Dear Hank & John - 420: The Plant Episode

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Does John want to be a corn or pea plant? If we were able to put enough plants on Mars, could they produce enough oxygen for us to be able to breathe? Is there a scientific definition of what constitutes a weed? How do purple leaves work? Should I tell my friend she’s been watering a fake plant for seven months? …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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to dear Hank and John. Yours I prefer to think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers, answer your questions, give you to B's advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John I recently asked Oren with the chemical formula for water was. Yeah. And he said, H-I-J-K-L-M-O, because it's H-2.

H-2-O, H-2-O. I like that's like a traditional dad joke. Like that, I think that we could be happy with that. Because, like, nobody's laughing. But that's what dad jokes are. They don't have to be, they're not supposed to be good. 100% agree with you that nobody's laughing. We're on the same page there.

John. Yeah. What's the best thing you've ever done? Oh, probably with Nerdfighteria, raise money to build. to hospital and lower the cost of diagnostics and treatments for tuberculosis. What about you? Oh, I like when, I like to like Cliff Dove into a river once. Oh, I misread the question.

It's like when I was dating that girl in college and she said, what's your biggest fear? And I said, probably abandonment. What's your biggest fear? And she said, geese. I had a very small part to play in both those successes with TV and with building the hospital, but I'm still immensely proud of them. So that's what I'd say. But now that you're asking me on a different level, I guess it's probably the time I jumped out of an airplane.

Did you what? You did not do that. Yeah, I did. No, you didn't. I did when I was in my 20s. You skydove? I sky dove. I mean, I was strapped to a guy, but I skydove.

This is brand new lore. I've heard the geese story. a thousand times. I've never heard you jumped out of a plane. Yeah. That's so antithetical to everything I know about John Green. You couldn't get on a table. I just tricked

you. I tricked. I tricked. I tricked. I tricked. I tricked. I tricked. I tricked. That was such an obvious trick. First off, I could never judge. How did you believe that trick? I did I didn't believe it. You didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it for the first two times I said, no, you didn't, and you said, yes, I did.

And then the third time you said, yes, I did, I was like, okay, I guess he wouldn't lie to me. Nothing tastes better than an old-fashioned trick. Oh, man. I once convinced a friend of mine in college that people got herpes from oranges, and it was transmitted to the oranges by whales. Well, that is a gullible friend, is all I can say about that. I really thought I was just, like, sort of vibe in a sort of absurdist zone. And he was like, oh, interesting.

Interesting. Didn't know whales and oranges ever interacted, really. That's when I first understood the full extent of my power. The power of the trick is something immense. I'm always trying to trick, Sarah. And at this point, I can't do it because she's so alive to the possibility of a trick, you know? Yeah. But then sometimes I'll tell her something true, and she won't believe it,

because she's so used to being tricked. Like when I told her that the leader of that cult was called Seth Jeffs, she was like, there's no way that guy's called Seth Jeffs. Like nobody was ever named Seth Jeffs, which reminds me, Hank, that we've got to talk about something that recently happened on the podcast, which is we talked about Tiger Blorge, an acquaintance of mine who first name Tiger, middle name Blanche because her parents were big Auburn Tigers fans. And this inspired thousands of people to write in with what their own names would be if they

were named mascot of their college team, color mix of their college team. Uh-huh. Like I would be Grizzly Milver. Grizzly Milver, which is a totally normal name, not much more normal than gopher mold. There's a lot of molds. or Cantamount Gorpal. If I met somebody named Catamount Gorpal, I would be like,

your parents were taking a big swing and they connected. You know, sometimes you have real tragedies in the name department. The tragedy, of course, spelled with E-I-G-H at the end. But not with Catamount Gorpal.

No, that's a pure win. Hussie PURGELBORP. Somebody wrote in to say, mine is Husky-Pur-Gold, which sounds like a food for fat dogs. Allison said, Hokey Marange is a beautiful name, darn it. Yeah.

Hokey Marange. What's her last name? I shouldn't. We shouldn't say. Probably. We shouldn't say. Hokey morange. Another listener wrote in to say

that they actually knew of someone named Crimson Ann White from an Alabama fan because Crimson and White. and White are... Crimson and White. Crimson and White. Oh, my God.

Crimson's a nice name. Crimson's not a bad name. Anne's not a bad middle name. White's not a bad last name. It's just crimson and white is a hardcore commitment to your college football team. You do not want that girl going to Auburn. You have to be in that space. Wolverine Blaze.

I also like that one. It's a really... Yeah, you actually cannot... You have to go to a different school. You have to go to some place where people are like, oh, Crimson and White. That's a nice name. Yeah. But not if you're rolling tide.

