Dear Hank & John - 414: Tell Me What Your Pain Sounds Like

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

How do people determine if they have a high or low pain tolerance? Can John and Hank tell the difference between their writing styles? How can I find my joy in my teenhood? Why don’t astronomers know more confidently when and where space stuff will collide? What do I do about my sneezing newborn? Which of the books that John and Hank have written should you start with? Is Rax Roast Beef and Rax Pizza Buffet the same thing? …Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as 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 week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon, apparently at pretty different energies. John, did you know why Pah, why know why Pavlov's hair is so soft? No, why is Pavlov's hair so soft?

Because he conditioned it. Oh, yes he did, he did. He reminded it daily that if it waited for a certain moment, it might just get a reward. And then it salivated all over itself. Yes. That made it soft. How glad are we that hair does not salivate?

Oh, huge win. How much worse would that make everything? It does sweat. Like it is like up there with a bunch of sweat. It will wet itself. Yeah, but it doesn't sweat itself. It's not like the sweat comes out of the end of the hair. No, but I bet if if it could, if the body could have figured out

how to do it, it would have. I recently did a tremendous deep dive on keratin, and I can't tell you all about it right now because you won't care. But when I when I set it up, it's going to be great. And a Hanks channel video that it's going to be great. And a Hanks channel video that I'm going to make about life. Well, you're going to love it. And that's that's really how you tease a video is like, look, I can't.

This is so boring that I am going to have to tell you a huge long story before you will care about it at all. People, by the way, people loved my 15 minute as if you weren't there and part of it you weren't there summary of AFC Wimbledon's journey to become a third tier English soccer team. You thought the people were going to hate it. They lapped it up, Hank. Yep. All of the people who didn't like it didn't write emails. That's exactly

correct. They got bored and stopped listening. So they did not write emails. Let me ask you a question from Rihanna, Hank. Oh, we're going to just do that. I love it. Yeah, we're going right into it. Because you sensed my feeling from last week that maybe the intros were a little too long. So this week, it's just hair sweat. Just hair sweat and right into it. Dear John and Hank, I've always been curious as to how people can say I have a high or low pain tolerance when they can't experience-

I knew you were gonna pick this one out. Pain through the bodies of others. How do you know if you have a high pain tolerance? Can you ever know how your pain ranks on an objective level, not the singer Rihanna? I think this is such an interesting question because as you know Hank, I am obsessed with the fact that we spend all our time here inside of one consciousness and looking at the world through one set of eyes, and yet we

think that we know what it's like to be other people and often can be quite presumptuous about their experience. And the thing is, this is like multiple levels, right? Because do you have a high tolerance for pain could mean I experience the same amount of pain as you, but I tolerate it more. It could also, it could easily be interpreted as when we have the same stimulus, I experience less pain. Right. And I have no idea which of I experience less pain. Right.

And I have no idea which of those things we would be measuring, and I don't think anyone does. It's not just that though, it's also that we assume that having a high pain tolerance, quote unquote high pain tolerance is good, and having a quote unquote low pain tolerance, which I'll be the first to admit, if in so far as there is a thing, I'm on the low pain tolerance side of the scale.

I actually, when I was reading this, I remember when I was a child, our father said to our mother within hearing of me, he just has a very high pain tolerance. And I took that as objective fact because he wasn't saying it to me to like compliment me, but I did hear it as a tremendous compliment and moved through

much of my life believing I had a high pain tolerance. And now I realize I definitely do not. And instead what my dad had identified was that I just kept doing things that hurt me over and over again, despite the fact that it did hurt me. I just was bad at risk management. Right. Also, you were my little brother, and I'd set the bar so low when it came to pain tolerance that inevitably, dad was impressed by you.

Yeah. But I do think in general, Lenk, there's a measure of judgment about people who experience lots of pain. Yes. There's this great quote that you've heard me say a million times, Hank, but it's from the body in pain by Elaine Scarry, where she writes that to have great pain

is to have certainty and to hear of another's pain is to have doubt. Yes. And that is especially true when you're talking to like, you know, that can be especially frustrating when you're talking to like medical professionals and you're like, I have great pain and they're like, I'm sorry. And some of that is because we have insufficient ways of dealing with pain. Like we have insufficient ways of confronting pain.

Do you know about my, my fix for the terribleness of the pain scale? So there's a pain scale is like one to 10, right? And they show you like the faces for the kids, the faces on the one to 10 scale. Yeah, I used it in the Fault in Our Stars, my hit book. Uh-huh. It's in a lot of the doctor's offices because you got to communicate about pain.

It's very hard because of course you could always sort of imagine a situation that would be even more painful than the one that you were in. Totally. Here's my solution. I just don't think numbers are a good way and I don't think words are a good way. And what is that?

