433: Making the Ice

Why are there so few left-handed people? Can people do things on instinct alone? Why haven’t babies evolved to sleep through the night? We’ve heard of ice breakers, but what are some ice makers? How do I decide if I should have kids? …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, welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  Podcast for two brothers, answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know how when you hold a shell up to your ear, it sounds almost exactly like the ocean?

• 0:24John Green?

  Mm hmm.

• 0:25Hank Green?

  Well, little known fact, if you hold a squirrel up to your ear, it sounds almost exactly like getting attacked by a squirrel.

• 0:36John Green?

  There wasn't much to that one.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  That one I actually really do like. I think that whoever wrote that did a good job.

• 0:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:43Hank Green?

  We are two brothers who have done a lot over the last 20 years, John, and I don't know if we've said it on the podcast yet, but the ribbon was cut on the maternal center of excellence. So everybody who has ever supported, been a part of the project for awesome, given a donation to that, bought something from Good Store, all that stuff. One step at a time, it got there and it is going to start seeing patients early next year.

• 1:09John Green?

  Hank, you keep saying that we raised $25 million, which is very generous of you to say, because it's a huge understatement. In fact, we've raised almost $50 million.

• 1:19Hank Green?

  What? What do you mean?

• 1:20John Green?

  I mean, we had to raise $25 million to do the initial phase of construction to get the maternal center of excellence open was always going to cost $50 million and we raised about 40 million of that.

• 1:31Hank Green?

  I mean, I had a thought, and I'll be honest with you, and you are much more in touch with the Partners in Health team than I am.

• 1:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Hank Green?

  But I had thought that the other half was raised by Partners in Health and et cetera, but no.

• 1:44John Green?

  Well, a lot of it was raised by Partners in Health and et cetera, but about 40 million of it was raised by us, one way or another, not just by us, but by people in our community reaching out to their friends and family and so on and buying socks and whatnot.

• 1:57Hank Green?

  Matching funds and buying socks.

• 1:58John Green?

  All kinds of things, but we got there. I'm very proud that we got there. And I'm very proud of all the money we've raised. I've also just gotten home from the Philippines where I was for this top TB partnership board meeting. And I'm very, very jet lagged. Like, I am, I am, I am out of time and space in a way that I've never been out of time and space before.

• 2:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, the Philippines is interesting in that it is both plus and minus 12. It's one of the two.

• 2:25John Green?

  It's exactly 12.

• 2:27Hank Green?

  It's exactly 12. It's you are exactly 12 off, which is as much as you can get off.

• 2:33John Green?

  Well, it was convenient in some ways because when it was like 3pm, I would be like, well, I can't call home now. It's 3am. You just switch PM for AM. So that's nice.

• 2:40Hank Green?

  That's true.

• 2:41John Green?

  Uh, it was really interesting. I mean, I learned a lot. You know, I was, I was in a lot of interesting meetings. But the most important thing I got to do was spend time with people living with TB and, and those caring for them directly. Both in the little island of Gima Ross, where we're working on a small project with the Philippine government to eliminate TB from that island. And in a slum in Manila, where I traveled with Doctors Without Borders, which is a very difficult place to receive care. And where there were significant challenges, including drug stockouts and shortages of preventive therapy. And all kinds of big challenges that were sobering, I would say. I was reminded that 40,000 people are going to get diagnosed with TB today. And that's a huge problem.

• 3:25Hank Green?

  What a world.

• 3:26John Green?

  I know.

• 3:27Hank Green?

  I think that if you could get two facts in your head, it would really sort of revolutionize your ability to like, understand what's going on generally.

• 3:35John Green?

  Okay, give them to me.

• 3:36Hank Green?

  Well, number one is air is stuff.

• 3:38John Green?

  Yeah, I know. This is very important to you that air is stuff.

• 3:41Hank Green?

  This is a big deal for me. Air is stuff. If you hold your breath, you die. Air is made out of stuff. It's real. Um, that explains a lot of different things. And number two is there are way more people than you think.

• 3:50John Green?

  Way more people than you think.

• 3:52Hank Green?

  That goes for your town. It goes for your state. It goes for your country. It goes for your world. There's just way more people than you think. And oftentimes, I think there's an instinct to sort of like, uh, the people in power are taking care of one person at a time than like they're doing it. But if the, if like the president is taking care of one person at a time, that's not doing any good.

• 4:12John Green?

  He's actually not doing his job.

• 4:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, it really has to be, it has to be broad and it has to be systemic. And that's really how it works because 40,000 people will be diagnosed with TB today.

• 4:22John Green?

  It's closer to 28,000 now that I Googled it.

• 4:24Hank Green?

  Yeah. And I'll say that's, that's most of the way there, you know, that's, that's a lot.

• 4:30John Green?

  It's still a lot. 28,000 people is sure a lot of people.

• 4:33Hank Green?

  Um, a physicist would say that those are the same numbers.