If you're a BYU fan, you're Cougar slew. Okay. I like Catamount better than Cougar. I don't know. I think Cougar works. If you're going to be named after a big cat, I think Cougar has a number of connotations, whereas Catamount doesn't really.

Oh, fair enough. What about this one, Hank, from Will. Buffalo Glax. Oh, yeah. Buffalo is an amazing name. Usually you have to earn Buffalo, you know, you have to be out there on the planes for a period of time so that you can become a, you can become a Buffalo man. Yeah, yeah. But no, sometimes it's just about your dad's favorite college football team.

Buffalo Glock. What if it was someone who was a huge fan of the Mighty Ducks? Oh, the Anaham Mighty Ducks. Yeah. So it's duck white. Duck groinge, I believe. Green and orange? I thought it was green and white.

I think it might be green, white, and orange. Okay. Let me try here. Gwornge, duck gwarange. Duck guai orange. What about sparky mold? This is a big problem with the golds. It's a big problem with the golds, especially if it's maroon and gold.

Also, there's a lot of bloranges. The gaiters are boranges, of course. Gator bornege. That's great. Trojan Carnald isn't bad. I would not name a child Trojan. Fair enough. Fair enough.

It's a big, it's another big swing. And then, of course, if you're a University of South Carolina fan, it's Cock Barnett. That's got to kill me. It made Hank cough. It made him laugh so hard. All right. Thank you for submitting all of your magical names. We can't get over them.

We're in love with it. I'm going to adopt Cock Barnet into my daily. God. It's a way of saying, gosh darn it, except it's Cockbarnet, John. Gosh, darn it. Except it's Cockbarned. People are like, is that a curse? No, it's to do with the college football team.

It's about a rooster and garnet and blue, I guess. Garnet and gold. Oh, Garnet and blue, yeah. Blarnet. Cuck, Blarnet. Cuck, Blarnet, Hank. All right, Hank, why don't we answer some questions from our listeners? Because they didn't just write in with their college mascots.

They also wrote in with our questions. Beginning with this one from Isabel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I'm growing plants in biology class. I've planted four peas and one corn kernel, and they have germinated. I'm going to name my plants at the first names of the authors of my five most recent books I've read, one of which was the hit new book Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. So does John want to be a corn or a pea plant? I'm right, yes, that corn needs to have more than one plant in order to pollinate because of the nature of corn. Gosh, John. That's actually maybe a topic you know more about than I do. Well, I'm pretty positive about this just because I live in Indiana. and so you ingest a certain amount of corn knowledge as a result of just being a resident. And so I'm going to choose to be a pea plant. Thank you for making me a pea plant in advance. You want to self-pollinate.

I want to self-pollinate. I always, I just, I've always said it would be easier. I would like to not have bees involved, and I would like to not have to have multiple plants. Yeah, yeah, I see. You don't want to have bees involved. That's a huge, that's actually for sure. Or like a person coming by with a toothbrush.

I don't want to have bees all up in my business trying to make me pollinate. Yeah. You want to do that. You want to do that peacefully by yourself. I like doing most things alone. Can I suggest another name of a plant, one of these other plants? Absolutely. Yes.

Cock barnet. We're trying to stay on task here. This next question comes from Ilo who writes, Dear John and Hank, I was at a space museum recently and we're in that the atmosphere of Mars is 95% carbon dioxide. So my mom and I were wondering if we were able to put a lot of plants trees on Mars. Could they transform enough carbon dioxide into oxygen for us to be able to breathe pumpkins and Martians, Ila? What an amazing science communication opportunity, John. Yeah. So as you may have just heard, 95% of the atmosphere of Mars is carbon dioxide. Which planet

Earth or Mars do you think has more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? Got to be Mars. It's Earth, baby. Earth is more than 95% carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? No. The absolute number. So Mars's atmosphere is, this is like me telling you that I jumped out of an airplane. That's a classic trick. You set me up and then cock barnet, you, that is a trick. We got to make cock barnet shirts. We got to make it happen.

Okay. I have the exact right designer for it too. I already know who I want to do it. So this is like a thing all the time is like, There are different ways to represent numbers and percentages mean something but sound like they mean another thing. But yeah, the Earth has, it's like 0.4% or 0.04% of, I actually don't know, but it's something like that. Of our atmosphere as carbon dioxide is very low. So, like, adding a little bit matters a lot, which is why having added a little bit has mattered a lot. But we actually have more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere in absolute terms than Mars does.

because we just have so much atmosphere and we have a lot yeah well actually more like on mars has very little atmosphere So this would actually be a terrible place for plants for a number of reasons. Trees, if we wanted to treat a girl on Mars, we would have to do a huge amount of work on Mars to increase the density of the atmosphere. And then also, I think, a huge amount of work on the tree to genetically engineer it to be able to survive in such a tremendously hostile environment. But isn't that cool? I think that's so cool. That is pretty amazing. It just reminds me that air is made out of stuff.

