Pod Insights Dear Hank & John 453: Nobody Is as Good as Me About this episode Why is it so hard to do things? What’s next for Nerdfighteria? Do our brains know when our limbs fall asleep? Is it possible for a mirror to have never been used? Do John and Hank purchase each other's books in stores? …Hank and John Green have answers!
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Hank Green? You're listening to a Complexly podcast.
0:08 Hank Green? Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.
0:11 John Green? Yours, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank.
0:14 Hank Green? It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, my friend's a lumberjack and he told me that he has cut 2,417 trees and he knows because every time he cuts a tree, he keeps a log.
0:28 John Green? Oh, that's good. Did you get that jacket from, from the lumberjack?
0:33 Hank Green? Oh, no, I got this from the fancy clothing store, but I'm glad that you think that it looks like I might have gotten it from a lumberjack.
0:41 John Green? It looks like you might have gotten it from a lumberjack, but it's a good looking jacket.
0:44 Hank Green? Oh, thanks. You got a good looking jacket yourself. Go AFC Wimbledon. We're staying up, up to the cup, cup, cup, up, up and Dr. Seuss and et cetera.
0:55 John Green? Yes, we're staying up. That's the important thing. I don't care how you celebrate it as long as you celebrate it. How are you, Hank?
1:02 Hank Green? Hi, I'm on top of the world.
1:04 John Green? Oh, really?
1:05 Hank Green? I've had the song "It's Raining Tacos" in my head for three days, so that's how I'm doing.
1:09 John Green? It's raining tacos from out of the sky, tacos. Yeah, that was a constant companion when my children were the age of your child.
1:22 Hank Green? It just, I wa- I wake up in the morning and it's like lettuce and shells, cheese and meat. That's, it's raining taco. That's what my brain does. And I, I do, I do wonder what the, the having of a song in your head is about.
1:40 John Green? Yeah, I don't know.
1:41 Hank Green? It feels like it's about something.
1:43 John Green? I don't think it's ref- I think it's like dreams being the waste products of the mind. I don't think it's about much of anything, but if you want to give it meaning, I think that's fine.
1:52 Hank Green? It's a, well, but even if it's a waste product, that's, that's about something. I don't mean that it's about like, like, why is it, why is it happening? How can I have like a bunch of thoughts and be doing a bunch of things in that whole time?
2:05 John Green? Yeah.
2:05 Hank Green? My brain's like, it's raining taco, just like right in the, in the back there.
2:09 John Green? Yep.
2:09 Hank Green? It's just, the whole separate part of it is dedicated to the tacos song.
2:13 John Green? The whole separate part of my brain that's dedicated to something else right now is dedicated to my book Hollywood Ending that comes out on September 22nd.
2:21 Hank Green? September 22nd.
2:23 John Green? And I just wanted to ask you if you've read it yet.
2:26 Hank Green? I'm 20% of the way through.
2:28 John Green? Twenty percent of the way through. You're still in part one.
2:31 Hank Green? It's good. It's, things are occurring.
2:33 John Green? Part one is most of what I'm working on, so some of it will change, but not too much of it, hopefully. But if you have any notes for part one, let me know. If you have notes for the rest of it, don't let me know.
2:41 Hank Green? Okay, you got it. You know, there's a lot that I didn't know about Andy Warhol that I'm learning, so there's that.
2:48 John Green? Are you learning more about Andy Warhol or about Hollywood? More about Warhol, huh?
2:52 Hank Green? I mean, I know more. I know about Hollywood more than the average person, but like,
2:56 John Green? Right.
2:57 Hank Green? I think I'm learning about how it, the, the, the way in which the people in front of the camera are objects to be moved around.
3:09 John Green? Yeah.
3:10 Hank Green? Like, really, they are, they are both the stars and, like, in a weird way, completely powerless.
3:18 John Green? Totally powerless. Actors are cattle, as Alfred Hitchcock famously put it.
3:25 Hank Green? So that is, that is actually, I mean, I've, I've experienced that directly, having been, having been cattle.
3:32 John Green? Yeah.
3:32 Hank Green? Been, and like, they want you to feel like you're not. They want you to feel like you're very special.
3:36 John Green? Mostly, mostly they just need you to have your face and stare in the right direction and say the right thing.
3:42 Hank Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then do it 17 times.
3:47 John Green? Right. And then you, as an artist, as an actor, you have to find ways to turn that into art to create the very similitude that's so important to the actual product.
4:00 Hank Green? Yeah.
4:01 John Green? And that seems to me like the hardest part, like to-
4:04 Hank Green? On the fifth camera angle.
4:06 John Green? Yeah.
4:06 Hank Green? The fifth time you do it at the fifth camera angle. Yeah.
4:09 John Green? Right. The, the 37th time you, you do it to bring your full self to it seems really challenging.
4:16 Hank Green? It is a weird job and it is not, the glamour seems to have nothing to do with the actual process of the art.
4:23 John Green? Right. Oh, no, that's very true.
4:26 Hank Green? Yeah.
4:26 John Green? Uh, the glamour is more about the fact that it tends to attract people who are stereotypically beautiful.
4:33 Hank Green? Hmm.
4:33 John Green? Uh, tend to get work. And also, I think that there's some glamour in the uh, popularity of the art, right? Like, it's a, it's an art form that still has wide reach, which most
4:45 Hank Green? Yeah.
4:46 John Green? art forms don't like.
4:48 Hank Green? Mm hmm.
4:48 John Green? I often say that if you sell 100,000 books, you've had a tremendously successful book. And if you sell 100,000 movie tickets, your movie is a complete failure.
4:55 Hank Green? Yeah.
4:56 John Green? You know, it's just a whole different scale at which like the art takes place, a whole different kind of audience. So.
5:02 Hank Green? Right. And it has both the scale, it has both the reach and the cachet. Like, I don't know how else to, to talk about it, but like, like it is just.