Leave us with sounds. Nurgh. Yeah, you should be like, okay, can you tell me what your pain sounds like? Because if I go like, eee, you know that that's very different from like, arrrgh, which is very different from like, arrrgh. Those are all like very clear kinds of pain that I have had. you know that that's very different from like, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr There's like its variable-ness as it lasts. There's where it's located in the body.

There's how it limits movement. Is it just always there? Does it happen when you do certain things? Like it's such a big, wide variety of stuff. There's a recent video where a bunch of people got bit by this bullet ant that's supposed to be the most painful ant. And they did their best to measure

how much more painful that was than a control sting, which was just from a wasp. Fun. They did the math, and all of them underestimated how, pretty much, all of them underestimated how painful the bullet ant actually was, because they simply didn't feel rational saying that it was like 4,000 times worse. But it is 4,000 times.

But it's 4,000 times worse. I'm going to try to avoid getting bit by a bullet ant. That sounds like it would be wildly unpleasant. I'm certainly not going to volunteer for a YouTube video where I get bit by one. It's a great video. They did it in a very, I think, clever way. Yeah. I also am not going to get myself stung by a bullet ant

unless you can guarantee me like 10 million views. Oh, my God. And that's the thing is, that's not a joke. To me, I only this is a fundamental difference between us. Is that like you're you are a good YouTuber and I am not a good YouTuber. And also, I take pride in not being a good. Yes, like very important to my career that you're not a good YouTuber and I am not a good YouTuber. And also I take pride in not being a good YouTuber. Yes, it's very important to my career that you're not a good YouTuber. Totally.

We need that. If I was a good YouTuber, we would have flown too close to the sun a long time ago. I'm flying so close to the sun on Hank's channel right now. You are. I'm like, hmm, what's it like up here? Every time you make a new Hank's channel video, it gets a million views. I'm like, why are you doing this? You're flying too close to the sun.

We all know how this ends. Don't you remember Tumblr? This sun is so tasty. Oh my God. It burns my skin. Exactly. Talk about a pain scale. So anyway, I know that I'm not a good YouTuber, but you're a very good YouTuber and you need

me because I keep Nerdfighteria a little bit smaller, which is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We need a filter. Yeah, absolutely. We need to filter the audience in certain ways. There was a time when you made Nerdfighteria bigger and then, you know, eventually a lot of those people dropped out and it wasn't because I was a great youtuber though it was because I had a hit book.

He almost gave himself a compliment everybody. Well, oh, because I almost said I'm a good writer. Yeah, you almost said a great writer, which you literally couldn't say even now. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to this question from River. No. Are you done with the pain question? Oh, I'm not. There are ways where we try to objectively measure pain.

There's a few ways that we try to do it. There's a thing where you submerse your hand in cold water and see how long you can keep it there. And this mostly works for testing pain for one person. So you have a person take a pain control medication and do it and then like report when they'd like to take their hand out of the water when they can't keep it in any longer.

It's surprisingly painful to have your hand in very cold water. And it's less useful when it comes to comparing different people because one person might just be able to deal with it better and be experiencing the exact same amount of pain, and we just have no idea how to handle that. There's also differences in physiology that can mess with this

that aren't just about the nervous system. If you saw something as being way more red than me, that would just be like, oh, interesting. But if you experience a pain that is way more painful than me, I just don't have a good way to understand that. Right. And so that just, it makes it very hard. We've got a great question from River, Hank,

that's about us. And you know how I love a question about us. You know how I love a self-reflection moment. Dear John and Hank, I subscribe to the We're Here newsletter available now at we'rehere.beehive.com. And whenever I read the opening paragraphs, I feel like I can tell within a sentence or two whether it's Hank or John that's written it. And I don't recall being wrong so far. My question is, can I tell the difference? Are y'all aware of

significant differences between your written speech patterns? And can you tell the difference between each other's written work? Paragraphs and psycholinguistics river. Absolutely. When I read Hank's books, I hear Hank's voice. Yes. If someone tries to write something as me, if they're trying to write a marketing email for the store and they're like, this is from Hank and here's what it says. I'm like, thank you.

I will now write it the way that I would say it. And I have no idea, like how, like what's happening. But I don't know, I just written a lot of stuff, you develop a voice eventually. Yeah, it's pretty specific having a distinct like a distinguishable voice is valuable. Right. And in the business that we're in. And so I think that we, it just like ended up that way. But yes, we write very differently. Our sentences are different lengths. Right.