And when I breathe air, I'm actually breathing stuff. One of the most important things that we all forget, it's invisible. And yet if you don't, this is, I've probably been on this tangent with you before. Yeah, that's all right. For 99.99% of the existence of humans, we have known that the fastest way to die is to not breathe. Right. And we found out why, that is, after the United States of America happened. Which in terms of human history was basically three hours ago.

Somebody recently mentioned to me, they were like, yeah, the U.S. has been around for five, 50 years. And I was like, oh, that's really not a lot of 50 years. Just five, 50 years? Yeah. So yesterday, my mother, also your mother and I were going through some for jewelry to decide what you're not going to get, basically, what I'm going to steal before it has a chance to get into the estate. and she showed me her grandmother, your nanny, my nanny, her wedding ring. And her wedding ring was actually borrowed from our grandfather's grandfather, whose name

was John Thomas Goodrich. And it had his wedding date inscribed inside of it, not their wedding date inscribed inside of it, which was February of 1869, which was essentially half of America. ago. That's wild. More than half of America ago, actually. And I sort of almost knew that guy. Right. So America feels very old. Also, not very old. We'll see how it goes. All those institutions that feel super solid were invented five, 50 years ago. I was recently researching gerrymandering. Do you know how gerrymandering got its name? From a guy named Jerry. That's my guess. His last name was Gary, actually, but it ended up getting weirded to Jerry.

Like Jeff and Giff. But the weird, yeah, the weird thing, the weird thing is that the mander comes from the fact that his district, which he did not like about this, his district looked like a salamander. Really? Yeah. So it's the Jerrymander. It's like the salamander named after Jerry, the salimander. Oh, man, that's great. I mean, and by great, I mean terrible.

Gerrymandering is a weird concept to a lot of people. Gerrymandering is one of the things I think is the biggest problem with America. Yeah, it is definitely, it's top ten, top ten structural issues. Yeah, and like very not talked about and very difficult to solve. Yeah. Which maybe those two things have something to do with each other, but I don't know. Let's go back a little further in history, Hank, and answer this question from Lily who writes, Dear John and Hank, how long did it take for Earth to become covered in soil?

It's like everywhere now, rooting around, Lily. Oh, it was I mean, so if you've been watching Vlog Brothers videos, we actually went into this recently. We talked about trees and what a big deal they are and how they did in fact do a mass extinction. And this was part of the start of

the Carboniferous. And I think that's roughly when it happened, which was around 700 million years ago. No, it happened 300 million years ago. Okay. Which I think was around like 300 million years ago. And so not that long. For

a half billion-year-old planet and trees got up there and like plants had been there but they didn't have like really strong structures and so they couldn't break down the rock very easily so there was like some soil stuff happening but when the trees got up there and they were able to break this like bedrock by just getting their their little fingers in it and growing they cracked they just cracked so much rock and then they they themselves fell over and there there weren't super fast in good ways to break them down, though physically this would happen eventually if the trees were exposed to oxygen. And that sort of was the thing that really made, I think, as far as I know, this is what made the earth like soft, basically, made land soft instead of just rocky. Now it's

soft. Now it's got all this weird soil in it that's got all these weird animals in it that are making more soil. Yeah, there was so much of the time that life has been on Earth that the land was pretty empty. It was mostly a water phenomenon life. And on some level, it still is mostly a water phenomenon. It's just that there's a land animal that has become not to brag, but a huge deal. Sometimes I will chat with somebody who doesn't think that people are that big of a deal. Yeah.

And I don't agree. Oh, man, we are a huge deal. We're a pretty big deal. We're the first thing that ever named the ginkgo tree. We're the only thing that knows. This is wild, Hank. So ginko trees are a invasive species in Indiana, like they're not native to Indiana. Okay.

Unless you go back 200 million years, in which case they are native to Indiana. Yeah. This is true of horses as well. Horses. Right. Horses are not native to North America unless you go all the way back. In which case, like, they started here. This is where horses began.

