447: Everything Is Over

What do you do with a check once it’s deposited? How does Vitamin D work? When someone compliments my necklace, is there a concise way of saying it’s cremation jewelry and contains the ashes of my grandpas (plural)? What should I do in my free time? How do glow in the dark stickers work? What’s up with teeth? …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.

• 0:12John Green?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

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

• 0:22John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:22Hank Green?

  When Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, he said, "I am Buzz Aldrin, first man to walk on the moon, kneel before me."

• 0:32John Green?

  Well, second man to walk on the moon, kneel before me.

• 0:36Hank Green?

  Well, yeah, but yeah, just the first aside from kneel before me.

• 0:40John Green?

  I think, I don't like to workshop your jokes, but I think that it's got, I think it's two revisions away from being a really good dad joke.

• 0:47Hank Green?

  It's there, it's almost there, okay.

• 0:49John Green?

  Speaking of revisions, I am deep, deep in edits for Hollywood Ending, my new novel that comes out September 22nd, and I do not have time to make this podcast, but I'm going to, out of respect for you and our listeners, and especially out of respect for one particular listener, who I want to mention here at the top of the podcast. You know, Hank, we have a top, top podcast for teens, top podcast for elderly people, of course, a hit exercise podcast and a hit sleep podcast, but did you know that we have a hit migraine podcast, according to Tiffany, who writes, "Dear John and Hank, since y'all have been discussing the different types of hit podcasts you are, I wanted to let you know that you're my migraine podcast. Treating my migraines usually involves lying down in a dark room for a while, but I don't want to sleep because it'll totally screw up my sleep schedule.

• 1:34John Green?

  Enter Dear Hank and John. Y'all hit on just the right balance of silly and serious." Well, thank you, Tiffany. Sorry about your migraine.

• 1:40Hank Green?

  Sorry about your migraine, and I'm glad that we don't do Million Dollar Idea anymore. That probably wouldn't help.

• 1:45John Green?

  No, it's too loud.

• 1:47Hank Green?

  It's too loud of a segment.

• 1:48John Green?

  Oh, God, the editing is overwhelming, Hank. It's so, it requires such intense concentration.

• 1:56Hank Green?

  Oh, interesting, because right now in my expert reviews, it's really not that way. It's just like scroll, scroll, they have a comment, I read the comment, I change a line. Scroll, scroll, they have a comment, I read the comment, I change a line. It's great. It's like the best thing that I've ever done in the writing experience, because it's just like, you, you mess this up, fix it. And I'm like, okay. I, I just feel like I'm being directed by experts to do something I know how to do.

• 2:25John Green?

  I remember that wonderful feeling when Everything is Tuberculosis was being fact-checked. This is different because a novel, everything has to fit together just so. It's like a thousand-piece puzzle. And every time you move a piece, you have to move a bunch of other pieces. And some of those pieces might have been 200 pages ago.

• 2:45Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:46John Green?

  And so the, that's the kind of concentration it requires is like, you have to remember, not just is it Tuesday, but also what color is this person's hair and what's their name? And what do they want out of life? And are they satisfied with the role that they're playing in my story?

• 3:03Hank Green?

  Would they, would they say these words? Would they make this choice? Would they?

• 3:07John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Hank Green?

  How would they react to this situation? And, oh, man.

• 3:10John Green?

  Yeah. And it's dual, it's dual point of views. So making sure that the point of views not just are different in terms of voice, but that, you know, they don't, they don't make similar observations or make them in the same way, things like that. It's exhausting. It's fun. I mean, look, look, this is child's play. I should not complain about my child's play job, but it's, it just requires focus.

• 3:37Hank Green?

  You're feeling it.

• 3:38John Green?

  I'm feeling it.

• 3:38Hank Green?

  I can feel you feeling it. I, I remember doing multiple points of view and at the end of it being like, I shouldn't say this, but boy, these people are all quite similar to each other.

• 3:49John Green?

  Yeah. I mean, there's only two of them, so it's a little easier to make them different from each other.

• 3:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, it was easy to make the space alien different. That was the big, that was easy. Everybody else was all humans. And I only, I only really know one of those close up.

• 4:02John Green?

  I wish I had a space alien. Yeah. Yeah. That is one of the challenges of writing a novel or indeed participating in any kind of artistic endeavor is that it's inherently an attempt to get out of the prison of oneself, which of course one cannot actually do.

• 4:16Hank Green?

  Preach.

• 4:19John Green?

  All right, Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners. But full disclosure, this entire time we're recording, I'm going to be thinking about my novel. The other day, Sarah, it was like Sunday, and Sarah was like, you're thinking about the story, aren't you? And I was like, I'm never not thinking about the story, just so you know. All right. M writes, Dear John and Hank, I just got a tax refund for $1.44 from the US government in the form of a check.

• 4:39Hank Green?

  A gross pennies.

• 4:41John Green?

  A gross of pennies, that's right. If they still made them, which they don't. While I contemplate what to do with my newfound wealth, what should I do with the check after it's deposited? I deposit all my checks with the bank app, and so it feels wrong to throw them away. But like, I'm not going to buy a shredder. Taxes and tyrannosaurs, M.

• 4:59Hank Green?

  What are you, I don't, I, now I'm worried about what I'm doing with my checks I don't want to say.

• 5:04John Green?

  Oh, I keep them.

• 5:06Hank Green?

  You keep them in like a bag?

• 5:08John Green?

  Basically. I should probably shred them.

• 5:11Hank Green?

  You got like a, like a check bag? Is it like a, is it a cloth bag with a big dollar sign on the side of it?

• 5:18John Green?

  Yes, I'm Rich Uncle Pennybags from the board game Monopoly.

• 5:25Hank Green?

  Yeah. Throw it over your shoulder, then when you're going camping, you bring it with you and toss it on the fire.

• 5:31John Green?

  Yeah, once a year, I ceremoniously burn the checks. That's how I deal with it, but everybody's got a different way.

• 5:38Hank Green?

  I write deposited really big on the front of it, and then I rip it up and put it in the trash.

• 5:43John Green?

  Oh, that's good. I like that. That's fine. I think that's fine. That's like having a shredder.

• 5:48Hank Green?

  I should, no, no, no, take this out, because I feel like people can figure out my account numbers. What should I be doing?

• 5:55John Green?

  Not if you're, not if you do a good job tearing it up, but also, people shouldn't be going through your trash, Hank.

• 6:02Hank Green?

  Well.