They're structured differently. We have different habits. Not to say that they're good habits, but like we have different habits. Exactly. We have different predictable flaws in our writing. Yeah. Mm-hmm, which is what I think of them as. But also like different, like certain quirks, like the way that I use M-dashes

is very different from the way you do. And like, yeah, but your work just sounds like you and mine sounds like me. And that is not something that was true for me when I was 23 years old. Yeah. It took me- It just takes time. Yeah. I mean, I think writing Looking for Alaska was the first time when I, and I finished

that when I was like 27, 28. That was the first time, and it was a five-year process. And through that five-year process, I found out what I sound like. Because I remember when I was, when I didn't get into the advanced creative writing class at my college. I'm so shocked that you remember that. When there were 15 applicants and 12 spots,

and I was one of the three people who didn't get in, which I remember quite vividly, and is sort of a defining experience in my life. When I didn't get into that advanced creative writing class, my creative writing teacher asked me over to his house to have a drink. And we sat there with, I sat there with him and his wife. And he was like, look, man, like the story that you submitted wasn't very good. But when you tell stories during the break in our seminars, those stories are very good.

Yep. And so you've got to figure out how to write stories like you tell stories, like how to sound like you sound, not how to sound like bad Philip Roth, but how to sound like you sound. That was really great advice. I think if he hadn't given me that advice, I would have abandoned my dreams of writing. So shout out P.F. Kluge. I mean, I have a similar story that's I think less

it's less takes less space in my head because of how it is a less significant thing. But I remember the first time I got rejected from a literary magazine and it was like the U.M. Environmental Studies Literary Magazine. And I went and I was like super into this and I worked really hard on it. I really thought that it was good. And what I needed to hear was this is all about you and it is for you. Like you wrote a thing that is 100 percent about your experience of the world for you in which you are the character who is just having smart thoughts.

Yep. Yeah, which is developmentally appropriate, I would argue, for someone in their early 20s. But it is real. It takes time to learn how to write for an audience. And one of the things I don't understand very well about myself is that I rarely write except for an audience. I wrote everything with tuberculosis,

not for an audience. Initially, I was writing because I was writing because writing is my way of thinking and trying to understand something. But it wasn't until I realized I was writing something for an audience that I kind of kicked into high gear and got really excited about everything, what would become everything as tuberculosis. Because I love writing for an audience.

And even when I was like 15 years old, I didn't journal, I wrote stories that I imagined were for an audience. And I don't know, I wrote stories that I imagined were for an audience. And I don't know what that says about me. I don't think it says anything great. It's not something I'm super proud of, but it's real. Yeah. I did the same thing. Yeah. We, we, I don't know, we both have that bug. But let's stop talking about us writing because I was just talking about how that's, nobody wants to hear that. That's a couple of guys. People don't like shop talk and they shouldn't like shop talk, right? Like I don't.

Unless they're in the shop, you know, unless, unless they're in the shop, unless, unless they're in the shop. All right. Let's answer this question from Anna who writes, do you want me to one? Okay, but this one is important. Okay, well, you can do the next three. You do the next three. I'll do this one. All right, okay. Seeing as you are a top podcast for teens,

thank you, Anna, we appreciate you acknowledging the reality that this is a top podcast for teens, including a top sleep podcast for teens, a top workout podcast for teens, a top podcast for tweens, and a top podcast for grownups. I figured you might enjoy a question from a real life teen. I know when I'm an adult, I'll look back and miss

being a teen. But right now, I mean, disagree with your somebody's told you that. Yeah. Not sure, not sure that we're on the same page about the assumption at the core of the question, but we'll get there. I'll look back and miss being a teen, but right now it's very stressful and I mostly just wanna grow up and gain more independence. How can I find more joy in my teenhood?

Pumpkins and penguins, Anna. Here's what I'll say. Yeah. You will miss your body working as well as it does right now, because it might be at its like, near its like peak level of functioning. It might not be. I was going to say, if you're like me, Anna, and you're smoking 40 cigarettes a day, which I hope you're not.

But if you're like me when I was a teen and you're crushing 40 cigarettes a day, like you're actually not going to reach your bodily peak until your early 40s. Not because you work so hard, but because you set the bar so low. So there's that. I don't know. What do I miss about being young? There's a certain amount of just physical ability.

There's also, here's what, let me see if, what you think of this. There is something where the connections I had with the people, like my friends, were so unquestioned and unquestionable that it was like, it was just like, this is where I belong and these are the people that I have found and I'm going to be with these people. Whereas I feel like friendship in adulthood and many relationships in adulthood are very like, sometimes you're stuck with people, like work, and you're like, you just deal with the ones and not necessarily are going to be loving them. Or, you know, you kind of like are thinking harder about whether these people are the ones you want to hang out with

or not. I just like miss just valuing people because they're my people. So I'm going to push back against everything that you've said. Okay. Hit me. Respectfully. Because my experience of being a teenager is that I wasn't very secure in those core relationships, even the relationship with my parents or the relationship with you or my relationships with my friends or my especially with romantic partners.

I didn't feel that sort of core security. In adulthood, I do. That's actually the main thing that I don't like. I wouldn't want to go back to being a teenager because of that constant feeling of insecurity and insufficiency. I felt very much like Anna. I wanted to just grow up and be independent and not have to deal with all the newness of everything.

The one thing that I recommend about being a teenager is that you're doing so many things for the first time that there's an intensity to that that is really thrilling. Now it's also like horrible, but it is thrilling, right? Like there's an intensity to falling in love for the first time or grappling with questions about suffering and meaning for the first time independent from your parents. That's really interesting and fulfilling for me anyway. But I don't think you're going to miss being a teenager. I don't miss it. Who knows? Everybody's got a different journey.

But I enjoyed being a teenager. I had great friends like you. I had deep, deep friendships that that you know Carried me through those years, but those years were hard man That was hard. My feet were always changing size. It was hard That's so not the first thing on my list, but yeah The feet have maintained the same size for a long time and there is a convenience to that there's one thing I'll say in that vein also is,

for so many years, I feel like I had my hair figured out. Then when I lost my hair and then it came back curly, I was trying to figure that out and now it's straight again, and I'm trying to figure this out again. I feel like I haven't had a haircut I liked in years. Do you feel like it's a second adolescence this this new world that you live in with a new body? Yeah, a little bit. And like new and like, how do you how do you prioritize how do you figure out?

I don't know. Because it's not just the new body. It's also the life crisis always is though. It's just it's just like, please let me go through adolescence again. Maybe. I don't know. Again, I really don't want to romanticize adolescence, which I find to be like one of the core things that adults do unjustly. If they could actually go back and be a teenager for a day,

they'd be like, oh no, no, not this, not this. I just think that there are some teenagers, I think, who, and I was at times one of them, surely not all the time, but who are just very confident and comfortable. And I think that's the thing that we are all seeking. And if you find that in school, that can actually be quite hard

because then that structure goes away. Right. And you're like, now I am without it. Right. So maybe there's like a joy and a benefit in never quite finding it in school so that you can try and settle on it in a more stable system that is the whole rest of your life

that you will have outside of school. Yeah, certainly you don't want to be like that character Tom and achieve the kind of limited excellence at the age of 19 that smacks of anti-climax, as Fitzgerald puts it in The Great Gatsby, one of the most damning disses of all time. I was like, who the hell is Tom and why is John being so mean to him? Well, he's a very careless person, Hank. He caused a lot of harm in that story. Which reminds me actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by by Tom Buchanan. Tom Buchanan. You know, I wouldn't necessarily get in a car with him.

This podcast, I don't know if you know this, John, but it is also sponsored by Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy. He's got that shape of a head. Yeah, for sure he does. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Tom Brady. Tom Brady. Tom Brady, he was surprised when he drove the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 to be booed, but he has hated here. You all gotta know that.

And finally this podcast is brought to you by Tom Misedison. Tommy Edison, little Tommy Edison. Brought you the light bulb, brought you the movie projector maybe, the telephone, no that was a different guy. Yeah, he didn't actually bring you any of those things but he definitely electrocuted an elephant. Okay, did he really? Yeah.

Wow, what a thing to be remembered for, the phonograph and the electrocution of an elephant. The phonograph, that's what I was trying to think of. What I love about that joke is that I've never once in my long life thought of Thomas Edison as good old Tom. Yeah, he's definitely a two-namer. He's a two-name kind of guy. I even know his middle name weirdly. Why do I know that his middle name is Alva? Why do we know that his middle name is Alva? What is wrong with our education system that somehow you and I ingested

that Thomas Edison's middle name was Alva, but we never ingested, for example, how limits work? for example, how limits work. No, you're correct. I didn't. And the horrible thing is will, and I'm sorry to bring it here, but will this be the case for people who today are influential people, who are industrialists? Mm-hmm. Will they be remembered the way that we were sort of taught

as Thomas Edison is just like a good old guy who made a lot of good stuff happen when we were kids? What a smart American industrialist. I wrote my third grade biography on Thomas Alva Edison. And I remember that I used the word interesting several times because it took up a whole line when I wrote it in cursive. And it had to be like a seven page paper. So yeah, Thomas Alva Edison.

I wish him well. And for today's industrialists, I would just remind you that history comes for us all. Even Thomas Edison eventually got eclipsed by Nikola Tesla. All right. Let's answer some questions from our listeners, Hank. Why don't you ask a couple? Yeah, this next question comes from Will, who asks, Dear Hank and John, why does it

seem that astronomers are so uncertain about when and where space stuff will hit other space stuff? I feel like I'm always reading articles about asteroids that may or may not hit Earth or the Moon. Aren't the motions of our celestial bodies constant and easy to predict? Why aren't they more certain about their calculations? Looking at the sky in terror, will, will. I have, I look, you have no idea, no idea how accurate these measurements are.

