457: Big Ball Curators

How do I best support someone trying to quit smoking? Why do migraines create such strange symptoms? Why are dead people and animals in cartoons often depicted with Xs for eyes? What do I do with a headstone in my backyard that is from the 1800s? How should I display all my nerdfighter memorabilia? Do ducks have ears? …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?

  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 dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know how farmers party?

• 0:23John Green?

  How do they party, Hank?

• 0:24Hank Green?

  They turn up the beats.

• 0:26John Green?

  Oh, they do. Yes, of course.

• 0:29Hank Green?

  Yeah. I don't know how you would turn up a beat, but I guess it's like a turducken, but it's a tur- tur- turbeaten?

• 0:37John Green?

  Well, we're currently growing turnips and beets in the same bed in our garden, Mom and I's garden, so it's not impossible.

• 0:44Hank Green?

  I don't think that you could cross a turnip and a beet. They seem pretty different to me.

• 0:48John Green?

  Yeah, I don't think that you'd want to. Like, the last thing... I don't like turnips or beets that much. The last thing I want is the worst of both of them together.

• 0:55Hank Green?

  But maybe it's the best of both of them. I love beets and I hate turnips, so maybe we could do something about those turnips.

• 1:01John Green?

  Well, Hank, I got my author photo taken today.

• 1:05Hank Green?

  Oh, you got a new one, instead of just going with the same one forever like every other author who wants to remember the way that they were once young?

• 1:13John Green?

  Yeah, well, it's, I think, somewhat precipitated by the fact that my best friend Marina is a photographer, and so every time I have a new book out, she's like, "What an opportunity to take your picture."

• 1:26Hank Green?

  Well, that's good. That's good. I like, I like a good photo shoot.

• 1:30John Green?

  Do you? I find them, even when it's my best friend taking my picture, a little excruciating, but I did my best. I did okay, I think. I, you know, at least Marina can tell me honestly, like, when I look like there's a gun pushing against the back of my back.

• 1:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, I do, I do feel like that's what I, I kind of ended up with for the cover shot for the new podcast for humans. I still look a little bit like, "I'm not sure how to be a human."

• 1:58John Green?

  Yeah, there's something weird that when a photographer enters the room, you forget what you do with your hands and you forget what your face is supposed to do.

• 2:08Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:09John Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Hank Green?

  I don't know. I think that my face always looks a little funny, which I'm not, not because I, my face looks funny, but because I'm always doing something funny with it. And it's hard for me to turn that off. But a good photographer, that most of their job is to try and make you comfortable and say things like, tell me a joke, or what did you have for breakfast?

• 2:30John Green?

  Right. A lot of the job is to be comfortable, but then some of the job is to understand like light and shadow and all that stuff.

• 2:35Hank Green?

  There's also a lot of that job.

• 2:37John Green?

  And yeah, so Marina's great at that. And it was, it was a fun, it was a fun couple of hours. But it was a nice, it was a nice break from signing my name over and over again, which is most of what I've been doing for the last week.

• 2:48Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 2:49John Green?

  In an attempt to sign 85,000 copies of my new book Hollywood Ending, coming out on September 22nd. I'm so nervous about Hollywood Ending. I can't, it's like all that occupies my thoughts right now.

• 2:58Hank Green?

  Okay, it's been so long since you've written fiction.

• 3:00John Green?

  It's been almost 10 years.

• 3:02Hank Green?

  Are you, are you even a fiction writer anymore?

• 3:04John Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Hank Green?

  You're, you're, you're, you are infectious disease writer, John Green.

• 3:08John Green?

  I know. And so will anybody remember their positive feelings for my fiction? Or does anybody even hold positive feelings for my fiction anymore? Or have they just moved on?

• 3:18Hank Green?

  Wouldn't it be fun though, John, to like just do, and I know that the answer to this question is no, but just to just do some Looking for Alaska numbers?

• 3:27John Green?

  What do you mean?

• 3:28Hank Green?

  Just like, like, do, like when Looking for Alaska came out?

• 3:31John Green?

  Like sell 6,000 copies?

• 3:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 3:35John Green?

  No, that would not be fun, Hank. That would feel terrible. That would mean that they would pulp 79,000 copies of Hollywood Ending that I signed. That would be a terrible outcome.

• 3:47Hank Green?

  So you've signed 80,000 copies?

• 3:48John Green?

  No, I've signed about 47,500 on my way to 85.

• 3:54Hank Green?

  Wow, geez. I don't know, man. I don't think I could ever do this. This is how I will never be a successful author.

• 4:00John Green?

  No, it's not. No. Because I'm the only person who does this and lots of authors are successful. In fact, I just read it in Vanity Fair and Patchett complaining about signing 17,000. That's one seven, not seven zero. And I was like, Anne, come on now. 17, what's it like work?

• 4:17Hank Green?

  I've heard people complaining about like- 500.

• 4:20John Green?

  Yeah. And they're like, oh, I just got to sit in front of the TV and sign my name 500 times. And I'm like, that's 45 minutes.

• 4:28Hank Green?

  Yeah, I know. I've, I've, I just did that for the Crash Course coin donors.

• 4:32John Green?

  I know, I did it too. And it was fine. I did that amid signing 85,000 times and it was totally fine. I don't even, I don't honestly don't even remember those thousand signatures that I did for the Crash Course coin.

• 4:44Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. Now I listen to half a podcast.

• 4:48John Green?

  Exactly. You can't even, you can't even get through the first months of World War I in your audiobook.

• 4:54Hank Green?

  Yeah. People are like, how do you do so much research for your, for your podcast? And I'm like, I listen to podcasts while I sign things.

• 5:02John Green?

  Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. When does humans come out? Is it out yet?

• 5:06Hank Green?

  It's out.

• 5:07John Green?

  Oh, I haven't listened to it.

• 5:08Hank Green?

  Our episode, well, you haven't, you haven't listened to it because it's not out for you, but it's out for everybody else.

• 5:13John Green?

  What do you mean it's not out for me?

• 5:15Hank Green?

  Because this podcast is recorded before it comes out, Sean.

• 5:17John Green?

  Uh. Wait, so you're telling me that when people are listening to this, they're in our future?

• 5:26Hank Green?

  Every time.

• 5:27John Green?

  Oh my God. I wonder what terrors have

• 5:30Hank Green?

  I know you

• 5:30John Green?

  struck in the last three days that we're failing to respond to.

• 5:34Hank Green?

  Get to in your head about it because if you do, it starts to, it freaks me out. It's like, I can't, I can't talk to these people. They're in a future where maybe the machines have taken over.

• 5:44John Green?

  Yeah, who knows? I mean, they could be in a future where I'm gone. They'll be listening. What if somebody listens to this episode in 30 years after I die? What if I don't even live for 30 years?

• 5:54Hank Green?

  Oh yeah. Well, first of all, there's a time at which you will no longer be alive. And I hope like to the person who's listening, Hank, John are dead. What the heck are you doing?

• 6:05John Green?

  That's wild. What's 2100 like?

• 6:08Hank Green?

  It's like me going back and listening to some soupy sales.

• 6:12John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. It's like watching a Buster Keaton film, but worse.

• 6:18Hank Green?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Except like really designed for quantity rather than quality.

• 6:23John Green?

  Yeah. So what questions do we have for the people of 2100? Hank, I guess my first question is like, I'm a little surprised to know that you made it. How did, how did you make it?

• 6:33Hank Green?

  How'd that go? Do you still get colds?

• 6:36John Green?

  Yes, that's Hank Green thought you would stop getting colds.

• 6:40Hank Green?

  I would love to hear if you still get colds. How's, you know, how are, how are you dealing with, uh, butt stuff?

• 6:47John Green?

  Butt stuff?

• 6:52John Green?

  Just say hemorrhoids.

• 6:54Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's what I meant. How are you dealing with hemorrhoids?

• 6:57John Green?

  Yeah, well.

• 6:58Hank Green?

  How are you dealing with the, yeah.

• 7:02John Green?

  Is tuberculosis still a thing? God, I hope not.

• 7:05Hank Green?

  Yeah, here's what, here's what, here's like my grim prediction.

• 7:09John Green?

  Okay.

• 7:10Hank Green?

  I think people like healthy people in the developed world won't get colds anymore, but other people will still get tuberculosis.

• 7:17John Green?

  So I disagree. I actually think the world will be much more equitable in 2100 than it is today.

• 7:27Hank Green?

  Okay.

• 7:28John Green?

  And I'm making that prediction entirely based on a little thing called hope.

• 7:35Hank Green?

  There's a, there's, you could see a little bit of trajectory, but like, I don't know.

• 7:40John Green?

  A little bit, not a lot, only if you squint.

• 7:43Hank Green?

  The thing is that there, there's so much more for the people who have.

• 7:47John Green?

  Right.

• 7:48Hank Green?

  There's just so much and like, it's very hard to understand the difference between like, uh, like having less poverty in the world and, and like have, like being able to get on a plane five times a year.

• 8:00John Green?

  Right.

• 8:01Hank Green?

  It's just like a huge difference in the amount of wealth.

• 8:03John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know what 2100 is going to look like, but I love the idea that somebody's going to be listening to this particular episode of the podcast.

• 8:12Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 8:12John Green?

  In what is for us 74 years into the future.

• 8:15Hank Green?

  And I just hope we figured out hemorrhoids by then because geez.

• 8:18John Green?

  Well, they're uncomfortable.

• 8:21Hank Green?

  John, do you have any questions for our listeners?

• 8:23John Green?

  I don't actually, because I don't have the document up. Do you have any?

• 8:26Hank Green?

  Ah, yeah, I got plenty. Uh, this first one comes from Elena, who asks, Dear Hank and John, my sister has smoked cigarettes and vaped since she was 12 years old. Now, as a 24 year old, she has decided to quit. It's been four months and my whole family is insanely proud of her. However, she is still really struggling. She used vaping and smoking to mask a lot of her difficulties with ADHD and depression, and I'm worried for her. John, you have been open about how difficult it was for you to quit smoking. Do you have any tips for my sister or on how to best support her? Hank, do you have any tips on operating in the adult world successfully with ADHD tendencies? Any advice, dubious or otherwise, is greatly appreciated. Pumpkins and penguins, Elena.

• 9:07John Green?

  Well, the thing about quitting smoking is that it does get easier. So I quit smoking in 2001 or two, and I don't think about smoking anymore. I don't think about cigarettes at all, and I don't yearn for a cigarette, and I don't feel anything. Um, so it will get easier, and four months is really, really good return on your initial investment. Um, but like, I remember once I quit smoking for a year and then started again on the 365th day. And I smoked like one cigarette on the 365th day because I kind of thought I was in the clear. I have a very addictive part of me, like my brain latches on to uh, pleasure buttons that I can hit, and I hit the pleasure button as many times. Like, if you put me in a, if I was one of those like rats in a

• 9:52John Green?

  cage and you give them a little bit of cocaine every time they hit a button or whatever, I would, I would hit the button until I die. Like, I, I love to hit the button. Um, and so I smoked one cigarette one day, and I woke up the next day and I smoked 25 cigarettes the next day.

• 10:07Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:08John Green?

  Because I just, I was like, oh, I miss hitting that button.

• 10:12Hank Green?

  Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just the flood. There's, there's no way to take your finger out of the dam without all the water coming through.

• 10:20John Green?

  Yeah, so that, I think that, you know, it's great. Of course, it's a struggle because it's something that's Like, my therapist always says, like, this must have been useful to you at some point, which is why you do it, but maybe it's not useful to you now, and so maybe you shouldn't do it anymore. And I think that's very much the case for using substances as a way of coping with other stuff in our lives.

• 10:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know why I hadn't thought about that with cigarettes, but I hadn't really thought about that with cigarettes. I think that we're just more judgmental about them because it seems so trivial and we've sort of tabooed it, which of course is a good thing. I'm glad that we've made cigarettes more taboo because they're very dangerous and silly, but, uh, but yeah, as, as a way of dealing with stuff, like, now you gotta find other ways to deal with this stuff. And that might be professional treatment, you know, that like, when it comes to ADHD and depression, there are people who can help with these things. And like, for me, it's really like, uh, as far as my like hitting the button, it's like finding stuff to always be doing.

• 11:27John Green?

  Right.

• 11:27Hank Green?

  And that can be hard. You know, one of the great privileges I have had in my life is being able to figure out something to do. You know? And, and I feel like that's denied to a lot of people. And, and it is, it is one of those invisible privileges that, that like we don't get when, when we talk about privilege, where it's like, well, I don't really see it. And it's like, well, do, do you see that just having the opportunity to try stuff? Um, or, or is society denying, denying you that are making it more difficult?

• 11:57John Green?

  The opportunity to take risks, the opportunity to do lots of things with your time, the opportunity to not have to engage in subsistence agriculture in order to survive, et cetera.

• 12:07Hank Green?

  Yeah, all of that. And, uh, and also the opportunities that come with speaking the dominant language, like, simple stuff.

• 12:14John Green?

  Yeah, that's huge, man. If I didn't write in English, if I were, if I were a Latvian author of The Fault in Our Stars, my life would be very different.

• 12:21Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Latvians, they'd love it.

• 12:25John Green?

  I hope it would have crushed Latvia. In some ways, it's better to be big on your block than it is to be big globally. And so, you know, maybe

• 12:35Hank Green?

  Yeah, in some ways.

• 12:37John Green?

  Maybe the Latvian me would be living the dream. I don't know.

• 12:40Hank Green?

  But yeah.

• 12:41John Green?

  I'm, it does, it does benefit you a lot to speak, speak and write in the dominant language.

• 12:46Hank Green?

  So, so all, all of that stuff, if, if she has opportunities to keep, keep busy and also maybe there are opportunities that you can add to the world of, of her life, whether it's going for a nice little walk or taking up professional coffee sommeliering or something where you just like get, get some hobbies. Yeah. Cause I love a hobby, man. If you can find something that you care about and, and that you care about together, it's, it's really great to care about a thing together with your sibling. I speak from experience.

• 13:17John Green?

  It is pretty great.

• 13:18Hank Green?

  We've got another question. I have personal experience here from Bex who asks, Dear Hank and John, I have had migraines for as long as I can remember, though they vary in frequency and severity through my life, but they have always come with auras. Often I experienced them with my eyes open, but closed is a light show I did not sign up for. Over the last 10 years, I've experienced auditory auras, which from what I can tell, don't seem to always be fully recognized as a feature of migraines. This is, this most often sounds like my brain latching onto a brief sound, like a fire truck going by and looping it for ages. This is crazy. I've never heard of that, but I believe it because migraines are super weird. This all seems incredibly rude of my brain since famously light and sound are bad for a migraine.

• 14:01Hank Green?

  What gives? Why do scientists think migraines induce such weird activity in the brain? Is it functionally similar to synesthesia? How do we even study these experiences? Mirages and migraines, Bex. I also, this is relatively new for me. When I was doing chemotherapy, I started to get migraines with aura and I still get them occasionally.

• 14:22John Green?

  Wow.

• 14:23Hank Green?

  And, and I mentioned this to our father who was like, oh yeah, that happens to me.

• 14:28John Green?

  Oh, interesting. So it happened to me.

• 14:30Hank Green?

  Is that what that is?

• 14:31John Green?

  It happened to me once and it was freaking terrifying.

• 14:36Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first time it happens, you're like, okay, so that's a stroke?

• 14:40John Green?

  I was gardening and I was like, suddenly was seeing auras everywhere. And I stood up, I went inside and like 20 minutes later, I was still seeing auras. So I went to the emergency room.

• 14:53Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 14:54John Green?

  Because I didn't know, I didn't know if I was having a stroke. I didn't know if I was having some kind of, uh, you know, mental health crisis. I didn't know what the hell was happening.

• 15:04Hank Green?

  Yeah. So a- as a very important piece of, uh, of the, of the medical advice, uh, UVR, which is our podcast.

• 15:12John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Hank Green?

  Always come to us for medical advice.

• 15:15John Green?

  You can trust us.

• 15:16Hank Green?

  If you think that there's like a 1% chance that you might be having a stroke, there's like a hundred percent chance that you should be in a car on the way to the ER.

• 15:23John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Hank Green?

  Strokes are not to deal with and, and minutes really matter in, in that sort of situation.

• 15:28John Green?

  Right.

• 15:28Hank Green?

  And wildly, when this happened to me the first time, I was like, is this a stroke? And I sat there for like five or 10 minutes.

• 15:34John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Hank Green?

  Before I finally was like, I should go to the hospital, which is so dumb.

• 15:39John Green?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Hank Green?

  But anyway, uh, now I know what they are like and, um, and we're not sure, but we have taken people who, uh, frequently get these kinds of migraine headaches, put them near a hospital. When they start having one, we put them in what's called a functional MRI machine, which images your brain and where the blood is in your brain. And that can show you what's going on in the brain. And what they see is a wave of, uh, something of some like, they, I mean, I don't know what this means, but they call it a wave of depolarization happening through the brain that moves at 3.5 millimeters per minute.

• 16:22Hank Green?

  But it, it has a state, a speed at which it moves across the brain. And this is what we think migraines are. And we think, this is definitely like even more caveats here, that when that happens in a sort of area of the brain that processes perceptual information. That you perceive stuff that are not actually there. And so the aura and also potentially the auditory phenomenon that you're hearing is like the migraine passing through the section of the brain that processes that. And then the pain is not entirely clear where it comes from. And some people, including me, get these auras and then the headache is relatively mild compared to a lot of the people. So I get a headache, but I don't get a headache

• 17:05Hank Green?

  that's debilitating. Like, maybe I want to like go lay down and close my eyes for a while, but like, I've never had a migraine that is disabling. And so, like, it's, it's, it's, it's a very weird, mysterious thing. And, and, and kind of cool if you can let it be. But it seems like-

• 17:27John Green?

  It's not, I would say it's not that cool. It's pretty annoying.

• 17:30Hank Green?

  It's super annoying.

• 17:31John Green?

  And if it's accompanied by disabling pain, it's even less cool.

• 17:35Hank Green?

  Right, right. But, but like, there, there's something in terms of the aura that's like, what you're saying is, there's a physical wave of a phenomenon passing through my brain, and I can see it.

• 17:45John Green?

  Yeah, no, that's terrifying, Hank.

• 17:47Hank Green?

  Yeah, okay. Well, I think it's cool.

• 17:50John Green?

  I love that you got this as a result of chemotherapy. You've gotten so much as a result of chemotherapy. Not many gifts, but many, many results.

• 18:00Hank Green?

  No, yeah, it's interesting. I talked to my doctor about the migraine and he was like, "But, that's not normal."

• 18:06John Green?

  Why, why do you think that your cancer treatment resulted in only negative side effects? Why didn't you get any Spider-Man-like powers?

• 18:16Hank Green?

  I did. My ulcerative colitis symptoms are far less severe.

• 18:20John Green?

  Well, I guess that's-

• 18:22Hank Green?

  And that's like huge.

• 18:24John Green?

  Would you trade that for aura migraines that aren't painful?

• 18:26Hank Green?

  I'd trade it for aura migraines that aren't painful, that happen at the, this frequency that they happen to me, for sure. There's other things, like, like a lifelong increased risk of a number of very dangerous cancers that I would not trade.

• 18:38John Green?

  Yeah, no, I understand. I understand that you wouldn't come out in favor of prophylactic chemotherapy.

• 18:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 18:47John Green?

  Oh, man. Um, I had meningitis in 2014, which is very uncomfortable, terrible headaches. And the great thing about meningitis, the gift of it in my life, is that I, I still can't feel other people's pain, of course, and like, that's a barrier past which no human I know of can go. But I am really inclined to believe people when they say that their pain is really, really bad, because having had really, really bad pain, it is, it's the only thing I had. It's the, it was my whole frickin' life for that time.

• 19:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 19:28John Green?

  Hank, why are dead people and animals in cartoons often depicted with X's for eyes? This is from Molly.

• 19:34Hank Green?

  Hmm.

• 19:35John Green?

  Where does that trend come from? And when did we start doing this? Curious to hear your thoughts on this, dubious or otherwise. Memento omnis oculus X habibimus, Molly. I believe that remembers all, all of our eyes will die, or all of our eyes will have X's.

• 19:52Hank Green?

  I don't know the answer to this. I didn't, I didn't pre-research this topic. I think that it is purely a cultural thing. People were doing, were, were do, like, needed to represent this somehow that was relatively non-threatening, like, you don't want to show a bunch of gross stuff. And so you're like, nah, probably they don't exist anymore. But I don't think that, like, there, I don't think that we ever, we put coins on people's eyes, that was a real thing. I don't think that we ever did X's on eyes. Do you, do you know anything, John?

• 20:26John Green?

  This is correct, Hank. So X has long been used as like, canceled, or don't, or no, or no longer.

• 20:35Hank Green?

  Uh huh.

• 20:35John Green?

  And it was a relatively simple way to do this.

• 20:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 20:42John Green?

  And so that is why it is done. Um, there, it, it's, it was done by Disney, it was done by, um, uh, lots of other people, and it was done early on in cartoons because it was easy and because it was clear to the audience that this person was dead or otherwise incapacitated.

• 21:05Hank Green?

  Right, right, unconsciousness also, yeah.

• 21:07John Green?

  Not all the time. Sometimes they would recover from the X's over their eyes. They would clear their heads after falling 10,000 feet or whatever. And um, do you think that in the early days of cartoons, there were all sorts of people who were like, kids are gonna think this is safe and they're gonna jump off of canyons?

• 21:25Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:26John Green?

  Okay.

• 21:27Hank Green?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 21:28John Green?

  That just occurred to me. Anyway.

• 21:29Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:30John Green?

  And the other thing about it is that there's no gore, right? There's no blood.

• 21:34Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:34John Green?

  There's no other, there's nothing, there's nothing that that could be seen as anti-child.

• 21:40Hank Green?

  It's like a safe, it's like a safe way to represent it.

• 21:43John Green?

  Yeah. Right.

• 21:44Hank Green?

  And I bet that like in other cultures, it wouldn't be immediately clear what is being represented, but we've all just been raised inside of that breath, you know?

• 21:53John Green?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Hank Green?

  Uh, it, and so it's just like in our brains and that's what it looks like to us.

• 21:58John Green?

  Have you ever gotten your bell rung?

• 22:00Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:01John Green?

  Cause it does feel like that a little bit. It does feel like.

• 22:04Hank Green?

  Right. You can like, you can like lose vision. Yeah.

• 22:07John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Hank Green?

  That's, that's wild. Getting your head hit hard enough that you're like, like suddenly can't see. It's like, oh, shoot.

• 22:15John Green?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Hank Green?

  How long am I gonna be dealing with this?

• 22:18John Green?

  It's only happened to me once when I got hit by that bike messenger around in the corner of Dearborn and Maple in uh, Chicago. And uh, this is pretty, pretty.

• 22:28Hank Green?

  It's happened, it happened to me once when I was a kid when I fell off a swing.

• 22:32John Green?

  It also happened to you once, I suspect, when you got tackled into a tree when we were playing tackle football and mom never really forgave me for being the one who tackled you.

• 22:39Hank Green?

  I don't remember that.

• 22:41John Green?

  I bet you don't.

• 22:47Hank Green?

  John, do you wanna know another reason that I found out on Reddit, why, why I's turn into X's?

• 22:52John Green?

  Why?

• 22:52Hank Green?

  Cause when things die, sometimes they turn into X, like Twitter.

• 22:59Hank Green?

  Good joke, good joke.

• 23:03John Green?

  That's true. That's true. And, and then they're just dead, but somehow still going.

• 23:09Hank Green?

  Oh my, yeah.

• 23:10John Green?

  Like Tumblr in 2016, just a zombie Twitter, sort of like struggling along. And then even Tommy in it is like, I don't think I can take this anymore.

• 23:21John Green?

  Tommy just quit Twitter, I saw.

• 23:22Hank Green?

  Oh my, that's hilarious.

• 23:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:24Hank Green?

  It's like, actually, the, the, it's so weird how the fracture has gone where I'm like, I like go on Blue Sky and it's all of my like journalist friends and I go, and then it's like, if I want to hear from Marquez Brownlee, I have to go on threads and I'm like, this is weird.

• 23:39John Green?

  Yeah, but then if you want to, then if you want to hear from like, uh, 300,000 chatbots talking to each other, you go on Twitter.

• 23:48Hank Green?

  Yeah, if I really want to hear from somebody who thinks that the singularity is currently occurring.

• 23:52John Green?

  Yeah.

• 23:52Hank Green?

  Uh, who is, who is, who is being supported in their belief by a bunch of really dumb bots, then I can find that.

• 24:00John Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:02John Green?

  Oh, if this is the singularity, it's so disappointing.

• 24:05Hank Green?

  Oh, man. Well, that's what I'm saying. A week from now, when this podcast comes out, maybe everything will have changed.

• 24:12John Green?

  That's true. That's true.

• 24:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 24:15John Green?

  All right. We got another question, Hank. It's from Amanda who writes, Dear John and Hank, we moved into our house almost six years ago. Shortly thereafter, we noticed that there was a headstone in our backyard. Our house was built in 1890, but the headstone is dated 1885 to 1886. Our best guess is that it was brought by the original family who built the house because it is not attached to a base or in the ground. At this point, we are several generations removed from the people who would have been related to this child. This begs the question, what on earth should we do with it? I'm scared to remove it or put it somewhere more sacred because of ghosts. We also just have this random headstone in our yard and it feels like it deserves to be somewhere more worthy. Pictures attached for reference, looking for real or dubious advice. Amanda. Amanda, I, I, I, I, I think there's a body in your backyard.

• 24:58Hank Green?

  Yeah, I think that there's a body in your backyard too.

• 25:01John Green?

  I think you have, uh, missed the most obvious possibility, which is that somebody knocked over the headstone at some point and like put it off to the side, but there's a body in your backyard.

• 25:11Hank Green?

  Yeah, but like an 1885 body.

• 25:15John Green?

  Yeah, but still, I wouldn't move that headstone. I would, I would keep it right where it is.

• 25:22Hank Green?

  Yeah, I'd prop it up and be like, I guess there's a baby here.

• 25:26John Green?

  Oh, yai yai.

• 25:28Hank Green?

  A one-year-old.

• 25:29John Green?

  It was such a different world. I think about this all the time, that like the death in the 1880s, which was not that long ago. Like, I realize that it feels long to our younger listeners, but to those of us who've been around for half a century, we're talking about, you know, one and a half centuries.

• 25:43Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 25:44John Green?

  Uh, so not that much longer than I've been here. And trust me, I haven't been here that long. I have no idea what's going on. And yet, back then, we were losing like 25% of all people born before the age of five in the United States.

• 25:57Hank Green?

  And that was a dramatic improvement.

• 25:59John Green?

  It was twice as good as it had been historically.

• 26:02Hank Green?

  It was twice as, it was, you know, a third as good as it had been like 40 years before.

• 26:08John Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. So there's just, it is mind-blowing how routine

• 26:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:15John Green?

  child death was in the entire world.

• 26:19Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 26:20John Green?

  140 years ago.

• 26:22Hank Green?

  And, and, and yet, remember, it hurt.

• 26:25John Green?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 26:27Hank Green?

  There's the sense that I can have in my heart where I'm like, well, if it was happening so often, maybe, maybe it was like less awful than it would be for someone to lose a child today. And I'm like, nope. I don't, I don't, I think it was just as bad.

• 26:40John Green?

  No, I think it was seen as natural. Like, in all the reading I've done, it was definitely seen as natural. So it wasn't seen as abnormal, or it wasn't seen as like troubling to the social order, but it was personally devastating to people. I mean, people would never recover. That's why they had these, that's why they made these beautiful headstones. Is because it was impossible, you know, it was impossible to recover from these losses. And, and so I absolutely agree with you, Hank. At any rate, point being, Amanda, Uh, you gotta keep that headstone in the backyard, man. I'm sorry, but like, and I know it's weird and I know you're gonna have to be, I know it's weird to like, like mow the lawn over it or whatever and like, have porch parties in the backyard and have people come over and be like, and this is our headstone.

• 27:25Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:26John Green?

  But you, you, you're taking a real risk by moving it.

• 27:29Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah. I think it's important to note that like a ghost of a one year old can't cause that much trouble. So.

• 27:36John Green?

  I'm not worried about the ghost issue.

• 27:38Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 27:38John Green?

  I just don't you think though, that like people in general should be relatively near their headstones if they were, if that's how they were originally buried?

• 27:46Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I also think that it's like a great, like little reminder of, of uh, human uh, ability and, and sacrifice and pain and, and um, innovation and all of the stuff. But yeah, I think, I don't know. I think you gotta like put it back up and, and like, it's not going to be right where. And I, and I think based on what I know of how this works, I don't think there's any way of finding where it, it actually wasn't. Maybe, you know, it could have been carried there by a flood or something. I don't know.

• 28:18John Green?

  Very unlikely.

• 28:18Hank Green?

  So unlikely. Um, I, I, but I don't think it was carried there by a person. I think that it was.

• 28:25John Green?

  No, I think what happened is that the child died in 1886 and when they built the house, they wanted to be, they wanted the child to be near them. And so they reinterred the body.

• 28:34Hank Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 1886 was like different. We did different things with bodies. We didn't have rules.

• 28:39John Green?

  Yeah. Well, they would reinter the body in 1890. That wouldn't even be that weird at the time.

• 28:43Hank Green?

  Yeah. I don't. Yeah. Or they were in the house at that moment. Or was that not, the, the house wasn't built then?

• 28:51John Green?

  The house wasn't built until four years after the child died.

• 28:53Hank Green?

  Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah.

• 28:54John Green?

  Which is just to me, a reminder of like how profound the grief is that you would want to be near your,

• 28:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:00John Green?

  near your child and reenter their body and everything. That's what I suspect to happen, but that I, it's pure guesswork. Like I have absolutely no idea. I just, I wouldn't take the risk, man. Like, oof.

• 29:11Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:12John Green?

  Anyway, it reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by ghosts. Ghosts steer clear.

• 29:21Hank Green?

  I guess like, like honor, honor them and they, they shall behave.

• 29:25John Green?

  Yeah, that's how I've always felt, man.

• 29:27Hank Green?

  You know?

• 29:27John Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:29Hank Green?

  Uh, this podcast is also brought to you by migraine with aura, migraine with aura.

• 29:36John Green?

  That's your, that's the tagline that you gave migraine with aura?

• 29:39Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 29:40John Green?

  Available. Available. Yeah. Speaking of which, today's podcast is brought to you by cigarettes, also available.

• 29:48Hank Green?

  Unfortunately.

• 29:48John Green?

  But like $20 a pack now and like, and, and really bad for you. So steer clear.

• 29:55Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by Tommy in it, Tommy.

• 29:59John Green?

  He always seemed like a really nice guy to me. I mean, I

• 30:01Hank Green?

  No, I like it.

• 30:01John Green?

  Yeah. Lovely man from everything I, I've seen.

• 30:04Hank Green?

  And this podcast is brought to you by qualifying every time you say you like a creator, just in case.

• 30:12John Green?

  Doesn't come out for five days, so anything could happen.

• 30:16Hank Green?

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

• 31:00Hank Green?

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

• 31:50John 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.

• 32:32John Green?

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

• 33:16John Green?

  All right, Hank, we've got another question. This one from MK, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a nerd fighter since the Brotherhood 2.0 era. MK, thank you so much. That is incredible. And we are so grateful that you have spent nearly 20 years of your life following our work. That is the coolest. As such, I have amassed quite the collection of Nerd Fighter ephemera. This includes a signed So Jokes CD. Remember your album So Jokes, Hank?

• 33:40Hank Green?

  Holy crap. Yeah, no, I think I have a copy of it.

• 33:44John Green?

  Didn't you like hand make those on a CD burner?

• 33:48Hank Green?

  No, no, no. These, that was Songs from Hank Green's Pants, which I think I also have a copy of somewhere. But this is So Jokes, which was made by a real, a real place that makes CDs. And it was just an envelope with a CD in it.

• 34:02John Green?

  Well, MK also has a Tiffio's Tour booklet, a number of P4A perks and so on. Many of these items were purchased by her with my lovely sister who introduced me to y'all. These objects serve not only as representations of this community and y'all's work, but also of my relationship with her. Also, since becoming a fan of y'all when I turned around 10, 10, 10!

• 34:21Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:22John Green?

  I have acquired degrees in both archaeology and museum studies. MK, I hope this doesn't sound weird, but I am proud of you. This is how I feel every time someone tells me that they like grew up with our stuff.

• 34:32Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 34:33John Green?

  And now they are doing adulthood. It makes me feel proud of them. And I don't mean that in like a paternalistic or condescending way. I just mean it like, that's how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like you're doing the thing and you let us be part of your process of doing the thing and that's an amazing feeling.

• 34:52Hank Green?