5:11 John Green? Right. Like, like YouTube doesn't have the cachet.
5:14 Hank Green? Yeah, you, I could get, I could get more, more views on a two hour long YouTube video than a two hour long movie would get. And like, nobody would think that those were similar achievements.
5:24 John Green? Right. Yes. Nobody complimented me on my hour long crash course, deep dive into tuberculosis and said like, this really deserves an Oscar.
5:33 Hank Green? No, no, nobody, nobody came forward thinking that it was gonna be, I don't know, did it win anything?
5:39 John Green? But what do you mean, win anything?
5:40 Hank Green? Did it get a Webby?
5:41 John Green? Nominated for any, no, it didn't get a Webby.
5:43 Hank Green? Ah, come on, you could have got a Webby for that.
5:45 John Green? I'm not, I'm not interested. I have to confess, Hank, and this is, I am interested in prizes, truly, like, I don't wanna be, but I am, but I'm not interested in Webby's. I think I already have one.
5:56 Hank Green? Oh, yeah, yeah, I think we both do. I think we have a, we might have like a lifetime achievement aware, award Webby.
6:01 John Green? Well, what's the point of a second Webby? I don't want a second Oscar either.
6:05 Hank Green? Do you have an Oscar?
6:06 John Green? No, I want a first one.
6:11 Hank Green? I bet you'd want a second one if you had a first one.
6:13 John Green? Uh, maybe. I don't know. Do you think, I don't think people who win MacArthur Genius Grants think, man, I wish I had a second MacArthur Genius Grant.
6:20 Hank Green? Well, cause it doesn't happen.
6:21 John Green? Just walk around all day saying I'm a MacArthur Genius.
6:24 Hank Green? Mr. MacArthur says I'm a genius. I, as you know, John, I am much, much more compelled by the, the market-based prizes of
6:34 John Green? Yes.
6:34 Hank Green? Number one New York Times bestseller, number one app in the App Store, twenty years of continuous relevance on the, in the salience factory. All of those things are, are where I derive my feelings of I actually did a good job. Yeah.
6:52 John Green? It's a totally normal thing to want and an easy thing to achieve being relevant in the salience factory.
7:00 John Green? Put it on his tombstone, everybody. Hank Green, he's spent twenty years feeding content to the salience factory and he's stayed relevant the whole time. It's almost like an insult to say he's relevant the whole time.
7:15 Hank Green? Did you do it with a normal, healthy brain? Because that doesn't seem possible. That seems unlikely.
7:21 John Green? I'll say, I'll say. All right, let's ask some questions from our listeners, beginning with this one from Ella. It's kind of on topic, Hank. Dear John and Hank, why is it so hard to do things? I look at people like you guys doing so many wonderful things for the world and I'm amazed. I like to think I have some brains in my head and feet in my shoes, but when I start to think about actually making things happen in the world, I get totally stuck and I feel like I don't have the skills necessary to actually make anything happen. To complicate the matter, I graduated college last spring and have been suffering from no longer having consistent validation of my intelligence syndrome. When did you guys feel confident enough to start building businesses and making your work public? How can I unearth a little bit of the confidence in my own life? Ella. It's a great question, Hank. I mean, first off, Ella, you are still really, really young and new in your career.
8:04 John Green? So like, you know, when I was your age, I looked in my doctor's chart and the first thing I saw was patient is a low-functioning young adult.
8:17 Hank Green? They really shouldn't put that within reach.
8:21 John Green? Well, they should. She shouldn't have left the room, but on the other hand, I shouldn't have opened the chart.
8:25 Hank Green? You, okay. You didn't just glance. It was.
8:28 John Green? No, I didn't glance. I opened.
8:30 Hank Green? Wow.
8:31 John Green? Well, I was a low functioning young adult, Hank.
8:35 Hank Green? That's the kind of thing that a low functioning young adult would do.
8:40 Hank Green? And, and, you know, and that's fine. That's what young adulthood is for. It's for functioning low.
8:45 John Green? Yeah.
8:46 Hank Green? I have had this conversation several times where people are like, you gotta, you gotta understand, John Green uploaded his first YouTube video when he was 30. Like, this was not.
8:53 John Green? Right.
8:54 Hank Green? We, we didn't start out like this.
8:56 John Green? Yeah.
8:57 Hank Green? Though you had published a novel by that point and it had been popular with librarians.
9:01 John Green? Yes, it had been limitedly popular, but, um, but even then, you know, like, I spent five years writing that book from the time I graduated from college and stopped working as a chaplain to the time it came out was like six years and I was writing the book the whole time.
9:15 Hank Green? But also like the kind of, you know, cultural relevance that we have is not something that all should aspire to, um, because it is not like, it is, is very, very much so a game that is only like, the status is in it being limited availability.
9:30 John Green? And it's not just that it's a rare thing. It's also that it's not entirely a desirable thing, which I don't think enough people talk about, like, like most, most people are not, uh, well equipped to this job, including me. You are pretty well equipped to it, but I think most people aren't. But I think Ella's real question is, how do I go from feeling like I'm doing nothing to feeling like I'm doing something? And that's hard.
9:57 Hank Green? Especially like the, in, in an amazing way, like you and I started on YouTube with a little bit of an audience.
10:04 John Green? Yep.
10:04 Hank Green? And that was so valuable because of your books. And, uh, and so we were creating for each other. So we were holding each other accountable. But we were also creating for this small audience and we were able to make some things with this small audience and we felt an obligation to that small audience. It's very hard to to feel like you should create when you are creating for no one or nothing. So like building a community of creation, a community of agency is great where you can sort of like compare notes.
10:33 John Green? Or not necessarily building it, but just being part of it, you know, whether that's a writer's group or finding it, building it, maintaining it, however it works. But whether that's a writer's group or a painting class, you know, Sarah started out as a ceramicist by taking one pottery class, met great people, met great teachers and now makes, you know, actually useful things in the world, not YouTube videos, but mugs.
10:58 Hank Green? I mean, intelligence is so interesting and weird and great. You know, you talked about like having that validated in school. But you know, the the thing that you're talking about now really isn't about intelligence. It's about like agency. It's about like being like having the ability to do things in the world, being allowed by the world to do things. And also like doing things despite your brain being like, maybe you shouldn't do these things. And also like it's overcoming all of those barriers, some of which are like, there's no guarantee that you can overcome all of them. But that's that's the frame to think of it inside of like, how do I become a person who affects the world in some way?
11:41 Hank Green? And, you know, work is the way that most people do that. And you affect your you affect your company, you affect the work that the work that they do.
11:47 John Green? But it's not the only way.
11:48 Hank Green? It's not the only way. Yeah.
11:50 John Green? No, I mean, I, you know, I think there are people who make big change in the world through volunteering. There are people who make big, you know, in fact, if I look at the work that I've done, I think the most a lot of the most impactful work that I've done have been has been outside the. Realm of so-called work.
12:08 Hank Green? Yeah, I'm so grateful for people who are like friend centers who like when I say that I like they asked me to hang out and I say, no, I can't today. And then they asked me again, I say, I also can't that day. They still ask, they keep asking the third and the fourth of the fifth time. And eventually I'm like, yeah, it is. It's really not that I don't want to hang out. It is that like life is complicated. And so we had like, there are people in my life who are this way. And I'm so grateful for them. And I am not this way. And I like, I, I, that's one way in which I like, wish I had more agency in the world where I could be that for people. And I think all the time about how I how I would organize that. And then I simply do not do it. But there's all kinds of things like that where you act in the world and you become, you become in the world in a different way. And in
12:52 Hank Green? feeling like you can't act in the world, like you can't affect things is very frustrating.
12:57 John Green? Yeah, turns you into a low functioning young adult. Let's answer this next question from Nick. He writes, Dear John and Hank, what's next for Nerd Fight Area? It's been incredible to see the maternal center of excellence come to life powered by my silly socks. And now that is finished and fully operational, I find myself wondering what the next big thing could be. Do we need to provide ongoing support to keep the maternal center of excellence up and running? Yes. Could we build something else in the Kona district to support the healthcare system in Sierra Leone? Is there some other big project somewhere else in the world we can support? Pumpkins and Possibilities, Nick.
13:24 Hank Green? So first of all, the work is never done. I'll tell you that.
13:28 John Green? Oh, yeah.
13:29 Hank Green? There's, there's, you know, the, the gap between where we are and a just world is wide enough that we will not finish.
13:38 John Green? I'll be busy my for the rest of my life. I think my kids will be busy. Maybe their kids will be all right.
13:44 Hank Green? You think that we'll just have a just world?
13:48 John Green? I hope we have a more just world.
13:50 Hank Green? We already have a more just world. I mean,
13:53 John Green? Well, not than last year, but yeah, then then 30 years.
13:57 Hank Green? The 70s. Yeah.
13:59 John Green? Yeah, for sure.
14:01 Hank Green? So the, yeah, I think that I think, but I don't think that there will be a final just world.
14:08 John Green? Well, that makes one of us. I do. The kingdom of God is coming for Earth, Hank. It's just taking a while. Anyway, we don't have to talk about theology.
14:18 Hank Green? Am I gonna have to wear sunscreen?
14:20 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The sun isn't gonna go away. We've already established that would be really bad, actually.
14:28 Hank Green? But, so, like, I could see two things. The kingdom of God comes to earth, I need to wear more sunscreen, because it's bright out.
14:35 Hank Green? Or two, the kingdom of God comes to earth, and it's like, you don't have to wear sunscreen anymore. We fixed that.
14:40 John Green? I think that there will always be, I see what you mean, like, there will be no more place for suffering in the world. I don't think that... The issue for me, and we're getting away from Nick's question, but the issue for me is not the existence of suffering, but the unjust distribution of suffering.
14:55 Hank Green? I have issues with both.
14:56 John Green? And that suffering isn't randomly unjustly distributed. It is unjustly distributed according to
15:04 John Green? structures that were built by humans.
15:06 Hank Green? Yeah, I mean, I don't like that it's randomly distributed either.
15:10 John Green? I don't like that either, but I can't do anything about that.
15:14 Hank Green? Yeah.
15:15 John Green? Whereas I can do something, like, we can do something about the human-built systems that are causing unjust distribution of suffering. That's, that's my, that's my idea of the kingdom of heaven coming to earth, is like, you can't do anything about randomness, you can't do anything about bad luck, but you sure can do something about the fact that your zip code or the country in which you're born can determine so much of your educational opportunities and the effectiveness of your healthcare interventions. Anyway, Nick, this is one of the difficult things about building a hospital, is that the building of the hospital is very dramatic and interesting, and it's easy to get donors.
15:58 Hank Green? There's definitely more dramatic, interesting things in the world, but...
16:01 John Green? That's true.
16:04 John Green? Have you heard about our incinerator and our laundry system?
16:09 John Green? Yeah, it's true. It's not the sexiest thing that you can build. But, it's, it's not, it's not the most salient thing you could build, as Hank Green would say. But, it's, it's relatively salient. The idea that there wasn't a thing, and now there will be a thing. Maintenance, the maintaining of systems, and the slow incremental building...
16:30 John Green? Of systems through maintenance and support is much, much less salient.
16:36 Hank Green? Oh, man, sure is.
16:37 John Green? But also much, much more important.
16:39 Hank Green? It's the thing. It's the whole thing.
16:41 John Green? It's the whole thing.
16:42 Hank Green? I have so many thoughts about that. I've been thinking about this like a ton lately, like all of the how, how do you have? How do you do the necessary boring technocratic work while also keeping people's attention? And that's like a little bit our jobs. So sometimes I, I think like, you know, we have to do like fun, grabby little things.
17:04 John Green? Yeah.
17:05 Hank Green? Also, and not just because to keep people's attention, but because like the, you know, everyone deserves joy.
17:12 Hank Green? And, and fun. And one of the things I've been thinking about is like, how do we do science together? This is a, this is a.
17:21 John Green? Like as a community.
17:22 Hank Green? As a community. I would be interested in, in this. I feel like there's opportunities there. I, I started this project and I really need to get back and, and like, keep it moving, where I'm trying to figure out how many names? The average person knows. And, and how, how would you, how would you figure that out?
17:42 John Green? Yeah.
17:42 Hank Green? Because I have this, I have this theory that about 10% or more of the words we know aren't names for people. Cause a word, a name is just a word for a thing.
17:52 John Green? Yeah. But I know like Alex Rodriguez and I knew Dolly Parton.
17:56 Hank Green? Yeah, you know, so many, you know, a lot of words, but you know, so many names.
18:00 John Green? Right.
18:00 Hank Green? And so I want to know, like, is it like 1%? Is it like 50%? Like how many of the words I know are for people? That's a very interesting thought to me and not something that anybody's ever done research on. There's people who've done research on similar things, but not quite this. And, and I'm like, I feel like nerd fighter could help with that.
18:18 John Green? Yeah, no, I, I agree with you that having projects like that is very valuable for the. I mean, it's valuable because it's interesting, but it's also valuable for the connectivity in the community, right? The sense of connectivity. And I think the Maternal Center of Excellence has been very valuable for that. The question for me is, how do I keep the Maternal Center of Excellence very valuable for that, such that people are as interested in maintaining the place as they were in building it?
18:43 Hank Green? Yeah.
18:44 John Green? So if you're a maintenance enthusiast like myself, go to P I H dot org slash Hank and John right now and donate to Partners in Health or get your awesome socks. Because I do think that, you know, the big project to me is how many deaths can we avert over the next generation with this incredible new gift to the Kono District?
19:11 Hank Green? Yeah.
19:12 John Green? And the answer to that is determined primarily by whether or not the hospital is adequately supplied, staffed, has adequate space and systems.
19:20 Hank Green? I mean, so much of everything. Even being alive is about maintenance. Like, just like, I've got a body and I need to take care of it. And like, it takes up a fair amount of my life, you know?
19:31 John Green? Yeah.
19:32 Hank Green? Thinking about both how to take care of the physical part and the non-physical part. It's a lot. It's part of being a high-functioning, older adult.
19:40 John Green? It reminds me of the great Kurt Vonnegut line, "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."
19:48 Hank Green? He's stuck right in my belly with that one.
19:50 John Green? Yeah, I mean-
19:50 Hank Green? Leave it, Kurt. I don't need to hear it.
19:52 John Green? You really nailed Hank Green there.
19:54 Hank Green? This next question comes from Emma, who asks, "Dear Hank and John, and the other day I woke up hours before my alarm and I got up instinctively to shake my leg, which had gone numb during my sleep. And when I say 'got up,' I mean stumbled out of bed and nearly fell because of my absent leg. Ha ha. My question is, in the context of sleep, do our brains know when our limbs have gone MIA? And do they wake us in order to preserve our limbs? What happens if you don't wake up and your limbs continue to go numb due to a traitorous hair tie or unfortunate sleeping position? Legumes and armadillos, Emma."
20:25 John Green? What's the deal, Hank?
20:26 Hank Green? It turns out- That you ca- you can create a problem for yourself.
20:31 John Green? Hmm.
20:31 Hank Green? And as Tmoki and I fell down this rabbit hole together, we found out about a thing called Saturday Night Palsy, which is a real condition that we do not, and we, there is argument over where the name came from.
20:46 John Green? Hmm.
20:46 Hank Green? Which is, it could be that it is, it happens after a Saturday night when you've been out drinking, and it was named after Saturday Night Fever, and it is Saturday Night Palsy, where you wake up on Sunday morning, or on Saturday morning, after partying, and you have, you know, you've been, you went so hard, whether it was drinking, or whether you just like stayed up real late, that your body was not awake enough to move you, uh, when this happened, and you could put so much pressure on your arm for so long, that you can have like weeks or months of weakness in that arm.
21:20 John Green? Wow. Wow. That's not great. Now I've got a new disease to worry about.
21:25 Hank Green? But there is also the idea that this was actually from the phrase Saturnine Palsy.
21:30 John Green? Oh.
21:31 Hank Green? And, uh, that's actually a different thing that is to do with lead poisoning, uh, and apparently lead and Saturn are connected. It's like Saturn is the god of the metal lead, which, if you look into the alchemy stuff, which I, I stopped after a little while, but, uh, but I did, I did read some Wikipedia about this. Um, and, and that that, uh, just got egg corned into Saturday Night Palsy.
21:59 John Green? Mm-hmm.
22:00 Hank Green? Uh, as a, as a separate problem, uh, and then, but there have also been situations, um, like, I think, like, one of the members of Megadeth fell asleep with his arm, like draped over a chair.
22:12 John Green? Mm-hmm.
22:12 Hank Green? And he, like, forever now has, like, his hand doesn't work properly.
22:19 John Green? Really?
22:20 Hank Green? Yeah.
22:21 John Green? Great.
22:22 Hank Green? Makes me think that he, it wasn't just like a normal sleep, it was a sleep that had some contributing factors to it.
22:28 John Green? I mean, I don't usually fall asleep with my hand over a chair, but on the other hand, literally and figuratively, I feel really bad for that guy from Megadeth. I imagine that his hands are pretty important to him.
22:41 Hank Green? Yeah, I actually don't know which guy it was, if it was a guitarist, and they probably mostly are.
22:46 John Green? Or, or drummers.
22:47 Hank Green? Also, yeah, that's the other, the other kind.
22:50 John Green? Yeah. I mean, is there any other, is there any other member of Megadeth? I don't think they have a tympanist.
22:57 John Green? Do they have a flautist?
22:58 Hank Green? Plays the glockenspiel? I mean, all of this is gonna require a lot of fingers stuff.
23:03 John Green? That's true. There's very little in the way of, I mean, I guess Def Leppard has a, has a one-armed drummer and he's, he's done pretty well.
23:09 Hank Green? He made it work.
23:10 John Green? He made it work. But it does, it does feel like saxophone, I'm trying to think of things that you play primarily with your mouth, but even those you also play partly with your hands.
23:22 Hank Green? Yeah, maybe he does the little harp.
23:28 John Green? You mean, is that just scat singing? Is that what you just did?
23:32 Hank Green? No, with the little mouth harp.
23:33 John Green? Oh, maybe. Sorry, that was so distractingly bad. I, I, I, I lost track of what you were talking about. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's Mouth Harp. Hank's Mouth Harp, yes.
23:50 Hank Green? This podcast is also brought to you by David Mustaine, who is the, the front man of Megadeth and is the guy that we've been talking about this whole time. And indeed, he does play guitar.
24:02 John Green? Does he? Or is he just a singer? If he's the front man, isn't he just a singer?
24:05 Hank Green? He also plays guitar. I don't know if he plays guitar as much anymore.
24:08 John Green? Okay, all right. Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Maternal Center of Excellence, the Maternal Center of Excellence in Cono District in Sierra Leone. Still in need of your support.
24:16 Hank Green? And this podcast is brought to you by low-functioning young adults. Low-functioning young adults, what would we do without them?
24:23 John Green? We're here. We're tired. Get used to us.
24:28 Hank 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, 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- Put on this jacket that I'm currently wearing with just a white t-shirt and I knew
25:10 Hank Green? 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. 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,
25:53 Hank Green? but that's not what they want me to do. I shouldn't do that.
26:01 John 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
26:42 John Green? relief never actually comes. The good news is that OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, which has proven to be the most effective treatment and it has transformed my life. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment, covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. There are licensed therapists who specialize in ERP therapy, who meet you in live, face-to-face, virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone. So if you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. That's nocd.com.
27:28 John Green? I got a question from Katie Hank who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was aimlessly scrolling through Facebook Messenger just now when I came across a post for a mirror that was described as, quote, "never used."
27:44 John Green? And it got me thinking, is it possible for a mirror to have never been used, given that it is always reflecting and surely the person selling it looked at themselves in it at least once? This feels like false advertisement. It's all smoke and mirrors, Katie.
27:59 Hank Green? I love this. When is a mirror for like, you can't like, is there a, do they make the mirror factory so that they're like always face down? So that the employees of the mirror factory do not look at the mirror so that it is not, does not arrive at Bath and Body Works having been used. But then they put it up on the wall and it immediately is used.
28:20 John Green? Well, no, no, no. Okay. So here's how you never use a mirror. You build it upside down.
28:25 Hank Green? Build it upside down.
28:26 John Green? You've got to build it upside down. So the only thing it's reflecting, even then it's being used. It's just like a tree falls in the woods and nobody's there to hear it kind of used.
28:34 Hank Green? It's being used by whatever it's laying on.
28:36 John Green? Yeah, yeah. Like it's, it's still reflecting the floor, but it's, this is how you keep it from, from, from being used by a person.
28:44 Hank Green? Is it being used if it's not being used by a person? Not really.
28:47 John Green? Well, that's, that's the tree falls in the forest question, right? Like it is being, I mean, if a bird comes up to the mirror and is like, hey, look at me, then it's being used.
28:55 Hank Green? Yeah. God, we gotta throw this one away.
28:59 John Green? It's sullied by a cardinal.
29:01 Hank Green? Never been used.
29:03 John Green? So I think that you, you build it upside down, you put it in a box. And then you, you don't unbox it until you, maybe it's never been unboxed. Maybe that's what they mean. In which case it's never been used because it's never been seen by a human.
29:18 Hank Green? You never know. You can't know. You can't know what happened.
29:21 John Green? It's true. You can't know that it's never been used.
29:23 Hank Green? So I need a mirror that's a mirror and it's acting as a mirror. But then I get the mirror and it turns out that there was a mirror film on top of the mirror. And I get to very satisfyingly peel that mirror film off. And then I know that I'm the first person who used the mirror.
29:38 John Green? Right. And that is, of course, essential.
29:41 Hank Green? Never been used.
29:43 John Green? The experience of a mirror is to know that you're the first person being seen in it, that nobody else, nobody else's body. Has been exposed into this mirror.
29:53 Hank Green? Mirrors are so weird.
29:55 John Green? I know you are always talking about it's because you don't understand optics, Hank. Like you're.
30:00 Hank Green? It's not just that.
30:01 John Green? No, you have a blind spot. You have a place you you like some mirrors have a place where you just can't reflect the truth.
30:08 Hank Green? I guess that just means that it's never been like hung up.
30:11 John Green? Maybe, maybe it means it's still in the box, but I think the critical thing is that it's been used.
30:18 Hank Green? Yeah.
30:18 John Green? Like you use a a mirror is used the moment.
30:23 Hank Green? Yeah.
30:24 John Green? An organism with eyes sees into the mirror.
30:28 Hank Green? Right. How complex does the eye have to be for the mirror to be being used? Is it just like a, you know, a sort of light detection spot? I guess probably if a light bounces off of there and then.
30:39 John Green? Light bounces back at you and you're like, whoa, that was weird.
30:42 Hank Green? Like, oh, I gotta move away from that or toward that.
30:44 John Green? Yeah.
30:44 Hank Green? Being used.
30:45 John Green? And I think that there's microbes probably on the not used mirror, in which case it's used from the moment it's made.
30:50 Hank Green? I don't know how mirrors get made. They're probably pretty hot at first, but.
30:53 John Green? You know what would suck is being a little bacterium on a mirror. How like being a bacteria would be confusing already, but then you've got the double confusion of being like, well, what's that? Oh, it's me. It's me. Huh?
31:07 John Green? You think you don't understand optics, Hank. Imagine being a bacterium.
31:11 Hank Green? I feel like mirrors are a place where bacteria do not last long. You know, they're very like, oh, there's a smudge. Got to get rid of that.
31:18 John Green? That's true. That's true.
31:19 Hank Green? So a lot of Windex headed headed toward them.
31:22 John Green? Yeah.
31:23 Hank Green? Can't be good for a little guy.
31:25 John Green? Katie, I think you need to follow up with the seller and be like, I'm going to question your.
31:30 Hank Green? I filed a complaint with the FCC.
31:35 Hank Green? You've clearly used this mirror.
31:41 John Green? I can't help but notice that you took a picture of the mirror that has your camera in it. Ergo, the mirror is used.
31:49 Hank Green? I don't know why it's the FCC. I guess because Facebook's involved.
31:53 John Green? Yeah.
31:55 John Green? I guess so, but at any rate, it seems like they're super responsive to customer consumer queries at the moment. Let's move on to another question from Mariah who asked, Dear John and Hank, I just pre-ordered Hollywood Ending from Fountain Bookstore here in Richmond, Virginia after John's visit, and it made me wonder, do you guys purchase each other's books in stores? I know you probably give free copies to give out to advance to friends and family and stuff, but if my brother had a book in stores, I probably couldn't resist buying a copy anyway. Pumpkins and pre-orders, Mariah.
32:22 Hank Green? Mariah, you're a better brother than I. I don't think I've ever bought a John Green book.
32:26 John Green? Are you serious?
32:27 Hank Green? I don't like why they're around.
32:29 John Green? Well, that's true, but I like buying, I like buying a Hank Green book in the store. I like the feeling of being, I'm always like, is the books that are gonna ask me? Are they gonna ask me, are they gonna be like, oh, I hear this book is great? And I'll be like, it is great. It's by my brother. That's worth 25 bucks right there.
32:46 Hank Green? That, if, if that happens, and I'm glad that it apparently did.
32:51 John Green? And you do get a very limited number of, of finished copies. You only get 20 usually. So you negotiate the number of finished copies you get in your book deal, and then they send you your 20 books or whatever. And so, you know, Hank's in my top 20, but I don't know that he's in my top 5.
33:07 Hank Green? Oh, but I get the book before it comes, I don't get like, the, the final book.
33:12 John Green? No, usually, but you don't get an advance, they haven't made advance readers copies for my books since 2011.
33:18 Hank Green? Oh, wow.
33:19 John Green? 2008.
33:20 Hank Green? So I just get a PDF.
33:22 John Green? You just get a PDF.
33:22 Hank Green? Walking around PDFing it. They haven't made, why haven't they done, I, I got A R Cs.
33:27 John Green? I know. Um, it's because my books were considered too, uh,
33:32 Hank Green? Oh.
33:32 John Green? The threat of piracy was too high.
33:34 Hank Green? Yeah, Jew fancy pants McGee over there.
33:37 John Green? Don't have a MacArthur Genius Grant, that's for sure.
33:41 John Green? I really hope you win a MacArthur Genius Grant at some point, so I can complain constantly about not having one.
33:48 Hank Green? I, I, I feel like, here's what I think. I feel like giving me a MacArthur Genius Grant would be a waste. I don't need that.
33:55 John Green? What, what do you mean you don't need it?
33:57 Hank Green? Like, what is it? It's a grant. I don't need money.
34:01 John Green? Well, no, you would give the money to Partners in Health.
34:04 Hank Green? Oh. Is that they let you do whatever you want with it? How much is it?
34:09 John Green? I don't know, like $600,000 or something.
34:11 Hank Green? Oh, my God.
34:11 John Green? It's a lot of money.
34:14 Hank Green? Why don't we just start our own? Be like, ha, ha, ha, ha.
34:19 Hank Green? Vlogbrothers genius grant.
34:21 John Green? And then the first, it's $800,000.
34:23 Hank Green? It is, it's gone up.
34:24 John Green? The first, uh, the first winners would be Hank and John Green.
34:32 Hank Green? Yeah.
34:32 John Green? It's like, there's this, uh, famous, have you ever, did you ever read that book, The Island of the Blue Dolphins?
34:38 Hank Green? No, I did not.
34:39 John Green? Children's book about, uh, a, a person surviving alone on an island of blue dolphins. Anyway, the writer of that award endowed a, an award for historical fiction and children's literature called the Scott Odell Award. And my favorite fact about the Scott Odell Award is that Scott Odell has won it, I think, three times.
34:57 Hank Green? What?
34:58 John Green? Yeah.
34:58 Hank Green? You can get more than once?
35:00 John Green? Not only that, you can get your own award.
35:06 Hank Green? Very.
35:06 John Green? That's what we should do with the Vlogbrothers genius grants. We should start it. We should do a big press release. We should make a big announcement.
35:12 Hank Green? Yeah.
35:12 John Green? And then we should, I love this idea. And then we should announce that the first two winners are Hank and John Green and never do it again. It costs us nothing.
35:21 Hank Green? Punked.
35:24 John Green? Well, we just could be like, listen, we keep looking for geniuses. We can't find any.
35:28 Hank Green? Yeah, nobody's as good as me.
35:33 Hank Green? They've all got weird opinions that aren't exactly like mine.
35:37 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They're all problematic in some way.
35:40 Hank Green? Not like me.
35:41 John Green? Not like me.
35:42 Hank Green? Not like me.
35:43 John Green? I've transcended. I agree with myself on everything. Oh, man. I do really hope you win one. That would be so funny to me.
35:49 Hank Green? They just like, you don't have to apply. They just like pop you with the money?
35:52 John Green? See, now you want one.
35:53 Hank Green? Who's this MacArthur guy?
35:55 John Green? Uh, some rich guy from the, from the early days.
35:58 Hank Green? What did he do? Something bad, I bet.
36:00 John Green? It's never clean.
36:04 John Green? The other day I was like, it's never clean. And Sarah was like, I don't know, your money's pretty clean. And I was like, no way, man. I cut down so many trees printing The Fault in Our Stars.
36:13 Hank Green? Oh, my God.
36:15 John Green? I did. I'm going to get up to the gates of heaven and they're going to say, St. Peter's immediately going to say I have two comments. And I'll say, I'll preempt you. The trees from The Fault in Our Stars and the La Croix.
36:26 Hank Green? And the, I think you're pretty clean, John. You just don't have MacArthur money because MacArthur made way more than you through the mail order insurance business and massive strategic investments in Florida real estate.
36:43 John Green? Yeah.
36:44 Hank Green? Yeah. I don't know. Hopefully, uh, his mail order insurance business was a, was like a good one. I can't imagine it was.
36:53 John Green? Well, not if you made that much money.
36:54 Hank Green? Yeah.
36:55 John Green? But maybe we shouldn't be criticizing MacArthur, Hank, since you're up for a MacArthur Genius Grant.
36:59 Hank Green? I definitely am not. They look, they look for people who are like, cool.
37:05 John Green? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like my friend, like my friend and co-host of The Away and Danielle Alarcon. He, Daniel is gonna...
37:12 Hank Green? Huh? He got one or you think he's up for one?
37:14 John Green? He got one.
37:15 Hank Green? He got one?
37:16 John Green? Yeah.
37:16 Hank Green? Amazing.
37:17 John Green? Yeah.
37:18 Hank Green? All right.
37:18 John Green? Um, and, and, and richly deserved. He's a brilliant, uh, maybe like three years ago, he's a brilliant writer and he created Radio Ambulante, which is like this, the, the most amazing radio show.
37:28 Hank Green? Is this like what it's about? Like, are people making this like, uh, this high-class, cool, sparkly, uh, not gonna make any money,
37:39 Hank Green? content for like elites? Because they're like, well, I'm gonna get that 800,000.
37:44 John Green? No, no, no, no, no. No. I don't think anybody thinks about that, to be honest with you.
37:48 Hank Green? You do.
37:48 John Green? I think people make stuff for, that's sparkly and fancy because they like sparkly and fancy stuff themselves. It's the same reason we never wanted to be on television, right? Like, all of our early YouTube friends wanted to be on TV and wanted to have TV shows, even though they were gonna make less money making TV, because like, that was their dream when they were young.
38:09 Hank Green? Yeah, and that's, it's where the stat, just like with, there's cachet, just like with the movies versus a YouTube video.
38:14 John Green? But there was no cachet for us. Like, we weren't interested in it because it wasn't cool to us.
38:19 Hank Green? Yeah, but then Scientific American sends me an email and I like, have a very strong emotional reaction.
38:25 John Green? Yes. So it's about what's cool to you, what was cool to you when you were a kid. And like, when I was a kid, you know, I, I wasn't reading lots of popular books. I was reading, you know, books that I considered to be quite fancy. You know, Daniel and I were reading Toni Morrison and, uh, Zora Neale Hurston, and we were reading Shakespeare and, you know, we wanted, we wanted to be part of the canon. Like, that was the cool thing back then. And so, when the canon comes calling, it still feels really good.
39:01 Hank Green? Yeah. Yeah, even if the canon is no longer relevant.
39:05 John Green? And it isn't, to be honest. I mean, like, I don't even agree with the idea of a canon anymore. You know, like, like, I, I, I think, I, I, I think art is so much bigger and broader and more interesting than, than, than that, than merely like establishing a set of like cortex that define a culture. Like, that's obviously, you know, hugely problematic in lots of different ways. And even so, when the authorities from that world come calling, I am always delighted.
39:35 Hank Green? I have this, this ambivalence about this because like, one, I don't think that there should be a canon and there shouldn't be like this thing that defines everything. And at the same time, like, I'm kind of miss the days when everybody read the same stuff. And we had these touchstones that we could share. It's almost like it's not about which things you pick, it's about that you pick. But at the same time, you have to pretend that there's a reason why you picked.
39:59 John Green? Pretending that there's no difference in quality between, and I say this with a lot of affection for my novels, like, no difference in quality between a John Green novel and a Toni Morrison novel does a great disservice to the overall quality of discourse in the world.
40:16 Hank Green? Yeah, right. You gotta pick some, you gotta pick good stuff.
40:19 John Green? You gotta pick something really good.
40:20 Hank Green? But there's like some, but there's lots of really good, I mean, lots, but there's, there's enough really good stuff that there's too much to be in the canon.
40:27 John Green? Yeah, but I think that traditionally the canon was used as a way of excluding people who didn't come from backgrounds that were seen as worthy of the canon, which meant that the canon was very white, it was very male, it was very dead. And that made literature feel cold and distant and turned a lot of people off from literature.
40:50 Hank Green? Gotcha.
40:50 John Green? Whereas if you're educated, the way I was educated in high school, where we were reading Tony Kushner's Angels in America and we were reading Vonnegut and we were reading Toni Morrison, who, you know, was just winning the Nobel Prize, like, when, when I was in high school. You know, we were reading Alice Walker, like, that, that stuff was really invigorating and felt, felt really alive and present in ways that have been very helpful to me as a reader in person.
41:16 Hank Green? Right, and I, I'm, and that probably felt to some extent like that when the canon, the original canon was being defined, which wasn't that long ago. It's not like we've had one canon.
41:26 John Green? Yeah.
41:27 Hank Green? Shakespeare's always sort of been hanging out in there for a lot of time, but.
41:30 John Green? Yeah, he's usually been in the conversation because he is the best in English.
41:37 Hank Green? He did English really good.
41:39 John Green? He's the best at English.
41:41 Hank Green? Yeah.
41:42 John Green? He won English. But you know what? He never won Hank. He never won a Nobel Prize, not even one of them.
41:47 Hank Green? He will.
41:49 John Green? Very unlikely. They don't give it to dead people.
41:51 Hank Green? Well, he won't be dead anymore. He'll be AI Shakespeare and he'll be writing new stuff.
41:58 Hank Green? And you can hang out with him. You can write him a message and be like Shakespeare, my girlfriend is being really upset about the way the fact that I didn't turn the light off before I got into bed. I thought that she was gonna get back up and brush her teeth. Turns out she was done. What do I do?
42:13 John Green? Shakespeare's epitaph is one of my favorite little poems.
42:18 Hank Green? Don't you dare make me into an AI.
42:21 John Green? That is literally what he said.
42:24 Hank Green? Oh, yeah.
42:25 John Green? Good friend for Jesus sake, forbear to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones and cursed be he that moves my bones. He did not want his bones moved, Hank. He did not want his bones reanimated by AI in the 21st century. He specifically asked us not to do that.
42:45 Hank Green? Don't you move my bones.
42:46 John Green? Don't move my bones.
42:49 Hank Green? And I'm sure somebody's already done it.
42:51 John Green? It's time to get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, Hank.
42:54 Hank Green? So there's the Psyche spacecraft. It's traveling to an asteroid, which is also called Psyche, and it's in the asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter. And so this this this mission has to go past Mars. But since it's doing that anyway, they decided to use Mars as a gravity assist. So Mars is involved here in two ways. First, it's speeding up this probe. So basically, Mars is going around and this probe gets close enough to Mars that Mars starts to pull on it, and then it pushes itself off of Mars and it gets a little bit of a speed boost. So that's great. Gets a little gets there a little sooner with less fuel. But also, as it's doing that, it's gonna take a bunch of pictures of Mars. Not really because we need pictures of Mars, but because it gets something to take pictures of, which allows the scientists to like
43:38 Hank Green? mess with the and calibrate all of the instruments onboard so that they're all ready for the moment that it arrives at its actual target. So that's happening soon.
43:47 John Green? Hmm. That's pretty cool. That's exciting.
43:51 Hank Green? Yeah. And then it'll get to Psyche in 2029.
43:56 John Green? Whereas it has already passed Mars as of this coming out, not as of the recording, but as of this coming out. I'm concerned that we're not going to get any humans there next year.
44:07 John Green? Uh, yeah, well, you know, singularity. I don't know what that means. The singularity is, is the, the point at the center of the black hole where physics breaks down. Um, but it is, it is also, it also applies to the point at which, um, uh, intelligence can manufacture itself and then all of our systems for understanding how fast anything can move break down and we immediately ascend into, um, the world where we no longer get sunburns. Okay. Well. The kingdom of God. Uh, is that what you call it? The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, depending on which gospel you're reading. That's your next reading assignment for after you're done with, uh,
44:45 John Green? Hollywood ending. All right, Hank. AFC Wimbledon have released their retained list, which is who is going to be with the team next season. Both of our goalkeepers, Joe McDonnell and Nathan Bishop are under contract. Ryan Johnson, our captain is under contract. Marcus Brown is coming back for another year. He's under contract. Matty Stevens, our goal scoring, uh, extraordinaire is under contract. Junior and Kang is under contract, although, uh, I will be surprised if we hold on to Starboy Junior and Kang because he is so young and so good. Um, I would not be surprised if somebody came along and purchased him in the summer, but, uh, let's, let's keep our fingers crossed
45:24 John Green? that, that that doesn't happen. Two of our best players, in my opinion, are not currently signed up for next season. Steve Seddon, who is the, uh, player of the year this season, uh, created more assists than any other player and did a great job tracking back as well. And Joe Lewis, our longtime defender and, uh, talismanic tall guy.
45:48 Hank Green? Small bottom big.
45:51 John Green? Small bottom big. Those two guys have not signed on yet. It's not clear if they will. Um, and a lot depends, I think, in terms of the quality of the team next season on whether they do re-sign. In general, I feel like there is hope here, but you got to remember, this team survived by three points this season. So if we're going to get better next season, which is not going to be easy, we're going to have to find ways to not only hold on to our current players, but get better ones. And that is pretty challenging. Um, we're going to have to, as, as Craig Cope explained to me when I saw him at the end of season awards, he said, uh, we're, we, we can't buy stars, so we have to make them.
46:34 Hank Green? Oh, and then they'll just leave us.
46:37 John Green? And then they will leave us, but hopefully for a big fee like Ali Alhamdidi did. Because if Ali Alhamdidi hadn't come to Wimbledon, we wouldn't be in League One. Not because he did anything to get us there, but because of the million bucks that we got for, uh, selling him to Ipswich Town. Sometimes it's great when they leave fairly soon after joining. Like, in my opinion, Ali Alhamdidi will always be a Wimbledon legend for what he did for the club. And a lot of what he did for the club was leave.
47:02 Hank Green? Fascinating. Oh, I'm glad that we don't fund, uh, space missions this way. It'd be tricky.
47:12 Hank Green? Just trading scientists to China.
47:15 John Green? Yeah. How'd you get your new crop astronauts? Oh, well, let me tell you. Geez, we got this guy on loan from India. We got this guy. This guy, he's, uh, he's, he's got no chance of staying with us. He's going to be sold any day now. But, uh, we got him for now. Yeah.
47:32 Hank Green? You got him for now. We're gonna get, gotta get a big boost for, they're gonna sell all of our astronauts and just do robotic missions. They're gonna do so much more science.
47:40 John Green? That would be really, really bad for your ability to get a human on Mars by 2027.
47:45 Hank Green? I don't think, actually, it would change the odds at all.
47:50 Hank Green? John, thank you for podding with me and thank you everyone for sending in your questions at [email protected] . I love to see them come in. This episode was edited by Michael Pulk. It was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Devoki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Ganna Rola. As they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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