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 PBSEons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we've become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. And welcome to Dear Hank and John. What does I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank?
It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions. Give you advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, did you know that no matter how hard you try, you cannot put socks on a bear? Why is that?
You can make socks that are extra big, you can make them socks that are made for bare feet, but you can't get them on because no matter what, they always have bare feet. That got me. I don't know why. I love all of them.
I always have all that got me. You John, you don't have to always have bare feet. You can walk around the house in what we like to call awesome socks. And you can go sign up now.
We're finally launched at awesomesocks.club. Awesome socks.club. I'm wearing some awesome socks right now, Hank, and they are comfortable. Me too.
And 100% of the profits, not a portion, not some, 100% of the profits go to supporting stronger healthcare systems in impoverished communities. It's an incredible thing that Hank has built here. And you get great socks. You could see the whole idea is that you're going to have to buy socks.
Like everyone knows this. You will have to buy socks. And this way, you don't have to think about it that much. You get really good socks.
Each one is designed by a different independent artist. And also all the profit goes to charity, which I don't know if you know this, John. It's not the case with other socks. I believe it is literally the only sock company that uses this as their primary raison.
Yeah, there are some that give some money to charity. Yeah, which is maybe there are others that do 100%. But I don't know if that. Awesome socks.club.
100% of the proceeds go to charity. And you get awesome socks mailed to you every month. Awesome socks. It's only open for 10 days.
You got to hurt. I don't want to create a car sense of urgency, but there is a genuine sense of urgency. I'm not saying like pull over the car right now, stop doing the dishes, like put away the jigsaw puzzle. I am.
I am saying to do all of those things. Stop the clock. It's one time. Well, I mean, when you hear when we come next week, when we have another podcast, it will be close.
It will be close. It will be close. It will be close. It will be close.
It will be close. It will be close. It will be close. It will be close.
It will be close. It will be close. The only possible only awesome socks.club episode of the entire year. We won't mention this.
Well, unless we reopen the club at some point, but probably it's only going to be open for the next few days. So awesome socks.club. Go get the socks. I love.
I wouldn't be pushing these so hard because, frankly, this is Hank's idea. It makes my heart happy to see Hank succeed, but not as happy as it makes my heart to see myself succeed, but they are such good socks. And this is such a good project. It's incredible, really, what Hank and the folks at the DFTBA have achieved with this and all the artists who make wonderful socks for us every month.
So thank you to everybody involved. Awesome socks.club. That's the end of the promo. Hank.
Yes. I have two bits that I've been thinking about, but I don't know if we should use both of them or just one or neither. Well, I just have a sock thing. So you're good.
You can do whatever you want. All right. So first off, a listener wrote in to tell us that there is a restaurant. You'll recall, Hank, that we had a childhood fascination with a restaurant called Rax.
It was sort of an RV-like restaurant. A listener wrote in recently to inform me that there is a Rax restaurant in rural. Wait for it. Finland.
Wow. That was not where I thought this was going. It's in, I don't even know there was a rural Finland. In my understanding, just from looking at a map is that it's all rural Finland.
Okay. So this place, I don't actually know if it's rural, but it's in a place called Porvoo. And that is the correct finish pronunciation. Don't you worry your sweet little head about that one.
Porvoo. Porvoo. Finland. P-O-R-V-O-O.
like for you in French. Okay. Okay. Are you ready to hear me say it in French?
Porvoo? Oh God, your French is so bad. No, it's like this. I didn't know.
No, you got it. I mean, it doesn't, nothing you say matters to me right now. I'm doing it because I'm at the Rax website for the Finnish Rax. And I wish very much I had a Finnish accent, but I don't.
So I'm going to read it to you in a German accent. Great. At Rax Pizza Buffet. At Rax Pizza Buffet.
You feast on delicious food easily and effortlessly. Our pizza buffet includes tasty pizzas, fresh salads. This isn't German at all. No, it's not even, it's German.
It's rather, give it one more try. I need a third take. Okay. I'll do it if you won't.
No. At Rax Pizza Buffet, you feast on delicious food easily and effortlessly. Our buffet includes tasty pizzas, fresh salads. Well, there's no T-H's.
I can't do it until I get a T-H. I'm laughing both at the translation, which was clearly done by Google. And, yeah, and at your accent at the same time, they're both goal. It's not good enough.