And camels, I think, too, began in North America. We live on a wild planet, and we have over the last, like, I would say, 10,000 years had a wild run. Wild. Yeah. It's a weird thing to be a part of. Can I ask you a kind of tough one? Sure, of course. There are some people who get a sense of joy out of.

of the bigness of humans. And some people who get a sense of dread and almost like a moral failing out of the bigness of humans. And I am both of those people. Yeah, I think you have to hold those competing ideas together in your mind without cracking up to borrow a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think you have to find a way to say this is both a cause of joy. Look, you know, without us, not only would there not be any Billy Holiday Records, but there wouldn't be anyone to listen to Billy Holiday Records, and a source of, like, but at the

same time, we are a complete catastrophe. Both have to be true at the same time. Well, yeah, yeah. And the thing that I feel about it, like that both of the emotions come from the exact same place, which is just the bigness. So there's like this like, wow, like, first of all, what an interesting thing. Second, I'm part of the interesting thing.

And I think it's way more interesting than most people think because, of course, the thing that we're made out of is the thing that's the hardest to see. You know, like the water of humans, like fish can't see the water, you know, David Foster Wallace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our water isn't the air, you know. No. Of course, as we were just talking about, it kind of is. No, it's consciousness. Is not just consciousness.

It's the links between each other's consciousnesses. It's all the ways in which, like, the way I talk is influenced by the way you talk. I am built out of all of the people I've ever met, and I don't feel that way, but it is true. All the words that I'm saying were created by people, and they are just the water. And I think that the links in the communication is the water. And it is like, it is the thing that turns us into, you know, a superorganism of individuals. And I think that that is so cool. But that bigness also is like, it's so big that it is like, like, mysterious.

Tremendom level, terrifying. Right. Well, it's very similar to the Mysterium Tremendum, actually, in the sense that it evokes both, like, awe and joy and a fearsome dread. Yeah. For sure. I really connected to something you just said about the links between human consciousness and how all the words that we ever will say were invented by someone and learned from someone,

because it reminded me that, like, language can change the air we're breathing on some level. Language can change the vibe so immensely. That's what I love about poetry is the way that reciting a poem can change the air in a room and you just feel everyone in the room feels differently. My friend Kava Akbar does this thing where he recites a poem and then notes how the room has changed as a result of the recitation of the poem. And that is so true. It's so, like, it is so true that we are literally made up and out of, the language and thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes and dreams of our ancestors. Which makes, it makes like perfect sense why people get so freaked out when language changes

around them and, and like, you know, it's like a part of language changes and then like it starts to head over toward them. They're like, I don't like the way these people are talking anymore. Like it was okay when people said, uh and um, but now people say like and that's not how it should be. Why are we talking like that? Because, yeah. Oh, actually, that reminds me. This podcast is actually brought to you by, yeah. It was very unexpected. That was very unexpected. I don't know what that word means. Is it offensive? It's a word for a butt. Oh, okay. Well, I didn't know that. How is it a word for a butt? It's spelled G-Y-A-T-T.

Yeah, I believe it's something like, and forgive me, I'm probably going to get this wrong, but like. You're so old. She got that bottom. Exactly. I think, please, please do not take that as gospel. Yeah, please don't send in corrections, okay? Oh, you can send in corrections. I just don't want you to move out into the world and say that fact to people as if it

It is definitely true. This podcast is also brought to you by the air. The air. It's everywhere. And, like, you will die so fast without it. And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you by self-pollinating plants. Self-pollinating plants. No bees.

Nice. And this podcast is brought to you by Cockbarnet. Cockblarnet. He's headed out into the universe and he's got to be president someday. He probably will, but I wouldn't be surprised. He doesn't even have to have a body, you know. It'll just be like an AI named Cock Barnet and people be like, I'm in. Yeah, yeah.

I just want Cock Barnett to tell me what to do with my life. I just realized this is the plant issue of Rosianas only sent us plant questions. Oh, really? And we didn't notice. We didn't notice. Because it's episode 420. Oh, it's the plant episode. Rosiana. That's so funny. Oh, man, that's good. That's good. In my younger and more vulnerable years, I had a terrible credit score because I adhered to a system of paying my bills called if it's important, they'll call. And that turned out to be a little catastrophic. But now through Chime, you can be smarter about how you manage your credit scores. You can build credit history with everyday purchases and regular on-time payments, plus get access to credit tracking tools and personalized tips for stress.