It's amazing. It reminds me of a joke that an astronomer told me once. An astronomer gets pulled over by a police officer and the police officer says, do you know how fast you are going? And the astronomer says, somewhere between 10 and 100 miles an hour. Which is so accurate. Which is so incredibly accurate, right? Like from the context of space time

between 10 and 100 miles per hour is incredibly impressive. If you can get it within an order of magnitude, like you've basically got it. Yeah, that's for stuff outside of the solar system especially. But like with stuff in the solar system, we know this stuff with such a huge degree of precision, and I can talk you through many of the reasons why it's very hard to get that level of precision and why we are always constantly

working toward a higher precision. There was recently like a asteroid that might hit Earth. It was like it went from like a less than 1% chance to an above 1% chance, and everyone was like, oh. And it kept going up, you know, for a couple of days before it went down. And what you have to remember is that when we're looking at these objects, especially at first, we are looking at a dot on a background of stars that has moved from one place to another on a flat plane.

We don't have a top-down view of the solar system where we can see all this stuff. We can only look at it from one direction. So we have to do all kinds of crazy stuff with brightness and how it's moving compared to the background stars as we move around the Earth because as we move these things also move but they the the stars all stay in the same place

so we can kind of use that effect to see them from different angles and that gives us more data. So we have to do a lot of observation of a lot of different objects and they're just dots and you can't use brightness because they can be made of different stuff and they can have different levels of brightness just because they just happen to be darker, not because they're closer, or bigger, and so all those things matter. So we have to figure out how big they are

to figure out their orbit, and then if they get close enough, we can actually bounce radar off of them. And that gives us their distance. And this has to be within like millions of miles. So it can't be more than millions of miles away. And when we get a radar signal, that tells us how far away they are to within meters. Wow.

Wow, so that's when we can be like, this one's probably going to land in the Indian Ocean. Yeah. But it's still tricky. Of course. Like, you have to get a bunch of measurements. And so, what often happens is like you start getting lots of measurements on, or you start with getting like a few measurements on lots of objects, and then you look at the objects

that have the highest probability, and you get more measurements of those objects to get more specificity on where they're headed. So it's just a tremendously difficult problem. And the thing I try to remind people when we hear about an asteroid that might hit Earth, is if this was 10 years ago, we wouldn't have any idea until it hit us. And like that's-

That sounds better actually. I feel like we've regressed as a species. I want to not know. Well, there are things we can do, so it feels like a good idea to know. Mm. Wow. Mind blowing. We didn't know 10 years ago, we would have just gotten hit by it.

Yeah. Now we're gonna have like six weeks of stress. Where we have to worry because we're just better at knowing about stuff. The same thing with pandemics, where for so many years, pandemics just happened or didn't happen. And now we're all thinking about bird flu four years before it happens or doesn't happen.

Thanks for that, Hank. This next question comes from Miranda, who writes, Dear John and Hank, initially I was thrilled to become a new mother, and my daughter appeared nearly perfect. However, it has come to our attention that she sneezes a lot. Oh, no! As a mother and newly minted pediatrician, Hank, can you imagine? You're a doctor, and you've got a sneezer.

You know how abnormal it is for people to sneeze. That's exactly what Miranda says. You can understand my serious concern as this is not normal. To make matters worse, she refuses to stop sneezing when politely requested. I'm afraid she doesn't grasp the severity of the issue. Any advice is appreciated. As you know, newborns are terribly challenging to refund or exchange. You have the right Miranda. You're saying that we don't have to comment on this absolute banger of a question. We can remain silent. What would you do, Hank, if you had a child who was a sneezer?

I think Miranda makes a great point. They are not refundable. No. So, here's the thing, and this is going to be hard, but you have to psychologically trick your brain into thinking it's cute. So you have to remove yourself from the understood, rational, objective knowledge that this is never normal and be like, actually, objective knowledge that this is never normal. And be like, actually, maybe that's kind of cute.

Okay. I bet newborn sneezes are more easy to cuticize than adult sneezes. What you don't wanna do though is to let that cross over into an acceptance of adult sneezes, especially as a pediatrician. Right, or child sneezes. That's what I meant.

Every time a child sneezes in your office, you need to tell the parent that is not a normal experience. That's never normal. And what the child is going through is concerning. I was actually gonna recommend that you seek out Dr. NeverSneezer Scrooge, the original doctor who said that sneezing is never normal, he never sneezes.

Because maybe Dr. Never Sneezer Scrooge has some insights into how to stop your newborn from sneezing. Do you think this person, this original person has a disorder and doesn't sneeze because there's something wrong with their brain? It's possible. Do they have the weirdest stroke ever? Yeah, I think it's more likely that Dr. NeverSneezerScrooge sneezes on occasion.

And when he does sneeze, he feels immense shame. Just feels like, oh my god, I've failed again. What did I do? Yeah, I think that's more realistic to me, is that there's an element of just horror and shame and a feeling of, I can't believe that happened to me. I must hide it. It is a totally unacceptable phenomenon. But fortunately for you, Miranda, you are yourself a trained physician.

And so if anybody knows if the situation is creeping into the pathological, it's you. And so I trust your judgment even, even more so because you acknowledged in your email that your daughter sneezing is not normal. Yes. Oh, I don't know what I don't know how to handle it. It sounds hard. It sounds like a difficult life that we all have to live here But I think that I think that if you can just for just for the infancy Yeah, just try it try and accept try and make your convince your brain that it's actually just like a cute little I also remember when my children were very young trying to make rational arguments to them about behavior And I would be like don't cry. It's three in the morning young trying to make rational arguments to them about their behavior.

And I would be like, don't cry. It's three in the morning. I hope there's nobody listening who does not know the lore and is worried about their sneezes right now. I think that we should become so post ironic that we ourselves don't even know whether sneezing is normal. Like by the time this podcast becomes Dear John and Hank in 2028, I want us to be in a space where nobody even remembers the war. All they know is that sneezing isn't normal. We got to go back and listen to the episode

and figure out does this happen on the first day of 2028 or does it happen on the last day of 2028? I think humans have to be on Mars by the end of 2027 in order by 2028? No, because if you're if you land on Mars on May 18th of 2028, you're on Mars during 2028. Right, but isn't there some rule where like Mars is further away every other year? And so it's got to know how technology is gonna happen in 2028 could be teleporters. There could be except I'm pretty sure that the initial bargain we made was that by the end of 2027, there would be humans on Mars, which is the most ludicrous thing that you could have ever imagined. That makes you look like such a techno-optimist.

It does. It makes you look like one of... No. The problem is that the wager matters. And so we're still talking about it, where most of my stupid thoughts that I had back then have been forgotten. But this one we had to hold on to. And now, now every time I say anything about what the future might hold, people are going to be like, yeah, these

people are gonna be Mars in 2027. Yeah, we gotta listen. We gotta listen. Because if it was by 2028, then I have one more year than you think. That's true. That's true. But it wasn't. So we'll find out. We got another question from May who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm 12 years old. We're privileging the tween and teen questions right now in an attempt to become a hit podcast

for teens. I am 12 years old, about to be in seventh grade, and I have been listening to the podcast for a few months, and I've heard a lot about your book, and they sound good. But I'm not sure if I'm old enough to read them yet. How long should I wait to be able to read your books, and what book would be best for me to read? I hope your books are amazing as they sound, May.

It's a really good name, specific sign off May, and it tells me that you're great with language and probably, you're certainly intellectually ready to read my books. I don't know, Hank, what do you think? May's ready to read your books too. I have no idea. I have no idea.

I have no idea. I feel like I cannot give someone's 12-year-old advice on books to read. May, to be honest with you, I'd have a conversation with your parents. And here's the conversation I have with your parents. I would say, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie, Uncle, whoever's in the house, I would say, hey, it's me, May. I am thinking about reading these books by John and Hank Green, mostly by John Green. There's more of them.

He needs the money more because he'll actually spend it, unlike Hank Green, just donated to Partners in Health. So I'm thinking about reading these books. And would you mind reading one and telling me if you think I'm ready to read it? And then you can kind of get an insight from the people in your, the grownups in your family. That's the first thing that I do. I will say, ironically, the only book I've really definitely published for adults, everything

is tuberculosis, is the one that I'm least concerned about you reading. Yeah, no, that makes sense. everything is tuberculosis is the one that I'm least concerned about you reading. Yeah, that makes sense. You'll learn a lot about tuberculosis. Yeah. It's going to be way ahead, way ahead. Yeah. So, I don't know where I'd start.

People ask where to start reading my books. I mean, with Hank's books, it's pretty obvious. You start with the first one because it's two book series. With my books, I don't know. I wrote those books like 20 years ago. I have no memory of them. Who knows what they're like. Yeah, exactly. Can I really recommend them in good faith? I genuinely don't know. This next question comes from Soma who asks, Dear Hank and John, my brother and I recently

went on a trip to Finland and as longtime listeners of the podcast, one of the items on our to-do list was to go to Racks Roast Beef. But upon arriving in Finland, we discovered that all the Racks are Racks Pizza Buffets and not Racks Roast Beefs. Are they the same thing? We must know for our next time. Did you go? Did you not go? No, I think they did go they had to have gone because It is a completely different racks. So the racks in America racks roast beef It's just the same letter is used for a different restaurant Absolutely. It is the exact same letters in the same order used to describe an entirely different phenomenon

Like like bear with it and bear. Oh my god. There's a bear Okay, it's very similar. It's very similar to that. So Racks pizza buffet restaurants, Hank and I've never been to because we've never been to Finland. But interestingly, Hank, I am going to Finland in 2027. I already have a trip on the books to Finland. Wow. And when I go to Finland, one of the main things I want to do is eat at a Racks pizza buffet, because you'll recall it was at a Rax pizza buffet that listener of ours had their pants ruined.