It's not, it's not. Okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Okay.
I don't usually do the accents around here, but I'm feeling it today. You know how good I am at it. Yeah, I know. I like to, I like to leave it to the professionals like yourself.
Also, when I tried to say for you in French, I pronounced it poor vu despite having three years of high school French. Like the only thing that you could hear from my high school French is that I went to high school in Alabama and so I have a slight American Southern accent. So that's why I say like poor vu instead of poor vu or whatever regular American would say. Whatever it should be.
Yeah. But I'm certainly not saying it French. I am, however, about to read you the opening lines of the Rax dot Fi websites. So we're in what I think will be a magnificent, I don't have a Finnish accent.
I've never, I've never met a Finnish person, but this is a German accent. Okay. I'm excited. After Rax pizza buffet, you feast on delicious food easily and effortlessly.
Our buffet includes tasty pizzas, fresh salads, various options for warm dishes, as well as cold and hot drinks. Top off your meal without delicious Sunday ice cream. This is very, for this is French, I think. Yeah, no, it's friends, it's friends with different tastes and requirements can eat at the same table.
Our selection of different things and requirements can eat at the same table is the lowest wevel brag I've ever heard a restaurant make. Like if friends with different tastes and requirements are not able to eat at the same table, like you don't have a restaurant. Our selection includes dozens of tasty options. So such everyone can choose their own favorites.
Say goodbye to us. Say goodbye to longer with your favorites from our selection. Oh my God. I mean, I'm sure that mine was worse than yours, but God yours was bad.
Like yours was yours was so bad that I'm starting to think at some point, like, is it problematic? Like, is it okay? Should we cut it? Is it going to be hurtful to people?
Yeah, if to anyone than to everyone though, it's equally offensive. Oh goodness gracious, but the racks in Finland looks really good and it's close to the water. The racks in Finland looks amazing, at least from the pictures and I am desperate to visit. It also seems to be in a beautiful part of the country.
There seems to be a ton of them, John. No. Yes. There's more than one of them.
There's a ton of them. No, there is. There's many racks in Finland. Yes.
Hold on a sec. There's like three Justin Helsinki. No. Yeah, there's also one in Pippen Sancita.
I don't have to go to what did you just say? I was going to lebar of our art non-coup too. I don't even have to go to Porvoo to enjoy delicious racks. No.
I could just fly into the capital city of Helsinki and make a tour of the city by touring its racks. Mizzoua to Helsinki. Oh God, it looks beautiful. Just on the map.
And actually, there's a racks really, really close to the airport. I could if I wanted to. I don't think this is a good idea, but I could just fly in to the Helsinki airport, get some racks, get back on the airplane and then, you know, go somewhere warmer, like the south of France or something. Yeah, I can go to Helsinki for the cost of like front row seats to a Harry Styles concert.
Well, I mean, no, we can do a lot for that. I was going to say, I mean, you can also like buy a fairly nice car. I don't know how much it is. It's $550 for me to get to Helsinki.
There's also three days. There's a lot of water in Finland. Like, I don't know that I understood this is a very porous country. There's this water every which way you look.
It's a very porous country. Yeah, rather just set up. I stand by it. I stand by it.
John, I have checked and I can get in the pit, the watermelon pit in Oregon, five days from now, to see Harry Styles for a mere $2,159. I mean, you could fly to Finland four times. Hey, I'd like to tell you about the Northern most racks on Earth. Should I go to see Harry Styles in Oregon?
Yeah, absolutely. But we're focused right now on abandoning the longstanding format of this podcast where we answer listener questions and focusing entirely on how there came to be a series of racks restaurants, but only in Finland. Okay, so there is a town in Northern Finland, Hank. It has an airport, which is encouraging, and the town appears to be called Arktikum.
Okay, and they have a lot of your pronunciation of that. Well, what I've tried to do is I'm just trying to be wrong in lots of different ways instead of drawing to be right. That's my current strategy. Okay, the Northern most racks on Earth is an Arktikum.
Now that I'm looking, I think Arktikum might just be the name of the museum. Yeah, I think that might be the finished word for museum. I don't know what this place is called, but there's a racks the average rating of the Northern most racks of the world. It has 446 ratings on Google.
The average rating is 3.7, which I think is pretty good, you know. Can I read you a couple reviews? Sure, hit me, John. It's right in the middle of town.
