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 Complexly like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yech, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBS Eons and Crash Course and Bizarre Beasts for nearly 15 years and 6 billion views. But this year, we have become a 501c3 nonprofit and we're doing something worth knowing as an in-person event that benefits Complexly and 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. Goers, I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank.
The podcast where we answer your questions provides a dubious advice and give you all the weeks news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. But first John, do you have a poem for us? I do have a poem for you. I was thinking that we're kind of like missing a segment from the podcast where we just I just want to ask you how you're doing.
I find out what's you know how things are. So how are you? Oh well I was expecting a poem and now I have a question being thrown at me. I'm great.
I mean a poem will come in the fullness of time. I just I just wanted to know if there's anything going on with you if you're up to anything. Well we'll see what I want to talk about myself but I know it's polite to let you talk about yourself first. When this podcast comes out I will be in France and I will have been in France for about a week and hopefully I'm having a good time there on a little mini vacation that started out with work with and I stayed in France.
Well congratulations to the future you on getting to visit France. I was just in France very recently as part of you know Hank it occurs to me that lots of people don't know that we are not just professional podcasters with a podcast sponsored by Shirt Tales, The 1980s children's cartoon that changed lives including ours. No we are not just professional podcasters. We also have other jobs.
Hank is an internet entrepreneur, vlogbrother, crash course, co-created Lizzy Bennett Dyer's which won an Emmy, SciShow, lots of things. What else do you do Hank? I can't remember. VidCon, do you have to be a record so I make videos with you on this channel called vlogbrothers, crash course.
I mentioned several of those things but clearly you weren't listening to me. Yeah so mostly I am the tale to Hank's comic but I also have this other job which is that I write books or I guess maybe I should say that I used to write books since I haven't written one in more than three years and one of the books that I wrote Paper Towns is being turned into a movie that comes out in a few weeks and so I have been traveling constantly so I actually spent 22 hours in Paris Hank. I left the hotel precisely twice. Mostly I was in Europe for five days I spent almost all of my time in hotel basements which are lovely.
I mean some of the loveliest hotel basements that Europe has to offer doing press junket stuff but I did leave the hotel twice in Paris once to visit the dentist because no visit to Paris is complete without a dental appointment and then once to do a signing that was supposed to be at a bookstore but turned out to be just sort of in a large public square but from what I could gather Paris is lovely it has some of the very best hotel basements that you can find in all of Europe so enjoy your time in France that's what I'm saying. Can I get to the poet poem part of the day? Yeah you can tell us a poem now it sounds really exciting and I look forward to your new blog HotelBassementReviews.com. Oh my god there's some great ones which reminds me by the way that Dear Hank and John is sponsored by Paper Towns Paper Towns, a new movie coming out July 24th in the US and other times elsewhere in the world.
This is a poem that by Walt Whitman it's designed to make Hank angry and it's called When I Heard the Learned Astronomer. When I heard the learned astronomer when the proofs the figures were ranged in columns before me when I was shown the charts and diagrams to add divide and measure them when I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room how soon unaccountable I became tired and sick till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself in the mystical moist night air and from time to time looked up in perfect silence at the stars. Yeah you know that doesn't make me angry I just think that Walt Whitman could enjoy both of those things in different ways those are both wonderful things I like listening to learn the astronomers myself and looking at the stars and the mystical mists or whatever he said it was. Well I think it's the debate between whether there's value to mystical experiences and whether science can damage that value.
This is a poem where I disagree with Walt Whitman he has a few of those because I do believe that science only improves our sort of like a mystical relationship with the stars. I mean the more I know about the stars the more kind of beautiful and massive and overwhelming they become and that's very close to the feeling the of the mysterious and tremendous you know that fear and awe and overwhelmingness that accompanies kind of experiences with the divine or with the radically other or whatever. But I still love the poem it's funny thing about poems Hank. Sometimes I disagree with the argument of a poem but I find its language and but I find its language and rhythm so compelling that I can't help but like it you know.
Yeah oh absolutely except for the part except for the part where I don't really get poetry because it well I actually I like it a lot more when you're reading it to me. I have a hard time reading poetry because it doesn't have the normal line breaks and it's taken me long enough to be able to read words the way that they're normally presented that when they're presented differently I have a very hard time with reading comprehension and I just completely lose track of what's going on. So I think that all poetry should be read to me by someone but preferably John Green if that's an option. Can we get to the questions?