• 6:03John Green?

  If people are going through your trash, we've got another problem.

• 6:06Hank Green?

  This didn't used to be a problem, because you used to deposit the checks and they'd be in the bank.

• 6:11John Green?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Hank Green?

  You'd bring them to the bank.

• 6:13John Green?

  The bank would have to deal with it.

• 6:14Hank Green?

  And they'd have, now I have the check. Okay, what should I do with my checks after? Stamp it with deposited, write deposited on it in ink or shred it? Okay, I'm doing good. I'm doing the right thing.

• 6:26John Green?

  Yeah, you're fine, Hank. I'm not worried about you. I am, however, worried about M, who only got a buck 44 from the federal government for a tax refund.

• 6:37John Green?

  Although I guess that means you paid like approximately the right amount of taxes. So in that sense, it's a good, good outcome.

• 6:43Hank Green?

  Apparently you should keep the check until it clears because you don't want to lose one gross of pennies.

• 6:49John Green?

  That's right. Well, I keep the check until it clears and then I'm just like, ah, why throw away these checks? And then I wait a year and I put them in my rich uncle Penny Bag's bag and I burn them. I like that idea. That's my way. Everybody's got a different way, Em.

• 7:01Hank Green?

  Yeah, you know, paper's valuable. So maybe, wouldn't it be like the baller move to have one of your bathrooms just wallpapered in your checks?

• 7:09John Green?

  I did once frame a check in the old days when you could, when framing a check was included, basically not depositing it. I received an 87 cent check from the Screen Actors Guild for my cut scene from The Fault in Our Stars and I framed that.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  I, yeah, I receive, I receive a fair amount of royalty checks now that I've like done things.

• 7:32John Green?

  Mr. Fancy Pants over here with his fair amount of royalty checks.

• 7:37Hank Green?

  And this would be a great thing to wallpaper your bathroom with because they're all for like $2. It's just, it's just sort of a hilarious, you know, just deposit your $2 and then just got like, you gotta show what everybody would, I bet like TV writers, oh my God, they gotta be getting 200 checks and they still come in checks. Like, nobody will do direct deposit.

• 8:00John Green?

  They still come in checks.

• 8:01Hank Green?

  Dropout does direct deposit.

• 8:03John Green?

  Now SAG only sends you, they send you a royalty statement and you only get money if it's over a dollar. So like, it's like 14 cents, I think, for every, every, every six months or so is what I make from The Fault in Our Stars movie that I got cut from because I'm in the DVD extras.

• 8:21Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 8:21John Green?

  And that means that it takes like X number of years before I get to a dollar and they send me a dollar.

• 8:27Hank Green?

  For all those people still buying DVDs, John, we should get back into DVDs.

• 8:31John Green?

  Oh yeah, physical media should make a return.

• 8:34Hank Green?

  What's the new DVD, though? Maybe there's a thing that's like a DVD, but it's not a DVD.

• 8:38John Green?

  A LaserDisc.

• 8:40Hank Green?

  It's even bigger than a DVD.

• 8:42John Green?

  An 8-track.

• 8:43Hank Green?

  It's even bigger than a LaserDisc.

• 8:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Hank Green?

  Or it's... Hmm. I want it, what I, what I want it to be is like a crystal. I want it to be like a little diamond that I buy and it's like in a, on like a ring pop situation.

• 9:00John Green?

  Yep.

• 9:01Hank Green?

  We gotta figure out how to get physical media really bizarre. We need to get bizarre physical media.

• 9:07John Green?

  And you actually hallucinate the film?

• 9:09Hank Green?

  Yes.

• 9:10John Green?

  So you like get, get the Twilight ring pop and you lick the Twilight ring pop and you see all of Twilight, but it comes to you like a dream.

• 9:16Hank Green?

  People in the future will be like, can you believe that they watch these things on screens instead of just licking their ring pops?

• 9:23John Green?

  Having, having, having the movie play behind their eyelids whether they want it or not.

• 9:29Hank Green?

  You can't, you can't stop.

• 9:31John Green?

  Once, once you lick that ring pop, you will be watching Twilight.

• 9:35Hank Green?

  Yeah. You're being supervised by a robot to make sure you don't injure yourself pretending to be a spider monkey.

• 9:42John Green?

  Have you seen Twilight? Because based on that particular detail, I feel like you haven't.

• 9:47Hank Green?

  I have. The, the piece that sticks out the most to me is when Edward says to Bella, hold on tight spider monkey, which is not like a name he has for her. He says it once.

• 9:58John Green?

  Yeah. But there's no spider monkeys in the movie. It's just a line of dialogue.

• 10:03Hank Green?

  No, she's pretending to be a spider monkey by holding on to him like a spider monkey.

• 10:08John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Hank Green?

  And that's what I would do. I would pretend to hold on to Edward and then we would careen through the canopy of the Pacific Northwest.

• 10:16John Green?

  Oh, so you're imagining that it would be sort of a first person film from Bella's perspective?

• 10:22Hank Green?

  Oh, heck yes. And also it would be far more detailed.

• 10:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Hank Green?

  They would have way, and if there'd be some, some real choice scenes added.

• 10:33John Green?

  Well, there, would there still be all those pregnant pauses where they're just staring at each other? That's my favorite part of the movie. Somebody cut together all the pregnant pauses and it's like 14 minutes long.

• 10:41Hank Green?

  And then in the third movie, there's actual pregnant pauses.

• 10:44John Green?

  Heyo.

• 10:45Hank Green?

  Which would be unpleasant to live through, but you know, we all gotta know.

• 10:49John Green?

  Yeah. I, I was gonna say in the third movie, you're going to get pregnant and not just pregnant, but pregnant with a special kind of baby.

• 10:57Hank Green?

  Special kind of baby that's gonna kill you if you, let's not spoil it. I actually haven't seen the third movie. I just know, I just know these things.

• 11:07John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's a problem. This is one of my big issues is that like way more people have opinions on books like Twilight and the Fault in Our Stars than have actually read those books. We're seeing this a little bit now with, um, uh, there's always like some kind of like drama in the world of publishing, but the books that generate all the drama don't necessarily sell that well. It's just like a vehicle for discourse.

• 11:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 11:32John Green?

  And then people have the discourse and the book doesn't actually get read.

• 11:37Hank Green?

  What a terrible thing to have like a Fault in Our Stars level discourse without Fault in Our Stars level sales.

• 11:44John Green?

  Totally.

• 11:45Hank Green?

