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 have 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. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Where's that first thing with your John and Hank?
It's a comedy podcast where two brothers answer your question, give you advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon John. Yes. Have you noticed that the bees haven't been out flying around? Why haven't the bees been out flying around Hank?
Because they're in the hive for the winter. You know why they like to stay in the hive for the winter? I don't. Swarm.
That's not a joke. That one's really bad. I feel bad about it. Do you want another one?
No. Do you know how many bones there are in a human hand? How many? Ah, handful.
That was better. That was better. But just for future reference, like the last thing that you should do when somebody tells you I did not enjoy that joke. It's doubled down.
You want another one? I just told you my best joke. But hold on. I've got a less good one lined up.
Well, I didn't find either of those were too good. But I felt like if you do two of them, if you like add up to one good joke. All right, John. Do you have any good news for me?
I do have some good news. Hank, in the United States, the turnout for the midterm elections was excellent, which is good news because democracy works when people vote. And here in the United States, voting is not as common as it is in many countries, partly because of voter suppression, partly because of historical attitudes toward voting. So it's great to see a little bit of a change on that front.
Yeah. I mean, especially in a midterm election where people are usually not super engaged, it seems like people are more engaged. The reasons for that might not be good news, but that is good news. That's right, Hank.
If we are looking for the reasons behind the good news, we will almost always find bad news. So we don't do that anymore. That's not what that part of the podcast is about. Exactly.
Let's answer some questions from our listeners. This person comes from Amanda who raised your John and Hank, I am walking home from the subway in 30 degree weather and my bladder is so full. Before my fears get paralyzed from the cold, I wanted to ask what will happen if I freeze to death before I get to a bathroom? Will my pee freeze inside of my body, trying to prepare for all contingencies, Amanda?
Amanda, I have bad news for you. But before we get to the bad news, I am going to need to ask John a question as a person who lives in Montana. How do you pee in big cities? Well, I mean, when you're in town, do you just pee on the sidewalk?
No, and I'm in Missoula. I go to one of the many places where I am allowed to pee, like the public restroom or like the restaurant where I know the people who work there. That's definitely the number one way. The other ways are not as desirable.
The number one way is to find a public restroom. If it's a true pea emergency, I think most people will understand if you go to an alley or you just kind of turn away. But that is technically in a lot of places a crime called public urination. I just want to know if there are public restrooms and I'm just not seeing them.
Well, there are. Yeah, of course. It's just like the answer is that it's just like Missoula except there are more buildings and Ergo more bathrooms. Okay.
I just feel like I can never find a place to pee. Right, but it's because you don't know the city. It's not because it's so there are places to pee. I just haven't noticed them.
Yeah, I mean, usually there are occasions where you have to be like, listen, I need to use the bathroom and you're going to have one kind of problem or another kind of problem. I think you're going to prefer if you let me use the restroom. Right, right, sure. And like, and when I get out, I'll buy a USB charger or a piece of pizza or whatever they sell there.
Right, yeah. Like, I know the restroom is for customers only and I will be a customer, but first. Okay. All right.
So Amanda, that's number one. Well, go pee because apparently there are places to pee in your city. No, Amanda, you're going to make it. It's fine.
You're going to make it. You're going to make it to your apartment and it's I mean, is there anything more enjoyable than making it to your apartment and it's being like, oh, peeing pee in this nice comfortable place. John, you know the answer to Amanda's question though. Of course, your of course, your pee is not going to freeze inside of your bladder after you die unless it is incredibly cold, like near absolute zero.
Well, first of all, it's 30 degrees. So your body isn't going to freeze for a long time. But the main thing is that by the time you are dead from cold, your body isn't frozen yet and so your muscles will relax and you'll pee all over your dead body. All right.
And then that will freeze on the outside. Good. Probably happened before you die, by the way, which is bad because then you're cold because you have pee on you. Well, I mean, I kind of knew that but I'm glad to have it laid out for me in that manner, Hank.
So thank you the next time that I need to pee and I'm walking in the cold, I will know exactly what's going to happen if I don't find my way to warmth. All right. Well, speaking of which, John, this question is from Lauren and she's got a solution for you. Dear Hank and John, what would it feel like to be microwave?
Microwaving goodbye, Lauren. Very good. Very good. It would definitely warm your pee up.
That's for sure. Don't do that. Don't do not get into microwave. No matter how big it is, no matter how comfortable it looks, no matter how cold you are, do not get into microwave.
