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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. Yours, I'm Christopher the Givit, Thee, and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast where Hank Green, who is me and John Green, who's my brother, give you a view of advice, answer your questions and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. That's true. How are you Hank? I'm good.
Oh man. My hair is out of control and I can't find a time to get a haircut. It's a disaster John. I mean it's so hard to be me.
How have you gotten to a point in your life where you can just call someone and have them cut your hair while you work? I have not thought of that. I imagine that's how the President does it. That's exactly how the President does it.
He's like on the phone with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister is like, I'm sorry, is there some background noise and he's like, oh no, I'm just getting a haircut. Yeah, I actually went to see the President, you may remember not to brag or anything, but I was getting my makeup done by his personal makeup person and I asked her, you know, what is it like to cut the President's hair? And she was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, I do not. I do not cut the President's hair.
He has a barber. So it's two separate people. Oh yes, two people. He has a hair person and a makeup person.
Yes. And the hair person comes into the White House and cuts his hair. As far as I can know, in the Oval Office. So apparently if you like, just look at the carpet of the Oval Office, there's hairs from every President.
I think they have never replaced the carpet. It's amazing. Nor have they ever vacuumed it apparently. Well, I mean, since you brought up the fact that you met the President, Hank, as we are recording this podcast, I am hours away from what could be the most wonderful moment of my entire life.
Of course, I have two beautiful children at a wonderful wedding day. Going to your wedding with one of the highlights of my life. I've had so many great days, the premiere of the Fault in Our Stars movie and the premiere of Paper Towns, both wonderful nights. But tonight, Hank, here in Indianapolis, I have to tell you, Hank, there's maybe eight or nine properly beautiful days a year.
It's usually a little too cold or a little too hot or a lot too cold or raining. But today, the sky is a cloudless blue. The temperature could be no warmer or colder and be more beautiful. It is just absolutely perfect.
And do you want to know why Indianapolis has chosen today to bring out its best self? Yes, John, I do. It's because Taylor Swift is coming to town. Taylor Swift is here tonight and Hank, I may meet her.
Oh, like you're going to a Taylor Swift concert and you will and you will watch her and yell Taylor. And then she'll look at you. I mean, I am going to go to a Taylor Swift concert and watch her and yell Taylor by all means. But also, I may meet her.
Oh, wow. Is she going to bring you up on stage to sing a song with her? I sincerely hope not as my brother. You are well aware that when I am brought up on stage by musicians to sing along, I perform poorly.
Hank always kindly has me come out for the on-cores when I'm when we're doing shows together and oh my god, I'm just the worst. Am I not? You're not great at singing. It's kind of remarkable.
And the funny thing is you're always like, no, I did the thing. And I'm like, well, you did the thing. You just didn't sing any other right notes. And you think you do.
It was just fine. And like, it's fine to, you know, did not have one of a million skills that humans are capable of having. It's just a... You know, like all novelists, I desperately wish to be a rock star.
And it is true that I can't sing. But I do genuinely believe that when we sung that song, New York City, by they might be giants at Carnegie Hall, and I sung the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island, Ferry Park, I truly believe I was on key. Was I not on key that night? Your silence has broken my heart.
Yes, you are. You are on key. Are you lying to me? Is it okay for me to lie to you in a certain circumstance?
No, just tell me the truth. No, you are on key. No. It's devastating.
I can't believe you told me that. I specifically ask you never to tell me that. Well, tell me more about how you're going to meet Taylor Swift. Are you going to be backstage?
Are you going to get to like, take a selfie and like high five and ask her how she's doing? I do not know the details, but believe you me on next week's Dear John and Hank, you will hear about them. You will hear about them in excruciating detail. I don't even know for sure that I'm going to get to meet Ms.
Swift, but regardless, I'm going to enjoy the concert because, as you know, I'm a massive fan of 1989, both the year and the pop album. And I am just so freaking excited. I am over the moon. I would like to thank Taylor, by the way, for making room at her concert for me in advance.
And not to hijack the whole podcast, but there is also other news in my life that I would like to share with you. I have gone on a social media hiatus. I've stopped posting on the tumblers and the Twitters and the Facebook. So the only thing I'm really doing work-wise, social media-wise is vlogbrothers' videos on Tuesdays and then Dear Hank and John, our comedy podcast.
And it's so that I can write a novel. And I'm only two days in so far, but I have to say it's kind of great. Well, I've identified a problem with your two pieces of news, which is that you will meet Taylor Swift and not be able to do anything with that. You have to, you have to snap that, John.
It turns out that you don't have to mediate experiences through social media in order for them to have really happened. That said, I suspect that if I do meet Ms. Swift, that I may I may Instagram that event. But we'll see.
