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 Yech, 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 or 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! That's the wrong podcast.
Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions give you to be sufficed and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, as you can tell by my intro, I'm a little bit hungover right now and maybe a little bit slower than usual.
Katherine and I both recently had our birthdays and this weekend to celebrate them. Our friends took us to this gorgeous vineyard in Missoula where people who can afford $10 glasses of wine get together and commiserate and talk about all the difficulties and hardships of their life which I guess is why they call it a winery. Did you actually go to a winery? I did.
Okay. That makes me feel better about the joke. I'm trying to just lean in and laugh at your jokes instead of resisting them. Well, I worked on that one for a while.
Like I felt a little bad about it because I didn't want, I don't like it was actually really lovely and we didn't want that much but I just needed a joke. Yeah, we did a joke about various things. Hey, can I read you some reviews that have just put in the last minutes before you do? I just want to say that the intro that I accidentally started with, that's the intro to our Patreon only podcast this weekend stuff or half of it before I realized which you can be a part of at patreon.com slash Dear Hank and John.
Anyway, John, your book is out. Congratulations. And by the way, that's what we're focusing on today, not the Patreon for this weekend stuff. So if you make only one Green Brothers related purchase this week, don't join our Patreon by my book.
Our Patreon doesn't come with a book. The book's true. So as we're recording this, it's the day before the book comes out, which is like in general, in my experience of this being the sixth time I've done this, the most challenging, like emotionally challenging day because nothing has happened yet, but things are about to happen or maybe not, you know, and it's my stress level has been extremely high. But then I got this review from the San Francisco Chronicle and it's so it's so nice.
So I'm just going to read a little bit of it to you like the way that you do when you are a little brother and you want to make your older brother finally feel proud of you and just because you're younger doesn't mean that you're not basically the older brother. So as a premise, it's clever. And in the hands of another writer, the conceit might stop it cute, but green is a ravenous and tender polymath. Can we talk about the fact by the way that ravenous and tender don't generally get followed by polymath?
No, or by each other. Anyway, I mean, I, but like, honestly, that might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me. Yeah, you can change your Twitter bio right now. I'm not sure I need to change my Twitter bio, but I know what you mean.
Can I put can I change my Twitter bio ravenous and tender polymath because I've stolen a lot from you over the years. Might as well take this. You can't, but you can say brother of noted ravenous and tender polymath, John Green, if you want to. That's okay.
These tiny essays are like winding mountain passes that lead you through unexpected landscapes, both in subject and in emotion. His reviews create a collage of factoids in a window into one person's longing, fears, and hope. And then the ending is so nice. The book makes the wondrous small, see his essay on Haley's Comet and the small wondrous, like his ode to Scratch and Sniff stickers.
The Anthropocene Reviewed is the perfect book to read over lunch or to keep on your nightstand whenever you need a reminder of what it is to feel small and human in the best possible way. That was so nice. That made me so happy. And it was just really because I almost know one has read the book.
Like certainly nobody I don't know has read the book. It's just for that to be the first thing that I get to read about it was really just lovely. So thank you, person at the San Francisco Chronicle who wrote that review. Elizabeth Greenwood, John, it was Elizabeth Greenwood.
Well, yeah, it was really nice. Thank you. Because I used to be a book reviewer, I'm uncomfortable with thanking book reviewers because when people would email me and thank me, I would be like, listen, I didn't write that because I wanted to make you happy. Exactly.
And I don't want you to get mad at me next time when I don't like your book. I'm just not a personal relationship. But this is not what this is about. Oh, so at least the initial reviews are good.
Hank, let's answer some questions from our listeners after we remind them one more time that the Anthropocene Reviewed is available now. Signed copies are everywhere books are sold and also everywhere books are lent. Check out your local library. So John, I want to ask some questions from our listeners, but not before I remind everyone that the Anthropocene Reviewed is available wherever books are sold, not stored, and also probably most places where they're stored and also including places where those books are lent like your local library.
All right. Hank, let's read our first question. This one comes from Autumn who writes, dear John and Hank, my name is Autumn and I am confused. Growing up, my mom always made me eat the crust of my bread because, quote, it is the healthiest part of the bread.
But what? How? It's made of the same ingredients as the rest of the bread, right? Unless there's something fundamental I fail to understand about bread making.
It's just cooked a little more. So how is it healthier? Not the other seasons, Autumn. I mean, it's not exactly chemically the same, I will say.
And there was a study back in like almost 20 years ago now, like looked at the different ingredients or different chemicals in even nutrients, chemicals in the crust versus in the bread. And there are some different chemicals and some of them are antioxidants. And so you can make the case that maybe these are slightly healthy. It's not.
It's not. It is nutritionally the same as the rest of the bread. But it is food that people and our planet worked hard together to create also a plant. The plant also worked very hard to create it.