So I have heard a story that during the Korean War, men would actually stand in front of the microwave antennas to warm up, which is basically, like these are antenna that are broadcasting information and they stood in front of them to get warm. So those people know and apparently it warms you up. Does it also like mutate the DNA in your cells? Probably a little bit.
Don't do that. Yeah, I just as a rule, like putting everything else aside, Hank, I feel like it would be very difficult to get inside of most microwaves. That's true. That's a very good point.
And in fact, if you have ever watched the YouTube show, is it a good idea to microwave this, which I did in the 2000s? Classic of the genre. Classic of the genre. You will note that it is hard to get a microwave to turn on with the door open even for lots of good reasons.
But I in college had a microwave that did turn on when the door was not open. And we threw it away because that seemed bad. Yeah. Yeah.
Definitely. Right. I mean, there was a time when microwaves were far less safe than they are now. We feel like we're in this horrible moment in human history.
And in many ways, we are. But at least we're not like huddling by the microwave radios for warmth. Yeah. Yeah.
That's in the future, John. Oh God. Let's hope not. I do think sometimes that we need to like pause and be grateful for the fact that the 21st century is so far at least on pace to be the least violent century in human history.
Yeah. The fact that by most objective measures, life is getting better. The main way that life is getting worse is Twitter. Like it's those big things, John, but it's also the small things.
Like everybody's got a fridge and like I can get avocado toast and coffee is really good now. Hank and I are so into the fact that most most people own refrigerators. Like it's incredible human accomplishment, not just to have invented the refrigerator, but to have made the refrigerator affordable enough that like lots of people have two of them. And you can go on Craigslist and someone will be like, hey, I'll give you my refrigerator for five bucks if you pick it up.
Yeah. It's free to a good home. I've been playing a video game called Tropico lately, John. And Tropico is a game where you are sort of running a like a community on a small island in the Caribbean and trying to make everybody happy and or suppressing them through your dictatorship depends on how you want to play it.
Sure. And I've noticed a thing where and they've designed this well where when you first introduce something people are like, yes, this is excellent and I like it. And so like I have a bunch of houses that I built like in the early 1900s and then into the 1950s they're like, I hate these houses. They're terrible.
And I'm like, you love them 50 years ago. And it's like, yeah, but like things have gotten better and I don't want to continue living the old bad way when like there are other people in other places living in the new good way. And I think that that is that is important. And also like it's it's great.
It's like that is like I as a dictator and frustrated by that. But I as a human love that. It's so wonderful that like we what we see as a normal amount of comfort changes and that we can continue making the world a better place for people and their children. I think we should get back to answering questions shortly.
But I just want to tell you that I met an astronaut over the weekend. Context is an important but I was hanging out with an astronaut not to brag but this is a person who spent like a year in space. Well, now you've limited it's not just an astronaut. It's one of like two astronauts.
That's your now. Well, it's also possible that they didn't spend a year in space and I miss her. I'm talking. I'm not a very good listener.
Or that it may be that you're exaggerating. Which I've seen happen before. But I'm about to retell the story that they told me verbatim with no exaggerations whatsoever. They were making the point to me which I found very interesting that like velociraptors were maybe like two to five million years away from getting really smart.
That they were pretty smart. You know, they had opposable thumbs. Some good stuff was happening on the velociraptor sentience front. And then there's this catastrophic event that results in the extinction of velociraptors and many other species.
Okay. We are in a weird time in human history where there's a little bit of like a potential bottleneck. Like there's a lot of ways that we could kill all the humans on the planet right now. And there's like a higher than ever number of people who have that power.
Okay. Yep. But if we can just become a species that lives in like a few places, like not just Earth, but maybe for instance Mars, maybe even the moon, then if there is a catastrophe on one of those places, it's not the end of the velociraptors. And I found that the most compelling argument I have ever heard for why we should focus about half of our available resources on reducing poverty and disease burden and improving life expectancy and lifespan and the other half of our resources on Mars, which was a huge shift in my thinking.
But I am now strongly as of like three days ago, pro-Mars. Man, I gotta tell you that is not that argument doesn't even do it for me. That's not the one that works for me because I feel like if we're on Mars, I mean maybe 300 500 years from now, you can have a system of colony on Mars. Yeah.
But yeah. That's what I want. All right. Okay.
Good. Good. I'm on the thinking of 500 year time horizon 500 years from now, there are the number of people who can end human life on Earth will be greater than it is today. And I don't like the greater that number gets, the more certain it becomes that human life will end on Earth.
But Mars is going to survive it and it's going to be great, Hank. Everything is going to be fine. Good. We're going to make it.