Life is long and who knows. But I'm really enjoying my social media hiatus because I have missed writing so much. It's been so long since I've had two or three writing days in a row, like the two or three that I've had here. And obviously, you need a couple hundred of those to write a novel.
But yeah, I'm feeling excited. Good. Well, in among your social media hiatus, I will say that I am Hank, G.R.E. on Snapchat, Hank Green on Instagram, Hank Green on Twitter and right here at Dear Hank and John on iTunes.
So if you'd like to follow me, I will not be taking the social media hiatus. Oh, an Edward Spoon hands on Tumblr. And I'll be just, I'll be making all kinds of interesting and well-composed filtered pictures of my dinner. And don't you want to see that?
Follow me. Snapchat. I don't understand your obsession with Snapchat. You really seem to believe that Snapchat is going to be the thing that breaks you out of your cult following into this proper mainstream success that you'll be on the Tonight Show or whatever.
And Jimmy Fallon, or I literally don't know who hosts the Tonight Show. So I hope it's Jimmy Fallon, but whoever hosts the Tonight Show will be like, so Hank, you know, you had a big following on the YouTube and of course, the big hit comedy podcast that was full of ruminations about death and Mars. But it wasn't really until your Snapchat hit it big that the world knew about you. So John, the thing is that the only following worth having is a cult following because...
Oh, I could not agree more. Yeah, like mainstream success is just really unpleasant. So Snapchat is very good at cultivating that cult following. And it's just a couple tens of thousands of people.
Yeah, it's just a nice place. Now that you've explained it that way, I realize that I was completely wrong and I apologize. Speaking of which, before we get to the question, Hank, we need to apologize to our listeners who like Mario Kart characters other than Luigi and Donkey Kong. There was a substantial amount of controversy about that.
Also, we spent a lot of time talking about it. So let's spend a little more time talking about it. People were tremendously angry and hurt by the way that we dismissed the likes of Yoshi, Princess Peach and even Bowser. And I would just like to state for the record that I am a novelist, Hank, is whatever Hank does.
We are not professional Mario Kart players and I apologize for giving advice as if I were an expert. Also, as if we were just to be clear, talking about Mario Kart, circa N64. Yeah, I mean, I was talking about the Super Mario Kart that I played on a yellow couch in 1994 when there was no functional worldwide web. So just remember that I grew up in a different time.
I'm from a different era. Hank, should we answer some people's questions? But John, wait! Don't you have to read us a poem?
So, Hank, you were called last week's short poem was by William Carlos Williams. He was a physician, often wrote very short poems on the back of prescription pants. This is just to say I've eaten the poems that were in the icebox, etc. Well, this is a slightly longer poem that I really enjoy.
Kenneth Koch often associated with the beat movement somewhat unfairly. But anyway, moving on, it's called Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams. I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I'm sorry, but it was morning and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.
We laughed at the Hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing. I gave away the money that you'd been saving to live on for the next 10 years, the man who asked for it was shabby, and the firm march wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
Last evening, we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor. Variations on a theme by William Carlos Williams from Kenneth Koch, that poem's from 1962 and one of my absolute favorites.
That's nice John, I liked it. I knew I could find a poem you would like if I tried hard enough. I'm coming around, I'm coming around. I don't know that you're going to slay me into becoming a hardcore A.F.
Sumel and Pham, but you may, yet, make me enjoy poetry. We have a question, John. This question is from anonymous who asks Dear Hank and John. I have a very annoying housemate.
She doesn't do her part of chores unless someone tells her she doesn't have a job, so her parents pay her rent, but she still gets money from the government and yet she can't pay her bills on time. She just sits around all day watching TV or singing. How can I get her to do her jobs and pay her bills and generally be a better housemate without sounding like her mother when I ask her to do these things? Oh goodness, oh goodness.
Well, we've all- Well, having been that housemate, I feel like I'm a bit of an expert in this. So for many years, I lived with my best friend Shannon James in the great city of Chicago. Shannon and I are still extremely close friends. In fact, she's visiting this weekend and I was a very messy person.
I mean, I have obsessive compulsive disorder and so I have some weird compulsions that in general make it difficult to live with me, but also I'm just not a very clean person and for many years, I didn't recognize what messiness was. So I would be sitting watching TV or playing Super Mario Card or whatever and Shannon would be like, is there any way that you could pick up around the house a little bit? And I would be like, I would look around and I would be like, oh no, everything's good here. I don't even know what you're talking about.
And she would be like, well, your pants are currently on the coffee table and that's not ideal. And also there's 17 cans of wild cherry diet Pepsi on the living room table, as you might notice. And I would be like, oh, that stuff. And slowly over the course of many years, Shannon trained me to have a better understanding of what messiness is.
