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Tickets to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. There's our first thing with you, Jon and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast about death where two brothers Hank and John Green answer your questions give you to be as advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hey Jon, how you doing? Ahh, you've been doing good for a bit of a version of that. You know what?
I bet you are. I bet you are. I bet you are. I bet you are all those things.
My first book in six years comes out in two weeks and I am freaked out. It is weird to have nobody have read this book and not be able to change anything and I am freaked out about going on tour and I am not, I would say like after having six or so months of pretty solid health, I am not all here. How are you? I'm good Jon.
You know I found out something about myself that I didn't know before this week. I went into the foot doctor because I have chronic pain in one of my feet and half since high school when I pushed a young man into a swimming pool and broke my toe on him while doing it and that's not super fun. But I went into the doctor and I was like, hey I have this problem because last of my women was like 15 years ago and they were like there's nothing we can do. So I didn't go back but it's been 15 years.
Somebody said something they can do now, right? This is my sort of thought and so the guy takes a bunch of x-rays of my foot and basically I come out of it and he's like, yeah that's not really anything we can do. But, but, but, but, but Jon, I have in my right foot the normal number of bones like everybody else has but not in the normal way. Oh, so two of two of my bones that should be two bones are one bone.
Oh you've had a bone. No, I was born this way. Two of my bones just were born like fused together. My pinky toe instead of being like three bones it's two bones or something.
So that's that's a thing and additionally I've just got like a rando bone that's floating in the middle of my foot. Oh that's not connected to anything. It's just like oh there's one of those and I was like is that normal? And he's like no, it's like but is it like okay?
And he's like yeah, yeah it's fine. I was like you sure? Is that like hurt me? Like nope just a rando bone.
So I got a normal number of bones but, but accidentally because I have one less than I should have and also one more than I should have. I mean there's something metaphorically resonant about that but I can't figure out exactly what it is because I'm struggling to actively listen to you but I want to actively listen to you not primarily so the podcast will be good but primarily so that I don't miss you saying your phrase of the week. Yeah well I'll give you a hint it was not rando bone but a very long could have been. No I thought it might have been born this way the wonderful Lady Gaga song and hey if ever you feel weird about your foot bone situation I just want to remind you that Lady Gaga wrote a wonderful wonderful song about being born this way and so just listen to that if you're ever feeling sad.
Can I read you a short poem? Yeah please. All right this is by Emily Bronte. It was sent by listener Lauren.
Thanks Lauren and it's about autumn and it is kind of autumn. Yeah. I'm just here. Yeah.
Fall leaves fall. Die flowers away. Lengthen night and shortened day. Every leaf speaks bliss to me fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when reeds of snow blossom where the rose should grow. I shall sing when nights decay ushers in a dreary or day. Yeah. And when I think of the things that I own that I am most proud of it's my one and less extra bone.
Yeah I mean I'm not sure that worked from a meter perspective but I'm proud of you for thinking of a rhyme. Speaking of which Alice has recently gotten into rhyming but she can't she doesn't rhyme correctly and it just drives Henry bonkers. So the other day she was singing a song and the lyrics were I'm walking in the hallway. I won't forget my mom knee way and Henry just said that's not right.
Henry you don't get to decide how poetry works. That's all right Hank. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. This one came from Bria and you know the more I thought about it the less I knew the answer.
So I'm just going to ask it of you. Dear John and Hank as you know people are always growing and changing. A baby is smaller than an old man depends on the baby. But where does all the extra body come from?
I just love that phrasing. There's so much extra body and grown-ups versus babies. Why did they change shapes so much? As you grow does your extra bone just appear completely useless at science or biology or whatever this is categorized as Bria.
I like how Bria starts the question. As you know people are always growing and changing which I am like yes we learn new things we find out that the way we once were is not the way that we want to be anymore. Where do my bones bone? Where do my bones bone?
Where are bones? Where are bones a lot today on this podcast? All the things I'm proud to own. It is my one extra and one less bone.
That's better. It's on the right track and yet not there. I'll give work it on it. Your bones are alive just to be clear.
They're not like rocks inside of you. Your bones are constantly replacing themselves and growing and fusing and when you break them they're able to join back together again. Your bones are living tissue that is created by the cells of your body. So they are always as you grow changing shape and that is done in the same way that all of your body tissues change shape which is really complicated and weird.