  Would be like a deep misery.

• 11:48John Green?

  Because like, uh, there was a lot of discourse around the Fault in Our Stars, some of which I found annoying, but at, at least 30 million people bought that book.

• 11:57Hank Green?

  Yeah. Which nobody gets.

• 12:00John Green?

  These days, if you're part of the discourse, that doesn't mean that you're selling even 10,000 copies. It just means that like-

• 12:05Hank Green?

  No, no.

• 12:06John Green?

  -the discourse has picked you up for whatever reason. And usually when the discourse picks you up, it's to be dismissive of you or your work. And therefore you don't have to read it because you can just have an opinion without reading.

• 12:15Hank Green?

  Yeah. Uh huh.

• 12:18John Green?

  Oh, boy.

• 12:19Hank Green?

  But you can watch somebody have their opinion about what they read.

• 12:23John Green?

  Anyway, you do want to read Hollywood Ending, the new book from John Green coming out in, uh, September. It's John's first book in nine years, not novel, first novel in nine years.

• 12:32Hank Green?

  He's been doing it this whole time. He's been writing books that weren't Hollywood Ending and then giving up on them this whole time.

• 12:40John Green?

  Well, I also wrote a lot of Hollywood Ending, um, in the period when I was also writing other books that I gave up on.

• 12:46Hank Green?

  What was the, Ian, the initial, uh, title slash frame of Hollywood Ending?

• 12:50John Green?

  The Junket.

• 12:52Hank Green?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:53John Green?

  It was called The Junket and it was entirely about the- Lead up to the premiere, not about the movie at all. And I've decided that was so, so joyless that I needed, I needed some movie in there.

• 13:07Hank Green?

  As they, as the kids say these days, I don't think I would suck on that Ring Pop.

• 13:14Hank Green?

  All right, John, this next question comes from June, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I recently got my blood tested and my doctor told me I had vitamin D deficiency. I'm from California. I moved to Washington state last year. Thus I have not seen the sun in many weeks. And this got me wondering how vitamin D works? How is it that I go into the sun and it hits my skin and the levels of the vitamin in my blood go up? The sunniest month, June. Oh, that's lovely.

• 13:36John Green?

  I've also been wondering this Hank, because I have to take a vitamin D supplement now.

• 13:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, me too.

• 13:42John Green?

  But I would rather just get five minutes of sunshine per day, which seems to be enough.

• 13:47Hank Green?

  I have, I don't know what the actual timing is. I did not look that up, but I did look up the mechanism.

• 13:52John Green?

  All right, walk, walk me through the mechanism. How does my skin turn sunlight into a vitamin that lives in my blood?

• 14:01Hank Green?

  So there is already a molecule in your blood. It's called seven dehydrocholesterol.

• 14:07John Green?

  God, they gotta work on these names.

• 14:10Hank Green?

  I mean, it says what it is. I promise. And UVB, so this is specific wavelengths of UV light, can turn that into vitamin D3. So the sun does not like eject you with vitamin D. It is triggering a chemical reaction in your skin that makes this precursor form of vitamin D. And then the vitamin D3 goes into your bloodstream, then goes to your liver, and there it is converted into 25 hydroxy vitamin D. And that's the main circulating form of vitamin D, though there are like others. But when you take vitamin D, you're usually taking one of, one of these various molecules. I think a lot of times you take the precursor and then it just gets converted. The, and, and it's weird. So this is a strange

• 14:53Hank Green?

  thing. Most animals that you run into don't do this. Like, imagine a cat, for example. When does the sun touch a cat?

• 15:02John Green?

  Never.

• 15:02Hank Green?

  They're covered in hair. So they get their vitamin D. Some animals get their vitamin D from eating things that make vitamin D and some animals make it themselves. So we have lost the ability to make vitamin D, but we could, like, we, you know, we couldn't. You can't, but like, there's no physiological reason, there's no like chemical reason why a body can't make vitamin D. And indeed, many animals do make vitamin D, but we don't. And so we, because it, it happens naturally when you're out in the sun and all of our ancestors spent enough time in the sun that we got it. But now, we're always wearing clothes, we're always inside, we're protecting ourselves from the harmful effects of the sun, which are many. And then we don't get this. And so we have to take a supplement,

• 15:47Hank Green?

  which is, I think, probably a pretty good trade off.

• 15:49John Green?

  I, so I was never a believer in supplements. And my doctor was like, you have low vitamin D. And I was like, well, just get out in the sun more. And she was like, no, you won't. I know you like, you're an inside cat.

• 15:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 16:00John Green?

  And so she was right. And eventually I was like, well, I'll take the vitamin D supplement. But my vitamin D is not going to go up because supplements are BS. And she was like, well, your vitamin D will go up because supplements are BS if you don't have low vitamin D, but you do. I also have low vitamin B12. And I started taking them and it worked.

• 16:20Hank Green?

  You felt better?

• 16:22John Green?

  Well, I don't know if I felt better, but my numbers went up. The lab, the lab says that I'm fine.

• 16:27Hank Green?

  I have, I have had to fight to get my vitamin D levels up because I'm not really, I'm, I have not been good at taking the pills every day. But, but interestingly, vitamin D, there's like debate over whether it's technically a vitamin, which I think is very weird.

• 16:43John Green?

  What is it instead?

• 16:44Hank Green?

  It might be, it's like, kind of more like a hormone. So, so like vitamin C, for example, is like very quintessential vitamin. It is a necessary chemical to make collagen, I think, which is why when you get scurvy, what's happening is all of your collagen is breaking down because you can't repair or create new collagen. I think that this is right. I have, this is like information that I have last looked at, like more than a month ago. So fact check me. But, but I think vitamin D is more like sort of just a carrier of information and it like activates certain things in certain places. It like maybe fills more of a hormonal role than like a, like a catalytic role. It's not like used as much in the process of chemical reactions. It is more

• 17:30Hank Green?

  carrying, it is more like a delivery mechanism for information. Throughout the body.

• 17:35John Green?

  I, after your summary of that, have no idea what a vitamin is. And not only that, I don't want to learn. I don't, there's some things I don't want to be curious about, some things I'm never going to know or have an opinion about. And now one of them is whether vitamin D is in fact a vitamin. I'm never going to have an opinion about that.

• 17:51Hank Green?

  You probably shouldn't.

• 17:53John Green?

  I don't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't. It's like.

• 17:55Hank Green?

  I shouldn't. It doesn't mean it's not important.