Yes. No, that's where you go to get your pants ruined. That's where you go to get ruined pants. I'm not exactly sure how the ruination occurred. I also don't fully remember the story, but Hank and I were waxing poetic about Racks Roast Beef, this restaurant from our childhood that still has a couple places open in like Ohio. And Hank and I went on a road trip and went to a Racks Roast Beef.

It was pretty good. I was surprised. I enjoyed my trip. Oh, yeah. It was very similar. It tasted just like the Racks Roast Beef from my childhood. But several people from Finland wrote in and said, we also have a Racks Racks Pizza Buffet. And one of them wrote in and said, Racks have a Racks, Racks Pizza Buffet. And one of them wrote in and said,

Racks Pizza Buffet is best known in my family for having ruined my pants. And went on to tell a story about the ruination of their pants. That was solid gold. And so I think that the next time you're in Finland, Soma, you have to go to Racks Pizza Buffet. One, give us a review,

let us know how the pizza is for God's sakes. And then two, you know, see if you can get your pants ruined. You never know what's going to happen at a racks. I'll tell you that. Well, one one thing that I didn't expect to have happen at the racks that we went to is to not be able to go inside because it was full of boxes. It is drive through only and like and because the inside of it is being used for storage.

The dining room is just where they keep the old cups. It was a weird experience, John. I'm glad that we did. I wouldn't I wouldn't wearing my racks t shirt. I got a racks t shirt and I get comments on it all the time. People are like, oh my God, I grew up with Rex. Anybody from the Midwest or the South who is in their 40s is very excited. All right, Hank, before we get to the all important news

from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, we need to answer a question. Okay. It's from Sabina. And it is a sports related question to sort of ease us in to the discussion of ASC Wimbledon. Sabina writes, Dear John and Hank, Timothy Chalamet, an American actor, Hank, just for context, recently got Kylie Jenner.

And Kylie Jenner is an American entrepreneur and a reality TV star. Timothy Chalamet recently got Kylie Jenner to come to Indianapolis on a Saturday for a New York Knicks game. What is the most outlandish thing your wives have ever done as a result of your interest in sports? No offense to Indianapolis, Sabina.

Now, I want to be very clear about something. Kylie Jenner was psyched to come to Indianapolis, and who wouldn't be? This is the white hot center of American culture. This is where it all goes down. This is where it happens. We talked earlier about Hank flying too close to the sun when it comes to the popularity of Hank's channel.

I fly too close to the sun just by living in Indianapolis. This place is too cool for regular people like me. So Kylie Jenner was delighted to be in Indianapolis. This place is too cool for regular people like me. So, Kylie Jenner was delighted to be in Indianapolis. The weirdest thing that my spouse has ever done for my love of sports is sign off on me paying the contract of AFC Wimbledon player Marcus Brown. Yes. I mean, if Timothy Chalamet did that for a New York Knicks, I think that Kylie Jenner

would be duly upset. I'm kind of stuck on Kylie Jenner and Timothy Chalamet at a New York Knicks game. They go to all the New York Knicks games. Are they a couple? Or are they just like really good friends? Yeah, they're besties. No, they're they're they're in a romantic relation. Oh. So hence the hence the question. What is the weirdest thing that your spouses have ever done? Did you

see that Billie Eilish was kissing that wolf? Uh II did. I did. Yes, I am II don't know, I don't want to talk about my friends, but yes, I saw that picture. My friend's private lives should be able to be private. Well, Timothy Shalem and Kylie Jenner's private lives aren't private, but that doesn't matter because Timmy Chimmy ain't John's friend. No, he is not. I've never met Timmy Chimmy.

He seems like a lovely, very ambitious young man. Yes. I don't, what, do I like sports? I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is during a vacation in Ireland, I made Catherine go to an industrially harvested peat bog, but that's not sports. That's just my interests.

Yeah. I think that's- In the same way that you are into football and being like, come on, do that. But I'm like, I, Catherine, I don't want to go see a peat. When I told people I wanted to go see a peat bog, they suggested all the nice ones that were pretty. Right. No, you're not into that. And I was like, I want to go to one of those, but what I really want is to go to one that's been industrially harvested.

And they were like, they don't put those on display. And I was like, yeah, but like they're around. So I just want to like find one. And they're like, okay, you'll have to probably like walk through a bunch of branches and brambles. I was like, that's cool. Wow. Just take me to the bog. Yeah, I think that your fascination with bogs and my fascination with sports are very similar.

They come from similar places, which is that we are trying to build community in a world where community is not natural. And the second thing about it that's the same is that most people would find it very, very boring. Yes. And then the third thing is that it can make your shoes muddy. Oh, absolutely. I went to an AFC Wimbledon game that was a nil-nil draw. And at the end of it, one of the people

I brought with me to the game, a friend from Indianapolis, turned around and said, so they can just not score? And I was like, yeah, yeah, you can fly all the way from Indianapolis to London just to see no goals. Nothing, yeah, look, the whole game happened. The whole game happened. I mean, just think of all the whole game happened. The whole game happened. I mean, the game happened.

Just think of all the events that occurred. I got it. Oh, yeah. And also Peep Boggs and English soccer about a preservation of the past and our histories. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the news from AFC Wimbledon. The news broke an hour ago. Oh.

Who broke it? Uh, the club, we don't really have like reporters beating down our. Who's going to put it back together? Well, maybe no one, because Josh Neufeld, arguably our best player, our player of the season last. Wow, I have not. I don't know this guy's name. You don't care about him, even though he's your best player. This is why he's leaving, because you didn't talk about him on the pod enough.

It's possible. It's possible. He had the opportunity to sign another contract for Wimbledon, and he has chosen not to. He has signed for Bradford City, another team that's been promoted from League 2 to League 1, but a club with a bigger budget, I think it's safe to say. And you can't, of course, you cannot begrudge a player signing a bigger contract. These are short careers and it's not like we're talking about billions of dollars here. So I wish Josh the best, but I am a little bit personally devastated. Yeah.

Well, what you got to do is get some get get a loaner from. Yep. From from Mansfield United. There you go. There you Mansfield United. Is that one of them? There is a Mansfield town. Oh, what's Mansfield United then?

Are you thinking perhaps of Manchester United? Sure. That's likely. We'll get a loaner from them. Okay. For the wing. For the wing. That's right.

We got to get somebody who can play wing back and it's not going to be Josh Neufeld because he's joined Bradford City. So I wish him well. We used to call him Joshie Ninetown because Neuf means nine and Will means city. Yeah, that's cute. I like that. Well, not anymore. Bradford City will have to come up with their own nickname for him. They're going to use yours. Yeah. Okay. We wish them the best. Well, I don't know. Let's just talk to somebody with a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend on a player. Is that how much they cost?

That's about how much they cost. Really? I guess it's a job, you know? Some of them, yeah. They'll get paid between $200,000 and $300,000, the average league game player. Wow. But again, like... League one, and this is the league you're in now.

That's the league we're in now, but you've got to remember... Like all the players get that much? Most of them do, but you have to remember this is a short career, right? So like if you're lucky, you play for 15 years. Oh, yeah. No, I'm just doing the math. It's expensive to run this team. Most people play for 10 years. It is expensive to remember this is a short career, right? So like if you're lucky, you play for 15 years. No, I'm just doing the math. It's expensive to run this team. Most people play for 10 years. It is expensive to run this team.

But the thing is, they're not in the good leagues. Well, I think that we are in the good leagues, Hank. I think all the time about how we used to be a ninth tier English soccer team. There's nine? There's 11 tiers? No, there's, yeah, there There's a there's 11 tiers. No, there's Yeah, there's actually there are 11 tiers. We started in the ninth tier. But yeah, there's 11 tiers. Okay. League

One is the third tier. Yeah. So we're actually we're actually doing great. Okay, great. Yeah. What's the news from Mars? Yeah, what's the news from Mars? Well, wouldn't you know? It's still out there doing Mars stuff Continues to orbit around the Sun and there's an there's an orbiter orbiting around Mars as it orbits around the Sun It's called Mars Odyssey and it got a rare glimpse of Erysia Mons Which is one of the biggest volcanoes in the solar system and also on Mars.

It's around 12 miles tall and has a diameter of 270 miles. It's almost twice as big as the largest volcano on Earth, which is Mauna Loa. And the thing is, Arisiamans is usually covered by clouds because there's air blowing up the sides and then it gets cooled and that forms clouds. And the clouds make it hard to get a picture of this volcano, but in early June,

the orbiter was able to get a picture of the peak of the volcano through the clouds and you can go see it. And it's wild that like we've taken so many pictures of Mars, but to actually be able to see the top of this volcano is very rare. Wow. It's sticking out above the clouds.

That's pretty crazy. That's hard to get my head around. I don't think of Mars as being that visually stimulating, I guess. Oh, it's changing. There's weird stuff about Mars. Wow. You know about the spiders?

No. Not the David Bowie ones. What? Maybe I'll tell you about the spiders next week. And now I just want to state for the record that if there were spiders on Mars, as I understand spiders, that would be the biggest, that would be the moment where you get to spend the first 15 minutes of the podcast talking about the news from Mars. Yeah, no, that would be big. That would be big to, and also really unfortunate, you know?

If the first life that we found on another planet was very spider-like, I would be a little bummed. I'd be like, but are they cute at all? No? Okay. No, they're these things that happen on Mars. It's a geological thing that happens, but it's very weird and it is active. It happens every year.

Wow, that's cool. Well, Hank, thank you for podding with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're very grateful to the folks who help us make this podcast. Hank is now going to read their names. I am. They include Penn's Fordout, who edited the podcast, Joseph Tunamedish, who mixed it. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosianna

Halsrow-Hoss and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.