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Friends have Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and Moore will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and our impactful educational media. It's the first ever Complexly in-person event and it's a fundraiser to support our mission of inspiring curiosity and lowering barriers to knowledge building because curiosity builds understanding and understanding builds a better world.
Tickets go on sale to the general public June 30th at somethingworthknowing.com. So come build a better world with us on September 16th and experience something worth knowing you can get your ticket at Complexly.info slash something. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! Oh, or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.
It's a comedy podcast about death where my brother and I, that's John and Hank Green, answer your questions, give you to be sudice and bring you all of the weeks news from both Mars, a planet, and AFC Wimbledon, a football team in the UK. Hello John? I'm here, you didn't ask me how I'm doing, usually you asked me how I'm doing and then I answer. How are you doing?
Terrible. Oh, no. Oh, you were ready. Unfortunately, as you could probably hear, I've just gotten home from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and while I was there, I caught just a terrible, terrible case of Afluenza.
Ah, yes. I imagine that that place is rife with this disease. I've never seen so much Afluenza in one place. Hank, it turns out that no matter how rich or powerful you are, you can still get the common cold.
So unfortunately, I'm horribly sick and also somewhat jet lagged. But I did, you know, I did have a lot of interesting conversations at the World Economic Forum and very grateful for the opportunity to have been there. I just wish that I had not come home with this horrific, horrific illness. I have a question for you, John.
An important question that I am looking forward to the answer to, while you were there, why did you choose to touch other people? That's a great question. So at the World Economic Forum, the, instead of like a currency of money, the currency seems to be business cards. And people just throw them at you.
And they throw them at you right after they themselves have touched them. And so no matter how much I avoided handshakes or bathed myself in Purell, I was stuck with these just toxic business cards covered in viruses and bacteria, as you well know, since we're half virus. Oh, Hank, I have great news. What?
What? Research has just come out indicating that the number of human cells in a human body is not one-tenth of the number of microbial cells, but in fact approximately equal to the number of microbial cells. So I am, I am half human. So so encouraging.
It's a lot better than you thought, John. I have to say, the most, the most fascinating thing about the story that I read was the line. I believe it was, it's close enough that a single defecation event can, can, can move the scale in the other direction. So you can be in mostly bacteria before you poop.
And then mostly human after you poop, to which front of my non-Facebook said that explains why I always feel more human after I poop. So I'm so distressed by this research. I was, frankly, I was better off when I thought that it was an approximation than when we knew these details. All right, John, I got another question for you.
How many business cards does it take at the Davos World Economic Forum to purchase a Teriyaki Satan sandwich? Well, as far as I could tell, there was no food for sale. You just had to show up at the right times and then you ate it quickly before, before everyone else got to it. But it was a really, no, it was a really interesting conference.
I did not print my own business cards because, you know, I've never had business cards. It's something of a point of pride for me. And so I, I had essentially no way of exchanging, exchanging myself or whatever approximation of myself a business card represents with anyone, which was a weird kind of powerlessness, but also weird kind of power where people would be like, he doesn't have cards. Wow.
Who, he must be real important. Just Google me. I'm John Green. He's either really high up the chain or he's so far down the chain.
He doesn't even know about business cards. It turns out it's the latter, but what can you do? I know that we've been talking for a long time and haven't gotten to any of the normal parts of the podcast, but I want to tell you the story of the one time I met a billionaire. Great.
Because I'm sure you met several this week, but I've met one. I was in the, in the Bloomberg building where Bloomberg, the publication is created with Emerson Electric. They were taking me around to talk to press about our thing that we do together. And, and they were like, and the people we were talking to was like, oh, Michael Bloomberg is here.
Do you want to say hi? And we were like, yes, that sounds awesome. And so, so we, we stood in a little circle with the people from this engineering company and me, and we went around the circle. They all introduced themselves.
And, and, and so it started and they like, they shook hands and then they talked about their business, but their market cap was how many employees they had, where their offices were. And then they got to me and I just like stuck my head out and I said, hi, I'm Hank. Nice to meet you. And Michael Bloomberg said to me, I think you may be the first man who has ever introduced himself to me with only his first name.
Women do that all the time, but never men. Well, so that was my interaction with Michael Bloomberg. It's very possible that you didn't just meet your first billionaire, Hank, but also the next president of the United States, at least if recent news reports are to be believed. This is a topic of hot conversation at the world economic forum.
Lots of people, of course, wanting Michael Bloomberg to run for president so that we can have a proper billionaire in office. Yeah, they're like, you know, who really knows how to fix things? People like me. Hey, so speaking of billionaires, just one more story before we get to the proper podcast.