• 4:38John Green?

  Certainly an astrophysicist would. Um, all right, let's answer some questions from our listeners before I get too tired, beginning with this one from Lucy, who writes, Dear John and Hank, you recently spoke on the pod about handedness. I'm a left-handed hairstylist and in daily salon life, I'm constantly faced with just how uncommon it is to be left-handed. I know that being a lefty used to be taboo, but why? Even now, when it is no longer looked down on, are there still so few left-handed people? Not righty-tighty, but lefty? Lucy, this is a great question. I have no idea.

• 5:06Hank Green?

  Uh, well, and, and you probably won't be too surprised that we have no idea. So there's like a bunch of different ways to ask this question. There's like, why did we evolve for some portion of us to, to be left-handed? Why isn't it a hundred percent, zero percent? And then there's also the question of why did we evolve handedness in the first place?

• 5:25John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Hank Green?

  And then there's also underneath both of those questions is the, what is the actual mechanism behind handedness?

• 5:31John Green?

  Right.

• 5:31Hank Green?

  So because it is consistently 10% across people and other species also have consistent handednesses. So they, they might be like 45% right-handed or 60% left-handed or, you know, like they, they have consistent across species numbers. There's gotta be some mechanism behind it that is being evolutionarily selected for. Now, the mechanism behind the evolutionary selection is interesting. In humans, there's this idea that there's some advantage to having some portion of the population that can, uh, fight the other way around. And they might be very good at getting through the guard of, of the rest of the people. But then if you sort of move beyond 10%, it, it evens out. And so it really only.

• 6:14John Green?

  So we basically, we evolved it for boxing, like for southpaw boxers?

• 6:18Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 6:19John Green?

  Okay, I like it. We are a little bit violent as a species.

• 6:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, where there's also an idea that like our jaws are shaped the way they are in order to take a punch, which is interesting. And it's and our hands are also like extra strong in order to do punching.

• 6:33John Green?

  Wow.

• 6:34Hank Green?

  But these are these are hypotheses, not facts. And then there's the underlying mechanism by which it happens. And that's the thing that we have like the least idea about. There's something going on. It's not random or else it will be 50 50. And it's and it's consistent. Once handedness is like is no longer taboo. It got to 10% and it stayed at 10%. And it's that way across cultures. So there's something, there's some reason why, and we just don't know. We have a couple of ideas, some are about like microtubules, which are are like literally like the things that hold your cells together. So how would that be involved? But it seems like there might be a relation there, like they looked at like rare gene variants and handedness and saw some relationship between that gene. But like, that's very hard to tease out for sure.

• 7:17John Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Hank Green?

  Super weird and we don't know. And we're gonna get to the bottom of it someday, but we have not yet.

• 7:22John Green?

  I don't know that we will get to the bottom of it. I don't know how much we're going to prioritize getting to the bottom of it, to be honest with you.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  It's true. It's not tremendously important to understand the mechanism of handedness because it's not like a thing you need to cure.

• 7:33John Green?

  It's not a thing you need to cure. It's not even a thing you need to address, really. I mean, it's nice to understand.

• 7:37Hank Green?

  You need to make sure that there are scissors for them.

• 7:39John Green?

  You do. You need to make sure that there are left handed shears and that they don't cost any more than right handed shears. Right? Because like that's part of how they get you.

• 7:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, that'd be better. But, you know, of course they do because everything's about bulk of 90% fewer people are buying something. Many companies won't make them at all. But yeah, there's all kinds, all kinds of, uh, this is very weird. It's it reminds me that I am, again, and maybe this is a third thing.

• 8:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Hank Green?

  An animal.

• 8:04John Green?

  Not just an animal. I think it's critical that we're mammals.

• 8:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:09John Green?

  I identify much more as a mammal than as an animal. Organism first, mammal second, animal third.

• 8:15Hank Green?

  And then where's human on the left?

• 8:17John Green?

  I don't know, 83rd after AFC Wimbledon fan? No, it's a good question. Fair question. Human first, mammal second, animal third, organism somewhere in there.

• 8:29Hank Green?

  Okay. Yeah, man, yeah, just a, just a bunch of cells.

• 8:33John Green?

  I have to go to the bathroom, but I'll be back.

• 8:34Hank Green?

  Okay. You got it.

• 8:35John Green?

  Host the podcast without me.

• 8:37Hank Green?

  I'm gonna host the podcast without John. I'm gonna do a science question, uh, cause he doesn't need to be here for those. We just did one. Let's do this one from Lucy, who asks, dear, this is, do we just do a Lucy? We did. This is a different Lucy. Dear Hank and John, I was just watching a squirrel build a nest in my garden and it occurred to me that they just know how to do that. Did their parents teach them how? Or can instinct cause them to build such intricate structures? If so, I'm wondering which complex tasks a human can do purely by instinct. In this guy with diamonds, Lucy. P.S. Yes, the squirrel looked frantic. They do do that. So, Diboki went and dove down a little bit.

