446: Just Chatting… With Me

Where does bubblegum flavor come from? Why do our voices change as we get older? Why does moving suck? Can a stump go on living once the top of its tree has been cut off? What are some ways to find a third space and be part of a community? What can I do to not be so nervous speaking in class? …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 Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Hank Green?

  You're listening to a Complexly podcast.

• 0:09Hank Green?

  Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

• 0:11John Green?

  Or is that for to think of it Dear John and Hank?

• 0:13Hank Green?

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

• 0:20John Green?

  John? Yeah.

• 0:21Hank Green?

  What word becomes longer when you remove two letters?

• 0:26John Green?

  What?

• 0:27Hank Green?

  Longerer.

• 0:32John Green?

  It's true. It's true.

• 0:34Hank Green?

  Ah, how are you? I'm still struggling.

• 0:37John Green?

  Hank, I have big news. I have a major announcement.

• 0:41Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 0:42John Green?

  Yeah, I've been keeping a secret from the Dear Hank and John audience for the last like-

• 0:47Hank Green?

  Is it under your hat?

• 0:48John Green?

  It's under my hat, Hank.

• 0:49Hank Green?

  He's bald, everybody.

• 0:51John Green?

  No, it's a new book. It's a new book, Hank.

• 0:53Hank Green?

  Oh, it's a new book. It's a new book. It's under his hat. You can't see it because it's a podcast, but there it is. Whoop.

• 0:59John Green?

  I have written a novel. It is coming out September 22nd. Signed copies are available for preorder now. It is called Hollywood Ending. Hollywood, comma, ending. There's a comma in the title, Hank. A controversial comma.

• 1:12Hank Green?

  Wow. Why is there a comma? Hollywood Ending.

• 1:16John Green?

  Hollywood Ending. It's about two people in their twenties who are stars of a movie. And the movie, which is about Andy Warhol's last year, is kind of blowing up. And alongside it, their lives are blowing up in ways that are exciting and intoxicating and also terrifying and painful. And Hank, you haven't read it yet.

• 1:38Hank Green?

  No, it's true. It's true. You gotta send it to me.

• 1:41John Green?

  I know. I feel like I need to prep you for the read before you read it.

• 1:47Hank Green?

  That's not how it works.

• 1:48John Green?

  Well, I don't know. I'm very nervous about it. I'm very excited. I've never had this much fun writing, but sometimes that's a bad sign. Usually when authors like their books, I'm always like, oh, no. I have an author friend who just told me like, I'm really excited for you to read my new book. It's my best one yet. And I was like, oh no, that's a terrible sign. Like Mark Twain thought his best book was his biography of Joan of Arc.

• 2:14Hank Green?

  Did he do a biography of Joan of Arc?

• 2:16John Green?

  Yeah. And there's a reason you don't remember it, Hank.

• 2:19Hank Green?

  Was it like well researched? Like he was just trying to do the work or?

• 2:22John Green?

  No, it's like a fictional retelling of her life.

• 2:24Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25John Green?

  At any rate, my book, let's not, let's not spend too much time advertising Mark Twain. He's done fine for himself. My new book is available for preorder now. And I'm really excited about it and I hope that people like it out there.

• 2:42Hank Green?

  I know that I don't, we shouldn't be talking about your next book after this book, but.

• 2:47John Green?

  Certainly not.

• 2:48Hank Green?

  If you could write a book that was a fictionalized retelling of the life of any person, would it or would it not be the man who invented Dr. Pepper?

• 2:57John Green?

  Charles Alderton? Oh, what a life that man had from treating tuberculosis and other illnesses at his pharmacy in Waco, Texas, to eventually developing the 23 special flavors that go into Dr. Pepper. I mean, it would be an incre- it's an incredible American story, Hank. And then he sold the formula for it because he just wanted to go back to being a pharmacist, which is so beautiful to me. He's like us. He got to a point where he was like, I can't take it anymore. Except instead of becoming a nonprofit, he, uh.

• 3:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:26John Green?

  Sold out.

• 3:28Hank Green?

  He didn't turn Dr. Pepper into a nonprofit?

• 3:30John Green?

  That would have been awesome.

• 3:31Hank Green?

  I don't know that you could do that. I don't know if it's enough of a social good.

• 3:36John Green?

  I don't know. I don't know. It would be awesome if he, if he chose to run Dr. Pepper for like tuberculosis care or something and Dr. Pepper was still fighting TB.

• 3:45Hank Green?

  Yeah, sold it to a forest.

• 3:46John Green?

  Yeah, exactly. Hank and I used to work for a magazine that got sold to a forest.

• 3:52Hank Green?

  It's the weirdest thing because it was like a fun facts magazine and then it became one of the funnest facts.

• 3:59John Green?

  Yeah. Uh, anyway, my new book, very excited about it. I can't believe it's finally here. It's been 20 years, Hank, since I published books in consecutive years. I've been working on this book since 2017, often in the background while working on other things. But it's finally done-ish. It's finally here. I will say immediately after finishing this podcast, I have to go back to my copy edits. But it's almost done.

• 4:25Hank Green?

  Well, right now I am doing expert review edits.

• 4:28John Green?

  I know, that's exciting.

• 4:29Hank Green?

  I'm like, deep in the, in the mix of like, a KRAS is actually an intracellular messenger.

• 4:37John Green?

  You know, the fact that I got wrong and everything is tuberculosis that haunts me?

• 4:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:41John Green?

  And it's nobody's fault but mine, but I said that when Robert Koch looked through the microscope at the TB basilis for the first time, he saw a squiggling. And TB is not motile.

• 4:56Hank Green?

  It doesn't squiggle.

• 4:57John Green?

  It doesn't squiggle.

• 4:59Hank Green?

  That's hard, that's hard. Well, at least you're not the poor people from Project Hail Mary who loaded up an unbalanced centrifuge.

• 5:06John Green?

  Oh, did they?

• 5:07Hank Green?

  They did, they did. The, the poor, the poor people. No one's being chill about it at all. They're just, and look, some centrifuges are self-balancing. But I will say, anybody who's ever worked in a lab, you do it by habit. You just balance your centrifuge.

• 5:22John Green?

  Right. Well, I'm sure there are things that I get wrong in Hollywood ending about Hollywood and about love and about Instagram and the relationship between fame and trauma and what we give up when we give up our own memories and experiences to feed the content machine. I'm sure there are things I got wrong, but I have seen a lot of it up close, Hank.

• 5:46Hank Green?

  I, yeah, I'm working on a video about this that's gonna come out before this, this podcast comes out.

