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Mar 4, 2026 37 min

443: A Top Podcast for the Elderly

from Dear Hank & John

Why do I have the desire to rebel against my parents? Why does pen on paper fade over time? Do we make new water? What is the scent of soaps and why do I want to eat it? How should I reveal that I can do the splits? Has there been any updates regarding Stars on Mars? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [email protected] Join us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn Produced for Hank and John Green by Complexly

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443: A Top Podcast for the Elderly

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Hey, so something worth knowing is a benefit for the nonprofit organization that makes Crash Course and SciShow Complexly. It's September 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Please join us. It's going to be incredible.

Friends have complexity like Mark Rober, Katie Max, Simone Yetch, and more will share inspiring talks about what makes them hopeful and join Hank Green on stage for fun, interactive discussions. Complexly has been creating free educational content like SciShow and PBSEons 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. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Oh, and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Yours, I prefer to think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and A.F.S. and Little John. I actually have recently started to rent out one of my toilets to a British soldier.

Well, you're a landlord. Yeah, but only for British soldiers, which is a real betrayal of my roots. I asked him and he said that he's a lieutenant. I like how he said it's a betrayal of your roots as if like your ancestors participated in the American Revolution.

We can't be providing quarter to British soldiers. That's like the main American thing. That is true. I mean, ostensibly, we also can't provide quarter to American soldiers.

Yeah, I know that's also a big deal. Shouldn't do that. It is in the Constitution. So you've got a legally lieutenanting.

Yeah, it's okay as long as it's not forcible. It's just a betrayal of my roots. I'm okay. We had an amazing project for Awesome.

I chose a British joke because during the project for Awesome, I was forced to speak in a British accent. And not just one, but many different British accents at random flowing into each other without control for over a half an hour. Yeah, it was pretty impressive from what I saw of it, but not in a good way. It was impressive the way that like, like me doing an Olympic ski jump would be impressive.

Like you would be impressed. Yeah, an impression would be made. You would see a guy die. I made impressions.

I thought you'd survive, but I bet your lower legs wouldn't. Based on my skiing results so far, which is that I got fairly badly hurt going 10 miles an hour down a green. I suspect that I would not do well with the Olympic ski jump. I give you a greater than 50-50 chance that you'd survive.

Well, let's go ahead and not find out which side of the coin flip I land on this particular time. Yes, for sure. Don't do it. But I did go off the ski jump of doing British accents live in front of Demi Adi Duivet, who is an amazing impersonationist, which was very embarrassing.

Yeah, but you did your best. And a lot, it's like karaoke. You just really have to commit to it. Whatever you're doing in life, you have to commit to the bit.

And the more embarrassed you feel the worse you are, because you just got to be totally committed. I was committed. I went hard. And all the British people in chat left.

They went to go to bed, which was probably the right call. It was late. It was a great project for us and we raised over $4.1 million for great charities like Save the Children and Partners and Health. Super proud of the whole team of people who work on the P4A every year.

I got sick on the last day and I'm just now recovering. So he's pushing through. He's been coughing during the pregame that we do, where we do a couple beers and then we make the podcast. We don't do beers because Hank can't drink.

I would do beers. It's 1pm on Wednesday. I'd have a beer, but Hank can't drink. So last night, I slept 15 hours, which I didn't know.

That's the way to do it. Congratulations. I was like a bear. I went to bed at 4.30 and I woke up at like 6.30.

Wow. Yeah, that's what you got to do sometimes. It's good for you when you're sick. Well, I feel a little bit better today.

I still feel kind of crappy, but I feel a little bit better. I'm ready to do the pod though. I'm excited to be with you. I'm excited to be with our beloved listeners.

Our Balaikid listeners maybe. Our Balaikid listeners for sure. And everybody, I know that we're out of date here, but everybody who showed up for the Project for Awesome, thank you so much. It was an absolute blast.

It was a really wonderful time and those last two hours where I showed up early by accident. Well, you're going to show up early from now on because that was a transformational two hours. We raised like $400,000 in two hours. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

It was crazy. And not from any big donors, just from thousands of people donating all at once. As a studier of the Project for Awesome, I've been there for a lot of them. That is very weird.

Yeah. No. This is our 19th Project for Awesome and we were pretty sure where we were going to land and we landed somewhere that the Project for Awesome has never been before, which is pretty exciting. It was really fun.