• 9:20Hank Green?

  And one thing Diboki found was a Reddit thread about a person with a squirrel who had the squirrel since they were seven or eight weeks old. So not a lot of chance to learn anything from the parents, but did start to do some nest building when given sticks. So maybe this is instinctive? Question mark. We know more about birds, I think. So birds definitely have some element of instinctual nest building and they have some element of non-instantual nest building where they actually learn techniques and skills. This is what we tend to find when we look hard at, you know, complex vertebrates and their instinctual behaviors is that some pieces of it are instinctual, but then also

• 10:04Hank Green?

  there are like refinements of that instinct that are learned. I think about this with flying. Like birds fly and it's like, they just know how to do that. They just learned how to fly. But they stink at it at first. So they're bad at flying at first, but they are also built for flying. But and and they like do stuff that is flying like, and then they are able to sort of transition from the the the simple version of flying into the complicated version, and then they get good at it. And I think oftentimes we like discount that as viewers of other species, because we're not like all caught up inside of their business the way we're caught up inside of our business. We see the flying occurring and we think, oh, they just like knew how to do that. But like, they knew how to do a version of it.

• 10:46Hank Green?

  And then they got good at it by doing it a bunch. And I think that we're the exact same way with walking. John, we're talking about instinct and how the extent to which nest building is an instinct versus learned. And what we have discovered in looking at this is that many things that we think of as purely instinctual also have elements of being learned.

• 11:07John Green?

  Like nest building?

• 11:08Hank Green?

  Nest building, walking also is this way. We're like, we're built to walk.

• 11:11John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have to learn from other walkers.

• 11:14Hank Green?

  It takes a lot of practice and it's not just learning from viewing. That's part of it. It's also learning by doing. And so like, you you have this instinct maybe to build a nest, but but you're actually learning what works, what keeps the sticks there when you're doing it. Even if you're just a squirrel.

• 11:30John Green?

  Fascinating. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not a squirrel, but I am a mammal.

• 11:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, as are they.

• 11:36John Green?

  What would you want to be mammal wise, if you had to be another mammal?

• 11:39Hank Green?

  Mammal wise, elephant, but like a like a like a safe one.

• 11:48John Green?

  What's a safe elephant look like these days?

• 11:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, the zoo, probably.

• 11:52John Green?

  Yeah, you'd want to be a zoo bound elephant?

• 11:54Hank Green?

  That's, I don't know, maybe.

• 11:56John Green?

  That sounds sad in its own way.

• 11:57Hank Green?

  I just want to be an animal that like a mammal that lives a long time, but also one that has a good time. I don't know that elephants have that much fun.

• 12:04John Green?

  I don't need to be here forever. Personally, I know you do, but I don't. I could. I could be a dolphin. How long do dolphins live?

• 12:10Hank Green?

  A while. A dolphin seems really fun, honestly.

• 12:14John Green?

  Yeah, mostly swimming.

• 12:16Hank Green?

  They can live 50 years in the wild. In captivity.

• 12:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Hank Green?

  Orcas, which are a type of dolphin, can live up to 90 years. I want to be an orca because that's like fun and also you get to murder a lot and it's fine, though.

• 12:29John Green?

  Well, you do when you're a dolphin, too, I think.

• 12:31Hank Green?

  It's true. It's true.

• 12:33John Green?

  And you wouldn't be a good murderer, Hank. You talk a big game, but you wouldn't be.

• 12:38Hank Green?

  I bet if I was a dolphin, I would be.

• 12:40John Green?

  Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you're you're from a fairly violent species and you're not that violent. So I don't really buy it.

• 12:46Hank Green?

  That's true. That's true. I'd love to see the dolphins evolve to have sort of more pro-social behaviors.

• 12:53John Green?

  Yeah, me too, man. I'd love to see us evolve to have more pro-social behaviors. Why don't we evolve to have more like systems that include more people?

• 13:02Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 13:03John Green?

  That's my big complaint about us is that we do not act as if what we know is true is true, which is that all human lives have equal value. We know that's true. We all know it's true. It's something that crosses all the different religions and all the different worldviews. Like, we all know that's true, and yet we don't act like it at all.

• 13:20Hank Green?

  Do you think we've gotten better?

• 13:22John Green?

  Probably, marginally. You know, in the last 300 years, we're probably better than we were 300 years ago. We probably include more people in our systems than we did 300 years ago. Yeah.

• 13:32Hank Green?

  I once talked to a historian of prisons. I wish I had done this on the record. It was a fascinating conversation that I'd love to share. But I talked to this historian of prisons and I was like, you know, sort of thinking that I would get that kind of answer. I was like, so are we better now than we used to be? And he was like, not really. Not with prisons.

• 13:48John Green?

  No, I believe that. I believe that. Prisons are pretty bad. I believe that. And I mean, then I'm thinking like, are we actually better? Or do we just have like way more tools and resources? I think we're marginally better than we were 30 years ago because we've cut the number of children who die by like 60%, but I don't know.

• 14:03Hank Green?

  Is that just because it's easier to do that rather than?

• 14:07John Green?

  I think I don't think it was that easy to do. I think we actually did decide to value the lives of children more highly. But yeah, I might be wrong. I've been wrong before.

• 14:15Hank Green?

  Well, John, I made all my windows go away and I didn't know how to get them back. Do you want to do another question?

• 14:21John Green?

  Yeah, let's do one. Let's ask this question from Michelle who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm the mother of a beautiful three-month-old girl. I love her. She's adorable. I'm exhausted. Michelle is very relatable. I mean, I mean, first off, I'm not in three-month-old baby pain, but I am in immense pain right now. Like, my body does not know what time it is. It does not want to be awake, but it also does not want to be asleep. It wants to be, it wants to not, it wants, Hank, and we'll get to Michelle's question, but no mammal. Was made for this. We were not made to travel 600 miles an hour across the ocean and then, and then wake up the next morning and host a podcast with our brother. We weren't made for that. We were supposed to go at best at the speed of canoe.

• 15:03Hank Green?

  This, okay. Fourth important thing to remember.

• 15:06John Green?

  Oh.

• 15:07Hank Green?

  Humans, our main ability is adapting to weird situations.

• 15:12John Green?

  Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm trying.

• 15:16Hank Green?

  An in-ear headset in right now?

• 15:18John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Hank Green?

  Like your, like your Sting?

• 15:21John Green?

  Like I'm Sting, because I have to do this interview after I talked to you and they insisted that I have an in-ear headphone.

• 15:25Hank Green?

  Wow. I saw somebody else doing that the other day. There was, I was on like an Atlantic podcast and they had in-ears and I was like, maybe I should do that.

• 15:32John Green?

  Maybe you should. Anyway, we got to get to this question from Michelle. I didn't mean to dismiss your question, Michelle. I'm just kind of uncomfortable at the moment. I suppose evolution selects your favorable traits in offspring, not necessarily for parent sanity, but why couldn't evolution bring us babies that sleep through the night? This is such a good question. I knew that people say you don't sleep when you have a baby, but oh, boy, boy, oh, boy, was I unprepared. Sleepily, Michelle and baby Abigail. Hank, I remember the first like three months after our son was born and to a lesser extent, our daughter, but especially our son. It was so horrible. Like it's almost, like I don't even want to tell people how horrible it was because I don't want to discourage them from having children.

• 16:10Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:10John Green?

  But it was so horrible.

• 16:11Hank Green?

  It's just like one bit. It's like, that's the thing.

• 16:14John Green?

  And it wasn't even that horrible for me. It was like, it was horrible for me, but it was really properly horrible for Sarah.

• 16:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's bad. And, and it's, it's not like, uh, it's not like a week.

• 16:24John Green?

  No, no, it's months and you do anything for months, you, you, you have sleepless months and it, it affects you deeply.

• 16:31Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, man, there's a lot here. The thing appears to be that human babies are born a little bit earlier.

• 16:40John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Hank Green?

  Than.

• 16:41John Green?

  So we can get their heads out.

• 16:42Hank Green?

  Be optimally, like an optimal birth age would maybe be a full three months after they're actually born, which means that they're, they, they call it the fourth trimester, this period of time when the baby is, is still very, very, very dependent on the body of.

• 16:58John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Hank Green?

  Mother.

• 16:59John Green?

  No, I mean, babies, real little babies, and I don't want to, I, I know some of them listen to this podcast. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but like, they're not impressive.

• 17:08Hank Green?

  No. They're not even very cute.

• 17:11John Green?

  They're not cute. They don't laugh.

• 17:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:13John Green?

  They cry a lot. They're not that fun to hang out with if we're being honest. Like, they smell good when they're not pooping.

• 17:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that's one of the things that that's what they had to make them smell good, because otherwise.

• 17:24John Green?

  Otherwise, it'd be very difficult.

• 17:25Hank Green?

  But oftentimes, they smell bad. They can do both.

• 17:28John Green?

  Well, when they when they've just pooped, they smell exceptionally bad. But, man, a good, clean, fresh baby, mm, that's a great smell.

• 17:36Hank Green?

  So that's the primary thing. There's also like the why is it so hard thing. And part of that, I think, is because we raise babies very differently than we used to.

• 17:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Hank Green?

  It was a more communal activity in the past, which might allow for more sleeping, or it's definitely one of the things that I think is is worse about the modern structure of society is that we are not as tight. And so we do not have the ability to lean on each other in the hardest moments in the way that we used to.

• 18:04John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a real problem.

• 18:07Hank Green?

  But there's also there's there's a science thing, I found an actual paper, which is unrelated to any of this. But there is a molecule that is about like, sort of a part of the arousal cycle, like being awakened aware. And babies that died of SIDS, they looked at their heel sticks that were still on file, and they found that they had less of that molecule. And so there might be some amount of like, just like, that arousal is kind of good for making sure the baby is able to arouse itself if it's in an uncomfortable situation, or like, you know, able to like, move around and etc. So there's there's also

• 18:47Hank Green?

  that element of it. But I think the biggest pieces is simply that both babies evolved to be in a more communal environment, and also, we evolved to get babies with big heads out.

• 18:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Hank Green?

  And that meant that meant getting them out a little earlier.

• 19:01John Green?

  We wanted that head as big as possible, because that's where all the fancy stuff happens.

• 19:06Hank Green?

  That's where, yeah, that's it. It does appear to be where a lot of our abilities lie, including our ability to just somehow get to the Philippines and back.

• 19:15John Green?

  Yeah, barely. Barely. I mean, shout out to the pilots. They did the real work. I was just sitting there.

• 19:24John Green?

  But yeah, I am tired. Which reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by talking over your brother, talking over your brother since 2016.

• 19:36Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by squirrels. Squirrels, what's going on there?

• 19:42John Green?

  And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's three to four to five rules for remembering that you are a human. Just an organism, buddy.

• 19:52Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by left-handed scissors. Left-handed scissors available. Thank goodness.

• 19:59John Green?

  That's a great end. Great tagline for them for left-handed scissors.

• 20:04Hank Green?

  Available. Available. We exist.

• 20:08John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 20:08Hank Green?

  Didn't used to.

• 20:10John Green?

  Hank, we got a question from Ryan. Ryan asked, Dear John and Hank, we all know ice breakers, questions at meetings or whatever to break the ice and ease the tension as people get to know each other. But I want to know if there are ice makers out there, questions that when asked make people feel less connected and less inclined to mingle with each other. Cold pumpkins and regular penguins, Ryan.

• 20:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, yeah, that's pretty easy ones out there.

• 20:32John Green?

  I can think of a couple.

• 20:33Hank Green?

  Go around in a circle, everybody. How much do you make?

• 20:35John Green?

  Oh, that's a good one. I was thinking more along the lines of, um, let's dig into politics.

• 20:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. How's everybody feel about how that election went?

• 20:44John Green?

  Hmm, that's a good one. Did man in fact walk on the moon? That's going to be a divisive one, surprisingly divisive. We used to be less divisive, but, but it's back to being divisive again.

• 20:55Hank Green?

  Yeah, I try not to think about that as being a thing.

• 20:58John Green?

  That's a thing.

• 20:59Hank Green?

  You could do it the way that, uh, uh, parents and grandparents all around the world do. When are you going to have kids?

• 21:05John Green?

  Ooh, or do you know where you're going to go to college? Asked critically of a sixth grader.

• 21:14Hank Green?

  What really shuts me down? Uh, what's your sign? That's a difficult one that actually.

• 21:21John Green?

  That shuts Hank's down a little bit.

• 21:23Hank Green?

  I feel like it comes with like a judgment. I'm like, I don't want, I don't want you to be judging me about that.

• 21:28John Green?

  Well, whenever I tell people my sign, they're always like, ah, man. That's too bad.

• 21:33Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 21:34John Green?

  I think I got a bad sign. I gotta.

• 21:35Hank Green?

  Are you the one with the twins? You're Sagittarius, right?

• 21:38John Green?

  Nope. Keep trying.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:42John Green?

  I was born on August 24th, if that helps.

• 21:43Hank Green?

  That's not gonna help at all, no. Is that like a cusp? Is that one of the?

• 21:47John Green?

  It's a cusp. It's a cusp.

• 21:49Hank Green?

  Yeah, okay.

• 21:49John Green?

  You got that right.

• 21:50Hank Green?

  That, yeah. So you're between, you're between Juno and Mercury.

• 21:58John Green?

  Nope, I'm between Leo and Virgo, but I'm, I'm a Virgo. And whenever I tell people I'm a Virgo, they're always like, ah, yeah, all right. Yeah, you know, what are you gonna do? It's not your fault.

• 22:07Hank Green?

  And I tell people I'm a Taurus and they're like, yeah.

• 22:11John Green?

  Oh, do you seem like a Taurus? Do you have typical Taurus?

• 22:13Hank Green?

  I don't know if I seem like a Taurus, but like, it's cool to be like a bull. That's a cool thing.

• 22:17John Green?

  I guess so. It's cooler than being a virgin.

• 22:26Hank Green?

  And then there's like one twelfth of them are just out there being Cancer. That's not fair at all.

• 22:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  But I think it's a crab or a woman with, with water.

• 22:34John Green?

  Point being, that shuts Hank down. It doesn't shut me down. The one that shuts me down more than anything in terms of an ice maker is if somebody asks me a leading question that they know the correct answer to about me.

• 22:51Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 22:52John Green?

  Like, I'll give you an example. Here's an example. You're not comfortable with ambiguity, are you?

• 22:58Hank Green?

  Ooh.

• 23:00John Green?

  Ice made. Ice unbroken, you know?

• 23:03Hank Green?

  Ice made. We're gonna, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to work a long time to make this shave ice.

• 23:07John Green?

  Anytime you make my personality into a question, but you think you know the answer to the question? I don't like it. I don't like it. But I do like this question from anonymous. Dear John and Hank, how do you decide whether you want to have kids? Some of my friends are starting to have kids and others know for sure that they don't want kids now or ever. But I just can't work out whether I want one, one way or the other. I'm 30 and now I feel like I barely look after myself. I still feel like I'm a kid in an adult's body. I'm doing okay financially, so that's not a massive factor. But the idea of deciding what to make for dinner every day for the rest of my life is daunting enough without being responsible for feeding someone else. And they just eat what you eat, anonymous. I, I know I still have plenty of time to work this out, but I worry I'll just keep putting off making a decision until one day it's too late and I'll regret not having done something sooner. So how do I work out what I want? Bye bye baby, anonymous.

• 23:52Hank Green?

  Boy.

• 23:53John Green?

  This is a good question for Hank Green because Hank Green made the call pretty late in life.

• 23:57Hank Green?

  I did. I did. Yeah. I'd like to make a video that's like, why is this good? You know?

• 24:02John Green?

  We should say having kids is not inherently good. We're not saying that like everyone should have kids.

• 24:07Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:07John Green?

  By any stretch of the imagination. If you don't want to have kids, don't have kids. I know lots of people who have fulfilling lives and no kids.

• 24:13Hank Green?

  Yeah. Um, but the, uh, there's all kinds of fun parts, you know?

• 24:19John Green?

  Yeah. I, one thing we should have said to Michelle earlier, Hank, is that like, the, the first three months are the least fun three months.

• 24:27Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, there's probably some circumstances where there's some less fun three months, but, but on average, for sure.

• 24:33John Green?

  That's true. I mean, that's very true. Fifteen is not that easy, but like, the first three months are exceptionally challenging for most people.

• 24:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. It, it really does. It can clear up. It become quite, quite a lot easier. At some point, like at six months, Orin started sleeping like 10 hours a night. And I was like, oh, man.

• 24:54John Green?

  Yep.

• 24:55Hank Green?

  That's a, that's a lot of time. Or like 12 hours.

• 24:58John Green?

  Yeah, like 12 hours and then a nap.

• 25:00Hank Green?

  That's a huge amount of free time.

• 25:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Hank Green?

  And now, now he sleeps once a day. Terrible.

• 25:06John Green?

  I know.

• 25:07Hank Green?

  They sleep so much in the beginning, but also not right at the very beginning when you'd like them to.

• 25:12John Green?

  Right.

• 25:12Hank Green?

  Sleep when they sleep is what they say.

• 25:14John Green?

  So Hank, how did you decide that you wanted to have kids or a kid?

• 25:18Hank Green?

  Um, I wish I'd been journaling. I was pretty like, I don't need this in my life. I felt like I didn't need it for a long time. There was just like so much interesting stuff going on anyway. And then, you know, honestly, what did it was like watching other people with their kids. We were like the last people in our friend group to have kids.

• 25:36John Green?

  Hmm.

• 25:36Hank Green?

  And, and, and seeing how it went, like going and hanging out with them and like liking the kids.

• 25:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Hank Green?

  I just hadn't, like, every kid I'd ever seen, like, either was invisible or having a tantrum. You know, like, strangers' kids are either not there, or they're being annoying. Like, those are the two ways that you know there's strangers' kids. But the more I, like, hung out with the kids of friends and, like, watched them grow up and, and saw how my friends were dealing with it. You know, the hard parts and the easy parts and, um, and the fun parts. And I was like, oh, that looks, like, kinda great. You know, and I, I kinda felt like, um, I think Catherine also specifically felt like there was, like, uh, you know, kind of a continuity to the, uh, you know, the process of having family.

• 26:27Hank Green?

  You know, you have family up, like, you have your parents, but then you, like, there's also, like, you know.

• 26:32John Green?

  Sometimes you want family down to some extent.

• 26:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, to, to, like, add family down.

• 26:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:36Hank Green?

  And, uh, I just kept, like, seeing, like, the interesting parts of my friends' relationships with their kids. And I was like, that looks really interesting, actually.

• 26:46John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, we decided to have kids because we were, like, uh, twenty-seven and other people were having kids.

• 26:52Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:53John Green?

  Which isn't the best reason, but I'm really glad we did. But I think, like, I, I take a lot of my social cues from around me. So, like, when my best friend had a kid, I was like, oh, guess it's time.

• 27:05John Green?

  I'm not really a leader when it comes to that stuff. I'm definitely vulnerable to peer pressure, you know, like, when it comes to having children or smoking cigarettes or whatever.

• 27:12Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:12John Green?

  I'm very, uh, I'm very much like, oh, is that what we're doing? Okay, all right, we'll do it.

• 27:17Hank Green?

  I think that's, like, most of how humans go.

• 27:20John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:21Hank Green?

  So much of, of how I see the world is just, like, ultimately, it's a lot easier if I just kinda go with what's normal.

• 27:30John Green?

  Yep.

• 27:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:31John Green?

  Yep. That's, that's a good rule.

• 27:33Hank Green?

  Not always a good rule.

• 27:34John Green?

  It's not necessarily a good way to go through life, but it is the way that I've gone through life.

• 27:39Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, it's not entirely the way you've gone through life. You've made a lot of.

• 27:42John Green?

  Pretty much.

• 27:44John Green?

  I pretty much had two children and a picket fence.

• 27:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, but you didn't, you didn't, you also became like a writer and YouTuber.

• 27:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Hank Green?

  Like, super typical path.

• 27:55John Green?

  Yeah, but that like, as you know, Hank, I think the obsession with what people do for a living is like way overblown and like not the most interesting thing about them. So I actually think like my life is very similar to my friends who are schoolteachers or sell dental supplies or whatever.

• 28:09Hank Green?

  Yes. There's also the element of, I think that it probably to a lot of people would have, would have seemed like a weird pivot from young adult novelist to a YouTuber in 2007.

• 28:21John Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Hank Green?

  But I think that we were following very normal incentives that other people, like lots of other people would have followed, I think.

• 28:30John Green?

  Totally. We were just, we just happened to be into something and it wasn't a weird pivot. Just like, it's not that weird of a pivot to go from a young adult novelist to a tuberculosis writer. Like, it seems like a weird pivot from the outside, but if you've lived my life, then it doesn't seem like a weird pivot at all because I've always been interested in young people and illness.

• 28:46Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:46John Green?

  And here I am, still interested in young people and illness.

• 28:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:50John Green?

  And still writing about them, just writing about them in a different context. And so to me, it doesn't feel like a pivot. But of course, like when you pitch the idea, young adult novelist turns into tuberculosis historian, it seems like a big pivot. But this is true for most of our pivots, I think. I think they're smaller than they look at first.

• 29:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:07John Green?

  All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we need to talk about the physicists. The physicists have responded, Hank, to what happens when you go near the speed of light. Does it look like Star Wars or does it look like something else?

• 29:20Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 29:20John Green?

  So first, we have this physicist, and you'll, you'll be surprised to learn, Hank, the physicists do not totally agree.

• 29:27Hank Green?

  Oh, interesting.

• 29:28John Green?

  So I'm going to tell you what everybody's, everybody's bona fides are.

• 29:33Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 29:33John Green?

  So that you'll, you can make your own decision based on their bona fides. Dear John and Hank, you asked for a physicist to answer a listener question. I heed the call. I'm a particle physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and frequently zoom things around at nearly the speed of light. Your listener asked what you would see if you move faster than light, like in Star Wars or Star Trek. The listener is right that you, it would not appear like it does on TV because the reality is more bleak. You would. Not see much. Oh. Ignoring other physics problems, you would zap past things so fast, most of that light would never catch up to your eyes. Hence, you would see black. The only light you could see is very narrow cone in the direction you are moving, which is just the light in your way as you crash through it. Now, you will notice that Grant says ignoring other physics problems. Yeah. It turns out that some people did not ignore other physics.

• 30:21John Green?

  So maybe that's part of the reason why people disagree. But anyway, what is more interesting is what happens, Grant writes, as you approach the speed of light, both your perception of space and time would change. And a fun way to see this is through a free game developed at MIT. I can see it giving both or either of you the giggles or vertigo. I did the game and it gave me vertigo. Not a source of funding, Grant. So thank you, Grant. That was very helpful. However, Adam writes, Dear John and Hank, as someone with a PhD in mathematical physics, I would like to emphasize the correct answer to the question about how stars look when you move faster than light is we have no idea. If anyone tells you differently, they are making some very big assumptions. Oh, wow. All right. Really coming for Grant here. As Grant apparently was.

• 31:03John Green?

  When determining how objects look when moving at a certain speed, we typically use special relativity, which gives us very good answers for anything that moves slower than light. Now, it is possible to plug a speed larger than light into those equations and get an answer. Maybe you can even get rid of the imaginary numbers that pop up, but there is no good reason why physics should behave the same way on the other side of the light barrier. That's Adam's perspective. Oh, going like faster than the speed of light. Okay. Kevin's perspective is, Dear John and Hank, I am a physics PhD student and I bet there won't be any universal conclusion on what a star looks like when passing above the speed of light. Man, that's a good answer right there. Not really thought through it. Personally, I think it's like Star Wars, though.

• 31:46John Green?

  So they're they're your answers from real physicists, real proper physicists have weighed in our physics question, and you've got some answers. Now Hank.

• 31:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:56John Green?