And so we should eat it because it's food. And so we tell ourselves and our children lies and we say that it's the healthiest part of the bread and you should eat it despite the fact that it's not. It's a lie, but it's a lie in service of the fact that we should eat food that is edible. And in fact, my son makes me cut his crust off his freaking peanut butter jelly sandwich and I eat them.
Me too. In fact, it's one of my favorite meals is my kids peanut butter and jelly crusts. I also think that sometimes the nutritional profile of crust in bread is changed further by the fact that the crust does have different ingredients in it. Like sometimes true have, you know, like egg on them or whatever and egg wash or even like are dusted with little nuts.
Right. But but at its core, when people say the crust is healthier, even when they're pointing to this one study from 20 years ago, it's important to note that the difference is so marginal. And we get obsessed with these really truly insignificant differences all the time when it comes to nutrition, rather than focusing on where we should actually focus, which is like eat, eat food, pay attention to how your body feels when you eat food and period. You are absolutely right.
And and it is also very true that like the way that we imagine what is healthy is it's very weird. And like that, like it's the white egg brown egg thing where you feel like a brown egg is healthier. Like in what where did that happen? How did this occur?
Where people bunch of chicken farmers had to switch chickens so that they could like have a different color of egg that is nutritionally identical. Yeah, what we live in a world where branding is so important that it's hard sometimes for us to disambiguate branding from reality because yeah, we're patterned searchers. So we know and it's like, it is true is that potato, there are more vitamins and minerals and potato skin than in the potato part of the potato. So they like went from that to being like, eggs brown eggs must have got to even eat the shell.
It's not even part of the per you eat. Right. But on the other hand, like it could also go, you also see this in the whole thing about drinking eight glasses of water per day, which is completely made odd, but is based on something, right? It's based on drink water.
When you are that is good. That actually is good advice. Now, the vast majority of people can just drink water when they're thirsty, but there is some very small subset of people who have to pay attention to the amount of water they drink and when they drink it and so on. But for almost everyone, almost all of the time, you drink water and that's good.
And that's the end of the sentence. Like I remember when we were doing 100 days, we went to these nutritionists and people who had studied all of the most recent compelling studies in nutrition science. And one of the things we learned is that a lot of these studies are based on relatively short time periods with relatively small groups of people. And so they're very similar.
Yeah. And so their results can be compelling without necessarily really reshaping the way we understand nutrition. And that has all kinds of downstream effects. But I was like, so we want to be maximally healthy for 100 days.
So like, what does the evidence strongly suggest I should do? How much water should I drink to maximize my health? And I'll drink that amount of water every day for 100 days. And the experts were like, well, you should drink when you're thirsty.
And I only drink water, right? And they're like, no, I mean, you should do drink water. But if you like to drink coffee, that's fine. Yeah, but doesn't it dehydrate you?
No, a little bit. Just drink a little water. Yeah, it's like slightly it will hydrate you slightly less than water. It will not dehydrate you.
It's not like drinking the ocean. It is almost as if water in particular is so vitally important for your body that your body has really good systems for telling you when to consume it. But I do think like we want, and this is partly, I think it's into this sort of collective delusion around nutrition and health, but we want nutrition to be able to solve all of our health problems, or to be able to, we want nutrition to be the key that unlocks all of human health forever. Yeah, not even like, not even like our fitness problems, but we also want to cure cancer with it and we want to not get COVID with it.
And I think like, I'm putting this stuff in my body shouldn't be able to control all of these things that I can't control. And it's just no, it's, it's not. Yeah, alas, it really doesn't. And that's kind of a tough thing.
And also like, that message doesn't get spread that widely partly because it's not a particularly lucrative message. Interesting one either. Yeah. And it's also not that interesting.
Right. So stories around wellness and around like, oh, you know, wife transforming because of eating certain supplements or something. And there may be anecdotal experiences of that that are very true. And I don't want to deny the reality of those people's experience.
But when looked at on a macro level, there's just not very strong evidence for much of it. So drink water when you're thirsty, eat the crust of the bread not because it's healthier, but because it's food. It's food. We worked hard to create it.
And John, this next question comes from Jason who asks, Dear Hank and John, a dear John letter is a letter to a romantic partner announcing the end of relationship. So I am aware, believe me. What would a dear Hank letter be? Dear Hank and John seems like the right place to ask this question.
What do we all need to tell Hank with Argonauts, Jason? What does it take to get to the question part of this question? But first, I just need to say something, which is that everybody who emails me and they begin the email by Dear John. And then there's a paragraph about how it's funny to be writing a dear John letter because that's a breakup letter.
But this isn't a breakup letter. It's a letter to a person named John. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but I've heard the joke. Right.
Well, and also at this point, do we even use that phrase anymore? I feel like the only time we use that phrase is in a Nicholas Sparks movie that came out 10 years ago. Yeah. And then when people are emailing me, the only times I see the colloquial meaning of Dear John used.
I have to shout out to anybody who remembers this theme song, which for some reason is in my head. Dear John, Dear John, by the time you read these lines, I'll be gone. It was like, Oh, God, what is that? It was like an 80s sitcom.
Is it from my two dads? No, it was a show called Dear John. Oh, no way. Yes.
No, I would remember if there was a show called Dear John. Yes, and had that guy in it. That guy who's still famous. He's still doing stuff.
No. Yes. No way. Oh my God, it has that guy in it.
He's an everything. He's still doing it. That guy. Apparently, Dear John was on American television from 1988 to 1992 for of my peak television watch.
I have no memory of this program. I'm sure I saw it a million times because when you sang that song, it something came back to me. Yeah. And I'm sure that that's part of the reason why in the 1990s, like when my friends and I would write letters, they would always be like, it's not that kind of Dear John letter, right?
Oh, I wonder if it's good, John, for the product for often this year, do you want to do a commentary of the Dear John? Because you can just watch it on YouTube. It is just available. Yeah.
You know, like streaming rights to friends sold for $50 billion or whatever, but the streaming rights to Dear John, like they couldn't get a five cent offer. So they were like, I guess we'll just upload them. Right. The first, the top comment on Dear John Pilots season one episode one is from Tom Willett.
He says, I am Tom Willett. I was Tom in this series. It's great to see the pilot again. The cast was fabulous to be with for the four seasons of the show.
The entire crew and production company was all first class. We did this at Paramount. The pilot was originally written for the UK where the series began. We worked on this from 1988 until 1992.
I wish they would release this on DVD. Thanks for hosting this eight years ago. That's great. Thank you, Tom.
Thank you, Tom. Willett. I was doing this series. It makes me think that like 40 years from now when people start like re-uploading vlogbrothers videos to whatever exists after the collapse of civilization and YouTube falls apart, we're going to come across like a re-uploaded vlogbrothers video and be like, Oh, hey, thanks for posting this.
I remember we made this in my basement in Indianapolis for 17 years in the before times. And it was so fun. Then of course, there was the tremendous amount of destruction that we brought. We're really sorry about that.
And thanks for posting. Anyway, I got to go now because I have to light the ring of fire that I use each evening to protect my home from the zombie horde. But it's really nice to see these old videos. Glad we're getting the internet back online.
Looks good. Thanks for saving us. Yeah, thanks to whoever downloaded vlogbrothers videos onto a hard drive and saw this whole zombie apocalypse thing coming. My God.
But I tell you what's not on a hard drive somewhere is almost all vlogbrothers videos. Yeah, gosh, it makes me think we should go through and download them. Yeah, I guess. I don't know.
John, do you want to actually answer this question at all? Yes, because I think that's a great question. And I'm sorry we got sidetracked by early 90s TV. What would a deer hank letter be?
I've got to answer the question because I know exactly what it would be because I received them all the time. Deer hank. Where does the wax go in the candle? No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, like a deer hank letter has to be like a universal letter. I have. If a deer John letter is this just isn't going to work, I'm leaving. I think a deer hank letter is I have long harbored a deep love for you that I am now revealing in this.
Oh, okay. Is it like, does it come along with a deer John letter where it's like you're leaving one person for the best friend? No, no, no, no. The deer hank letter is the letter that you write where you're like, I'm just going to say it.
I've been thinking it for 15 years. I'm just I'm going to reveal these feelings to my best friend and we'll see how it goes. And then of course the deer John letter is the letter that you get in response. That's not what I that's I don't know that that's what if I could pick.
Here's what I pick for any letter to be a deer hank letter. It would be a letter that you write to a person who you want nothing from but want and they are relatively minor player in your life, but a person who you see in the real world. And it's just letting them know that you appreciate something about them. But it has to be someone who you want nothing from.
So your hank letter is like, right to the person that you see at the grocery store sometimes who has very good shoes. Or like the person who has a very clever license plate, personalized license plate, and you leave it on their front of their window and you say, I just wanted you to know, I see this license plate around town and it makes me smile every time. I want nothing from you. And I'm going to include that sentence because nothing sounds more like you want something from them than like it sounds like a threat.
I don't want anything from you. Why would you think that? Just say, yeah, I really I do like that idea. That's a great idea for a deer hank letter.
And I have to say, I've been writing more thank you notes in the last few years. And one, somebody in the Anthropocene Reviewed email told me once that thank you notes are a double mercy because they bring mercy to the writer and to the reader. And I thought that was so beautiful and so true. Like I feel better after I write a thank you note.
So I love the idea that it's a thank you note, but it has to be a thank you note from somebody. Even if you dig deep down into your heart, you do not want anything from it is a true is a true thank you note. Yeah, that is good. And I it is a thing that I know that you do much more effectively than I do, because I don't form habits that are healthy.
Thank you very much. All right, we have another question. This one comes from Julia. It gets right back to the heart of when we started this whole of business.
Dear John and Hank, I've been binging Vlogbrothers' videos lately and I was reminded of the fact that John was the one who suggested the idea of a collaborative video blog. Let's just take a second to be grateful for that. I mean, where would we be Hank? Right a little where would we be?
John's writing a thank you note to himself. So that's good. Oh, and it's a and it's a deer hank letter because I really don't want anything of myself. I just want to say thank you.
My question is how did John, a person who is generally anxious and stressed about public speaking and interacting with others become excited about blasting videos and images of himself to the entire internet pumpkins and penguins. Julia. I don't really know. I don't really get it.
But it was very different back then. Like, it was never like a moment when it all suddenly felt like lots of people were looking at us because there wasn't really a moment where our audience grew dramatic. Like now with TikTok, you have like many people have like eight videos on their TikTok and one of them has a million views on the rest of them have 100. And whereas when we like in the sort of beginning times of this, it was like every video would get the same number of views forever.
It was what it felt like. Maybe slightly increasing over time. Yeah. I mean, the first like 150 or so Vlogbrothers' videos we made got an average of around 400 or 500 views.
And so I know it's hard to like think back to those times, but I didn't think I was so there's two things at work. One is that I am anxious in social situations, but making a video blog is not a social situation. It's something that you do a little bit more. It's extremely controlled.
Yeah. You do it alone in your basement and you have complete control over every facet of the process. And that was very appealing to me. I do not like being on television because it is not like that.
And then number two is that it was just smaller, like the world of the internet was smaller and it felt like a world that was separate from the real world. And so I think both those things were at work. But like to be clear, just because you're an anxious person doesn't mean that you aren't like desperate for outside affirmation. And I think part of the reason I started writing books probably was because I wanted to tell stories to an audience, but I wanted to be able to like not have to go outside to do that, not have to perform to do that.
But the other thing is that I like performing. Like I do get very anxious before Hank and I go on stage if we're performing. And sometimes it can be really difficult for me, but I enjoy it. I get a lot out of it.
Like I love, I mean, I've said this before, but I love being on stage with Hank because it's so unpredictable. I have no idea what's going to happen. There's a terror in that, but there's also a wonder in it. And I also know that like I'm on stage with someone who is like, you know, gonna save me if I start to bomb.
I do feel pretty intensely anxious when it's just me on stage and there's not much, you know, I don't really get a big kick out of that really. But I'll do I don't know. I'll do it if I need to do it for work. Like if it's an important part of selling a book or something like before we started vlogbrothers, I did it to help sell books and I don't know.
It wasn't something I really sought out, but I was okay doing it. So in my case, anxiety and OCD manifests itself in certain ways. And for a long time, videos just weren't even part of that. Like my life making videos was completely separate from my life experiencing anxiety.
And then that changed. And it was a difficult thing to deal with the change, because it did begin to become a source of anxiety for me. And and it took much, much longer to make a vlogbrothers video because it took much longer to like say the words that were in the video. And you know, but that's okay.
Like I just make space to accommodate it. And so I still really love making vlogbrothers videos. It brings me a lot of joy. I also have to sometimes accommodate this like thing that I do where I repeat what I say or like can't get through a sentence because I get nervous or trip up or whatever.
But that's fine. I've made space for it. Yeah. It's funny because like the things that I would think would be the cause of the greatest stress and anxiety for you are not necessarily those things, which just goes to show that like the ways that I try to imagine other people's brains is always going to be a little bit or a lot wrong.
You know, I would imagine just the idea of like putting ideas out there that people might misinterpret or that they or that like they might be wrong. Like that would be the thing that would be this like like chief focus because that's like sort of what I like I have the most anxiety about. And I know you have anxiety about that too, but it isn't the same kind of obsessive anxiety that you have around other things. Yeah.
And I think like that can be a difficult thing for people who aren't inside the experience to imagine. But the example that I always use is that the White River is really, really filthy. It's profoundly contaminated. I've gotten Giardia from it twice.
But I do not have anxiety about kayaking on the White River. Because for one thing, I know that if I get Giardia, I'll be fine. I've done that. I know that's like.
So, you know, I have all of these I have health fears. I have all of these obsessive fears about contamination. But I'm able to do this thing that doesn't make sense to people, a lot of people, because they're like, well, you have an obsessive fear of contamination. Why would you stick your butt in the most contaminated place in Indianapolis?
And the answer is because the worries are not rational. If it made sense, it wouldn't be a disorder. Right. Yeah.
Like my disordered thinking is disordered. Yeah. Where's my thing about the White River is very reasonable. I'm like, yes, dirty, but like, oh, it's going to be lovely to be down there.
Right. John, I have a question I want to answer because it's fascinating. And I did not know this until Spokey looked it up when she saw the question. And it's from Bailey who asks Dear Hank and John, why do cats and dogs always sniff in short little sniffs?
Why don't they take one big sniff the way that we do when we smell something? You're friendly building and lone Bailey. So John, it turns out we take one big sniff to breathe things in because our sniff areas are on the way to the lungs, whereas dogs and cats take lots of little sniffs, because their sniff areas are separate things that exist off to the side. So air can go two different ways.
It can go into the sniff areas and it can go all the way down into the lungs to breathe. That about 12% of the air goes into sniff areas. And then they breathe out through a separate hole, kind of, it's the same hole. But so like, you see the dog knows, has like the nostrils and then they're like, slit that kind of curl up to the side and makes them super cute.
That's like the area that air is exhaled out of where it is inhaled through the holes. And this allows them to store air in the sniff areas and have it sit there for longer so that they can sniff, so smell the stuff that's like sitting in there rather than us having to like breathe in constantly to have more of the same air going past our sniff areas before we blow it all out with air that just smells like our lungs. Wow, that is mind blowing. Yeah, so different to be a dog.
It would be very different to be a dog. Though there's a dog I follow on TikTok that makes me think it's not that different. That's tick. You see, buddy, the great equalizer.
Hey, can I ask you a question about this? Yeah. So one time, this only happened one time, but one time, I went to like a wine tasting. Okay.
And the wine tasting guy, the Somelier, is that the one? Well, the Somelier was like, so I want you to smell the wine. I want you to inhale deeply and smell the wine. And then they always ask you like it's a pop quiz, like where do you smell?
And the only answer that I ever have in my heart is I smell wine, you know, and I'm trying to smell other stuff, but like really it smells so much like wine. It's hard to pay attention to anything else that it might smell like. And then he said, and then we like, you know, we switched the glass around. And then he wanted us to take short, quick sense, like where doggy, I've always wondered why he did that.
And I did, I was like, well, when I do that, you know, it still smells like wine. But I did it. And I always wondered like why he had us do that. If there was anything to it, or maybe he was just like these people have such rank amateurs that I can tell them anything.
You should have been like, look, sir, I'm not a dog. I don't have a separate sniff pocket. Yeah, I should have that. Because you really, one thing you definitely want to do at a wine tasting is annoy the Somelier.
I, this happened to me once I had a glass and I usually have nothing to say. I'm like, wow, this tastes like grapes. And what it has overtones of grape. And then I said, oh, this, like, I drink and I was like, you know what that tastes and smells a little like his gun powder.
And the guy said, no. And I was like, oh, sorry. Yeah. He was like mad at me.
And I was like, oh, right? Well, I guess I'm wrong. Yeah. I usually try to express myself rather than with words with sounds like mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
Yeah, sure. And then I feel like I can, like if I taste one wine and then I taste another wine, I can be like, that is not the same. Yes. Yes.
I can be like, I have noticed a difference. I can't, I can't articulate it super well. But one of them is sort of more and the other is sort of less. One of them tastes like big and the other one tastes a little smaller.
That's how it works. It's all about metaphor. I've for clarity, I've been in one wine tasting with my life. So I think I was there with you.
Yeah, you were. That was with my art. That was a fun trip. One of them.
You know, John, this conversation has reminded me of one of our sponsors, which is separate sniff pockets. Separate sniff pockets. They are fantastic. Only dogs and simoleas have them.
That is one kind of virtual reality headset I would definitely sign up for. If they could like make me have a more sophisticated sense of smell, I would, I mean, if that's the Oculus 3, take my money. Today's podcast is also of course brought to you by Tom Willard, who played Tom on the 1980s and 1990s sitcom Dear John. Well, this podcast is also brought to you by John's Press Tour for the Anthropocene Reviewed.
It is about to begin and John is going to be stressed out all day. And so enjoy your day, John. You're going to do good. I wish it was only one day.
You're going to. That would be nice. And I do try to remind myself that there were several books where I did not have press tours. And I have a lot to be grateful for.
Yeah. Just the fact that a newspaper wants to talk to me is great news. And so I'm trying to focus on that side of things. Lastly, our podcast is of course brought to you by Dear Hank Letters, Dear Hank Letters, an exciting new product coming soon from dftba.com that will allow you to write thank you letters to people from whom you genuinely want nothing.
Because Hank, I think it's one thing to have an idea, but it's not really an idea until there's a capitalist motivation for it. And so I think we need to release the first ever Dear Hank Letter note cards if you want this idea to take off. I agree. Not least because we can't be advertising anything when we are advertising the Anthropocene Review.
John, we have a project for awesome message. It's from Rachel and Ben from Tulsa to Judelyo, Elena, Elijah and Skye. To our curious little Nerdfighters, keep striving to understand the world and all of its beauty. Your mom and dad are proud of who you are and who you are becoming.
You've lived through interesting times and yet you stand full of wonder. Keep going, continue to love well and live fully. The world will be stronger for it. John and Hank, thanks for impacting other generation.
We're good. That's very sweet. Also, you'll have a great number of children. Also phenomenal names.
So Judelyo, Elena, Elijah and Skye, we wish you well. We're sorry that we didn't make a better world for you, but we have every confidence that you are going to make a better world for those who come after. Yeah. 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. 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.
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With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Yes. Hey, before we get to the on-port news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I really want to ask this wonderful question that came in from Caitlyn that I do not know the answer to and which has real import for what I want my future as a person to look like.
Caitlyn writes, Dear John and Hank, in your last podcast, you mentioned that the Martian sky is filled with dust and has a brown daytime sky vibe. I'm allergic to many things on Earth, particularly pollen and dust and I was sad to learn about the extensive dust on Mars. I had hoped when we moved to Mars that I would no longer have allergies and would therefore be able to discontinue my allergy medication. I see this is the main reason people want to visit Mars.
I thought it was very important to Hank that we get to the bottom of the question, will we have allergies on Mars? There has been some thinking about this. I think mostly in the science fiction world, often what you hear is that there are still allergens, but there are fewer. The big problem is when people come back to Earth, they are not used to the allergens of Earth and so have tremendous allergies on Earth.
I think that's part of a way that it's a trope in science fiction to emphasize that we become not Earth people when we leave Earth and come back to the Earth. There's sort of a tension. Some science fiction authors argue that ultimately when you come back, you are finally being exposed to the world that you were built for and you are very comfortable in it and you find that you've been uncomfortable your whole life versus other sci-fi authors who make the case that you will and is certainly the case when it comes to changes in gravity, that when you come back to Earth it will actually be really terrible and you will be incapable of functioning here. That's what I know from Sci-Fi books which talk about allergies a surprising amount.
Now, the dust that you are allergic to on Earth is definitely not as far as I know, it is likely to be not just dust generally. It's likely to be a component of the dust. There are many different components of the dust. There could be several different components of the dust that you might be allergic to, but a lot of dust is just like pieces of carpet and furniture and clothes and if you're not allergic to your own like the cotton in your shirt, then you're not allergic to some of the dust because a lot of the dust is just cotton particles.
Now, it may be that you're mostly allergic to dust mites, in which case you would not be allergic to the outside of or the leavings of dust mites. You would not be able to the outside of Mars, but you would absolutely be able to the inside of whatever habitat you were living in because we're taking dust mites with us whether we want them or not. And the same goes for mold. We're taking mold with us whether we want it or not.
And oftentimes, like even on the on space station, mold has been a problem already, existing space stations that we have now. So you will likely be allergic where you end up. It will probably not be the Martian dust finds that you will be allergic to. It will be the stuff that we bring with us.
So I have bad news regardless. Also, at least as I understand it, it's not like you're going to be able to get that allergic to the Martian dust because you're not going to be interacting. You're not going to be like breathing it in very often because you're not going to be like romping around Mars, you know, breathing in the air that isn't there. Actually, you probably will be breathing in the dust quite a bit because there will not be a way to keep it out of the habitats because it is so sticky and tiny.
It will get to the air lock and then it'll get to the habitat and it will be it will be a whole battle to fight. And it's also now another problem is that the like, I would be more worried about the components of the dust, which may include like, it may be sharp. And so like astvestacy, where it's the tarmulongs, or you know, if there's like chemical compounds in the dust, like perchlorates that would be bad to breathe in, this is one of the main concerns with when it comes to Mars is that there are some chemicals in the dust that humans are not well suited to encountering regularly. So it may be that it may be that Mars will be kind of off the table because of that, but we're operating right now as if it will not be the case.
So we'll see. I'm really excited for humans to go to Mars. And I think it will be one of the great achievements of our species top probably top five. Sure.
But I will say that the more you talk about what human life on Mars might look like, the more I think, wow, is Earth a good planet. I mean, what a great planet. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, like it, no one talks about the toxicity of the soil on Mars, which does seem like a really big deal.
Like the toxic soil is a big problem. And this isn't just a problem for like growing plants in it, like you could not grow potato plants in Martian soil unless you like washed it a lot. But like also you just like you got to do I have to have systems for keeping it out of the areas that people exist inside of because it's for you. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, Earth is just I've been thinking this more and more. Like I really have been trying to orient myself toward wonder because it just makes life so much more enjoyable. And in those moments when I'm able to do it, I'm like, wow, this is great.
Like, like, this river is amazing. If we if we like discovered the white river on Europa tomorrow, everyone would be like, Oh my God, what a river. Oh, whoa. Your big concern is that it's got a little too much nitrogen and, you know, like a little smidget, you already are here in there like, would be a very big deal.
Yeah. Most exciting GRDR we've ever seen. I mean, it would be hilarious if the first life that is discovered on a planet outside of Earth is literally just E. coli.
I mean, that stuff really can make it anywhere. It is not impossible. There are people who think that that is maybe even likely. We will find life somewhere else and it'll have straight up mitochondria and we'll be like, Oh, dang it.
That's just us again. Well, we'll be like, Oh, dang it. But we'll also be like, Oh, whoa. Yeah.
I mean, there is no version of finding life that is definitely from another planet that is not incredibly exciting. Yeah. I mean, I guess there was one version, which is that it's the last moment for humanity. It then spreads and eats all of our eyeballs until we're just no, I didn't mean like microscopic life.
I'm not like if said to come here and they're like, Yeah, I mean, this is a good planet, but y'all have not done a great job with it. So we're going to go ahead and this is ours now. Thanks. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and settle in on this one.
Yeah, I don't know if you've heard, but your core is got a lot of iron and we're we need to build a dyson sphere. So we're going to need that. Yeah, that's a bad version. But like all the versions where humanity discovers life on another planet or finds like strong evidence of life that we're able to observe closely is incredibly exciting because it could we don't know what we don't know about extraterrestrial life.
And anytime something like that happens, it's so exciting. I just want to have one moment of like that in my life where there is such big news about our understanding of the universe that that my mind just it could happen. You got some time left? I know.
Well, hopefully we'll see. Or maybe it's just the white river. Maybe it's just the white river, which is also that's also that's also been a great joy. Hank, yes, I want to talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon.
It's always exciting. It's never not exciting. But I just have to acknowledge that the football team that I have loved since I was a child, Liverpool Football Club, had a game over the weekend. It was wild in which it's a game that we had to win in order to have a chance to qualify for the Champions League.
And so with the last kick of the game, we brought the goalie up, which is something that teams do, but it never works like a football club for 130 years. It was a tie. It was like tied was tied. Was it an exciting game before that?
Sorry. Can I get a little more context? Was it zero zero? Like had you been losing and you've been winning?
It was one one. We went down one nil and then Muhammad Salah tied the game. So it's one one in the 94th minute. It was going to be the last kick of the game this corner kick.
So they brought up the goalie, Allison, a Brazilian guy who's a lovely person and also has had a horrible, horrible year. He lost his father in a terrible accident earlier, just a couple months ago. And he hasn't been able to go home to Brazil. So he hasn't been able to grieve with his family.
And it's just been very, very difficult. And so the other piece of background here that's important is that Liverpool have been a football club for like 130 years. And no goalies have ever scored for Liverpool in that 130 years. That's how much this whole like bring up the goalkeeper for the last kick of that.
That's how much it never works. Except that it did work. It did work. Allison scored not just a goal, but a really magnificent goal.
It was not it was not an accident. It was not like I was another body there. He's like, he's like eight inches taller than everybody else down there. It was like to me.
He's a big guy. He is and the head was just like text book. Oh, it was the goalie. The goalie for the other side just stood there was like, well, not getting that.
It went into the side netting. The Liverpool, I mean, I have never felt like that. I was watching last. Yeah, I was alone.
I was so discouraged. I was so frustrated that we weren't going to qualify for the Champions League and all that means for the club financially. And I was so mad. I'm mad about this whole European super league, which distracted the club at a critical time.
I was just mad. And now I've scored this goal. And I just I mean, I don't know that I will ever feel like that ever again. I don't even know what happened inside of my body.
It's like they found you collide on Europa. It was it was it was that it was just pure joy. So happy for Allison 94 and like in like 13 and 20 seconds. How long did the games last?
That's longer than they said it was going to last. I know I know it was Matt. It was pure pure pure magic. But let's talk about AFC Wimbledon Hank.
America's favorite third year English football team is once again going to be a third year English football team thanks to some absolute end of season heroics by manager Mark Robertson and the boys. Couple big big pieces of news. Number one 19 year old Wonder Kid, Ayuba Saul has has signed a new professional contract with Wimbledon that will take him through 2024, which is key because if he continues to get better at the current rate that he's getting better, there is no way he is going to play for us much longer. So I'm very grateful to him for signing that contract.
The other thing is that even though the league season is over, Wimbledon are still participating in this thing called the London Senior Cup. It's like the under 23 team kind of the younger kids are playing in this this this knockout cup competition. And we have reached the finals of that competition in the in the quarter finals. We beat, you cannot make this up a team called cock fosters.
Yeah. And in this, I'm sure that's a place in England because why wouldn't it be? And in the semi finals, we beat noted footballing powerhouse, Cray, Villy, Paper Mills football club. Now we move on to the finals.
This is the first chance Wimbledon has had to win any silverware and sometime this would be you know, like a proper trophy. It's not quite as good as like winning the Premier League, but it is something and I am very excited to see if we can pull out a win in the London Senior Cup. Okay. Good.
Is that how likely is that? You know, I mean, I think it's I think it's pretty likely like last year it was won by Heck Ham Town. I don't know. I feel like we could feel like we could beat the likes of the town.
They did it. You can do it. Yeah. This is the stuff I have to have to keep me going during the long silly season that is the off season.
So what's the news for Mars? They don't quit playing in the summer? No, they don't. Boy, I just spent the last the last while you were talking.
They're just watching Alison Becker score that goal over and over again. And it's amazing. It's so magical. I don't know who this other guy is.
He's collapses into tears. Oh, yeah. He's like right into the sky talking to his dad. I can tell he's talking to his dad and it's just did something else.
But yeah, he lifts his fingers up to the sky and he says in Portuguese, he says that's I mean, I can barely say it now. He said that's for you. Yeah. Is this other other Liverpool player like dives in and like comes right in front of Becker and has this tremendous leap and he's headed straight for the ball and he's like, yeah, and it just like doesn't even touch him.
Right over and then like just giant Alison Becker is just there with his head in the exact right spot. It worked. It worked. It feels so good.
I don't even care. It feels so good. It's just magical. Just magical.
Yeah, the guy who was running for it and like took that great leap was Nat Phillips, our hardworking central defender. But he really flew. He was flying and he did. He was doing everything right.
Whereas Alison was just like, I think I'm going to let the ball hit my head. And then I think the ball is going to go in the net. Oh god, bless sports. Well, there's also good news in Mars.
So there has so far as of a couple of weeks ago, only ever been one country has managed to land a rover on Mars. It's been the US. We've done a number of times. We've been it is a hard planet.
And as a species, we are getting better at this. And as of last week, as of now, there is now a second nation that has put a rover on Mars. It's the german rover that the Chinese National Space Administration has landed on Mars. It's been orbiting the planet for a while.
So Changman one is the orbiter that is still orbiting. And since February, it's been like taking pictures to make sure it's got a good spot for this thing to land. Went down landed safely. It is the mission is going as planned.
It looks good. You will if you look at sure on, you will think that's familiar because it looks very much like spirit and opportunity, which is sort of just a convergent evolution. Like if you want to think to fold up into a certain shape, you want to mast with scientific instruments on the top of it. You want six wheels that are sort of like having to pin a transmission.
And so like all that stuff sort of comes together to make a rover that looks similar and is a similar shape. The solar panels also kind of function similarly. So it's another opportunity to survey another area of Mars. It's a big planet.
So any opportunity, you know, it's not it's not the same sort of suite of instruments as perseferences, of course, which is like probably at least 10 times the mass of Xerong. But it's, you know, it's got another opportunity to learn about a different spot on Mars, get more beautiful high resolution pictures. And it will be working for at least 90 Martian days, which is basically the same as Earth Day a little bit longer. And it's got cameras and it's got some spectrometer specific, vis-à-vis equipment.
It's going to be studying the weather. It's going to be studying some rocks. And it will be working with its orbiter to send all that data back to Earth. And is China's first Mars landing and the first rover landing of any country except for the US.
It's basically the first successful landing from any country except the US. Russia had a land that landed successfully, but then broke within a day, which was a bummer. But no, that is a bummer. But it looks like we're figuring it out.
I'm very happy that there is another rover on Mars. Is this probably going to be the last one? Because I assume Mars and Earth are getting further apart. Right.
So like, yeah. So Johnwin arrived at the same time, basically, as Perseverance, because they're sort of a two-year window when you can launch. So this is the last of the spade of missions. But of course, like their missions continue.
And there will be news for both of these rivers as we go on. Yeah, that's really exciting. And it's great to have more people getting involved in space exploration and interplanetary travel. Am I correct in assuming that it will be another like year and a half before we can make the next round of these Earth to Mars missions?
Yeah. I think a year and a half will be the time when you will hear about a bunch more Mars missions launching. And we know what those are, but it's not like they plan them in less than two years. But so yeah, we are aware of which missions those will be, but they will not be launching.
I think that they'll be launching in 2022 or 23. I'm excited. I'm excited too. Those launch times are very exciting and busy.
And it's crazy that they sort of also all arrive at the same time. And they're like, hey, we're here. We're back, Mars. How's it going?
We're launching. We got close together again. So. Yeah, I love it.
Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at hankandjohnatgmail.com. We really appreciate your questions.
We're off to record our Patreon only podcast this week and stuff. I hope you like the Anthropocene Review book. Hey, if you buy the book, by the way, go to the Anthropocene Review.com, a website that I'm very glad now that I didn't buy because two Nerdfighters have made a wonderful website there. Their names are Jim and Rhett.
And they built a website that allows you to post where your book ended up. And also, if you take a picture of your signature, I can see your signature, which will make you really happy because I like to look at them and rank them in my mind. But it also allows you to not like the signature, but the one that you received from John. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, my signature that is now yours because that's how the transaction works.
But it also allows you to review the place where you are reading the book, like review the town or the state or the whatever community in which you are reading the book. And those have been so lovely to read. It's from it's really great. And I'm just so grateful to them for making that.
So if you have a chance to share where your book ended up and what it looks like, it would make me super happy the Emphicene Reviewed.com. John, this podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna-Mettish. It's produced by Rosie Anna Hosser-Hossen, Sheridan Gibson. Our communication score in here is Julia Bloom.
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