It looks like a lovely place. Yeah, so Artem writes, not delicious. Seems like the food they hear for a long time. Broken ice cream machine screwed my plans.
Oh, wait, no, it's better. It's better. I'm sorry, I misread. It says broken ice cream machine screwed my pants.
I thought it could happen only in comedies, but no, what? It's good. Your pants? I mean, how broken was that ice cream machine?
And also, like, were you standing on a table? Like, I'm questioning whether it was the ice cream machine's fault at this point. I'm inclined to blame Artem for that mishap. Yeah.
I've also got a nice, Ian writes, this is a perfect place for families. Food is good quality, and the choice is excellent. Kids can help themselves in buffet and ice cream afterwards. Let me see if I can.
I wouldn't. I'd be careful. I'd be careful having your kids. I hear it can screw some pants.
I think the town is called Rovaniemi. Oh, God, that sounds challenging. They have an Arctic light as well, which is a place where you can sleep. Oh, so you could, so I'll have a hotel room.
It's hip lodging. I have to do with nature themed rooms. That sounds great. Let's go.
I think most people probably go there for the Northern Lights, but we will be going for the rags. Oh, that's what the Arctic light is. Yeah. Everybody else goes up there for the Northern Lights.
It's a great place. But for us, it's all about the racks. I also let the idea of checking into the hotel after we have our first meal at Rags and checking the hotel in there. Like, would you like to be woken up at three o'clock in the morning for the Northern Lights?
And we'll be like, absolutely not. I'd like to be woken up at 10 o'clock in the morning. When Rags open. When Rags open.
I want them to ruin my pants. I came here to gamble at this field at the field Vegas run, Rovaniemi and get my pants ruined in a rags. And I've already played casino war, so it's time to move on. Okay.
All right. Okay. I'm going to put I got to put a good on this, John. You want to answer some questions from our listeners?
I do, but I have another bit. Oh, God. I'm sorry. Well, you can't say because you're not going to be here next.
I can't say that I'm not going to be here for a whole month. Can I tell you my other bit? So I was I was reading Goodreads Reviews of the Anthropocene Reviewed book, which I know I shouldn't do, but you know, I can't. Sure, sure, sure.
I mean, I do a lot of things on the internet. I shouldn't do like tweet. Anyway, there's this wonderful five star review of the Anthropocene Reviewed book that I read Sarah and I read it to her. And I felt like she laughed a little too hard.
So I wanted to read it to you. And I wanted to kind of see what level of laugh you bring to it. Okay. I think I love John Green.
That's nice. I've always loved his white novels and enjoyed the vlogs he did with his brother Hank, situating that in the past tense is a little bit of a bummer, but I'm good with it. I admired the way he presented calm analysis of politics and foreign affairs among the host of other things that must have helped many young fans. But this collection just made me want to hug him.
He comes across as so nice and well meaning. And I love and respect the painfully honest way he represents his own struggles. I bet he's terribly difficult to live with. Wouldn't want to be that guy's brother.
Gotta say. I also felt like you laughed a little too hard. I was thought of maybe more of a little chuckle, maybe more of a haha than like a full blown advice. I'm not agreeing.
I'm just saying that's that's quite a thing. I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's very precious. Sarah was agreeing.
Sarah's last year was like he is terribly difficult to live with a lot of other things. But there's some downsides. But so is everyone in their own ways. It's true.
Nobody is terribly easy to live with. Yeah. Certainly not me. Awesome socks dot club.
Let's answer some questions for our listeners. Have you gone yet? Have you gone and signed up? Look, I can guarantee you one thing.
When this episode goes live, I'm going to be at the back end of the awesome socks dot club website looking to see if you are signing up in real time. I'm going to be staring at that. And when you sign up, you can leave a little note and I'm going to be reading those little notes. So you want to say something to me that's where you could now's the time.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I will be doing the same thing. And I'm a little nervous. I'm very excited.
Like it's just a day. It's such a it's become such a big deal. It's a huge deal for being able to fund the maternal and child care work that we're trying to support. So yeah, it makes a big difference.
I will also be on the back end, but I'll mostly be trying to figure out like did this person come from Dear Hank and John or did they come from Hank's frickin TikTok? Yeah, well, it will be very difficult to tell. I know, but I will try anyway because there's nothing my brain loves more than jumping to conclusions based on limited information. Well, if you sign up, at least leave us a little note that says I came from the from Dear Hank and John.