Yes of course Hank. Liv asks dear John and Hank are you worried about the disappearance of the bees and do you know of anything people can do to help save the bees? This is obviously more of a Hank question than a John question but I just want to jump in real quickly here and say Liv as far as I can tell from my backyard the bee situation is I'm not concerned about the bee situation in my backyard is this a moment Hank where maybe anecdote is not singular of data and that sometimes just because UCB's doesn't mean there isn't a larger bee issue. There's a larger bee issue there is definitely a larger bee issue that the bee issue that we're having is mostly an economic sort of commercial bee issue so there are bees all across America that are driven around to crops and they are planted outside of the crops during the pollination season and then and then brought to new crops when it's time to pollinate those crops and the bee farmers who do this are paid to do it and then they at the end of the year also have honey that they can sell and and it is a it is a job that people have it's not so much a wild bee problem it is it's more of a commercial bee problem and it is a huge problem because commercial bees in addition to providing jobs for those lovely beekeepers and honey for all of us also produce you know all of the crops by pollinating them and crops that don't get pollinated do not turn into food and that's bad and they do not turn into seed for next year's harvest and that's bad as well and colony crops disorder is basically a a huge widespread unknown phenomenon in which the beehive just suddenly dies and and that is happening to a huge percentage of commercial beehives and the reasons for this are not well known though they are being increasingly well studied and likely have something to do with sort of a combination cocktail of pesticides that should not should not and are not being sprayed on the crops that bees are currently pollinating but may be being sprayed on nearby crops or may just be still on those crops after after longer than we thought they were sticking around and the way that all of these things are combining maybe this is still you know like being studied is basically lowering the immune system of the hive as a whole and allowing for outside pathogens to get in and and and the pesticides aren't what's killing the bees it's just sort of a general lowering of the health of the bees that then allows for pathogens to kill the bees this is a problem but the good news is that it is an economic problem and and capitalism is good at solving those problems because it says oh god we need to continue selling our crops and having our bees so we need like so research is easy to fund studying colony collapse disorder which is why there is lots of research being done on it the fingers crossed is that it will get figured out and we will we will modify or cease our the use of certain pesticides and that will allow for bees to not collapse in their colonies and that is a thumbs up the the uh you know the the feeling that bees in general are in trouble is not really what's happening it's more of a humans are in trouble situation and uh we're okay at solving those because we like being us and we like selling things to each other.
Hey one of the things I think about a lot is the uh this new word that's emerged in the last few decades the Anthropocene and Anthropocene I don't even know how to say it for sure you know what we're not referring to though yeah I think Anthropocene yeah the Anthropocene the idea that we're living in this new geological age where suddenly one species specifically humans is having an outsized impact on kind of every facet of life on earth and we're still getting used to um this power that we've suddenly had since the industrial revolution to uh make or break earth um it freaks me out to think about but we do need to start thinking about it and I think when we live in denial of the fact that we're living in this new geological age when humans can make or break lots of different things on earth choosing which species survives choosing what the carbon levels of the planet are etcetera um yeah when we kind of put our heads in the sand and just pretend that we don't have that power I think it's uh very dangerous indeed um the interesting thing about the Anthropocene is that it is often stated as the uh the age in which humans are the dominant power but in fact what it is more like is it is an age in which uh future geologists would be able to tell a sharp difference in things like climate and species diversity uh in the geological record and be able to say like this is marks a new beginning of something new we are the cause of that new beginning but the Anthropocene will continue to exist for theoretically uh a very long time and that that age may not have humans as its dominating factor for that whole time it may just be that humans were the thing that changed like that created that defining moment and then over time it was you know the Anthropocene continued to exist but either one human stopped existing and the Anthropocene would continue because future geologists would look at it and say this age continues and species diversity did not come back and carbon levels did not decrease uh in fact even without people carbon levels will probably continue to increase because as things get warmer carbon dioxide production increases um it's a feedback loop it's bad uh and or it could be that we will have a less of an effect but we will continue to see the uh those those effects uh continue despite the fact that we are having less of an impact on the earth in the future through hopefully technology and intelligence but uh but the changes that we have made will continue they are they are not something that we can turn back the clock on. Yeah this is a great comedy podcast we've got another question Hank um this one's from Samantha she writes dear john and hank would you rather know what happens after you die or know everyone's secrets ah I would not maybe like to know either of those things uh well yeah no obviously in a perfect world you wouldn't know either of those oh I think you agree with you I desire to know what happens after I die and I have no desire to desire to know everyone's secrets but I do have a preference and I think that's what the question is what is your preference if you were forced uh to choose between the two what would you choose and for me that's easy I would want to know everyone's secrets I think that this question is in fact uh would you like those are both good things and uh phrased in that way I think some people would like to know both of those things but maybe not we are just old stodgy curmudgeon's um and both of those things sound awful but to many people that might sound sound lovely to know what happens after you die or yeah I know I think I find your philosophical ramblings interesting but again Samantha's question is is a value free would you rather right okay know what happens after you die or know everybody's secrets and to me that's a that yes I would rather know what happens after I die because knowing everybody's secrets would be crushing and awful oh no no knowing everyone's secrets are completely completely remove my ability to be a human in the world no first off knowing everyone's secrets would be incredibly helpful and useful in terms of navigating the world and you would quickly become a billionaire and then you would be able to do something about malaria so it's a clear win to know everyone's secrets you just exploit and abuse other people's secrets to get billions and billions of dollars which you then use to fight global poverty obvious um for instance I could probably use knowing everyone's secrets just a bet on uh you know like to bet on future sporting events or whatever because I would know who's secretly injured um versus knowing what happens after I die that's going to ruin the rest of my life because I'm just going to be too focused on it I'm gonna be thinking about it too much what I want to be thinking about is what is happening now while I'm alive that I can do to abuse other people's secrets to become a billionaire who then cures cholera ah I uh yeah I think that I would be very little affected by knowing what happens after I die well but you also think you do know what happens after you die I do think I know what happens after you die you're right so I think that might be slightly uh biasing you here on the question um anyway long story short listeners try to find out everyone's secrets um what's next thing we have a question from loyal loyal says dear hanken john I'm going to college soon so I have a lot of choices to make not only must I decide what to study but I'm also toying with the decision to start going by a nickname I really do like my name but I hate introducing myself because my name is also an adjective and people think I'm describing myself plus I'm socially awkward and even though loyal is a boy's name I'm a girl and etc uh beyond that I've started the question if changing what people call me will change me as a person so my question is this how much does a person's name shape their identity and do you think I should start going by a nickname in college I have always gone by a nickname my name is william henry green and a call me hank my parents called me hank from the day I was born which is a fate that I would never still upon their child because it results in the bank often saying this check is not for you and me saying oh please please please give me my money but I think that loyal question is very interesting uh specifically the first often we just pause and note that loyal has a fantastic name yes and in my opinion it's not a boy's name or a girl's name it's just a great name correct top-notch name so I mean first shout out to your parents loyal uh or whoever named you because that's that's some good naming right there um I I have a lot of uh background in the field of choosing your own nickname because I tried to do it throughout middle school I don't know if you know this about me no yeah so I I wanted a nickname but nobody would give me a nickname because like nobody was even kind of aware of my existence um so so they didn't know me by my name or by my nickname um so my nickname's only existed in my head but in in sixth grade I tried to get this nickname going shrimp I really wanted people to call me the shrimp um or just shrimp uh because you know I was a smaller person and uh it was something of a derogatory nickname but it was at least a nickname you know like at least then I would be a nickname to person instead of just a kind of non-existent person so I really tried hard to establish this identity of shrimp I would I would always I would ask people to call me shrimp I would behave in ways that I thought were shrimp alike by the way I do I do like shrimp um I think they're fantastic animals are they animals yes they're oh my god are they animals I just love the idea of watching middle school john uh like act in shrimp like ways whatever that means I'm picturing it it's great I'll tell you as you can probably imagine it was not a stretch uh to be shrimp like I mean I wasn't trying to act like the animal shrimp I was trying to act like the uh the slang word shrimp which was kind of slang for a person who was maybe a weaker and a little bit less masculine and etc so it wasn't that much of a stretch for me and then when I was in high school I again I desperately wanted a nickname and I never got one until the last couple years of high school and I really loved having a nickname and in some ways I miss it like I loved being known for something other than my given name I've always been fascinated in my fiction by the the relationship between like given identities and chosen identities like a lot of my characters have nicknames but also you know generally I'm fascinated by the way that in in adolescence and the first years of adulthood we're trying to find ourselves and part of that is like finding a name for ourselves so in high school I was called cuffs k u f s because one time I said that christian Slater who was an actor never made a bad film and it turned out that he had been in a a cop buddy comedy named cuffs in which his buddy was a was a police dog named cuffs with a K um and I really enjoyed being called cuffs even though it was like making fun of this you know stupid thing that I'd said so anyway well I think it's totally cool to have a nickname I think it's cool I think you have a great name as it is but I also think that if you want to have a chosen identity as well as your given identity then that's wonderful we are the things that we're given we are many of the things that we're born with but we also get to choose a lot about what we are so I think it's I think it's awesome go for it thank you any nickname suggestions for loyal um no I think that it's I think it's difficult to give yourself a nickname because it's always going to be awkward to be to like introduce yourself as something that you're not used to introducing yourself as and like I don't think so I could totally do it yeah well I mean but you're John Green and you're very confident in an adult um so there's no no no no like just I could have done it on my freshman in my freshman year of college like somebody walks up to me they ask me what my name is instead of saying John I say I don't know I'm trying struggling to think of a nickname for myself you got anything cuffs I say oh yeah my name is cuffs cuffs green good to meet you um