We're going to make it. We're going to make it through this millennium if it kills us to quote the mountain goats. All right. This next one comes from Susanna who asked, you're John and Hank, my dad recently got a Facebook account.
Oh, my condolences. That's too bad. He's very, very into it. Yeah.
I bet he is. I mean, everybody who's new to Facebook is like, look at this thing. I'm away for university. So I don't see this first and but whenever I open chat, I see that he's active and my mom and sister complain about him spending too much time on Facebook, even during dinner, which was strictly forbidden for me and my sister.
And I realize that he's scrolling and reading comments, even when I'm Skyping with him and my mom. Also, he's posting a lot of political posts and although well intentioned, oh boy, they always are, aren't they? They often are worded in a conflict initiating way. And my dad has a newcomer to Facebook hasn't yet learned that this is definitely not a good place for political discussions.
Oh, Susanna, if only, only, if only, it was a problem. Yeah. For newcomers. Yeah, there's some seems to be a perspective here that this is something that only happens and then like you get you get over it.
But in my experience that, I mean, maybe eventually, but that's Susanna. Susanna is a much better person than I am. It's the long and short of it. I'm a lot more like Susanna's dad.
Susanna is my hope for the future. Anyway, I tried telling him how unhealthy this can be and that it seems like he's pulling away from real social life, but it's tricky. Who listens to their daughter for life advice? Do you have any ideas on how to approach this?
Facebook's and father's Susanna. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I don't, I don't know how to fix this problem, but it's not just you. It's the whole species.
Yeah. Yeah. The, um, there was a really interesting article I read once that said the internet didn't have the giant impact on the 2016 election that we thought it had. And, uh, and it said it was like in 2014, all of these people, and that was the most recent data we had, didn't have Facebook's.
And so like it couldn't be affecting these people. And so there was some like talk of like maybe there's some kind of effect where like one person is influencing, like one person on Facebook is influencing a bunch of other people on Facebook, but actually it turned out that a lot of people got Facebook between 2014 and 2016 and a lot of people particularly got Facebook during the election cycle, like while the campaigns were happening, because they were really Jones and for news because in America when elections are happening, we get pretty obsessed with it, especially if we're somebody who maybe thinks that like the opposition party might be like a catastrophe for the country. And so those people all came on Facebook very quickly. And just like Susanna's dad didn't know like all, like, you know, like had that initial spurt of being like super obsessed and also not super healthy about how they were using it, and also seeing it as this way to influence the world that it was almost like being on this platform, doing this work, that is the good that I am doing.
This is the, this is how I am making the world better by engaging in these conflicts, by coming at people, by creating, oftentimes creating conflicts. And I know that from personal experience too, and I still do it a little bit. I've gotten much better at it, especially since I'm starting to delete this, though not everyone can start a you know, year-long podcast with their wife in which they get criticized on how they're using social media. But I think that we are building some tools and I think we are getting better at it.
And I do think that to some extent Susanna is right that like you get, you like the moment you get into it is the moment that it's the worst, and that realizing that bad behavior pattern takes a little while, and it also does take feedback from people who love you and who you can trust. And hopefully your dad can trust you and the rest of your family to like help him reign it in. Yeah, I think it's a lot more optimistic about this stuff than I am. Like I read Hank's novel and came to a very different conclusion based on the text of the novel than Hank came to as the author.
I do not see the number of minutes that people spend on these social media platforms decreasing much over time. It is right now and Facebook actually has a huge problem and like they're getting scared about it. Well then that's great. I guess I can only speak to my personal experience.
I don't know that much about the metadata. But in my personal experience, the amount of time I spend on these platforms, even as I do learn to create content in a more careful way to respond, you know, when baited less often, etc. I don't really find myself able to turn off in the way that I used to be able to. You know, we got into the internet in the first place.
The reason that this podcast is happening, the reason that there's vlogbrothers is that before Twitter or even like Facebook was that big of a deal, at least in my life, Hank and I were really into a couple of YouTube shows that in a lot of ways mimicked the contemporary social internet just on a much smaller scale, like that allowed us to feel connected to people, that allowed us to feel like being part of that community was really productive and important and interesting and in some ways like the most interesting thing that we could be doing in that moment. And I still, I agree with Hank, I still believe that there are wonderful things about the internet and that these are mostly tools that we just don't know how to use well yet. And the fact that Zuzana, for instance, is able to see her father's use of the internet very differently from how she uses the internet tells me that like, I suspect the next generation, the kids who grow up with this will treat it differently and more cautiously than we've treated it. But I am still really concerned about it.
And that's why I'm taking a year away from the social internet to see what I feel like on the other side of that. A year. It's not that long. I mean, it's true.
As you get older, a year becomes less of a big deal. Yeah. And it's going to be a very busy year, to be honest with you. So there's a ton of stuff going on.
And it'll probably be useful to me to go to Twitter.com and find that there is an app that says, no, no, you can't. Yeah, I've actually, so I spent a lot of this this weekend playing that video game that I've now talked about two times, because obviously it's stuck in my brain because of how much fun it is and how compelling it is. I love strategy games. And I hadn't played a lot of games recently.
But what I found is like, it gave me an outlet for problem solving and for like exercising, flexing some problem solving muscles and was very distracting and felt very good. And I enjoyed doing it. It was very pretty. And it was time that I otherwise would have just been engaging on Twitter.
And then when I was like, let's look at Twitter, I didn't have the same dopamine response. And that was very interesting to me. That a solitary video game can kind of be just a reboot, like a switch to hit and be like, oh, yeah, no, this isn't the end of everything. There are other things that are fun.
And then I can do it in my free time. That'll be a little healthier. Yeah, no, I agree. I feel the same way about video games.
My issue is that I am suffering from what you Hank called technology induced loneliness. And I do not want to have technology induced loneliness anymore. And my brain says that the treatment for technology induced loneliness is to spend more time on the internet. And I think that my brain might be wrong.
Yeah, I think that is correct. I think that is correct. I got it on a party last night and we were like, Oh gosh, oh my, look at all these human beings. And I spent like an hour of it playing with a two year old because that's where I'm at, John.
Yeah, it was fun. Now he's a great little two year old. This next question comes from Hannah who asks Dear Hank and John, I am the head librarian in a school and I'm currently reading the fault in our stars for the first time. Everyone thinks that, of course, I've read it before.
So I'm extracting lots of spoilers. How can I stop this without telling everyone I haven't read it before? Not a spammer or a banana. Hannah.
Well, Hannah, one thing that I think we forget about books is that even very popular books are read by basically nobody, including many of the people who have strong opinions about those very popular books, right? Like, we all know that the number of people with an opinion about Twilight is massively lower than the number of people who actually read Twilight. The Father's Stars is a much more successful novel than I ever imagined could be possible in my life. And yet, like 95 to 96 percent of people over the age of 14 have not read it.
So you're in very good company, Hannah. Like you're with the vast majority of people. But Hannah's a head librarian. Even so, like there are lots of books and why would you read one instead of another?
Like, even a very ambitious reader can read maybe 50 to 100 books per year. That means that every year, there are lots and lots and lots of great books that you don't read. So I just think in general, the way to deal with this is not to spoil stuff. Yeah, I mean, you're solving the problem for all the people listening who might spoil something.
But there's not that many of them. How do we solve the problem for Hannah, who has this problem now? And we're not going to shift all of society overnight. Do you put a post note on the book that says, I've not read this book, this is my first time.
Do you read it on a Kindle and no one knows what you're reading? No, you definitely don't do that. You buy it from your local academic bookstore. Do you only read it at home and have another book for it?
Don't you ever correct myself. You clearly get it out of your local library. Yeah. It's free and Hannah's there.
Yeah. Hannah, who I assume is in the United Kingdom, because wrote not a spanner or a banana, Hannah. And so I assume it's supposed to rhyme. Right.
Spanner. Spanner or a banana. Should I reread the question in British accent, Sean? Would that be good?
If you reread the question in British accent, I will quit the pod. I can never go back to the time when you faked a British accent for six months. It's like one of my worst memories. Do you want to know a great thing?
Oh, I got to have a scotch of Catherine. Do you want to know a great thing, John? What? Sometimes I do accents when I'm reading or in books.
And I'll start reading a book that clearly is from the word usage. It's a British book or it's like American South book. And I'll start to do an accent and he will go, no, no, no, no, no. I've always done something similar with Alice, where I insert Alice into the story.
Yeah. You know, so I'll have the main character of whatever book be Alice and she just hates it. She's always hated it. And I've always thought it was hilarious.
And she'll be like, no, dad, go back and read it the regular way. Yeah, we're dads. Yeah, it's just irresistible. Anyway, Hannah, what you should say is look, 95% of people haven't read this book.
And I am one of them, but I'm about to not be one of them. So stop spoiling me. But spoiler alert about spoilers for the fault in their stars. You can't spoil the book.
Like, that's not true. I mean, I disagree with you. It's like spoiling the Titanic, you know? No, it's not because it would be like spoiling the Titanic.
We can't put that in the pot, Nick. That's a spoiler. I think just said something very funny that we can't put it in the pot because it's a spoiler. It's very, very funny.
All right, Hannah. Okay. All right. I guess I guess upon further reflection, you can spoil the fault in their stars.
I convinced him, everyone. He did. He did. I'm just going to say, no, I'm just going to say what you said.
I think it's so funny that I think it's worth the spoiler. So hit that like skip ahead 30 seconds button. All of you who haven't read the fault in their stars. Also, it's available wherever books are sold.
What I think is ahead was it's just like the Titanic, but if a different ship sink. So yeah, I think, yeah, all right, Hannah, if you were listening, maybe you just want to listen to the spoiler and be just accept it. All right, if you're coming back from not listening, welcome. Again, my book, the fault in their stars has not been read by 95% of people.
And I want you to not be one of them anymore. Hit it. Or you can get an absolute remarkable thing as well. All right.
I think this next question comes from Christina who writes Dear John and Hank, I've always known this, but recently I've given more thought to the fact that when we breathe air out of a kissy face position, it is cold. But when we breathe air out of a more open mouth, it is hot. Why is this? Do we cool our own air before blowing it out?
Not an Aguilera, Christina, I have to is that right? Is that true? Oh, wow. It is truly true.
Yeah, it's dramatic. This is okay. So now we are discovering that this is the first time John has ever done kissy face air. It's the first time I've ever done kissy face while like, expelling air out of my mouth in the fastest way possible.
I don't know how you kiss, but that's not my strategy. I'm telling you how I do it to Warren's belly. But it's so cold. It's like colder than the air.
It's almost definitely not colder than the air condition. It's the difference between turning on the heat and turning on the air conditioning in your car. So my guess is when you're my guess is when you got big open mouth and you're blowing air that that it's not incorporating a lot of air from like ambient air, whereas when you blow the little tube, you're getting a lot of mixing of ambient air through like like, you know, fluid dynamics for newly stuff that you don't want to know about. And that's like grabbing a bunch of other air, sucking it in and mixing it so that by the time it hits whatever you're like measuring the temperature at that.
And actually I'm going to do a test, John. I'm going to do a test right now. I don't agree. I think it's different.
I think it's something else. I think it's that when you push air out at a high rate of speed, it picks up air in the atmosphere. And that's what I was saying. Okay.
I thought you meant like, because you're breathing differently. No, no, it's like sucking an atmosphere. Yeah, it's sucking an ambient air. So air from the room.
Right. And I just did an experiment, to confirm this, because science is great. I hollowed out a pen on my desk and I blew fast air through the pen. And right when it comes out, it's still warm.
Oh, wow. I mean, we are here to solve people's problems. Big ones, small ones, but especially small ones. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Hank's Science Experiments.
Hank's Science Experiments. Look for them soon in a retail store, maybe. And this podcast is also brought to you by the first six months on Facebook. You think it's so important, but really you're just being attacked from the inside.
You have an autoimmune disease called Facebook. Today's podcast is also sponsored by huge microwave rays that you can stand next to to get warm. Not recommended. Not recommended.
And finally, this podcast is brought to you by a ferret oatmeal bath. That's the question we haven't answered yet. We didn't get through any questions, John. Well, we still have time.
Let's get right to that ferret oatmeal bath question. This one comes from Vicki, right? It's dear John and Hank. I have a roommate who I absolutely adore.
That sentence makes the rest of the question kind of makes sense, but only a little bit. So let's just bear in mind throughout the rest of the question that Vicki for whatever reason completely adores this roommate. We share a bathroom and she's a moderately clean person. I don't have any complaints aside from the fact that she has two ferrets and she bathes them in our bathtub.
This wouldn't be a problem, but ferrets have to have oatmeal baths. Do they have to have oatmeal baths? Do they have oatmeal baths? Do they have oatmeal baths in the wild?
Yeah, is that like on the instruction manual? Can you imagine like the ferret spa that they go to? Like in the wild where they're like, oh god, this oatmeal bath. It's so nice.
I'm sure there's a reason why ferrets eat oatmeal baths. Anyway, she doesn't always clean the tub out after their baths. That is a crisis. It needs oatmeal dust in the bottom of the tub, and if I don't check before I shower, it makes the bottom of the tub slimy and I end up smelling like a retirement home.
I'm a non-confrontational person. Yeah, no, Vicki, we gathered that. So how do I broach this? Do I obsessively clean the tub every time I shower?
Do I request a schedule of her ferret bathing? And he do these advices welcome, Vinnie Vidi Vidi. Oh, yeah, yoy. You gotta, you gotta, well, this is a great time to take a person you adore and have a good relationship with and experiment with a little bit of conflict.
Just a tiny bit where you say, hey, roomy, couple things. First off, do ferrets have to take oatmeal baths? No, no, no, no. First off, I love your ferrets and I love them and I love them and I love them.
And I want you to take, go that far. I want you to take great care of them. First off, I tolerate your ferrets and I know that you love them. There's no reason to be dishonest.
I know that you love your ferrets. I want them to be healthy. I want you to take great care of them. But when I shower after the ferrets have bathed in our only tub, I often feel really gross for a variety of reasons that I would imagine you can imagine.
It's dangerous. It's dangerous. You got it like a slippery tub. Is it a day people die?
Absolutely. It's dangerous. That's why I believe that if you've got a tub, you should take a bath. But not Vicky.
But, but, but only, but there's one exception to that. That's not a lot of bathtubs that I wouldn't take a bath in. But I have to say that if I was living in Vicky's house, I would probably be a shower person. Yeah, you're just going to have to have a small confrontation because really what you're looking for here is not a huge shift in behavior.
You're looking for, hey, after the ferrets get out of the tub, can you wipe it down really carefully because you just put two ferrets inside of our only shower container. And if they react negatively to that, then I can't imagine that they will, Vicky. I think you're going to be fine. You've got to have the confrontation though because A, this is a health issue and a safety issue and B, it is a big, big problem.
I usually try to minimize how big a problem these things are, but this seems to me like a proper crisis. All right, John, this next question comes from Sage who asks, Dear Hank and John, last week I was doing my homework and this person came up to me and started talking and it was a bit annoying, but I tried to be friendly. He ended up asking for my Snapchat and I gave it to him. I asked if I, he asked if I wanted to be his friend and I said, okay, because what else was I going to say?
He has been talking to me on Snapchat and wants to hang out sometime. He called me one of his best friends. He is a pretty cool person, but I really don't want to be friends with him partially because he's a lot older than me and I don't think he knows how old I am. I'm 16.
How do I stop being friends with him? I've considered not answering his texts, but that seems mean and I don't want to hurt his feelings, pumpkins and penguin Sage. Oh, Sage, don't be a little Sage. I'm just going to say this really quickly.
People who are going to treat you poorly and are going to abuse your trust, that is what they do. They make you feel obligated. They make you feel like, oh, I mean, in the normal course of human events, I would be friends with this person. It doesn't seem totally unreasonable to say no to any of their individual requests, but you're getting a vibe and the vibe is correct and you should ghost this person.
Yeah, give me another one, John. All right, let's stay serious for a minute. This one comes from Ambie who writes, dear John and Hank, my dad passed away unexpectedly last week. I'm a junior in college and everyone I know keeps asking, how are you and offering condolences, which is very sweet of them and I appreciate it.
But the problem is, I keep saying it's okay. And then they say, no, it's not okay. And you know, it isn't okay. But it leaves me in an awkward position in which there is no easy way to end these conversations.
Is there a good response to these questions that lets them know that they don't need to worry about me without oversharing or lying? Can I just walk around telling people my dad died and it's not okay by now, see you later? Should I just crack a joke? How many more of a jokes can I get away with before causing alarm?
Abby. Oh, this is actually, she has a great name, specific sign off. I forgot it. I'm sorry.
Doing appropriately, Shabby. Abby. That's good. You could just put that on a t-shirt.
Yeah, I mean, it's so hard because people are trying to be nice, but in a lot of cases, Abby, I'm imagining that it's in a situation where you don't have like 15 minutes or it's not someone you're particularly close to. You might be like in a hallway or right before the beginning of class or something. And they're like, how are you, how are you doing? And you're like, I don't really have time to discuss it.
And I'm also not sure how much you want to discuss it. One thing Sheryl Sandberg recommended in her book about the grief she experienced after her husband's staff was saying to people, how are you doing today as a way of not making it this big overwhelming question, but about what's going on today? And it allows them, allows the Abby of the situation to share whatever part of their day they want to, as opposed to only having to talk over and over again about this huge overwhelming loss in their lives. And maybe that's like just turn that question into that because how are you doing?
Could mean a lot of things. And if you turn it into here's how I'm doing today or here's how I'm doing this afternoon or that might be an easier question to get your head around and to have a satisfying answer to. Yeah, the other thing I'd say, and Abby, we're not grief counselors or experts in grief, to be clear. We are two brothers who just figured out via blowing through a pen how air gets cold.
But I do think that it's really important to have conversations with people you trust about how you're feeling and what you're going through to process that grief and to learn to live with it. And I think reaching out to people who are asking how are you at a time when it's good for you and when you have time and when the situation is appropriate is almost always going to be welcomed by those people. And so I would encourage you to reach out to people when you need to as you need to but not feel obligated to say anything in response to how are you. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.
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. When you start with Shopify, the tools to design and launch and take payments, they're all there from day one. You don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business.
And this is important because you also have to look good and with Shopify's templates, you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together. And when things look real, that works on my brain to be like, I'm doing a real thing. And it also works on other people's brains to be like, this is legitimate. Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet.
It's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks. Returning customers can check out with a single click. That means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody. That stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing.
You're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work. You're not wondering whether customers can get through the process. Shopify handles that foundation so you can focus on the thing that you're actually trying to do. It's really kind of amazing to me that Shopify is a tool that works from the first day your store launches when you're just starting to get customers all the way up to being the size of good.store or dftv.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark.
When you build a Shopify, you're building with tools that already work at every scale. All you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest. You can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank.
With new subscription only, while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed.
My kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to quince. I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints. In fact sometimes I get compliments about it. I was at the airport a couple days ago as I often find myself in airports and someone said I like your shirt and I said thanks.
It's from quince. Quince is 100% European linen pants and insurance are breathable, easy to throw on and the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34. Their tees are soft enough to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when those summer nights cool down. So that's why I'm wearing quince this summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deerhank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.
Now available in Canada too, that's qunce.com slash deerhank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deerhank. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor. Imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and that you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do?
Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts? Those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge. You can get smoky barbecue chicken breast with potato mash, cream corn and peppers. You can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice, peel off broccoli and carrots.
This has the fiber I need, it has the protein I need and it has the deliciousness I need. What about garlic, herb roasted, barramundi with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce? I don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious. What about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema?
A delicious high fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for? Any of those can be ready in two minutes. Fresh, never frozen, over 100 rotating weekly meals including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian, Factor shops, preps, cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring. Head to factormills.com slash deerhank50off and use the code deerhank50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box.
With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you on the website for more details. We can do it. Just ball your fists up and put them into little hand socks.
It's fine. Exactly. Alright, we gotta get to some comments before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. This email came in from Ian who wrote, Dear John and Hank, you've stated repeatedly that this new partnership with WNYC would not change the pod but now only one episode in John states that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the quote best Halloween candy and the first thing he steals from his children.
I thought this was a strictly pro-Mars pro-snickers podcast. Does WNYC have a brand deal with Hershey that has forced John to repeal his stance on Snickers? And if this is the case, I can come to accept it. I just need the truth.
Ian. Ian, it's true. Ian, no, we can't. We cannot discuss this matter.
What do you mean? We cannot discuss this matter. The state of our brand deal with Hershey slash Mars. We're pitting them against each other.
Exactly. And as nothing to do with WNYC, it has to do with my desire to have a personal candy sponsor and not really caring who I sell out to. Yeah, because Snickers was like, here's a bunch of Snickers bars and you're like, okay, that's good. But like, they only last me a month.
Yeah, I gave them so much promo for this 478 Snickers bars and did another 478 Snickers bars. Arrived at my office? No. So what that told me is that maybe it's time to reach out to my friends over at the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups place factory.
Yeah, I mean, but like, so little Snickers are fine. They're good. They're one of the best Halloween candies. But little Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are better than big Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and I'm standing by that statement.
Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. A little Snickers tastes like a slightly off Snickers. Yeah, a little less than a peanut butter cup tastes like a condensed and superior Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Yeah, which is the kind of thing that I will say over and over and over again.
If those folks just send me 478 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, minis or fools, I don't care. Oh geez, minis. That's only like, that's like a $40 bag. So true.
Why am I so willing to sell out for like goods and services, but not for cash? Like if Reese's was like, Hey, I'll give you 80 bucks to talk about us on the pod. I'd be like, of course not. You've offended me.
But if they send me 80 bucks worth of candy, I'm like, Hey guys, you know, it's great Reese's. I just took a bath and peanut butter and chocolate. My favorites have never smelled better. I want a list of all the times in human history, when the sentence, my favorites have never smelled better, has been spoken because I want, I want to relive each of those moments.
Like I want to be a fly. Like if heaven exists, it's me as a fly on the wall every single time any human has ever said, my parents have never smelled better. This is a great compilation video. And it's just like an infinite video.
Yeah, exactly. It's the infinite just like I would be so happy for eternity. If it was just that, and then like, I would get occasional breaks to be with my family, but like my job would be watching every time that's ever happened. Okay.
Okay. All right. I'm in actual tears. Also, Sean and a bunch of other people wrote in the say to your Hank and John on your recent podcast, you discuss some specifics regarding the terms of will a person visit Mars before 2028.
And while I agree with your assessment views of the alien dogs, I think you missed a crucial aspect of your bet and your discussion and your understanding thereof citizens United established the corporations are in fact people. So should a corporation, I e SpaceX visit Mars by 2028, I would argue that Hank per the specific terms of the bet has won regards Sean. Thank you, Sean and everyone else who responded similarly, excellent point completely disagree on every level, Sean. First off, if SpaceX gets to Mars by 2028, I will eat my hat.
Secondly, corporations are not people no matter what the Supreme Court says. Like if a corporation does something, nobody ever says like, Oh, the first person has made it to the top of Mount Everest, it was Google. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think John has legitimate points, but I'm going to go with the Supreme Court just because I want the podcast to remain named the dear Hank and John, although probably it still won't be. Yeah, I still like my odds by the way.
Hey, it's time for the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first. I have decided to be relentlessly positive about AFC Wimbledon through the end of the year. I think that the negativity is not helping.
Yes, we are at the very bottom of the table. Yes, we lost another game, the first game without Neil Hardley, two to one after being up one nil. But we're not going to talk about that stuff anymore. We're going to talk about good things, great news.
And the best news, really exciting is that the dawn's trust which owns AFC Wimbledon Wimbledon is owned by its fans. The dawn's trust is having elections right now. So if you are a member of the dawn's trust, if you own AFC Wimbledon, I own like one six thousandth of the club, you can also own one six thousandth of the club. You can vote for your preferred candidates right now, which I have done.
It is democracy in action and it's a very special thing. Most people don't get to vote for the people who are going to leave their club. They just have to deal with whatever rich person owns it. And in that respect, Wimbledon fans are very fortunate.
And so I'm really excited that there are 11 people running for the four spots in the dawn's trust that are up for election this year. And I love the way the club is run. And I love that forever 75% of AFC Wimbledon will be owned by the dawn's trust in no matter what rich person comes in and tries to steal it, it can't. It is an asset of its community, which is the way that all sports teams should be.
So good news. What's going on in Mars? So the day that this podcast comes out, Mars Insight Lander will be landing on the surface of Mars one way or another, John and Lesse, unless it misses. In case that's a terrible news.
So I guess that's a possibility. But how big is this Lander? Give me some specs. I don't know what it weighs.
That would be an interesting fact for me to have access to and yet I don't. Am I talking about like a hot wheel landing on Mars or am I talking about like a desk landing on Mars? Bigger than a desk. Wow.
Yeah. And also it will get bigger once it lands because it will unfold, which is quite cool. That is cool. I'm so excited for this Hank.
I have bookmarked the NASA website and set a calendar reminder so I don't miss the live stream. I need this moment. Yeah, I agree. I'm right there with you, John.
So last week I talked about the seismometer, that insight will place on the surface of Mars. And now I will tell you about the two other main experiments that are on the Insight Lander. One is a heat probe that will hammer itself down into the surface of Mars. And here's what it does.
It will go down a little bit and then it will release some heat and then measure how fast that heat dissipates. And this will tell us about the composition at that level. And then it will go 50 centimeters deeper and it will release some heat and do it again. And then 50 centimeters at a time until it's five meters, ideally, if everything goes to plan below the surface of Mars.
At which point it will sit there and it will have learned its active experiment part of how much, how good Mars is at dissipating heat, which will tell us about the composition of the crust. So basically what you're saying is that this contraption will be kind of like hot breathing onto the surface of Mars. Yeah, there's a portion of it that will be hot breathing on the surface of Mars. Correct.
That's right. And then there's another experiment that is designed to tell whether or not Mars has a solid core, which is a question that's up in the air. We literally have no idea and it does that by basically measuring exactly where it is on the surface of Mars and that will allow us to tell how much Mars wobbles in its orbit and that wobble and how that wobble works will tell us whether there's a core of the planet, which is amazing that you can do that with just a couple antennas on the surface of the the Lander. That is pretty amazing.
Science. Science. All right. Thank you for product with me.
Thanks to everybody for listening. We're off to make our patron only podcast over at patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John called this week in Ryan's. But first I think Hank has the credits. I do.
Dear Hank and John is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC studios. It's produced by Rosie Annahals Rojas and Sheridan Gibson. Our editor is Nicholas Jenkins. Victoria Bongerno is our head of community and communications.
The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.