It was tiring. I wore a lot of wigs. It was great. But now, now we have to be professional podcasters again, because we have to provide America with its sleep, slash gym, slash dishes podcast, slash hit podcast for teens.

If only we could be a hit podcast for the elderly as well. I mean, what is it going to have to take? We talk about our aches and pains. You talk about our diseases and our medications.

You know, look, the ARP is in my inbox. They're here. Oh, I'm a member of the ARP. They'll go as low as you'll let them.

Yeah, no, you can join. It's like you just got to pay your membership fee. But I'm a member of ARP because it got me a discount on my phone that was worth more than the membership to the ARP. So I just joined and I look, I am 48.

I'm not that far away from retirement. I just retired from Complexly kind of. I don't get paid anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You aren't an owner.

I said this to Aaron. I was like, what if I retired and he said that would be bad. Oh, interesting. When I tell my kids, I might retire.

They're like, that would be great. Yeah. No. Yeah.

And I was like, why? And he was like, where would the money come from? And I'm like, oh boy, I got news for you. That's not what it's about.

No. Yeah. No. It all goes back to our hit episode of the future podcast.

Why does Hank Green want to be famous? But first, let's answer this question from Havaland who writes, dear John and Hank, I'm struggling a lot right now with morality, religion, personal beliefs and politics. It seems that every opinion my parents have on a particular stance, I seem to have the opposite. Subtiling by the way, as being a teenager is the worst thing that ever happened to my morality.

This is a podcast for teens, Hank. We're addressing teen questions. Wow. Wow.

That's a great subject line. I think this is because I'm getting older, but that itself doesn't fix the problem. How am I supposed to be myself if my parents disagree with everything that makes up myself? They still love me and that makes it even worse because I could tell them what I think, but they'll just discard it in the name of protecting me from influence.

I was always a good kid. I always did what they wanted. I always used to agree with them. So why do I have this unquenchable desire to rebel against them?

Teenagering is strange and I'm confused, Havaland. Wow. That is a remarkable amount of difficulty and also self-awareness. Yeah.

I was going to say, just you being aware of the fact that you're rebelling from your parents when you're a teenager is a huge amount of self-awareness. There's two potential things happening here. One is that it's completely normal. I remember my therapist being like, when I was 16, my therapist being like, you're rebelling against your parents and then when you're 20 or 21, you'll come back to them and it was completely right.

That is exactly what happened. I mean, I have this like a frame for understanding this period of life where cultures have to evolve. One of the things that you know, like that you want an evolutionary biology is that you don't want to rate of zero mutation. You don't want to rate of zero change.

You want some amount of not too much change. So you actually, the systems engineer ways to introduce change and to select four advantageous change. And that's wild. And I think that culture's do that too.

And I think that youth is about that. It's about testing boundaries because if we never do them, we never change, we never evolve and we need to and we need to evolve a lot. We need to change a lot right now because all of the systems are built for a world that no longer exists. Yeah.

So that's one thing. But the other thing is that maybe how the land is coming to a place in themselves that is a true place. For sure. Sometimes the distance you create between your parents is not just a matter of developmental appropriateness.

It's also because you are going to have different values from your parents in some important ways. And that's a hard thing. That distance being created is really difficult. If our parents have been more religious, your atheism would have been really, really challenging for them, for you, for everyone involved.

And that's a hard part of growing up. It's not necessarily a tragic part of growing up. I know it's hard, but when you say it's the worst thing that ever happened in my morality, it could also be one of the better things that happened to your morality because maybe you're coming into your own moral sense of the universe. And that's an important process for you.

Like the coolest thing about being a teenager to me is that you're asking those big questions about what it means to be a person and what we owe other people and what we owe ourselves. You're asking those questions about suffering and everything else separate from your parents for the first time. And good parents encourage that even if they land someplace that isn't exactly where you wish they'd land. Yeah.

I mean, the hard thing about this is nobody knows what's right. And your brain will tell you that you know, your brain will tell you that there's certainty. And when you're a child, you feel like your parents' version of reality is a certain reality. But all of us are struggling with the sense of our conception of the world being a defined reality that we think is real and then also the knowledge that it might not be and that we can pick and choose different ways of being and understanding things of having worldviews and having values.

We can grow. We have to grow. Like getting stuck with a certain worldview is bad. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest thing I'd say is like be open and curious. That's the biggest thing. This is the only thing that has brought me like freedom from the crushing weight of feeling like I am in a world that is unjust and immoral and like, you know, not feeling that way being like that.

That is the truth of the matter. And curiosity is the only thing that has provided me relief from that. And also data that makes it easier to understand how we ended up in that world and like it not being about evil, but it being about eight billion people all on the same planet trying to make life work for themselves and their family. Yeah.

And important ways things are more unjust than they used to be, but also important ways things are less unjust than they used to be, right? Like, yeah, whether it's educational opportunities for girls or malnutrition, those things are better than they were when we were in high school. What I would say is continue to be curious about where your perspectives are coming from and continue to be curious about where your parents' perspectives are coming from and continue to be curious about like all of the other people who are important to you to. Yeah, stay open.

That said, I will tell you, Babylon, that being a teenager was actually the worst thing for my morality. Yeah, it's so hard because there's no certainty anymore. Yeah, that's part of it. But part of it was that I just had a deep-seated urge to like blow up my world and everything in it.

And I don't know why, but like, I remember being on the like back porch of our house in Orlando and mom coming outside and saying, you can't smoke cigarettes on the back porch of my house. Yeah. And me like taking a drag at the cigarette and saying, what are you going to do? I had a backwards version of this where I read this like very sort of radical book and it was one of the first like nonfiction books I ever read.

Oh, I remember. And I gave everyone in the family remembers. I gave it to mom and dad and dad read it. And he looked to me in the eyes and he said, you don't believe this, do you?

Which is like, like, our dad is very understanding. Yeah, yeah, he makes space for people, but apparently he's not that much space. Cooking back and like, I still have that book. And I'm like, oh, wow, this book is designed to alienate you from culture and reality to like make you like lose faith in everything.

And you know, because that can be very, it can be a kind of appealing, you know, like the idea that everything good is actually bad and everything bad is even worse than you think. Yeah, it's usually appealing, especially when you're younger. And those ways of looking at the world have a ton of explanatory power and any relatively simple worldview with a ton of explanatory power is going to get some traction for sure. I have one more piece of advice, which is don't read the fountainhead.

Moving on to this question from it wasn't the fountainhead just for clarity. It's not the book that we're talking about with me. I know. I know.

I know. I don't want people to think that. Well, I mean, you know, the fountainhead is a very influential book in a lot of smart people's lives. And so I shouldn't be as, as I shouldn't be the way I am with it.

But I am that way, because I have a different worldview because my parents and those around me had different worldviews. And I'm a product of circumstance just like all of us moving on to this question from Isabelle. Dear John and Hank, why does Penn on paper fade over time? Why does anything fade over time?

I too shall fade Isabelle. Podcast for teens. And the elderly. The elderly have this on the mind.

Hank, they're watching as their old manuscripts fade away. They're watching as their lives themselves fade away. It's hard out there for an elderly person like Isabelle. Why isn't anybody writing that at tutorials on top podcasts for the elderly?

I don't know. I'm going to do it. And we're going to be number one. Yeah, I like it.

I'll take it. I'm going to create a media outlet designed entirely to create fake promo for myself. Like any good, famous person would do. Have you seen these Facebook pages that have millions of followers that just report not like fake news, but like fake, fake news?

Like that, for instance, I died. Oh, no. Facebook is a real no-go zone for me. They'll have an AI generated picture of me inside a coffin, where they'll be like Nicholas Cage dead at 61.

All the comments will be like Nicholas Cage isn't dead. And then some of the comments will be like, RIP. Yeah. And that's happening because it's not that hard to trick some people.

No, yeah. But why does Penn on paper fade over time? I mean, it's so like the pen part of the ink, the ink, the stuff that has color in it. There's other other pieces of the ink to make it like flow and stuff.

But the part that's colored, it's a molecule and it is a color for God knows why. But it is only a color because of its specific shape and the way that the molecules are arranged. I'm never going to understand. I think I may have given up understanding why things are the colors they are.

It's because they like absorb some wavelengths and reflect. But why? I'm like, I, I, quantum effects, maybe. Anyway, the photons go in there.

Some of them get absorbed. Some of them get reflected. And that's why it has a color. But some of them are getting absorbed.

And when they get absorbed, that actually jiggles the molecules around a little bit. And over time, that can change their shape. And it can break them apart. And those new molecules that are different shapes are broken apart don't have color anymore.

And this won't happen if you keep them out of the light. So this is photo degradation where it's really the more light is hitting it is what's degrading it. So the answer is light is about the visible reminder of the invisible light. This is why if you have a nice painting, like I've got a painting right now, and it's got some light on it.

I'm not going to lie. And if that painting were the Mona Lisa, people would be freaking out right now. People would be furious with me and with good reason. Because you've got to protect, you've got to get the light just right.

This is something museum curators do. Like something Sarah did when she worked at a museum all the time was like figuring out the right light so that you can see the art, but that you're not harming the art. Because you don't want to jiggle those molecules. They're jiggle those molecules with light.

Because we're just a bunch of particles and waves. That's all of it. That's everything that we're doing. Now that I have a solution to the problem of consciousness, just for clarity.

Why is there light? What do you mean? Just what I said? We don't know John.

Really? Well, I mean, we know why like we know why photons are produced. Why? So there are atoms, you know, about them, they have electrons.

When energy comes into electrons, which are sort of like wobbling around the nucleus. Those electrons gain energy. That might be a number of different ways to this happens. And they will like go up to a higher state of energy.

And when they drop back down, they have to release that energy and they release it as photons. Now, deeper than that, there's probably like one or two levels down that a particle physicist or quantum physicist could tell you. But another level after that, it's really like, oh, because that's the way the universe is structured. And we don't totally know why the rules are the way that they are.

And we don't even totally know why there is matter in the first place. Right. There is only matter because the rules are the way they are. But the photons don't have mass, right?

They do not have mass. So they're not matter. There's something else. That's right.

Light is not matter. It's energy. It's just energy. I'm just going to stick with the TSLA quote about how it's the visible reminder, the invisible light move on from there.

This question comes from Eileen, who says, Dear John and Hank, I know about the water cycle. I even taught a rudimentary version to kindergartners for years. But here's the question that's been bothering me. Do we make new water?

Or is the water we have just a really huge closed system? Really, I do, Eileen. Again, we could get into complexities here. But no, we mostly don't make new water.

Like, I'm going to even take out mostly. I'm qualifying here because there are like weird situations in which water gets made. But no, it's a pretty close loop. Okay.

So like, let me ask you a question, though. If a really icy meteor were to hit Earth, would it increase the amount of water? Yeah. So new water comes in in that way.

And it's a fair amount. And water also exits when water in the atmosphere can get broken apart again by photons or energy particles from the sun. And they can get broken apart. And I think that can last.

So like the hydrogen will float away and even get like knocked into space. The oxygen, I don't think does get knocked into space because it's too heavy. So we can lose it that way. There's also like a bunch of, so there's a bunch of water on Earth that's not part of the water cycle because it's bound up in rocks in the mantle.

And we think that there are some ways for that water to get out sometimes. And that that might be part of how on long-term geological scales, like the history of the Earth scales, we think that that might be an important contributor to the amount of water that I was in the system. But the amount of water in the system is pretty stable. Like Jesus lived in a world where there's a pretty similar amount of water to where I live.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you like grabbed a handful of water, almost, I would wager that like 99 plus percent of that water, those molecules were water molecules when Jesus was around. Wow.

So what you're saying is that I was baptized with the same water that Jesus was baptized with. You were 100 percent like when you got baptized. Some of those molecules were in the water that baptized Jesus. All right.

Can I go back further than that? Did a dinosaur drink my water? Oh, yeah. So the further back you go, the more true it is.

Like you and I probably weren't baptized in the same water because it didn't have time to spread out. So we were both, I think, baptized in the same church, which maybe would more likely. But the more time, the more space you give it, the more the water has time to mix up. It's like how everybody is descended from Genghis Khan.

Yeah. I don't think that everybody is. But like you go back further than Genghis Khan and it's like, yeah, everybody's not from anybody who has to send it's still. When I drink dinosaur water, does that mean that the dinosaurs are sort of still alive inside me?

No. But I am the result of their chemistry. You do have, so it's not the water, but you do have a common ancestor with dinosaurs. And so in that way, the dinosaurs are still alive part of you.

Though that common ancestor was not a dinosaur. Okay. So the dinosaurs are still with us in a matter of speaking. No, the dinosaurs are still with us.

Absolutely. The thing about birds, because of all the birds, is that like they are still here. Everybody treats this like a fun little science fact, but they are dinosaurs. Like the the Therapod dinosaurs are still around and there's lots of them.

And they're like, there's like lots of them. They're like, I think there are more of them than there are mammals. Really? I think so.

And these are birds? Yes. There are significantly more species of bird species than mammal species and then individuals also. There are more.

I mean, there might be more chickens. There might be more like Therapod chickens than there are humans in America. Yeah, there are a lot of chickens. I mean, no doubt.

Not necessarily a good gig. Oh my God. At any given point, there are well over 1.5 billion chickens in America. Wow.

I mean, I don't know about you Hank, but I just saluted the flag. Yeah. Do you know, like, it wasn't like Hoover before he crashed the entire economy and everything got destroyed. It was a little bit of a oversimplification, but yeah, what was it slogan?

I think it was like something and a chicken in every pot. And we did get that. Yeah. No.

I mean, if anything right now, we got five chickens for every pot. We got so many chickens per pot. There are more chickens than pots. I just read a book that was a little more generous to Hoover than previous books I've read about the Great Depression.

It seems like, I mean, two facts about the World Bank. Yeah. One, the world runs like on the confidence that the world will continue to run. And two, at any given moment, we are way, way, way too confident.

And when we become too too confident, the confidence fails to deliver and there's a big crash. And then we lose all our confidence and it takes like a decade to regain it. Yikes. I'm not ready for that.

It happened in 2008. You lived through it. Yeah. I definitely like really let's make it so that it happens every 80 years.

Oh, yeah. I'm a big believer not having two once in a lifetime events occur inside of a single lifetime because otherwise it undermines the idea of a lifetime. Okay. It drives me crazy when they're like, oh, we had 600 year floods this the last 100 years.

No, we didn't. We had one. We had 100 year floods. You did your math wrong somehow.

We had five what used to be 100 year floods, but things changed. Okay. Yeah. So I've already lived through one once in a lifetime financial crisis.

If there's another one, I throw out the whole concept of once in a lifetime. Which reminds me of this podcast is brought to you by once in a lifetime events. Once in a lifetime events. Sometimes they should not happen once in a lifetime.

Yeah. Today's podcast is of course also brought to you by your teenage morality, your teenage morality, information. This podcast also brought to you by Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover.

Apparently not as bad as you think. Well, no, I want to be clear. That I'm not coming down to Herbert Hoover. And of course today's podcast is brought to you by light.

Light. It exists. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify. There are a lot of things that stand between I have an idea and this is an idea that actually exists in the world and people are buying things from me.

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This episode of Deer 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?

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It comes from Haley who asks deerhankajan, what is the scent of soaps like Irish spring and palmaulive and how do they achieve it? The only word I could describe it is fresh but that's not really a scent. Also, why do I want to eat it so badly? Oh that makes one of us.

I got soap but in my mouth when I was a child. Oh did you? Not by my parents but by my best friend's parents. Wow.

When I first. That's awful brave. I know yeah that's definitely not a thing I would do. No.

Like come home from a sleepover and be like oh yeah I did slightly abuse your kid last night. I will totally discipline a child that is not mine. I'm not afraid to tell them that they need to behave more different. Yeah tell them with words but not with snakes.

Yeah when I think of discipline I do not think of causing them physical harm. Yeah so anyway I don't remember liking that taste at all actually. Yeah I remember being like oh man I really shouldn't use the SH word in front of that guy. Boy yeah.

Did you tell mom about this? I don't remember. John there there is a ton of stuff that goes into soap to give it those smells. There's maybe one called a linoleolol or linoleol.

Oh god how would you even say that? You're doing a great job just keep trying. It's L-I-N-A-L-O-L. Let me just like linoleol.

Linoleol. Linoleol but usually what these it's like linoleolol or something like that but I don't know. At any rate that's what they put in it. The way that they describe this is fresh which is so weird to me because like what does that mean?

I think that what it means is it smells like fresh produce or specifically fresh citrus. Yes so like if you walk into the part of the grocery store where the citrus is you will get this smell. I think that there's definitely a citrus element but that doesn't cover the entire spectrum of Irish Spring. Irish Spring also has some spring forest in it.

Yes so that's a thing called hexalcinimal and that has like a green leafy smell. That is also in the Irish Spring and that probably also adds to the freshness of what they call this synthetic ozonix. So it smells like the ozones that are produced by life but they're synthetic. Interesting.

Yeah so that's like kind of the freshness is. As you know Hank I've been trying to work with Sunbase and Soak to recreate the smell of my childhood dorm room. My high school roommate had a special deodorizer that we use to mask the smell of cigarettes and it's the best smell I've ever encountered and I would like it to be a Sunbase and Soak smell. Sunbase and Soak has all these like fancy nice you know classy smells, nice citruses, nice christmasy smells, whatever whatever.

I wanted to smell like my high school dorm room. Could you put a little bit of burnt tobacco in there? No no minus the tobacco out please. I mean unburnt tobacco has a lovely smell.

It does. It does. But yeah the uh there is neither here nor there. I don't know what you're talking about that's not my experience.

Oh thank god I quit a long time ago. Yeah all right Hank before we get to the all important news from Mars and AFC Womblin we've got to answer this question from Miriam who writes Dear John and Hank inspired in part by the fiddle player that wrote to this podcast years ago I decided not to tell my mom that I've been trying to wear the splits because I thought it would be funny to just suddenly be able to do that. I'm very nearly there and now I'm wondering how can I make the reveal any ideas I'd do something where I can warm up first committing to the splits Miriam. I've got it's easy it's easy.

Yeah you're gonna you're gonna be doing a you're gonna be doing a funny dance in your socks in your awesome socks go up socks on your on on some slippery floor on the tile on the wood on the bonoleum and you're doing a dance and then for your mom and then you're gonna act like you fell. Yes and you're gonna be a slits and then you're gonna go ha-zah I don't know if you're gonna go ha-zah. The other thing I was thinking is maybe you could do a uh you could go to your mom and say like uh what's that song it's like hello my baby hello my your mom says darling and you're like what's the end there and she's like hello my ragtime and then you're doing a split. It's good stuff Miriam I really need an update I need an update of your mom's dooley shocked when you do the splits.

Can we do another question that is inspired by an old episode of Dear Hank and John? Sure of course this is from Eliza and this is amazing and I I can't believe that we have never gone deep into it. Dear Hank and John over the summer I've been listening to old back catalog during and John episodes of my parents thank you for all the joy that you guys have brought. The family episode 371 from May of 2023 is a banger you spend the first half discussing the meaning of life in the second half uh pitching a horror film called 44 Olympic sized swimming pools full of mosquitoes.

Oh god. The Mars news from that episode comes in the form of an announcement of a new reality tv show called stars on Mars. I have completely forgotten about this where celebrities vote each other off of a fake Mars since this was the last regular show before a six month break there's never been an update for how stars on Mars fared and I would love to know if there has been any notable news on this subject you wanted to share Martian pumpkins in space penguins Eliza. Hank while you had cancer what happened to stars on Mars.

The whole thing happened John stars on Mars happened they did it they made stars on Mars and it was it was it was it was completely and totally a 12 episode series that was made for one season and then never again. Well they flew with these celebrities to Cooper P.D. Australia and each cycle the group elected a base commander who would assign tasks to complete around the compound and the base commander would not be able to be like voted off and the base man also selected another celebrity to be the mission specialist who helped oversee stuff and and and some names of the people on this show we have Bruce Willis's daughter Toulula Willis we had the guy who played McLovin Ronda Rousey we have Lance Armstrong's on the show Andy Richter yeah we started with legitimate celebrities some people I've never heard of like Cat Cora who was on Iron Chef. Oh she was a big star there's also a real housewife of Atlanta there's several professional sports players like uh Marshawn Lynch.

What is wrong with with Lance Armstrong that he wanted to do this despite being a wealthy person. I am not sure I am not sure we also had Adam Rippen the Olympic figure skater was on it. Who won he was the winner. He won Adam Rippen won yes McLovin was voted out on episode one.

John you know how like Jenny Nicholson will do like a four hour long YouTube video about that I mean I I really want to be that guy so bad right now I want to watch this and I want to tell the whole story of the whole thing. I bet you could get Lance Armstrong to co-host it. That guy seems willing to do anything. I mean I bet I could get Adam Rippen to do it.

Yeah oh man. This is great this is gold man. Stars of real housewives of Atlanta I mean everybody. Everybody.

I can't believe Marshall and Lynch did this. Marshall and Lynch also a person with adequate funds. Probably doing okay. Wow yeah it's already.

It's not how Mars had happened to Lula also. Willis did not last long. No Richard Sherman great corner back not apparently a great Marshall. He was out in the third episode and then who is our fourth episode loss.

It says Tom Schwarp from Vanderpump Rules. One of the only people on this list who does not have a wick to be the FH brutal brutal hard out there for Tom. So Hank it's now time for the all-in-fort news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon lost to the top top of the table Cardiff yesterday they lost 4-1 which if anything was a score line that flattered them but that's not the kind of game that's going to define our season.

The kind of game that's going to define our season is beating Reading 3-2 and tying with Barnsley 3-3. So in this Barnsley game we went down 2-0 after 13 minutes and I don't think AFC Wimbledon have come back from 2-0 down in like seven years but we did. We came back and we were actually ahead 3-2 but then Barnsley scored in the 82nd minute tying the game and thereby we just got one point out of that. We're currently six points clear of relegation.

There's five teams between us in relegation and so I don't know I'm not brimming with confidence but we're doing whatever there is. Just to remember that there's a reason why those teams down there are down there. Part of the reason they're down there and not lower is because they tend to beat us but yes that's true. There's a reason those teams are down there and look hope is the thing with feathers that purchase in the soul and sings the tune without the words and there's every reason to believe that here in the last 15-16 games of the season we can pick up the four or five wins we will need in order to survive.

Well John and Mars News we're still having Mars News that's Moon News because that's our step you know we're going to go one step at a time yes and first we'll be on the moon. So as we are recording this so not knows what happens but NASA is carrying out its second wet dress. Is that like a dress rehearsal? It is.

It's called a wet dress? Yeah so they're actually putting fuel into the tanks so that's a way. I'm not here to tell NASA scientists much but I am here to tell them to rename the wet dress. I think that they more commonly call it the wet dress rehearsal.

It doesn't matter that's not any better. Okay well the so the first one got cut short because there was a leak in the liquid hydrogen tank. That's no good. He's gonna have a leak in liquid hydrogen lot of pressure and very small molecules that you're dealing with.

They've also sealed up some of the problematic parts and they did a partial fill that goes well Artemis 2 should launch as soon as March 6th and I'm ready John I've got a YouTube video all queued up for it actually. Wow good well it'd be great to shoot around the moon again. It's been a while since we saw the back of the moon as people. Yeah for sure.

It's been a long time for this species. I should get one of those astronauts on to your hand and John. You should. I'll take a week off.

But instead John we've got Adam Rippon he's joining us right now. What was it like to be a star Mars? What did you get? Did you get a Mars?

Did you get a promise from Elon Musk that he was gonna let you be one of the first Martians? God what do you get? Do you think the person who gets voted off early is actually the one who like most wins because it's like you get your appearance. I think he'll get paid by the week.

Really? You must get like a bonus for showing up in the first place. I wonder what the prize was. Yeah what did they get?

A mission patch called Brightest Star. There was no monetary prize for winning the reality competition. They were paid for their participation. The final challenge involved constructing a satellite tower to broadcast a message to Earth.

Wow. Oh my god. The brightest star in the universe. Winning stars on Mars was amazing but the real prize was all the incredible friends I made.

Not being cheesy. Just let me be earnest on Instagram for once. It says Adam Rippon a hundred and twenty nine weeks ago. I'm so grateful for all the time I got to spend filming this show.

Just imagine that Adam is here. I laughed. I cried. I won.

Thank you to everyone who put so much work and made this crazy show of reality. The cast the crew. Well last but not least I love you William Shatner. He got a patch.

I mean ultimately you do that kind of thing for the experience of doing it. Right? It's gotta be. And you might say yes to that.

I wouldn't be shocked if you said yes to that. Not right now but like there's a version of me. Yeah for sure. There was a time when I like like being on Wipeout was a dream.

Oh god. Hank Green wanting to be famous. A subject for a future podcast. I think Wipeout is the path of the thing.

Thank you for plotting with me. Thank you to everybody for listening. You can email us your questions at hankandjohnajemail.com. This podcast is edited by Ben Sword out.

It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Manish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Schott. Well it's produced by Rosie on a Hall's Row Host in Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Debukie Charkar party. The music you're hearing now and it begins the podcast is by the great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

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This episode is 37 minutes long.

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This episode was published on March 4, 2026.

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