Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.
Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS Eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we've become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets go on sale 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. Hi, it's John here with a very special call to open. So during this episode of Dear Hank and John Hank and I talk quite a bit about his upcoming book, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.
We also mention that the pre-order will be available soon. Well, every time we say that, just imagine that we are actually saying the pre-order is available now. That's right Hank's book is available for pre-order now. Wherever you pre-order books, you can also go to HankGreen.com.
There are links there. Okay, that's it. I just wanted to pre-correct the incorrect facts in this pod. Also, I just want to say this is a really, really wonderful book.
I'm not saying that only because Hank is my brother. It is a really special novel. I am so proud of him and so excited for him. I really hope that you'll pre-order the book.
It's called An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. It's by Hank Green. It is his first novel and it is available for pre-order now. All right, on to the episode.
Hello and welcome to this weekend. Rhymes? That's not the title of this podcast at all. Dear Hank and John.
That's it. I prefer to think of it as Dear John and Hank or this weekend, Rhymes, whatever. It's a comedy podcast for two brothers. Answer your question.
You can do the use of rice and bring you all the weeks to use from both Mars and AOC with him, John. How are you? I'm cold. I'm cold, Hank.
I've been cold for two months. The situation is utterly unacceptable to me every day I go outside and it is somehow colder than it was the day before. The snow is so cold, you can't even make snowballs out of it. It just falls apart in your hands because it's made out of ice.
It's ice snow. It's horrible. It's horrible. Everything is terrible.
I'm so tired of winter. Why do I live here? I didn't even know that Indianapolis really had winter. It usually has a nice mild winter where it gets down to 10 degrees a few times.
The entire month of January has been just horrific, terrible. I just want to say to everybody in warm weather climates, if you're listening to this in the southern hemisphere, if you're in Florida or Arizona or something, just give us a bit of that warmth. We're desperate up here. We're dying.
Would you say that of the things that are native to Indianapolis? Weather clearly is not one of them that you really enjoy. Also, I don't see you going out to the tremendous variety of chain restaurants that are available to you. You don't seem to be indulging in that, which is a big perk of Indianapolis.
You do enjoy the motor speedway. Is that the thing that's keeping you there? What is it about Indianapolis? Of the things that are specific to that place that you really is indulging?
I love the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You really only need the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day a year. What happens if the lion is the lion? If necessary, I could probably fly in for the race.
What happens? Do they have an amphitheater or do they have like a new... No, the whole month of... Actually, the whole month of May in Indianapolis is a great thrill because the cars are running almost every day.
You can take your kids to the garage. They can meet the drivers. They can see all the engineering and stuff. That's fun.
Other than that, the main thing that keeps me here is the people, which sounds a little bit cheesy, but it's true. We have wonderful friends and the thought of moving to a different place where I would have to make new friends is unbearable to me. It took me so long to make good friends. Then I have to say, I find it to be a physically beautiful place much of the year so that even though I'm only eight or 10 minutes away from the 11th largest downtown in the United States, though it's a properly big city, I get to live with coyotes and foxes and deer and all that stuff.
That's the other big thing that I like about it. But it's no Missoula. Hank, I'll tell you that. It's no Missoula when it comes to coal.
What are the things that are specific to Indianapolis that you choose not to indulge in? Like in Missoula, I choose not to indulge in downhill skiing. It's not suitable for my temperament. Right.
No, mine neither. I'm not a downhill skier or a snowboarder for that matter. The main thing that I choose not to indulge in Indianapolis is the sports. There's a tremendous sporting culture here for the Indianapolis Colts, the Indianapolis Pacers.
It's not that I don't like the Colts. I know a couple of the Colts. Some of them may be listening. They're nice people.
I know a couple. I do. I do. I have a couple of cult friends.
Is one cult a cult? Like if you're just like one of the Broncos, you're a Bronco. Yeah. One of the Lakers, you're a Laker.
Yeah. Yeah. Works. I have to say the two Colts I know the best.
I'm not sure that they're completely committed to being Indianapolis Colts so much as they enjoy being in the NFL. I don't know if it's the Colts themselves that are the overwhelming draw so much as being able to play professional football. But yeah, anyway, I guess that's what I don't indulge in. Would you like a short poem?
Yeah, hit me. All right. It's Fire and Ice by Robert Frost. You know this poem?
Is Robert Frost his actual last name, Frost? I think so. Yeah. But that's why I went with it.
Because we've got a cold theme. Yeah. Fire and ice, emphasis on the ice. The poem goes like this.
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say an ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction, ice is also great and would suffice.
Nice poem by Robert Frost about fire and ice and hate and God, it's so cold. Do you know how many Pulitzer Prizes Robert Frost one? Two four. Also, his last name isn't actually Frost.
His name is Robert Lee Ryan. No. No. No.
You can't catch me. You can't trick me with Ryan jokes. I'm too ready for them. Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners.
This first question comes from On Hill who asks Dear Hank and John, I have some novels. I want to recommend to this person, but we're not really close. And he isn't even a reader. I think that he'll really like these novels, but I can't come up to him and be like, Hey, you don't know me, but here's a book.