actually you're right that would have been difficult just because cuffs was such a specific nickname but if it had been a nickname uh like I don't know uh Daisy Pants and people were like I just been like oh my name's Daisy Pants Green people I think people would have accepted that over time yeah no I think they'll accept it I just think it's it would be difficult for me to do personally the thing I want to say to loyal is that it is actually really valuable to have a weird name um like there's some like as a hank there's something nice about having a name that's pretty unusual and like people remember my name which is good people do not remember like Catherine's name for example because it's normal her and uh and people I think feel like remember me more and being remembered is advantageous in general in life so I think that there's I think there's a lot good about loyal and in fact it a little bit sounds like it already is a nickname and that might be part of what makes it awkward to introduce yourself is that people think that you're giving them a nickname or a you know a you know something that you've chosen for yourself and and and you feel weird about that but I think that that like comfort in one's identity is one of the greatest greatest things that we can achieve as people and it is very difficult to achieve so whatever you can do to achieve it is worth attempting so Hank uh ultimately what you're suggesting is that loyal remain loyal to loyal oh dang the nice thing about when you talk for like three minutes in a row is that I get to think of puns ah yes that's that is really how puns happen you just have to let a friend monologue for long enough we've got another question this one is from Emma Emma says dear hank and john there are a lot of accredited colleges online lots of these places let you get college credit for taking tests like AP or CLEP exams Alia high school senior next year I've been homeschool since kindergarten so I'm used to being self-taught if I can get a college degree using one of these resources along with things like crash course sponsor of today's episode of dear Hank and John for test prep why don't I why should I go to a brick and mortar school is the real life experience worth it well I think that there is a real value to in classroom education I think that there is a value to person-to-person physical interaction um and I know that that sounds like a double entendre and it is this is a comedy podcast boom chuck hey um but I do I think that there's something valuable about classroom experiences about uh iRL classroom interactions and about iRL experiences with really really excellent professors that said there's also lots of other things that are valuable about college that you can get online so I you know when Hank and I were designing crash course we we imagined it as an educational material that didn't try to replace classrooms as opposed to everything else that was being done which which sort of was trying to replace classrooms because I think we both really believe in the classroom experience and classroom education and in the power of teachers that said I think that there are lots of values to online education and even if for me at least it's not as complete an educational experience it is still very much a good and valuable educational experience so that is my way out of answering your question I also this probably is just in my mind because we were just talking about identity but I think that college is a great time to sort of come to better understand yourself uh and and uh that is most effectively done by interacting a lot with peers and being able to have these intense years of uh of peer interaction and for end interaction and there are certainly other ways to find that as well but um for a lot of people um you know higher education is really the time when you get to hang out with people who are adults but who are not busy or like stuck with big other life things like you know marriage and kids and jobs and stuff so it's uh you know those those relationships are extremely valuable in my life and I know that they are in a lot of people's lives and not just not just then they were very valuable then but they continue to be valuable now so there's good stuff about college there's good stuff about having four years or so where you know you are really concentrating on personal growth not just academically but also you know all the rest of the ways plus it's usually where you meet your college girlfriend who will later crush your soul so that's not without value that's John's experience I got married to mine well I mean maybe she's just gonna crush your soul later then all relationships end hank either in breakup divorce or death oh well god I love this comedy podcast um why on earth did you make this a comedy podcast all of our all of our negative reviews in the iTunes store are like perfectly enjoyable but not particularly funny anyway I don't mean to focus on the negative but it's also the only thing that I know how to focus on see that was a great joke John thanks buddy uh so we've got a question from Josiah he writes dear John and Hank when 3D printers become widely accessible what will be the first simple object you will print and why uh smurf maybe something maybe oh well you can get smurfs maybe an action figure like print a smurf when you could like a shirt tail shirt tails the 1980s children's television program that sponsored today's episode of dear John and Hank what was I thinking you're absolutely right now I think I might print a snork even better I have such fond memories of the snorks in fact when I was thinking of that shirt tail stroke I was trying to think of the snorks it's funny because Henry watches a show Octonauts that is uh today's snorks like it's he will remember it the way I remember the snorks but I really remember the snorks as the the first and in some ways most important narrative experience I've ever had that's really weird that I think for me that was a show called cities of gold which was not popular and not on for a long time but I was really obsessed with it I'd get up every morning like seven in the morning on Saturdays to watch it and I had a huge crush on the cartoon girl well I think Josiah's question has been answered but not in the way any of us expected no you didn't answer you want a snork as well um no I don't think I would print a snork I think the first simple object that I would print um would probably be a like a mechanical hand that could sign my name for me because that's something I spend a lot of my leisure time doing that might not be qualifying as simple what about an xbox controller because mine is always breaking is that simple no I'm just kidding of course I would my first 3d printing project would be a