434: Curt’s Fleas

Why don’t John and Hank live in the same state? Where does the chapstick go after I apply it? When my phone runs out of battery, why can't I plug it in and immediately use it? If aliens landed on Earth long after the sun has died, would there still be signs of former human life? …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 doobie advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John?

• 0:21John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Hank Green?

  Do you know how an elf blows out a candle?

• 0:26John Green?

  I don't.

• 0:26Hank Green?

  Just going.

• 0:29John Green?

  Why is that funny?

• 0:30Hank Green?

  I didn't have a joke ready.

• 0:32John Green?

  Oh, it was absurdist humor, like, uh, data-ist.

• 0:35Hank Green?

  I don't know. I don't think it was.

• 0:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Hank Green?

  If anything, it was.

• 0:39John Green?

  Oh, Marcel Duchamp would have been doubled over with laughter.

• 0:42Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, I was inverting the frame of the joke by elves actually, of course, blowing out a candle in the only way that one could.

• 0:49John Green?

  Yes.

• 0:49Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:50John Green?

  This reminds me of my all-time favorite joke. It's a knock-knock joke. You start it.

• 0:54Hank Green?

  It's so good. Knock, knock.

• 0:56John Green?

  Who's there?

• 1:00John Green?

  That's it. I put that joke in Looking for Alaska. I always thought it was such a funny joke and I first heard it in high school and so I thought it would be appropriate for Looking for Alaska. And I cannot tell you over the last 20 years how many emails I have received from people who are like, "I do not get the joke. Please explain the joke to me." And I'm like, "Well, I guess it doesn't work that well over text. Maybe I should have considered that." There are a number of things I regret about my previous novels, but that knock-knock joke is definitely on the list.

• 1:25Hank Green?

  No one had gotten in touch with me before publishing a book about how mad I'm gonna be about certain parts of the book.

• 1:33John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that you're really gonna wanna take it back and you can't because it's out and lots of people have read it. And if you take it back, it almost makes it weird because then like, once you take back one thing, people are like, "Why don't you take back other things?" And you're like, "Well, because if I took back everything I regretted about the book, I would not, I would have to unpublish the book."

• 1:53Hank Green?

  Wouldn't be any book left. Man, would I rewrite that first page.

• 1:57John Green?

  Really?

• 1:58Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Hank Green?

  It's okay. People love it. People love it.

• 2:02John Green?

  Well, sometimes people like stuff that you don't like, and that's okay. Like, you know, ultimately, the job of the book is to resonate with an audience more than it is to resonate with the author of the future. So like, if parts of those books don't resonate with me anymore, as long as they're resonating with an audience, that's all that matters.

• 2:18Hank Green?

  I was just listening to an author talk about being an author, and they were talking about the the feeling of, you know, knowing the ways that people are going to critique your book even before you publish it.

• 2:29John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Hank Green?

  You're like, I know what people are gonna say.

• 2:32John Green?

  Right.

• 2:32Hank Green?

  And like, and there's like, there's like, either a limitation, like, there's a reason why I can't solve that problem, or I don't want to solve the problem because I'm doing something else. But you know it. You like, are putting it out, knowing exactly the criticism you're going to receive.

• 2:45John Green?

  Teenagers don't talk like that. Oh, yeah, really? I didn't know. Thanks for the info. Thanks for the heads up. Do teenagers talk like in Romeo and Juliet where their first 14 lines or whatever are just a sonnet back and forth to each other? Do they talk like that? How do they talk? Is Romeo and Juliet bad?

• 3:02John Green?

  Then then there's the meta criticism, which is fair, which is, did John Green just compare himself to Shakespeare?

• 3:08Hank Green?

  Nah, nah. Look, Shakespeare was just a man, you know? Or possibly several people.

• 3:14John Green?

  Yeah, he was just a man, but one, one heck of a, one heck of a writer.

• 3:18Hank Green?

  I don't know. I've never, I've never really resonated with it personally.

• 3:21John Green?

  Are you serious?

• 3:22Hank Green?

  For clarity, I definitely want everyone to interpret that as a criticism of me, not Shakespeare.

• 3:27John Green?

  There's a lack of generosity in the reader rather than a lack of generosity in the writer. I like that.

• 3:31Hank Green?

  Well, it's just, it seems to take a lot of a lot of work.

• 3:34John Green?

  Well, it's a lot of work because it was, yeah, it was a different, it was definitely a different time. So if that's your concern, you should read Marlo, because Marlo sounds even more dated.

• 3:44Hank Green?

  What's Marlo?

• 3:46John Green?

  Never change, golden boy.

• 3:49Hank Green?

  It's not what I went to school for, okay?

• 3:51John Green?

  Clearly.

• 3:54Hank Green?

  Is Marlowe a Shakespeare play? I have not heard of that one.

• 3:57John Green?

  No, it's a writer. It's a writer who was a contemporary of Shakespeare.

• 4:02Hank Green?

  Oh, there was another person doing it back then?

• 4:05John Green?

  And who got murdered in a pub, if I remember correctly.

• 4:09Hank Green?

  Did he get a death note?

• 4:11John Green?

  Uh, no, I don't think so. I'm not sure how that works.

• 4:14Hank Green?

  Okay. He probably knew it was likely.

• 4:17John Green?

  I mean, it's never that far away from a possibility, is it Hank? Let's move on to some questions from our listeners.

• 4:23Hank Green?

  Let's do it.

• 4:24John Green?

  Let's start with this question from Grace who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm wondering why you guys don't live in the same state? I understand John loves Indianapolis and Hank lives near the DFTBA warehouse, but wouldn't living close together outweigh these pros long-term? Is it something you've never considered? Thinking about shared space, Grace.

• 4:41Hank Green?

  Well, John, I think it's very important for us to not murder each other.

• 4:45John Green?

  See, this is Hank's take all the time. He'll be like, the reason we can't live in the same place is that we would murder each other. And what he means is that he would murder me.