Read it, read it, read it, read it. How do I approach him suddenly and segue into giving him recommendations and actually get this person to read the books? Hoping for you to be his advice. I mean, it's a great question for me because of course my career is literally built around trying to get people I don't know to read a book.
One time I was at Barnes and Noble and there was somebody who had picked up the Fault in Our Stars and they were like looking at it and like going and like they walked around the store for a little bit and then they put it back and I was like, What do I do in this situation? Do I just let this happen? Do I just let this person not buy the Fault in Our Stars and was clearly considering it but has now made the ultimate decision that no, instead I'm going to buy some other piece of trash. I'm not sure what their book was good, but it is difficult.
I think you if you're going to intervene in that situation, Hank, you have to do it before they put the book down. So you have to be like, while they're holding it, you have to be like, Oh, that's a great book. I really, really enjoyed it. I certainly do that whenever I'm in Target and I see somebody holding turtles all the way down.
I'm always like, Hey, I think you like that. I really loved it. I think it better if they put it back on the shelf and then I grab it and I'm like run up to them and I'm like, You put this down. You lost this.
You forgot it. And I'll be like, No, I meant to not like, No, no, yours now. Your hand is all over it. Oh, no, the thing you have to do is you have to become closer to this person.
I mean, you can't just go foisting media on people. You don't know well, because you think that they'll like it. You have to develop a relationship and then voice to the media. Yeah, yeah, I have no idea.
I have a very hard time getting people to read books because books are a big commitment. And and people also have a hard time getting me to read books. You sent me some books for Christmas and I haven't read any of them yet. Oh, there's a couple really good ones.
I'll do my best. I'm in the middle of so many different books, John. Hey, Hank, speaking of books, when is your book going to be available for pre-orders? I can start talking about it.
I don't know the answer to that question, John, but it should be relatively soon. It's so good. I mean, I admittedly, to be honest, I did go into it with somewhat low expectations. Okay, so it was so much better than I expected it to be.
Tell me about your expectations. Let's start there. Well, you know, I've read a lot of books by YouTubers. Some of them are great.
Some of them are terrible. So, you know, I went into it thinking, Oh, great, another YouTuber book, just what the world needs, but it's brilliant. Thanks. It really is.
I mean, I'm not just saying that I was completely and the thing about it, I won't go into it too much because we got to save the praise for when people can pre-order. But the thing about it that has really stuck with me is that it is a really fascinating exploration of how fame and the culture around fame warps individual consciousnesses, but also it is an incredibly well told story. Like my books are mostly about how plot gets interrupted by character. And your book is so well plotted.
Like it was such a pleasure to read. I roared through it. So anyway, I'm incredibly excited for you and really genuinely blown away by how good it is. Thank you.
Thank you a lot. The thing that we're working on right now is the copy that's going to like the pre-order will go up, but there's all the words that go up. In his much anticipated debut novel, Hank Green, has a book, spins a sweeping cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight sensation and realizes that she's part of something bigger than anyone could possibly imagine reading directly off of the thing right now. And so I have to figure out what that's going to look like.
I have to approve these words. I never thought about the fact that I didn't think I'd be involved in that process. Oh yeah, no, there's a lot of authoring that you don't know about yet. There's a lot of making sausage in any business.
And then when you're actually making the sausage, you're like, oh, this is a lot of work, isn't it? All right, let's move on to another question. I got to crack this sausage crank. Yeah, exactly.
Good luck cranking the flapped copy sausage crank. That's called by the way, the flapped copy. I've always liked that term. All right, this next question comes from Olivia who writes, dear John and Hank, is Kylie Jenner pregnant?
I have no idea what conclusion to draw from the available evidence, which is mostly reports from anonymous sources and insiders. And I have no idea what that means. It's driving me crazy, which is a situation I never expected to be. And I appreciate your dubious thoughts on all subjects, including hopefully this one, Olivia.
John, I mean, it does seem that we know a surprising amount about Kylie Jenner's reproductive strategies, considering that she has not said anything about this publicly. And so I feel like it's not my business whether Kylie Jenner is pregnant. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I agree. Obviously, it's none of our business. But I, and my initial feeling was also like, Oh, this question, it's unfair, it's unfair to Kylie, etc. But then I am completely obsessed with other unanswered questions, like whether Donald Trump knowingly colluded with the Russian government during his campaign for president, which is also a question that will be answered in the fullness of time.
And I would argue is like, maybe the question itself is more important than the question of whether Kylie Jenner is pregnant. But the way that I am interested in it is in that exact same salacious way that one is interested in any piece of gossip. So I don't want to be dismissive of the question. I will say Kylie Jenner had a crib delivered to her home in Los Angeles recently, which I think is highly dubious.
Is there a certain, well, I mean, sometimes your friends are coming over and they have kids or your, you know, her sister's got kids. I can play in that situation. I'm not sure you could have a career. Well, if you're really rich, you probably do.
You probably have like a bunch of extra rooms in her house. Do you think Kylie Jenner is that that rich? I think that Kylie Jenner is probably rich. I just assume I'd hear her name a lot.
I think that she has a makeup line. Oh, oh, oh, she's very rich. Did you Google Kylie Jenner net worth? Like everybody else in the world?
I did. I did. I did Kylie Jenner as a wealthy person. Oh, there's no way that Kylie Jenner is as rich as it says she is, but she is very well off.
Yeah. Well, I'm happy for her is the important thing. I'm sure she works hard. And if she whether or not she's pregnant is not our business and she will tell us when she is ready.
It's weird because of course, like we all feel like we deserve some kind of access to celebrities lives because they do offer us access to their lives. Right. But I also think that people should be able to draw the line where they want to draw it. Yeah, but I do feel like is there is there a possibility that Kylie Jenner is like intentionally getting a crib delivered to her home in order to create more news around Kylie Jenner that she's going to CVS and a large hoodie in which could be concealed a baby bump in order to generate more buzz about Kylie Jenner?
It seems maybe seems like maybe. I don't know. I mean, this is actually this gets back to issues raised in your book. It's in fascinating ways.
We do as public figures and by the way, like I don't think you and I are ultimately that different from Kylie Jenner except in terms of scale and also success. She's been far more successful. But I think people are inevitably to an extent calculating about the way that the public looks at them. I'm not sure that they're that calculating.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think that it's an unknowable thing and it's just kind of another thing that we can talk about and we'll talk about and that can generate more discussion and it's interesting that even that discussion is part of that feedback loop.
Right. So one thing that we all definitely know, not just the generous and Kardashians of the world, but all of us is that speculation is more valuable than fact. So the speculation over whether Kylie Jenner is pregnant is certainly taking up a lot more space than ultimately the fact will. Yes.
Yep. This next question comes from Brooke who asks, Dear Hank and John, I've been friends with this guy for six years and I assumed that I knew most things about it that could affect our friendship. However, the other day we were driving around and he pulls over, finishes his drink and throws the cup out the window. Oh boy.
We became friends because we share the same sense of humor along with pretty similar core beliefs and values. But I do not know how to react to this realization that my best friend, apparently not this is your best friend, my best friend willingly litters without remorse. Should I just accept him as he is or try to explain how I feel about this possibly creating an awkward situation where I come off as self-righteous, any of these advice would be appreciated best wishes. Brooke, how do you even watch this occur without saying something?
Yeah, I feel like that's when you say like, stop the car, walk back to the cup, pick up the cup, walk back to the car, apologize, write a letter to your local, like, you know, just keeping the force saying that you're sorry and you've done this in the past and you've changed your ways. Yeah, I mean, we all do terrible things, Hank. Look, we're all deeply flawed people. We're all contributing to systemic injustice, but you don't have to throw a cup out the window for God's sakes.
I mean, there's trash cans at every place. They're all over. Yeah. And there's a whole car of places to put a cup.
That's what I was thinking. I mean, if they don't worry, trash cans, my feeling is that my car is a large trash can and then just periodically I take out the trash. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I can I can I can confirm that that is how you feel about your car. The thing that I wonder is like, is there a universe in which Brooks friend thinks that Brooke now thinks he's cooler because of his irreverent disregard for the laws of littering? Right.
Right. Maybe. I don't care about anything. I'm just look at me.
I'm just like, I the system just doesn't just the system. Wow. The rules don't apply to me. Rage against them.
Stick it over the man. That's right. Well, I'm not sure maybe. Which man you're sticking it to.
Probably just all the people who now have to look at the trash on the side of the road. And also the people who have to clean it up. Which yeah, I think in general, like I want to have a relationship with my friends where when they do something that I think is just unacceptable, I can be like, dude, that is unacceptable. Totally.
So that would be my bigger concern, Brooke, is not so much that this person did this, although it is duly horrifying. But more that the question of do you feel comfortable confronting them and saying like, Oh, come on. Yeah. Like, you should if this is your best friend, if you've been friends with this person for six years, you should be in that place where you can not have to worry about coming off of self-righteous.
And of course, like not everybody has the same level of self confidence and and power in a relationship. But but I think that that is a completely normal thing for a friend to do. And I would not. It's weird now because you didn't do it in the moment.
And it'd be like, okay, we have to talk about one time I did this with a friend of mine who like, who like we split the check and then like it became clear that he did not leave a tip. And I was like, do I and I didn't say anything in the moment. And then I was like, but now I want to like make sure that he knows what the rules are because like there's rules and maybe he didn't learn the rules. But also maybe he thought because we were splitting the check that it was different somehow.
And so I ended up having the conversation and then he lied to me about it. He just lied and he was like, no, no, I always leave a tip. And then I was like, oh, I think that you're not a good guy. Yeah, maybe maybe he was just embarrassed and maybe that's how he deals with embarrassment.
I as you know, Hank, I'm a little more sympathetic to liars than you are. I don't know why. I think it's just because I'm a more generous empathetic person. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on, can I tell you a story about my dirty car? Okay, is it true?
It's true. It's true. I don't even know if it's funny. I do know that I think about it all the time though.
I think about it. It's almost every single time I get into my car. So many years ago when I was living in Chicago and when Sarah and I were first dating, I was still living with my buddy Hassan. And Hassan and Sarah and I were walking up to my car.
And Hassan said, every time I approach your car, I always expect to be there to be a little rat sitting in a passenger seat, clutching a purse and looking up at me and saying, where are we going today? What's my car? And my cars are still going to be at every single time. I walk up to the car.
I think like, is the little rat clutching the purse going to be here today? Yeah. This is like the rat is so at home. Basically, you have become like driving this rat.
Right. Exactly. All right. This next question comes from Natalie who writes, Dear John and Hank, if someone stole a base clarinet from my high school and gave it to me, do I have a moral obligation to return it?
The band director didn't even notice it was gone. And the girl who stole it graduated, Natalie. I feel like we're going over some real basic stuff today, John. Yeah.
You hit it. You hit it. Hoard stolen goods. I mean, this is Natalie.
You got to return the base clarinet in this situation 100 times out of 100. I'm sorry. The only way in which maybe you don't have to return the base clarinet is if you paid for it, not knowing that it was stolen and later found out it was stolen. That is an interesting role to them.
This is not an interesting moral dilemma. No. Yeah. I'm afraid.
I'm afraid whether or not the stolen property has been identified as stolen. And also, do you know that the band director didn't notice it was gone? Or does the band director tell you about all of the things that get stolen? Like, are you on the band director email list of still like where their communication with the police?
Like, you don't know. Also, in a way, isn't it worse if the band director didn't notice it was stolen because it just means the band director is so downtrodden about the amount of stolen goods flying out of the band room? Oh, man. Listen, Natalie, the great thing about your situation is that you can be a hero here.
You walk into the band director's office. You say, I have two pieces of good news. I did not steal this base clarinet, which you can say in complete honesty. However, I am returning it to you because the person who did steal it graduated and gave it to me and I didn't feel right about it.
So here it is. P.S. If you want to give me a reward for my generosity, a base clarinet would be a great reward. And so maybe you've got like a 5% chance of getting, you know, a guilt-free base clarinet.
And also P.P.S. No, I cannot tell you who stole the base clarinet. I'm sorry if that person is my friend. Right.
Yeah, you can't. You say I'm not going to name names, but they did graduate and then maybe you give a couple hints. This next question comes from M who asks, Dear Hank and John, is it impolite to move when a smoker sits down next to you? Currently, the vibrator computer and somebody came in smelling a lot like cigarettes, smoking.
I can't just leave because I need to use the computers. But please help. I have tried to stop breathing and it is not going well. I await your answer.
M. Yeah, you could totally move. I do that. I can move you theater if somebody sits down next to me and smells like cigarettes.
I will move. Absolutely. So there's broadly speaking two kinds of former smokers. There's the kind who can no longer bear the sight of cigarettes or the smell of cigarette smoke or the smell of, you know, a person's jacket after they've smoked cigarettes.
And I'm not that kind of ex-smoker. I'm the kind of ex-smoker who, if somebody sits down next to me and even if it is the most rancid stale cigarette smoke, smell, I'll just be like, oh, God, it smells so good. Can you lean over here a little bit? Yeah, it's just like the best perfume in the world to me.
And when people smoke near me, other people get up and move and I'll be like, I'm sorry, if it's okay with you guys, I'm going to stay here and enjoy the second hand smoke because it's as good as it gets for me these days. Oh, man, I've never smoked. So I'm not that person. I will even move if somebody's vaping nearby.
No, don't move because I don't like to see people vaping near me because the problem with the vaping is that I can see the cloud. It's not the smell or anything. It's that I can see the cloud of their breath approaching me. And that's like so horrifying to me because I know all of the bacteria that are traveling with their vape smoke.
It's super weird. So they're shooting me these rings of vape and I'm just like, oh, God, no. Yeah, because there's something about cigarette smoke where some of it's coming out of the lungs and some of it's coming out of the cigarette. And so you're like, well, 100% that you don't know 100% where the smoke has been.
Maybe it's just the smoke. But if it's vape smoke, 100% of that vape smoke has been inside a person. Yeah, no, that's just breath visualized. It's terrible.
Now that you've said it, it's breath visualized. One, two, I can't help but trying to guess what flavor the vape juice is. Oh, that's like suddenly all conversation stops and you're like, is it like peppermint banana? What is it?
Oh, God, is it? Is that like Jolly Ranger watermelon flavor or or is it how what is that? Clove? What's happening to my nose and you can never quite figure out and you have to go talk to the strange vapor and be like, what is it?
Just tell me what is the juice you got in there, bud? I can't believe I mean, I would think that you're doing a bit except you are the kind of person to walk up to a stranger and say, what is the flavor of your vape juice? Totally am. You really are.
It's distressing to me like, and it's not we share so much DNA and yet you're willing to do a thing that I wouldn't do for like probably low five figures. All right, this next question comes from Ada who writes, Dear John and Hank, our fogs clouds and if so, can they rain? Does everything just get wet? What about lightning?
Water is weird, Ada. Our fogs clouds, John. Our fogs cloud. Well, okay, I'm not a scientist, but my inclination is to believe that fogs are essentially extremely low hanging clouds.
Yeah, well, so like the weird thing is what it what where does a cloud become clouds? Like if you got one of those days where it's just 100% gray above you, is that just one cloud? It's cloudy, right? But those aren't clouds because they're not independent from each other.
So fog is one cloud kind of weirdly definitionally like you are like fog is when you are inside of a single cloud and then so yes, it is a cloud. It's not clouds but would be if you looked at a bunch of different fog from far away and it's like clouds hitting the land. But what I've never heard of, the reason, and I think that there's a good reason for this is like fog clouds form in a different way than like cumulonimbus clouds do. And so they don't have as much perturbation and they don't have as much, they're not as much like energy in them.
So they can't they're not big enough to create lightning. So you shouldn't have to worry about fog lightning though. Now that I've said it out loud, I the world is a large place and maybe fog lightning has happened somewhere. But fog, but fog clouds do rain.
You will notice that if you ever looked in the Pacific Northwest where you'll be like it's foggy and then you're like it's raining and foggy. What is this this disgusting? I hate it. But I don't think that you have to worry about fog lightning.
I don't think. So I once walked through a cloud while descending a mountain in Denali National Park in Alaska with a girl who'd broken up with me like two weeks before. But for some reason we decided to continue on this trip. That's not totally relevant to the story.
But my experience walking through an actual cloud was that it was somewhat thicker than walking through most fog czar. I mean, I think when it comes down to the fog's John, there's a lot of different fog. Sometimes they're pretty thin. Sometimes they're extremely thick.
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll believe you. But I don't think I think that fog lightning is something that we are relatively safe from.
This next question John comes from Christine who asks, Dear Hank and John, I work as a volunteer at the local food bank. I love my work. We help over 450 families in our city alone. I see those families register them and check their finances every few months.
About half of our clients are Dutch. I'm from another one. So people with huge debt problems and the other half are refugees who recently got their status as a refugee and are waiting for their financial situation to be fixed by the government. Well, I don't know.
Well, I know that my work is appreciated and many, many people depend on it. I have found some strange things people do which should expel them from our food aid, like only taking a few items out of the whole crate of food we provide them or spending all their money at a casino. The strange thing is that this hasn't happened to any of our Dutch clients. This combined with the fact that many of our immigrant clients don't speak Dutch or English or German or French and I don't speak Turkish or Arabic has made me think a bit weirdly of our non-Dutch clients.
I'm not the only one my colleagues who have been doing this for many years vote the anti-immigration party. How do I make sure that I don't become a racist when I have so many bad experiences with immigrants? I like thinking that everything is nuanced but it's getting hard. Loving food, Christine.
I thought this was a really interesting question, Hank, and it's a difficult one. The first thing I wanted to say about it is that I don't think racism is only a character flaw. It is also structural. It is also built into political and social and economic systems.
And so I think it's important to remember that. The second thing I wanted to say is that it's really difficult but incredibly important to be empathetic to people's experiences and how difficult and experience it is to be a refugee. And sometimes people are going to deal with that poorly and they're going to make really bad choices. People are going to be as human as anyone else except the population that you're working with, Christine, in many cases are people who have survived what is to me unimaginable trauma.
They've survived the trauma of dislocation. In many cases they've survived the kinds of loss that most of us will never have to imagine. And now they're in a place that feels very distant from the way that they have lived before. And that's challenging.
And one of the ways you might deal with that, for instance, is to not eat a lot of the food because a lot of the food isn't good to you or it doesn't make sense to you or you don't know how to prepare it. And because you can't have the conversations that you need to have to build that empathy, to bridge that empathy gap because of language, all of these problems I think can compound upon each other. So just as you're struggling to empathize with people who maybe are making bad choices or in other cases are maybe just dealing with the regular traumas and dislocations of being a refugee, you have to also remember that in a lot of cases the people you're working with can't communicate effectively with people who are the people who would be giving them services and help and for instance helping them with a gambling addiction. And so I think you have to work to bridge that empathy gap.
Now that work goes both ways. The refugee populations also need to work to bridge the empathy gap in their host countries. And so I don't want to say that all of the work lies with you, but I do think that it has to be too much. Yeah, the thing that I'd add, I think that was great, John, is also like that racism, like judging people based on the way that they look at the way that they are like this is a natural thing that happens to people.
We are pattern recognition machines. And when you are having, you know, a number of interactions and some of them are negative and then some of them end up being negative with a person who looks one way more than the person who looks another way, you start to apply that sort of like that one negative thing to all of the people because you maybe only interact with people in a certain circumstance. And so it becomes pretty easy to start to see things in a blanket way when they aren't actually when they actually aren't a blanket way. But I think that it's like the remarkable thing, Christine, is like how like carefully you're thinking about this and also how hard you're working to serve the people that you serve.
And thank you for doing that. And I'm glad that everyone says support systems for its citizens, both people who have been there a while and for refugees as well. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's get to one more question before we thank our sponsors.
This one comes from Jessica writes, Dear John and Hank, about a month ago, I got a new job with my local Girl Scout Council. And while the job is fulfilling, there is one problem. I thought there would be more cookies. No one has offered me cookies.
However, there is a cookie closet filled with several cases of each kind of cookie. The problem is that in order to gain access to the cookie closet, I must tell the secretary why I need cookies. And he do his advice and fake reasons are appreciated cookies and conundrums. Jessica.
Well, when this question started out, I thought that the thing was going to be like, I thought there would be more cookies, but it turns out that we only have cookie that we like people order the cookie. No, there is a cookie closet. You just have to say why you need the cookies. I mean, what like, are there some examples of like, I feel like I need the cookies.
Is that a good enough reason? Is it possible to put the second day and say I need the cookies today because I am hungry for thin mints. I need the cookies because I cannot sit this close to a cookie closet filled with cases of cookies and not eat at least one cookie. Like I am only human.
Yeah, I feel like you should start out with the real reason, right? And then you see that start. So you start out and you say, listen, I would like to access the cookie closet because I am a human being and I love cookies. And then if the person who has the keys to the cookies, I am sorry, that is not a good enough reason.
I think you come back the next day and you say, well, I would like to access the cookie closet today because I would like to give some, I would like to have some of the cookies for myself, but also to enjoy them with my aunt who is going through a hard time. It doesn't matter if this is true or not. And then if that doesn't work, then you have to go deeper and deeper into progressively crazier lies until you are like, I am sorry, I need to access the cookies. It is a matter of national security.
What are the cookies tend to be useful? I feel like if I am working at a Girl Scout Council, we got a cookie closet. The cookie closet is probably there for entertaining guests because people are coming to speak at the Girl Scout Council or they're coming to have a meeting with you about marketing or whatever. There's, you're like the people coming to the Girl Scout Council are expecting cookies because this is what Girl Scouts are most known for apparently.
And so you have to break out the cookies for when guests come. So you need to be getting guests into the office who are important to the Girl Scout Council's business and we go and we're like, our guest who is an important person in the community has been a supporter of the Girl Scouts is visiting. We got to get some tag alongs up in here. Right.
I mean, I like that idea to Hank because then the guest of honor eats like two of the thin mints or tag alongs or whatever. And then you're like, okay, listen, we don't want to just let this sleeve of cookies rot. John, so I have a good home for them. My home.
John. Yeah, I have discovered something that has, I thought I was crazy. I thought I was broken and wrong and that like my brain had made a thing where there was no thing. There are two different companies that make Girl Scout cookies.
There is what ABC Bakers and there's little brownie bakers and well and ABC and little brownie bakers makes Girl Scout cookies here in Missoula. They're there where we get them from and almost all of Florida also it's they supply by far the most area of the United States. But ABC Bakers supplies Orlando where we grew up. Oh, and so when I'm eating, I've always like ever since I'm from Montana, I've been like, themons are different.
They're just different here. And I thought that I was crayon, but I'm not. It's really a thing. They're different.
They're thin mints in Montana are different from thin mints in Orlando. Whoa, all of them. Wow. That's I mean, so basically, you're saying I've got to look up where I am.
Indianapolis, you have, wait, where is Indianapolis? I think that all of Indiana is different from Orlando. Yeah. Yeah.
So we've got the we've got the ones that are not the Orlando thin mints. Correct. Do you have different thin mints? And also, I mean, my palette is not discerning enough to have noticed, but I would like to congratulate you on that.
And also Orlando didn't even have tag alongs. They're called peanut butter patties in Orlando. I think that they've actually universally changed the name. Oh, okay.
But regardless, today's podcast is brought to you by Orlando Thin Mints or Lando Thin Mints not available in Mizzou. No, no, they're different. I think they're like the Orlando. It's better, John.
This podcast is also brought to you by John Green's Car Rat. John Green's Car Rat would like to know what we're going today. Spot gas is in addition brought to you by fog lightning fog lightning a natural disaster I don't have to worry about. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by that unknown vape juice smell.
Oh, it came out of someone's lungs and now really curious what it is. Good Lord. Hey, before we get to the all important news from Mars and A.C. Wimbledon, I want to give you a few updates.
All right. First, we have two corrections from Caroline's. Oh, Caroline's different. Okay, different.
Caroline writes, dear John and Hank, I'm not certain whether the following qualifies as a correction, but in a recent episode of the pod listener wrote in wondering about a hamster's ability to survive in the wild. Imagine my severe disappointment when both brothers failed to mention the true name of the Syrian hamster. So the true name for the Syrian hamster, Hank, the Arabic name literally translated is Mr. Saddlebags.
Oh, my God, that's real cute. Mr. Saddlebags. Mr.
Saddlebags. Our other correction coming from Caroline, dear John and Hank, I'm a longtime listener and a big fan. But the most recent episode discussing Benjamin Harrison has left me a little bothered. I volunteer as a docent at the President Benjamin Harrison site.
And my heart broke when Hank said that Harrison might be at the end of the list of presidents, people remember, I should also add here, Hank, that I have many friends who work at the Benjamin Harrison house. And I do not understand how I got into this pickle. I have heard from countless people. I know in real life who are horrified by our complete failure to reflect the many accomplishments of President Benjamin Harrison to suggest that he did hardly anything as a disgrace to America's only Hoosier president, Caroline writes quick facts include a huge expansion of America's Navy, creating America's second to fourth national parks, including Yosemite, attempts to protect the early environment and early trust busting efforts, including the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Also, John Harrison was one of the less corrupt presidents. He actually shunned the practice of appointing people to office based off of pressures from his party and instead made a point to appoint those from all sides, including appointing some of the first African Americans to political positions. Harrison is often overlooked because there was no crisis to solve at the time. He wasn't involved in some awful conspiracy and didn't raise America out of disaster.
He kept the course steady during his time in office, especially John, but Hank as well, you have to come visit the President Benjamin Harrison site to learn this up. It's in downtown Indianapolis, so it shouldn't be a problem. Ask for Lucas. He's my boss and he's great.
Well, I now want very much very much be like, hello, I'm Hank. I was told to talk to Lucas. I want to make some kind of application that like type in all the president's names you know and then do some analysis to figure out who the least known president is. Is it Chester Arthur?
Is it Warren Harding? Is it Rutherford B. Hayes? Is it?
Well, Caroline's argument is that regardless of whether Benjamin Harrison is a lesser known president, he shouldn't be. And as a Hoosier, I should have called you to task. Well, I apologize. Well, stating a fact is different from agreeing that that fact should be the way that it is.
And I wasn't saying that I think this person should be the least well known president whose name I cannot remember at the particular moment. Harrison, some Harrison, which Harrison is, and I think there were two of them. Okay, Don't even hear Harrison was president, right? But that's not who we're talking about.
Who are we talking about? Benjamin Harrison, because you're digging a whole deeper and deeper. There's a couple responses I also wanted to get to, including a response from Molly who had to make the PowerPoint for the guy Rick who was retiring. And it was her first day on the job and she had to make her a PowerPoint for a stranger.
Dear John and Hank, just as an update about the PowerPoint, I was able to scrape together some blurry pictures, including some of him with his family, and one of them holding a baby, who's maybe that's actually not that his nickname was Teflon Rick, because nothing ever sticks to him. Still entirely convinced that the guy I talked to wasn't messing with me on that one. It was a hiking themed presentation about the next adventure. And the opening title was 12 years here, Teflon Rick, exclamation point.
People seemed properly apathetic to the whole thing while they ate their barbecue. Thanks for the read, Molly. So why are people trying to stick stuff to Rick? I don't know.
I mean, also, I don't know that being named Teflon Rick is good news. I hope Rick listens to the pod and he writes in. Yeah, we really want to know why people try to make things stick to you, whether actually physically or like the murder rapper, whatever, like the crime that Rick may or may not have done. I'm confused.
We've also got some information from Sarah who says, dear brothers green, since you all were talking about the illustrious Indianapolis cemetery, I thought we would share the sign in the cemetery at the time I grew up in. It says, thanks for visiting. Come back when you can stay longer. Grave sites available.
We'll put that up on the Patreon. It's a pretty great sign over at patreon.com. Dear Hank and John, last, last, last, last response we need to get to Hank is from Niali. You may remember it was a while back on the part, but somebody wrote in saying that they were really struggling with the male-dominated STEM program that they were in.
And they wrote an update nearly two years ago. I sent an email expressing my frustrations about being in a male-dominated STEM program. I wanted advice on whether I should stay or not, but I stayed and it was the best decision ever. I just finished my first year when I was getting ready to drop out, but I stayed deciding to see what could come of the second year.
There were new people in the second year. And guess who wasn't upset? He's spaghetti anymore because there was a new girl. And we both basically rule STEM now.
I mean, that literally. She's the president of our TSA chapter and everyone in the engineering program is in TSA. And look, I don't want to explain the social hierarchy. I don't like long emails.
We just got out of school, STEM certified, too, and not to throw shade at the STEM academics team. But we basically convinced a board of actual adults that we knew what we were doing with LCDs. And I built a solar powered stoplight. And my engineering teacher is essentially my mother now.
I've done so many things. I love so many people staying was the best decision I've made. I mean, that was just a great email. It made me so happy.
So thank you, Niali. That's really wonderful. John. Yes.
You got any AFC? One of the news for me? How did they play the MKDons yet? Has that happened?
Hank. Hank. Yeah. There is nothing, Dons, about the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes.
Sorry. Sorry. My apologies. You're welcome.
They did. They played the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes. It was a I listen to it. I watched the first half on my I follow up.
I listen to the second half on the radio W Do and hoping for a change in luck. But alas, it was a nil, nil, draw right like the 88th minute Andy Bartium had a wonderful opportunity to win the game for AFC Wimbledon. But it wasn't to be it was a you know, look, a point away from home is not a disastrous result. The problem is that AFC Wimbledon are now 26 games into their league one season.
And that means there are only there only 20 games left. And we are currently sitting two points adrift of of safety. So we have 28 points. The Milton Keynes team and a couple other teams have 29 or 30.
And we're in we need to we need to get up to 20th place. We just need to finish in 20th and not get relegated. So it's it's it's getting there's 20 games left in the season. A lot can happen.
But I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge that I was getting nervous. Well, you feel like you guys are kind of holding on there. It's not like you're at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. That's true.
It could be worse. It could be worse. If you get relegated, is that you make a lot less money? Yeah, also you just it's hard to get up to the third tier, right?
Like you don't want to get relegated because then you have to try to get up again, either through direct promotion or through the playoffs, which is always a crapshoot. If we could just finish in 20th and then keep keep one more season in league one and then we'll have our stadium built and anything is possible. So that's the that's the news from AFC Wimbledon. All the games are big games now.
20 games left in the season. What's the news from Mars? You know how Mars has a lot of water on it. It turns out we've figured this out, you know, a couple decades ago and keep finding new water in new places.
But one of the things that's always been a little bit questioning, what question is how that water exists? So does it exist sort of in like mineralized salts where it's not really easy to get at? Or is it sort of like just another piece of dirt? So like your dirt is part ice part which is actually would be really hard, like kind of permafrosty.
You'd have to like scoop it up and then melt the ice and like then you'd have a bunch of mud and you have to somehow get the dirt out and get the water out. And so that's really complicated. There's a bunch of rocks. So yeah, like really rocky ice chunks that just would be hard to work with if you were on Mars and wanted to get water.
So that's a lot of what we've found is just sort of like just below the surface, there's a lot of little pieces of ice mixed in with the dirt. And that's good. It's nice to have any kind of water, but it would be a lot better if there was like clean, fresh, not salty, not mixed with a bunch of dirt or rocks water. And so recently a paper came out, some researchers looked at with like high resolution artificial color images, they looked at images from the Mars reconnaissance orbiter and were able to identify in areas where there had been like basically what you would see like at the Grand Canyon where you can see the layers of sedimentary rock laid down.
They were able to identify layers where it was just like a pure ice layer and we're talking like tens of meters thick of pure water ice with no rock inclusions or anything. And that's just like, you know, it's significantly below the surface, but it's on the order of like reachable like meters down. And so there is not just water on Mars, but there's also like clean, not mixed with anything else, water ice. And the way that happens is the same way that it would happen on Earth, which is snow would fall in the same place year after year after year, and then that snow would get compressed and it wouldn't evaporate or melt or anything, it would just keep getting compressed until it became ice in the way that Glacier would.
And then after that, sediments were laid down on top of it probably through wind probably. And so there's a bunch of that and it's indication both of like a lot of precipitation on Mars, but also good news for people who want to go to Mars someday and have clean water to drink, but also to convert into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel, but also to breathe. So that's a thing. And it's real lots of lots of big slabs of clean water ice.
So I was reading about this, Hank, because I've become a little bit of a Mars fan. And the thing that struck me reading about it is that yes, this is sweet clean water ice, but isn't it also really far away from where humans would likely be if they were going to go to Mars? Like wouldn't humans probably live pretty close to the equator? And this is pretty far from the equator?
Yes, where humans would be actually is up for debate, like whether we would be close to the equator because the weather is a little better there maybe, but like really weather probably isn't that big of a deal. Like it's pretty cold and crappy on Mars. Right, because the weather's bad no matter where you are. So what's the difference between super cold and super cold?
That's a question I have to ask myself every morning. The much more interesting thing is like versus how nice the weather would be is how interesting it would be scientifically. So areas where there were long standing pools of water, lakes, oceans, rivers, things like that are probably going to be the places where we'll be most interested in the next part. Interesting, interesting.
Well, good luck to you. Okay. And may it not be until 2028. So Hank, thank you for pausing with me.
What are we going today? Oh gosh, John, we learned that you cut yaht and not litter. Yeah, we also learned that you can't keep a stolen base clarinet just because you didn't steal it. And we learned that thin mints and thin mints are different depending on where you live.
And we learned that Hank's new book truly is excellent. Oh, thanks. Thanks, John. Thanks again.
Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to find out more about our podcast or listen to our weekly terrible podcast this weekend, Ryan's, you can do that over at patreon.com slash dear Hank and John. Thanks again, everybody for listening. Hank, why don't you read the credits?
This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosie Annalles Rojas and Sheridan Gibson, our head of community and communications is Victoria Bonjourno. The theme music that you're hearing right now and at the beginning of the podcast and at the beginning of this weekend, Ryan's is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.