bobblehead version of Hank I'm no dummy I just want a bobblehead Hank in my life I have a bobblehead you in my life already I'm looking at him right now he looks a little weird because you have a bobblehead hanker bobblehead john yeah yeah bobble john over there he looks a little weird because his head fell off once and now it doesn't quite rest correctly so your chin sort of like leans on your like that your right shoulder kind of and it's like you okay there buddy it's like a long yeah my other big issue with the bobblehead johns which I think we're produced in 2008 or 2009 is that um uh I'm a little concerned that the bobble john looks significantly younger and thinner than current john and it hurts my feelings sometimes the look at my bobblehead self which I'm doing right now I'm just like who's that handsome young large-headed human yeah that's a norm that's not used to be that guy you've got to you've got to be okay with the skin that you're in john oh man that's good that's that's good dubious advice Hank um we've got another question this one is from Leah she writes Dear john and Hank recently my grandma died she's been with me my entire life and I've always thought of her as a second mother it's only been a week but I'm doing okay I don't think I'm as sad as I should be it was really hard the first few days and whenever I think about her I feel sad but generally I'm fine does this mean that I'm heartless am I a bad person for not being completely devastated for longer than a couple days about the death of someone I love so much this has been constantly on my mind and I would really appreciate an answer this sounds like a john green question to me Leah you are fine there are lots of ways to grieve and there are lots of kinds of grief and judging your grief or other people's does not do you any good you are not heartless if you were heartless you would have already you would already know it's it's perfectly possible that your grandmother lived a long and full and rich life and that you feel very grateful to have had the time with her that you had and that that you've integrated the sadness that you feel about her death into your life and that it's part of your life but not a consuming part and that's not unhealthy you're okay I promise I wasn't that sad when my grandma died and I was very close to her as well so yeah does that make me sound heartless I can know I'm concerned now I'm feeling exactly what Leah no you do not sound heartless and I thought your answer was very good I think a lot of times like to judge our grief or other people's grief but yeah your grief is yours and it's okay it really is it's also okay if in three months you find yourself suddenly extremely sad about that loss like one of the difficult things that I go through a lot is like judging my own feelings and making my life worse by judging them so I'll be like I'm sad and also I'm angry at myself for being sad and also I'm angry at myself for being angry about being sad and then that I'm pretty far away from where I should be which is I'm sad and that happens sometimes yeah great answer john not as good as your answer about the bees which was full of information that I did not know can I tell you a funny story about bees Hank you want to tell me a story about bees if you don't mind you have a second I do so my son is in preschool and I got an email a few weeks back and in all capital letters the subject line of the email was the bee incident and then the email itself was like the first the first sentence was I just want to reassure all parents that our students and heroic teachers are all fine and I was like what the hell has happened and it turns out that two students and three heroic teachers were stung by a nest of ground bees in the playground on the campus of the school itself but to read this to read this email you would have thought that there had been a catastrophe on the scale of the leucidaneous thinking that like not not since the Titanic itself has humanity struggled with such a catastrophe and then the last sentence the email was I would again like to thank all of our heroic teachers so yeah that's uh that's uh that's life in the contemporary american preschool these days so that's that's just good management she's making everybody feel good the bee incident this question is from bailey bailey asks dear hank and john if given the choice would you rather know virtually nothing but be incredibly happy or would you rather know everything but be incredibly miserable oh bailey we seem to like uh answering these uh hypothetical questions Hank uh I've never taken a ton of value in hypothetical questions I'm not sure how our podcast became a hypothetical question podcast but um I'll answer this question um this is a uh you know it's a bit of a faucy and dilemma right like uh uh there's the character not just in in uh gertus fauce or uh or dr fauce or anything but also in like a little mermaid there's always a character in a faucy and dilemma who makes a deal with the devil in exchange for knowledge and then of course the deal with the devil comes uh comes full circle and uh you know as a result of your knowledge you have to suffer uh some terrible fate possibly including uh hellfire and um you know and then on the other hand you've got the great examples of the sort of like happy uh happy but uh ignorant people of um I don't know say uh john barns is novel lost in space you can take a drug uh that makes you increasingly happy as you get uh as as you know less and less you become happier and happier um I would I don't know like what would you rather do um I would rather know everything but be incredibly miserable because then other people could be happy because of my knowledge that it everything is a lot of things and I think you probably would be incredibly miserable if you knew everything but if you knew everything then you could make a lot of people's lives better and that would be an okay trade off yeah that's a really good point actually because you could probably cure cancer if you knew everything yeah yep you could yeah I mean knowing everything would be so incredibly valuable not just to the human species but to the universe as a whole to like the idea of life that you would almost be a bad person not to take that choice you know not to make that sacrifice on the other hand the one question is if you are incredibly miserable are you able to help anyone at all because of your incredible misery or do you become dr manhattan and you're just like I'm incredibly miserable and I understand how to make people happier but why even bother that's a great question because if you're so miserable yep yeah on the other hand I don't think that uh being happy is particularly the point of being alive um right I remember I was I