• 17:59John Green?

  No, it means that I trust other people to have better opinions than I ever will. I feel the same way about the Super Mario Odyssey movie. It's not that I have, it's not that I, I don't think that it's important to have opinions on the Super Mario Odyssey movie. It's just that I in particular, don't want to have those opinions. I don't trust myself. I don't feel like I'm invested enough in the Super Mario universe in order to have a really deeply informed opinion. And also, if I have an opinion on every single thing, then I don't, then I don't do a good job of digging deep. Like, I have a lot of opinions about tuberculosis, but that's because I'm deeply informed about tuberculosis. I don't want to have an opinion on whether vitamin D is a vitamin.

• 18:42Hank Green?

  I gotta tell you, as you've been talking, I've been more and more convinced that vitamin D isn't a vitamin in particular, because the idea of a vitamin is that it's a thing that your body needs to function normally, that you can't get naturally. And you can get it, well, like that you, that you have to consume in order to get it into your body. But you don't consume vitamin D. Your body does kind of make it.

• 19:06John Green?

  No, you consume sunshine.

• 19:08Hank Green?

  The fact that it requires UVB to me is like, well, yeah, but like, all of my molecules require that I breathe oxygen.

• 19:15John Green?

  All right.

• 19:15Hank Green?

  Like, they require external outputs, but this isn't, it's not that chemical that's the external output.

• 19:21John Green?

  You're so passionate about this, I find myself coming to an opinion, and it's the opinion opposite yours. I take back my previous perspective that I don't have opinions. Instead, I do want to participate in vitamin D discourse. Not only that, I want to take the provocative take that you are consuming something when you take in vitamin D, and the thing that you're consuming is sunshine. And that isn't the same thing as consuming oxygen, although that is also a form of consumption, because sunshine is external to our atmosphere. It's essential, but it's external. In the same way that like consuming broccoli to get your vitamin A is essential, but external.

• 20:06Hank Green?

  All right. I disagree, but I still respect you.

• 20:08John Green?

  No, the whole Hank, that's not how fighting on the internet works. You got mad. I got mad and now you get more mad. You don't deescalate.

• 20:20Hank Green?

  I disagree with you and I no longer want to be your brother.

• 20:24John Green?

  There you go. End of the podcast. Cancel the whole affair.

• 20:30Hank Green?

  Cancel the whole affair. Everything's over, everybody. We're done. We're done.

• 20:34John Green?

  It reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Dear Hank and John. Dear Hank and John, 2016 to 2026, R I P.

• 20:41Hank Green?

  This podcast is also brought to you by one gross of pennies. One gross of pennies. Good luck. From the government.

• 20:50John Green?

  Today's podcast is also brought to you by Rich Uncle Pennybags. Rich Uncle Pennybags, not just the star of Monopoly, also the way that John deals with his deposited checks.

• 20:58Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by Hollywood Ending. You could buy it now or you can wait for it to come out on Ring Pop.

• 21:04John Green?

  No, no, no, you can't wait. You gotta buy it now. Illusion of scarcity. There's only so many signed copies in the world.

• 21:10Hank Green?

  Oh, can you order it now? Is it orderable now?

• 21:13John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:14Hank Green?

  Oh, it's orderable now.

• 21:16John Green?

  Yeah. Wherever you get books.

• 21:18Hank Green?

  Deliver it in September.

• 21:20John Green?

  Yeah. Pay now, get in September. It's a classic bargain.

• 21:28Hank Green?

  It's cheaper if you use your tax return.

• 21:32John Green?

  It's only 28 bucks after your tax return.

• 21:35Hank 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 gonna be both comfortable and I'm just gonna look good in it. It's gonna go well with my khakis, or my jeans, or my third kind of pant? That I have 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 gonna work!

• 22:19Hank Green?

  I went downstairs, 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.

• 23:09John Green?

  Dear Hank and John is brought to you by NoCD. So you may know that I've had obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a kid, but I was only diagnosed as an adult. I lived with intrusive thoughts and the compulsive behaviors I used to manage those intrusive thoughts for many years without treatment. OCD is not just anxiety. If you have those "what-if" intrusive thoughts, and you cannot close the loop on them, and you find yourself in thought spirals, you might have OCD. And it's not the organizing stereotype you've heard. It's a persistent, unwanted series of intrusive thoughts that feel totally out of character, along with... Mental or physical behaviors that you feel driven to to get relief, even when that relief never actually comes.

• 23:51John Green?

  The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment and it has transformed my life. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP therapy, who meet you in live, face-to-face, virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone. So if you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. That's nocd.com.

• 24:35John Green?

  All right, let's answer this question from Anya, who writes, "Dear John and Hank, I wear two matching teardrop-shaped necklaces every day. They are cremation jewelry. One is gold and houses, my paternal papa, and the other is silver and houses, my maternal grandpa. They passed two months apart a few years ago and I've worn the necklaces since. The problem, sometimes people compliment them. How am I supposed to respond to this? Do I simply say, 'Thank you'? There is usually, that is usually my go-to, but I feel like I should explain. Is there a concise way to say, 'These are my dead grandpas', without sounding like a complete crazy person? 'Grandpas in grave dirt, Anya.'

• 25:07Hank Green?

  That's gotta be a case-by-case situation.

• 25:10John Green?

  Yeah, if you're like at a restaurant and somebody, and like the server is like, "I like your necklaces," you say, "Thank you." And if you're at, on a date and somebody says, "I like your necklaces," say, "Thank you, they're my grandpas." Because what a great conversation starter.

• 25:26Hank Green?

  But John, what if the server is cute?

• 25:29John Green?

  Oh, then you say, "Thank you, they're my grandpas."

• 25:32Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, yep, yeah.

• 25:35John Green?

  It's a good opening.

• 25:36Hank Green?

  Because, because look, they want, they want to talk about something. Like, I don't say, "Hey, nice shoes," unless I want to have a little bit of a shoe conversation.

• 25:44John Green?

  Sure, sure.

• 25:45Hank Green?

  What if, that's true, we start a business where you get to wear your grandpas on your shoes?

• 25:53John Green?

  Cremation jewelry, but it's shoes.

• 25:55Hank Green?

  Like, put them in the aglets? Or put them in the rubber soles? You wear through them and then you're like, well, I guess. They're all, they're spread across my entire town.

• 26:05John Green?

  No, I think jewelry is the right vibe for, I think we should get in the cremation jewelry business. So that seems like a great business.