I can tell you that there's something special about the way that bones do it but also the fact that all of your body's tissues do it is in fact very weird and we don't understand it that well. All right Hank while you were talking I wrote out some iambic it's not pentameter because it only has four feet but just to get it out of my head to solve a problem that you created in my mind I wrote two iambic lines that rhyme, own and bone just to shut my brain up and it is this of all the objects that I own I'm proudest of my floating bone. Okay good the good the only thing that I'd add to that is that I actually find it weirder that after growing for a long time we then start shrinking. Like my doctor recently said to me at my 40th birthday checkup because of course how else was I going to spend my 40th birthday.
I was like I used to be 6-1 as this is an ongoing argument between Hank and me and my doctor said it is perfectly possible that you used to be 6-1 and that you know the shrinking has just begun. Or or or or actually that rhymes. I'm gonna work on that one. You are just lying the whole time.
Because I've always been 6-1 and yet un-inched taller than you. This next question while John is working on his poem comes from Jenny who asks Dear Hank and John I'm currently doing my master's thesis in art history. I find my studies very interesting and feel like I have chosen the right path. However parts of my thesis are dependent on interviews from some very important people in the art world and those those words very important people are capitalized.
I'm not usually scared of talking to people but when facing the task of emailing very important to people and asking them to meet up with me to help me with stuff like crumble in a bottle of anxiety. Will this ever go away or will I have to be scared of talking to important people in my field for the rest of my life from the block Jenny. That's a good name specific sign off. I mean yeah it probably won't ever go away.
What do you think Hank? I think it won't ever go away unless and until you yourself become a very important person. That does help. No no no that much.
Whenever I still hang out with people and I'm like It's like anything it depends on the pond that you're playing in. That's true. Alice is certainly completely unimpressed by what I do for a living so much so that she insists that my job is race car driver and when anybody asks what I do for a living she says my dad is a race car driver and when I tell her that I'm not a race car driver she says but you did do a race car race in Minnesota which is true. I did a race car race with Maggie Steve Otter a Y author and I say yes I was in that one race car race but that does not mean that my job is race car driver Alice and then she says you got a trophy and I said I know I got a trophy because Maggie Steve Otter very kindly let me win one of the races but that still does not mean that my job is race car driver.
My job is writing books and making videos with Uncle Hank and then she says your job is race car driver. It's fascinating but John do you have advice for Jenny? Yeah but it's gonna be dubious. I feel like it's kind of okay to be a little bit intimidated when you're sending those emails because you want to make sure that they are good emails like you want to reread them and make sure there aren't any obvious typos and you want to have a certain level of deference going into it but at the same time you have to remember that these people who are very important people in their field even though my wife works in art history I almost certainly haven't even heard of them so just remember that like you know outside of their pond they are normal people and so be you know I think it's always helpful if you just treat someone as if they're human you express interest in their interest you make it clear that you understand who they are and what they do and you make it clear why you want to talk to them because you share an interest in the field.
Yeah and in my experience of interviewing important people who are important either to me because of who I like just who I am and what I'm really into or because like like objectively you know they're the current president of the United States like that it's terrifying and the thing that goes into it and the thing that like I had to fight for in those moments was staying present and not being like this is so weird this is so weird this is so weird but just being like I'm listening to the words and I'm understanding the words that you were saying. Right right it would be very stressful to be the president and to have essentially every interaction you have with someone be that person being like oh my god it's the president oh my god it's the president we have a question that from Lucy who writes Dear John and Hank for the last few months one question has bothered me can jellyfish suffer that's it that's the whole question she signs off the classic pumpkins and penguins Lucy. Can jellyfish suffer wait is suffering necessary? Wait I don't understand I'd like to can ask a back question question is suffering a necessary part of life.
I don't think that it's a necessary for one to suffer no no it's but so like single celled organisms don't experience suffering. Oh okay I'm I've misunderstood your question I thought you were saying like so given that someone has the capacity to suffer will they necessarily suffer I don't think that is the case I think that it's very likely that if you have the capacity to suffer that you will spend at least some of the time while you are alive suffering. Who wait who's this person who didn't spend any time suffering? I'm not saying that the person exists I'm just saying it's possible.
A hard disagree and I really find myself hard disagreeing. Maybe not a person maybe like a fish or maybe like a dog or something that's capable of suffering but never did. Um stuff like that. Unconvinced.
I'm gonna register my disagreement and allow you to go on. All right and then as far as like is suffering necessary for you to be a living thing now it is a useful tool but I think that it's a fairly fairly complex one. Certainly not like it's certainly not anywhere close to the most complex system that an animal can have but it is I think that suffering is I think my guess is that suffering is outside of the capacity of a jellyfish. Um I guess it's but it's very weird it's hard we don't know and we'll never know.
We don't know what it's like to be other organisms we don't know if a tree can suffer in the same way that like you know it's kind of like one of the for me a condition of life is to sort of want things and to take action to move in the direction and to try and acquire those things like that's sort of like it's a good life definition and so if you're being prevented from getting to that there are negative feedbacks that that uh any organism will experience. I feel like suffering is one of those negative feedbacks but I don't think it's the only one and I think that it's not one that every organism has but I don't know because maybe is any negative feedback saying like I am not able to get to the thing that I want to get to in order to survive or to brocreate and that is like I'm like I'm getting that negative feedback saying like work harder figure it out you're gonna die this is bad if any feedback like that could be interpreted as suffering. Right yeah it is a kind of a question that asks someone to anthropomorphize in ways that are problematic. You have to look at the world from a jellyfish point of view to answer the question about jellyfish and I doubt that jellyfish if they could understand what suffering was would define what they experience the suffering but if they could understand what suffering was they wouldn't be jellyfish.
That is for sure though for a long time we didn't think that any organisms except for humans could suffer which was like just just I feel like willful understanding. Yeah it does it right it seems like the kind of thing that you would only believe because it's extremely convenient to believe it. Speaking of which Hank I have written a I have a pentameter cuplet about my height. Okay I'm fairly sure I used to be 6-1 but Doc reports the shrinking has begun.
I'll be here all week. I mean why don't we just read a short poem from John Green every week. Oh yeah he's such a good quality. Well I mostly you know what I like most about them John.
What? I thought that two lines long and that they end and then I'm like oh good that was good. That's about the podcast. Listen I tried to cut the weekly short poem and then people got really mad.
Yeah I mean it's good it's good I'm sorry I have some really good advice for Lizzy who asks Well actually she says Dear Hank and also John just to the side there. I've been trying my best to keep my Tupperware cabinet tidy but somehow every time I open the cabinet the containers end up recklessly strewn throughout. Why do different brands have slightly different sized containers that make them so difficult to stack should I invest in some sort of organizational device to buy or larger tubs to put my tubs in. Seeing that you guys have been adulting for much longer than I have and you have kitchens of your own I assume that you have run into a similar crisis any advice would be appreciated always covered in Tupperware Lizzy.
Lizzy here is the thing you need to do. Throw out all of your Tupperware. This is correct. This is the biggest moment in your life realizing you are an adult.
Throw it away throw it away go to Target buy a fifteen dollar thirty six piece Tupperware set and they will all fit together because they will be the same brand. Do not save do not save the little containers that your deli meat comes in and say ah this is clearly meant to be a reusable container don't do it go to the deli get the little plastic bag deli meat it's better anyway don't just use the one kind of Tupperware get one inexpensive Tupperware set and use that and then after five years when it breaks down because it was cheap get another one. Okay as usual Hank is one third correct. Hank is correct that right now before you even get to the end of this podcast you need to throw away all of your mismatch Tupperware it is a source of tremendous anxiety and just wretchedness throw it out throw all of it out Hank was right about that he's wrong about everything else what you need to do is you need to call your local Thai restaurant I don't know if they do delivery hopefully they do if not you're gonna have to go to the restaurant and pick it up and you're gonna order your favorite dish every night for the next 26 nights in a row and then the amazing thing is that you will have 26 identical medium-sized Tupperware containers with 26 identical medium-sized lids and all of your problems will be solved forever.
Well you got to make sure that it's the kind of classy place that puts it in a Tupperware in one of those folding Chinese food boxes because that's obviously obviously you have to make sure of that in advance but once you so you just what you do is you just start ordering take out from various restaurants until you get the correct sized Tupperware container and then you go back to that restaurant 26 consecutive nights until you have 26 sets of Tupperware boom done. I mean it strikes me that you think you're saving money but literally a Tupperware set of like a 36-piece Tupperware set costs less than two of those meals. Right but you get 26 how many I can remember how many I said let's say 26 you get 26 amazing meals in the interim it's totally worth it and then you've got an amazing story when people are like hey where'd you get all that incredibly well-matched Tupperware you can say oh I just ordered from Swasti Thai restaurant 26 consecutive days that's our local Thai restaurant by the way it's excellent it didn't sponsor today's podcast but I highly recommend it yeah our local Thai restaurant is called Saladi which I think is probably the same phrase but slightly different grammar. I don't know I don't know but it's very good if you ever have a chance to go there 86th and ditch really solid times.
Everything in Indianapolis is at the same intersection almost everything is at the intersection of 86th and ditch I had a pivotal scene of the fault in their stars occur at the intersection of 86th and ditch because I was sitting at the intersection of 86th and ditch at the Starbucks while I was writing it and I thought where could they go and I looked across the street and I was like oh they could go to that gas station. That's good my book takes place in New York City so I always have a tab that's just a street view of New York City open just like walking around where they're walking around. I remember that James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses he used to write to friends in Dublin because oh my god back he used to write your friends in Dublin and say hey could you do me a solid and walk this exact route and then write back to me about how long it took what you saw and what the road was like. All right we're gonna go to the portion of this one comes from Abigail who writes Dear John and Hank I work two jobs one is an overnight job three days a week the other is a daytime job two days a week oh god yeah I've been doing this for two weeks now and the transition between sleeping at night and sleeping during the day is rough my body is very confused all the time any advice writing this at 3am because that's when my lunch hour is Abigail.
I mean Abigail this is not how the human body is designed to operate there is no way to fix this. I mean there may be a sustainable situation for some people it may be a situation that you just need to be in right now but that is going to be rough I think moving forward. I had an overnight job for several months working at the Steak and Shake in Winter Park Florida and even that messed a lot I thought with my brain it is really hard to work third shift now I have a cousin who's been doing it for like 30 years and hold on hold on it's coming nope it's not oh god I need to sneeze so badly and it didn't happen for me that time ah now I'm just frustrated I want to go back in time and work harder to get that sneeze out but now the moment is passed anyway I have a cousin who's been doing it for like 30 years and swears by it and says that it allows him to spend way more time with his kids and do all kinds of stuff I could not do it so different people have different needs I guess but I just don't think that there is a way to make that not suck. I agree John I do not have good advice so I'm going to move to the next question but after but only after commiserating and saying keep going keep just keep swimming little fish.
Man you are you would just be a terrible motivational speaker. Is that that's not the finding Nemo just yep. Dear Hank and John this is from Maria I have a serious question about hangers what's the right way to hang a hanger with the hanger hook facing the wall or the hanger hook facing you I just painted my mom's closet and we were in the process of refilling it with her cousin she wants to hang on the hangers with the hook facing the wall and I believe you should hook facing you and the answer is appreciated Mulgare, here's Sue Maria. Is that also a joke from Avatar the Last Airbender or something?
One has to assume that that's an avatar the Last Airbender thing because at this point we can't risk it not being we got I have never received so many letters as I did about our failure to understand the avatar the last Airbender joke. Wait stop wait stop I googled it it's it's uh Mulgare here soon uh to milk a mail goat okay oh it's uh it's like it's a phrase to like attempt an impossible thing oh I have gone in a different direction direction. Maria let's get back to your question immediately. Maria here's here's the deal and I feel bad about this because you're obviously a nice person.
Um the hook faces the wall oh yeah no you're super wrong about this Maria this is terrible like think about it if you have your like disco pants and you want to party down and your party pants and they're like it's time to go party you don't want to be like flipping them out and pushing them toward the wall and then bringing them to you so you can go to your disco party and have to disco jams correct to you need pants now now yeah so the whole idea behind getting your disco pants as quickly as possible is just lift and pull the way that you're proposing it involves lifting pushing going down and then pulling that's four motions by the time that you're done with that the party is probably over it's terrible yeah I mean this is actually similar to the long-standing argument it's one of the longest pages on wikipedia about whether you should put toilet paper rolls so that uh they face out or like you have to come from underneath and to me it's so obvious that it's not worth debating but then also you know we only have this one brief precious flicker of consciousness and I am glad that some people are choosing to spend it with me thinking about this stuff that doesn't matter but that I can't stop thinking about it anyway I mean it's it's weird to me that either of these things could at all be debatable the only reason to hang your toilet paper not facing so that it's easiest to get to is if you have a cat that does the thing where it spins it down because if you do it the other way the cat can't spin the whole toilet paper out or you're dealing with enemies and you want to make their lives harder like I mean that's the argument that I've seen for that actually makes some sense if you're trying to like push somebody out of your house you're just trying make something a little little bit worse to communicate to your roommate that this relationship has come to an end um that that kind of thing really really works like putting the hangers in backwards toilet paper head backwards I think that's like the universal sign for it's time to leave Phil if your roommates consistently hang your toilet paper incorrectly then you may be need to find a new living situation all right this is our next question comes from Maddie who writes dear john and hank why is there why is there fruit called a grapefruit when there's already a fruit called a grape sign off Maddie this is an excellent question because it isn't a grapefruit a grape because it is a grapefruit ah yes well it isn't a grapefruit because it looks and tastes absolutely nothing like a grapefruit yeah do you know the etymology of the word grapefruit no in fact I was about to look it up it comes from the words grape and the word fruit this is not a shock do you want to know a few interesting facts about grapefruits i want to know more about the freaking etymology of grapefruit okay they okay because grapefruits grow in clusters and people thought the clusters that grapefruits grow in what kinds of kind of like gigantic clusters of gigantic grapes in clusters have you see it's just like an orange tree it's the same as orange tree hank yep i am telling you what wikipedia which is never wrong says oh god oh wait some other people think that it might be because um it the latin name is citrus grandis meaning great citrus or great fruit and then people just mispronounced it that is i wouldn't be shocked if there was some kind of like uh both of those things had an effect on this okay can i tell you some interesting facts about grapefruits well that's too bad because i've done quite a lot of research and there are no interesting facts about grapefruits please send us through the hank and john at gmail.com you're interesting grapefruit facts we can share them next week because we are incapable of finding anything at all even remotely interesting about this fruit i don't think anybody's gonna find anything but godspeed my friends this question comes from the bookleman dear john and hank oops it's dear hank and john i know that successful football and soccer teams must replace their players with better ones to improve but if over time all the players have been replaced in afc Wimbledon will it still be the afc Wimbledon team if it's not all the players but the location why do teams compete if you and i were just to hire chess players to play against each other in chess and my player one it wouldn't prove anything about my chess skills how is that different with sports teams best wishes from the ship of the ccs the bookleman in cleveland i mean this is a great question and it gets to the heart of the problem with franchises which is that ultimately a sports franchise is owned by usually by one single rich person or one single rich family and if they want to move the team they can and the definition of the team is the thing owned by that rich family um yeah interesting and the whole ship for those who aren't familiar with the ship of the ccs the basic idea is this a ship takes off from port and uh the the mast breaks so they replace the mast with a different piece of wood and then all the other parts of the ship slowly break over a long journey and they replace all the other uh parts and then by the time it gets back to port it is an entirely different ship but at the same time it is the same ship because um and this question is applied to a lot of problems especially problems with self you know like if um you start out as one person as and you end up as a different person then are you still the same person uh but also football teams i guess so i i think the answer in afc Wimbledon's case is actually relatively straightforward which is that the football club is the community that is based around it which is why when the english af a decided to move Wimbledon fc to milton keens it did not mean that milton keens suddenly um had uh Wimbledon and then Wimbledon restarted as afc Wimbledon and even though they went from the third tier to the ninth tier overnight they were still the same football club they still had the same history um they were still the same community they still had the same supporters and that's what a lot of what i find so interesting about the afc Wimbledon story is that at a time when the social order said to these people you don't have a football club anymore they responded no we still have the same football club we always have and then by the force of their will and their determination as a community eventually the authorities the social order itself was forced to be like our bad you were right you do still have the same football team and i find that very very beautiful um so i think like in the end a good organization any good community uh is defined by the people who are inside of it and they change over time and that changes the community over time but hopefully there is some level of continuity that allows the ship of theses to still be the same ship when it gets back to port well which gets to the the very thing that that like sort of solves the ship of theses riddle which is that it's not about the ship it's about our imagining of things right and it's is like that is really the interesting thing about the afc Wimbledon story is that like it wasn't about like the team it's about the people who enjoy it and who make up the community and i feel that same way about like this podcast and about all of the stuff that we make on the internet that it's like like it is the defined by the people who appreciate the thing and imagining that and understanding that makes it a much more rich thing to be doing right exactly yeah i mean you've got to understand when you're part of a community but especially when you're leading a community like that that um so much does really depend on the way we imagine the world like that's uh the story that my new book gets its title from the turtles all the way down story is ultimately a story about understanding that the world is in part the stories we tell about it which leads us to our sponsor this week which is turtles all the way down turtles all the way down a book by john green coming to a bookstore near you available for pre-order in lots of different places but only signed if you go and figure out which ones are gonna be signed if you go to probably sign turtles dot com and just to emphasize one thing the book comes out on october 10th and it will be available wherever books are sold and also some places where you might not traditionally look for books like casko um and today's podcast is also of course brought to you by the suffering of jellyfish the suffering of jellyfish complicated this podcast is also brought to you by the inconsistent object that is yourself you are being constantly replaced and your bones that once were your bones aren't actually your bones they're new bones you and lastly this podcast is brought to you by grapefruit originally a grapefruit now just a grapefruit that's it this episode of your hand can run 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wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deerhank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada too that's qunce.com slash deerhank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deerhank this episode of deerhank a john is brought to you by factor imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 p.m and you did not eat lunch what are you gonna do are you gonna get meal delivery that's gonna cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you gonna go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts those are my two choices unless i have a factor in the fridge you can get smoky barbecue chicken breast with potato mash cream corn and peppers you can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice peel off broccoli and carrots this has the fiber i need it has the protein i need it has what about garlic herb roasted verimun tea with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce i don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious what about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema a delicious high-fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for any of those can be ready in two minutes fresh never frozen over a hundred rotating weekly meals including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian factor shops perhaps cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring head to factor meals dot com slash deerhank 50 off and use the code deerhank 50 off to get 50 off and free daily greens with new subscription only wild supplies last until september 27th 2026 see website for more details used to be great now that is actually pretty good that is the only interesting great fruit fact is that it possibly used to originally be known as the great fruit it's a big fruit like how many fruits are like fruits by size fruits by size what are the biggest fruits john watermelon has to be the biggest fruit right i mean i'm not going to pretend to be an expert in this field i i don't even really have a guess i bet pumpkin is the biggest fruit nope nope weighing 268 pounds well nope nope that's wrong that's wrong it's wrong john john help save me what's your order what's your first of the week go all right we haven't i haven't used it yet oh that is amazing an amazing hint john i'm still gonna be fine i'm still gonna win i'm not even worried have you used yours i'm not gonna tell you of course i know i'm not um Hank before we get to uh some more questions from our listeners i really have to read this vitally important response uh some of you may remember that in the past episode of the pod somebody wrote in to say that they had been harboring a secret snake in their home and that they wanted to take the secret snake to college but they couldn't figure out uh how to get the snake to college because their parents were going with them on the drive uh so devin and draco wrote back in to say dear john and hank back in episode 87 you answered my question about owning a secret snake as of seven p.m. friday september 22nd 2017 one year and nine days after i got him draco is no longer secret i was worried about that like i was worried about the plot twist there was gonna be i know i i too thought he might die but no my dad discovered him while looking for our cat who was in the basement okay good i'm glad that the cat wasn't in draco while he is not thrilled that there has been a secret snake in the house for one year and nine days wait wait wait you didn't take the snake to college you just left the snake at home this i i need more information right i have i have more questions than answers did he leave the snake at home to fend for himself yeah or did he in the end just decide to take a semester off from college to delay the inevitable while he's not so we don't know the answer to that question but we do know this while he is not thrilled that there is a snake in the house i played my dad the segment from your podcast and he found it hilarious and draco is allowed to stay although i have been warned that there will be a tarantula in my bed if he gets loose as john said in his answer everything turned out better than expected snakes and secrets but no longer secret snakes devin and draco john the world's largest pumpkin which is the largest fruit ever recorded was 1,689 pounds also 766 kilograms for those of you who don't know what pounds are all right well there you go um a question that i've never wanted the answer to and now have the answer to well that's too bad because my entire video this week is gonna be about world's largest fruits oh my god i don't even think you're getting your desperate for a video topic i'm gonna make a suggestion here's a video topic my brother's first book in six years comes out in ten days everyone buy it at bookstores everywhere all right this we got another question hang this comes from anor who writes dear john and heck when you see someone doing something on snapchat is it weird to talk about it when you next see them in real life i watch my friend snapchat and sometimes i feel like i should reply but then it feels awkward when i do also sometimes want to bring up their last snap in conversation but always chicken out at the last second so my question is is it socially acceptable to talk about social media in real life or reply to something they posted hours ago also another question why is chicken out the phrase for not doing something or being a wimp i mean what did chickens ever do we tons of them every year so shouldn't we just lay off any of us would be appreciated that's a great point anor i mean haven't we done enough to chicken kind just by eating them by the billions why do we also have to besmirch their good name oh yeah i'm totally on board with not no longer besmirching a chicken um cease this the besmirchment of chickens that's my new t-shirt yeah now secondly i'm so glad that you came to two people men who are in their late 30s early 40s to discuss with you how to properly socially interact with people who you who you are friends with and follow on social media snapchats because we are the experts on how to navigate the awkward world of knowing what your friends are doing all of the time but not because you talked about it that is correct you could not have picked two better people for this topic and as an expert i.e. someone who last sent a snapchat in 2016 i feel extremely prepared to tell you that it is fine to talk in real life about someone's most recent snaps as long as you aren't sort of like overbearing about it like it'd be great if you said like i thought that was really funny the caption and or emoji and or handmade drawing that you did but it's not cool if you talk about it for like 14 minutes and you detail all of the things that you loved about the snap and how you saved it and now it's your like scran saver on your phone and everything yeah and i also think that like the thing that i my experience of snapchat and instagram stories is often like oh look at all of the fun that my friends are having yeah and so there is a certain amount of uh like navigating the i like oh that was really funny versus why was not invited to that thing that you did right because not everybody can be invited to everything all the time and now we all know every time we're missing out on something which is not how it was a few years ago you didn't know when your friends hung out and you weren't there and that was a thing that happened but you didn't have to know about it all the time hank hey can i ask you something do you ever feel like you know that simpson's reference uh where abe simpson home responder is holding a newspaper with the headline old man yells at cloud yeah yeah he's on the newspaper yeah old man yells at cloud oh that's what it is right i do i feel like an old man yelling at a cloud uh yeah yeah i've been a lot of different circumstances sometimes i feel like i'm yelling at a cloud and it's like a late-stage capitalism and i'm yelling at sometimes i feel like i'm yelling at a cloud and it's like boy hank just does not know what this thing is and he's kind of angry at something he does not understand these young people these days yeah i mean i remember being a kid and just feeling like like old people were completely deeply profoundly out of touch about what was interesting like even in my 20s i remember just thinking like oh my god how does someone let themselves get so far removed from what is interesting about right now yeah and now i'm like i am so uninterested in what is interesting right now yeah no that's how i feel too it's freaking me out yeah there's a lot of stuff to be interested in and i think that it's important to uh to to be okay with both yourself and with other people for being interested in what they're interested in and that's going to mean that i'm not very good at instagram stories well i'm actually truly going to give instagram stories the old college try when we go on tour um because i think like that that to me is what is when i can use it to make sense have it make sense for me is when we're like out and doing something because usually my life is so boring and repetitive but i really like its repetition but i don't think that it would make for an interesting instagram story for me to be like once again at three twenty i did pick up my children from school for the you know for the like 19th consecutive weekday i spent the hours between three twenty and three forty in the car with the kids and be really maybe there's like a certain set of people who just want that very steady rhythmic therapeutic instagram story where it's just the same thing every weekday right yeah i mean like there is there is benefit of that right like i mean i don't know i like uh i like the classical music station in indian apple is partly because they play the same like eight pieces of classical music or whatever all right and it's time to get to the news from mars and afc wibbleden what's the news from mars this week oh john remember last week when we were talking about uh how there was that group of people in hawaii who had gone out and they like hung out for for months um in hawaii and it went pretty well and nobody got super angry well it turned out one of them killed another one of them not actually what happened not what happened oh wow you had me for a second now i'm back to being bored um no no uh though one of them did get interviewed and he said uh you know there's rough moments that the hardest part they said was uh the fact that they could not just get on the internet like a normal and if they were solving a problem and needed information it would take days when it should have taken minutes because you have to wait for so long for responses from people right google and um so that that is definitely a problem to solve but he said that there was not a single insult uh not single personal insult hurled through the entire uh i don't know if it was six or eight month long experience but that's not my news the news is that the ua e the united air of emirates is uh permanently attempting to build a 100 million pound martian city that's the currency unit not the weight in the emirati desert to simulate life on the red planet whoa yeah 1.9 million square feet largest space simulation city ever built largest largest biodime dome ever uh team of researchers will live in the city for a year carry out experiments to understand life on mars and it will have a museum open to the public whose walls will be 3d printed from the sand and it is unclear when the building uh when building will begin on the project or its exact location so who knows if it's actually going to be a thing that will exist with this mars science city they've got some cool 3d renders of it it looks pretty and uh they have so much money in the ua e they can do these weird things uh yeah i mean that's the only mars i'll ever visit i'm just going to tell you that right now that's going to be my number one all-time favorite mars that i visited my lifetime is the mars right here on earth i mean it looks pretty cool hank uh can you hear that that in the background mmm it's a rumbling it's a rumbling noise i hear no no it's the sad string quartet music oh oh yes it's sad it's like uh it's like uh it's like an ambulance riding away no not exactly it's sadder than that it's it's the only thing sadder than that it's the sound of having lost a home game against milton keens oh two nil uh there were many wonderful moments almost all of them in the stands um with uh wimbledon fans singing uh who were you who were you when you were us my all-time favorite uh uh chant in any in any sport uh but the moments on the pitch were not great i watched the whole game live on the afc wimbledon app um there's some issues with the live streaming but it is much better than no live streaming and uh it was really really really frustrating i was yelling at my phone which i try very hard never to do i really it was really frustrating and i feel terrible for all of the wimbledon fans out there because that's the one game that you really want to win in a season and uh it was difficult and also wimbledon did not score and wimbledon spent essentially the entire game in the attacking half of the field and the only two times that milton keens had anything like an attack they scored uh and then uh and then wimbledon went on to lose to south end united on september 26th which is very bad and was a game that we really should have won and now we find ourselves in it what can own at this point i think it is fair to describe the situation as perilous there are 46 games in the season we're only through ten of them so it is not yet a period for panic however wimbledon in ten games have scored five goals that is not great uh and they are only one that spot away from the relegation zone and only kept out of the relegation zone by goal difference so it has not been a bright beginning to the year i do know however what your phrase of the week was well i mean it's not fair because you know in a bit that hank i got like halfway through a bit and hank was like we have to cut that because you already did it and then i redid string quartet and of course he's gonna know so yes it was string quartet i lost this week and i'm mad about it was your phrase born this way no no you thought that i was just talking about disco pants for no reason oh god disco pants oh it just seems so perfectly specific god how can i not have noticed that all the listeners are going to be flooding my twitter with comments about how i clearly wasn't paying attention to be fair i'm not really paying attention but regardless hank thank you for plotting with me we now have to go over to our patreon page on dot com slash here hank and john to report this week and ryan um which has become a podcast that is about everything except for people named ryan but i do appreciate you being here hank and uh in in livening my days and giving me something to think other than the turtles all the way down situation well i don't look forward to these days when this will happen to me but i also really do and i'm really excited for your book to come out and i hope that there's excitement among your anxiety because it's very good and i can't wait for people to read it ah thanks man i appreciate it this podcast is produced by ryan alsrael has and shared and gifts in our editor is nicholas jankins Victoria Bonjourno is our head of community and communications our music is by the brilliant gonerola you can email us at hank and john at dmail.com or find us on twitter at hank green or at john green thank you again for listening and if they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome