so there's all these different ways that we think, uh, that we both know that there is water and also think there might be more flowing water features on Mars, and that's very cool. And I think is under like the kinds of variety that you can have of water is, uh, is where the where the interest is rather than whether or not there is water on Mars, which there definitely very much is.

• 40:48John Green?

  The question is like, what kinds of water are there?

• 40:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:52John Green?

  And how good are those for making chemistry?

• 40:54Hank Green?

  Right. And big, big questions about subsurface lakes, about like, uh, water that might be near active volcanic areas. Cause it seems like the, the sort of Olympus Mons region was volcanically active not that long ago. So not like billions of years ago, but millions of years ago. So like long enough that it's almost certainly still hot stuff down there. And if there's hot stuff next to water, that's, you know,

• 41:19John Green?

  It's promising.

• 41:20Hank Green?

  That's the good, the good stuff.

• 41:21John Green?

  Yeah, that's what we, uh, that's where we came from, probably.

• 41:24Hank Green?

  I was talking to Astro Alexandra about this and she was like, look, there's, there's like three places where there could very well be life in the solar system and one of them is Mars.

• 41:33John Green?

  What are the, what's the other one? Earth?

• 41:34Hank Green?

  Uh, sorry, four. Um, the, uh, the Titan, Enceladus, um, watery moons of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn.

• 41:44John Green?

  Cool. Hope we get out there someday, but in the meantime, I hope we get to Mars on January 1st, 2028. Because Hank, one last note.

• 41:54Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 41:54John Green?

  In our timeless episode, such that we never have to mention it again. Thanks to hardworking listeners of this very podcast who went back and listened to our original bet.

• 42:03Hank Green?

  Nice.

• 42:04John Green?

  That we made nine long years ago.

• 42:08Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 42:08John Green?

  We bet that there would be humans, whether there would be humans on Mars by the end of 2027.

• 42:17Hank Green?

  Ah, okay. That's not great for me.

• 42:23John Green?

  Thanks for going back and deep digging, deep and listening, everybody.

• 42:26Hank Green?

  Earth's not great for me, though.

• 42:28John Green?

  It's not great for you. And lots of people in response were like, I bet they'll only do one episode in 2028 and then retire. I think you underestimate both how much we enjoy making this podcast and also critically, how little we need to make it.

• 42:48Hank Green?

  That's, that's not why we're doing it.

• 42:50John Green?

  Yeah, no, we just love it.

• 42:52Hank Green?

  Fun, good stuff.

• 42:53John Green?

  It's fun.

• 42:53Hank Green?

  Let's keep rolling. Let's do another one.

• 42:55John Green?

  As long as it's still fun. I have a meeting. As long as it's still fun. We're gonna keep doing it. I do have a meeting, unfortunately, so read the credits.

• 43:03Hank Green?

  All right, this podcast is edited by I don't know and I don't have them.

• 43:07John Green?

  Actually, I'll read the credits. You know, it's a, it's a timeless episode, Hank, and we can switch things up. This podcast is edited by Chayton Whaley, mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medich. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Rosianos Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. The editorial assistant is Deboki Chakavarti. And the music that you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gonna Rolla. Finally, as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.