• 26:11Hank Green?

  You know what I've always wanted to do? I feel, I feel like we could totally do is, is do like copper burial rods? Because copper is one of the things that lasts forever. And so if you inscribe like a little message on a copper rod, I don't know why I feel like a rod is the right way to go. I guess we could do a coin.

• 26:27John Green?

  Yeah, I think rod is the wrong impulse, but I'm, I'm with you on copper.

• 26:31Hank Green?

  There's something about, there's something about a rod that I like, but anyway.

• 26:35John Green?

  Hey.

• 26:35Hank Green?

  I want, I want a rod. I want to be buried with a rod. You can't stop me.

• 26:42John Green?

  Okay.

• 26:44Hank Green?

  Not a rod. He's gonna die first. I, um, but, but so copper.

• 26:50John Green?

  Bold prediction. I mean, he's not that much older than you.

• 26:53Hank Green?

  He is very healthy as well.

• 26:54John Green?

  I was gonna say, and he's fit.

• 26:58John Green?

  I bet he gets his 150 minutes of weekly exercise in.

• 27:01Hank Green?

  I bet he's never had shingles. Jesus.

• 27:03John Green?

  I bet he hasn't had it three times.

• 27:07Hank Green?

  So, uh, and, and this is a problem that like most, like almost everything that you bury with a person, it doesn't last very long. And so sometimes when you dig them up, it's like, what do we actually transport to the grave? Where we, we're gonna move the cemetery to a new place. And so they just like take a fistful of dirt or something. But I think that if they like could grab the rod, that would be great. Just like a fistful of dirt and the rod, so that there's always a little identifying information there.

• 27:29John Green?

  Okay, so you're not talking about a copper rod that's a grave marker? You're talking about a copper rod that goes into the coffin?

• 27:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, or the bag.

• 27:37John Green?

  Okay.

• 27:38Hank Green?

  The bag with a big dollar sign on the side of it. That's what I want to be buried in.

• 27:46John Green?

  Yeah. You remember the 1910s? You know how robbers used to haul away stuff in bags marked with a dollar sign? I'd like that to be my cremation urn. Thank you.

• 28:00Hank Green?

  I just want you to remember the value I delivered for shareholders.

• 28:07John Green?

  Yeah, I don't dislike the copper rod idea. And I think, again, getting into the copper rod death sales business would be a good business. High margin, you're dealing with fine metals, you know, it seems good to me. I like it. I don't dislike it at all.

• 28:24Hank Green?

  Coin is also nice. I like a coin.

• 28:26John Green?

  A coin might be good. A copper coin that's got a message on it. You know, we have your grandmother's and my grandmother's wedding ring. My mom and I were looking at it and we looked at the date inscribed on the inside of the wedding ring and it was not nanny and Papa's anniversary. Because it was her grandmother's ring.

• 28:46Hank Green?

  Wow. Yeah.

• 28:48John Green?

  She inherited and that she wore her whole life.

• 28:50Hank Green?

  I have Catherine's engagement ring was Papa's sister's ring, I think.

• 28:55John Green?

  Okay.

• 28:57Hank Green?

  And that's, that's what mom gave me to do the proposing?

• 29:01John Green?

  I'll tell you a couple of things that are unlikely about that story.

• 29:04Hank Green?

  Oh, no.

• 29:06John Green?

  Papa had no sisters.

• 29:07Hank Green?

  It was something like that, though.

• 29:09John Green?

  And.

• 29:12John Green?

  Something like that, though.

• 29:14John Green?

  Oh, no.

• 29:15Hank Green?

  Oh, I guess there's Aunt Nell. But Aunt Nell had kids of her own.

• 29:19John Green?

  I think.

• 29:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. It wasn't her wedding ring. It was just like a ring that he gave her at some point and then he got it back.

• 29:27John Green?

  He took it back?

• 29:28Hank Green?

  I think so.

• 29:29John Green?

  It does sound like Papa.

• 29:31Hank Green?

  I gotta ask mom. It was like, I don't know, it's been 20 years since I proposed. This was all very fresh in my mind.

• 29:36John Green?

  I feel like you're besmirching Papa's good name one way or the other.

• 29:39Hank Green?

  It had something to do with Miami.

• 29:42John Green?

  Miami, that's a, that's a different, that's a different, that's an uncle, not an aunt.

• 29:46Hank Green?

  Okay. All right.

• 29:48John Green?

  Miami would be, uh, Tad.

• 29:53Hank Green?

  That's a great name.

• 29:54John Green?

  He used to give us $2 bills.

• 29:56Hank Green?

  What? Oh, on dad's side?

• 29:59John Green?

  Huh?

• 30:00Hank Green?

  On dad's side?

• 30:01John Green?

  No, mom's side.

• 30:02Hank Green?

  Oh, I know. I remember that dad's dad used to give us $2 bills. He gave me a $2 bill with a Clemson stamp on it.

• 30:08John Green?

  Nope. You are, I mean, your ability to misremember family history is truly astonishing.

• 30:15Hank Green?

  That was Tad.

• 30:15John Green?

  Ask yourself, did your grandfather go to Clemson? Or did he spend his entire life in Indianapolis?

• 30:24Hank Green?

  That one.

• 30:25John Green?

  Yeah. That's how you know that it wouldn't make sense for him to give you a Clemson $2 bill.

• 30:30Hank Green?

  This whole time I've thought Clemson was in Indianapolis.

• 30:33John Green?

  Nope. It's in South Carolina.

• 30:35Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 30:37John Green?

  Yeah. Go Tigers. It's, it's funny because you know so much about vitamin D and so little about your family history.

• 30:44Hank Green?

  That's, it is. Do mom and dad listen to this podcast?

• 30:47John Green?

  Probably, probably this episode they will. Uncle Mike listens. Uncle Mike's sitting there horrified right now. And baffled.

• 30:54Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 30:55John Green?

  All right. Here we go. This question's from Rosie. She writes, Dear John and Hank, I just got unceremoniously and suddenly laid off yesterday after a successful five-year career with a company I loved. I'm sorry, Rosie, that sucks. I'm scrambling to pick up the pieces and just starting to deal with the emotional and financial whiplash of the situation. Whiplash is a great word for it, right? Because like, it's, it's like, everything is like ripped out from under you. Like, your whole life becomes so different so suddenly. And eh, I'm just sorry. Anyway, now that I'm looking for work, besides the typical suggestions of take a class or do a hobby, what else should I be doing with all my extra time? It's hard to focus on self-improvement things when you're stressed about your livelihood. Really appreciate any advice you have. While it's dark now, I hope the future looks a bit more. Rosie, nerd fighter since 2007. Thank you for sticking around all that time, Rosie. That's pretty cool of you.