was dating a girl once I don't know why this is the ex-girlfriend's episode of the earth john and hank but I was dating a girl once and she was talking to me about how I was I was very unhappy and and you know I should be more happy and I realized in the conversation that I just I don't value happiness particularly highly I value uh productivity and connectedness and attentiveness and I certainly value um you know love and loving relationships and everything but I don't know that I really seek happiness as such maybe I should maybe I've been under rating happiness this whole time now I'm having an existential crisis in the middle of a comedy podcast that's not unusual here at deer hank and john I value happiness fairly highly myself I think that it is a lot of the point of life and I think that it guides you in good ways right what is happiness really well now I'm starting to think that not only have I been undervaluing happiness all of this time but that in the last like five or so years I've secretly been valuing happiness more than I thought which is maybe part of the reason why I've been doing more work that I enjoy and generally feeling better about being alive um now I'm thinking that well been under appreciating happiness but I've also I've been secretly appreciating happiness it's getting too meta hank we've got to go to another question I feel like maybe deer deer hank and john has become really good talk therapy for you it is becoming good talk therapy for me can we talk about how I was bullied in middle school that's the number one subject of my therapy sessions um also uh actually hank while deer john and hank is becoming a therapy session for me um I want to share with you this question from julia that is of great personal interest to me um deer john and hank ever since I was a seven or eight I've had a couple strange habits I talked to myself where my nostrils and sometimes bulge out my eyes not all at once without even realizing what I'm doing I've noticed people being really creeped out by it and expressing concern for my mental health because of it as well I pretend I don't care but I do it's annoying and it's something I really hate about myself I will soon start my junior year of high school which means I will soon start the college looking application process and I don't want to have these really creepy things sort of hanging over me for the rest of my life any advice on how to stop well uh julia this is a question that I can relate to maybe a way that isn't going to be helpful to you but first I want to say that deer john and hank is a podcast full of dubious advice and that if you want actual good advice you should definitely talk to a health professional in this case a mental health professional which I'd probably recommend anyway uh just because this seems to be something that's really upsetting to you and really difficult for you to deal with when I was in uh high school and before that and well after that um I had these uh these these compulsions I guess I have OCD and one of them was actually talking to myself like I needed to talk to myself very quietly and in a way that I think ultimately wasn't that distracting to people around me but I did need to do it sometimes um I don't know if that's what uh similar to what you're going through I don't know if these feel like I think that you have to do I don't know if they're ticks or compulsions or just habits and it's impossible for me to know um but I guess what I would say is that um you know a I'm sorry that you know you feel so uncomfortable uh with these with these parts of your life and b it's really really really difficult to know what's going on when you're kind of stuck inside of your own head and that's why I think it is really useful to talk to someone uh for whom this is an area of expertise yeah and uh if it annoys you that is the main thing to be concerned about if you are perceiving the annoyance of other people you may be perceiving their feelings incorrectly and oftentimes you know I have friends who have weird fun habits and I just think of that as how they are not this episode of your hand con done is brought to you by Shopify there are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me and that is what Shopify makes easier when you start with Shopify the tools to design and launch and take payments they're all there from day one you don't have to build a whole machine before you can start building the business and this is important because you also have to like look good and with Shopify's templates you could get a site set up really quick that looks credible and professional without needing to code or duct tape a bunch of different tools together and when things look real that works on my brain to be like I'm doing a real thing and it also works on other people's brains to be like this is legitimate Shopify also has one of the best checkout systems on the internet it's built to help customers finish the purchase effectively and efficiently without a bunch of roadblocks returning customers can check out with a single click that means less friction and fewer abandoned carts and a smoother experience for everybody that stuff gives you confidence early on and it gives other people confidence in what you're doing you're not wondering whether the payment system is going to work you're not wondering whether customers can get through the process Shopify handles that foundation so you can focus on the thing that you're actually trying to do it's really kind of amazing to me that Shopify is a tool that works from the first day your store launches when you're just starting to get customers all the way up to being the size of good.store or dftv.com or being the size of like Mattel and Gymshark when you build a Shopify you're building with tools that already work at every scale all you need is the idea Shopify handles the rest you can start your free trial at Shopify.com slash deerhank start your free trial Shopify.com slash deerhank with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th 2026 see website for more details. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels the days are a little more relaxed my kids don't have to wake up at five in the morning and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again which is why I keep coming back to quince. I often wear either a long sleeve or a short sleeve button down from quince and it fits well and I never have any complaints in fact sometimes I get compliments about it I was at the airport a couple days ago as I often find myself in airports and someone said I like your shirt and I said thanks it's from quince quince is 100% European linen pants and shirts are breathable easy to throw on and the summer upgrade your rotation needs starting at just $34.