I think you should just leave a note that just says racks. Yeah, wait, I'm going to do a little bit of translation here. I want to ruin my pants. That's a halwan pilata hoi su ni in Finnish.
So that's the only words that you need to know when you're walking to a rack. I've got two euros and urgent need to ruin these pants. Where's your ice cream machine? I feel like a real dummy right now, John.
Where's your ice cream? I want to go. I want to go so bad. I know that I can't commit to a bit.
I know that's always been my great weakness as a person. I really want to commit to this bit. I know that we don't have three spare days to fly to Finland to go to a racks and not see the northern lights, but I really want to. John, this first question, this first question comes from Tim who asks Dear Hank and John, who decided that pen colors are what what pen colors would be professional?
Yes. Yeah. Fantastic question. Black.
I get it. Black. Sure. Black is it's the color of all ink.
This is the newspaper color, but then blue is blue is professional, but anything else is like, no. Yeah. So I actually I actually think that black is the worst because black the worst. It's the one where it's hardest to tell by scanning a page that it's been signed.
And it's the one where it's easiest to fake by photocopying. So so I don't understand why black ink somehow just became the de facto. This is definitely a real signature ink when it should be like blue or red or green. But the truth is I look, I researched this thing.
So for a long time, the concern with red and green ink was that they didn't photocopy as well. And so maybe sometimes if it was a bad photocopy, you couldn't tell that the signature was a real signature or that it had been signed or it was faint or whatever, whatever. First off, we're talking about photocopies. Right.
Like that's not a good argument. Can we be done? There are so there are so many different things where I'm like, why are we still doing that? Yeah.
Yeah. Drinking milk that came from a cow. Why are we like, we got Oh, milk now. Why are we doing that?
Using gasoline powered cars every time I see one, including the times when I get into my own, I'm like, it's the year 2021. Why are we using any color of ink that is not fun? Also, why are we still doing that? Yeah, no, we should only use fun ink.
We should all be reds and greens and purples and legal documents should be signed with curly cues and smiley faces and heartily gel pen. There is no reason not to. And we need to free ourselves from the shackles of this way of thinking. That is the end of the answer.
Also, we need to get rid of our front lawns, which exist for a very similar reason as black and blue pens. There was also a study done that if students disagreed with their teacher, they seem to think the teachers were being more negative if they wrote in red ink. So red ink actually, like psychologically affects people. So sparkly purple gel pen teachers.
Yeah, be welcoming. Yeah. And then you write in the margins of the paper, I hated every second of reading this. And people are like, Oh, that's so sweet.
Yeah, but put a little heart over the eye in this. It would be very hard to be a teacher and read paper after paper after paper and try to like find ongoing constructive things to say about each of them. Yeah, I feel like that would be challenging. The first things were made from charcoal and soot, which is why black was the standard.
I totally understand why it was standard. I don't know. Like blue came around. No, well, blue, the idea was that blue also photocopies relatively well, or at least did back in the day, but this is all the relevant now.
We should use whatever color ink we want. All ink colors should be treated as wonderful instruments for markmaking. Every time, yeah, like what Mark's parents, every time a, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know if I can go on with the podcast. I was having a lovely time.
And then you had to go and say that. This next question comes from Ryan who writes, whenever somebody, Ryan, submits a question, even all these years later, Rosiana has to write inferenities seems real. This is thanks to Ryan who writes here, John and Hank, do you have any advice for stage fright? You two seem to be pretty put together whenever being in front of a group of people.
Sorry, Ryan is real hard for me to read that sentence. Speech is performances, auditions and other events have always been terrifying to me and I can't seem to get over it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I get stage fright and often spend like the hour before we go on stage feeling very anxious and sometimes throwing up and other times just getting panicky and it can be very challenging for me.
So I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer this question. It has gotten easier for me over the years. Like a lot of things. I mean, the basic thing that I did was a form of exposure therapy, which I worked on with my therapist.
And if you feel like it's going to be enough of a part of your life, Ryan, where it's going to be an ongoing problem for you, I really recommend doing some kind of therapy with a, you know, somebody who has a lot of experience with that particular kind of problem because for me, it really, really helped. But I still get really nervous before I go on stage. I just have better tools for dealing with it now. And like, if I throw up, I don't freak out and think like, Oh God, I'm going to bar on stage.
And if I do have to throw up on stage, I'll just try to leave the stage before I throw up. Like that's what I always tell myself. So yeah, it's not easy for me. And it's not something that I'm natural at, but I have gotten to a place after all these years where I'm able to enjoy it, which is also to say that I miss it.
Did you say Ryan's name, specific sign off? No, I did not. What is it? It is a Ryan.
To Ryan. That's really good. That is really good. Ryan.
Really good. Ah, pretty good. I find so I'm like, I like going on stage, but I still like, I hate waiting to go on stage. Yeah, even after like the eighth night, you know, like the first night's always the hardest and second so literally is only on tour and you're doing it every day.
But it like never gets to the point where it's not scary. And like the whole the worst for me is is hosting. So like, I have done several times gigs where like my job is to MC and so I go out and I talk and for like, you know, 30 seconds and introduce the next person and like, like, like, you know, try and keep people's energy level up and make a joke. And the that like you're always about to go on stage and never on stage.
Mm hmm. So like finding things to distract myself with trying like just trying to talk to other people or listen to music so that I'm not constantly just sort of like in my body's rebellion, which is what it feels like is good. But like, yeah, I mean, I've never gotten over that and people are always like, so is this you still you don't get stage fright anymore, right? And I'm like, ah, no, I definitely do.
And the fact that there are some people who don't is like a foreign thought to me. I cannot understand. Yeah, I mean, I know people who don't and I think it's great and I think it's awesome. But I always have, I mean, I, you know, Hank and I've both built up structures over the years, I think to make it easier.
So like, it's easy to make fun of me for this. But the first thing that I do when I get to a new space, like when we're going to be performing or if it's space I don't know well, I ask where the nearest bathroom to the stages because I need to know that because I throw up a lot. So like, I want to know where that is. And I also like sometimes I go into the bathroom to like gather myself because I'm feeling panicky and I just don't want to be around people.
And so I need to know like where is there a door that locks? And then I also ask a few questions to try to understand the layout of it so that I can start to imagine it in my head because part of what I do to keep myself calm is I imagine how it's going to go. And I tell myself that it's that it's going to be okay. I will say I have had a few more notifications on stage that have made the stage fright worse, not better.
And I like you, Hank, those times when we like emcee Vidcon, when we would have to go and talk for 30 seconds between each featured speaker for like six hours, that was very challenging. And honestly, of all the times that we've performed together, it was also the most stressful and it was the time when we kept away from each other the most. Like we come off stage and we go into different regions. We don't need to chat.
We don't need to like work each other up. And like being okay with that and being good with that and knowing that that doesn't mean your brother doesn't love you is an important part too of making making room for it. I think. Yeah, yeah, well, I think just like being on especially doing anything serious before I'm going on stage is very bad because I'm not an if I strike on make up decisions.
Yeah, no, yeah, I don't know. We really answered your question, Ryan, but maybe it's a little bit of solidarity. Yeah, this next question comes from Megan who writes here, John and Hank, if you drop something down a hole that was drilled completely through the earth, where would it go? Thanks.
Just a flesh straw wondering about Earth's straws, maybe it's true. We're just less strong. It's true. Well, I was from one whole together and then all the flesh gets built up around it.
So if we were so if we're just talking like just pure thought experiment, yeah, you know, it would it would I think because of the way that the earth spins, it would hit the side of the hole. But absent that, if it's a very strong thing that continues going down, even though it's going to hit the side, you're not going to get it dropping straight down because the earth is spinning. You it would it would it would it would normalize in the center of the earth. Yeah, it would just end up in the middle, right?
Now it's very hot down there. And so it would probably vaporize. But if we're neutralizing the temperature somehow, yeah, it would go down and then it would go a long way the other way and then it would come back and then it would sort of yo-yo back and forth until finally centering in the middle of the planet. I enjoyed the thought experiment of this because I enjoyed thinking that it was almost like a pendulum, but just going up and down up and down up and down up and down until eventually it gets to the place in the middle where their gravity is kind of pushing and pulling on it in such a way in the direction.
Yeah, it's just being held there. And if you really got it in the very in the very middle, it would it could just hover there in the middle. It would be being pulled on in all sides. Now the earth is not uniform.
So locating exactly where that point is and also that point would move over time. But still, the thought experiment is there. It is possible to make a ball hover in the center of a gravitational object. Neat.
That is cool. I mean, I don't think we can do it. We can't. We can't.
We can barely scrape the surface of this planet, John. I know. A lot down there. We think that we're such a big deal, man.
It's like how everybody in their little pond thinks that their pond is a big deal. You know, like you talk to people in the world of car sales and they want to talk to you, they think car sales are super important. Talk to people in the world of podcast. They're fascinated by podcast.
Want to talk all day about podcast? Earthlings. That's good. That's good.
I agree. I'm not criticizing. I'm just saying that earthlings are like, you know, like we think that earth is a big deal. Really?
Like we think about almost all of our thoughts are shaped by Earthness. Maybe all of them. Yeah. I think we actually have a question from Agnes that talks about how shaped we are by Earthness.
Agnes asks Dear Hank and John, how does your internal clock even work? Are you born with it hypothetically? Would someone born on Mars have a 24 hour clock? Or would it feel weird to live somewhere with longer or shorter days?
Would it all get messed up? I have so many questions. Agnes. Now we don't obviously don't know all the answers to these questions because no one's ever been born on Mars.
But when we have put like scientists have intentionally put people, sometimes people in space, sometimes people in, you know, sort of artificially lit situations in a situation where their day is 23.5 or 24.5 hours long. So not much longer. And they're getting the, you know, sort of daylight cycles. They get messed up.
Their melatonin levels get all weird. They're like their sleep cycles mess up. They can't sleep as well. We are very we are Earthlings and we are we are defined by the way that the cycles of this planet for sure.
And I don't know like when like Mars' day is a little bit longer than Earth's like not a lot. And but I still think that it would probably be a really long like kind of jet lag. And astronauts have to deal with this because they sometimes operate on like 23 and a half hour days and people who are on Earth working on Mars missions have to deal with it because they're sleeping during the Martian night, which can be very difficult. In fact, one of the people working on Curiosity had just had a baby right before Curiosity landage.
So it was on like baby time and Mars time at the same time. It sounds super miserable. But people making it happen out here. But yeah, we our bodies do not handle it well because we are Earthlings.
And so if we imagine a future where humans are basically the same, but we're able to travel to distant planets that have vastly different days, you know, orbiting vastly different stars or whatever, we will continue to have a 24 hour sleep cycle. Like we will continue to have that forever. You know, my guess is that after like years of living on Mars or especially if you're born on Mars, then probably your sleep cycle will adjust. But Mars is but that's very different from like a 30 hour day or a 35 hour day or like a 10 hour day.
And those situations you're not going to you are not going to be able to adapt as a human being and live on that daylight schedule. Yeah, which is wild. So we are, I mean, just to state the obvious, we are creatures of Earth, which we often forget about because we are very weird and we spend a lot of time inside buildings that we made that are fairly well insulated from what we consider Earth. But actually all the materials that the buildings are made out of are also from Earth.
Like this is what the whole end of the Anthropocene Review book is about is me having the revelation that it's all Earth. All the chemicals inside my brain making me feel the way that I feel, the love that I feel, the hope that I feel, the despair that I feel, the the the carrots that I just pulled out of the ground over the weekend with my mom, it's all Earth. It's all Earth John. Oh man.
All right, we have another question from Kayla who writes to John and Hank, if you call someone and they tell you that they are too busy and we'll call you back in five minutes, how long after five minutes am I required to wait by the phone? Kayla, I'm so glad that you asked because believe it or not, this is an issue that comes up for me all the time. But only when I'm calling one person, Hank Green. I made the mistake of calling a customer at work before my lunch hour and he said he would call me back in five minutes.
It's been 20 minutes and I haven't heard back from him, hungry and Kayla, foreign. Yeah. Oh no, that's very good. Well, I it's different when it's a customer than when it's your brother, right?
The other day I texted Hank and said, can you give me a call? And he said, is it good or bad? And I said, it's good. And he said, yes, I'll call you in five minutes.
And then he didn't call me. But if I had said it's bad, he would have called me in five minutes. And so I learned an important lesson, which is no matter what, always tell Hank that it's bad. I don't care.
I don't care about good news. He's like, hey, I don't need to know a good thing that happened. I'm too busy to feel happy. I only need to know what I should feel worried about.
Yeah. I mean, isn't that where a lot of us are though? Yeah, but if you're too, I mean, just to say the obvious, like, that's a call to do some internal work to get to a place where you're not too busy to be happy. But Kayla's issue is something else.
And I think, I know the exact answer to this question. Great. What is it? Can we say it at the same time?
How many minutes exactly you think you have to wait by the phone if you have a customer who told you they call you back and buy from it? Yes. Okay. Three, two, one, 12 minutes.
I mean, listen, if you're not going to be punctual, you're not going to be punctual, then you get the voice mail and you call them back and you're like, sorry, you said you'd call me back in five minutes, call came in six minutes later. It was my lunch break. Yeah. And you're just establishing some boundaries, like, call and five minutes.
I like that. I like that. I don't like that. I don't think it's not a bad answer, though.
Well, 12 minutes is like, you don't have to wait 15 minutes. Yeah. Well, whenever Hank and I are like on a conference call and the important person who's going to be joining the call has joined after 12 minutes, Hank and I are both like, that's it. That's it.
Forget that. They're not coming. They're not coming. Yeah.
And even if they are coming, I'm not going to be in the mood to like do it. Yeah. I'm not going to be in the mood conference call after this. So at 12 minutes, the person is seven minutes late.
Yeah. And at seven minutes late, it's okay to be like, oh, but like, I had a different thing that I had to do. It's especially if you're seven minutes late for a five-minute engagement, you can never be later to the engagement and the engagement will last. Yeah.
That's a great point, John. Yeah. But also why ever be late? Just don't be late.
Just don't be late. That sounds like a personal attack. Are you substituting me right now? No, I have learned that like my sort of worship of punctuality in the same way that any character asset can become a character defect if you know you carry it forward in the wrong way.
My worship of punctuality became a character defect and I've had to kind of walk it back and learn that different people respond to time differently and that like my way of looking at the world is in everyone's way and just kind of get better at that. Yeah, which is created not, you know, moments of a not insignificant argument among the brotherhood. I feel like that's been much better though in the last couple of years because we haven't needed to do things together because the main time it is created strife is when we're on tour. That's true.
No, I don't have to be awake right now. That's true. But even recently when it would have otherwise caused like today, for instance, you were late to the Patreon live stream over at patreon.com slash your handcon john and it was fine because I have changed my perspective on punctuality, which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by punctuality. It's a virtue, but not like a virtue that you have to worship.
This podcast is also brought to you by Mark Makers there how you make a mark? God, how marks get made? That's better if you're looking to turn this into a commercial product that I'm sure you are. I think it's how marks get made are better.
It's better. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by the Finnish racks the Finnish racks come ruin your pants. You won't believe our ice cream machine. It's a pants ruiner.
Really? And also this podcast is brought to you by purple sparkle gel pens. Purple sparkle gel pens. That's how you let your students know that they have not lived up to your expectations in style.
We also we also have a lovely project across a message Wayne and Arizona wanted us to read this message to Finley and Marin. We have a few words of advice for Finley and Marin. You should keep practicing your Mario Kart skills, but it will be years before you can compete with your dad. The only real chance you have is to wait at the back of the pack until the last lap and hope to get a lightning bolt or bill.
Good luck and don't give up. Comment. The truth is after three months into a pandemic they quickly surpassed my abilities and I'm reduced a mud slinging on the internet to lift my ego. That's great.
Thank you Wayne and also Finley and Marin for being part of the project for awesome. This episode of your 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.
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With new subscription only, wild supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. Alright, if you have another question from Samantha who writes deer, John and Hank Samantha here, should I write a plot twist in my book? I'm writing fanfiction.
I want to add one plot twist but I don't want the plot twist to distract from my characters and her new environment and I think the plot twist might mess it up. Always thinking and writing Samantha age nine. I think that having, having surprises can be really, can be really valuable as well but they can't, you were right and that they can't be something that your character wouldn't do. You have to know them well enough to not make a surprise happen just because you want a surprise instead because maybe you know a little bit more about the character than the reader does.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. Plot twists for them to work, they have to the moment after they happen. That's when the reader is like, oh, that makes sense. I hadn't thought of it that way.
The plot twist that don't work are the moment after they happen, the reader thinks like, oh, that's ridiculous. That's not a good, that plot twist doesn't make any sense because the author hasn't, the writer of the story hasn't built toward it. Yeah, and that's one of the wonderful things I learned in writing fiction for the first time is that plot twists are possible because it always seemed like such a magic trick when I was reading. But they are possible for the writer because when you are writing the story, you know more about the situation and characters and their world and their environment than anyone else.
And so you, as long as you're including that in all of the rest of the writing, then you can have a surprise that makes sense to your world. Yeah, so Samantha, there's this word that you may have heard called foreshadowing where a writer will hint at something that's about to happen, but hints at it in a way that only makes sense after it happens. Then once it happens, the reader is like, oh, I see how this was foreshadowed by this happening and that happening. My inclination, Samantha, when I am writing a story is always to have a huge plot twist that is very rarely like the right one.
Like I always want to write a story just like you want to write a story that has a big massive like, whoa, everything just changed moment. And then I always have to end up cutting them because they don't make any sense. Like recently, I've been working on a story that I'm working on with my wife, Sarah, and I woke up at three o'clock in the morning and I was like, I got it, I got, I've got an amazing plot twist. Sarah's like, what is it?
And she, I was like, she's a fictional character. She knows that she's a fictional character. And Sarah was like, okay, two things. First off, you've used versions of that plot twist many times before.
You were obsessed with this idea of fictional characters realizing that they're fictional characters. And also it doesn't make any sense for the story. And I was like, oh, God, they're all good arguments. Sometimes you just do it.
In general, Samantha, like, especially at your age, I would try to focus on writing that follows characters and environments and try to get to know those characters and environments and see how you can communicate knowing them through language. Because that for me is kind of the magic of reading and writing. What a wonderful little trick we all have to pull to have any of this work at all. Writing is such an illusion act, you know?
Amazing. It is. Reading is too. I mean, the reader has to do a lot of work to allow themselves to become immersed in a universe that they know on some level isn't real.
For sure. John, we got another question. It comes from Kay who asks, Dear Hank and John, but mostly Hank, if all humans were to collectively decide to stop wearing socks and shoes indefinitely, how long would it take for the species to evolve? Pop hats, like dogs, spring, constant.
Kay. I mean, potentially a really long time. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing.
We don't know that we need them. Yeah. We did. We before we had shoes and socks, we had feet like our feet.
Yeah. I mean, they got callist. They weren't exactly like our feet, but they were anatomically like our feet. Yeah.
And we did. Okay. Yeah. And like chimpanzees, their feet look, they don't they don't have big pop hats on them like a like dogs.
Right. They look a lot like human hands, just a different shape. Yeah. So I think it would take a good amount of time, but I've got some amazing news.
You don't have to have bare feet. You can have warm feet with socks designed by independent artists by going to awesome socks dot club. That's awesome socks dot club right now. Sorry.
I have to squeeze in one more. I don't have to worry about it. That's right. And and the socks are going to be a delightful little surprise that you can give to yourself or someone else.
And if you hadn't already do it, I'm literally sitting at my computer right now. But the backend of the website, like looking to see if you're telling me that you've ruined your pants and finish. I also, I also, I also just want to say for the record that they do genuinely make a great gift. I got subscriptions for several friends and also for a couple of kids in my life.
And they are a constant source of joy for my friends as well. So and you can cancel that at any time. Yeah. Free shipping everywhere.
And here's something that somebody a clever person did. They got the other subscription for themselves, but they also when they need a gift for someone, they just take that month's awesome sock and give it to their friends. Brilliant. Brilliant.
So smart. All right, Hank, it's time for the all important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. I'll go first because my news isn't great. AFC Wimbledon lost a football game.
Certainly not the first time that AFC Wimbledon has lost a football game, but it's starting to get to the point where we're looking over our shoulders a bit and saying, Oh gosh, all the bad teams in League One are not that bad this year. There is one properly bad team in League One this year, Crew Alexandra, they look like pretty likely candidates to go down. But then the other three bad teams, they're just not that bad. I'd like them to be a little bit worse.
We're down to 17th. What's behind it? I mean, injuries in central defense has really affected us because we were already having a little bit of a difficult time defensively and with our two of our three best central defenders injured for months, that is not great. And then the other thing is that we just haven't been scoring as many goals.
And I think some of that is because our tactics have been figured out. Some of that is because of injuries. And so it's just going to require a certain amount of flexibility. It's hard, though, because when you have really young players and Wimbledon is the youngest professional team in England right now, you also have players who don't have a ton of tactical experience.