• 31:40John Green?

  Uh, I suggest a, a garden, a container garden, if you're not feeling ambitious. Where you just, uh, use any kind of containers you got around and put some dirt in them or, or some compost in them and, or some potting soil and grow a single tomato plant or a single pepper plant or something. I just find that caring for something that's alive, but doesn't need all of the support that say a dog needs or a gerbil needs is very helpful.

• 32:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, jar, dirt, seed, all accessible, all accessible things. There's, um, there's this thing that Catherine does that I think is amazing where she'll take people's houseplants that are not doing well. And she'll like nurse them back to health.

• 32:29John Green?

  She'll foster them.

• 32:30Hank Green?

  Yeah, she like fosters a plant and she's like, oh, you got a lot of bugs on this one. And she, you know, she, she gives, totally repots it. She makes, she neems them up, gets that neem oil all over them. I just respect this, the heck out of this. And I'm like, just got a new plant in the downstairs shower. Where'd that one come from?

• 32:47John Green?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so maybe foster some, some struggling plants from your friends. I just think like being with stuff that's, I, somebody told me once that when you hit middle age, you either become a bird person or a tree person. And I have very much become a tree person. And so maybe my bias is showing here, Rosie. But I feel like we are supposed to be with plants. That's the one thing, that's the one thing that I'm sure of, is that this is a plant planet and we are supposed to be in communion with them.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:18John Green?

  And they make food. And so at the end of it, you have some food, which is kind of a fun feeling. You're like, oh, man, I grew a tomato and I get to eat it.

• 33:26Hank Green?

  Yeah. And that, and then also vitamins.

• 33:30John Green?

  Also gives you a real appreciation for food systems in general, because it takes a hell of a lot of work to make one tomato.

• 33:37Hank Green?

  Sometimes I'll see like an Instagram reel where they're out in like a broccoli field. And I'll be like, there ain't no way. I try to grow broccoli. It's, I got slugs, it's like everything is so hard. And then they're just like, it is like, nope. And yeah, I mean, obviously like there's broccoli at the store, so somebody's doing it.

• 33:56John Green?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Hank Green?

  Boy, they got a big broccoli field out there in California somewhere. I seen it on Instagram.

• 34:02John Green?

  So anyway, we wish you well, Rosie, and we're sorry that you're going through this. Hopefully, indeed, rosier days are to come.

• 34:09Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Sorin, who asks, Dear Hank and John, tonight I noticed one of the stickers on my sketchbook. It is a possum that says, "It's a beautiful day to scream. It glows in the dark. How do glow-in-the-dark stickers and other stuff work? Why do they need to charge under light first? The glowing reminded me of radium, which also made me wonder if glow-in-the-dark things can be different colors or only green? If only green, brothers, green, why? If they could be other colors, why do I only see green glow-in-the-dark things? Is it meant to resemble radium? Stay curious. Sorin." I love your, I love your possum, first of all. It's a beautiful day to scream. There's always a thing. There's always a reason.

• 34:49John Green?

  I know the answer to this.

• 34:51Hank Green?

  All right, hit me.

• 34:52John Green?

  It could only be green.

• 34:54Hank Green?

  Oh, oh, okay.

• 34:56John Green?

  It can't be red.

• 34:59Hank Green?

  Hmm, okay.

• 35:01John Green?

  And it glows in the dark because it holds the energy. And the reason it, I'm not done, and the reason it is green is because of optics. And as we all know, Hank doesn't understand optics.

• 35:18Hank Green?

  There's actually not very much optics going on here.

• 35:21John Green?

  How much did I get right?

• 35:23Hank Green?

  I think none.

• 35:24John Green?

  None.

• 35:25Hank Green?

  I mean, you got one thing right, which is that, like, it has to be charged. The light has to come from somewhere. So, so with, with radium, this actually isn't, I mean, it's coming from somewhere. It's coming from radioactive decay, which is going on over a long time. So you don't have to charge things up when, when they're being charged up by radioactive decay. But, um,

• 35:45John Green?

  But there's some downsides to having your glow-in-the-dark possum be a radium possum.

• 35:49Hank Green?

  Yes, the, the energy is coming from ionizing radiation, which also might ionize your cells. But phosphorescence is what we're talking about here. So the, the light will get absorbed. And then it, like, it basically raises the energy of the electrons to a different, higher state. And then slowly, those electrons relax back down. And every time they relax from one shell to another, from one, like, higher energy state to a lower energy state. A photon will be emitted. And because that does not happen immediately, it happens slowly over time. You get this glowing happening and it happens at the way, like the color comes from the wavelength of the photon that is released by the electron

• 36:34Hank Green?

  shell. But like, it's defined by the amount of energy that it's dropping. So I think that this is like a, like, lower energy drop in the green.

• 36:44John Green?

  All of this is literally what I said.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  Is it?

• 36:48John Green?

  You're just quoting me back to myself.

• 36:51Hank Green?

  This is, this is interesting. This is interesting.

• 36:55John Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Hank Green?

  That is not, that is not how I am experiencing it.

• 36:59John Green?

  It's interesting to be plagiarized.

• 37:01Hank Green?

  Well, for example.

• 37:02John Green?

  To have somebody take your answer and then answer it the same way. What a, what a fun thing for our listeners to hear the exact same answer twice.

• 37:10Hank Green?

  Green is not the only wavelength that can be emitted. Is that a useful addition to know?

• 37:17John Green?

  I said that, too.

• 37:21Hank Green?

  But I think that the higher, the higher energy wavelengths are harder. And so I don't, I don't, like, I think that you might get red, but you, but like, in order to get red, they're doing weird things. That's, but I don't know.

• 37:35John Green?

  All right. That was helpful to me, Hank. Thank you. I didn't know that every time a photon, an electron went from a higher state to a lower state, a photon was released. But that's kind of a beautiful idea.

• 37:44Hank Green?

  Uh, yeah, it's, it, a lot of stuff is going on there, down there at the, at the weird molecular or the atomic level. And color turns out to be really fricking weird.

• 37:57John Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Hank Green?

  Seems pretty normal. See it all the time. Why is, why is things the colors they are? Way weirder than you think.