But that was an act of extraordinary generosity and love between two absolute best friends. This person doesn't sound like your best friend. You should just get around. Yeah, this person, in fact, it sounds a little bit to me like you sort of waver in this question between being like this person needs, we need to like come to a better understanding and insulting the person, which makes me feel like you have a bad relationship with the person.
Yeah, I would just go ahead and sever the house maintenance. There's a bunch of people out there looking for roommates. Yeah, if that's an option. I mean, the other thing to remember is that a lot of times what this, this activity comes from, and I also suffer from messiness blindness, the way that John does, which is a struggle for for Catherine, and she has also lovingly trained me to understand what messy is.
But oftentimes, I had a roommate that was a lot like this and it turned out that he was, you know, struggling a lot with depression. And that can be, you know, like that's an unemployment to symptom of depression, you know, not doing things as a symptom of depression and, you know, not taking care of things that need to be taken care of. And so if you do want to keep this person as a roommate, or you have to, then the thing to do is to create a great deal of structure and and try and have that structure be the boss and not you, because one of the great allies of mental stability is structure. And, and, and if you can create that and have it be something that this person doesn't feel like they have an option to avoid, then they won't avoid it.
They will do it. And, but that might mean being a little bit of a mom or, or someone has to be the authority in that case. And, and if it's the kind of thing that this person is going to be like, you can't be the boss of me, then, you know, maybe you find a different place or they find a different place. However, however it's set up, whoever's the person on the lease, it makes that, is going to have to make that call in the end.
Yeah, I agree with you. I, I kind of feel like if you can't have open lines of communication in a roommate relationship, it gets dark and walking on eggshells and passive aggressive really, really fast. So you've got to just, you've got to, what, what Shannon and I would always say, because we had like other roommates who would come and go. And what we would always say to the other roommates is like, in this house, you must be able to fight.
Like you must be able to fight lovingly and forgive each other, because if things are not like open and honest around here, then like it gets super weird, super fast. All right. I, I was, that's actually something that we both have legitimate experience with. John, do we have another question?
Yes. We do. And it's another thing that we both have legitimate experience with. It's from Kathy.
She writes, dear John and Hank, who do you think would win in a fight? John's puff or Patrick Roth versus beer? I mean, John's puff is, is amazing. It's, it's elegant.
It is. Some people call it historically significant. It is indeed historically significant. Patrick Roth versus beer is also all of those things and also much bigger than the puff.
And I would say, you know, significantly more bad ass than the puff. Yep. So I think that Patrick Roth versus beer would win. Patrick Roth versus you don't know is the author of the name of the wind.
An absolutely beautiful, fancy novel that's part of the series that is, that is in the middle of being completed. Well, he's a great writer. It's beautiful. It's wonderful stuff.
It's, it's like, you know, if you like fantasy at all, it's basically, in my opinion, like the thing that happened in the, you know, since 2010, that matters a lot. I mean, I don't, I don't know anything about fantasy. All I know is that like sentence to sentence. He is a beautiful, beautiful writer.
And I met him in real life at VidCon this year. And you know, I'd seen pictures and everything, but meeting him in real life is interesting, because almost immediately as soon as you start talking to him, you realize that his, his beard is bigger than he is. And it's, he's really the only person, he's the only person I've ever met who, whose beard is, is, is bigger than the person the beard is growing upon. Yeah.
So yeah, to me, Patrick Roth versus beard wins going away. He's also just a lovely, lovely person. Just haven't met a nicer person. Could it be nicer?
Just so nice. I mean, either. He's like incredibly supportive and nice and empathetic, but also doesn't take any of your crap. Like he's amazing.
He's, you know, like sometimes you meet people and you don't know them well, but you like meet them. And, and you're like, I look forward to seeing that person again so much. You have friends who maybe like aren't your closest friends, but you just, you love seeing them. Yeah.
He's one of those people. Yeah. We're working on a conference together. So we're talking a lot right now, which is nice to be on the phone once a week or so.
And, and it's called Nerdcon Stories, and tickets are available now. The agenda went live earlier last week, I guess. And it's going to be fascinating. It's in Minneapolis.
And if you were around there, or even if you just want to come see a lot of amazing storytellers, authors, poets, musicians, that sort of thing, then come on, come on over. John and I will be there. It's going to be a good time. I will be there.
It's my only public appearance for the next year, actually. Also, Hank, I don't know if you know this, but are you aware of what Maggie, Steve Vader, and Steve Vadar, Steve, Steve Fader? Yeah. You know, Maggie, are you aware of what Maggie and I are doing?
