451: We’re Synced, Baby!

Do Americans not like trains? What do I do with all my files? How can I make camp memorable? What happened to my town’s clouds? When did the concept of a weekend start? …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?

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

• 0:14Hank Green?

  It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, recently, Orin looked up at me and he said, can I have a bookmark? And which is lovely. I love that he loves books, but he still does not know that my name is Hank, which is hard.

• 0:33John Green?

  Horror, horror.

• 0:35Hank Green?

  How are you? John, you recently are returned, not as the listening, but as of the recording.

• 0:41John Green?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Hank Green?

  Here in Leon. How you doing?

• 0:43John Green?

  I got back yesterday. I'm tired. I'm quite tired. I was supposed to have a day with nothing scheduled, but then you insisted on recording this podcast. So I'm trying to

• 0:53Hank Green?

  Do I do that?

• 0:54John Green?

  You did. It's okay. I'm not mad. I'm excited to talk with you. I loved seeing the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence at Coideu Government Hospital. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've had as a vlog brother, as a person. It was just, it was incredible. It was really spectacular and made me very, very grateful and overwhelmed. That said, like, the scope of need in the Kono district is hard to get your head around. You know, I mean, I was with a community health worker, visiting with two young women,

• 1:34John Green?

  one living with HIV, one being treated for tuberculosis. And goodness gracious, this young woman's one-year-old kid, who is also being treated for TB, was just so sick and has such a hard... Road ahead and man, it just sticks with you.

• 1:57Hank Green?

  Is tuberculosis like in kids, is that usually like comorbid with like lack of nutrition? Or like, cause like the way I understand tuberculosis is like usually when you're young and healthy, it doesn't like necessarily hit you super hard unless there's other problems.

• 2:15John Green?

  Well, yeah, there's other problems. This kid was severely malnourished. I thought he was maybe like four or five months old, but he was over a year and just severely, severely malnourished and they have, you know, because stigma and late diagnosis, just a really hard road.

• 2:39John Green?

  The psychosocial parts of illness are as important as the biomedical parts. And I was just reminded of that, that stigma is fatal, you know? Stigma kills people all the time because they don't want to, because you know, the idea of getting treated for an illness being such a black mark on your social standing that you would choose not to get treated is, is real.

• 3:06Hank Green?

  That's hard for us to, and certainly we still have this with some, some illnesses for sure.

• 3:11John Green?

  We had it way more with cancer, like when dad had cancer in the 1980s. It was a really profound thing.

• 3:17Hank Green?

  Just a lot of people really wanted it to be his fault. And because it's protective, you know?

• 3:24Hank Green?

  It's, it's like a self-preservation thing where like I, I'm not going to get it because I wasn't, I'm not a workaholic like Mike or whatever.

• 3:30John Green?

  Yeah. Stigma is a way of saying you deserved for this to happen. And by extension, and I don't deserve for it to happen, so I'm safe.

• 3:39Hank Green?

  What people really want to feel is safe and it's such a blessing to feel safe. And so disorienting when suddenly you don't, when, when you've had it a lot in your life.

• 3:51John Green?

  Yeah. Hey, so before we get to the regular part of the podcast, have you read my book?

• 3:57Hank Green?

  I haven't. You sent it to me and I haven't. I feel so bad.

• 4:00John Green?

  I just wanted to make sure, I wanted to make sure that you haven't, haven't read it yet.

• 4:03Hank Green?

  No.

• 4:04John Green?

  Okay. You haven't even read the first page.

• 4:07Hank Green?

  Correct. I've read the first paragraph.

• 4:09John Green?

  All right. As long as you haven't read it yet, then I'm not stressed out. It's just if you have read it and you're not telling me about it because you're just being quiet because you hated it. That's a worry.

• 4:20Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, I um, it's top of the pile, tell you that.

• 4:26John Green?

  I appreciate it. You gonna wait for the audiobook?

• 4:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, could you, could you quick, just do a quick reading for me?

• 4:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Hank Green?

  Just give me a call, read the book, I'll listen while I'm doing dishes.

• 4:39John Green?

  Yeah, it's like probably eight hours. We've both got time for that. Um, but it was a great trip to Sierra Leone. I was with some of my best friends. I was with Rosiana, who uh, has been such an important part of this project with Nikki Wa, who really spearheaded the 25 million dollar capital campaign, which was not a job that she expected to be having. Yeah, Nikki was there. LJ, who heads up Good Store, where you know, 12 and a half million dollars have been raised for the Maternal Center of Excellence.

• 5:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 5:10John Green?

  You know, so if you've ever gotten awesome socks, if you've ever donated at pih.org/hankandjohn, or if you could today, uh, if you, if you could get your awesome socks today, or donate directly at pih.org/hankandjohn, I mean, it just, it's incredible to see the first NICU in Sierra Leone, to see 120 maternal beds, to see a world-class hospital.

• 5:35Hank Green?

  What's the vibe among the staff?

• 5:37John Green?

  The vibe is incredible. I mean, the vibe, the morale is astonishing. Because, you know, this is a place that for so long has been deemed unworthy of world-class facilities.

• 5:49Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 5:50John Green?

  You know, and has been told that good enough is good enough. And Maternal Center of Excellence is more than good enough. It is not a good hospital for Kona, or a good hospital for Sierra Leone, or whatever. It's a good hospital. It's a good place to receive care. I would feel very happy and safe with any member of my family receiving care there. And, you know, from, from the NICU to the C-section recovery ward, it is just an astonishment. And so I'm super, super grateful. But yeah, it was an awesome trip, man. I mean, if I could snap my fingers and be anywhere in the world, most days, I would go to Kona.

• 6:35Hank Green?

  Wow.

• 6:36John Green?

  The problem is you can't snap your fingers.

• 6:38Hank Green?

  You sure can. No, it does seem like it took, it took a while to get there.

• 6:42John Green?

  My 25 hour trip home on Royal Air Morocco was a long day, Hank. I had a long day. Sarah had a long day. Chris and Marina had a long day, but we made it home.

• 6:55Hank Green?

  John, do we have questions from our listeners this week?

• 6:59John Green?

  I don't know, Hank, because I can't find the document.

• 7:01Hank Green?

  Well, here it is. My first question is from Abby, who asks, Dear Hank and John, do Americans not like trains? I've seen videos online talking about how trains or shuttles are called people movers? Is the creation of this new noun due to some stigma toward trains that I'm unaware of? Is calling it a people mover less scary or confusing? A confused Brit, Abby, from, can you correct me if I'm wrong? A people mover is not a train. It can, they can be trains, but a people mover almost always is what you might call a shuttle on rails. So a thing that goes from one place to another and then back.

• 7:38John Green?

  Like a monorail is very interesting. I don't want to, I don't want to make the whole podcast about Sierra Leone, but this is very interesting because there's a, you know, I talk in the book, Everything is Tuberculosis, about this one Sierra Leonean physician who said, if you want to understand the challenges of Sierra Leone, look at a map of our trains and the trains just go from the mineral rich areas to the, to the port. Like that's, the, the trains don't connect people to people. They connect minerals to the ocean.

• 8:04Hank Green?

  Yep.

• 8:05John Green?

  And there's a brand new gleaming train railway in Sierra Leone that wasn't there the last time I visited, at least not as I recall, that is, it's the equivalent of a people mover, right? Because it has no like stations. It has, it takes iron ore and diamonds to the coast.

• 8:32Hank Green?

  From, from the mine to the coast and then back.

• 8:35John Green?

  Just to make sure that they don't in any way enrich the country.

• 8:42Hank Green?

  Yeah, so a people mover generally is like

• 8:45John Green?

  Okay.

• 8:45Hank Green?

  Usually at like an airport, you know,

• 8:48John Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Hank Green?

  The traditional people mover is like, the airport is so big that the two like wings of the airport would are like two miles apart. And there's an automated like, there's not even a person that's piloting this thing. It's just you get in and it just goes back and forth.

• 9:04John Green?

  Yeah. I think that Americans don't hate trains.

• 9:08Hank Green?

  No, I think we we may have a stigma against trains.

• 9:12John Green?

  We have a little bit of a stigma against trains, but not, I I actually think Americans like trains. It's just that they haven't been given the opportunity to love trains by larger forces, because I'll tell you what, when you go to, when you go to Europe or parts of Asia, the train situation is

• 9:34Hank Green?

  It's lovable.

• 9:35John Green?

  Oh.

• 9:36Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:37John Green?

  It's wondrous.

• 9:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 9:39John Green?

  The train from Amsterdam to Brussels, I wrote a large section of The Fault in Our Stars, taking the train from Amsterdam to Brussels. And then I'd walk around Brussels for a bit and then take the train back to Amsterdam. Because the internet wasn't very good, and so it forced me to write. And it was great.

• 9:56Hank Green?

  Even the times I've trained in America, like when it's actually like a useful train, when it's a useful train route, like I needed to go from, I was in in Los Angeles and I needed to go to to somewhere north of Los Angeles. No, I was in, I don't know, it was some coast of Los Angeles train. And it was beautiful and it wasn't crowded and I got to, and there was a plug at my seat and I could stand up at any time. And you don't have to show up super early and you just get on the train and you do your thing.

• 10:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Hank Green?

  It was great.

• 10:25John Green?

  It's amazing. I love the train from Indianapolis to Chicago. Great train.

• 10:30Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's great. Montana, not a train place. That's not an option for us.

• 10:35John Green?

  Well, and to be fair, like, I feel like midwestern cities should be connected by train, like there should be

• 10:42Hank Green?

  Sure.

• 10:42John Green?

  light rail between Indianapolis and Louisville and between Indianapolis and Milwaukee and and Detroit and Cincinnati.

• 10:50Hank Green?

  But you don't understand the difference between the Midwest and the West, like that's a very

• 10:54John Green?

  Up there, up there in Montana, it's six hours to the nearest population center.

• 10:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, there's no People, you gotta look at a map of population density of the US. There's like a line in the middle, and that's where the rain stops falling. There's just no water out here, so you can't have a lot of people, because you can't do a lot of agriculture, which is what the country was based on. Do you know what made the, like, the peak corn crop in America? You would expect that to be like last year.

• 11:26John Green?

  This year?

• 11:27Hank Green?

  It was like, it was like 1930.

• 11:29John Green?

  Really?

• 11:30Hank Green?

  Yeah. It was before that, I think. It was back when we had, like, before cars, when we had to feed animals all the time.

• 11:38John Green?

  As opposed to now, when we, when we don't have to feed animals all the time? Oh, to do the work?

• 11:42Hank Green?

  To do the work. Yeah, all the, all the mules and horses to do the work.

• 11:46John Green?

  Back in the Red Dead Redemption 2 era?

• 11:49Hank Green?

  Exactly.

• 11:50John Green?

  I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on John's channel. It's such a blast. I have so much fun doing it with Stan. The fact that Stan and I, uh, co-created Crash Course Humanities and then went on to play Red Dead Redemption 2 together, it's just, it's a wonderful arc.

• 12:07Hank Green?

  Now, is the, is the redemption Red Dead? Or is Red Dead being redeemed?

• 12:16John Green?

  I believe the redemption is Red Dead for the second time. But the main character, Arthur Morgan, I, I have heard many times that the, that the video game includes tuberculosis, and the main character just got coughed on by someone quite sickly, which feels, like, that's an oversimplification of how tuberculosis usually spreads, you know? But he was, like, coughed on very explicitly, and there was, like, some red, red gleams in the cough. And I was like, oh, I think I got, I think I got what happened there. I think I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to spoil anything for myself or others, but I've glimpsed how this might end.

• 13:02Hank Green?

  Is the red dead, what they call tuberculosis? I'm choosing to say yes.

• 13:06John Green?

  All right, ask me another question, Hank. I like not having the questions in front of me. Now you're, now you're, now you're in charge.

• 13:12Hank Green?

  This one's from Nikki, who asks, dear Hank and John, over the last years, I have amassed tons of files from projects and receipts to photos and videos. Most of it seems tossable, but I keep hanging on to it just in case. What should I do with all of it? Do I keep everything? What about when I'm long gone? Who gets all these files? What are they gonna do with it all? I know it's tricky. Nikki, where's all your stuff from when you were in college or first working?

• 13:43John Green?

  I have a little bit. So I have every email I wrote mom and dad and they wrote me back in college because dad printed them.

• 13:50Hank Green?

  That's nice. Yes. Printing it out is weirdly effective for the things that you actually want to keep.

• 13:56John Green?

  Oh, yeah. I've got the book somewhere in this very room. I have the book of emails that Sarah and I wrote back and forth before we started dating, when we were just friends, and it's the best. It's the best book to read to each other. It's so sweet and funny and like, I was so enamored with her and she was so aware of that.

• 14:21Hank Green?

  There's real categories here. Obviously, you don't need your receipts from 2010. Those are, those are not useful anymore. You know, it's hard to sort these things and it may get easier in the future. And also it is easier than it once was. There may be tools that you could be like, hey, delete all the screenshots. I don't need those. Delete all of the receipts. I don't need those. But they're like, photos is like, you might as well hang on to most of those. And nowadays you could probably get yourself a Google Photos account or something like that. Get them all on there and then have them be there. Don't have them be on your hard drive. That thing might just stop working one day and then you won't have them anymore.

• 15:00John Green?

  Do you need your receipts from 2010? Like, just let it all go.

• 15:04Hank Green?

  What if it's just like a pic you're gonna enjoy looking at someday of you and your friends being googles?

• 15:10John Green?

  You won't, you'll never look at it again.

• 15:11Hank Green?

  I do.

• 15:13John Green?

  How?

• 15:14Hank Green?

  I go on my Google Photos. And I scroll through the years.

• 15:17John Green?

  All right, okay, all right, maybe I'm wrong. That's, that's true. And now, uh, the iPhone has a new service where it picks a random photograph from somewhere in your camera room and shows it to you every hour. And that's nice. You're right, I'm wrong.

• 15:31Hank Green?

  But then, then there's like, I have a, and, and it's, it's a real tour of embarrassments. But I have like, my desktop of my desktop of my desktop. So every time I get a new computer, I just like put all, I don't do this anymore. But for a long time, I would put like, the desktop, which would have all my stuff on it, in a new folder called old desktop. And then, and that would go on my new desktop. And then I'd put, take that and I put it in my, when I got a new computer again. And so I've got like, layers of old desktops? A real wild tour to go through and see what the heck I thought I was gonna pull off as a 24-year-old, you know?

• 16:11John Green?

  Surely your 45-year-old self is pleased with how things worked out from the perspective of your 24-year-old self. You pulled off all kinds, what, how could you have been more ambitious than you turned out to be?

• 16:22Hank Green?

  Well, I was.

• 16:24John Green?

  You thought you were gonna be president? What did you think you were gonna be?

• 16:27Hank Green?

  I thought I was gonna, I thought I was gonna create like tech platforms, maybe, you know? I thought I was gonna be, be the guy who ran YouTube, not just a YouTuber.

• 16:35John Green?

  Oh, gross.

• 16:37Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know. I agree. I had all kinds of ideas. I was like trying to make like the next Reddit, basically.

• 16:43John Green?

  Oh, imagine.

• 16:45Hank Green?

  But then, but then also like-

• 16:46John Green?

  Think about how stressful our lives are anyway.

• 16:49Hank Green?

  I know.

• 16:50John Green?

  Also owned Reddit.

• 16:51Hank Green?

  Yeah. It was never, the ideas weren't good. I basically, I wanted to do the thing that everybody thinks, which is like, what if we could control our algorithm? We could tune it ourselves. Uh, which is, turns out is not what people wanna do. They just want you to chalk them full of high salience moments.

• 17:11Hank Green?

  Just keep, keep me engaged platform. I don't care how you do it.

• 17:15John Green?

  It's like how a certain percentage of people will choose to eat, you know, 12 to 15 servings of vegetables a week. And the vast majority of people, if offered the choice, will choose to eat,

• 17:29John Green?

  not 12 to 15 servings of vegetables per week. And I am in that vast majority, and I'm also in that vast majority when it comes to the salience economy. So like, I will eat when I am fed. I, I, I, I will not seek out necessarily the highest nutrition information.

• 17:48Hank Green?

  You gotta have a mix. But boy, I don't think I'm doing the best.

• 17:53John Green?

  I don't think that I'm doing the best. I don't think that I'm covering myself in glory when I look at my Instagram algorithm, if I'm being honest. More hoof trimming videos than like, how do we actually address healthcare and education inequities in our global systems?

• 18:13Hank Green?

  That's not what Instagram is for. You wanna, you wanna play, you wanna play the game, John? You wanna roll and, and open up Instagram and see what the first thing is?

• 18:19John Green?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 18:20Hank Green?

  Let's do it. Let's roll.

• 18:23John Green?

  No, hold on, let me get my phone.

• 18:24Hank Green?

  Oh, well, if he didn't have his phone, I definitely weren't doing it because I'm not gonna do this by myself.

• 18:28John Green?

  All right, here you go. First thing.

• 18:30Hank Green?

  I got an American Woodcock video from Stan's Field Guide about the American Woodcock. I got a McElroy video. McElroy family video. Come on, give me a stinker.

• 18:41John Green?

  I got a BB No Money video where BB No Money is talking on half the screen and the other half the screen is a person making stir fry.

• 18:56Hank Green?

  I just got the American Woodcock video.

• 18:58John Green?

  Hey, hey, hey, hey. Our Instagrams are the same and they're not that bad.

• 19:04Hank Green?

  We're synced, baby.

• 19:06John Green?

  All right, I, I know Hank Green, if I let him, will do this for the next 40 minutes.

• 19:10Hank Green?

  So that's the problem. That's the problem.

• 19:14Hank Green?

  Nikki, I don't know what's gonna happen to all your files when you're gone. I don't think you should worry about that. You should worry about how they serve you now.

• 19:24John Green?

  There you go. There you go. And that's, that's true for art as well. Don't think about how the art is gonna live or die when it comes to forever. Think about how it can serve you and other people now.

• 19:34Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Izzy, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm currently getting ready to become a first time camp counselor. I have been preparing by learning all the camp songs and basic games that I can get my hands on. I have also been watching camp movies for inspiration. I will mostly be working with four to six year olds. So I fear pranks. Four to six year olds? What kinda, this is not a summer camp. I don't think this is sleep away. That's babies.

• 20:01John Green?

  What kind of pranks are they gonna pull?

• 20:03Hank Green?

  Yeah. Have you met a six year old?

• 20:07John Green?

  The main prank they're gonna pull is peeing at inappropriate times and places by accident.

• 20:13Hank Green?

  Accident, yeah. Oh, uh, I, oh, no, no, no, no, sorry. I fear pranks, even small ones, may traumatize them. Not I fear their pranks. What else would you suggest I do to make their camp experience as camp like as possible? Smashing smores, Izzy. Friendship bracelets. I don't know why, but that's the thing you do. Those six year olds is a little early for that.

• 20:37John Green?

  I was gonna say, I don't know if you, those little four year old hands can necessarily knit together a friendship bracelet, Hank. But maybe if Izzy gave a friendship bracelet to the four to six year olds, that would be pretty magical. That would be very memorable. No pressure, but that would be cool.

• 20:53Hank Green?

  Though a lot of work, cause there's a bunch of them. You can fit a lot of five year olds in a, in a little cabin.

• 20:58John Green?

  It's true, it's true. That sounds so stinking cute, camp for four to six year olds. I'm sure that in reality, it won't be cute, but it sounds cute from the outside.

• 21:08Hank Green?

  Uh, I think you gotta, you gotta like build fairy houses and it might just be like holes. You know, you, a fairy could live in a little hole that you dig in the dirt. Uh, but I'm a big fan of a fairy house. Sometimes I find them in the woods. Cause I'm out there in the woods. It's a real delight.

• 21:24John Green?

  A lot of time out there in the woods, Hank.

• 21:26Hank Green?

  I like going in the woods.

• 21:27John Green?

  Always looking for fairy houses.

• 21:31Hank Green?

  And then, and then finally, the biggest camp thing that you do, the most important event of any camp is the talent show. Oh, yeah, you've got to do the four to six year old talent show. Because that's gonna be, that's gonna be a core memory for you, maybe not for them. Yes. Yes.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  I don't know what they do, but something, everybody's talent is the same, little dances. That reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by four to six year old talent shows, four to six year old talent shows, it's not about them. It's about you. The podcast is also brought to you by the American Woodcock, the American Woodcock, it's a cool word. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by trains. Trains. They're wonderful. And this podcast is brought to you by the Red Death. We're not sure what that one is yet, but we are a little worried. 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

• 22:36Hank Green?

  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, I have like a, 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. 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.

• 23:19Hank Green?

  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 and 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.

• 24:03John 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.

• 24:46John 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 N O C D dot com. That's NOCD.com.

• 25:30Hank Green?

  This next question comes from Anthony, who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm currently on a walk with beautiful Minnesota weather, not a cloud in sight this afternoon. And as I look up above me, I see a deep blue sky. But as I look around me in any direction, the horizon transitions from this deep blue to a hazy white in the distance. My guess would be that there are clouds above me. I just can't see them as they are not dense enough. Concerned that the clouds are avoiding my town, Anthony. This is just, uh, that's what they call haze, Anthony.

• 25:59John Green?

  Well, is it? Or is this another example of Hank Green doesn't understand optics?

• 26:04Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, it's what they call haze. I didn't say what haze was.

• 26:11John Green?

  No, so if you look up and there's a blue sky.

• 26:13Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:14John Green?

  I mean, I can say there are no clouds.

• 26:17Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 26:18John Green?

  I like if you fly up, like when you fly on a, on a, on a blue sky day, which I have to do pretty regularly.

• 26:26Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 26:26John Green?

  I fly on all kinds of days. I fly on most days. And so when you fly up in the sky, it's not like, oh, there are the little wisps of clouds. Once you get up there and you can see clearly, like there are no clouds. And then the reason the sky is, I've always assumed the reason the sky gets less blue as you look toward the ground is not because of haze. It's because of something having to do with optics. It's like the, the, the sun has to, the light has to go further or something so that it just looks less blue.

• 27:00Hank Green?

  You are looking through more atmosphere.

• 27:02John Green?

  It, that's what I was trying to say.

• 27:05Hank Green?

  That is correct. That's what the haze is. Like when you see these, this is like one of the reasons why like pictures from the moon look really weird to us. It's like they look like a video game render because the distant things on the moon look like as clear as the close up things. Because you aren't looking through more atmosphere. Because there isn't any atmosphere and on the earth, there's like all these particles of dust and, and water droplets and stuff. And, and also like the atmosphere itself, like it scatters light, which is why it's blue. That's also why the sunset has a different color because if you're looking through the sun as it sets, you're looking through it as it is passing through more atmosphere, which is why it's easier to look at. Why this sun, like more of the light scatters from your perspective. Uh, because it's

• 27:49Hank Green?

  getting scattered by all that, all the, the stuff in the, all the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. And that is giving you, it's scattering more of the blue away. And so you're getting all of that yellow.

• 27:59John Green?

  Hank, where would you rank the sun in a list of heavenly bodies?

• 28:06Hank Green?

  Uh, number one.

• 28:09John Green?

  Sorry, Mars.

• 28:11Hank Green?

  Well, Mars disappears is fine. Sun disappears, any star, any non-sun thing disappears, fine. Sun disappears, not fine.

• 28:22John Green?

  Yeah, even the moon, even the moon, moon disappears.

• 28:25Hank Green?

  Moon disappears, problems, problems. What can I do with that? Problems, not like, not like sun disappearing, like, like, like moon disappearing is like, oh, I might have to get my foot amputated, sun disappearing is like, I have to get my head amputated. If Earth disappeared, we would die sooner than if the sun disappeared, but marginally.

• 28:43John Green?

  And not just that, maybe, maybe it would be worse.

• 28:49Hank Green?

  What do you mean?

• 28:49John Green?

  Maybe it'd be nice to have those like, like, maybe if the sun disappeared, it would be worse than if Earth disappeared. If Earth disappeared, we'd all be gone, but we'd be gone very quickly and without any warning. If the sun disappeared, we would be gone and it would be miserable.

• 29:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, like, would you rather have the time to sort of like get your affairs in order? Not that the affairs would matter, but say goodbye, you know, just not be floating in space with no oxygen.

• 29:15John Green?

  But just so cold and dark.

• 29:17Hank Green?

  So cold and dark. The oxygen, though, we'd have that for a while. Well, how would we die if the sun disappeared? That's actually interesting question.

• 29:25John Green?

  Of cold.

• 29:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, probab- probably, I don't know. Yeah, the, the powers, the power grid would not last long. Probably not at all, it'd probably immediately, immediately crash. So we'd have to be burning wood to stay warm.

• 29:42John Green?

  It would, Hank, it would be beyond cold. It would, there would be an infinite cold.

• 29:48Hank Green?

  No, no, no, we got, we got buildings, you, you build a fire inside and it holds on to the warm.

• 29:54John Green?

  You gotta go outside to get the wood and there.

• 29:57Hank Green?

  John, the sun disappears, I gotta remind you, the sun disappears every day. And we make it through 12, or sometimes 16, 18 solid hours. Up in Alaska, they make it through days, weeks.

• 30:10John Green?

  There isn't some residual sunshine sort of filtering in, that's what I always assumed.

• 30:14Hank Green?

  That's probably a little bit of heat from other places that's getting there, but no, we, we, we could, the, the Earth would hold on to some heat. We, we do have, I'm actually, I gotta figure this out, how we would die.

• 30:26John Green?

  If the sun disappeared.

• 30:27Hank Green?

  How long would we make it? Are we talking about? I thought, I thought we were talking about minutes.

• 30:31John Green?

  No, I bet some people would, would last weeks.

• 30:34Hank Green?

  Oh, that sounds terrible.

• 30:37John Green?

  I could be wrong, though. I feel like we could.

• 30:40Hank Green?

  Weeks in cave darkness, absolute cave darkness.

• 30:44John Green?

  Well, if the moon's still there. Never mind, that's lit by the sun.

• 30:48Hank Green?

  Heyo, heyo, Hank Green just got Hank noted, noted science guy Hank Green thinks moonlight's itself.

• 30:58Hank Green?

  There's always a special fusion skin that it's got starlight. We would have starlight still.

• 31:04John Green?

  Yeah, we would have some starlight, but I mean, you want to talk about some weak light. Starlight is going to be insufficient to our needs.

• 31:12Hank Green?

  Oh, man, how would we die? I'm so curious.

• 31:16John Green?

  I think we would die of cold. I think we would die of cold and, and, uh, and I don't think it would take that long. I'm going to take the under on weeks.

• 31:25Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm worried that we'd die of like asphyxiation. So that would be worse. But I think that there's also a lot of oxygen to hold on to.

• 31:33John Green?

  Well, it would be weird for sure. Like I do not, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't want to be a rogue planet. I want to, I want to have a star. I want to, I want to be, I don't want to be hurtling through space.

• 31:45Hank Green?

  Is that also metaphorically true? Should we all like have a star, something that we center around?

• 31:50John Green?

  Yeah, but it has to be something undying, right? Because otherwise you're, you center your life around something that might go.

• 31:58Hank Green?

  Undying?

• 32:00John Green?

  Yeah. God, love.

• 32:03Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 32:05John Green?

  Friendship.

• 32:07John Green?

  Searching for meaning, whatever it is. I don't think you can, can make your star like a single person. I think that's a lot, that's a lot of pressure on that single person.

• 32:15Hank Green?

  Okay, I kind of understand what you're saying. I'm like, like all the things you just listed are things that are not undying technically, but I get what you mean now.

• 32:22John Green?

  You go say that to God, Hank.

• 32:24Hank Green?

  Well, I apologize about the God thing, uh, that the God, the God, that God I can see being undying, but like, you know, like wanting me like, like searching, you know, that's, that's an undying thing as long as you're around. And I guess that's the, that's basically identical.

• 32:40John Green?

  You just need it to last longer than you.

• 32:42Hank Green?

  Or exactly the same amount of time as you.

• 32:45John Green?

  Right, exactly. You want it to be. Uh, at least as undying as you are.

• 32:52Hank Green?

  Which is famously not, but.

• 32:55John Green?

  Not that much. It's true. It's true. We're all going.

• 33:01John Green?

  This is my favorite last words of all time.

• 33:04Hank Green?

  We're all going?

• 33:05John Green?

  Yeah, one of, one of the presidents, one of the ones who was assassinated.

• 33:11John Green?

  His wife said, I want to go too. And he said, we are all going.

• 33:15Hank Green?

  We're all going. We're all going.

• 33:18John Green?

  Thanks for coming to our hit podcast for teens. What's, give me another question, Hank.

• 33:22Hank Green?

  Christie asks, dear Hank and John, when did the concept of a weekend start? Did ancient Egyptians working on the pyramids get two days off a week? Did they have, oh, did they even have weeks like us? Lost in time, Christie. I don't think that the ancient Egyptians, who I don't believe were always Egyptian, working on the pyramids, got the weekends off, but maybe something?

• 33:47John Green?

  Maybe feast days or, uh, or Sabbaths of some kind, but no, not, not, not a traditional weekend. The traditional weekend came about because of the labor movement.

• 33:57Hank Green?

  Before that, there was the Ten Commandments. One of which was, don't do anything on my day.

• 34:05John Green?

  Yeah, rest on the Sabbath, but like, that's not a weekend.

• 34:09Hank Green?

  No, no, no, no. It's, it's half of one. Yeah. And then the labor movement was like, what if there was a day that was?

• 34:16John Green?

  For you.

• 34:18Hank Green?

  Yeah. And then one for God. And then back.

• 34:21John Green?

  You could argue that we, we, as we increase productivity, we should probably go toward four days a week. Or you could take the Hank Green path of going seven days a week just for fun.

• 34:35Hank Green?

  Well, if, if it's, if it's, is it work? If it's?

• 34:40John Green?

  But it's work. Yes, correct.

• 34:44Hank Green?

  You know what my therapist says?

• 34:46John Green?

  Hmm.

• 34:46Hank Green?

  I should stop thinking about what I should do and think about what I want and what I need. Because I keep, I keep saying should and she doesn't, and she's like, where does all these shoulds come from? Who's telling you you should?

• 34:58John Green?

  Yeah, it's almost always an email, my shoulds. It's almost always an email. It's like, there's like 15 emails right now I should send that I, but I'm so tired. I just got home.

• 35:10Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, but you shouldn't think about the should. You should think about what you need. You need to send that email.

• 35:15John Green?

  Yeah, I guess there are some emails that I need to send and a few that I want to send. That's almost never an email I want to send now that I stop and think about it.

• 35:23Hank Green?

  I feel like less than it used to be.

• 35:25John Green?

  Yeah, it used to be a source of joy. Like when I would email Sarah before we started dating. I mean, email in the 2000s, it's almost impossible to explain how, how enjoyable it was.

• 35:36Hank Green?

  You've got mail. Now everybody's got mail and they're like, I'd rather not have mail. Uh, but John, before you get to the news from AFC Wimbledon, I know you have a lot to tell us. The ancient Egyptians and the people working on the pyramids, they appear to have had labor crews that worked in rotating shifts. So they did get time off, but they would have longer periods of time on. Uh, and their time in ancient Egypt was organized around 10 day periods called decades. And sometimes rest would come after like long stretches of work and then you get like a big hunk of time off. Which, you know, that seems like it might have its advantages.

• 36:12John Green?

  I kind of like the idea of like, uh, longer work, longer break, but everybody's different. Listen, we got to get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, Hank, because the news from AFC Wimbledon is incredible.

• 36:21Hank Green?

  Do me a, do Mars first?

• 36:23John Green?

  You do Mars first.

• 36:24Hank Green?

  It's incredible. It's astonishing. It's, it is kind of wild.

• 36:27John Green?

  It's pretty wild.

• 36:28Hank Green?

  This week in Mars news, scientists have found more organic molecules in Mars rocks.

• 36:34Hank Green?

  In 2020, Curiosity found a rock sample and drilled some holes in it so that they could run some tests. And based on that analysis, they found that the rock had 21 carbon-containing molecules. When we say organic in chemistry, we don't mean that they're from life. We mean that they are based in carbon chemistry. And seven of those molecules had never seen before on Mars. One of these molecules is important because it's like kind of a chemical precursor to RNA and DNA, not the kind of thing that would like break down from RNA and DNA, but it'd be good to have it if you were gonna make life in a place. We do not know if these molecules formed via biological or geologic processes, but it does provide evidence that Mars could have been hospitable to life at one point in its history. And

• 37:16Hank Green?

  it also shows that these molecules can be preserved in rocks even through billions of years of exposure to radiation on the planet. The rock sample was called Mary Anning III, after the paleontologist who discovered the first ichthyosaur and plesaur. And the solvent used in these experiments on the Curiosity rover is called tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide, or TMAH. But the Curiosity rover only has two cups of TMAH, and this was the first sample to be tested because it was considered to be one of the highest value samples.

• 37:50John Green?

  Oh.

• 37:52Hank Green?

  So we just keep finding little clues, John. They're exciting little clues.

• 37:57John Green?

  They're clues, they're indications, they're maybes.

• 38:00Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:01John Green?

  Hank, I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are on the six-hour drive from the Kono district to Freetown to fly back to the United States.

• 38:15Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 38:16John Green?

  Now, you're with your friends Ryan and Lauren, Chris and Marina, and your wife, all of whom, in addition to being huge investors in noted John Green Boondoggle, the Imperial Center of Excellence, are also small investors in noted John Green Boondoggle AFC Wimbledon.

• 38:36Hank Green?

  Uh huh. So it was your car full of dorks?

• 38:39John Green?

  Car full of dorks who love AFC Wimbledon, who are deeply invested in this community. AFC Wimbledon have lost six straight games. They have one draw in their 10 games.

• 38:52Hank Green?

  You kept saying, we like, we got so many games to get these last points. And then they were like, I'm gonna make John Green get sweaty.

• 39:00John Green?

  We had 10 games to win one game and we couldn't do it. And so we found ourselves with two games remaining in 20th place at the edge of the relegation zone, which starts in 21st, about to be relegated with nine of our best 11 players injured with an absolute, like, no starting forwards. Period.

• 39:28Hank Green?

  Hmm. What happened?

• 39:29John Green?

  They all got hurt. Marcus Brown, Omar Bouguil, Matty Stevens, they all got hurt. So we were in dire, dire straits. I mean, it just looked, it looked inevitable. It felt inevitable. Our last two games were both against good teams. Exeter City was on a stunning run of, win after win below us in the table. So we're driving from Kono to Freetown in a van with my friends. And I would say that Ryan was able to stream about 20% of the game on his phone. Like, the game would come in for like 30 seconds and then it would go away.

• 40:13John Green?

  We're playing Wigan. Game comes in for 30 seconds. It's 0-0. It goes away. At one point, we slipped down into the relegation zone because Exeter City score and send us into 21st place. And then Burton Albion equalized against Exeter City. And so suddenly it's not looking quite so dire. We're back in 20th place, but only by one point. And we have a worse goal difference than Exeter. Everything is going against us. We see little bits of the stream, it crashes, then a little bit of the stream, then it crashes. Finally, in the 88th minute, it's still 0-0 and the stream starts to work perfectly.

• 40:55John Green?

  And we're all watching and we're all just like somehow, I mean, we had 25% possession in this game. We looked awful.

• 41:05Hank Green?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:06John Green?

  And I was just like, somehow, someone find a way to score a freaking goal. Just, just one, just somehow. And then a ball comes in, in the last minute of the game, Hank, to Antoine Hackford, who's had a long season on the bench, buries it in the back of the net and Exeter City draw. And AFC Wimbledon have secured their League One status for another season. It felt as good as Wembley. We were loaded. That's how it felt. I mean, it felt as good as anything can feel in that van. We were jumping up and down. We were hugging each other. I was almost weeping after all the emotion of seeing the maternal center of excellence,

• 41:51John Green?

  to see AFC Wimbledon, to see this other boondoggle of mine. It was just incredible, incredible feeling. And then, and then Hank, to make it even better, the very next day, AFC Wimbledon's women's team had to win or tie in order to not get relegated. And they tied in the 88th minute. They were down 2-1 and they tied the game.

• 42:14Hank Green?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:15John Green?

  And AFC Wimbledon's women's team survive as well. Two teams that looked doomed on Friday, live again on Sunday.

• 42:24Hank Green?

  Beautiful. I mean, I cannot believe you started the season so strong.

• 42:31Hank Green?

  It's all, why is there always drama? And I feel like most teams are just in the middle.

• 42:37John Green?

  I know. You would think so. We were, you would think that we could have one season where we end just in the middle. But no, we're always in the playoffs or in the relegation zone every season, no matter what. So it is a huge achievement. We have the second lowest budget in the league. It's a huge achievement to stay up. The last four teams that were promoted via the playoffs from League Two all went back down in the following season. So this is a huge achievement, but you're right, we should have achieved it earlier. We should have had a few games without stress. Instead, we only have one game without stress, which I am going to this weekend to see AFC Wimbledon play a game that does not matter in the least.

• 43:17Hank Green?

  Well, keep it up, boys. Everybody rest up, heal up.

• 43:22John Green?

  Heal up.

• 43:23Hank Green?

  How bad are those injuries?

• 43:25John Green?

  Everybody will be back for the new season, assuming that they have contracts, which is always undetermined.

• 43:31Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 43:32John Green?

  So AFC Wimbledon, stay up. AFC Wimbledon women, stay up. And I've got a World Cup to look forward to. If you're as excited about the World Cup as I am, you should check out the podcast I do with my friend Daniela Arcon at the Away End, the Away End Pod. It's a great, we have a great time making it. It's no Dear Hank and John, but it is a wonder.

• 43:49Hank Green?

  John, thank you for making a podcast with me. Everybody, thank you for sending in your questions. It's [email protected] if you would like to send us stuff. This podcast was edited by Michael Polk. It was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

• 44:23Hank Green?

  American woodcock.

• 44:25John Green?

  It's a good ending.