While I was in, while I was in Davos, I met someone who was currently a billionaire, but who is a facetiously working to no longer be one, Melinda Gates. She and her husband Bill Gates co-founded the Gates Foundation, the largest nonprofit, I think, in the world right now. And I met her and we were talking, she's a genuine fan of our work, Hank. That was really cool.
And then Sarah came into the room, my wife, because I had to grab me and we had to go to someplace else. And Melinda Gates turned to my wife and said, you must be Sarah. Wow. And that was so impressive to me.
I was just, I was like, slack jawed. I was like, geez, I barely recognize you or your husband. I have the ability to remember about eight faces at any given time. Yeah.
So that was very impressive to me. She was in general, just crazy, smart and interesting to talk to and so committed and passionate and one of the highlights of the week for me. There was a lot of, frankly, there was a lot of like seeing the sausage being made and finding it a little unsettling. But both meeting her, meeting the CEO of Save the Children was amazing.
And then meeting the Under Secretary of the UN Refugee Agency was really amazing. All three of those women were tremendously inspiring to me and really, really exciting, almost as if yeah, so it was really, I don't know, that was the highlight for me. It was a weird week. Obviously, I got this illness, but it was those meetings were really interesting.
Should we move on to some questions? Oh, hey, one more thing I have to say. Oh, geez, wow, we're bad at this. You also have to do the poem.
Don't forget about the poem. So sorry. In our last episode, I said that the United States dollar is only currency in the United States. That was a terrible, horrible lie.
I apologize. There's Ecuador. There's the United States minor outline islands. There's the British Virgin Islands.
I'm sorry. It was obviously a disgraceful mistake. John was just too caught up in being angry at pennies to believe that anyone else would choose to use them. That's right.
All right. I did kind of want to call you on that as you said it, but you seem so sure that I was like, I must be wrong. I have a great gift for sounding like I am right, especially when I am wrong. I also, I have learned that from you.
Yeah, it's a terrible, it's like a terrible, terrible gift. I also forgot that generally here in the beginning of the podcast, I read you a short poem. Do that. I feel so crappy.
I was thinking recently, Hank, you know, we had two unexpected weeks of grieving David Bowie. And then in the interim, lots of other people died. I don't want to say that 2016 is the year of celebrity death, but I don't know. It seems like an unusual number of people are dying.
But then again, January is the number one month for death in the world. Anyway, Alan Rickman died. And of course, just earlier yesterday, as we're recording this, we heard about the death of the great character actor Abe Vagoda, who's 94 years old, lived a great, long, complicated, interesting life. Remind me of this poem by Robert Burns, the 18th century Scottish, very important to identify him as Scottish poet who was not English, and indeed was also not from England and was not English.
Okay. This poem is called Epitaph on a Friend by Robert Burns. An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man, the friend of truth, the friend of age, and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed.
If there's another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he's made the best of this. Epitaph on a Friend by Robert Burns. Lovely.
John, do you know that interestingly, January is the number one month for death? Apparently, I didn't know that, but you did. But February is the last month for death. It is also last place in the amount of beer drinking per month and last place in the amount of money spent per month because it has fewer days.
I was going to say that's the least interesting statistic possible. The shortest month is also the least deadly month. But yes, no, January, partly because it has 31 days, but partly because there just seems to be something about winter that kills us. January is indeed the deadliest month.
Also, there's some thought that people really like to get through the holidays at the end of their lives. Anyway, let's move on to away from the darkness, toward the questions from our beautiful listeners. There's also, I think, a there may be a tax advantage to having people die in January rather than in December. And so occasionally, like occasionally doctors who see their patients die on the last day of December will just say that they died on January 1st because it's just like it's a good thing for the taxes of the family of the person.
So that is an interesting thing as well. Oh, God bless our tax policy. Can we move on to the questions from the listeners? Yes, we can.
I think we had enough weird talk about death in months. But it wouldn't be dear Hank and John without a little bit of talk about death and months. We have a question. This one is from Louisa who asks, dear Hank and John, a common question when meeting new people, both on the internet and in the meat space, is where are you from?
I find this a deceptively difficult question. What are they asking me? Where I was born? Where did I grow up?
Where did I live? Where did I just move from? For me? And a lot of people, I think, these are all different places.
I also don't know how specific I'm supposed to be. Do they want my address or the planet I'm from? What are these people asking? And why must they give me such an emotional crisis when I'm only just meeting them?
Yes, I love your podcast. It's actually kind of funny. Thanks, Louisa. That's very generous.
I apologize for my earlier influenza joke. Yeah, so I think what people are trying to do is put you in a category that makes sense to them. But they're also looking for a topic of conversation. I might have said this before on the podcast, but my Italian friend Enrico is enraged by nothing in the world more than when people ask him if he's from Italy because he has a very thick Italian accent.
And as he says in his thick Italian accent, I wanted to recreate it. Of course I'm from Italy. Why do you think I sound like this? And then when you ask him where he's from in Italy, he says, I'm from Rome.
I bet you went there in college. So I think it's a mix of people trying to find a topic of conversation and also trying to put you in a certain category that will be helpful to them for the rest of the conversation. But of course, it's infuriating to you because this is not the first time that you've been asked if you're from Italy or indeed if you're from Rome or listen to someone's stories about being in college in Rome. Yeah, I think that's accurate.
And it's just a kind of way of asking about a person and asking about their background and a little bit more. People ask me and I live in Montana and I say that I'm from Florida. For me, I lived in Florida until I was through my entire youngness. And I think that's true of the majority of people.
So I think a lot of people are looking for that thing. And they think that because they lived in one place, because the majority of people have that everyone else is going to be like that. But of course, then you have to say something like, oh, I moved around a lot. And then it becomes a much longer conversation.
I kind of want to tell you, and I kind of don't want to tell you my surrogate question for this question. And the reason I don't want to tell you is because I like it and I don't be able to steal it from me. Well, tell me anyway, what is it? I guess it's too late now.
I ask people what their favorite bridge is. That's a terrible, terrible intro question. Well, it's not like the first question I ask. It's not like you walked in something and you're like, where are you from?
But once like the conversation, my name's Hi, Hi, I'm Aaron Bloomberg. My name's Hank. What's your favorite bridge? Michael Bloomberg's like, you know, this is weird, Hank, but nobody's ever introduced themselves to me that way.
Only women. Only women ever say that. Oh, man, I liked Michael Bloomberg feels so confident about putting people into just the two buckets. And I like that you at least complicated that a little bit for him.
Well, when I said to him after he said that I was like, well, I'm not expecting you to remember who I am. Yeah, no joke. He's not Melinda Gates or anything. You know, like, I'm sure you I'm sure this happens to you like eight times a day and has for the last 20 years, like, why would you anyway?
Yeah, so I but but it once into the conversation, if I want to know a little bit more about a person, I ask them what their favorite bridge is. And I think that that tells me more about them than where they're from. And oftentimes the bridge is in the place where they are from, because you know, sometimes you don't live in a place with lots of bridges. But I think a lot of people do.
And so they tell me about a place that means something to them. Hey, what is your favorite bridge? You know, that now that I've asked the question enough, it's become kind of a complicated answer for me. But I think it's the California Street Bridge in Missoula, which is a pedestrian bridge.
It's really not it's like very far away from any main roads. It's kind of a it can be a little bit of a skeezy part of town. And I have a friend there almost get mugged and buy like children, like tried to mug him and he just kicks them and biked away. But it's it's got lots of like stupid, like high school or graffiti.
And it's really pretty and you can just stand there and look at the river and it's nice. All right, that's an acceptable answer. Let's move on to another question, having established Tank's Favorite Bridge, because that's really what you've got a deer hankin' John for. This question's from Allison who writes, Dear John and Hank, on drinking cereal milk, I think it's very important not to be wasteful.
I don't like cereal without milk, but I also hate the taste of the milk after my cereal has been in it. I was just wondering, how do I reconcile these two things? Well, I won love the taste of my milk after it's had cereal in it. It's far better than the taste of just milk.
So I have never had this problem. I'm just like, I want I want as much of that at the bottom of the bowl as possible. But for you, I've no suggestions. My suggestion would actually be to go ahead and send your cereal milk to Hank, because he's extremely enthusiastic about it, Allison.
He lives in Missoula, and in my experience, if you just write a letter, or I guess it wouldn't be a letter, it would be a sealed package, if you just put it in a Ziploc bag there, put it in a box and just write a Hank. Missoula. Maybe in parentheses, Favorite Bridge is the one in Missoula, the pedestrian one, and beneath that Missoula, Montana, and a zip code in Missoula, it'll get to Hank. Yeah, no, no, I think it just write Hank Missoula and it'll find its way to me.
But I would suggest actually that you just put it in the Ziploc and then write on the Ziploc, Hank Missoula, and then just put it in your mailbox. No, you're gonna have to put some stamps on there. Listen, the United States Postal Service doesn't work for free. No, no, it's all about saving milk, John.
They understand that when it's about efficiency, they can go the extra mile. No, I feel like the carbon footprint of that milk would be much higher than just throwing away the milk, actually. Allison, the right thing to do in this situation is to throw away the milk. I think probably John is correct, or find a friend.
I really enjoy cereal. That friend come over to your house and drink your cereal milk, which is so much more intimate than anything that you can do. Horrifyingly intimate thing. I wouldn't even drink the cereal milk of my children.
Hank, can I make a terrible confession to you that you already know about? Sure, yes. So I do not like milk in my cereal. And one day, I would say maybe three or four years into our marriage, I had a bowl of raisin bran, and I did what I always do, which is I went over to the refrigerator and I stuck the bowl of raisin bran up against the water thing, so that water would come out and then it would water my raisin bran, which is I like to eat my raisin bran.
What? I do not know this about you. That is disgusting. And my wife, I mean, we were married.
We didn't have children yet, so she still could have gotten out of it. My wife, I mean, she's never looked at me before like that with just pure disgust. And I have to say, I think that eating your cereal with water is the best way to eat it. You don't add calories, you don't unnecessarily use an animal product, and you get all the sogginess and crunchiness of a good wet cereal.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, John. Oh my god. It's delicious. You should try it.
You don't know, you've never tried it. It's great. I haven't. It just seems, it seems inhuman.
It seems, it seems not of this world. If you told me a space alien put water on their cereal, I would be like, okay, I guess. But a human being on the planet earth. Oh my god.
I'll try it. I'll try it tonight. When I have my 11 o'clock bowl of frosted mini-weets, I'll put some water on there and waste some frosted mini-weets for you. Just make them awful and destroy it.
Let me know how it tastes on the next episode of Dear Hank and John. In the meantime, I think that we have adequately plumbed the depths of Allison's question and it is time to answer a new one. All right, this question is from Logan who asks Dear Hank and John, so I was going to eat a banana for breakfast. But I noticed that it is neither hexagonical or hexagonal.
There are only four sides to this quote unquote banana. Should I trust it? Should I eat it? No, no, I mean, no, you cannot eat a banana with less than five sides.
Five sided bananas are okay. Six sided bananas are okay. Four, I would even argue that a three sided banana is okay, because there's probably three tiny little sides that you're not noticing. A four sided banana is cause for concern.
No, yeah, I mean a square banana. Did they make it? It could also be rectangular, but it's still upset. Or trapezoidal or, you know, a number of different shapes.
But I want to know, like, do you live in a place where they like make square watermelons because it's more pleasing? Like they do, they do that in some places. Yeah. Or they're like, they're like, buying the maybe you live in a place where they bind bananas to be square because there's a cultural interest in squareness or hexa or like a trapezoidalness.
I think a parallelogram banana would be pretty interesting looking. Is it a parallelogram banana? Because I actually might eat that. That sounds kind of delicious to me.
So I hear an agreement on this one. You cannot eat a square or rectangular banana. If it's a parallelogram, I think more research is needed into the question. Yeah, I would like to see a picture of this banana because I'm curious if it's, if it's rounded foresides, I'm sure it is somewhat rounded.
And so maybe there are sides hiding in there. But I want to see a picture. If you Logan still have that banana, tweet us, Hank Green and John Green on Twitter. And we will, we want to take a look at this thing because I kind of don't even believe it exists.
It seems... Yeah, I think you might, I think you might be missing a side. Although at this point, it's very possible that the banana will no longer be ripe enough to establish a side-ness. But if you ever see a foresided banana, just send it our way.
Right, yes. I mean, the question for Logan is how familiar are you with counting? Are you new to counting? That's like, I should have been our first question.
But if you're, if you're an experienced counter, then I want to see a picture of this banana. Yeah, that's a great point, Hank. All right, we have another question. This one comes from Matt who writes, Dear John and Hank, I recently got into competitive Pokémon.
Congratulations, Matt. It's so exciting. I couldn't be. Oh, wait.
I forgot. He said, no, I didn't. I did recently get married. That's also exciting.
It's not as cool as getting into competitive Pokémon, though. Let me submit that these things are not mutually exclusive, Matt. It's not too late to get into competitive Pokémon. Anyway, I had the pleasure of marrying my husband in my home state of Oklahoma, something I thought might never happen in my lifetime because I am gay.
I was wondering what is something that has happened in your lifetime that you never imagined could or would happen? I mean, just the legalization of gay marriage in America, I don't know if I never thought that that could or would happen, but it happened so fast that I remember thinking at one moment, like, wow, it's really ridiculous that that hasn't happened. But that was only a year after thinking this is an intractable problem that we're not going to solve very quickly. But then we solved it very quickly.
Well, I mean, we didn't solve it that quickly, to be fair. From the moment when I thought that we could not do it, and then the moment when we did do it was very close to that moment. Yeah, it was, it's interesting because there were all of those, you know, over decades, really, votes, usually in non-presidential election years to bring out a conservative base. There were all those votes to insert into state party state, to insert into state constitutions that, you know, marriage was only between one man and one woman and all of that stuff.
And then it did fall apart quickly. And of course, all of those state constitutions, many of which also contain lots of other discriminatory language, were rendered irrelevant by the US Supreme Court. I mean, certainly, if you told me in high school that, I mean, I was really in the first, in my high school, you know, there were two kids in our class, we had a class of 53 kids who came out as gay during high school, and they were the first kids, I think, in the history of the school to come out. And it seemed extremely brave and scary to me that they were doing that.
Like, it seemed like something that I could never do. And I do think the landscape of that has changed tremendously and way more than I ever would have thought possible in 1994, 1995. That said, when I look at what, I mean, we grew up in, when Hank and I were kids in the 1980s, there were all of these famines, especially in East Africa, millions of people died, and there was live aid concerts and all of these attempts to raise money to address the famine. And it wasn't done very effectively or efficiently.
And to see rates, I don't think I could have predicted then that rates of malnutrition, that rates of infant mortality, that the number of people who die because of lack of access to nutrition would be so dramatically lower in just 25 years. I think like, maybe I didn't internalize it because I didn't understand the scope of the problem, but the problem seemed natural. It seemed to me as a child, natural that some people were hungry and others were fed. And it no longer, I think one thing that's changed is that at least for me, it no longer seems natural.
And that seems like a big, big change in my lifetime. But I also would definitely cite LGBT rights as it, like just a tremendous change that I didn't see coming. There's also a number of like cultural ones that I just, I've just astounded by the things that catch on. And you know, that one of the top songs of the last 10 years is Gondam style.
Like, that's not the thing that like for the former existence of the world would have allowed. And the fact that like Kim and Kanye got married, I would never have expected that. That is just- That didn't come as a huge surprise to me. I think Kanye and Kim are both geniuses actually.
Well, I- Underappreciated geniuses of a very new kind. And of course they were going to come together. It's like, it's like, you know, stars and space that form double super no-fi. I don't know anything about astronomy.
Yeah, the other one that I would cite is I don't think that 20 years ago, I would have had any way of knowing or internalizing the extent to which the internet would be part of my life. The internet was a thing when I was a teenager and when Hank was a kid, the internet was a thing that a very small number of people made a very active choice to be on. And now there is no such thing as an internet person really anymore. There are just, you know, the people who have access to the internet and the people who don't.
And I could never have anticipated like, or I would have bought six shares of Yahoo! stock. Yeah, yeah, we're like the domain name cars.com. Oh, we could have killed it with cars.com.
Hank, back when our website was called like, crs.org slash i-a-g slash 1774256 slash a. Yeah, dot html. Okay. All right.
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It's from a Delaney who asks deer, John and Hank, why do you smell become normal? For example, my boyfriend's mother smokes in their house and when I would go over to their house, I would smoke like anyone would but recently I don't smell the smoke. She's still smokes in the house. Why don't I notice it?
Because your body is really good at ignoring things. You can't have too many things like too many senses happening all at once and so your body has to figure out which one of those things are important and if you have constant stimulus then you will basically lose the ability to feel that thing. Like I cannot feel my glasses on my face. I also like basically unless I try and pay attention, I do not see them.
I can always see them. They're always there but I do not have any idea that they're there unless I look for them. This is also true. Like if you chew, this is a gross example.
If you chew mint gum, you will chew mint gum and then it will stop tasting like mint to you. But if you give that mint gum to someone else, it will still taste like mint to them. We think that all the flavor is going away but in fact the flavor is still there. We're just adapting to it.
This is called sensory adaptation or neural adaptation and there's lots of different versions of it, lots of different experiences of it and smell is nearly adaptive which is why mint is the same thing. You don't taste mint to you smell it. Yeah, there's lots of research on how this works and how your nervous system adapts to things so that if it's like, I don't need that sensation anymore. And if I put my wallet in my left pocket, I'm like, there's a giant thing in my pocket but if it's my right pocket where it always is, I have no ideas there.
That's weird. My wallet is always in my left pocket. Really? That's weird.
That's weird. That's almost as weird as you drinking Alice in cereal milk or asking people what their favorite bridge is. Today's been an episode of Dear Hank and John where we both reveal our deep eccentricities. All right, this one is from Nicole who asks, Dear Hank and John, I just had a horrifying realization.
Everyone everywhere has been lied to. Is that foil that you wrap food and other things with made of tin or aluminum? It's called both tin foil and aluminum foil as follows I know, but tin and aluminum are very different and it can't be both. I am extremely buffuddled.
Please help. I can help. I can help because I googled it. Tin foil used to be a thing.
I see. However, now since World War II, it has almost always been aluminum foil because aluminum or aluminum if we are British or probably Scottish. Not sure. I'm so scared now.
Ever since Robert Burns, I was so scared of accidentally calling him English. Anyway, aluminum foil or aluminum foil because it's both cheaper and more durable sort of rose in popularity in World War II. But the word tin foil just kind of like hung around because they look about the same. So that is your answer.
That's the rare question that I actually have a definitive answer to. Look at you. And now I'm going to ask one that I don't have a definitive answer to. All right.
This question came in from Naomi with the subject line. This question will leave you speechless. Dear John and Hank, what's the deal with clickbait? Why did we fall for it?
And should we be protecting ourselves from this contagious social media epidemic? Oh my goodness. Well, the question is, do we fall for it or is it designed to make us fall for it? Because of course, that's like, we fall for it because it's designed to trick our brains.
It's not. Yeah. I mean, like the number one thing is you in the internet world, the currency is the click, the share, you have to get people to look at your stuff in a world of infinite content that's very difficult. And so you have to create really good, sticky, attractive headlines.
And that has become more and more important in the world of online media to the point where I think event like we are having a rebellion to it. And eventually, I'm really interested to see like sort of long term what happens with the idea of the headline and also with the idea of content with it being so much created so fast that of course it's impossible to consume all of the content that exists. And in fact, it's almost as if there's more content than there is people to consume it. So, but like as far as why we fall for it, it's because you know, we want to know, we want to know why that adorable thing is the most adorable thing.
Like you read the headline and you're like, yes, that is what I want to know. And in fact, I often now find myself saying like the headline will be a question and I will want to know the answer to that question and I legitimately do want to know the answer to that question. And then there will be an article and in that article, there's one sentence that is the answer to the question. And I have to find that sentence and it's very frustrating.
And then I find the sentence and I'm like, okay, now I know the answer and then I move on. Yeah, it creates an itch that needs to be scratched. I actually wrote a blog post with no, no headline for the World Economic Forum. And they gave it a headline.
And it was such a good headline in terms of its stickiness that I myself clicked on the headline to find my own answer to the question asked in the headline, which was why the word millennial makes me cringe. And I was like, why does the word millennial make me cringe? And then I remember while reading the article. So yeah, I mean, I think it's I think it's this very powerful thing.
I also think that ultimately I'm not sure it leads to deeper comprehension. But I just wanted to jump on one thing that you said that I thought was really interesting, which is that we live in a world of infinite content and feels like there isn't enough, there aren't enough people to consume all the content that's being made. I was in a one of the most interesting meetings that I was in at the World Economic Forum was about the future of the internet. And people who live outside of the rich world where the lingua franca is English, or Spanish or Portuguese or German, like one of the sort of big rich world languages, were actually saying in this meeting that there isn't nearly enough good content and that there isn't that that that nothing is being translated.
And when it is translated, it's translated so poorly that you'd much rather read a book or read a print magazine. And because the business models, it's this true in the US as well, the business models of content creation haven't quite caught up with where they were in the print world. But that's a much bigger problem in places that don't have the kind of capital and investment that we have in the states or in Europe. And I thought that was really interesting because I feel the same way.
I feel like gosh, there's plenty. There's more than enough. But then you think about the 4.5 billion people who don't have regular access to the internet. And when they do get access to the internet, there isn't the kind of the content that will be most useful to them or most helpful to them isn't in their language, isn't easy to access.
And it's similar to the problem that we had on the internet back in the 90s when everything was indexed so poorly, that it was incredibly difficult to find anything. It was incredibly difficult to find sources. And then companies started solving that problem. I think Wikipedia helped solve that problem.
Google helped solve that problem. And it was a really interesting idea that this problem has only been solved for slightly less than half the world. Yeah. Yeah, that is a really great point.
And it's also very true of when I see YouTube things happening, like I pay a lot of attention to YouTube more than I do to the rest of the internet. And watching YouTube content happening in native languages in India, in Russia, in Brazil, Venezuela. And like you see these, it's so interesting to see the smaller independent YouTubers making it there because there isn't what we have in America, which is so much content that it's basically impossible to get noticed. And so you see a very similar trajectory to the early days of YouTube back in 2006 and 2007, when there was just not a lot of people doing it.
And so people were craving this kind of content. Now no one craves more content on YouTube. There's just so much of it that there's always something good to watch in English. All right, we have another question.
This one's from Sean who writes, Dear John and Hank, are you satisfied with your names? I always thought I was satisfied with mine, but that was before I knew I could have been named Autobioc and Fenway. And Autobioc and Fenway is surely the finest name that's ever been given. Now I feel dissatisfied.
How do I cope with this? Oh, Sean. Well, I mean, Hank, Hank has a pretty good name. Hank Green, like he can get Hank Green.com, for instance.
I mean, my name's John Green. That's been owned by a realtor in Southern Mississippi for like, you know, 150 years before there was even an internet John Green in Southern Mississippi at John Green.com. So I think, I always felt like Hank was easier. It was easier for him to google himself, which I guess is a bit of a poison to chow us.
But yeah, I don't know. I was always a little bit jealous of Hank growing up because he had a proper, proper good name. You know, there's lots of good Hanks in American history. You got Hank Williams.
Historical Hanks. Hank Aaron. Hank Aaron. Hank Hill.
Thank you. Yeah. I mean, whereas there's, you know, there's surprisingly few good John's in American history. Talking about him and John itself is used as both a, a, both a word for people who go to prostitutes and a word for toilets.
So I don't know, it could have been made easier for me, but I would argue that actually it's not easier to go through the world named Autobioc and Fenway. Obviously, that's a great name to have once you're successful. But I think that probably, you know, you get, you get teased a lot, which might be why Autobioc and Fenway, you know, is 250 pound, you know, just the strongest man alive. Yeah.
The certainly the largest professional football player in league two or, or any other league. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
And soon he's going to be the largest professional football player in league one. But yes, no, he is the strongest player in all of FIFA 16, Hank. So he is, at least according to FIFA, the strongest professional footballer on earth. All right.
Well, John, this podcast is brought to you by Autobioc and Fenway, the strongest professional football player on earth. So strong that he brings physically brings Dear Hank and John to your ears every week. And of course, this podcast is brought to you by four-sided bananas, four-sided bananas, a cause for concern. This podcast is also brought to you by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the choice of billionaires everywhere.
Oh, man. Hank, all of our billionaire listeners are going to take this so personally. It's hard out there. I can't tell you how many of them complain to me about their various woes last week.
And of course, this podcast is brought to you by Hank's favorite bridge. Hank's favorite bridge. In Hank's opinion, a way of understanding something deep and important about you. Basically, yeah.
That's what I'm trying to get at. All right, John, do you want to do one last question? Yeah, let's do one last question. Hank, that's a great idea.
Do you want a question about chemistry? Oh, I guess. I hope I know the answer. This question comes from Terry who writes, Dear John and Hank, I know this question is more science than advice, but I've always wondered this and expect you might know, I know that cooking, especially baking involves lots of chemistry, but I've never completely understood why if something says it should be baked at 250 degrees for an hour, you can't just bake it at 500 degrees for half an hour.
My burnt cake and I need your help. So heat is a is a as a transfer of energy. So what you're doing is, but but energy does not transfer uniformly. So if you cook something at 250 degrees for an hour versus 500 degrees at half an hour, you may in fact be adding the same amount of energy to your cake, but you are not adding it evenly.
Also, there are certain things like like chemical bonds that will not break at 250 degrees, but will break at 500. So there are a number of different reasons for this. One, it was not going to cook evenly. Two, there are lots of different physical and chemical properties of all of the atoms and molecules in your cake that are going to behave very differently at 500 degrees versus 250 degrees.
So just because you're putting the same amount of energy into something does not mean that you are going to have the same effect. So like I could put my hand on like in front of a fireplace and like warm it up and that would be nice and I could do that for like an hour and receive the same amount of energy as if I stuck my hand in the fireplace for five minutes or five seconds and that would not have the same effect. It would be the same amount of heat entering my body, but it would not be, it would not feel the same to me. Well, I think what's most encouraging about this answer, Hank, is that now at last we know how to bake your hand into a cake.
Don't do that. Very slowly. Very slowly. Don't make don't make Hank's hand.
No, if you want to bake anything into a cake, it should be a hot dog and that cake should be made out of corn meal and it should be a corn dog. Oh, Hank, what's the news for Mars? Anybody what if I want to say if anybody wants to try, I don't know if this is a thing, but if anybody wants to try to make a corn dog cake, I want to see a picture of that. I'll pay you $5 for the first person who posts a corn dog cake on Twitter.
What is a corn dog cake? It's like a cake with lots of I don't know. I don't know. I'll say it is corn dog cake and then and then go with that.
I got to terrible terrible idea. Can we move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon? Please, I'm very excited to share with you the news from AFC Wimbledon. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first so that people can skip just the last bit and not also the first part right about Mars?
You go first. All right. John, exceptionally weirdly, NASA's opportunity rover, which was supposed to last for three months, has just had its 12th anniversary on the surface of Mars. Wow.
It has been there for 12 years. They are still operating and it's still moving around. It's still doing science. It's powered by solar panels, which can be not the best source of power in a place where it can be windy and covered in dust and it can be dark for a lot of the time, especially in the Martian winter.
They have developed cleaning protocols that allow opportunity to clean off solar panels, which was not something that they expected would be possible. But basically the solar panels on opportunity covered in dust and that was what they thought was going to be the limiting factor in the mission of this rover. They have figured out how to continue cleaning it off. It has even stayed active this whole winter because the solar panels have been much cleaner this winter than the last few winters because the wind has actually blown the dust off.
So it's fantastic that this thing that we spent a lot of money getting there and we thought we're going to get three months of science out of. We are now 12 years into the opportunity's mission and it continues to operate, which is just wonderful and fills me with joy. Well, I certainly couldn't be any happier with this whole situation that we still have a rover on Mars in addition to, I believe, another rover that is also on Mars. It's true.
It's true. And Spirit, which landed at a very similar time to opportunity and it was basically the same rover at Twin Rover, stopped talking to Earth back in 2010. And for whatever reason, opportunity is just much more long lived. It's gone for more than about twice the amount of time that Spirit did.
Crazy. Well, you know what else is crazy Hank? What? If you Google League 2 table right now.
Okay, I'm going to do it. So when last we left the exploits of the AFC Wimbledon grown-up team, not the under-18s that beat Newcastle, but when last we left the grown-up AFC Wimbledon, they had just beaten Cambridge United for one. That was their second win in a row. Then they went on to beat Mansfield 3-1 coming from one-nil down.
You know what they sing, one-nil down to three-1 up. That's the way that we're going to win the league. Is there no cup at the end of this league? Sadly, there's no cup at the end of this league.
What is the trophy? Is it a good trophy? I guess actually it is rather cup-sized now that I think about it and cup-shaped. So I guess we can sing one-nil down to three-one up.
That's the way we're going to win the cup. So Mansfield went one-nil up and then Montserratty and international, our hero, Lyle Taylor scored a goal to tie it. Then there was a goal from Callum Kennedy, who you might know from my FIFA playing, and then a third goal from Adavio Aziz, the other Adavio. Then, then a week later, we played Nots County and we won two-nil with goals from Tom Elliott, under-appreciated Tom Elliott, and Andy Bartum, which means the last two games, saying AFC Wimbledon have scored five goals via five different players.
And I think if you go back further, that streak continues. It's just an incredibly productive time in the history of AFC Wimbledon. It's an amazing, amazing moment. And if you look at the league two table right now, Hank, you will see that AFC Wimbledon are eighth on 42 points.
The top three teams in league two automatically go up to league one. Teams four through seven then play in a playoff. Oh, okay. So, all right.
AFC Wimbledon is only one point away. In fact, you are tied in points with Stanley. So you're both 42 points, but I imagine Stanley has a higher goal differential. Right.
It's only Aqrington Stanley. It's only goal difference that's standing between us and Aqrington Stanley. And we actually have a better goal difference than the team currently in six late in the Orient. So Hank, suddenly I am starting to properly dream.
I will tell you how far from that time when the finals begin, are you? Well, Hank, there are 46 games. I'm glad you asked. There are 46 games in the season.
Different teams have played a different number of games currently. So some teams have a game in hand or two games in hand. We've played 27, which means we have 19 games to go. This is how close I am to properly dreaming.
Hank, I went ahead and looked up the day of the playoff final. And then I went ahead and looked up playing tickets to figure out can I drive directly from the Indy 500 to the airport to get on an airplane and then arrive in London in time for the game. As you know, Hank, I'm not a regular drinker, but I do enjoy the Indy 500. So potentially, that would mean 30 to 35 straight hours of good times.
All right. All right. That's all that's going to go straight from the Indy 500 to the playoff final. It's going to be amazing.
I'm starting to dream, Hank. I'm starting to dream. We've won four straight games. We've just got to keep this up.
I appreciate the dream. You know, if I could fly to Mars in 35 hours, I'd do it. Yeah. Well, imagine if instead of arriving in Mars and immediately dying, you instead arrived in South London and got to see the most exciting football match imaginable.
Then I will I will imagine that I will imagine it right now and have a lovely imagining and and I will imagine mostly what it will be like for you, which is well, good news and bad news. If they make it to the playoff final, you're coming. We could do a live episode of Dear Hank and John from the AFC Wimbledon stands. Oh my God, it'll be great.
I'll cry through the whole thing. Yeah, I think we can do it remotely. What do we learn today, John? Well, we learned never to trust a banana with less than five sides.
We learned that John is astounded by the state of the internet and cannot believe how relevant it has become to his daily life. And of course, we learned that water is an underrated cereal topping. I don't know. I learned that.
We didn't learn that. Report back. Report back next week. I don't think of water as a cereal topping.
I think it's fantastic. I think people are just, you know, people are so set in their ways. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.
All right, John. Thank you for joining me and thank you to all of the other people for joining us on this episode of Dear Hank and John. This podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. Our theme music is by Gunnarolla.
Thank you all for listening. You can send your questions via email to hankandjohn at gmail.com or you can use the hashtag. Dear Hank and John on Twitter. I'm John Green on Twitter.
Hank Green on Hank's preferred method of communication Snapchat. He is Hank GRE and on Instagram on John Green writes books. Thanks again for listening. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.