  Yes, it is great to hear. It is great to hear and it like changes the way that I am in the world. It's wild.

• 34:59John Green?

  Totally.

• 34:59Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:00John Green?

  Totally. All right. MK asks, "So I find myself at an impasse which presents itself to most folks who study material culture. How do I both protect and lovingly display these pieces of personal slash nerd fighter history? Caution and curation and confusion, MK. P.S. Shout out to my sister, you stink and I love you."

• 35:18Hank Green?

  You have a thing that I really like, John, which is there's, there's an area of hallway that just has a bunch of things that are like things.

• 35:29John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:30Hank Green?

  They're not just photos, some of them are photos, but they're also like, like something that happened once.

• 35:36John Green?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Hank Green?

  You know, and I've, I've got like, like, like my framed first badge from VidCon. You know, like just like moments that occurred that seem important to have out.

• 35:48John Green?

  Right. We have a hallway that has like-

• 35:50Hank Green?

  My sob joke CD, like within reach of my desk chair.

• 35:53John Green?

  We have like a hallway that has family photos, but it also has little works of art and little ephemera from over the years, often framed, and it has a picture of Cara de Levine tickling me with a rose beneath the Eiffel Tower.

• 36:10Hank Green?

  Ah, jeez.

• 36:11John Green?

  Uh, it's got all kinds of stuff there and- Uh, most of it is not nearly as embarrassing as that. I'm not sure why I mentioned that particular piece anywhere.

• 36:19Hank Green?

  Yeah, there's some really lovely things from, from, from like notes from people who have passed on and like all kinds of.

• 36:25John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you could do that, MK, or you could.

• 36:29Hank Green?

  And like mix it up, though, like.

• 36:31John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't make it all Nerd Fighter. That's, that's, that's gonna feel too much, but make it Nerd Fighter, but like with pictures of your sister and stuff.

• 36:38Hank Green?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 36:40John Green?

  Or donate it to a museum so they can begin the first ever Vlogbrothers Studies collection.

• 36:47Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Hank Green?

  We're working hard to become worthy of a museum.

• 36:53John Green?

  Oh, my God, that would be so embarrassing, actually. That would be so.

• 36:57Hank Green?

  Well, here's what it should be, John. Eventually, we were, we're gonna buy that biggest ball of paint. And it's gonna be the biggest ball of paint and Vlogbrothers under a museum.

• 37:11John Green?

  The biggest ball of paint and Vlogbrothers Museum, and it's gonna be in rural Indiana. You're gonna have to drive a couple hours from Indianapolis to get there.

• 37:18Hank Green?

  It's not that far.

• 37:19John Green?

  It's not that far.

• 37:20Hank Green?

  It's like I, I went because I was at your house and I was going to Ohio for a thing, you know, I was just like on the way.

• 37:27John Green?

  Right.

• 37:27Hank Green?

  I mean, it was a little longer to go, but.

• 37:30John Green?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Hank Green?

  Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait for our dotage where we are big ball curators.

• 37:42John Green?

  I used to be the 77th most popular podcast in America, but now, now I take care of a big ball.

• 37:53Hank Green?

  Yeah, it's gonna be, it's just gonna be lots of old YouTubers, you know, Grace Helbig's gonna have a big ball.

• 37:58John Green?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:59Hank Green?

  Yeah, Tyler's gonna have a big ball.

• 38:01John Green?

  Sure, sure. Yeah.

• 38:05Hank Green?

  And they're gonna stream.

• 38:07John Green?

  They're all gonna stream on Twitch in front of their huge balls.

• 38:14Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Hank Green?

  Yeah, there'll be a separate platform for that.

• 38:19John Green?

  I think we, uh, I think we addressed that question.

• 38:22Hank Green?

  So as well. Yeah. All right, John, this next question comes from Kat, who asks, Dear Hank and John, my daughter Alma is three years old and her favorite stuffed friend is baby duck. She recently asked us if ducks have ears and we weren't sure if they did. Obviously they can hear, but do they have ears? Stuffed animals in toddler tutus, Kat. It depends on what you mean by ears.

• 38:45John Green?

  Yeah, this is a great question for Dear Hank and John, because you actually can't Google it. Because if you Google it.

• 38:52Hank Green?

  It's like, yeah, ducks have ears.

• 38:54John Green?

  The AI will be like confident, but that's wrong. This is an issue in which you should have no confidence.

• 39:01Hank Green?

  Right. Well, here's the situation. There's no good answer. This is the thing that I love about the job and hate about how a lot of people do the job, which is like, you're like, a lot of people are trying to find the space where there is a clear answer. And of course, ducks have ears. They have a system through which they can hear vibrations that pass through the air.

• 39:20John Green?

  But that's not an ear.

• 39:21Hank Green?

  That's not what I call an ear.

• 39:23John Green?

  No, that's not an ear to me.

• 39:24Hank Green?

  Yeah, we call that an ear in science.

• 39:27John Green?

  Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah. If you have no ear, but you have a here, but you can hear, you have an ear?

• 39:33Hank Green?

  See, if for a human, that's a totally different thing. And, and this is really important. We have much more open systems when it comes to dealing with people because we are people and we're different from science. Like, we're dealing with like human stuff. And so if you, if someone's had their ear cut off and they want a prosthetic ear, you're not going to say that that person has an ear because they don't have an ear. And until they get one given to them by the prosthetic doctor.

• 40:02John Green?

  I can't give you a prosthetic ear because you already have an ear.

• 40:04Hank Green?

  Yeah, you can still hear. There's still like, uh, like, uh, like, you know, all of the labyrinths and stuff in there doing the work. But no, and I like, I think that this is important because I often see scientists sort of being like, well, in biology, X, Y, Z. And it's like, well, that has nothing to do with humans.

• 40:21John Green?

  Right.

• 40:22Hank Green?

  Like, it's also true that you can like have an ear and also not have an ear. So we need to talk about being a human differently because we're solving human problems, not like biological categorization problems.

• 40:35John Green?

  Right.

• 40:35Hank Green?

  It's a bit of a complicated answer to it for a three year old. But the answer is there's no physical ear on the outside, but they do have a hole in the side of their head that air goes through and they perceive sound through it.

• 40:47John Green?

  Do you think that they get water in their ear the way we do?

• 40:51Hank Green?

  That's a great question.

• 40:53John Green?

  And then they have to be like, try to get it out?

• 40:57Hank Green?

  Get two ducks, get water in their ears. I mean, you hear, see them shaking their heads sometimes.

• 41:02John Green?

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking is when they shake their heads, are they just trying to get the water out of their ear like we are when we go swimming?

• 41:07Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what they do. I don't know what they do.

• 41:12John Green?

  Yeah, they have to.

• 41:13Hank Green?

  I mean, I found no websites about this, but the AI summary is confidently telling me that ducks get water in their ears.

• 41:20John Green?

  Well, I mean, it's probably confidently tells you that because it's like, of course, ducks get water in their ears, they swim underwater.

• 41:28Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:28John Green?

  And then the water touches their ears, but that's not what I mean. I mean, do they get water in their ear canals that they then have to go like?

• 41:34Hank Green?

  Right. They have to like jump up and down.

• 41:36John Green?

  Right, right.

• 41:39John Green?

  It's a great image.

• 41:42Hank Green?

  Turning their heads to the side.

• 41:43John Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Hank Green?

  It's like a duck hopping is good.

• 41:46John Green?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Hank Green?

  Hopping in place especially, a very unusual sight to see.

• 41:50John Green?

  You don't usually see that from a duck, which makes you think maybe they don't get water in their ears.

• 41:53Hank Green?

  I don't know, maybe they don't, maybe they don't because they got like waterproof feathers all over their body and they just like close up, close up shop.

• 41:59John Green?

  Maybe, maybe. It's hard, you know, I, this is an area that is ripe for study. I mean, when I think about the problems that we face as a species, it seems to me that a significant one of them is not knowing whether or not ducks get water in their ear canals that they then have to clear somehow.

• 42:15Hank Green?

  Well, I mean, an actual problem that we do have that I really wish we had solutions to is being able to say to a duck, what's it like to be a duck? Which includes whether or not you get water in yours, but like I so desperately want to know what it is like to be a duck and I just, I don't think that we'll ever figure that out.

• 42:32John Green?

  Would you take the risk to become a duck for 10 minutes to be able to come back and report to humans what duckness is like?

• 42:38Hank Green?

  Is the risk that I get predated?

• 42:41John Green?

  Yeah, of course, man. The risk is that, or like, what if, what if the science only works one way and you're stuck being a duck?

• 42:50Hank Green?

  If I'm not guaranteed that the science works both ways, I'm not doing it.

• 42:55John Green?

  So you wouldn't be the first one.

• 42:56Hank Green?

  But I would love for someone else to do it.

• 42:59John Green?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Hank Green?

  And I, I, I am worried though, that, that even if it were guaranteed, I would fail so hard at being a duck, that I would die in that 10 minutes. It's not that I think that the probability of the duck dying in that 10 minutes is too high. It's I think the probability of me as a duck dying would be too high.

• 43:18John Green?

  Right. Like you just try to like, you're, you're in a lake somewhere and you try to get your balance, but you can't. So you just flip over like a kayak and drown.

• 43:27Hank Green?

  And all the other ducks are like, Steve, what is going on? And Steve's just like in the, in the back of the brain being like, I don't know. I can't control him. He's, he's in me.

• 43:39Hank Green?

  Or maybe Steve's in my body and I'm dying because Steve can't figure out how to do anything.

• 43:46John Green?

  Yeah. Maybe the only way to do it is you become a duck, Steve, and then Steve becomes you. And then Steve with your brain is like, real quick, I have 10 minutes. Here's what it's like to be a duck.

• 43:59Hank Green?

  He just tells me while I can't.

• 44:02John Green?

  No, he tells all the scientists, well, you're busy being a duck.

• 44:08John Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 44:09John Green?

  He sort of gives a quick TED talk, you know?

• 44:11Hank Green?

  Yeah. Yeah. That'd be amazing. Put him on stage.

• 44:14John Green?

  It would be called on duckness.

• 44:16Hank Green?

  Yeah. It'd be hard to translate the quacks, but.

• 44:19John Green?

  No, we'd figure it out. I, I love this. I, I have also, I have also long been fascinated by the, the question of what it's like to be a non-human animal. And how that shifts when you're a dolphin versus when you're a duck versus when you're a single celled organism.

• 44:39Hank Green?

  Yeah. I don't think that there's anything that it's like to be a single celled organism. I've thought about this, but people disagree. So what do I know?

• 44:46John Green?

  Yeah. Oh, man, I was at a book signing last night where there was a fight over whether eating oysters is vegan and I wanted to just hide behind my seat.

• 44:55Hank Green?

  Oh, that's a strange, that's a strange thing to think is a plant.

• 45:01John Green?

  Well, it doesn't have a nervous system was the argument.

• 45:04Hank Green?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess vegans eat living things all the time. Like, it's hard to avoid eating animals completely.

• 45:13John Green?

  Well.

• 45:14Hank Green?

  There's gonna be like microbugs getting into your mouth sometimes.

• 45:17John Green?

  Right, yeah, I mean, that's, that's incidental, I think, if you swallow a mosquito here or there. I don't think that, I don't think that invalidates the project.

• 45:28Hank Green?

  I agree.

• 45:29John Green?

  Okay, thank you. I'm glad, I'm glad you weren't coming in with a really bad hot take there.

• 45:34Hank Green?

  There's no such thing as vegans.

• 45:36John Green?

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Panic at the disco.

• 45:40Hank Green?

  Yeah, that's, that's, I got, I got that one straight off of X.com.

• 45:49John Green?

  Oh, man.

• 45:51Hank Green?

  The Xed out corpse of.

• 45:54John Green?

  The Xed out corpse of Twitter?

• 45:55Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 45:56John Green?

  I love it. All right, Hank, it's time to move on to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's this week's Mars news?

• 46:02Hank Green?

  Well, you heard from us a little while back that the Maven spacecraft, which has been hanging out around Mars for over 10 years now, uh, uh, uh, lost contact with, with us here on Earth. We've been trying to figure out what's going on, and the official news is that the Maven mission has ended. So, data from the Deep Space Network shows that before signals were lost, the spacecraft was rotating at a high rate, and that drained the batteries as it was trying to stop doing that. And also, it led to the communication system losing power. Also, it's hard to communicate with a satellite that is spinning unpredictably. We were also able to get one of the Mars rovers to image the sky at a moment when

• 46:46Hank Green?

  Maven would be being lit up by the sun and thus visible in the sky, which is amazing. And it was not there. So, we don't really know what happened. Something went wrong. Probably a thruster fired when it shouldn't have fired and made it spin and change orbit in such a way that we have not, we have not been able to and will not be able to regain contact. This happened at a bad moment also. So we, it was, there's like moments when spacecraft can't communicate with Earth. And so it's, this began right at a moment when we couldn't send signals to correct it. And so, uh, bad luck there. But in general, you know, these missions tend to be

• 47:28Hank Green?

  expected to not last for 10 or 11 years, which Maven did. So that's great.

• 47:34John Green?

  Right. So you celebrate the win that it outlasted its expected mission lifetime, even as you mourn the loss of Maven.

• 47:43Hank Green?

  Yeah. So it was, it was part of, Maven was also a part of the Mars Relay Network, which uses orbiting spacecraft to help scientists communicate with other spacecraft in orbit or on the surface of Mars. So we've also lost a little bit of, a little piece of that though. It's, it's still working. I just like that the fact that they're all kind of talking to each other.

• 48:02John Green?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. We're trying to take a picture of the sky where Maven would be like, that feels like there's a bunch of stuff hanging out on Mars.

• 48:11Hank Green?

  There is, there is. It feels like at the same time, very, um, very advanced, but also very quaint. It's like a bunch of little, like a bunch, a small number of little robots all sort of doing science together.

• 48:23John Green?

  Right. Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon this weekend is that our thrilling preseason friendlies have been announced.

• 48:30Hank Green?

  Preseason friendlies?

• 48:31John Green?

  Yeah. Now Hank, as you may be aware, this is a World Cup year.

• 48:35Hank Green?

  Sounds like where I'm gonna go get burgers and fries.

• 48:38John Green?

  This is a World Cup year. So that means that the footballing world pretty much shuts down for June and the first part of July.

• 48:47Hank Green?

  Right. Everybody's, everybody's doing stuff. Even people on AFC Wimbledon.

• 48:50John Green?

  Well, AFC Wimbledon doesn't have any players going to the World Cup. We have some former players going to the World Cup, like

• 48:55Hank Green?

  Oh, gotcha.

• 48:56John Green?

  Ali Alhamdi.

• 48:56Hank Green?

  That's the thing I remember.

• 48:57John Green?

  But no current players going to the World Cup. But even so, nobody's gonna go to a preseason friendly when there's a World Cup game to go to, right? Like, or even a World Cup game to watch on TV. The World Cup, Hank, is the best thing that we do as humans. I talk about this a lot on my podcast.

• 49:14Hank Green?

  Says the guy who just talked about infant mortality going from

• 49:20John Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Hank Green?

  25% to

• 49:23John Green?

  Under 1%.

• 49:23Hank Green?

  Less than 1%.

• 49:24John Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Hank Green?

  And, yeah.

• 49:26John Green?

  Yeah, in 150 years. No, that's super impressive. But like, the World Cup, Hank, the World Cup is one of the great glories of humanity, because it is one moment where most humans are paying attention to the same thing.

• 49:41Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 49:41John Green?

  It's really the only time, and it only happens every four years, and it's the only time when most people on Earth are paying attention to the same thing. So, that's a really cool, rare thing, and I'm really excited about it, even though FIFA's corrupt and all that. If you want to hear more about the World Cup and get ready for it, and about FIFA's corruption, you should listen to The Away End, my podcast with Daniel Alarcon, the great Peruvian novelist who I went to high school with. We make a podcast with our other friend from high school, producing it, named Sean, and we just have a great time. Anyway, we're playing Sutton United, the first ever opponent that AFC Wimbledon had way back in 2002 as AFC Wimbledon. We're playing Norwich City, Charlton, Wieldstone, and we're

• 50:26John Green?

  playing a team from the Sky Bet League Championship that hasn't been announced yet. But that's still cool. We're gonna play a team from the league above us, which is awesome. And we'll see how it goes. So, we're playing some pretty big teams. Charlton are pretty big, Norwich City are pretty big, and whoever we play from the championship is gonna be big. And then we're playing Wieldstone and Sutton, both of whom we should comfortably beat.

• 50:46Hank Green?

  Wieldstone?

• 50:47John Green?

  Wieldstone.

• 50:49Hank Green?

  Is it like wielding a stone like a spear, or is it like a stone that is in the shape of a wheel?

• 50:54John Green?

  It's W-E-A-L-D, Stone.

• 50:57Hank Green?

  Oh.

• 50:58John Green?

  Yeah, Weldstone?

• 51:00Hank Green?

  I don't know. That's, that sounds very arcane, though. That's like, very British. It's like, they found an object and named the town after it.

• 51:07John Green?

  Yes. You know, you know, you gotta go to the town that's where the Wieldstone is.

• 51:13John Green?

  You know the Weldstone.

• 51:14Hank Green?

  Yeah, what's the, it's, uh, it is a sarsen stone positioned to mark the boundary between the parishes of Harrow and Harrow Weld.

• 51:23John Green?

  I mean, sometimes you read that stuff and then you think like, well, J R Artolkeen was a genius and everything, but like half the book was written for him.

• 51:32Hank Green?

  You can go, it's just on the side of the road, John. The Weldstone is right there. I'm looking at a picture of it.

• 51:36John Green?

  He just writes down like, oh, and then they went to the Weldstone and you're like, oh, man, what a fantasy this guy's having, but no, he just went to the Weldstone.

• 51:46Hank Green?

  Yeah, what could, what, what could they have possibly have named this town after? Oh, this big rock. It's not even that big, just for clarity. It's like, it's like maybe two feet high.

• 51:55John Green?

  It's a border rock. Uh, yeah. Classic border rock. Um, anyway, that's who we're playing. I'm excited for the new season. I mean, I'm mostly excited for the World Cup. I really want to see how Ali Al Hamidi does. I, it would be my dream for a former AFC Wimbledon player to score a goal in the World Cup. It would be so cool, but we'll see if it happens. In the meantime, um, uh, there's always next season to get excited about our fixture list, Hank. It will be released on June 25th. So that's when we find out when we're playing the franchise currently playing its trade in Milton Keynes and other teams.

• 52:28Hank Green?

  John, can I read you a, uh, just a selection of this Wikipedia page because it's really great?

• 52:32John Green?

  Sure, of course.

• 52:33Hank Green?

  Okay. Well, the, the Weldstone, the sarsen stone is, uh, located outside, I'm quoting now, the Bombay Central Restaurant, which was built as a public house, previously known as the Weldstone Inn, and prior to that, the Red Lion.

• 52:52John Green?

  Great.

• 52:53Hank Green?

  Which, uh, now that I'm thinking, well, maybe it was not related to Red Lion Inn, but maybe it was.

• 52:58John Green?

  Maybe it was.

• 52:59Hank Green?

  May, but maybe not, but maybe they just called it the Red Lion. I don't know. To me, that just sounds like it used to be like a double tree.

• 53:10John Green?

  No, I suspect it used to be a pub. But yeah, it was never a Doubletree, I suspect. But maybe it's one of those pubs with like three hotel rooms on top. I have stayed in some of those.

• 53:19Hank Green?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:20John Green?

  Pub hotels in in England, traveling to see AFC Wimbledon away in beautiful towns like Nottingham and Mansfield.

• 53:27Hank Green?

  Yeah.

• 53:28John Green?

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

• 53:35Hank Green?

  This podcast was edited by Linus Obenhouse. 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 Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.