Their teas are soft enough to live in all day and the lightweight cotton sweaters are exactly what you want when those summer nights cool down so that's why I'm wearing quince this summer and you can make your summer wardrobe easier by going to quince.com slash deerhank for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too that's qunce.com slash deerhank for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash deerhank. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor. Imagine for a moment that you are absolutely immersed in some work where you're creating something beautiful or useful or useless and ugly but you love it anyway and you look up and suddenly you have a feeling and that feeling is that it is 2.30 pm and that you did not eat lunch. What are you going to do?
Are you going to get meal delivery that's going to cost too much and maybe be a bit of a mistake or are you going to go to the cupboard and just eat several fistfuls of peanuts because those are my two choices unless I have a factor in the fridge. You can get smoky barbecue chicken breast with potato mashed cream corn and peppers. You can get creamy lemon pepper chicken with veggie rice peel off broccoli and carrots. This has the fiber I need.
It has the protein I need and it has the deliciousness I need. What about garlic herb roasted veramunji with potato zucchini and burr blanc sauce? I don't really know what that means but it sounds delicious. What about a black bean taco bowl with corn salsa and cilantro crema?
A delicious high fiber high protein meal that no animals had to die for. Any of those can be ready in two minutes. Fresh, never frozen, over 100 rotating weekly meals including globally inspired flavors like Mediterranean and Asian, Factor shops, perhaps cooks and delivers straight to your door so you have more time for everything you love this spring. Head to factormills.com slash deer hank 50 off and use the code deerhank50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box.
With new subscription only, while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See you website for more details. Not as something that is, you know, annoying about them. So, all right, so we're about to head into the news from Mars and AFC One-Bldin but first we have a correction from a couple podcasts ago.
One of our sponsors was the Orlando Solar Bears which I referred to as a defunct international hockey league team from the 1990s. This was in fact a true statement because the international hockey league team, the Orlando Solar Bears, does no longer exist but and part of the reason for that is that the International Hockey League does no longer exist but there is an American hockey league team that started in 2012 called the Orlando Solar Bears that took over the legacy of the IHL's Orlando Solar Bears and they do exist. The Solar Bears are a current team and they play at the TD Waterhouse Center or whatever the arena in Orlando is now called. I have not lived there in a while and you can go watch them.
They have an attendance of roughly 6,000 people per game so there are seats available. The Orlando Solar Bears are a real thing. They just weren't for about a decade. Did they really sponsor our podcast or was that part was that part?
No, they did not actually give us any money. No one gives us money. Did they sponsor our correction? No, a person on Twitter told me this.
Oh, that's disappointing. Thanks to the Orlando Solar Bears however for re-existing. They are one of the great sporting memories of my childhood speaking of great sporting memories. Let's talk about the news from AFC Wimbledon this week.
Hank, as always, it's an incredibly exciting week for AFC Wimbledon. They just drew their first round, the Capital One Cup is a competition in which all the teams in the football league play each other. In the first round, AFC Wimbledon will be playing a Cardiff City. It's a fascinating matchup for Wimbledon for a couple of reasons.
First off, our manager, Neil Arde Lee used to play for Cardiff also used to play for Wimbledon and he began his coaching career there. But also, Cardiff City is a great more recent example of the same process through which AFC kind of came to exist. Hank, as you know, there was a team that played in Wimbledon for 120 years called Wimbledon FC that was moved by, I try to be as objective as I can here and not biased, but it was moved by greedy, actively evil owners to Milton Keynes where it became the filthy pond scum currently known as MK Don's. That left the community of Wimbledon without a football club, so they formed their own football club, which is entirely owned by its fans and worked their way up from the ninth tier of English football all the way back into the football league, back into being a full-time professional team, so that there is now again full-time professional for that community to support.
And this is evidence to me that football clubs are not ultimately businesses owned by people, they are ultimately communities. Cardiff City has gone through some of this as well because they were bought by a guy named Vincent Tan who unfortunately for him looks like a 1970s Bond villain, but also has been acting like a 1970s Bond villain. Cardiff has traditionally been known as the Bluebirds and he changed the uniform color to red from blue and trying to affiliate them with dragons instead of with bluebirds and Cardiff City fans started to boycott games and they would sing where Cardiff City will always be blue and they would only wear their old blue uniforms to games and they refused to buy the new red jerseys and eventually the owner of Cardiff City capitulated and this will be the first season opener game in several years in which Cardiff City will be playing in blue. So congratulations to Cardiff and their supporters on getting to play in blue and getting to be the club that they have historically been and saying to their owner.
But I hope that you get crushed by the mighty machine that is AFC Wimbledon on August 11th. That was some really fascinating news from AFC Wimbledon John. I am riveted to my seat. I only wish there were more.
I can't tell if you're kidding. But we have to get on to the marks. We have to but we have to but thanks for mentioning it. There is more.
Callum Kennedy AFC Wimbledon's left back has signed a new contract after a recent return to form. He's you know he had a difficult second after the season but but he's showing a lot of promise still a young player. Callum Kennedy he's going to be an AFC Wimbledon player again next season. I'm sorry was there news from Mars?
But we have to get on to the Mars news. Thank you for your AFC Wimbledon news John. Six scientists who were taking part in an eight month long Mars simulation mission have been released and are now part of human society again. They spent eight months in a dome together a very small area with very limited privacy and and every time they went out of the dome to do science on the slopes of Manoloa in Hawaii they had to wear spacesuits upon emerging from the dome.
They said the things that they missed the most were their families peaches and the feeling of wind which they did not experience for eight months which I can imagine is somewhat upsetting but they they were eight people or six people selected for for their their temperament and their scientific knowledge to be a good team and to be able to spend eight months together and not go nuts and and they succeeded and we now know that that is possible. Now they're going to do it again and this time for 12 months I believe where they will have people basically participating in human experiments to see how people handle living together in close quarters of being able to shower for only six minutes a week and not go nuts and still be able to do interesting science. That sounds like my idea of hell. It does sound awful.
It does sound awful. You know colonizing Mars is all fine and good until I can only shower for six minutes a week. Let me ask you a quick question about that though Hank. How often were they allowed to take nice comfortable soaking baths?
Because I could handle only six minutes of showering a week but I'm going to need eight to ten really chest deep baths. The very hot water. One of the most fascinating things about this is that one of the true members Jocelyn Dunn when she walked out she was a little bit afraid to leave the enclosure without her suit on. Wow.
And after doing it for eight months he was like can I really go outside and is that okay? Wow. Which is just terrifying. Yeah.
I mean Hank I don't like to enjoy the news from Mars but that actually was interesting primarily because it was the news from Earth. Well I appreciate your appreciation. So that's all the news from the world's greatest fourth tier football club and also all the news from the solar systems fourth rock from the Sun which brings us I'm afraid Hank to the end of our podcast for the day. What did we learn?
Oh gosh I should probably take notes because I always forget what we learned. Well we learned that the Snorks were the greatest television show of the 1980s. Yes. We learned that that John and I disagree about the implications of knowledge about the afterlife.
And we learned that Hank is very knowledgeable about bees. I wonder what Hank isn't knowledgeable about it. It's kind of frustrating sometimes. Well I stand in front of a camera and am paid to talk about science.
So even when I don't know about things someone has written a script and then I read the script and then I do know the thing. And we learned that against all odds the Orlando solar bears are still a thing. Yeah it's very exciting. I suggest all or landings get your butts to those games.
Sounds like a good time. All right. Go solar bears. Thank you for listening.
We'll be back again next week. You can send your questions to deerhankandjohn at gmail.com or visit us online. I'm at John Green on Twitter and Hank is at Hank Green. Yes.
Thank you to Nick Jenkins for editing this podcast. And as we say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome.