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 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! Where's that for the Dear John and Hank?
It's a comedy podcast for me and my brother John. That's that other guy. We answer your questions, give you two B's advice and bring you all the weeks news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Hey John, how you doing?
I'm doing well Hank, how are you? I'm good. I have coffee which is probably a little bit dangerous but I wanted to bring my A game so I decided to do this on stimulants. I do feel like you're a person who by and large does not need a ton of caffeine to get going.
No, well I mean I'll be honest with you and this is a difficult thing now that my life has changed. The trick that I used for years to be really like sort of like up and get them and go and like really energetic kind of person was I would sleep a lot. I would sleep nine hours a night minimum. It's smart.
And then I'd get up and I'd be like ready to take on the world. Like everything's like Hank's never tired and I'm like that's because I'm asleep most of the time. Yep, yep that is one of the benefits of not having a child. Yes it is not it is no longer my life though I do find I have a very wonderful ability to is one of the great privileges in my life that I can set my own schedule and so I've tried I've tried to since Petoni did leave his end did not schedule anything before 11 and that allows me to still sleep a fair amount it's just not all at one go.
Yeah I haven't uh I don't think I've slept like eight hours in a row more than like 10 or 20 nights a year since my kids were born. Yeah that seems like it's going to be the case. Um and it's almost I remember I was talking to today who who helps run DFTBA and he was going out to VidCon and he has two young children and it was like it's going to be really intense you're going to be on all day and he was like am I going to get to sleep eight uninterrupted hours because if so this is going to be a vacation like I have never had before and I was like you will you will get to do that so have a really great time having the most intense weekend of my life that will to you seem like a great day off. I think would you like a short poem for today?
Do it for me brother. All right Hank this poem comes from Ogden National. It's very very short indeed it's just a couplet it's called The Fly. The Lord in his wisdom made the fly and then forgot to tell us why.
I love it I love a good Ogden Nash bomb. Nothing like Lightverse it's the most unappreciated kind of verse we've got plenty of heavy verse these days but I like a good light verse. Maybe you should get into that business John where's all your light verse? Unfortunately I'm not good at I don't have an ear for poetry like I can't uh I can't hear the rhythm of it in my head very well but um I am trying to write a book of another kind.
Yeah me too hopefully I'll get that done at some point. Oh god it's hard. It is hard um but among the things that could be difficult in our lives it is a nice one to have uh how hard writing is. So yeah you know what's the dumbest thing about writing I found is that like literally anything can happen you're just making stuff up and you gotta make up the best one of all of the infinite number of things that could happen.
So yeah I don't really buy into the argument that um you know like people who suffer from mental illnesses have like secret talents or whatever you know how that's like a commonly romanticized uh thing about mental illnesses that like oh sure yeah well but if Carrie Mathis and just goes offer meds she'll catch the terrorists and homeland or whatever. I don't really buy that argument but I will say that one of the benefits to my obsessive thought spiraling uh one of the very few benefits is that it allows me to cycle very quickly through all the things that might happen in a fictional situation and to choose from among them the most devastating. So I have found that helpful in my writing career although again it's only really useful when I am well enough to be able to write in the first place. Indeed um well now let's use that as a jumping off point for our first questions sure all right this question is from Katie who asks Dear Hank and John it's gonna be a quick one.
My longtime partner and I are getting married in October and clearly the first thing I had to do was put together the music for the reception. I have two questions how do I convince him to let me put pen-pineapple apple pen on our wedding playlist and two any other song recommendations? Well Katie first I don't have an answer for number two but for number one don't do that. What is pen-pineapple apple pen?
Really? Really? Oh you're so you're so as they say out of the loop. Okay we're gonna pause the podcast.
We're gonna just hit the pause button on the podcast. I'm gonna listen to this song on YouTube and then we're gonna get started on the podcast again and then I will come back to you momentarily with my review of the song. Hold on. Okay.
I have now watched this 51 second video pen-pineapple apple pen which inexplicably has 182 million views on YouTube and I'm just going to tell you Katie right now as memes go that one is not going to last. You know what it's gonna be like? It's gonna be like if you brought Ikea monkey to your wedding it's just not gonna hold up as a meme. Yeah yeah you just have to consider I mean do you want your I mean I guess maybe you want your wedding to be a snapshot of that moment in time but to me it should be more than that it should go deeper than that it should be a try to have it be a more of a timeless experience and but I mean looking back I don't know what what we played at our wedding I know that the songs that we sort of like started off with were both classic songs that had been around and had displayed their longevity.
I don't have it be like the song that you dance with your dad to. Never mind. Definitely do that. What was the first song you had with with Catherine?
Do you remember what your first song was? What your first dance song? Oh god oh god I want to say it's nothing matters when we're dancing but I think that's wrong and I think that it was some it was like walking after midnight or some Patsy Klein song and I feel real bad that I can't remember right now. Is nothing matters when we're dancing is that a magnetic field song?
I love that song. Yes. Oh god that's such a beautiful song. That whole album this is a little personal but whatever we're getting into personal stuff that album 69 Love Songs volume one was playing the first time Sarah and I made out so I have extremely fond memories of all the songs on that album.
Interesting. Ours a lead dance to this Ryan Adams song I don't remember the name of it but I know some of the lyrics so I'm going to Google it now I miss my family and I miss Kentucky being some of the lyrics. The song is called O my Sweet Carolina by Ryan Adams. We almost danced to a beautiful song by old Crow Medicine show but then we realized that it was about a brother and a sister and so it didn't seem right.
Ah yes there's a there's a similar thing to that the music that we used to start off Brother Could 2.0 every episode of Brother Could 2.0 ever just called Brothers on a Hotel Pit which I was like I just like looked literally on like Lime Wire the Napster substitute and I just typed in Brothers and I looked at all the songs that were brothers in them and I was just and now I've listened to the words of that song and I'm like wow that's not super appropriate to our to be grateful we should be grateful to Bright Eyes is that the name of the band? No it's the Postal Service. We should pause to be grateful to the Postal Service for well both for the heroic job they've done delivering the mail here there and everywhere for the last 192 years but also for never suing us and forcing us to take down every single brotherhood 2.0 video entirely because of that like eight note jingle. Yep that would have been really bad for us and quite mean.
Thank you Postal Service we appreciate that and also everybody who works at the Postal Service for delivering many packages mostly my books but also other things to people all around the United States. Hank I have another thing to ask you which was do you remember what your first dance was with Mom because I had a great one. Yeah no I don't I don't I feel bad but I know what your man mom is gonna listen to this she's gonna be devastated. My first dance with Mom was to the song Mama Tried by Merle Haggard which the chorus of which is I turned 21 in prison serving life without parole no one could turn me right but Mama Tried.
Mama Tried. Alright well I feel like we haven't answered Katie's question but I also don't know that I not that I don't care about Katie it's just that I think Katie can make her own call here so if you want to go on the next question sure Hank this question comes from Aaron who asks Dear John and Hank I have just been endorsed for the skill Science on LinkedIn by a person who I am sure I do not know should I endorse them for a skill? Thanks. Oh yeah definitely Aaron you should definitely do I like that you can be endorsed in science.
Yeah science is a big skill. Pretty good with Microsoft Word of course I'm science you know I'm great at that. Of course I've been endorsed by Science on LinkedIn so hire me now. Yeah I mean what can you do anything can you just say whatever or is there like a specific like a drop down list because it feels like if you can endorse somebody in science you can endorse them in anything.
See I feel like the right thing to do in this situation is to endorse this stranger in the skill of endorsing because it's the one thing that you know they're great at. Yeah yeah yeah yeah that you should you should I agree with that. What about like something really esoteric like like penguin dissection like just a really good yeah really good at like autopsies on penguins like that's that's what boy I've seen this person do a lot of autopsies on penguins and he always gets to the bottom of the cause of death for that penguin. By the way it may be obvious to people who have used LinkedIn ever once that Hank and I haven't ever once used LinkedIn.
We're not totally sure what LinkedIn is like we've seen it on Google Search Results of course when like looking up old friends from high school or whatever but we've never like been to it as a website. I actually I have and I go to LinkedIn and I have a LinkedIn profile and people send me messages and I think that sometimes they even pay LinkedIn to send me a message and I look at them about once every year and I always feel really bad because it's sometimes it's people that are like perfectly like good questions or are interested in working with one of my various enterprises and but eight months will have passed and I'll be like it's probably not worth being right back to them now. You know Hank what I like most about your LinkedIn profile and I'm on it right now is that your job title is Younger Brother. Yeah that's my job title at Vlogmas.
You say that for the last 10 years in one month you have been the younger brother on Vlogbrothers and you also call yourself a creator which is an interesting job title and host. Now see I would not if I was giving you a job title it would not be creator and host of anything. I would give you the job title CEO and Chief Innovation Officer. I feel like that's a very LinkedIn job title.
Sure yeah. I would make you the Chief Innovation Officer of SciShow and the CEO of Complexly Productions. Yeah well I guess I probably haven't changed it since Complexly started existing have I? Yeah haven't.
Well you should have me write your LinkedIn profile. It's my gift. You are. It's the thing that I'm best at in the world.
Just kidding they won't even let me view your whole profile because I don't have a profile of my own and they say I can set one up for free but I'm not I just I take it I have enjoyed so much not having a LinkedIn having there be one social network where I do not network. Alright Hank let me follow another question. Alright thank you for ending the part where we make fun of my LinkedIn profile. It is a little bit of a terrible LinkedIn profile but you're a good person.
Okay thank you very much I'm glad to hear. John I have a question from Tyler that is important to my life and so I have to ask it hopefully you will have advice for both of us. Dear Hank and John I recently got a haircut and I found myself in a dilemma. When the hairdresser asks how would you like your haircut?
I have no idea what to say so I usually respond. Short obviously this does not help. Fortunately this doesn't usually prevent me from getting a good haircut because I've been seeing the same person for many years. However I'm going off to college soon and I will have to face this question in an unfamiliar barbershop and you do be as if I somewhat to say in this situation it's greatly appreciated to be a Tyler.
Help John help me because I have the same problem. They're like what do you want to look like and I'm like hair. The key Tyler is not moving like the mistake that you've made everything you've done is flog with something at this point where you chose to leave home for college. I guess like what I would do in that situation I would probably try to offer my hometown barber incredible incentives to relocate with me to college or alternately I would just try to make sure I have four or five trips home per year so that I can continue to get my haircut at the same place and just say do exactly what you usually do but maybe slightly shorter so that I can buy an extra week of this haircut.
I feel like I'm a terrible person to answer this question since I have had the same hairdresser for years and he is wonderful and a genius and when I didn't have him the only thing that I could say was that my hair is thicker than you suspect it will be. Yeah they always say that to me as well. We have green hair jeans they're always like wow look at all this hair and I'm like I don't know how to feel about that. They say that to me less these days.
So Catherine does the thing where she's going for a particular look and she's seen somebody new or she's doing a new haircut she'll get a bunch of pictures she'll put them on her phone or she'll print them out even and bring them with her. I just can't bring myself to do that to like print out a picture of David Beckham and be like make me look like David Beckham. It just feels wrong it feels like in violation of some contract I've signed with society for some reason. Yeah I mean it's not wrong but I also like to empower hairstylists that I work with.
They know hair much better than I do so I want to acknowledge that while it is my head of hair they are also the expert in the subject and I'm kind of like trusting them in this deal and so I want them to mostly feel like they can do whatever they want. But then to be fair if I don't like what they do I will never go back to them. Right I have this problem where I wait too long to make my hair appointments and so when I call the barbershop they're like who would you like to see and I'm like Thursday whoever is available Thursday. So I I've seen pretty much everyone at the barbershop that I go to and there's like 13 of them.
So I really need to center in on somebody but and I have several that I like quite a lot but none of them are available when I want them to be. Which I only work with David. I think the answer here is clearly to import your hairstylist to your college town through whatever means is necessary. Let's move on to another question.
This one comes from Amina who writes Dear John and Hank I am a 14 foot tall octopus with three heads. Hank it is the question we have been waiting for all this time. Oh thank goodness the space alien. Just tell us what to do.
We've made a hash of this Amina. We've done a terrible terrible job with our planet. We've made very marginal progress and at great cost to biodiversity. Please just come and take us over and make us better.
Yes we need a couple of things from you. We need we need flying cars and we need you to just tell us what to do. Just a cheap sustainable energy source a better political system. Like explain to us like what should we do about the electoral college.
Yeah no we just we need your unique authority and superiority. Okay go on with the question. I am ready to give my world over to a sentient 14 foot tall octopus with three heads which I think says a lot about the situation in which we find ourselves saying. But unfortunately the question goes on no I'm not.
Dang it. Sometimes it feels that way because of the way people treat or look at me. You see I'm a young Muslim woman of color who wears the hijab and I'm currently studying in a very male and white dominated subject at a university. As a result I have to deal with racism and presumptuous comments about my faith and ethnic identity.
I know that you guys say that we should imagine other people complexly but when I try to get a deeper understanding of the people who misjudge and stereotype me I find myself excusing their actions thinking things like well he might be saying offensive stuff now but he's a good person deep down maybe he volunteers for charities on the weekends and helps old ladies across the street. And this leads me to wondering if maybe the stuff being said to me is my own fault which I know rationally it's not. My question is essentially this. Is it always a good idea to imagine other people complexly especially when they refuse to do the same to you and when doing so may harm your own perception of yourself.
I thought this was a really interesting question. Now I have to say personally yeah I don't think that imagining other people complexly means forgiving their failures to see you as a full and complete human. It only means trying to see them as a full and complete human. So it doesn't mean saying oh they're a good person deep down or that other things that they've done might excuse their failure to imagine you complexly.
So I think that's where the logic break has to be where you have to say this is not okay but at the same time that doesn't mean that this person is merely evil. Yeah the thing that happens is when you do this you start to be less angry at them and that can feel like maybe you still have to create an explanation for why this thing is happening and if the explanation that you then create because you're less angry at them then turns inward upon you then that is not it's a really difficult thing to try and figure out the difference between like understanding someone and like forgiving them or or excusing them I guess forgiving is different from excusing. So the difference between understanding and excusing I think is really important and they can seem like the same thing and if you are in a way excusing them then you if you're trying to find another another place to put the blame and you put it on yourself then that's obviously like the wrong way to go. It is really exhausting in practice to have people make assumptions about you to have people see you as less than fully human and really it's really difficult to figure out a way through that when it's part of your daily life and I don't want to minimize that and I also know that Hank and I come at this from a very specific and you know very deeply advantaged point of view but I do think that ultimately if yeah I think it's really important like Hank said to is there well I guess more I would just leave this as an open question is there a way to understand without excusing not a rhetorical question genuine question that I don't know the answer to.
Yeah yeah I mean because understanding is so so vital to the progress of our species and but also so is holding people accountable for them taking actions that hurt other people. So we need both of those things and like in the fact that it falls upon the people who are being hurt to figure that out isn't unfair but it does. It should not solely fall upon them but and I do my best to not allow it to solely fall upon them and to think about that as a person who doesn't experience that but it's always going to largely fall on those shoulders. Hank there's another question I want to ask it's from Val.
Val's house caught fire this week leaving that mofo charasar did it is what Val said so. That's a direct quote just to be clear like we're not we're not making fun of this situation. The beginning of Val's email is my house caught fire this week leaving that mofo charasar did. Okay but in all seriousness everyone including my two kids and my husband and our three cats are safe aside from a few burns on my husband's arm that's terrifying however we lost three rooms of our house also my husband and our musicians and a band together we lost our recording and PA equipment along with some very sentimental items um and our daughter's skylinders and pokemon cards the list could of course go on needless to say the most important thing is that everyone is safe we have very good insurance that is taking care of our needs replacing everything and even putting us in temporary housing until the repairs are finished however friends and family and acquaintances keep offering to donate money.
I suppose that we could use it for deductibles and other expenses but since our insurance is taking such good care of us I feel guilty taking it. I've been telling people to donate to the Red Cross instead but still it ends up in my paypal though I'm extremely grateful for such great people in our lives and really just for being alive another day how can I move past the guilt I feel for taking money from people. I realize that they want to help and it's the only way that they know how but I just feel like there are so many people suffering worse than we are. Oh my god it's burning Val thanks for reminding us Val that it is indeed burning.
Yeah uh yeah make sure that this is a good time hank and I like to do this on a regular basis make sure right now today that the smoke detectors in your house work because that could actually save your life just do it just make sure that your smoke detectors work because that uh can save your life. Okay that aside uh I think Val has to accept the money in this situation don't you? I do and Val can do whatever Val wants to do with it. Val can give that money to charity.
Val can take that money and buy better PA equipment than they had before and invest in their business. Right yeah this is something I struggle with a little bit in my own life as well but when people want to give you a gift accept the gift it's good to accept the gift because I think if a gift is really freely given people want you to accept it and they'll be grateful to you for accepting it and if you end up donating that money to charity if you end up you know spending that money on Skylanders and Pokemon whatever you end up doing with it that's that's your call but to me the accepting of a gift well sometimes very difficult and awkward and uncomfortable is is a way of acknowledging and honoring a gift freely given and is worth doing. Yeah and there's a certain amount of uh watching this happen to someone else makes us want to help almost so that we know that we will be helped ourselves win and if it does happen to us. Right.
And you know that is part of how society functions and it's not a part that like gets I think recognized by uh the you know a lot of the uh a lot of the structures of our society but it you know in the best cases its house society can function because communities are strong and you know when communities are strong and when there is you know enough to go around which is the best case scenario. Um and uh and so I think that it's it's almost it's almost a part of a community being itself is is having those moments where things go wrong for people in the community and everybody reaches out to help and uh and that's how you know you're part of a community. Yeah so just pay it forward Val. Uh when your neighbor's house burns down um right you know put some money in their PayPal.
Seriously though I hope your neighbor's house doesn't burn down this is a one time day. Yeah everybody don't don't have to check on make sure that you didn't leave the cookies in the oven because they could catch on fire. I have another question John you ready for that? Um you don't know I was just thinking about Hank.
Okay yep. Uh I was just thinking about how you know when Snickers sent me those 378 Snickers bars they probably just did it as a as a gift that they wanted me to freely receive but I felt so bad about getting the gift that I've um you know turned it into a tremendous amount of marketing for them that probably generated way more than 378 Snickers bars worth of sales and in a way like I haven't been following my own advice so I just want to say to every candy company in the world um that next time you send me 378 of something I will not be mentioning on this podcast. I will enjoy that candy and or money and or anything else you want to send me as long as it's 378 of something I'm going to enjoy that in private gratefully a gift freely given and freely received. Now John I have to tell you I've done a little bit of work in corporate marketing and uh they know when they give you a gift that they are uh have a chance of receiving it back and that's the only reason they do it.
Well Hank uh with that note it's all the s- it's all the subtle manipulation uh and and uh and I watch it happen and watch people be subtly manipulated and be like well I won't be affected by this and then I watch them be affected by it and that's how it all works. Oh I want to be very clear that I've been deeply affected by the generosity of my friends at the Mars company um yeah there's no getting around it it's made a huge difference in my life which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Snickers. Snickers. Delicious.
Nutritious. It's just as good as an energy bar anything else that you could eat uh except that it's uh slightly less expensive than a Cliff Bar Snickers. My guest is also brought to you by the social network work site Linkedin. Linkedin.
We link you in I think it's their tagline. I mean if it isn't they've wait I'm googling we link you in to understand. Hank that is not any website's tagline and you go out you've just you've just stumbled upon a million dollar idea which is selling the catchphrase we link you in to Linkedin. Yep well I've already read the stream we link you in.com so it's done.
Contact the CEO of Linkedin. Read? Sure. Did I get it?
I have no idea. I did get it. I did get it. Got him.
I'm so good at knowing Silicon Valley CEO names. Today's podcast is also brought to you by the Postal Service. The Postal Service, a wonderful band and an excellent federal government service. And finally this podcast is brought to you by Space Aliens.
Space Aliens hello we're down here please help. Seriously we need it. Seriously Space Aliens. This episode of Your Hank and John is brought to you by Shopify.
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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.
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See you website for more details. All right. I want to ask you a serious question. If I may because you highlighted it and I assume that means that you want to answer it.
This question comes from Ben who writes, Dear John and Hank, while listening to your show, I began to wonder about the stars and navigation on Mars. Would Mars have the same constellations in Starligh out as Earth or would its angle in space be different enough that we could have new constellations? I'm personally a fan of the razor being a new one. I don't know if that's a reference to the Motorola razor like the cell phone but anyway.
If they would be the same, how far would you have to go before they are different? Are we talking Jupiter or Neptune or even further? So Hank, if I'm standing on Mars, would I see the same constellations that I see now? You would but the navigation would be different.
So Mars, so the angle that Mars is at has an effect on how the constellation spin around the planet but it doesn't have to, like it's not far enough away from the constellations to be different. And indeed you would have to go very far away for them to start to be noticeably different, like leggers. But yes, the thing that would change is the constellations would all be the same. But the north star and the south star would be different stars.
In fact, I don't think there are stars there so there would just be like sort of arbitrary spaces in space. And then the planets would also move differently, obviously, for obvious reasons because Mars and Earth, you would see Earth, Earth would be a thing. Mars would not be a thing in this guy. We couldn't see Mars from Mars.
And so all of the like when Saturn was in Virgo, stuff would be different. But the constellations would all be the same. Well, that's kind of cool. So there's really no reason to go to Mars before 2028 to what you're saying.
Well, what? You know, just there's really no reason to go to Mars. Well, the nice thing is that we wouldn't really have to worry so much about navigation because probably by the time we got there, we would have a pretty good GPS system set up anyway. But if you had to, you could definitely navigate by the stars on Mars.
You would just have to do it slightly different than you would on Earth. And I'm just ignoring whatever John is saying because I don't think that it's very helpful or nice. Well, Hank, I'm not trying to be nice. I'm trying to get our podcast renamed to your John and Hank.
Okay? I have another question for you. Well, the good news is I made that bet for 2028. So you're going to have to hold on to this podcast for a long time, even though I'm almost certainly going to lose that bet.
It's still going to be called Dear Hank and John for a long time. So I've made the smart call here. And I will never. The interesting question is whether AFC Wimbledon is going to get to the premiere week before he was getting home.
And that is a really that is an interesting bet because it is probably a tight risk. Yeah. Well, actually I would definitely take it. But we'll have to think about like what would be good stakes in that bet because it's not going to be something as minor as just the name of the podcast.
Hank, I have another question for you. It's from Anna. And she writes, Dear John and Hank, my husband and I are moving to Texas soon. And we plan to buy a house.
We both would like to have enough land that we can plant trees. And since land is inexpensive compared with California where we currently live, it looks like we will be able to. My question is, how many trees would one person need to plant to offset their carbon footprint? Oh, Anna.
I have terrible news. Oh, yeah. I have even worse news than John has. What is your news?
My news is that probably just the amount of water that you would have to pump to your house would outweigh the amount of carbon you're going to sequester in that tree. Unless you are in a very sort of humid, wet part of Texas, which is not the Texas of my memory. I can remember like four different Texases. There's the Houston, there's the Dallas Fort Worth area, there's the Panhandle, and then there's the Southern part of Texas.
And what I don't remember is like a huge rainforest. Yeah, I remember that there's a river that doesn't have any water in it. So that's not good. Yeah.
So if you live near a great water source or in a very wet area, then that's good news for your carbon footprint because then planting trees can matter a lot. But in a lot of places, there just aren't naturally that many trees. So if you are in a place, though, Hank, where there are a lot of trees, how many trees would it take? And the answer is a lot.
A whole lot. Yeah. I looked it up and here's a little bit of context. In the best possible rainy situation, if you drive a small car that gets 40 miles per gallon, about 25 miles per day, you're looking at needing to plant 17 trees per year.
Assuming that all of your electricity, your heating all come from renewable energy sources and you do nothing but drive that car. Like, for instance, you don't create any food waste or eat any meat or anything like that. I do have some good news for Anna with regard to trees, though, there are other benefits to them besides sequestering carbon. You can have them shade your house, which can decrease your energy bills.
So if you have a hot place, as Texas is, that is very sunny, you can use them for shade and that can actually decrease the amount of energy that you consume. They also help to moderate the climate. They are what they're habitat for for wildlife and they are lovely and beautiful things and they are in themselves valuable things. So don't not plant trees, definitely plant trees.
It's a good thing. And you could even plant fruit trees and then you would be getting food from them as well. So it's not going to limit your carbon footprint, but there are lots of good reasons to plant trees. Besides the fact that they don't slope nice and will be a pleasant thing to have in your life.
But hey, do you want to hear something that's absolutely amazing? There are in fact four regions of Texas. Were you right about which ones they were? Oh, God, no, I was completely wrong.
There's the coastal plains, the north central plains, the great plains and the mountains and basins. The mountains and basins, including like El Paso and Amarillo being in the great plains, the north central plains, including your abalines, your Wichita Fallses, and then Houston is in the coastal plains. So anyway, regardless, I hope you have a wonderful time in Texas. I think it is maybe the most underrated state.
You know whose big on Texas is my lovely wife. She really enjoyed her recent art assignment trip to Houston. There's a good video coming out about that soon over at the Art Assignment. Hank, it is time to move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.
Is there news from Mars this week? There sure is, John. Do you know about Spirit and Opportunity Rovers? Yes, there is a minivan on Mars and then there is a much smaller thing on Mars as well.
Yeah, so those two little smaller things, Spirit and Opportunity, have now been on Mars for 13 years and Spirit is dead. Spirit is dead and isn't talking anymore. I think that opportunity is still alive. I don't know that it can move.
I should have done some research on that beforehand, but Spirit, Spirit, I'm just going to go back in time a little bit and tell you a little bit of Spirit news. That's from quite a while ago, but I feel like it's underappreciated. So one day, this little little rover, which is great, and I just made a metal earth statue sculpture of it, which I love and turned out really well. It got its foot stuck.
Its little wheel started spinning in the dirt and it got stuck and they were like, oh gosh, now we're in trouble. But they got it out, and then they looked back at where its foot had got stuck in its wheel. As it had gotten stuck, it actually dug a little hole. They saw at the bottom of that hole a mineral deposit that we think could only have been created through the action of a hot spring.
This is very weird. We have not just water at that place. We have water that is being geothermically heated by the interior of Mars and would then be bubbling up containing a bunch of minerals and then depositing those minerals. That's weird that that happened right where that little rovers wheel got stuck.
Maybe it's not so weird. Maybe there are these geothermal, there was this geothermal activity all over Mars, but it's amazing that we happened to find it right there. And I think it's such a cool story, and this was a long time ago, but I wanted to bring it back and let everybody know about that amazing discovery that Spirit made before getting well and truly stuck and not being able to power itself anymore back in 2010. And like, wow, hot springs on Mars was a thing that actually existed.
If only the humans on Earth had coincided with hot springs on Mars, what a different history we would be living in right now where we could go to a warm wet Mars, which existed a long time ago, but did exist and apparently for a pretty long time. Pretty cool. John, you got any AFC news for me? Hello, John from the future here.
So my recording cut off while I was telling the news from AFC Wimbledon, which means that I get to now close out the podcast entirely by myself with no hank at all. The news from AFC Wimbledon is this. It appears that AFC Wimbledon has well and truly and finally jumped over the last remaining like regulatory hurdle standing between Wimbledon and a return to their spiritual home in Wimbledon itself at Plow Lane or very near Plow Lane. So that is really, really exciting for many Wimbledon fans.
The thought of having a home back where they belong is as important or maybe even more important than being a full-time professional team in the football league. So there's still, of course, the problem of paying for the stadium, getting it built, getting it up and running and everything. But the plans are beautiful. You can look at them online.
It's going to have 11,000 seats to start and can go up to 20,000, which is probably big enough to support a Premier League team maybe someday. So really now it's just a question of whether Wimbledon are going to get to the Premier League before humans are going to get to Mars. And with that, I shall now close out the podcast on my own. Thank you so much for listening.
You can email us at hankandjohnatgmail.com. Our podcast is only as good as your questions. Actually, on average, it's not nearly as good as your questions, which I'm sorry about. Thank you for all your wonderful questions and I'm sorry about our sub-optimal potting.
Dear Hank and John is produced by Rosie on host, Rojas and Sheridan. Gibson, our editor is Nicholas Jenkins. Victoria Bonjourner is our head of community and communications. And our music is by the great Gunnarolla.
You can follow Hank on Twitter at Hank Green. I'm at John Green. Thank you so much for listening. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.