I heard a rumor, but I don't know if it's true. We are racing each other in an actual car race with actual race cars on a dirt track, a half mile dirt track outside of Minneapolis that Friday night. So in addition to going to Nerdcon Stories, you can go and watch an extremely successful young adult novelist who is also a race car driver, race me, a person who has not gotten in a car crash in a couple of years. I didn't know about that.
I heard something about that. I assumed it was remote control cars. It's one of those things where Maggie was like, would you want to do this? And I was like, yeah, of course, that sounds hilarious.
And then, but you know, like, I didn't think she would actually set it up. And then she's like asking me how the circumference of my head so I can get a helmet that's the right size. And I got to wear a fire suit in case the race car catches on fire. And I'm just thinking like, I've got to, I've got to not get lapped.
That's my goal. Just want to not get lapped. So that's Friday night and then Saturday and Sunday is Nerdcon Stories. It's going to be an amazing weekend.
This one's from Natalie who says, Dear Hank and John, my name is Natalie. And I'm not thinking about applying to college in the USA, but I have absolutely no confidence in my speaking and pronunciation ability since I'm from Ecuador and I speak Spanish as my native language. Do you have any advice for improving my speaking? Yes, I do.
Let's come up with a hashtag on Twitter for Talk to Natalie. And maybe you can find some people who speak English natively to talk to you. What should that hashtag be, John? Hashtag Talk to Natalie.
So we think which is your first language, just use the hashtag Talk to Natalie and then maybe Natalie will find out about this and then she can talk to you. But in general, Natalie, I have to say, I think you're going to be fine having read your email, which was grammatically perfect, which is extremely rare for Dear Hank and John, you know, I think you're in good shape. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
All right. That one was easy. I'm going to ask a question that's somewhat harder now. This one is from Isabella who asks, what do you do when your parents have a different political opinion than yours?
And they try to force theirs upon you. Oh man, John, I don't don't know because like the like the only way that this has happened to us. Well, it's happened to me a bit with my analogs though they are very nice about it. But with our parents, it's like, we like how far left can you go is often the topic at our dinner table.
Yeah, I mean, I guess that I do have some different political beliefs than my parents, but but first like they don't try to enforce their beliefs on me and they really never have even when we were little kids. That's true. You know, when I when I was like nine years old and I said that I thought Ronald Reagan should be elected president and not Walter Mondale, my dad was incredibly supportive. In fact, I didn't even know at the time that, you know, he'd secretly written me out of his will.
But no, I mean, yeah, our parents are extremely, I mean, I wouldn't say that they're communist, but I would definitely say that they are further to the left than either Hank or I and Hank and I are pretty pretty liberal on the political spectrum. I don't know, actually, I'm not I'm not as liberal as Hank. The order is my mother, my father, Hank, and then me almost in the center. In some Northern European nation, saying I would be a centrist.
Oh gosh, in some Northern European nations, you would be you would be to the right. I might be actually. So like, I have a good friend who is a Jesuit priest, he is a Catholic priest and he and his parents often have political disagreements. And he has been a real model for me in like, how to talk about politics or other controversial topics with people who disagree with you.
And it seems to me that what he does very well is is listen, he listens very well and very openly. And he he tries to understand people's concerns who disagree with him. And then he states why he believes what he believes, you know, very strongly and clearly. And he doesn't apologize for it, but he's also not aggressive about it.
He doesn't assume that people who disagree with him are evil. He just, you know, like has x, y, and z justifications for his belief system. And I also of course often disagree with him as well, though my disagreements with him are different than his family's disagreements with him. And I find it really kind of invigorating and refreshing to be able to have conversations with him because they aren't confrontational and they it doesn't feel dichotomous.
It doesn't feel like there's good and evil. And I am always on the side of good. And those who disagree with me are always on the side of evil. It's just really, really hard in contemporary American political discourse to have those kinds of conversations to embrace subtlety and nuance and also to acknowledge the possibility that you might be wrong, which you might be.
I mean, as strong as my convictions are, I might be wrong. I've been wrong before. That what your friend does and what, you know, I think we should all attempt to do is really hard. It requires great presence of mind and also great sort of understanding of your own perspectives and biases.
And it is important and such an amazing exercise in like in knowing yourself and understanding, understanding, you know, where like how you became who you are. That's a difficult thing. But if you can do it, even if you can just try to do it, it has dividends that are way outside of like improving your ability to discuss politics with your parents, because it helps you know yourself and it helps you, you know, better understand not only where your opinions come from, but why other people think the way they do. And that's, it's hard, but it is a really powerful ability to cultivate.