• 4:55John Green?

  I like Hank a lot. I could hang out with Hank like twice a week and be very happy. Hank would murder me.

• 5:01Hank Green?

  No, I mean, we hang out twice a week already and, you know, not in physical space.

• 5:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:05Hank Green?

  This is one, and then there's probably another, you know?

• 5:08John Green?

  Yeah, we have a conversation twice a week. That's not quite the same thing as a hang session, but I hear you.

• 5:12Hank Green?

  I agree. I agree. I've thought about it. I thought about especially like living in Indianapolis for like a while every year.

• 5:19John Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Hank Green?

  And then we could.

• 5:20John Green?

  Oh, man, we would crush the amount of content that we could make together.

• 5:24Hank Green?

  It would be. Good for the content.

• 5:27John Green?

  Great for the content. I mean, think about like how good Rhett and Link have it, you know? Living in the same town as they do.

• 5:33Hank Green?

  You know, another thing that I like about this, I was just thinking like Indianapolis needs the love.

• 5:39John Green?

  It does.

• 5:40Hank Green?

  I'm about to hit you with an idea. Here it is.

• 5:43John Green?

  Are you about to run for governor of Indiana despite never having lived here?

• 5:46Hank Green?

  No, I'm going to move to Indiana so I could become the vice president.

• 5:50John Green?

  Oh, of the United States?

• 5:52Hank Green?

  Yes, because that's where they're all from. No, that was not my idea.

• 5:56John Green?

  Especially if you don't want to become president, because we've had an astonishing run of six consecutive vice presidents from Indiana who did not become president.

• 6:05Hank Green?

  That's great.

• 6:06John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Hank Green?

  That's very Indiana.

• 6:08John Green?

  Well, I'm being a little presumptuous about Mike Pence, but I do think that we can rather put him in the past category.

• 6:14Hank Green?

  That would be a weird, that would be a weird direction for the Republican Party to go.

• 6:19John Green?

  Technically, I think Dan Quayle is still alive, so he could also.

• 6:22Hank Green?

  You could do it.

• 6:23John Green?

  He could also run for president.

• 6:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, look, we've only ever elected boomers in my life, except for Obama, so.

• 6:30John Green?

  That's true.

• 6:31Hank Green?

  Um, John.

• 6:33John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Hank Green?

  The, the idea is, is this, we have people come in and then we like create, we create like an experience.

• 6:40John Green?

  Uh huh.

• 6:41Hank Green?

  And then part of the experience is that like you give a, you give like a little lecture downtown in Indianapolis.

• 6:46John Green?

  Yeah, like an artist and writer's residency where you do a public facing thing once.

• 6:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, but then there's also like a bunch of like really nice, you know, other things that happened to you.

• 6:57John Green?

  You do realize that this is what Sarah and I are starting, right?

• 7:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:01John Green?

  Okay, I just wanted to make sure you knew that we were doing.

• 7:03Hank Green?

  I didn't know that there would be a public facing part of it.

• 7:05John Green?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Hank Green?

  But, but then also I think that like it can be at a, you know, a thinker's and intellectuals and.

• 7:14John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:14Hank Green?

  And all of that.

• 7:15John Green?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I'm all for that, Hank. That's a good idea, mostly because it would mean that you would move to Indianapolis, which would make me very happy. Like, I don't really want to move to Montana because of the sky high housing prices combined with the complete lack of inability to get anywhere other than Montana. It's lovely there.

• 7:32Hank Green?

  That can be a huge perk sometimes. Do you have nonstop to New York?

• 7:35John Green?

  We have lots of nonstops to New York.

• 7:37Hank Green?

  Do you have nonstops to LA?

• 7:38John Green?

  We do.

• 7:39Hank Green?

  Do you have nonstops to Europe?

• 7:41John Green?

  We have one nonstop to Europe, yeah.

• 7:43Hank Green?

  Where does it go to?

• 7:44John Green?

  Dublin.

• 7:45Hank Green?

  I'm in!

• 7:46John Green?

  I know, it's pretty good. It's not bad. It's pretty good. That Aer Lingus, they've got a good flight.

• 7:51Hank Green?

  Aer Lingus, what does Lingus mean?

• 7:53John Green?

  I think it means air, um, air, air travel.

• 7:57Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 7:58John Green?

  Air language.

• 7:59Hank Green?

  It means fleet.

• 8:00John Green?

  Oh, so it's their air fleet. That makes sense. So anyway, point being, I would love for you to move to Indianapolis. You're very welcome here anytime you want to. Full disclosure, I might leave for part of the year at some point.

• 8:11Hank Green?

  We've, we've kind of got all of our systems set up in the places where we are, you know?

• 8:15John Green?

  That's true. And, and, and deep roots. I mean, the real answer, Grace, is that once you have deep roots and like, once you have your people, it's very hard to move. It's very hard to move and dislocate your kids from their school and leave behind your dentist. I mean, I love my dentist.

• 8:29Hank Green?

  I don't love my dentist. In fact, I don't have a regular dentist.

• 8:32John Green?

  I was like, man, it's gonna be a bummer when your dentist listens to this podcast. What a way to find out.

• 8:38Hank Green?

  I keep going back to the same dentist that I ultimately do dislike now.

• 8:42John Green?

  Okay, so you just don't, you just, you just shop around for dentists? You really shouldn't move to Indianapolis. I've got a great dentist for you.

• 8:48Hank Green?

  I go to whoever's available on the day I'm, I'm available.

• 8:52John Green?

  I know what school Orin would go to. You'd have a great life here. And your, your cost of living would cut in half and you could fly to New York or LA anytime you want and anywhere else for that matter.

• 9:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, but I do not trust that they will be serving me good coffee.

• 9:06John Green?

  Well, there is that. The coffee situation is not as good in Indianapolis as it is in Missoula, but on the upside, you do own a coffee company.

• 9:15Hank Green?

  I can, yeah, I can make it good at home, but I do, I do love a nice coffee shop.

• 9:20John Green?

  Yeah, I get it. I, we have a nice coffee shop now. We got a, we got one at 54th and Illinois. It's quite, quite nice. It was just there this morning, actually. All right. So we're gonna move to the same state, Grace, all because of you. Thank you. Hank's moving to Indianapolis. This is an announcement.

• 9:34Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Sharice who asks, Dear Hank and John, every night I put on chapstick before I go to sleep and when I wake up, my lips are dry and chapped. Where does the chapstick go? Autumn leaves and morning dew, Sharice.

• 9:46John Green?

  Can I guess, Hank?

• 9:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, you can.

• 9:48John Green?

  I think it goes into your lips.

• 9:51Hank Green?

  I, uh, don't. I think it goes into your mouth.

• 9:55John Green?

  What? What do you mean it goes into your mouth? You think it crawls up and floats its way into your mouth?

• 10:01Hank Green?

  No. Could you think of another way it might happen?

• 10:04John Green?

  No.

• 10:05Hank Green?

  Your tongue, your tongue.

• 10:07John Green?

  Oh, you lick your lips throughout the evening? No way. No, that's wrong.

• 10:11Hank Green?

  When you're sleeping, you pull them in and like, things happen.

• 10:14John Green?

  That's wrong.

• 10:15Hank Green?

  I think that's what happens.

• 10:17John Green?

  Nope.

• 10:17Hank Green?

  I think, what I will say, Sharice, is in looking at this, there are actually some ingredients in lip balms that can dry out your lips.

• 10:24John Green?

  Oh.

• 10:24Hank Green?

  Uh, so you wanna-

• 10:26John Green?

  That's how they get ya.

• 10:29Hank Green?

  It's addictive. You always need to put on more. It's a bit of a fool's game. The chapstick.

• 10:34John Green?

  It's a poisoned chalice.

• 10:36Hank Green?

  So what you want to do is start out with the real basics. So move from whatever's in whatever you're buying, that's fancy and, and nice and smells good to something very simple. That's ju- like you could just use Vaseline.

• 10:54John Green?

  Hmm. No.

• 10:57Hank Green?

  Why not?

• 10:57John Green?

  I'm a no on that one.

• 10:59Hank Green?

  Aqua for them.

• 11:00John Green?

  Really?

• 11:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:02John Green?

  Oh, but I like my Burt's Bees.

• 11:04Hank Green?

  Of course you do, but you know who owns Burt's Bees?

• 11:08John Green?

  So like Unilever or something?

• 11:09Hank Green?

  The enemy, John.

• 11:14John Green?

  Big, big lip chap?

• 11:19Hank Green?

  Big lip chap owns all of the big ones. Who owns Burt's Bees?

• 11:22John Green?

  I'll tell you who doesn't own it anymore is Burt. That guy's living the dream.

• 11:26Hank Green?

  Oh, oh God, Burt's Bees is owned by Clorox.

• 11:29John Green?

  Is it really?

• 11:30Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:31John Green?

  I thought, I would have thought Clorox was owned by something else, but no, Clorox is its own company with 8,000 employees worldwide, based in Oakland, California.

• 11:39Hank Green?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 11:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Hank Green?

  Uh, they've got 420 people there at Burt's, so that's a sizable portion of Clorox.

• 11:46John Green?

  Wow. They make a lot of stuff that people use every day, like the Brita water filtration system.

• 11:51Hank Green?

  The Clorox company does?

• 11:52John Green?

  Yeah. And Formula 409, that like cleaner?

• 11:56Hank Green?

  Yeah. Mm hmm.

• 11:58John Green?

  They make cat litter? Sometimes people are like, I can't believe that you're in the sock business and the household cleaning products business and the soap business and the coffee and tea business. And I'm like, have you Googled Clorox? Because?

• 12:11Hank Green?

  Yeah. Clorox makes Casey Masterpiece, the barbecue sauce.

• 12:15John Green?

  And they also make liquid plumber.

• 12:20Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't, I actually don't want that to be the same company. Like, what if there's a mix up at the factory?

• 12:28John Green?

  Are you guys more in the mood for sort of a Hidden Valley Ranch dressing? Or more of a Pine Sol?

• 12:36John Green?

  Because we got both here at the Clorox Company.

• 12:39Hank Green?

  Well, do you want some, do you want some Glad trash bags? Or some Kingsford charcoal?

• 12:45John Green?

  It's good. It's good. They got everything, man.

• 12:47Hank Green?

  It's what they call consumables is what they make.

• 12:50John Green?

  Well, Wikipedia only has their net sales up to 2020. So somebody's not on it at the Clorox Company updating their own Wikipedia page.

• 12:58Hank Green?

  Their revenue in 2025 was $7 billion. And if we could get Good Store there, I think we could call it a success.

• 13:05John Green?

  We could call it a day, Hank.

• 13:07Hank Green?

  I don't know why we can't. I just don't, am I not ruthless enough?

• 13:10John Green?

  I don't know what the issue is, but Good Store is very successful in the sense that it's given over $11 million to charity, but it's not nearly as successful as Hank and I think it should be. It's a little bit like Vlogbrothers in 2007 where we were baffled that we only had 86 subscribers after 85 videos.

• 13:27John Green?

  And we were on to something with Vlogbrothers and maybe we're on to something with Good Store and it's just gonna take some time, but yeah.

• 13:32Hank Green?

  How big was Clorox when it was eight years old, you know?

• 13:35John Green?

  That was in like 1910, so I don't know, but all your holiday needs can be met at Good Store where we do not sell bleach.

• 13:42Hank Green?

  No, and we don't sell lip balm yet, but maybe we should, I should put my money where my mouth is and make a very simple lip balm that is a single ingredient that all it does is make sure it prevents evaporation from the lips.

• 13:53John Green?

  Can you make it smell better than Vaseline?

• 13:56Hank Green?

  Vaseline does not have a smell.

• 13:58John Green?

  I mean, you have never in your life said something more wrong.

• 14:03Hank Green?

  Aquaphor does not have a smell.

• 14:05John Green?

  Okay, maybe.

• 14:06Hank Green?

  That's what I use. I use Aquaphor. And there are, there are other very low ingredient lip bums that you can try, Sharice, is all I'm saying. But I do think that as time goes on, like the lip balm stuff does not evaporate. And I don't think that it, maybe it does. I didn't look into this, but I don't think that it gets absorbed into the body.

• 14:22John Green?

  I think it does. I think it absolutely gets absorbed into the skin because the skin dries out over time.

• 14:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, but it's not, it's not water. It's, the lip balm stuff is very specifically not.

• 14:33John Green?

  I can't wait for a lip balm scientist to write in and say that you're wrong. I can't wait to issue this correction.

• 14:38Hank Green?

  And honestly, if you do know what you're talking about, maybe we can make a product together. I got.

• 14:44John Green?

  Thanks. Thanks getting into a new business, everybody.

• 14:47Hank Green?

  Look, look, if Clorox can do Burt's Bees, what's our, what's our, what's it gonna be called? So it's not Burt's Bees, but it is a man's name and an animal. Everybody write in your suggestions.

• 14:58John Green?

  I think it's Kurt's Dees.

• 15:00Hank Green?

  Kurt's Dees Nuts?

• 15:02John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:06John Green?

  Doesn't that sound like a wholesome, low ingredient, eco-friendly lip balm?

• 15:11Hank Green?

  Kurt's Dees Nuts.

• 15:14John Green?

  Hey, I really like this lip balm. I really like this lip balm. Where'd you Kurt's Fleas? Where'd you get it from? Oh, I got it from Kurt's Fleas. You know, it's Burt's Bees, but it's actually lower ingredients and better for the environment. It's called Kurt's Fleas.

• 15:26Hank Green?

  It's called Kurt's Fleas.

• 15:30John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 15:31Hank Green?

  Oh, we could bring back Kurt the punk rock nerd fighter to be the spokesperson.

• 15:34John Green?

  We could.

• 15:35Hank Green?

  He's probably not, never had fleas.

• 15:36John Green?

  That's, we could bring him back. That's a, I mean, that's a deep cut, Hank. That's a 2007 cut.

• 15:42Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:42John Green?

  All right, let's go on to this question from Caroline, who asks, Dear Hank and John, or Dear John and Hank, rather. I just accepted a new position and will be working from home for the first time. I have a good desk set up in our guest room, but it still doesn't feel like a workspace. You two seem like work from home guys. Are there any home office recommendations that could help me get in the work mindset? Home sweet Caroline.

• 16:01Hank Green?

  You gotta get the thing that feels most worky.

• 16:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Hank Green?

  And put it in a frame.

• 16:06John Green?

  Oh, like a picture of your dog or whatever?

• 16:08Hank Green?

  No.

• 16:09John Green?

  Oh, like a picture of your printer?

• 16:11Hank Green?

  Yes, exactly. Yes.

• 16:15Hank Green?

  Print out a picture of your printer on your printer.

• 16:17John Green?

  So you could look at your printer all the time while you're at work and be like, well, this definitely ain't home.

• 16:26Hank Green?

  Yeah. Any accolades, you know, your degree, a picture of your degree antiperspirant?

• 16:33John Green?

  Sure. That's a good one. Your degree next to your degree.

• 16:37Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Make it meta.

• 16:39John Green?

  I. Mostly work from bed. And so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this Caroline. I can transform any space into a workspace just by being anxious.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  I am the opposite. I work mostly in the office where I am sitting right now. And, and it is like, it feels like a workspace to me, even though it does not, of course, look like a traditional workspace. And I think that that is simply because it is dedicated for work, which is a luxury. Like, it's not easy to have that. And I have my fidgets. Is that a weird thing to say?

• 17:14John Green?

  That helps.

• 17:15Hank Green?

  Yeah. And by fidgets, I mean this, these nail clippers, my Allen wrench set.

• 17:21John Green?

  99% audio podcast, Hank. Nobody can see you.

• 17:25Hank Green?

  They know what nail clippers look like, John. They're not unusual nail clippers.

• 17:29John Green?

  I don't. I have aphantasia. I can't picture anything in my mind.

• 17:32Hank Green?

  John, when you see a tree.

• 17:35John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Hank Green?

  Do you think the word tree? Or do you have a feeling?

• 17:39John Green?

  I have a feeling of the tree. I have a feeling of the tree.

• 17:42Hank Green?

  Okay. I'm just trying to figure out how inner monologues work because I don't have one and people do.

• 17:47John Green?

  I have an experience of the tree. You don't have an inner monologue and I don't have an inner picture producer. Between the two of us, we are pretty, pretty, pretty cold to the world. Pretty far away from being able to engage with the universe as we find it.

• 18:02Hank Green?

  Yeah. Another thing that you might want to do to make your office feel more like an office is just like, stuff a bunch of pantyhose full of cotton and then form it into the shape of a coworker. That's just there. You know, and they're always there. And eventually, like, you could like install like a raspberry pie connected to a fart sprayer. So that every, every, like, three weeks it'll fart and you'll be like, oh my God.

• 18:30John Green?

  That's a good idea.

• 18:31Hank Green?

  That really, it really feels authentically like having a coworker.

• 18:34John Green?

  That's gonna feel just like having a coworker. I think the other thing you can do is invite one of your friends over to work next to you from nine to five. You know, just do that. That way you don't have to do, go to raspberry pie. Still get the pleasure of the fart smells, but without having to do any coding.

• 18:53Hank Green?

  Without all of the code?

• 18:55John Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Hank Green?

  Yeah, uh, but you could have like a snack drawer.

• 18:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Hank Green?

  That was kind of a nice way. I actually have a snack drawer.

• 19:02John Green?

  Do you really?

• 19:03Hank Green?

  I do.

• 19:03John Green?

  Maybe that would get me out of bed because I definitely don't eat snacks in bed. That's one of my only rules.

• 19:09Hank Green?

  This, do you see what I got for you, John?

• 19:11John Green?

  No, I don't. I don't look at you when we make the podcast.

• 19:15John Green?

  I look at the question document.

• 19:16Hank Green?

  Turkey sticks.

• 19:18John Green?

  Oh, gross.

• 19:20Hank Green?

  Oh, that's in my snack drawer, just in case, you know, just in case turkey sticks.

• 19:24John Green?

  Yeah, sure.

• 19:24Hank Green?

  That's what our turkey stick brand is going to be called a good store, actually.

• 19:27John Green?

  Just in case.

• 19:28Hank Green?

  Just in case.

• 19:29John Green?

  Can't wait till we make turkey sticks to go along with our soap. That would be amazing. I'm going to throw it out there that I don't love being in the meat business.

• 19:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'd rather not be in the meat business, honestly.

• 19:38John Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Hank Green?

  Hard, hard to do well.

• 19:40John Green?

  Yeah, I think we should. I like the hard pivot to lip balm, though. I think that's a good hard pivot.

• 19:45Hank Green?

  What about, would it be, would it feel more like a workplace if you did like a 15 minute stand up every, you know what a stand up is, John? You're not, you're not very corporate.

• 19:54John Green?

  No, what's a stand up?

• 19:55Hank Green?

  This is where you have like have a quick meeting where everybody's standing.

• 19:58John Green?

  Oh.

• 19:58Hank Green?

  You know, like you like go into like a person's office and there's like six people and they like stand there and they.

• 20:02John Green?

  Are you allowed to sit?

• 20:04Hank Green?

  Yeah, you can sit.

• 20:05John Green?

  Okay. Well, that's nice. As long as you're allowed to sit. I remember when I worked at Booklist, like I would drop by someone's office and stand and they would sit and we would chat for a minute. Is that a stand up?

• 20:15Hank Green?

  Yeah, usually it's a bunch of people get called together, but you're gonna.

• 20:19John Green?

  So it's a scheduled meeting. It's just a shorter meeting.

• 20:22Hank Green?

  It's a short meeting and the idea is that nobody sits to keep it brief.

• 20:26John Green?

  Oh.

• 20:26Hank Green?

  And, uh.

• 20:27John Green?

  You can't keep, you can't keep it brief enough. It should, it, it, it should be shorter than it is. That's the only thing I know about stand up meetings, just like sit down meetings.

• 20:36Hank Green?

  I've been in some good stand ups, uh, but, but, but you're gonna have to do this by yourself. So what you're gonna want to do is like, uh, do it like happy slip. Where you play all the different parts of the different characters in The Office?

• 20:49John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, like Natalie Tran used to.

• 20:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, this is so we're doing more YouTube deep cuts here for people who've been around forever. But yeah, and and and go around in a circle and you're gonna wanna create a bunch of office personas. And you can base them on like your favorite sitcom or something. And you're gonna go around in a circle and you're gonna talk about all the things that that everybody's gonna do that day.

• 21:10John Green?

  And then you're gonna record that, you're gonna record that, you're gonna edit it together. Then you're gonna upload it to YouTube and then you're gonna quit your job and become a YouTuber.

• 21:18Hank Green?

  Absolutely.

• 21:19John Green?

  And then you're gonna find that you wait, wait a second, still work at home, still work at home.

• 21:26Hank Green?

  Still need to, still need to like gaze longingly into that picture of your printer.

• 21:32John Green?

  Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by that picture of your printer that you keep next to your desk to remind you, this is work.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you, of course, by Kurtz Fleas, Kurtz Fleas Lip Balm, all natural, low ingredient.

• 21:47John Green?

  And today's podcast is brought to you by Indianapolis, Indianapolis, soon to be the hometown of Hank Green.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by everything I'd like to change in my two novels. Everything I'd like to change in my two novels, oh, not an insignificant number of things.

• 22:05John Green?

  Yeah, but you just gotta let it go, man.

• 22:07Hank Green?

  I just gotta let it go.

• 22:08John Green?

  I mean, the truth is, those books will be out of print eventually, anyway.

• 22:11Hank Green?

  Look, yeah, the sun's gonna explode, John.

• 22:14John Green?

  Yeah, no offense, but your books are gonna go out of print before then.

• 22:18Hank Green?

  I hope so. Dear Hank and John, what I've always loved about laptop computers is that you can use them immediately after plugging them in when their batteries die. Why don't phones do this? Electricity and elephants, Aiden. Aiden, I love this question. This is super weird and I had never thought about it. This is my favorite kind of question, John. A thing that is a normal part of my life.

• 22:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Hank Green?

  That is, there's obviously a reason, but I've never even noticed it's a thing. So if your laptop runs out of battery, you plug it in and you just like turn it back on and it works again. Your phone runs out of batteries, you plug it in and you go on it like some amount of time. Five, sometimes like 10 minutes. I'm gonna like weird and I'm like, can I please? I need to finish watching that reel.

• 23:02John Green?

  Give me that juice.

• 23:04Hank Green?

  How I'm gonna survive for 10 minutes without my binky.

• 23:09John Green?

  And that's what they should do, Hank. I'm just gonna stop you right there. You should be forced to call your phone your binky. You should be, that should be like a criminal offense if you don't call your phone your binky. And see if that, see if that affects your phone use at all.

• 23:22Hank Green?

  It's gotta be something. Something's gotta make this embarrassing.

• 23:25John Green?

  No, I need my little passy. I'm sorry. I can't, I can't go on for 30 seconds longer without my passy.

• 23:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:32John Green?

  All right. Go back. Go back to what you were saying.

• 23:34Hank Green?

  So it, it seems, and I would love, again, if there's experts who know more about this, but it seems that it is totally possible for a phone to do this, but it requires extra circuitry. So it, the way that a laptop works is that it can charge the battery and run the computer at the same time through that power port. There's enough power coming in and the electrical system is set up in such a way that it can route that power intelligently. So it doesn't overcharge the battery and it doesn't send too much power to the other thing. Or if the battery is done charging, it can, it can stop sending power to the battery and it can send it just one place. It could do all this stuff and that just requires circuitry. It requires systems. And phones are so packed full of stuff

• 24:19Hank Green?

  that that circuitry isn't worth the space that it takes up in the phone for it to be able to run the whole phone from the power port. And so all of the power, the systems is only dedicated to getting power into the battery. And then the phone only can use electricity from the battery, not from the power port.

• 24:39John Green?

  Wow. I mean, that's not what I would have guessed. So that is really interesting.

• 24:43Hank Green?

  Did you have a guess?

• 24:45John Green?

  Just because the phone's a little crankier. That was gonna be my guess. Well, more temperamental.

• 24:50Hank Green?

  Little piece of crap.

• 24:51John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:52John Green?

  But that's a, that's a better answer than the one I was gonna proffer. So very impressive. I was like going to a very short, not quite as good technology connections video.

• 25:01Hank Green?

  Indeed.

• 25:02John Green?

  All right. We got another question from Rachel who writes, Dear John and Hank, when people write in for advice, you sometimes talk about how none of us are gonna be fine in the long run because eventually the sun will die and make life on earth impossible.

• 25:13Hank Green?

  Sometimes, sometimes we do do that.

• 25:15John Green?

  Rachel, it is kind of my, my comfort answer, you know, like, we're gonna be okay in the long, long run, just in the sense that we won't be here. My question is, what would remain to be discovered by others? If space traveling alien archaeologists landed on Earth long after the sun has died, would there still be signs of former human life that would be discoverable? My name is most of the letters in archaeology, Rachel YG. Rachel, I have terrible news. We are very likely going to be engulfed by the sun.

• 25:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:45John Green?

  Before it dies.

• 25:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, so we'll become part of this sun. We'll get, we'll get baked into little bits.

• 25:52John Green?

  So I made this podcast called The Crash Course, The Universe with the great astrophysicist Katie Mack. And in the last episode, she talks about the long term future of the universe, which also is in trouble, just for the record, Rachel, it seems anyway. And she talks about how there's a very old star that she saw once that had a weird chemical signature in one part of the star. And how that weird chemical signature, there was this paper that argued that weird chemical signature was probably a planet that the star had swallowed when it was a red giant. And how like, that's what's gonna be left of us is a weird chemical signature in a dying star.

• 26:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Hank Green?

  Ew.

• 26:36John Green?

  Thanks for coming to the party. I mean, it's not a bummer to you, Hank, or is it kind of, to me, it's not necessarily a bummer because we aren't working for forever anyway. Like, I, I, I guess like, my ambition doesn't extend to forever. My ambition really extends to now. Like, I'm very worried about now. I'm so worried about now, I don't have time to be worried about forever.

• 26:58Hank Green?

  I think that if I look at myself, I think that now is a kind of forever. Like, I, I don't actually distinguish those things in my monkey brain. Like, I get it. I get that those things are different. And then I am, when I am confronted with the reality that they are different, that is the uncomfortable thing.

• 27:15John Green?

  Right.

• 27:15Hank Green?

  So this is a thing that I have with philosophy in, in general, where I just, I think that we mostly don't operate with truth in mind, you know, with like, with the, like, the, the truth of the structure of reality in mind. We operate with like, our biology in control, where it's like, you know, I love these people and these things because I do, not because of any...

• 27:40Hank Green?

  Structures or systems are like deep understanding, but I have found a lot of joy and inspiration and connection and excitement around the weird thing that is life and the weird thing that is humanity.

• 27:58John Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Hank Green?

  And so because I have that affinity and that amazement about that very long history of of chemistry that I am part of, I am kind of loathe to think of it being finite.

• 28:13John Green?

  I hear that and I can definitely empathize with it, but I guess the reason I'm not as concerned about it being finite. I mean, there's two things. One is that it's very strange. I mean, we are the only creature probably on Earth and indeed in the known universe that is finite and can conceive of infinity in a meaningful way.

• 28:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 28:33John Green?

  And can even kind of describe infinities and and and describe the strangest thing of all, which is that there are different sizes of infinities and so on.

• 28:41Hank Green?

  Yeah, and just being aware.

• 28:42John Green?

  Just being able to think of the infinite from within a finite space is a very strange and to me lovely thing. And I guess I don't need it to last forever as long as we can conceive of forever.

• 28:55Hank Green?

  I certainly don't need it to last forever.

• 28:57John Green?

  Well, good, because it ain't gonna.

• 28:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm comfortable with that, but there's just something, I think the universe is better with life in it than without.

• 29:06John Green?

  Yeah, there is something sad about thinking about the universe itself dying, much more sad than thinking about any of us dying or thinking about even humans dying.

• 29:16Hank Green?

  Right, yeah.

• 29:16John Green?

  It's not just that the universe is better with life on it, right? Like Earth is so much better with life on it. Earth is so blisteringly, stunningly, constantly alive. It's

• 29:26Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:27John Green?

  The overwhelming like process that Earth is undergoing all the time. And it is strange to think about that being a chemical signature inside of a dying star.

• 29:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Hank Green?

  We have like a word for when individual things die and we have a word for when a species dies.

• 29:44John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Hank Green?

  But like the idea of like the whole system. Dying.

• 29:49John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Hank Green?

  Like, that's, that's the big one. And like, it may have happened on Mars. You know, like, we may, like, our solar system have may have already seen that thing.

• 29:58John Green?

  It seems likely that it happened on Mars, albeit in a less dramatic way, maybe.

• 30:03Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'm not ready to give likelinesses to it. Maybe I am. I don't know. It's exciting. It's exciting times.

• 30:09John Green?

  It's pretty exciting.

• 30:10Hank Green?

  This is an interesting thing to me. I've gotten some feedback from folks that are just like saying, hey, you know, you're talking about life on Mars, and that's great and everything, but that's not really what we're interested in. We're interested in aliens. You know, we're interested in

• 30:24John Green?

  Right.

• 30:25Hank Green?

  life that, that like has trombones, you know?

• 30:28John Green?

  So-called complex life.

• 30:30Hank Green?

  Yeah, well, it's a different thing. Cultural life, technological life, you know, life that does the things that we do. And what I didn't realize that I, I would have to kind of make the case for why a second system of chemistry would be a very big deal.

• 30:44John Green?

  Well, here's, here's the way you made the case to me early on in the podcast that really resonated with me. You were like, look, either it evolved in exactly the same way with DNA and RNA, which is very interesting and very strange, that it would evolve separately twice with the same chemical structures, or it evolved in some other way.

• 31:06Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 31:06John Green?

  Which is very, very strange and exciting.

• 31:10Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Or there's a third thing where it could have, if it, if it's Mars, it could have come from Mars to Earth, then we are the same system, or from Earth to Mars, and we are the same system.

• 31:20John Green?

  Yeah, which is also really beautiful and exciting. It means we're already a multi-planetary system.

• 31:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. And also like that, that it isn't, probably isn't difficult, though this would just be kind of an N of one, but it probably isn't difficult for life to travel between planets.

• 31:36John Green?

  Yeah. Strange. Regardless, all three of those possibilities are incredibly exciting.

• 31:41Hank Green?

  Yeah. And, and, and basically, two of them would mean that life is plentiful in the universe.

• 31:47John Green?

  Which is exciting in its own way, and also a little terrifying, but encouraging ultimately, because it means that we are not alone.

• 31:53Hank Green?

  Yeah. Well, here's the, here's the thing. I mean, there's so many different worries here, but there's, there are people who think that it's very, it would be very worrying for life to be common, because it would mean that what we are is very uncommon, which means that what we are is probably very fragile.

• 32:10John Green?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I already knew that.

• 32:16John Green?

  You know what I mean?

• 32:17Hank Green?

  Well, I actually don't like I I'm not I'm not there. I think that like we we may be way more resilient than we think. And and there's there's arrows pointing in that direction. But there's arrows pointing in the other direction, too.

• 32:28John Green?

  I mean, we've had about 80 years, maybe, where we could cause the extinction of humanity ourselves.

• 32:33Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:34John Green?

  That's not that long of a run. That's not that big of a sample size to be like, we're good.

• 32:39Hank Green?

  We did it.

• 32:40John Green?

  We made it. We made it one human lifetime. So I I continue to be pretty, pretty worried about our fragility. I I think we are a very resilient species. We've proven that over 300,000 years. But this is a very precarious situation. There's no getting around it.

• 32:56Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 32:56John Green?

  And I think to pretend otherwise is to lose a little bit of what's beautiful about it.

• 33:00Hank Green?

  And also, if we think that it's easy, then it is more likely that we'll suffer the consequences of that, you know?

• 33:06John Green?

  I mean, think about it. There were hundreds of millions of years of dinosaurs where there is no evidence that they meaningfully use technology.

• 33:18Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:18John Green?

  Hundreds of millions of years. We've been around for 300,000 years. And for most of that time, we use stone tools.

• 33:26Hank Green?

  Yeah, look, I actually am getting really interested in the extent to which we overweight the the stone tools because they're the ones that stick around.

• 33:36John Green?

  Right. As opposed to wooden tools and stuff?

• 33:38Hank Green?

  There's there's wood. There's there's a huge amount in cordage and textile and fiber and

• 33:43John Green?

  Sure, sure.

• 33:44Hank Green?

  All that stuff that doesn't last.

• 33:45John Green?

  Sure. No, we were a great species.

• 33:47Hank Green?

  A lot of innovation goes there.

• 33:48John Green?

  We were very sophisticated, but we did not have nuclear weapons.

• 33:51Hank Green?

  Well, no, but I think that we were kind of advancing the whole time. And I think the biggest way we're we're advancing was communication.

• 33:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Hank Green?

  So language didn't start like it is now. You know, it was it was evolution. It had to evolve on its own as well. And and possibly, along with physio, well, definitely along with physiological changes in our bodies and and probably physiological changes in our brains. So that took time. Though that that work was all done by the time anatomically modern humans showed up, we think.

• 34:20John Green?

  Yeah. That was done 300,000 years ago. And I agree that we've been advancing the whole time. And I used to believe that the rate of change is changing. Argument was ludicrous and involved a lot of recency bias.

• 34:33Hank Green?

  I don't think that.

• 34:35John Green?

  I've changed that perspective over the last 10 years. I think the rate of change is changing.

• 34:39Hank Green?

  Maybe you're just getting old.

• 34:41John Green?

  Maybe I'm just getting old.

• 34:42Hank Green?

  You're just thinking about that rotary telephone you had when you were a kid.

• 34:45John Green?

  I am thinking about that rotary telephone I had when I was a kid, for sure. For sure. Well, Hank, we've spent so much time talking about the end of the world. And thank you, Rachel, for allowing us to indulge our eschatological anxieties. We've spent so much time talking about the end of the world that it is now time to transition to the news from Mars in AFC Wimbledon.

• 35:06Hank Green?

  First, can we read this from Ren, who says, Dear Hank and John, I understand. Hank has made the hard pivot to balls, but consider longest chains. Longest chain of paper clips, longest chain of twist ties, longest chain of zip ties. Each person who visits gets to add to the chain, or maybe it becomes like a curtain of sorts. Yes, I love this because it's going to have to go up and down and you can like walk through it. Though, though, I don't know, we got to make sure that people don't vandalize our chains. Balls are hard to vandalize, whereas chains could maybe be easier. Each addition can be different colors, sizes, people could add more than one if they like. And I'm going to add to that, you got to make a donation to Partners in Health to add to the chain. I love it.

• 35:45John Green?

  It's a great idea. It's a really good idea. It's a million dollar idea that also would be a beautiful expression of human compassion and collaboration.

• 35:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, I don't know, John.

• 35:55John Green?

  Someone should do it. It's not going to be me. I'm not having people over to my house.

• 35:59Hank Green?

  It's not going to be at my house, no. No, but, but there's got to be some warehouse somewhere where, where people can start adding chains.

• 36:05John Green?

  Well, you know what Indianapolis has, Hank? A bunch of those rooms, a bunch of them abandoned.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  Indianapolis is going to be the world's largest ball of balls.

• 36:16John Green?

  The world's largest chain of chains and the world's largest ball of balls. Visit Indianapolis.

• 36:23John Green?

  Take that hard pivot to balls.

• 36:26Hank Green?

  All right, John. What's the news from AFC Wimbledon?

• 36:28John Green?

  No, it's terrible, Hank. We knew that this couldn't last. We knew that AFC Wimbledon's amazing start to the season, being in fourth place or whatever, was totally unsustainable. But also, we dreamt that it wasn't unsustainable. We dreamt that it could somehow be sustained, as one always does. You know, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, togetherness.

• 36:49John Green?

  Togetherness. We believed that through togetherness, this was possible, that we would continue on the rocket ship that only went up. But it turns out the rocket ship also comes down. And AFC Wimbledon just lost to the worst team in League One.

• 37:05Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 37:05John Green?

  Five to nothing.

• 37:07Hank Green?

  What? What happened?

• 37:09John Green?

  If anything, that scoreline flattered us. We played like the worst team in League One.

• 37:17Hank Green?

  You guys lost your togetherness.

• 37:19John Green?

  We lost our togetherness in a big way. Now, some would say it's because we had a couple of injuries. Miles Hippolyte's been out of the squad. Of course, up front, Matty Stevens is injured. He scores most of our goals. But moo boy, we looked bad. We looked awful. We also lost to 21st place Burton Albion, which is not, not a great sign either. But it's still early in the season. The Wimble, the Wim, the Wambles are still in eighth place, and hope is the thing with feathers. So we continue to believe that things can turn around.

• 37:50Hank Green?

  Yeah, you're only three points out of first place, John.

• 37:54John Green?

  That's true. After all this, we're only three points out of first place. We are, however, out of the FA Cup because we lost to a team in the fifth division. So there's that as well.

• 38:02Hank Green?

  I will say, everybody lost their last game. Everybody in the top of the table.

• 38:06John Green?

  It's true. It's a very strange season in League One, where like, the top of the table and the bottom of the table are not separated by as many points as we're used to.

• 38:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:14John Green?

  Which. Is good in the sense that Wimbledon has a chance, but it's bad in the sense that Wimbledon isn't actually that far away from relegation.

• 38:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could be in seventh place and still be quite close to 20th place.

• 38:27John Green?

  Exactly, exactly. So nervy times, but we persevere. How's Mars?

• 38:33Hank Green?

  Mars also had a little bit of a hiccup. So we talked recently about the escapade mission, and it was gonna launch, was gonna launch.

• 38:40John Green?

  Yep.

• 38:40Hank Green?

  This is gonna date the podcast. You'll see how long, I don't know exactly how long it takes between when we record it and when they go live anymore. But if you were able to catch some northern lights recently, that was because the sun went kinda nutty and gave us a big burp. And that big burp was such a big burp that they were not able to launch when they wanted to.

• 39:03John Green?

  Wow.

• 39:04Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:04John Green?

  The sun got in our way.

• 39:06Hank Green?

  The sun was shooting out too much energy for it to be a safe time to put that boy up into the air. And that's great for us here in Montana. We've had some great auroras just last night, honestly, I was looking at the auroras. But that launch has been delayed because of that solar activity. And interestingly, part of the escapade mission is to see how solar wind and other space weather might have affected Mars. So the sun's like, no, I don't want you to know my secrets, trying to keep us here on Earth. But this is a concern because every chance you miss increases the chance that you'll actually miss this whole launch window.

• 39:50John Green?

  Right. And if you miss the launch window, it's like a year and a half, right?

• 39:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have to wait until Mars and Earth get close together again.

• 39:56John Green?

  Right.

• 39:57Hank Green?

  Which only happens every once in a while.

• 39:58John Green?

  Okay, so how worried should we be? How likely is it that it'll still happen?

• 40:03Hank Green?

  I don't know. I don't know. I think that we're okay right now.

• 40:06John Green?

  Okay.

• 40:06Hank Green?

  Like, I think as long as there's like no technical problems or no, you know, if the sun needs to chill out. But usually it does.

• 40:14John Green?

  I've been saying that about the sun. Like, first off, stop trying to eat Earth.

• 40:19Hank Green?

  I actually, I would love to

• 40:21John Green?

  You're bumming out, Rachel.

• 40:22Hank Green?

  To get into, to get into this, but there is, there is some thinking, there, there's quite a bit of evidence pointing this way, that the sun is exceptionally chill.

• 40:31John Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, I, I have heard that before. That as stars go, the sun is less violent than many stars.

• 40:38Hank Green?

  Which is another thing that's like, maybe our solar system's just like real good for life.

• 40:43John Green?

  Well, I mean, I would argue that it's definitely real good for life, but maybe it's like borderline uniquely good. I would, I only say borderline because one of the things I learned from Katie is that 275 million stars are going to die today.

• 41:00John Green?

  That's how big the universe is.

• 41:02Hank Green?

  In the universe?

• 41:03John Green?

  Yes, that's how big the universe is.

• 41:05Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:06John Green?

  It's a big ol', it's a big ol' wacky universe.

• 41:08Hank Green?

  It's a big ol' wacky universe.

• 41:11John Green?

  Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. We always appreciate your questions. You can email them to us at [email protected].

• 41:19Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Ben Swartout. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown,

• 41:37John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.