• 5:52John Green?

  It's gonna come out after March 31st?

• 5:55Hank Green?

  Y- yes.

• 5:56John Green?

  Then you should advertise Hollywood ending in it.

• 6:00Hank Green?

  Uh, well, it's already recorded.

• 6:02John Green?

  Well, then put a little Hollywood ending ad at the end of it, buddy.

• 6:06Hank Green?

  Okay, we'll see.

• 6:07John Green?

  I thought you loved me.

• 6:10Hank Green?

  Anyway, I just, the, the things that flag us, we don't realize how specific our knowledge is. The example I use is that in Project Hail Mary, they loaded an unbalanced centrifuge. But also in Project Hail Mary, uh, the, the main character picks up a traffic cone from the surface of an aircraft carrier and pukes into it. And like, nobody knows, who doesn't work on an aircraft carrier, that we would never have a loose traffic cone on the surface of an aircraft carrier. It's gonna become like a projectile at any moment.

• 6:42John Green?

  Also, aren't- Those hollow, like, wouldn't it just sort of funnel your puke?

• 6:49Hank Green?

  Also, there is a hole in both ends.

• 6:50John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Hank Green?

  Usually, but maybe this one doesn't have a hole in both ends. But definitely, you would never have one on this. It's like, literally dangerous and like, against policy to have something loose like that on the surface of an aircraft carrier. But that's not the thing you notice, because you don't have that set of experiences, but lots of people do.

• 7:09John Green?

  Right.

• 7:10Hank Green?

  And so you can't have every single one of those things get caught. And at some point, it's just like, okay, but which things are good for making a movie?

• 7:17John Green?

  Yeah, I think that we forget some, I mean, obviously, you don't want to be pulled out of your immersion into the story by a fact that's so glaringly wrong. But like, a lot of this novel that I've been writing is about the life of Andy Warhol. And there are times when I've cheerfully ignored things about the life of Andy Warhol, because they're not useful to me. Like, the movie that they're in is about, is called Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, and it's about Warhol's kind of end of life. And there's lots of things that are true to Warhol, but there's also lots of things I made up, because I've, that's, isn't that the joy of writing fiction? Like, that's what I've missed for the last nine years, is being able to make things up.

• 7:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if I ever write fiction again, what that would be like.

• 8:03John Green?

  I think you should, but I also don't want to put pressure on you. I think you should, I like your strategy of not signing a book deal until you've written the book.

• 8:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, I like my strategy of doing whichever thing is, feels most pressing at the moment.

• 8:19John Green?

  That is certainly how you've gotten where you got in life, Hank Green, is by following a constant urgency.

• 8:29Hank Green?

  It's just the urges.

• 8:31John Green?

  Yes.

• 8:32Hank Green?

  Many of the urgency is simply the urge. It is not even external urgency.

• 8:37John Green?

  No, no, you have like, your own internal urgency that tells you, I must write a book about cancer now.

• 8:44Hank Green?

  I am really frustrated that it's taken as long as it has. It's hard.

• 8:47John Green?

  It is hard. Writing, writing, I mean, writing books is the best job in the world, and so complaining about it is poor form, but.

• 8:54Hank Green?

  I don't know, man, podcasts, we're gonna do this, it's gonna take an hour, and it's gonna be done.

• 8:59John Green?

  That's true. Making podcasts is easier than writing books. It's not the best job in the world. This is the best job in the world.

• 9:07John Green?

  We have two of the best jobs in the world.

• 9:08Hank Green?

  This is a great one. Yeah.

• 9:10John Green?

  This is a great job.

• 9:11Hank Green?

  But we actually don't get paid for this part.

• 9:13John Green?

  But like, I don't get paid for most of my jobs. That doesn't bother me. That doesn't decide whether or not it's a job anymore, whether or not I get paid. It's about, it's about more than that now, Hank. Let's answer some questions from our listeners.

• 9:24Hank Green?

  Okay, John. First question, John. What word becomes shorter if you add two letters?

• 9:30John Green?

  Short.

• 9:32Hank Green?

  That's correct.

• 9:33John Green?

  Yes. Okay, I think I got it. Reagan asks, Dear John and Hank, what is bubblegum flavor? This feels like it falls in the ranks of truly artificial flavors like Dr. Pepper, Pumpkins and Penguins, Reagan. Reagan, this is such a good point. Bubblegum flavor is another purely artificial flavor with no real world analog that I believe dates to the late 19th century, when we were first experimenting with the idea that there could be tastes that had no real world analog.

• 10:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, we were just doing artificial flavors. We were finding these esters that had like, they were components of fruit flavors. So these are things that might be in a strawberry, might be in a banana, but are like much simpler than the actual flavors of those fruits. They're just one of the many flavor components or smell components. And we're just like, which ones are easy to make and have strong flavors? And can we have them be somewhat inexpensive? Let's mix them together. And we ended up with a bubblegum flavor.

• 10:31John Green?

  I really like the word esters, but I think we should name some of these bubblegum flavorings, Hank, like methyl salicylate. That's a great, why don't they advertise that? That it's got that sweet, sweet methyl salicylate in it. Ethyl butyrate? Benzoy acetate? I mean, mmm. Deliciouso.

• 10:52Hank Green?

  Organic compounds.

• 10:54John Green?

  Yeah, I guess that's the truth, right? They're all organic compounds. It's not like we're getting this stuff from Mars or anything. It's made out of flavors.

• 11:03Hank Green?

  Well, when I say, when I say organic compounds, I just.

• 11:05John Green?

  You don't mean like.

• 11:06Hank Green?

  Carbon, I mean, carbon based.

• 11:07John Green?

  Organic.

• 11:08Hank Green?

  No. Yeah, usually, a lot of these are, are chemical distillates. They come off of doing chemistry to petroleum products, but they are also naturally, they naturally occur in, in, you know, fruits as well.

• 11:21John Green?

  You're telling me that bubblegum flavor is made out of oil? Like, oil from the ground?

• 11:25Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah. No, I'm telling you, bubblegum is also made out of oil. It's rubber.

• 11:30John Green?

  It's made out of petroleum?

• 11:32Hank Green?

  I don't, I think that it is now. Didn't used to be, but I think that it is now.

• 11:36John Green?

  Oh my god.

• 11:38Hank Green?

  Yes, most conventional chewing gum is from synthetic petroleum-derived gum base.

• 11:43John Green?

  Oh my god. Actually, bubble gum wasn't invented until 1928. How did we live for 300,000 years with no bubble gum, no Dr. Pepper? What were we doing?

• 11:54Hank Green?

  I don't know, John. We're about to celebrate bubble gum's 100th anniversary.

• 11:58John Green?

  Wow. We need to clear the calendar for 2028.

• 12:03Hank Green?

  Right around the same moment, we were discovering that other galaxies were other galaxies.

• 12:09John Green?

  Yeah, like the smudges in the sky were other galaxies.

• 12:13Hank Green?

  Yeah, that we were, that there were many island universes is what they at first called them.

• 12:17John Green?

  Hmm, that's a, they should have stuck with that. Island universe is much prettier than galaxy.

• 12:22Hank Green?

  We had to figure out what to do about that. We had to be like, okay, so you're telling us, like, like the universe as we imagined it is much bigger than what it is, but it still makes sense to call the universe whatever there is.

• 12:38John Green?

  Right.

• 12:40Hank Green?

  So that was like a process of figuring out how to, how to name things, which is crazy that that's that young.

• 12:45John Green?

  There are so many stars.

• 12:50Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 12:50John Green?

  Like, you can't get your head around how many, there are more stars than there are chickens. There are more stars just in our galaxy than there are chickens currently on the planet, and there are a lot of chickens.

• 13:04Hank Green?

  That's a weird analogy because of how, it's, it's hard to, it's, I think most people don't understand how many chickens there are, but it is, it is a, a, a frequent topic of the podcast. So listeners, you guys, y'all know how many chickens there are.

• 13:21John Green?

  There are more chickens than there are birds.

• 13:23Hank Green?

  Yeah, if you don't include chickens.

• 13:25John Green?

  And there are more stars than there are chickens and birds combined.

• 13:30Hank Green?

  Oh, for sure.

• 13:31John Green?

  By a lot. Just in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, maybe infinite.

• 13:37Hank Green?

  You know, there's that Carl Sagan quote about like the number of stars versus the number of grains of sand on Earth, and what that kind of highlights in a way that you don't realize until you've been in it for a while, isn't really how many stars there are, but how few grains of sand there are. There's just like not as many grains of sand as you would expect.

• 13:53John Green?

  Yeah, but if you go to the beach, Hank, with a shovel, and you like let a handful of sand go through your fingers, and you think that's one handful of sand out of millions of handfuls of sand, and there are more stars in the universe than that, that does blow your mind a little bit.

• 14:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, but people think that like the sand goes out forever, but it doesn't. It's really localized to beachy areas and desert-y areas. There's a lot of, we actually have a sand shortage, if you can believe that sentence.

• 14:23John Green?

  I believe it. We have an everything shortage. If there is something, we will use it in extremis.

• 14:30Hank Green?

  We really figured out some real uses for sand.

• 14:34John Green?

  We're making bubble gum from old dinosaurs, Hank. Like, yeah, I believe it.

• 14:41Hank Green?

  That's what we should be doing with the dinosaurs, you know? There's, like, we shouldn't be burning it. If there's anything we're learning is like, that stuff's valuable. We should be using it for like high-quality, longer-term uses than just lighting it on fire. And yet.

• 14:58John Green?

  And yet. All right, let's move on to another question. I think we've answered that one pretty darn well.

• 15:04Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Maya, who asks, "Dear Hank and John, why do our voices change as we get older? Not just puberty when the voice drops. Why do singers on reunion tours have less vocal strength than they had when they originally recorded those songs that they're performing? My Tyson, papaya Maya." Maya, because they're old.

• 15:22John Green?

  We're falling apart, Maya.

• 15:25Hank Green?

  Why did you even, why'd you bring this up?

• 15:27John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I go back and watch early Vlogbrothers videos, and I, first off, I'm screaming at the camera, which is annoying. I wish that I just talked like a regular person, but I guess that wasn't the style then. You're screaming too, which makes me feel a little bit better.

• 15:39Hank Green?

  Way worse than you, yeah.

• 15:40John Green?

  But at any rate, aside from the fact that I'm screaming at the camera, my voice, the timber of my voice is so beautiful. And I remember hating my voice and thinking like my voice was so thin and reedy and weak. And now I'm like, oh, what I wouldn't give for that voice. Although I will say, Hank, I will say. I did just win an audio award for best book, audiobook narrated by the author. Oh, God, I want that one so bad. So maybe I have a beautiful voice. Maybe in 20 years, I'll look back on my current voice and be like, oh, he sounded so good then.

• 16:13Hank Green?

  I think that our voices have gotten better.

• 16:15John Green?

  No, our voices have gotten worse. I mean, even yours has too. Don't, don't, I'm not just throwing myself under the bus.

• 16:22Hank Green?

  I, I have, I have a piece of information that I think is correct. When, I know it is, it is spelled T I M B R E, but I believe it is pronounced tambor.

• 16:34John Green?

  No way, really?

• 16:35Hank Green?

  I think so.

• 16:37John Green?

  Really?

• 16:38Hank Green?

  I, I gotta, I gotta check now.

• 16:40John Green?

  That's the kind of thing that you would think an audio award winning audiobook narrator would know.

• 16:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's tambor.

• 16:48John Green?

  Tambor? The tambor, well, I'm just exercising that entire word from my vocabulary so that I never have to pronounce it again.

• 16:57Hank Green?

  It's never happening again. What a lovely little word, tambor. But, but why would they have there be an I if it was going to be pronounced tambor? Unacceptable.

• 17:06John Green?

  Unacceptable. I find that your voice changes as you get older and the way to deal with it is mostly to embrace it and see it as a sign of wising.

• 17:18Hank Green?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that it's hard for, for people who are professional singers. There's a certain kind, like a certain set of singers who really, I feel like we're signing up to, to have this problem. Like, like the scream singing feels like a twenties activity.

• 17:33John Green?

  Yeah.

• 17:33Hank Green?

  And then eventually like the muscles get looser, the, the, you know, all of the, the stuff that holds, the voice is a very specific set of complicated tissues. And those things are gonna get less, they're, they're just gonna change quality in various ways. It's not, you know, they're, they're like, the muscles are weaker, the, you know, the tissues are gonna be maybe less strong or like have less differentiation between like the soft and the hard parts. I don't know, but there are things that people do. Um, so, uh, people can get, sometimes there's like tremors that you'll get and people get botox injections when they're singers.

• 18:14Hank Green?

  So that they don't get the unintentional tremor. You can also inject filler or fat to make the vocal cords larger. And there are implants. And of course, also, there's lots of vocal therapy. And then like Celine Dion, when she's performing, she's like, I need the room to be like this temperature, this humidity. She's not messing around.

• 18:32John Green?

  Yeah, I think the real pros know what they need. Um, but I think I'm just gonna slowly get huskier and fainter.

• 18:42Hank Green?

  Well, we should start smoking so that we can get that, that.

• 18:45John Green?

  Oh, yeah, that's what I need, Hank. That's what, it took me so long to get that out of my life. Let's welcome it back in.

• 18:51Hank Green?

  I, like, I'm not convinced that it's bad for you.

• 18:54John Green?

  Uh, well, it's a take, and these days, that's what matters most.

• 18:59Hank Green?

  I have, have read an increasing number of blog posts.

• 19:05John Green?

  No way.

• 19:05Hank Green?

  That seem very convincing.

• 19:07John Green?

  No. Are you serious?

• 19:09Hank Green?

  No.

• 19:10John Green?

  Oh, okay. I was like, there's no blog post saying smoking is good for you, right? Like, they haven't.

• 19:14Hank Green?

  Oh, no, there are.

• 19:15John Green?

  No, there aren't.

• 19:16Hank Green?

  Oh, there, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, nicotine. There's a lot of people who are like, the, the, the health benefits of nicotine outweigh the health detractions of smoking. Because of course they do, because the entire internet is run on having the craziest ideas possible. Like, you can't get attention unless your ideas are silly. And so, of course, every silly idea is having a moment.

• 19:36John Green?

  If nicotine is so beneficial, why not just chew nicotine gum?

• 19:40Hank Green?

  Well, that's what they, that's a lot of them. That's what they do.

• 19:43John Green?

  Okay, that seems better than smoking cigarettes.

• 19:46Hank Green?

  They do zins. And also, for clarity, nicotine, uh, has many, many health impacts that are not good, all on its own.

• 19:53John Green?

  Yeah, I remember when I went to the doctor and he was like, how much nicotine are you chewing? And I was like, I don't know, like 20 pieces a day. And he was like, that's like three packs of cigarettes, man. He was like, and I was like, yeah, but it's just nicotine. Nicotine's good for you. And he was like, no, it's not, man. I don't know where you got that. I don't know where you heard that, but that's just not true. Let's answer this question from Avery, who writes, Dear John and Hank, why does moving suck? I have a lot of experience in this area. I'm currently packing for my 11th move in 12 years. I've gotten fairly efficient at how to move, but it always sucks. Why? Not having a very good time. Avery.

• 20:27Hank Green?

  I get it.

• 20:29Hank Green?

  I feel like Avery is way more of an expert on this than us. I haven't moved in a while, but like, you gotta get all your stuff into boxes.

• 20:38John Green?

  Yeah, it just sucks and you gotta, especially if you're moving yourself, you've got to like then stack the boxes into a U-Haul, which is its own unfun sweaty form of Tetris. And then you've got to drive to your new place and then you've got to unpack and unpacking takes forever. People say that moving is like among the top 10 sort of discordances in a human life. And it makes sense to me because, I'll give you one example, Hank. Because I don't have a very good vestibular system anymore due to labyrinthitis. I have to hold on to a piece of furniture while I walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night or I fall over because my vestibular system is very reliant on visual information. And I know exactly how many steps it is.

• 21:23John Green?

  I know exactly what to touch and where to hold, you know? And if I move to a new place, I wouldn't know any of that. Then you've got the actual, like, if you're actually moving towns, you've got the unbelievable disruption of needing to find a new dentist. I think we underestimate how horrible it is to find a new dentist.

• 21:43Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's why you go to zocdent.com.

• 21:50John Green?

  That reminds me, today's podcast is actually brought to you by zocdent.com. zocdent.com, a website that we are currently making in the background while making this podcast.

• 21:59Hank Green?

  We called the people at Zocdoc and we were like, look, you're missing a huge opportunity. I'm sure you haven't thought of this already.

• 22:07Hank Green?

  Oh, God. This podcast is also brought to you by Esters. Esters, they're an kind of organic compound from petroleum distillates.

• 22:17John Green?

  But not that kind of organic compound. Not like they come from organic bananas, more like they come from organic petroleum.

• 22:23Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:24John Green?

  Today's podcast is also brought to you by Hollywood Ending. Hollywood Ending, the new book for me. I'm so excited.

• 22:31Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by your vocal cords and by my vocal cords. Actually, true.

• 22:38John Green?

  It's true. It's the rare sponsor message that is, that is literally true.

• 22:42Hank Green?

  This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Quince. I do very much like opening up my closet and finding an item that I know is going to be both comfortable and I'm just going to look good in it. It's going to go well with my khakis or my jeans or my third kind of pant that I, I have like a, or like a pair of orange pants. Just things that make getting dressed easier. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and merino wool. And the styles are timeless and they're versatile and they're designed to become dependable pieces that you reach for day after day. This morning, I put on this jacket that I'm currently wearing with just a white t-shirt and I knew immediately, this is going to work. I went downstairs

• 23:27Hank Green?

  and Catherine was like, "Look at that nice jacket. Where'd that come from?" You know where it came from? It came from Quince. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for the quality, not the brand markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know that it was Dear Hank and John. It's a good way to support the show. I feel like I should say it's Q-U-I-N-C-E. I guess it's pretty easy to spell Quince. Quince.com. I feel tempted to make up a tagline for them, but that's not what they want me to do. I shouldn't do that.

• 24:16Hank Green?

  Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NoCD. So you may know that I've had obsessive compulsive disorder since I was a kid, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. I lived with intrusive thoughts and the compulsive behaviors I used to manage those intrusive thoughts for many years without treatment. OCD is not just anxiety. If you have those what-if intrusive thoughts and you cannot close the loop on them and you find yourself in thought spirals, you might have OCD. And it's not the organizing stereotype you've heard. It's a persistent,

• 24:48John Green?

  ...series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character, along with mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to to get relief, even when that relief never actually comes. The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment, and it has transformed my life. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP therapy, who meet you in live, face-to-face, virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone. So if you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help.

• 25:31John Green?

  Book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. That's nocd.com.

• 25:42Hank Green?

  Avery, though, I want to keep answering Avery's question, because I think inside of here, like, yeah, there's a reason why it's bad. But how do we make it less bad? And to me, the obvious answer to this question is that you imagine yourself to be some kind of non-human animal or alien. And, and this is, and, and, and just extract yourself, because this is like the moment where you extract yourself from your reality, right? Where suddenly you see all of these things around you for what they actually are. And then when you're in a new place, like, you see them in a way that you, you know, after a couple of months, you will no longer will. It's all gonna be background. But in these moments, we understand that our clothes are our, like, temporary exoskeletons, that our books are our, you know,

• 26:27Hank Green?

  outsourced brains of other people that we keep on a shelf, that our, you know, all of the, the food in the fridge is just, you know, molecules that we will convert into movement and, and thought and anxieties.

• 26:45John Green?

  And poop.

• 26:47Hank Green?

  And then, and then also poop. And then all of these objects, like, have their weird human utility that's based on our weird human activities and, and human behavior. And then that's, that's how to, that's how I imagine it. And then suddenly I am, I am, you know, doing this, this extra bizarre activity.

• 27:10John Green?

  Yeah, I like that. Use it as an opportunity to consider the anthropology of oneself.

• 27:17John Green?

  Yeah, probably only gonna work once. Yeah, but I like when I get out of my routine as a human being. Like, there are obvious downsides to it. It's uncomfortable, it's exhausting. But also, when I'm outside of my routine is when I'm most reminded of the strangeness of consciousness, which I kind of just take for granted most of the time. I think Andy Dillard said once that we spend almost all of our lives in some sort of incensate waters, and I like those moments that snap me into awareness, even if they're kind of unpleasant in the moment. Good luck moving. I know it sucks, man. I did it like 10 years ago, and I don't ever want to do it again. I think I'm gonna die in my current house. Yeah, or, you know, on the moon.

• 28:01John Green?

  I'm not gonna die on the moon, Hank. There is a 0% chance. Or in Titusville. I really don't want to die in Titusville. As you know, one of my big ambitions is not to die in Florida. I just don't want it on my Wikipedia page. Which would you prefer, moon or Titusville? The moon, for sure.

• 28:21John Green?

  If I'm in Orlando, and I'm dying, and there's a spaceship. Put me on the spaceship. Crash me into the moon. Remember when you were in the hospital with me in Orlando, and the doctor was like, "I think we're gonna keep you for the night." And I was like, "I'm not dying in Florida, buddy. You're not keeping me for the night. Put me in an ambulance and drive me to the Georgia line." Yeah, you were like, "Drive me to..." And I'm like, "John, you're fine." Oh. It was a little worrying. It was a little worrying. I remember one time when I thought I was dying. It's witches. I mean, I'm laughing because it is a fairly common experience, but it feels super real when it's happening. But I remember one time I thought I was dying.

• 29:06John Green?

  And I said to Sarah, "If this is it, know that I've had a good life." And she said, "You're 28."

• 29:14Hank Green?

  And you have a tummy ache.

• 29:17Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Ben, who asks, Dear Hank and John, my neighbors have a huge tree stump in their backyard that they use as a table. I got sad thinking about the fact that since the tree is dead, the stump will eventually rot away as well. However, I wondered, will the stump die? Can a tree live without the top of the tree? How long does it take for the roots of a tree to realize that the top of the tree has been cut off? Not being Ben. I, so John. Yeah. Usually getting the top of your tree cut off, if you're a tree, is a world ending event for the tree. Sure, it's also a world ending event for people. Definitely, always, always for people. Yeah. Usually for trees.

• 30:02Hank Green?

  Oh. So this is interesting. There was a stump in New Zealand that was discovered to be both a stump and alive. This doesn't usually happen, but the fact that it happened once means that it happens. You know, there's a lot of trees, so it happens a lot. And what happened was this tree was actually connected through root systems to other trees. Oh. Tree fall, tree die. But the stump was connected, like all these roots were valuable to the other trees around it. So the other trees kept feeding this root system. And that actually kept the stump alive. And the scientists were like, this stump is not just like not rotting,

• 30:46Hank Green?

  it is actively maintaining itself. And they could see that it was like, had like the xylem and phloem act like with stuff moving around inside of it. Wow. And so it was still being fed and was able to sustain itself because of the trees around it continuing to sustain it. So not always do stumps die just because their top gets cut off, but usually.

• 31:07John Green?

  This fascinates me. I've been thinking a lot about the phenomenon of crown shyness, where trees choose not to grow together.

• 31:15Hank Green?

  I have a chapter in my book about crown shyness. I hope you don't.

• 31:18John Green?

  I don't.

• 31:19Hank Green?

  Great.

• 31:20John Green?

  I don't, so you're safe. But I've been thinking about it because there are these two trees that have actually grown together near my house, in the forest near my house. And when the wind is blowing, it makes quite a racket of these two trees like pushing against each other, and it's a real whine, almost like the wooden version of metal machine music. And if trees didn't cooperate and make space for each other and allow for space in the canopy and everything else, if the world were as, you know, so many long argued it was, where it's merely a story of competition and merely a story of might makes right,

• 32:01John Green?

  the forests would be so loud, it would be excruciating to walk in a forest. We would hear nothing. We would have to scream to be heard over the sound of the trees fighting each other.

• 32:12Hank Green?

  That's a fascinating thought.

• 32:14John Green?

  And yet, we don't have that because trees cooperate and collaborate just as much as they compete. The story is so much more complicated and interesting than mere competition.

• 32:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, and we don't, we don't really understand what, you know, evolutionary pressures are at work with crown shyness, if we have not explained this. It's the situation where trees don't encroach on each other's space. They work up to each other and then they just stop. And so you can see these like little threads of sky through a mature canopy. And there are some species that don't actually respect crown shyness, and they are often sort of more, there's like certainly parasitic plants, obviously, like kudzu isn't gonna respect crown shyness. It'll move from tree to tree, no problem. But mature trees do this. We don't know what the evolutionary pressures are that is making them do it. And we also don't know what the sort of mechanisms that allow them

• 33:10Hank Green?

  to do it are. Like, how do they know when they are bumping up against another tree?

• 33:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  The idea that this would, if this was not the case, it would, it would fundamentally change the experience of being outdoors during a windy day, I'd never thought of before. And it really would.

• 33:28John Green?

  I mean, we might have evolved differently since we evolved in forests. We might have evolved language differently. We might have, it would be so frickin loud all the time.

• 33:37Hank Green?

  Wow. Monkeys are pretty loud.

• 33:39John Green?

  That's true. It's a good point. It's a good point. Monkeys are pretty loud.

• 33:44John Green?

  Maybe, maybe it wouldn't completely change human history that much, but it would make the forest annoying.

• 33:49Hank Green?

  Most of the, most of the language, languaging we did was after we moved out of the forests, I think, too.

• 33:54John Green?

  That's fair enough. All right. We got another question from anonymous. He writes, Dear John and Hank, I live in the Provo area of Utah, but I am not a practicing Mormon. My family stopped going to church in person during COVID and we just kind of never went back. That was actually a huge relief for me as I never believed any of the stuff that we learned. So I was able to stop pretending to feel the spirit in church or whatever. However, I am moving in the fall for college and am looking for other forms of community. I am tempted to attend a different church, but I still have the problem of pretending to believe in something I don't believe. Do you have any suggestions for things to do to find a third place outside of work slash school and home? Anonymity is awesomeness. Anonymous.

• 34:30Hank Green?

  What do you think about like folks going to church even if they don't have a strong faith?

• 34:35John Green?

  Hank, let me tell you, there are a lot of people who go to a lot of churches who do not believe in God. There are a lot of agnostics going to church. And I think that's fine. And I think it's interesting, like my, my best friend goes to church even though he is a very staunch atheist. And not the fun kind of atheist, but like the, the old school, I can't believe you believe all that crap kind of atheist. In fact, one of the first times, one of the first times we hung out, I was like, listen, man, I gotta go to bed. I gotta get it. I gotta go to church in the morning. He said, I don't want to be rude, but like, you don't actually believe that stuff, do you?

• 35:16John Green?

  And I was like, we barely know each other.

• 35:18Hank Green?

  That sounds like him.

• 35:19John Green?

  We've met three times.

• 35:21Hank Green?

  I could hear him say those exact words.

• 35:22John Green?

  Yeah, totally. Totally. And anyway, but he goes to church because his, because his daughter goes and, um, you know, it's interesting, like. I don't think it's that uncomfortable for him. He does like complain sometimes afterwards. He's like, I can't believe, cause it's an Episcopal church. He's like, and I'm an Episcopal fan. And he's like, I can't believe you guys still say the Nicene Creed. I'm like, it's 1600 years old, man. It is cool to say something that is 1600 years old, even if you don't fully embrace all the nuances of it. But he has a different perspective.

• 35:55Hank Green?

  So that's one option.

• 35:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Hank Green?

  I, what I'll say is do something and work hard at it. It's a project and it is work. The nice thing about church is that it's less work. Like people are gonna be there. You gotta, like, there's a system in place. The people, they got, they got, they got a building for it. Oftentimes you have to build them yourself, which is harder.

• 36:17John Green?

  Yeah, but I'm not sure that it's entirely that much harder. Let me give you one example. Sarah works at a local food pantry here every week. And that's the same kind of community, you know? Like, it's still a strong sense of community and connection. And you see the same people week after week. And you're working together and doing stuff together. And you're, you're doing real service together. And I think that also works in much the same way that church does. I don't think that you need a religious context in order to bring people together. But it's funny that you're always the one defending religion. And I'm always the one being like, careful now. This is, this stuff is dangerous.

• 37:01Hank Green?

  This is how we are. When the first episode of my new podcast comes out, people can hear that conversation in depth.

• 37:06John Green?

  Yeah, really. You really were going hard for religion. And I was going pretty hard against it. And I was like, what is going on with me?

• 37:15Hank Green?

  That'll happen in June, everybody. We're recording now. I'm excited.

• 37:19John Green?

  Hank, no disrespect, but you're not allowed to promote. Something in this podcast. I have a book coming out. I have a novel coming out for the first time in nine years. We need clear focused messaging.

• 37:31Hank Green?

  It's a big deal, you guys. I mean, it is. It's exciting. It's exciting. And it's like, it's, are you scared?

• 37:37John Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:38Hank Green?

  Yeah, okay.

• 37:40John Green?

  I'm really scared. Because so both of my previous books, Since Turtles All the Way Down, Anthropocene Reviewed was not that scary because everyone had already heard it and it had already been fact checked by thousands of listeners. And Everything is Tuberculosis wasn't that scary because I'd already made that hour-long crash course deep dive into tuberculosis. And so a lot of it had been seen and heard and confronted and everything in ways that were super helpful for the final book. And this is something I haven't experienced in almost a decade where people don't know anything about it and they're just gonna read it. It's terrifying.

• 38:25John Green?

  And you don't know how people are gonna respond. And you don't know if people still care about the idea of you writing fiction. Like, if it's been that long, are people still interested? It's, there's a lot of feelings at the same time. But I enjoyed it so much. I think like, that's the thing I haven't had since I wrote The Fault in Our Stars, is that feeling like, I, this isn't, this isn't just something that I made as a gift for other people, even though it is like, it is also something, it is child's play. It is something that I've been doing for fun since I was a little kid.

• 39:00John Green?

  And I felt that. I felt like, that feeling of just getting to live inside a story being joyful in and of itself.

• 39:08Hank Green?

  Is it, is, a lot of it, for me, I remember the joyful parts being like, the problem solving of it all.

• 39:14John Green?

  Totally. That feeling of like, when, when, in fiction, when things click together.

• 39:19Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 39:20John Green?

  When you have an unsolvable problem and you're very frustrated, and then you solve it. It's like playing Wordle, but on a bigger scale.

• 39:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like one of the, one of the hardest puzzle games you could possibly imagine. Like, making a book work.

• 39:34John Green?

  And you made it up yourself. So like, there's also the feeling that- You created both the challenges and the opportunities and it's just, it was stinking fun. It was other things too. It was painful and hard and I cried and everything, but it was, it was also, it's also been really nice. I'd forgotten that joy of pure, purely getting to make something. And yeah, but I am terrified now. I've transitioned away from this is fun to this is scary. But of course I want to share it. I want people to read it. I'm excited for people to read it. And yeah, that's why I'm signing my name 82,000 times.

• 40:18Hank Green?

  Well, I consider this a formal request for a PDF.

• 40:22John Green?

  All right.

• 40:24Hank Green?

  Unless you, unless you want to chat after the podcast and tell me things you want to prepare me for, but I, I'm excited.

• 40:32John Green?

  All right.

• 40:32Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 40:33John Green?

  I mean, I'm nervous to share it with Hank. That means I must be exponentially more nervous to share it with the public.

• 40:39Hank Green?

  I mean, I've always been, yes.

• 40:44John Green?

  You've always been a very supportive reader.

• 40:46Hank Green?

  It is a cra- that's not what I was gonna say, but like it's a crazy vulnerability to like make, especially in the world of, you know, you and I having experience where we make things and then we get immediate feedback, but also the world is so set up that way now.

• 41:01John Green?

  Right.

• 41:01Hank Green?

  Whereas a book is like, you have to make this thing, you have to lock it in place and then you have to tell people about it and show, that's so hard.

• 41:09John Green?

  This next question comes from Anya who asks, dear Hank and John, how do I get better at speaking in class? I've found that when I have to participate in a discussion in class, give a presentation, answer a question, even ask a question, I get super nervous and I feel like whatever I say sounds dumb or doesn't contribute anything. I've tried making like a little script of what I want to say, but I always end up cutting it shorter, messing up. Dasvid Anya. I was so confused until I said it out loud.

• 41:38Hank Green?

  Anya, you are not alone in this. I think everyone who speaks in class either does feel a little bit like an imposter or else should feel a little bit like an imposter. You know what I mean? Like the people who are hyper confident when they're talking in class, those are always the ones where I'm like, hmm.

• 41:57John Green?

  Yeah. And they have so much to say.

• 42:00Hank Green?

  Yeah. Gosh, I wish you would temper that confidence just a little bit.

• 42:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that like there's, there's something to be said for very little things. So, so if you're just like speaking up in class, it might be just like as simple as, you know, I found this idea was related to this other idea, or asking like, do you think that this idea was related to this other idea? And let the teacher taking it on from there. So, so like, you don't even have to save very much necessarily to be adding like a substantial amount of impact or insight. And then the other thing, and this is important, and I don't know, I don't know any other way to do it. But like, you have to get comfortable in your like, speaking voice. And the only thing that I ever found that worked for that

• 42:49Hank Green?

  was finding time where I was alone and talking out loud.

• 42:54John Green?

  Yep. Hundred percent. I agree. I do that all. I still do that.

• 42:57Hank Green?

  Reading stuff I had written down, reading other people's stuff, like reading the Declaration of Independence out loud, just like spending time using your voice, because it's a complicated thing. And then imagining, you know, imagining like that you're not just talking like one on one, but talking to a room of people and like seeing how that changes. The timbre of your voice, or whatever else.

• 43:24John Green?

  Nicely done. I think that's good advice. I spent the last three weeks walking around the house, talking out loud about what I would say about Hollywood ending. Because I feel so uncomfortable talking about it. And I feel like I don't know how much to reveal, or what's a spoiler, or all that stuff, and how to get people interested without, you know, harming people's reading experiences, yada, yada, yada. And, and I found it really helpful to just talk out loud. I will say, at one point, Sarah heard me talking out loud, and I had my AirPods in, and she mouthed, are you on the phone? And I had to say, no, just chatting with me.

• 44:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, a real hard part about this can be finding this, the place where you actually do it.

• 44:17John Green?

  Right.

• 44:17Hank Green?

  And, and like, there's, oftentimes, there just isn't one. And I remember in college, you know, doing this. I also remember one time being in a hotel room, practicing for a speech, and the hotel security came and were like, "You need to stop." But the people next door had called them. And I was like, "That is embarrassing."

• 44:39John Green?

  That is embarrassing.

• 44:40Hank Green?

  But I was preparing to interview the literal president, so...

• 44:44John Green?

  And you were doing it at very high volume. You were shouting, "Mr. President, sir!"

• 44:52Hank Green?

  And the person was like, "This guy's got AI psychosis next door."

• 44:59Hank Green?

  Thinks he's interviewing the president.

• 45:02Hank Green?

  It's just Claude. This was before Claude.

• 45:05John Green?

  Yeah, I think that's good advice. I also think that we can learn something from our grandfather and our Uncle Mike, both of whom rarely spoke in meetings. But because they rarely spoke in meetings, when they did, they were taken very seriously.

• 45:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, it does not take a lot of words to get the idea across. And the other thing, like, I'll say, and this is, this is gonna sound silly, but just take a deep breath beforehand, not like a big, visible one, but like, just have enough air in the lungs to do the job.

• 45:37John Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Hank Green?

  Because, man, it's hard. Like, this is one of my hardest parts, is when I first get up on a stage, I often find myself lacking for air.

• 45:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Hank Green?

  Because, like, your breathing strategy changes for some reason.

• 45:49John Green?

  Right.

• 45:50Hank Green?

  It's great. Thanks, physiology, for making me have to pee, for making me breathe weird, for making me want to talk really fast for some reason. That's all very helpful.

• 45:59John Green?

  Yeah, but you've gotten better at it as you've gotten older.

• 46:02Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's just practice.

• 46:04John Green?

  I think that'll be the case for Anya as well. It's the case for most of us. Most of us become calmer as we, as we get older. Like, I used to throw up before, like, a lot of events, and now I never do.

• 46:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, people are always like, "You still get nervous?" And I'm like, "Uh huh, yeah, every time."

• 46:19John Green?

  Yeah, but your nervousness is weirdly processed, such that you don't seem to be nervous when you're on stage. In fact, sometimes when you're on stage, you don't seem nervous enough.

• 46:31Hank Green?

  No, I mean, sometimes I'm not nervous enough. Sometimes I am. I get nervous before I go onstage. Once I'm onstage, I'm not nervous until things start going wrong. And then I become very nervous very quickly. Yeah, I think that's pretty common. Till you lose the room and then then. Then it's like, oh, and now I have no way of getting you back. That's why stand up is fun, because at least you've got some jokes written.

• 46:55John Green?

  Yeah, but stand up is so intimidating precisely like, ask Anya or me to do stand up and we couldn't do it. Even with all the jokes written in the world, like even if Mike Birbiglia wrote all my jokes, I couldn't do it because there's nothing between me and the audience. Except for like, and, and, and the job is not to interest them. It's to make them laugh. And then you know for sure whether you're succeeding or failing based on whether, how the room vibe is. Whereas like when I'm reading something or, or giving a speech or a talk or having a conversation or in public or whatever, I, I don't feel that precisely because I'm not trying to make them laugh all the time.

• 47:35Hank Green?

  Oh, man, I, I was, the last time I did stand up, I had this like, you know, a lot of times you're working toward a punchline and you like, introduce a lot of little punchlines along the way so that you can get there. Yep. And I had this great punchline. I can't tell it because it's not a clean joke. But, uh, but, but I was working up and none of the like, half, halfy punchlines were landing very well. And they shook me so much that I forgot to do the real punchline. Completely. And I just moved on to the next topic and I was like, I was like, man, that part really didn't work. And then I was, as I was walking home from doing the set, I was like, oh, it's because I didn't get to the joke.

• 48:14John Green?

  I didn't, I forgot to tell the joke.

• 48:16Hank Green?

  I was so mad.

• 48:19John Green?

  I was so scared. I forgot that the job is to joke.

• 48:22Hank Green?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 48:24John Green?

  I guess I could get onstage and do like a 12 minute version of the Bessie the pig joke, but that's about it. I mean, I would.

• 48:29Hank Green?

  You could do it.

• 48:31John Green?

  You could do it. I don't know. Anya, one day I'll do stand up and one day you'll stand up in class and feel comfortable, but that day is not today. But we get there through practice.

• 48:41Hank Green?

  One day at a time. All right, John, what's going on with AFC Wimbledon?

• 48:45John Green?

  Well, AFC Wimbledon tied a football game.

• 48:48Hank Green?

  That's great. That's half of a win. It's a third of a win.

• 48:51John Green?

  It's a third of a win and it's, it's a big third because this puts us on 50 points. And theoretically in past seasons, 50 points has been enough to stay up.

• 49:02John Green?

  So we now have eight games left and very little risk of relegation. And very little risk of making it to the playoffs, I would say. Those are both equally likely.

• 49:14Hank Green?

  Most of the teams are in the middle, John.

• 49:16John Green?

  We are going to be somewhere in the middle, which is great. If you told me at the beginning of the season, we would be somewhere in the middle, I would be duly surprised with the second lowest budget in the league.

• 49:26Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:26John Green?

  So I am delighted to be somewhere in the middle. It does mean that for the next eight games, we are sort of, as they say, on the beach, where there's not a ton at stake.

• 49:38Hank Green?

  Gotcha.

• 49:39John Green?

  But I kind of like being on the beach.

• 49:41Hank Green?

  I'd want to be on the beach. Most of the beaches are great. You know, it's, I don't, I think the beach is Normandy. The beach is the beach.

• 49:47John Green?

  Yeah, let's enjoy the beach. And people are always like, oh, they're not playing very hard. They're on the beach. And I'm like, yeah.

• 49:54Hank Green?

  Great, we're not going to injure Marcus.

• 49:57John Green?

  They played hard all season so that we didn't have to worry about relegation for the last eight games. This is a miracle. Let's enjoy it. So I'm just going to enjoy the last eight games. We're playing like all the best teams. We're probably not going to win a lot, but as long as we squeeze out one or two points, we should be totally safe from relegation.

• 50:14Hank Green?

  Great, I'm happy for you.

• 50:16John Green?

  Thank you. I'm so proud of how we've done this season.

• 50:19Hank Green?

  Mars news continues to be weird. Would you like to hear the weird Mars news?

• 50:23John Green?

  Please.

• 50:25Hank Green?

  So NASA just announced its like plans, like what are we going to do? And they are like, this is not, it's, it's, it's a little frustrating because one of the things that happens, because leadership changes and leadership is weird, is that like NASA just changes priorities maybe a little bit more than it needs to.

• 50:49John Green?

  Right.

• 50:49Hank Green?

  So, uh, and, and then like you only stay on one track for four years and then you are suddenly on another track. But anyway, here's our new track. NASA announced that it's going to be launching a nuclear powered spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028. Now, John, what? Don't think that I'm not an optimistic guy when it comes to Mars. For example, I bet the name of my podcast on humans getting to Mars in 10 years, which is not going to happen. Also, we're not going to launch a nuclear powered spacecraft to Mars in 2028.

• 51:27John Green?

  Well, maybe we can. Dream big. Like, remember when we weren't gonna go to the moon within nine years and then we did? Like, that was very impressive. This could be very impressive.

• 51:36Hank Green?

  It's March of 2026. Yeah. This would be the first time an interplanetary space mission would be powered by nuclear propulsion. If it happened, it would be very exciting. It would allow us to maybe travel further or differently into space. Currently, the only spacecraft we have that is able to travel to the outer parts of the solar system use batteries or solar power because they need too much liquid fuel to get that far. So the idea is that if we could make nuclear propulsion get to Mars, maybe we can apply it to future missions that can go further away from. That'd be great.

• 52:12John Green?

  Now, is this gonna be this theoretical nuclear-powered spacecraft? Is this gonna be? This isn't gonna have humans on it, right? It's gonna have some kind of space probe on it?

• 52:21Hank Green?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you the name of the spaceship, John?

• 52:24John Green?

  Please.

• 52:25Hank Green?

  It's called Space Reactor One Freedom.

• 52:28John Green?

  Oh, boy.

• 52:30John Green?

  I mean, I think, I think they should workshop it, I'll just tell you.

• 52:35Hank Green?

  NASA has not given a lot of details on how this thing will work.

• 52:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Hank Green?

  Everybody I know who's in the business is not optimistic.

• 52:44John Green?

  Well, here's what I'll say, Hank. Even if it happens, we're still renaming the podcast because there still won't be humans on Mars by 2027.

• 52:52Hank Green?

  That's for sure.

• 52:54Hank Green?

  It keeps getting closer, John. Every, every year it gets a year closer.

• 52:57John Green?

  Every year it gets closer. It's looking real bad for your bet, but we, we don't give up until we have to.

• 53:03Hank Green?

  I, I think that, I think that we'd have, that something very strange would have to occur. It turns out that you, like, you can, you can have a lot of data centers full of AI and it doesn't get humans to Mars. Things are not tightly related.

• 53:19John Green?

  No. And I think you sort of overestimated the extent to which people are really able to marshal resources without the assistance of governments.

• 53:31Hank Green?

  It'd be interesting to make that episode when we make the, the official Dear Hank and John switch where I get into what I overestimated. I think that the main thing I, that the main flaw in my reasoning was, well, who knows?

• 53:45John Green?

  Ten years sounded like a long time. It sounded like a long time 10 years ago. And to be fair, it's been a long decade.

• 53:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, no, we've put a lot of resources toward a lot of things.

• 53:57John Green?

  Yeah, it's just very few of those things have involved space travel.

• 54:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, but lots of, lots of cool stuff going on, you know? I'm into the Europa Clipper mission, that's happening.

• 54:08John Green?

  Yep.

• 54:08Hank Green?

  That's great, you know?

• 54:09John Green?

  That's exciting.

• 54:10Hank Green?

  Ultimately, Europa might be more interesting than Mars, we'll see.

• 54:14John Green?

  We'll see. I mean, we probably won't see, but someone will see in the future.

• 54:19Hank Green?

  Humanity will see.

• 54:20John Green?

  Humanity will see. Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at [email protected].

• 54:29Hank Green?

  This podcast is edited by Bridget Kennison. It's mixed by Callie Dishman. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrohassan-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, don't forget to be awesome.