  We have long known that the AFC Wimbledon juggernaut simply could not last forever.

• 32:01Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 32:01John Green?

  That Icarus was melting its wax wings, Hank. We've always known that AFC Wimbledon was flying way too close to the sun. And sure enough, AFC Wimbledon played in the FA Cup, a tournament we really needed to do well in because we need money. I don't know if I emphasize this enough, but AFC Wimbledon is, as football clubs go, desperately, desperately poor. And we really needed the money from a big cup run where you get like Liverpool away and you get like $500,000 just for playing Liverpool.

• 32:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:29John Green?

  We needed that. Instead, we lost to Gateshead.

• 32:32Hank Green?

  Well, you know what they always say about Gateshead?

• 32:35John Green?

  What do they always say about Gateshead?

• 32:36Hank Green?

  Oh, I don't know either.

• 32:39John Green?

  We also lost to Burton Albion, the 21st best team in League One. So in our last two games, we've lost to one of the worst teams in League One and a team currently plying its trade in the fifth division of English football. So, uh, not covering ourselves in glory at the moment.

• 32:56Hank Green?

  No. Do how many of those count toward your standings?

• 32:59John Green?

  Only one counts toward the standings. The other just means that we don't get to play in the FA Cup anymore, which is really unfortunate because we needed that half million dollars we were going to make if we made it to the third round.

• 33:08Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 33:10John Green?

  So, yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit crap, Hank. What else can you say? Um, yeah, we're out of the FA Cup. We're struggling down, I think in sixth place in League One. But I don't know who, I'm just kidding. I'll take that all day. Sixth place in League One. You gotta be joking.

• 33:29Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, as, as long as you can hold on to it and look, it probably means you're gonna stay in the league, at least.

• 33:37John Green?

  Yeah, the main thing is to stay in the league. That's job number one. Job number two is to miraculously get promoted to the championship and lose 100% of our games the season after.

• 33:46Hank Green?

  Well. We'll try that.

• 33:47John Green?

  All right. What's the news from Mars?

• 33:49Hank Green?

  The news from Mars, John, is that we're going back.

• 33:52John Green?

  No.

• 33:53Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, a probe. So.

• 33:55John Green?

  Oh, we're probing back.

• 33:57Hank Green?

  Yeah, we've never gone with people. So we're just going, we're probing back.

• 34:01John Green?

  Probing back.

• 34:02Hank Green?

  This is called the escapade probes. This is a dual, a dual spacecraft mission. And it's going to launch in the next few weeks at some point. Um, so this was actually supposed to launch in 2024 using Blue Origin's rocket New Glenn. But NASA was like, this thing doesn't look 100% ready. So, uh, there, there were some more test flights and now, uh, it has been prepped for launch with the escapade probes, which are going to go to Mars. I, I will continue to look into the like, deep details of what Escapade is going to do. But they're basically trying to, I think, understand like Mars is like weird, weak magnetic field, how it interacts with the solar winds, how it became a desert, lifeless place with no atmosphere.

• 34:48John Green?

  Or at least a desert. I wouldn't go so far as to say lifeless just yet.

• 34:52Hank Green?

  Oh, thank you. Yeah. Also, it has some atmosphere. Thank you.

• 34:56John Green?

  So this is my big question, Hank. And it's not about Mars. It's about my home planet, which I much prefer.

• 35:02Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:03John Green?

  It's autumn right now. It's beautiful. The sky is blue. There's planes in the air. You know, the robins are.

• 35:09Hank Green?

  We're all a bunch of mammals, air and stuff.

• 35:12John Green?

  We're all just a bunch of mammals, breathing air, the witches stuff. Is there any chance the solar winds are going to blow off this atmosphere and leave this place like, uh, done and dusted?

• 35:22Hank Green?

  No. I mean, if we've gotten four and a half billion years into this, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna hold on to our atmosphere. We could do some stuff to the atmosphere that's not ideal. And by, by could, I mean are.

• 35:33John Green?

  Yeah. No, I know we are doing that, but we're going to have an atmosphere for the foreseeable future.

• 35:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:39John Green?

  Great.

• 35:40Hank Green?

  I'm not worried.

• 35:41John Green?

  That's a big relief to me.

• 35:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, you're good. Keep breathing, buddy.

• 35:45John Green?

  All right, I got to figure out these, uh, these headphones before I do my big interview.

• 35:49Hank Green?

  Hmm, I'm so hungry right now.

• 35:51John Green?

  All right. Well, Hank, that's a good reminder that we need to end the podcast. We do. Hank needs to go eat.

• 35:56Hank Green?

  I gotta get a snack.

• 35:58John Green?

  Thank you for podding with me. You can send, cool listener questions can be sent to [email protected]. I'm sorry I was so tired today. I swore I'd do my best, did my best.

• 36:06Hank Green?

  You did great, John. This podcast was edited by Ben Swartout. It was 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 Tabuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown.

• 36:24John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.