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to pretend that it's not hard though, because I think on a day to day, minute to minute basis, it's often impossible not to feel outraged, particularly when people are, you know, expressing outrage at you. It's very difficult not to respond to that by getting ratcheted up and like, you know, getting angry. And it's hard. And I feel like, I mean, I think it's always been hard, but I certainly feel like the way the political discourse has become so, so black and white that there are these two political positions in America, one of quote unquote liberalism and one of quote unquote conservatism has not helped our ability to have conversations, because you were expected to be either one thing or another.
And then you kind of don't end up having conversations about policy. And that's the other thing I'd say is that I find it much more interesting and I find it much more interesting and helpful to have conversations about policy. Like instead of saying should we tax the rich, like, let's ask well, what should the income tax rate on income over $500,000 a year be? You know, should it be 34%?
Should it be 37%? That becomes a question about policy and about nuance, not a question about like the government is trying to take from successful people versus the rich have to do their part. I find questions about like specific policy considerations much more beneficial to me. Yeah.
And that being said, there's a complete possibility that your parents are just really mad and upset and scared about the state of the world. And they think that things are going very badly and that makes them reactionary and upset and it's fear that's driving that outrage, usually. And personal fear, but also fear that things are just going places where they shouldn't go. And sometimes when I'm dealing with scared people, what I have to do is just sort of like acknowledge their fear and not engage with it.
Because like what are you going to do say you don't have the right to be afraid? Their fear might come from bad places, their fear might come from unconscious bias, their fear might come from just being exposed to people who are intentionally trying to scare them all the time. But there's not a lot you can do about that. Yeah.
I totally agree with you. Let's go to the next question. Hank, our next question comes from Emily who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been having trouble falling asleep lately, particularly because I want to hum and sing songs I get stuck in my head. Do you have any advice on how to get the song out of my head so I can get to sleep?
Thank you for your dubious advice and don't forget, it's a comedy podcast. Oh, Emily, I have already forgotten that it's a comedy podcast because all I see in front of me is the gaping canyon that is the endless misery of being unable to sleep until finally at last death comes for you and you can do nothing but sleep. Oh, I have a higher sort of surface level question here. Is it possible that you, a person who's having trouble sleeping and is singing all the time, have a roommate who might think that you are really messy?
Emily, I just need you to double check that you are paying your bills on time and not really messy because I think the underlying problem could potentially be that you're having a difficult time with the unemployment and everything. But if you're a different person, then yeah, I think we need to look at different different possible solutions here. My number one go-to solution for an earworm which is a song stuck in your head is Free Fallen by Tom Petty. Once I just start singing Free Fallen, whatever was in my head goes away and I can just drift off to sleep, Free Fallen.
I have no ability to help you because I sleep really well because I take medicine so that makes me very tired. So you could take Mercaptopurine and that works for me. It's not without its side effects, it does not intend to be a sleepy drug but it sure does knock me out. Yeah, Emily, go ahead and get ulcerative colitis so you can take the pill that Hank takes to make him sleepy.
It's worth it. You know Hank when Sarah and I first started dating, like we would, you know, like, well, you know, when we first, Hank when Sarah and I got married and began to sleep in the same bed for the first time in our entire relationship, she would often sort of be chatting with me toward the end of the evening and I would be talking back to her and I'd be talking about something and then I would look over and I would learn that she was asleep and in fact in the 11 or 12 years that we've been a going concern, I've never seen her take more than 12 seconds to fall asleep. It is the most infuriating thing about my wife. The idea that you can lay your head upon a pillow and fall asleep at the time of your choosing is so foreign to me and I am so intensely jealous of it.
I can't even explain it to you. So Emily, I do empathize. My number one piece of advice when it comes to sleeping is to spend at least 30 minutes away from screens before you try to go to sleep. Yeah and another important one is to have a really set schedule of sleep which is very hard to do but that's what the sleep scientists say.
The number one thing for insomnia is going to sleep and waking up at roughly the same time every day and who does that though? Really? But you know the other thing I can't help but recommend as a solution to this humming business maybe listening to the sweet, sweet baritone of a podcast before you go to bed. Like for instance maybe re-listen to old episodes of Dear John and Hank.
I don't know that that's a good idea. We're too engaging John. Today's episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Dear Hank and John itself. That's right.
We're sponsored by Recursion. Oh man. Listen to Dear Hank and John. It's available on iTunes or wherever podcasts are free.
Today's episode of Dear Hank and John is of course also brought to you by NerdCon Stories. NerdCon Stories October mini-applicous race cars stories. Today's episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Patrick Roth this is Beard which is epic and glorious and historically significant and would totally win over John Green's puff in a fight. Today's episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift is the most important country and pop musician of the last 15 years. Taylor Swift on tour now. Ah Taylor Swift on tour now. I'd go see her if she came to Missoula, Montana.
I'll tell you what. Um well she isn't because I have all of her tour stops memorized. Ah yeah I don't know that she would find a room that could be really suitable though we do have a stadium. She could she could just play at the stadium.
Sometimes people do that. The Rolling Stones played. We have the Rolling Stones John. We're a big metropolis now.
We have the Rolling Stones play at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 4th. It was magical. I was not actually in town because I was doing for paper towns but I heard that it went well. Speaking of which we have a question from Robert.
Robert writes, Dear John and Hank John has written in the past about the do's and don'ts of meeting him or any well-known person as a fan. My question is what are the do's and don'ts of conducting a press junket interview. Oh my. There are lots of ways it can go wrong but what can make it go really well?
Well I've not done a I've done a couple of press junket interviews but John has done a million of them. Literally. Also an added question to this is how can John Green not embarrass himself when meeting Taylor Swift. So let's do let's do Robert's question first.
Hank talk to me about what kind of fan interaction works for you. Like if you're in Target and you're meeting Taylor Swift what what no that's not no like if you're in Target and someone comes up to you and says hi like what's the ideal way it could go. Um I mean there's there's multiple ideal ways like some people just be like hey thanks for the videos that helped me with biology which is great. Like I like that a lot because then I feel like I like it was it's it's immediately obvious the value I provided.
Whereas you know I also like it when it's more sort of obscure and like oh my gosh it's you I like all of your things you do so many things and I like all of them. That's also nice. I just it's to me that as long as you're not expecting me to do something like to like be you know like funny or like to like make like do some kind of performance then I'm happy. I'm happy to take a picture I'm happy to talk I'm happy to you know like you know I'm happy to be complimented in public by a stranger.
But but there are have been a couple of times where it's it's been like uh it felt like this person is disappointed that I am not uh not doing like a thing and I'm like well I'm currently uh just just here to buy my to get my suppositories from the pharmacy. So I just yeah I mean I would say 99% of the time I've been um approached by fans it's been awesome like it's it is really encouraging to hear from people to get to hear from people directly um you know what kind of stuff that you make matters to them and how it matters to them and that varies from like the person at Target who pointed at me and said Crash Course World History and gave me a fist bump and kept walking um you know to people who come up and tell me that they're Nerdfighters and um and what you know the Nerdfighter community uh means to them and that gives me a chance to talk about how much it means to me. So that's that's really lovely and I think like that's the perfect thing and that's what I'm going to try to do if I do meet Taylor Swift I'm just going to say you know I really love your work and I when we were on the set of the Paper Towns movie it was it was long days and a lot of hard days for me and um I was into 1989 every day and it was like the soundtrack of that part of my life and I'll always have wonderful memories because of it um not that I've practiced what I'm going to say but as far as as far as press junket interviews go um I mean I don't nobody likes press junkets the press doesn't like them the the people who are doing them don't like them I think the people at the studio who organize them don't like them I think the people who are running the cameras and the mics don't like them I don't think it's fun for anyone I think it's it's considered sort of a necessary evil to try to get get the word out about the um the movie um or whatever the project is I I guess I guess the only thing I would say is is to try to remember that um the people that you're talking to have been talking to people all day and that they've had a different interview every six minutes and that they are feeling probably pretty dehumanized and pretty exhausted um when I was on the press junket for Paper Towns um a hippopotamus escaped a zoo in Budapest I think and um every between every interview not Wolf would just show me a picture of this escaped hippopotamus and he would whisper someday that will be us um and I found it tremendously comforting to think of the escaped hippopotamus and on multiple occasions people would like test how well Nat and I knew each other and one of the questions would always be um do uh like what's your favorite animal or what's John's favorite animal or whatever and it would we would be so specific we would write a hippopotamus recently escaped from zoo in Budapest um yeah I mean the only thing I would say is you know if you have to get the quotes that you have to get then like go in and ask the questions that you have to ask and I guess probably don't have a particularly high set of expectations for what people are going to say because I think it's almost impossible um to answer a question thoughtfully when you're so tired and feel so weird and yeah but um if you want to try to have a look like a really interesting thing then just do something that's completely different where you don't ask any of those questions and you just maybe allow them to play a game like I remember when I was in um Brazil a reporter played a game with us where she was like Nat you and I are going to create a new John Green novel together and John you are going to provide the dialogue and that was really like a really fun seven minutes in fact at the end of it Nat was like can we please just keep doing this and stop the other things so I don't know it's not easy and like I think it's kind of inherently dehumanizing it's really difficult in those situations for the people who are being interviewed to remember that the interviewer you know is a person who is having a very specific seven minutes of their day and it's really difficult for the interviewer to think that about the people who are being interviewed so my strategy moving forward is going to be trying to avoid them as much as possible. This episode of your Hank and John is brought up to there are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me and that is what Shopify makes easier.
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it is done what's the news from Mars this week well in Mars news on the I think the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon no it was that with Stephen Colbert the new the new Colbert show which I don't know what that's called it's very confusing because they all sound exactly the same uh to me did he not change his name to Colbert is he still Colbert I would assume that he's that he did not Colbert was just the just the act but I guess that is real name that's a real name okay um nice guy by the way yeah seems like a great guy um no but I've hung out with him oh right you did yeah yeah uh I have not I just hung out with the president so that was a total brag I apologize I want to apologize to my friends and family for that clear unadulterated brag that's fine no nothing wrong bragging uh well Elon Musk was on on Stephen Colbert's show and they were talking about Mars Mars came up I hate I hate to bring this up but I've also hung out with Elon Musk did you did you did you get to go to the White House and hang out with the president John no no but only because I was like eh I think my brother should do that he hasn't had a big big media hit in a while uh-huh yep that's that's that's that's how I remember all right I'm sorry what did my friend Elon Musk talk about with my friends Stephen Colbert they were talking about Mars and how how to potentially make Mars habitable uh or more habitable for future visitors and uh Elon Musk proposed the fast way to make Mars a little warmer and give it some atmosphere would just be to drop a bunch of thermonuclear bombs on the poles of the planet which uh what yeah so Elon Musk uh you know noted um Tony Stark impersonator uh creator of of many amazing things including uh PayPal which no one talks about and uh and Tesla Motors and SpaceX has proposed that we drop h bombs on the poles of Mars so that the so that would be carbon dioxide and water and that it's stored in the poles of Mars would be released of the atmosphere then there would be a quote runaway greenhouse effect which would warm the planet further which would create more carbon dioxide and water being released into the atmosphere which would warm the planet further etc. um this is a legitimate idea uh there are a couple of problems with it one if there is an ecology on Mars it would be the largest scientific discovery in the history of mankind and we don't want to just really mess up that ecology really fast before we study it to uh you're dropping a bunch of thermonuclear weapons on Mars which might be uh you know there are ways to design nuclear weapons so like particularly fusion bombs so that they have less fallout but there's still going to be some fallout that's not ideal and of course you are just releasing carbon dioxide and water into the atmosphere which is not the kind of atmosphere that humans would really enjoy breathing but it would help shield astronauts from radiation and it would uh it would increase the pressure of the planet which is good because it would mean you know less vacuum to immediately kill people who are on the surface it does not solve a lot of the problems that Mars has with regards to habitability but it's not that far out there idea uh you know it's certainly not within the next hundred years though yes.
Now as you know I'm not a expert in science or in Mars or anything but what what would if we did that what would happen to the dinosaurs on Mars? Well the dinosaurs that are on Mars in our in Jurassic Mars would uh would have to be specially designed to uh to function in that atmosphere whatever that atmosphere is uh which it doesn't see like that doesn't seem outside of the realm of uh of movie science which is completely fake anyway so let's just design uh dinosaurs that can breathe water vapor uh instead of oxygen which of course chemically makes no sense but who cares and and we'll be fine Jurassic Mars coming to theaters so it has not affected the box office potential of Jurassic Mars. Not at all I think that introducing the possibility of thermonuclear warheads into Jurassic that the plot of Jurassic Mars can only be a positive I actually completely agree with you because whether it's at the beginning of act one or the end of act two uh there is definitely an opportunity for nuclear war on Jurassic Mars. So Hank I don't know how much you know about the history of AFC Wimbledon but you're about to know a little bit more as you do know back in 2001 the club was moved by rapacious owners to the town of Milton Keynes a hundred miles away from Wimbledon the historic home of this football club that had been together for 120 years and then Wimbledon supporters in protest started their own club AFC Wimbledon but they couldn't start at the historic home of Wimbledon which is actually you know in Merton uh the stadium called Plow Lane um so in fact on the closed sad gates of Plow Lane at the very end of its history before it was destroyed in the early 2000s um someone spray painted Wombl Till I Die because the Wombl uh is the mascot of AFC Wimbledon and fans are often called Wombles and um and so now they play their games in in Kingston uh at at a um in South London at a stadium uh that also houses a non-league side called Kingstonian um but the dream has always been to get back to Plow Lane in fact AFC Wimbledon fans sing a song show me the way to Plow Lane um the dream has always been to get back to the historic spiritual home of this football club with a new stadium that can support permanently um you know a club of AFC Wimbledon size and maybe even allow them to make more money and and have you know more concession sales and stuff so they can maybe get up to leave one or or even higher and so they're trying to build this 11 000 seat stadium that's directly across the street from where Plow Lane was Plow Lane is now houses um and uh it's been a long effort it's really beginning to take shape now and as part of that they're selling King's Meadow um their current stadium to Chelsea Football Club one of my least favorite possibly my least favorite football club owned um by Roman Abramovich who bought the the club Chelsea literally with the blood of Russian peasants he just sent um a large amount of Russian peasant blood to London um and then was given Chelsea Football Club so anyway uh Chelsea it looks like it's gonna buy King's Meadow to help fund the building of the new AFC Wimbledon stadium and this is great news um because for the club to really really exist long term they need a stadium they need a place of their own that's in the community of of the football club and uh this is a huge huge deal to Wimbledon fans I mean for instance Hank MK Don's fans you know the team that that Wimbledon that stole Wimbledon away and made it their new team in Milton Keynes you know them sure yeah uh they sing to make fun of AFC Wimbledon they sing you're just a pub team from Kingston to say like you're not really Wimbledon um and you're not really a club you're just a pub team from Kingston to be able to be back in Wimbledon in a stadium that's appropriate for a football league club really would be the end of this story um and and would put the club on a stable path where they can really they can survive um and so it's a huge deal to be selling King's Meadow uh to help fund the building of the new stadium but there's still a long way to go and if you're a member of the Don's Trust which Hank by the way you are I just bought you a membership you own exactly as much AFC Wimbledon as I do or as the chairman of the club Eric Samuelson does all 5500 of us own equal shares of Wimbledon um happy birthday um if you're a member of AFC Wimbledon um you you can vote in fact you need to vote um if you remember the Don's Trust you need to vote uh to help move this forward to sell the current stadium and then to invest by and build the new stadium it's a really really exciting time in the club's history and really for the first time you know in the last 10 years it looks like the stadium might actually happen uh that's great what's gonna happen to the current stadium if Chelsea owns it though oh yeah so Chelsea is gonna turn it into a place for their women's team and also their youth teams so they'll play their games there um and it'll be good for the development of their women's side and um and they're like under under 18 side um so it's great for them too uh potentially anyway um because Chelsea need a better developed uh women's soccer program as I've talked about previously in the podcast AFC Wimbledon has a really strong women's soccer program but many teams uh in the football league including very famous ones don't um like Manchester United doesn't have a women's soccer team at all which is just an embarrassment um and so it's great I think it's great potentially great for everyone but the main thing from Wimbledon's perspective is you know gosh how amazing would it be to have an 11 000 seat brand new state of the art stadium um you know where they could play and grow into being being the club that that they could be if they just didn't have this very small stadium cool that's exciting John I'm so excited I can't even tell you I can't wait to go uh Hank we're gonna do so many crazy sponsorships at the new stadium I'm gonna get so many like bricks on the on the walkway to the new stadium dedicated to you um I'll be like this is the Hank Green Mars sucks brick um this is the fourth rock from the Sun who cares brick this is the AFC Wimbledon is more important than Mars brick I'm gonna buy you so many anti-Mars bricks at the new stadium all right um thanks I you're uh jerk uh what did we learn today Hank oh we learned that you can never really know why your roommates being a bad roommate so you need to talk about it and of course we learned that uh the key to taking Jurassic Mars to the next level is thermonuclear warfare we learned that a podcast can sponsor itself and we learned that if a song free-fallen by Tom Petty wasn't in your head it is now Hank thank you so much for podcasting with me this is my favorite part of the week and I also I also want to thank everybody for listening their comments and responses on twitter I still check my app replies even though I'm not tweeting really give me a lot to me so thank you guys for listening and we hope that you continue to enjoy the podcast yeah if you could hashtag your things on twitter hashtag Dear Hank and John so that we know that those things are there don't use hashtag Dear John and Hank that would be confusing the show's called Dear Hank why don't they just use hashtag talk to Natalie and that way Natalie can also have more people to get in touch with well I think that if they have specific questions with regards to Dear Hank and John they want to correct us on something in fact we do have a correction which is that I said that the number one impact that you can have on the world is by controlling how much you heat or don't heat your place of dwelling but in fact I was corrected the number one impact you can have is eating less meat which uh there's a tremendous amount of uh of greenhouse gases that are produced in the production of meat especially the large animal meats of of pork and beef so that is a thing that you can also do and and has a tremendous impact um so corrections such as those or or just comments so that we can see what we're thinking uh you can hashtag Dear John and Hank ah!
Dear Hank and John ah hashtag Dear Hank and John not prefer the hashtag Dear John and Hank myself but I guess it's up to readers listeners whatever they call themselves it's fun using your Hank and John that's fun uh today's podcast was edited by our friend Nick yeah the theme music is from Gunnarola you can send us questions at Hank and John at gmail.com and as they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome