Dear Hank & John - 104: Dove Quivering

Episode Date: August 21, 2017

Why am I afraid of something I know doesn’t exist? Can I avoid scurvy by sticking my arm in a giant vat of orange juice? What is proper etiquette for a cat birthday party? And more! Get 10% off your first purchase by going to hover.com/dearhank or hover.com/dearjohn Email us: [e-mail] patreon.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Of course I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a comedy podcast. It's about death sometimes in which two of your favorite people in the old hang world Hank, John Green, answer your questions, give you to this advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and the AFC Wimbledon. Hey John, how are you doing, you cutie face? Well, that's a first.

To be honest with you, I am shaking like a dove giving birth because I have just done my first interview for Turtles All the Way Down, like with a journalist who'd read the book and I mean, oh, I am actually shaking, Hank. I, it's so stressful because you don't want to say anything stupid, and that, of course, dramatically increases the chances of saying something stupid.

If the whole time you're thinking, don't say anything stupid, don't say, what are you going to do? Of course, you're going to say something stupid. So I don't know what I said, but now I'm like running it all back in my mind, trying to think about, did I say anything stupid? Oh, I just, man, you gotta know that you like,

you should just like walk into the interview and start out with something stupid, like just start out real dumb. And then, yeah, that's, that is not a good strategy. And then it like, like, you're like, well, I don't have to worry about saying anything stupid because I did that already. Have you seen what the internet does to people who say something stupid in interviews? I see what you saying anything stupid because I did that already. Have you seen what the internet does to people

who say something stupid in the internet? No. I see what you mean by stupid. I have a different conception of the situation. Oh, yeah, I see what I mean. I just say something silly. And which case, I'm now shaking like a dove giving birth for you.

Oh. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I don't really understand the idea of a dove giving birth, but I imagine dove giving birth, but I imagine anything giving birth, you got a quiver a little bit. Now that I think about it, doves don't really give birth so much as they give eggs. You know, John, there's a book that I read to,

or frequently it's called, when animals kiss, if animals kiss, like we kiss goodnight, and there's a line in it that says mama python and hatchling would kiss wagling round, twirling and twisting like rope loosely wound. And that upsets me, John, because Python's give live birth and don't have hatchlings.

So that book could just go right in the fires of history for all I care. It's scientifically inaccurate. The animals. Breaking news, Hank Green advocates book burning in recent podcast. Pro book burner, Hank Green, has just said that he wants to burn a book for one small error.

I, oh man, well, my dove quivering has begun. Breaking news, Hank Green heating oven to Fahrenheit 451 to burn local book. Local book, local book and fear for its life from Hank Green. I don't have a short poem for you today. I do have a book of short poem recommendations. It's counting descent by Clint Hill Smith. It has really, it's shaken me up in the best way,

or possibly shook me up in the best way. I don't have a very good grammar, but I do have this question from Clara, not Cara. She wrote that her name is pronounced like clay-ra, not clad-ra, but I actually don't find that helpful. Clara, it's Clara. Clara, who writes Dear John and Hank, me and my best friend, Cher, notebook

that we passed back and forth and write in. It was my turn with the notebook and I was writing it on a Greyhound bus. Wait, Hank, I forgot to ask how you are. Are you well? Oh, sure, whatever. Who cares? You're in the midst of a very interesting event

in your life that you can't talk about. Yeah, and like I am so proud and unabashedly, internally proud of my ability to not be like, I'm working on a really cool thing, I can't tell you guys about. I don't do that, and I never will do that, and I'm upset that you made me just do it. Well, everybody on the internet is always doing that, and you do heroically avoid it most of the time, but I just forced your hand. You're really excited about a thing you can't talk about. Let's get back to Claire's question.

We called it, okay, all right, right. So she was writing in this on a Greyhound bus. She shares a notebook with her best friend. When I got off the bus, I realized that the notebook was nowhere to be found. We called all the bus stops and everywhere it could possibly be, but we still haven't found it. This notebook has all the details of our entire lives for the last year. I feel so bad. How do I tell my friend I lost it? Notebooks and diaries? Clara. Yeah, you got to get a new friend. Just this one's over. All the history that you had together,

it doesn't even exist anymore. It's driving around the country perpetually on a Greyhound bus. And you'll never have it again. It's gone. By the way, I think this is a beautiful premise for a novel. And I think it's a, but I actually have, unlike you, properly helpful advice in the form of a personal anecdote.

Okay. Well, maybe it'll help me too to find the laptop that I left on a flight to frickin' Amsterdam that KLM never found. So Hank, I was recently on a flight back from Venice, Italy, on Delta. My beloved Delta, as you know, I have a long-term relationship with an airline. That airline is Delta.

I am patiently waiting for them to sponsor me, but so far, all my love has gotten me is a lot of money spent on Delta anyway. And I have this hat that I always were to the Indy 500. It is an Indy car. Hat, it is a very important part of my life. I love the hat. It's the hat I feel most comfortable in when I'm in public because it's very hard to recognize me in the hat and I just,

I love the hat. It makes me happy. And I left the hat in the airport lounge in Venice, Italy, and then got on a plane. And the moment I like, the moment the plane took off, I leaned forward to Sarah and I said, oh my God, I left my hat in the airport lounge. What are we gonna do? And Sarah was like, just contact Delta, they'll be fine, they'll be cool about it. So I did, and they were, I mean, like on the plane, I used the wireless flying over the Atlantic Ocean because of course Delta has amazing wireless

in the train flight. And they were very helpful. They were like, we're talking to the wireless in the train to make flights. And they were very helpful. They were like, we're talking to the people in the lounge. We're gonna deal with this. Don't panic. It's gonna be okay. And I was like, I know it's just the happens. An incredibly important hat.

It's as important to me as Claire's notebook presumably is to her. And this is what happened, Hank. By the end of the flight, they were like, we are concerned because we have looked everywhere in the lounge and we have not found it. And that was upsetting to me. And then I got off the plane. Like when we landed, the plane, it was deep-laning. And so I stood up and gathered all of my things and realized that I had been sitting on my hat all. Oh God. Oh wow, you're insufferable.

I didn't even see that fudge was coming, John. Oh my God. That's terrible. I'm ashamed to be your brother. Long story short, Clara. Have you looked in your backpack? Ha ha ha. I encourage you to continue looking. I have literally right next to me on my bookshelf a collection of notes that I sent, that were sent to me. We sent notes back and forth in high school. And I have them right here.

Still have them. And sometimes I do take a mountain, look at them. And they still kind of smell like high school and I have them right here. Still have them and sometimes I do take a mountain, look at them and they still kind of smell like high school to me and I do treasure those memories and it is a shamanish thing. I don't think you're making Claire feel better at all. I'm just saying, you're making her feel worse. Well, I'm not gonna tell you that it's not like,

it is a terrible thing to lose things. But I've also, I lost a computer that had a bunch of baby pictures on it, my baby that I'll never, presumably never get back. And that is like, it sucks. And, but you can be okay, and you can build all those new memories again from scratch. Not really though. You really can't build them again. Here's the thing Clara, it's this sucks, but I also think it is an opportunity for a new creative enterprise where you guys try to recreate the previous notebook while also creating a new notebook together. So you both

try to recreate your old memories and you try to make new memories. That's my best advice. It is a bad situation, but you are not a bad person. And I think that your friend will understand, even though initially she will be bummed out. And somewhere on a Greyhound bus, somebody is like, I can't believe all of the zany adventures that Clara and her best friend have gotten up to. I feel like we're not super helpful.

This question goes from- Guys, by the way, if you're on a Greyhound bus listening to this right now, and you have a good notice, Claire's diary, get in touch with us because we have her email address. Okay, let's go on to another question. This question comes from Emma, who asks, do you hang a John, I've just been invited

to a good friend's cat's birthday party, but I have no idea of the proper etiquette for cat birthday parties. What do you do? What do you get for the cat? Is there a gift? Hank, I understand you have a cat. What do you do for it's birthday?

Help. Kind of crazy for cats. Emma. John, I don't know what my cat's birthday is because it's a cat. I can finish that sentence for you. Camille is a cat. Because it's a cat. Camille is a cat. Because can finish that sentence for you. Camille is a cat. Because it's a cat. Because nobody knows their cat's birthday.

That's not true. It's not like a dog. I mean, it's a cat. Oh my God. Wow, first of all, you make like the Delta representatives life of Frickid nightmare searching for your hat and the stupid Delta lounge. And now you are offending not just me,

but every cat person. Why are you making it so hard to be your brother? I'm kidding. Of course, every cat owner knows their cat's birthday and has cat birthday parties because that is a totally normal thing to do in the course of a regular human life. Yes, of course. I mean, so I've never been,

Camille has never had a cat birthday because she's a stray and we got her, you know, when she was on adult cat, so we don't know whatever it was. But I definitely like, like if you want to get the cat a gift, you're probably going to want to talk to the owner about what kind of cat gift.

And I think that would be cute. Like, I don't think that there is any expectation that you will get this cat a gift, but it might be a nice fun thing to do, and if you want to be like, what's your cat's favorite kind of toy, or what's your cat's favorite kind of treat, I was just happened to be next to Pet Smart,

and I was thinking maybe I would get it something for its cat birthday, but this is just an opportunity for your friends to hang out. Like, that's all it is. Right. This is a celebration of friendship and a cat. And so just go and have a good time and don't worry too much about the etiquette. Hank, I have to ask this very important question. Okay. It's from Nat, who writes, Dear Brothers Green.

Recently, I had one of those moments where I was suddenly confused by a phrase that I've heard a lot but never properly thought about. What do we mean when we say something can be seen from space? When talking about the great wall of China or the pyramids, we sometimes hear that they are visible from space, but where in space does that mean? From the ISS, if so, with the naked eye or with a big telephoto lens. Photos on Google Earth are taken from space, but they can show like license plates.

Thanks preemptively for helping me make sense of this. NET. Yeah, so yes, there are definitely places in space where you can't even see the Earth. Like the majority, the vast majority of space. Almost all of space. The whole Earth is not visible. The sun isn't visible.

The Milky Way galaxy isn't visible. Great point Hank. So that's a good point. But where does space start? There's a place. It's 100 kilometers up. We've defined it arbitrarily. It's called the Carmen line.

So I guess it means if you could see it from the Carmen line. Right. Then you can see it from space. And I don't know how high the ISS is, but it's not super high. So that's sort of like generally also like where the space shuttle is, where the ISS is. If you can see it from there, that's mostly what they're talking about. Because that's where most of the eyeballs have been in space.

Is that the ISS? Speaking of which, by the way, according to the internet, the Great Wall of China is just barely visible from low Earth orbit and cannot be seen from the moon. But many man-made objects can be seen clearly from low Earth orbit without magnification, including some dams and city lights and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it is interesting that the Great Wall of China for a long time was thought to be the only object you could see from space that was made by man,

but then it turned out that you couldn't really see it and there were a bunch of others that you could. Right. For instance, you can see the Bingham Canyon mine and open-picked copper mine. Oh, you sure can see the Bingham Canyon mine and open pit copper mine. Oh, you sure can. Yeah, that's a big, I wouldn't necessarily call that a structure, so much as the opposite of a structure.

It's a whole... It's a whole... Yeah. There's some pretty big holes, John. We have made some pretty big holes. I mean, if there's one thing that human beings are good at, it is moving earth. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to know, I don't know where I've told this story.

I think I made a YouTube video about it once. Yeah, that's what it was. There was a test question, and it was like a geography test for maybe elementary school, and it said, what is the most powerful force on Earth? And I think that the teacher was looking for maybe water, which shapes a great deal of the surface of the Earth. And I think that the teacher was looking for maybe water, which shapes a great deal of the surface of the Earth. But the person had, the student had written love, which I then went on to argue that probably in fact love being the thing that has created so many humans in a both a metaphorical and a rather physical sense, that maybe love is the most powerful force on earth,

considering how fast people are affecting it. This question comes from Julio who asks, Dear Hank and John, I have a question for you brought all the way from Guatemala by the magic of the internet. I'm taking a medicine that is only applied on the skin and my body absorbs it. I don't have to take any actual medicine or put it anywhere inside my body, applied on the skin and my body absorbs it. I don't have to take any actual medicine or put it anywhere inside my body just on the skin. And that may be wonder if I stick my arm into a jar of orange juice. Will I get all the vitamin C I need? Thank you. Armin orange juice. Huleo. Oh, that's a great question. Hank, can I avoid scurvy just by sticking my arm in a giant vat of orange juice?

I don't know. I bet you definitely could if you like stuck your eyeballs into it. Okay, which, on second thought, it's not a great idea. If I like opened up my eyes inside, a gigantic pool of orange juice and just let the vitamin C seep in. Yeah, you'd probably get enough vitamin C doing that.

I don't know if you'd absorb enough of it through your skin. There's different kinds of compounds that absorb more readily through the skin, and I don't know if vitamin C, I think it's a scorbic acid. Probably wouldn't be one of those. But anything is going to go through to some in some small amount. Wait, are you saying that the skin is like a tot, I was thinking about this because I used to wear a nicotine patch back in the days when I was trying to quit smoking

before I discovered the magic of nicorette and went on to chew nicorette for seven long years before finally quitting nicorette. Anyway, I was thinking about that. At least all that happened before vaping, John, and you didn't have to do that instead. That's true. That's true. So, I was thinking about it because the idea that my skin is not an impermeable sort

of structure that protects me from the world is deeply upsetting to me. Like there's something horrifying about knowing that like medicine can seep in through my skin because that means other things can too. Yeah, I mean it does seem like there's this definite barrier between the outside and the inside and your skin is considered by some to be the largest and most important organ in your immune system. It is like obviously without your skin, you are much more prone to infection. But molecules are very small.

They're much smaller than bacteria, for example, and a ascorbic acid is a very small molecule, but there's certain things like how hydrophobic something is or how hydrophilic something is that can affect how easily and also how big how large the molecule is that can affect how easily it goes through the skin. But that's the nice thing is to remember that like the size of a molecule and the size of a bacteria are on completely different scales. So like having a poison or a medicine go into your body through your skin is very different from having some like foreign invader do it, which really does need a chink in the armor there.

So you're saying that my skin will at least keep the bacteria away from my body, even though my body is still crawling with bacteria literally and figuratively. Yeah, on all the parts that are covered in skin, yes. Great, wonderful. Thanks for reminding me about all the parts that aren't covered in skin. Hank, before we get to another question from our listeners, we have to quickly pause

to say that we have received the most extraordinary email response. I think we've ever received in the history of this program. It came from Bree, who wrote, Dear John and Hank, recently a person named Bree sent in a question with a sign-off that was something to the effect of completely lacking a sign-off. As a Bree, I just want to let this Bree and all Bree's out there know that there is a best sign-off for us. It is float like a butterfly, sting like a breeze. Lope this helps.

float like a butterfly, sting like a breeze. Good holy God, Hank. Oh man, I cannot believe that I missed the opportunity to name Alice Bree. I am, well, the question is. I am riddled with regrets. Like Bree is a good one that there are opportunities there. Like there are, you know, there are, there are Bree rhymes,

but I'm wondering like how many like name specific sign-offs we can get. I wouldn't mind if we had a section on next week's podcast that we're like that but with other names. Right, this week name specific sign-offs. Yes, exactly. That's a great idea. So we're at hankanjohn.gmail.com. If you have anything

occur to you that you would like to send to us to share to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to

encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to encourage you to as good as the name specific sign-off. No, yeah. All right, what's our next question? Comes from Cassidy who asks, dear Hank and John, I was drinking a glass of wine tonight, and I soon noticed that a tiny little bug guy was swimming around in my glass, which is mostly just rude, but I'm sure he didn't intend to ruin my drink. My question is, do bugs get drunk or rather,

what does alcohol do to bugs? Is it like the best day of their short lives or are they totally unaffected? Please help me because I would like to know if that bug was numbed at all when I poured him down the drain. Bugs in booze-cacity. Yes.

Yes. That is my guess. My guess is that bugs do get drunk. Bugs do get drunk. They've done some research on this. They did some B research where they exposed Bs to ethanol and saw that their behavior was affected. It wasn't necessarily the kind of things you might expect. They weren't like extra gregarious or they just did less.

Mostly they did less of everything. They were just lazy. Oh man. Mostly they did less of everything. They were just lazy. Oh man. But yeah, so it does appear that bugs get drunk and probably, so these bees were exposed to like 2.5% ethanol, which is a lot less than is in wine. So there's a really good chance that your fly was pretty wasted by the time you hit the drain.

So you might not have even be able to survive that level of alcohol poisoning. So he may not have even been able to survive that level of alcohol poisoning. So you basically did him a favor, except that probably he just died of alcohol poisoning in the drain. It's not like just being inside of a drain immediately kills you. Unless there's a garbage disposal down there, I don't know how you did it. What a way to go. Just die of alcohol poisoning in the drain of Cassidy's sink. What a what a good life Yeah, that's how we that's how we should all be so lucky Hank is to die like that bug did. Oh, no That's I want to I want to die not in a drain and not a alcohol poisoning those are two those are my two requests today

Oh, man I've got so many more requests for how I don't want to die. I've got it Sometime I should introduce you to my top 10 list of how I don't want to die. I've got it. Sometime I should introduce you to my top 10 lists of how I don't want to die, except that I know that if I do that, I'm too superstitious because I know that if I do that, that I'm gonna be stuck with one of those deaths. And then when like the Indianapolis star

publishes my obituary, they'll be like, he died, you know, in a drain of alcohol poisoning, just as he begged not to in episode 108 of Dear Hank and John. Yeah, oh, I did actually recently read a story that was exactly that, like the person who said that they didn't want to die in a certain way at a certain age, and they died that way at that age.

And it was a bummer. Yeah, no, yeah. Oh, I just, I'm gonna say it again, in the hopes that I can bend the universe to my will. I want my last words to be This sure has been an amazing 145 years of perfect health All right Hank this next question comes from Ryan who writes dear John and Hank when I was a kid

I was made to be ashamed of liking so-called girly stuff I've always been big and tall and masculine and I've lived with the expectations that apply to so many men growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. The thing is, I've been able to abandon most of my preconceptions and ignorance over time, and I've worked hard to provide a judgment-free environment for my son in this regard, but I can't get past my own shame for liking girly music. I don't even believe in the idea of girly. So why is it that when I'm blasting Melanie Martinez in my car, I turn the volume down at stoplights. Why am I afraid of something that I know doesn't exist? Am I hopelessly doomed to live with the ghosts of homophobia?

Any help would be appreciated. Still trying to figure this part out, Ryan. PS, love the show. You guys have played a big part of my re-education. I'm very grateful. Give a hug to all the folks who work behind the scenes for me. Thanks again, and sorry for lying about my name. Oh, Ryan!

Ryan! You're better than that. You're better than that, Ryan. But that's very nice. That nice little message there. That's very sweet to think about all the people who work behind the scenes. It's very nice.

I also want to say that why am I afraid of something that I know doesn't exist is one of the great questions we have ever been asked, and I do not think we will be able to approach an answer today, Brian. But that is a beautiful question that I would not mind having tattooed on the inside of my wrist. Yeah. Pulling up at a stoplight is a really weird interaction,

where you know the person next to you is there and they know you're there, but you're in your own separate private box spaces. And I feel like it's sort of different about it when I'm on a bike. If I'm on a bike and I pull up next to a car at a stoplight, I'm kind of like, hey, I'm basically in your car now. I'm just standing here next to your car and your window is open. And so it's like kind of weird for me not to recognize that you're there. But if I'm in a car like we're

in our own worlds and if like my like world starts to encroach on your world I feel kind of weird about it and I used to do this intentionally. I used to like like like sing really louder like play drums loud on the dashboard so that the people in the car next to me would see me and I could, like, perform for them a little bit. Cause, John, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a little bit, like the attention. And as a younger man, liked it more than I even do now.

Very true, deeply true. I think that when you're pulling up to a stoplight, you're afraid of somebody, you're afraid of a stranger's judgment. But I turn down, I always think like, oh, I'm gonna keep listening to this music really loudly because I want people to know what good taste in music I have. But when the moment actually comes, I always find myself turning down the music, even if I'm super pleased with it, because I don't want to make it weird for them. I don't want to make like their car trip about me. So maybe that's what you're doing rather than turning it down just out of fear of judgment.

Maybe there's also an element of, I don't wanna make this other person's time in their car about what music I'm listening to. Like the opposite of what I was doing, which was very much like, I am now going to make your private moment about me. Look at me. Right car person, which I think maybe is not the worst thing to do,

because for the most part, people are alone in their cars, and maybe they're having some good thoughts, but maybe just have a little bit of a thing for them to experience. And be like, I saw this dumb child driving of all the 240 today and they can tell their family about it. But I'm totally in favor of the sort of adrenaline rush of jumping into like really loving something in front of a stranger. And that's always going to be a little bit scary, but I think that it is something that I would like to see more of. I would like to see more people loving things in front of me.

And so like, I mean, that's that is of that can be taken out of context so much easier than what you said about bookburning And it's so much more disturbing. I don't even know how to process it. I'm so bad at interviews I'm like oh my god. Yeah, I'm so bad. I To get to the question though. I mean, I think that, I mean, to get to the heart of the question, it takes a long time to get past notions that you grow up with. Like it takes a really, like I was told when I was a kid

that I was girly because I liked reading the babysitters club and I still feel like the babysitters club. And I still feel like the babysitters club was for girls. Even though I liked it, it's really, really hard to get past those entrenched notions that the culture gives you because they're so powerful. And you're right that they're not really real,

but they also are real, because even though they're constructed, they're still real and they're powerful, but I think being conscious of it is a huge, like that's the big first step. And then the second step is slowly dismantling it over time within yourself, you know, but it's work and it takes time, I think. This podcast, of course, it's a good time to mention, is brought to you by slowly dismantling cultural preconceptions

over time and side yourself. Slowly dismantling cultural preconceptions within yourself, hard time-consuming, but recommended. It would be great if ideas like that Hank could actually sponsor podcasts, maybe in the future. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Cat Birthdays. Cat Birthdays, John supports them, and he apologizes for whatever he said that offended cat people. I love cat people, pleased by turtles all the way down available at probably sign turtles.com right

now. This podcast additionally is brought to you by Quivering Doves. Quivering Doves. Apparently they give life birth. I got that line from my friend Empty Anderson. And I don't know when he says it, M. T. Anderson. And I don't know, when he says it, it's so extremely compelling, but then when I say it, I just sound kind of like a doofus.

I just think that I assumed it was like Emily Dickinson or something, I was so lovely. I know, well, that's how M. T. Anderson speaks. He speaks constantly as if he is inside of an Emily Dickinson poem. He's one of the most eloquent people I have ever encountered. Hey, yes.

I wanted to ask you, if you remember your first ever like website that was yours, your first ever personal site. I mean, so back in the day, it was much harder to get domain names. And so my first thing was on the, the what was it called back when, back before AOL existed, even, I guess AOL existed, but there were local companies that provided access to the internet. And so we had one of those and they let you put stuff on their server at like, it was

iag.net, it was the internet access group, was the one in Orlando, and then they had a slash, and then you could put in your own little name there, and that is where I had my Mars website, when I first had my Mars website. It was like ig.net slash tilde CRS, which was our dad's username slash Mars, was where I had my first server website. It was a great website.

I remember it was devoted to the idea that we should explore Mars. And people took you totally seriously, even though you were like a 13 year old kid. Well, that was, yeah. Which is one of the magical things about the internet to me is that it has that great democratizing force. I also had a website where I wrote like on that server where I wrote like little pieces, humor pieces, I guess, and it was called Johnny saw me naked, remember? Yeah!

I remember Johnny saw me naked. Oh, that was good. All right, Hank, let's answer one more question from our listeners. I, we've got to get to this one. It's important. This question comes from Alejandro, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm a 17 year old undocumented immigrant in need of dubious advice. Last week, I lost my job for the second time this year due to my legal status.

I dropped out of my high school at the end of my junior year because my parents wanted me out of the house by the end of the summer, which is fast approaching. Today I found out my DACA application was denied, and I am headed to the hospital to check on my 16 year old brother who has leukemia. In short, my life is a mess. I'm also a photographer, and I'm rather successful in this small city I live in. Photography is my passion, and I surround myself

with creative individuals who share the same interest as I do. My life outside of work and home is enjoyable, but my problems in life seem to surround two very specific parts of who I am. I'm gay, which is why my parents are kicking me out of the house, and I'm an immigrant, which is why I can't hold onto a job for more than a couple months. My question is, how can I feel like I'm gay, which is why my parents are kicking me out of the house, and I'm an immigrant, which is why I can't hold onto a job for more than a couple months. My question is, how

can I feel like I'm more than that? I know that being gay and an immigrant are both challenges in my life I will learn from, but my life revolves so heavily around these two topics that I can't help but feel that they are all that I am. Any dubious advice is appreciated, dumb Spiro Spiro Alejandro. I so I felt pretty unqualified to answer this question, so I reached out to my friend Julian, who is an undocumented immigrant, but has his docker. He had a lot of really smart and interesting things to say. One, of course, is just in general to be informed about your status as an immigrant in America. And there's website at informdemagrid.com, which is a good place to go. And I may send Alejandro Julien's whole response, which is very nice and long and detailed. And also

includes stuff about how like there are ways to work in America, especially if you are semi-successful in a creative endeavor like photography. If you start your own LLC, then there are opportunities for you to basically work for yourself legally. But I think that this is a really wonderful point about identity, that when something is affecting you negatively, like the statuses that you have or identities that you have, they can sort of take over who you are and sometimes that's really uncomfortable and you just don't want that. And my advice, and also Julian's advice, is to look for other identities that you can, and not to say that you shouldn't be proud and excited

and love these parts of your identity, but also look at your other identities, like your identity as a photographer and your identity as a fan of, I assume, of this podcast, or other things that you love and look for communities where that surround themselves with, you know, with those kinds of things. Yeah, I think that's all really good advice. I think the main reason I wanted to share this question is to remind people who aren't

going through this experience that there are lots of people in the U.S. who are, and that their lives are valuable, and we are lucky to have them in this country. And that is all. Thank you, John. And thank you, Alejandro, for writing in. And best of luck, and I'll get you in touch with Julie, and he has some good thoughts and ideas that hopefully will be helpful.

And he suggested he asked me to get the two of you in touch. This next, and I think last question comes from Natalie who asked, dear Hank and John, I was making toaster waffles just now. And when they were finished, I sat down to eat my meal with the mess still laid out on the counter. My brother came back and made himself some waffles. Then he left everything out and never came back

to clean up the mess. Who should have to clean it up? The person who first made the mess or the person who was last with the waffles. Keep in mind, petty sibling feuds are a real thing, so compromise probably isn't an option. Natalie. Well, Hank, I think we're both going to have the same answer to this question, and so it's not going to be a really interesting debate. But the answer, of course, is that we don't have enough information to answer the question, because we don't know if Natalie is an older sibling or a younger sibling

And the answer is that the younger sibling has to clean up the waffle crap Everybody knows that I mean, so I'm shared this question with with Catherine last night and she said to me I'll tell you who doesn't clean up the mess is your mom So don't you dare let this get in the way of like your mom still after all these years having to deal with your bull. That's right Natalie. So just figure it out.

That's right Natalie, figure it out. Don't make your parents do it. That's the only thing we're sure of. No, I think that the person who last used the waffles has to clean it up. Although I would feel that way. I would wonder, Natalie. Well, I didn't you clean it up in the first place,

thereby preventing your brother from using waffles at all. That would have been really brilliant. No. I do. Like, I have this thing, and I think it's... I can't be the only one where, like, I've left out some stuff, and then someone else comes in and uses it, and then I'm comes in and uses it

and then I'm like, yeah! I don't have to, that's no longer my responsibility. You would've got that stuff out anyway and made that mess. So now, this just worked out perfectly for me. Yeah, I totally agree. So that's settled. So you know what is not settled, Hank?

What? The ASC Wimbledon situation. Hmm. What's up? It's not good. It's not good. Oh, it's not good. It's been a very bad.

It's been a very bad start to the season. Two games played one goal, one point. Now that is enough to currently have kept AFC Wimbledon out of the relegation zone because there are one, two, three, four, five teams that have played two and lost two. One of whom is the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes. So I guess that's good news. However, the Don's lost to Shrewsbury over the weekend. And it was by all accounts,

not a particularly inspiring performance. I was not able to watch it because I have not gotten the video thing that you can now sign on for to work, but I will give you an update when I do get it to work. I've heard that it's working for other people, so that's good. But yeah, it was not a good game by all accounts.

Shrewsberry almost scored a number of times, but goalkeeper George Long did a good job of keeping the ball out of the net, except for that one time, and it was a one-neil draw. I think of greater concern is the fact that, if you count, wait, what's a one-neil draw? Oh, sorry, a one nil loss.

I was paying attention. A one nil loss. Good job paying attention. I was testing you. I think of greater concern going into the rest of the season is that if you go back to last season, I think in the last 800 or so minutes of League One action for AFC Wimbledon, we've scored just the once, which is not a great, it's not great, it's not great.

So hopefully things will turn around. Yeah, did they like shriek down the goal or something? Like what's happened? Did is Lyle Taylor's foot fall off? Is there an issue? Well, we lost arguably our best striker from last season, Tom Elliott. I don't know, It's hard to know. Wild Taylor came on as a substitute in the Game of Genshrews' Barry and did have

a pretty positive impact. It sounds like, but it's hard to score goals in soccer, but it shouldn't be this hard. So yeah, that's the update. What's the news for Mars? The news for Mars is that there is a mission that has been hanging out around Mars, occasionally taking little dips into the upper atmosphere called Maven, the Maven spacecraft. And it is about to take another dip. So as we discussed, oddly enough, earlier in this episode,

there is sort of a point at which space begins and atmosphere ends, and that's a fuzzy point. Like, it doesn't just happen. Like, there's a gradient of atmosphere thinning out for a long, long way, and so Mavin is going to drop down to, I think, 125 kilometers above, or maybe 150 kilometers above the surface of Mars, no 125. So basically just above what would on Earth be the carbon line. And it sucks up little pieces of gas. And part of what

it has done and been really effective at doing is understanding the process by which Mars went from a pretty nice place on the edge of the habitable zone of our star to a place without atmosphere, without water on the surface, except for some ice. And that happened when Mars's magnetic field shut down early in its history. And after that happened, Maven has been really

effective in understanding how, like, kind of devastating the Sun's solar wind has been to the planet Mars, and to sort of its like potential habitability because since that magnetic field shutdown, the sun has been really good at just pushing off any gas around Mars into the, you know, interplanetary space. And Maven has been doing this research for a long time and it's about to take another dip to learn a little bit more. This is going to be its closest that it will have gotten to the planet and they want to save these observations for later because as it gets closer to the planet, it hits more gas particles and that slows it down and eventually won't have enough fuel to get back up to a higher, more stable orbit.

So Mavin's still doing its job and we're understanding a lot more about how ridiculously important Earth's magnetic field has been. Yeah, I'm as you talk about that becoming more and more in favor of Earth's magnetic field and also a little nervous about it suddenly disappearing. Is there any thought that that might happen? No, no. So I have two good pieces of news on that front. One, it would take a long time for Earth's magnetic field to shut down and there would be

a lot of changes in signs that it would be happening, so it's a long way off if it is ever a thing. Second, there's actually been some really interesting research lately, and I'm working on a SciShow episode about this right now, about creating an artificial magnetic field, potentially for Mars, and also potentially for interplanetary spacecraft. The idea being if you put sort of an object pretty far away that disrupts the solar wind, it doesn't necessarily have to have, it doesn't necessarily have to be that huge of a magnetic field generator to sort of deflect those particles so that they won't end up hitting Earth, which would also be a great thing to have because our magnetic field protects us from the vast majority of solar high energy particles,

but when there is a large flare, it can have negative impacts on Earth. So that could be a potential kind of failsafe for to protect ourselves. And I'm super into the idea of protecting ourselves from that here on Earth. Also, when we're traveling between planets where you don't have any protection at all, and, when we're traveling between planets

where you don't have any protection at all, and also when we're on the surface of other planets that don't have magnetic fields. I mean, I can't wait for the future. I know that I'm not gonna be around for any of this, like, the crazy intergalactic future. We probably don't have an intergalactic future. But it's a crazy interstellar future.

Well, I truly do have a need that it's going to happen. You think that this is gonna to be a crazy idea? I think that if we can just make it through the next 200 years, we will have an interstellar future. Wow. That's a cool thought. I mean, I think that we will explore interstellar, like we will have interstellar exploration. It is very hard.

And of course, a science fiction has dealt with this in a lot of different ways, but it's hard for me to imagine getting humans to another star. It's just, it's, that is an engineering feat. But maybe, maybe. I don't know, man. I mean, who among us would have guessed that we would have an incredibly reliable Toyota Corolla? You know? That's true. I mean, just, at this point, I'm reaching out for any sponsorship opportunity. I can find it.

I just want to free Toyota Corolla. Hank, thank you for potting with me. You can email us, by the way, at Hank and John at gmail.com, or you can find us on Twitter. I'm John Green, Hank is Hank Green. I got, I don't like Twitter much these days, but I do go on there. Yeah, yeah, I do too.

And if you've got good sign-offs, name specific sign-offs will be very interested in seeing those. If you've got any for John specifically, if apparently he's in dire need, this podcast is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. It's produced by Rosie on a Huls Roe Haas and shared in Gibson, our social media

and community manager is Victoria Bonzorno where you can find out more about what she's up to at patreon.com Flash, dear Hank and John. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.