• 38:06John Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Hank Green?

  I just scratched my shingles, John, and it, it is such a crazy mix of.

• 38:13John Green?

  Relief and pain.

• 38:14Hank Green?

  Yes. It is like, like the, the intensity of the satisfaction feeling is beyond any itch I've ever had in my life. Like, I feel it in my brain. It's like full body dopamine wash, but then at the same time, pain.

• 38:33John Green?

  Mm hmm. It's like giving into compulsive behaviors when you have bad OCD.

• 38:37Hank Green?

  Maybe, yeah. It certainly is compulsing.

• 38:40John Green?

  I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that you have shingles. You've made now, I think, three podcasts while you had shingles, and I would have made none. I would have, I, I, you couldn't get me out of bed for a million dollars if I had shingles.

• 38:52Hank Green?

  I am pretty exhausted. It is taking it out of me.

• 38:56John Green?

  Well, let's hope mom and dad don't listen because they do worry about you.

• 39:00Hank Green?

  Understandably.

• 39:01John Green?

  All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news from our A F C Wimbledon, let's answer one more question from Mike, who writes, Dear John and Hank, teeth?

• 39:07Hank Green?

  Teeth?

• 39:09John Green?

  Feels like I have bones growing through my skin, which is not great. The need to perform daily maintenance seems to support that hunch. As to the existence of medical specialists, I need to visit annually in order to continue to have teeth. Have any creatures figured out a better answer? Flossing, flossing under protest, Mike.

• 39:27Hank Green?

  As Titus Andromeda says, outside bones, outside bones. Never forget your teeth are outside bones. They're not, they're not like a hundred percent outside bones, but they are pretty amazing.

• 39:43John Green?

  They are the closest thing to a bone currently outside my body that's connected to my body.

• 39:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, I wrote a short story once that took place in a magical town that was sort of, you know, like a little bit teen, teen edgy. This was when I was a young person.

• 40:03John Green?

  Oh, you wrote it when you were young. I thought this was a recent short story.

• 40:06Hank Green?

  But no.

• 40:07John Green?

  In that world, did people not have teeth?

• 40:09Hank Green?

  No, but they did. There was a character who had done a magic thing so that his fingertips were his bones. And so he could like clack them and he was like a scary guy and he clacked the bones on the table when you were in meetings with him.

• 40:25John Green?

  That's kind of good. I like, I like that. The fact that you wrote that as an edgy teen is actually quite impressive to me.

• 40:30Hank Green?

  I was probably 23.

• 40:32John Green?

  Okay.

• 40:33Hank Green?

  Less impressive.

• 40:35Hank Green?

  And who knows, who knows if I even have a copy of that anymore? Be interested to read. But that is not actually a solution that anyone has ever created. There are like other tooth solutions.

• 40:49John Green?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Hank Green?

  Obviously teeth are very useful. That's why so many things have them. But, but we, there are, of course, there's sharks that have the tooth conveyor belt that replaced them. Actually elephants replace their molars, though only a certain number of times. And at the end, they like, like have like their sixth molar come in and then with that one wears out, they just die.

• 41:10John Green?

  Wow.

• 41:11Hank Green?

  Crazy, unless they're in captivity and they get to eat mashed up stuff.

• 41:16John Green?

  Wow.

• 41:17Hank Green?

  And, uh, and like rodents that grow forever. That's a, that's a thing you can do. Beavers have their teeth doped with iron so that they're stronger. All kinds of crazy things happen in, in the teeth world, but we, we have teeth because like we, like extraordinarily useful to be able to grind stuff up. You know what I was thinking this morning, John? I'm always eating stuff.

• 41:40John Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Hank Green?

  Super, super strong ability. Like I can chew, I can chew some hard stuff.

• 41:46John Green?

  Yep.

• 41:46Hank Green?

  And you know what's like always less than a centimeter away from my hard chewers is my soft talker. He's just in there.

• 41:55John Green?

  One of your softest parts and your soft cheek.

• 41:59Hank Green?

  He's just in there like pushing, pushing the food right up into the teeth so it can get chewed on. And he gets bit so rarely.

• 42:07John Green?

  And then when you do bite your tongue, I know when you do bite your tongue, it's so painful and so horrible. And then you think, then you should be thinking about all the times you didn't bite your tongue.

• 42:17Hank Green?

  You should.

• 42:17John Green?

  You know, we should be thinking with gratitude for, about all the days where the tongue went unbidden.

• 42:22Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:23John Green?

  But man.

• 42:23Hank Green?

  But, but we won't.

• 42:24John Green?

  Because you do, you, you, you chomp with such ferocity.

• 42:29Hank Green?

  Oh yeah, I could eat a tongue.

• 42:31John Green?

  Oh yeah, I think I have.

• 42:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, I definitely have.

• 42:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Hank Green?

  I, yeah, yeah.

• 42:37John Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I feel bad about it, but I've, I've had beef tongue.

• 42:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:42John Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Hank Green?

  Now that, now that you say it, for sure. The, the, and that's a big, that's way bigger than mine.

• 42:49John Green?

  How weird is it in general that we have to masticate recently deceased plant and animal matter in order to continue thinking?

• 42:58Hank Green?

  How weird is it?

• 43:00John Green?

  So weird.

• 43:00Hank Green?

  At all.

• 43:01John Green?

  Oh, it's so weird. If you pitched that idea to an alien, they would hate it.

• 43:05Hank Green?

  I don't know that we can be brothers anymore. I disagree with you and the project is over.

• 43:13Hank Green?

  I mean, in terms of like earth animals, it's extremely normal because there's nobody who doesn't do it.

• 43:19John Green?

  Yeah, but you would think we could just keep going from sunlight.

• 43:22Hank Green?

  Right. Well, I think that, I feel the same way about babies where I'm like, boy, I know that this is how it all, all of us happened, but that's nuts.

• 43:31John Green?

  Yeah, live birth is pretty wild.

• 43:33Hank Green?

  That's nuts that you, that like, do you grow one in, you grow one?

• 43:37John Green?

  On the inside.

• 43:38Hank Green?

  From scratch?

• 43:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:41John Green?

  Instead of just having some warm eggs.

• 43:44Hank Green?

  I mean, even that's pretty weird, but yeah, not as weird.

• 43:47John Green?

  Yeah. I just think if you pitched, for, okay, imagine pitching it to a tree. Imagine saying to a tree, yes, the only way you can live is by eating cows. Although you can, or, or eating, eat, worse still, eating other trees.

• 44:07John Green?

  Like imagine pitching that to a plant.

• 44:09Hank Green?

  Yeah, the tree's gonna be like, lick the nuts, lick the nuts? No, no, the whole tree.

• 44:13John Green?

  No, the whole dang, well, what happens to the tree then? Well, it does. It's dead now. The tree is dead. That's the only way. In fact, you have to kill the tree first. You have to use, use the energy you got from killing the previous tree to kill a new tree so that you can have energy to kill the next tree.

• 44:31Hank Green?

  There was like a time on earth before predation. You know, there was like, like afterlife, but before predation. And I don't think that it was long. I think that it was quite brief. But like, there's no reason why carnivores have to exist.

• 44:49John Green?

  Well, and indeed, there's no reason why we have to be carnivores.

• 44:52Hank Green?

  No, yes, yes, even more specific.

• 44:55John Green?

  As I have lately learned by dramatically cutting my meat consumption.

• 44:59Hank Green?

  Good for you.

• 45:00John Green?

  I just had a Caesar salad. It wasn't very good.

• 45:05Hank Green?

  Did it have meat in it?

• 45:07John Green?

  Anyway, I would have made it better.

• 45:14John Green?

  Anyway, we've got teeth. Lots of things have teeth, Mike. You got a floss and it is ridiculous, the amount of maintenance that teeth require, but they have such an upside.

• 45:25Hank Green?

  They have such an upside.

• 45:28Hank Green?

  They have such an upside, but they also have always been like a huge source of problems. Now, I will say our teeth are worse now than they probably would be if we had a sort of pure hunter-gatherer diet.

• 45:44Hank Green?

  But there are lots of advantages to living the lifestyle that we have.

• 45:49John Green?

  Lots of advantages.

• 45:50Hank Green?

  And also, many animals have lived totally natural lives and have teeth problems that they die of very painfully. So glad that we have the dentists. Thank you for doing the work.

• 46:01John Green?

  You know what we got in addition to dentistry from our modern lives, Hank?

• 46:07Hank Green?

  What?

• 46:08John Green?

  Football. Football, which did not exist just 200 years ago.

• 46:12Hank Green?

  Of course.

• 46:13John Green?

  200 years ago, people would go farm. Most of them people were still farmers and they would come home and they would have no football to watch because it hadn't been invented yet.

• 46:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, they just had to go to bed.

• 46:26John Green?

  And now, now I can watch third-tier English football on a streaming service called Don's TV and enjoy AFC Wimbledon getting their absolute butts handed to them by Stockport County.

• 46:40John Green?

  3-0 and that scoreline, as that scoreline does flatter Stockport a little. As my friend Jonathan, longtime nerd fighter, texted me after the game. That was the most encouraging 3-0 loss I've ever seen. So there were reasons to be encouraged, but Wimbledon, realistically, I think we have eight games left in the season, or seven games left in the season. And to be safe, I think we might need one or two more points.

• 47:10Hank Green?

  Okay, I think you can get them.

• 47:13John Green?

  I hope so.

• 47:14Hank Green?

  Are you playing any baddies?

• 47:16John Green?

  No, we're playing mostly goodies.

• 47:18Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 47:19John Green?

  Like this weekend, we're playing Lincoln City, the best team in League One by a country mile.

• 47:22Hank Green?

  A whole city?

• 47:23John Green?

  They're gonna play us off the pitch. I know, it's not fair. It's not like AFC London gets to play Lincoln City, no. No, just little Wimbledon, just in that little corner of southwest London is playing Lincoln City.

• 47:35Hank Green?

  And Stockton, the whole county as well.

• 47:37John Green?

  I know, it's hard. It's hard to play a whole Stockport county. Fortunately, coming after that, we've got Luton Town, and we got a chance there.

• 47:44Hank Green?

  You know, I feel like I know how Stockport got its name, John.

• 47:48John Green?

  Yes, I believe it is, although it is not on the coast. So there's a surprise for you.

• 47:53Hank Green?

  Is it on a river?

• 47:55John Green?

  Probably.

• 47:56Hank Green?

  They all are. It's England.

• 47:57John Green?

  I don't like to judge places other than Milton Keynes. But I would say Stockport is a hard place, you know? Some places are soft, some places are hard. Stockport's a little harder than most places.

• 48:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, Stockport's got some calluses.

• 48:13John Green?

  Speaking of the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes, though, they are near the top of League Two. So there is a chance that next season... I know, that is too bad. There's a chance that next season we could play them. But there's also a chance that they could heroically fall down the ranks in the last few games of the season, which would be very funny, and lose in the playoffs, which would be a delight. So, a kid can dream.

• 48:50Hank Green?

  In Mars News, the guy who wrote The Martian wrote another book that turned into another... Other movie that's just been an absolute smash hit.

• 49:00John Green?

  Project Hail Mary. Big hit. Big hit.

• 49:03Hank Green?

  Have you gone to see it yet?

• 49:05John Green?

  I'm seeing it on Tuesday with my daughter.

• 49:07Hank Green?

  Nice. Nice. It was a delight. I enjoyed it very much. And I also enjoy movies, you know? I just don't think I do it enough. Orin loved it, got a little bored at certain moments. It was quite long, but was enamored and was a big fan of the the secondary main character, who you meet in the, you know, first half of the movie.

• 49:33John Green?

  My book, Hollywood Ending, is a Hollywood story. It's about Hollywood and it's really a love letter to movies on some level. Like, I love movies. And as I've gotten older, I've learned to love movies more and appreciate the art of them. So I'm really excited to see Project Hail Mary in the theater. I'm one of those old people that really enjoys going to the theater, getting the popcorn, getting the Coke Zero, that whole shebang. So it should be a good time. And it's great. It's great to go to a place where you watch a movie with strangers. I still think that has value.

• 50:08Hank Green?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 50:10John Green?

  You know, it doesn't have value.

• 50:13Hank Green?

  Uh oh, ring pops.

• 50:14John Green?

  Milton Keynes.

• 50:16Hank Green?

  Oh, wow.

• 50:18Hank Green?

  If you want to send us your questions, you can do that at [email protected]. That's how we have a podcast. There isn't anything without all of your lovely thoughts. So thank you to everybody who sent in your questions. This podcast is edited by Bridget Kennison. It's mixed by Callie Dishman. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsro, Hassan Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna Rolla. And as they say in our hometown,

• 50:48John Green?

  Don't forget to be awesome.