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chime, checking account required. Well, in that spirit, here's the question. I was reading one of, this is from Jen, who asks dearank and John. I was reading one of Ross Gay's essays from the essays on Dandelions and had a sudden vivid memory of being in elementary school science class and learning about weeds and how they were mean plants who stole all the nutrients for themselves and choked out other good plants. At the time, I didn't question. This is that. That is. That is. some propaganda. At the time I didn't question this, but thinking about it now, it seems very weird to assign morality to plants like that. Is there a scientific definition of weed? Don't plants in general just like absorb as many resources as they can? Not a genie, just a gen. Well, this is something about life in general, right? Which is that life is trying to take up as much space as possible. And when humans get mad at other humans or get mad at like the species for trying to take up as much space as possible, I'm like, we are trying to resist

literal millions of years of input that we have been told to try to take up as much space as possible. We are trying to undo all of that pressure and not take over the world. The big thing evolution selects for is continuing to exist and replicating. And we're trying to resist that to some extent. Yeah. Well, interestingly, I don't know that we are trying, but we are nonetheless, which I think is, is a fascinating thing to be oh in terms of replication yes that is a weird it's a weird thing

but get to the point of the question is there such a thing as a weed well a weed is just a plant we don't want and and there are there are different contexts for that of course like if you have a lawn and you want just the one species in your lawn because you want it to look very homogenous you want to have that blanket of green that feels like you're in control, then you only want that one plant and anything that isn't that becomes a weed, even if it's a native plant, even if it's a beautiful plant, even if it would otherwise be like a delicious plant for your cows to eat. It's not the plant you want there. But as you know, Hank, I've turned my lawn into a meadow. Yeah. And even in the meadow there are weeds because there

are plants you don't want there. Plants we don't want there because they will take over the entire area. And so we have to figure out how to deal. with like Japanese stilt grass, for instance. We don't have anything like a monoculture in the little lawn that we do have, but even when you're not trying to create a monoculture, you can still have plants you don't want. There's like also a sort of economic definition of weed, which is a plant that is harming your ability to maximize the economic value of your land.

So here in Montana, we have like a big napweed problem, and there's a bunch of other plants that are just bad for cattle. So if you have a bunch of this plant on that, you know, the cows either will choose not to eat, thus selecting for more of that plant because the plants that the cows like to eat are the ones getting eaten, or you will have the cows eating that and the cows will get sick. So if you have like certain species that that are like weeds because of that and then they're like governmentally defined as a weed because the government is trying to decrease them because they're trying to help out the economy of an area by not having that weed around. So, weed, that's what weeds are. All right, simple definition of weed is a plant we don't want. I like it. I have another question for you that I think will be harder for you to answer.

Okay. From Ben, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been listening to the podcast since the very first episode, it's enhanced my life so much. If trees use chlorophyll and their leaves to gather energy from the sun and chlorophyll is a green pigment, how the heck do purple leafed trees such as Japanese maples work? How have you been? They also have green in them. so the chlorophyll's in there it's doing its chlorophyll things there I guess it isn't going to be that hard for you to answer then there are some photosynthesizers that use that don't use chlorophyll they they photosynthesize them otherwise but the all of the plants

the big multicellular plants are descended from chlorophyll like a chlorophyll ancestor so they all use chlorophyll and the the purple ones you just have other pigments in there as well that do other things. So, like, a Japanese maple would have, like, an anthocyanin, which is going to do other work. I don't know if it's, like, an antioxidant to, like, help prevent it from getting zapped too much or what. I don't know, actually, what purpose that is in there, but it is doing a separate job. Or it could just be there to be pretty, you know? Yeah. It's just like, I wanted to be prettier. Why do peacocks have too many feathers? Because they're pretty. Other peacocks find it hot. Yeah, but that's not how plants work.

They don't find each other hot, as far as I know. Well, I was going to say, you know absolutely nothing about the, like, we do not know anything about the inner lives of plants, the hard stop. And you actually can have some of these colored pigments in other plants. So like when the green gets pulled out, you can sometimes during deciduousness, you can sometimes have pigments left behind that have the fall colors. All right. Well, this question is going to be.

properly hard for you to answer, I promise. Okay. It's from Anonymous who writes, Dear John and Hank, I gave my friend a fake plant with instructions on how to water it as a joke. I thought I would just tell her after a couple weeks. However, it seems I have forgotten about it, and now it's been

seven months of her watering a fake plant. I went to her house this morning and laughed so hard I cried, but I still didn't tell her. I feel bad because she's really proud of herself for keeping this plan alive. Should I never tell her and hope that she forgot who gave it to her? She's named it Charlie, and she lost it.

Or should I tell her and probably suffer through the late April Fool's joke. Please help. Fake plants and frogs, anonymous. Now, anonymous, this is why I waited less than 30 seconds to tell Hank that I had successfully tricked me. The moment you've tricked them, you reveal the trick. You reveal the trick. I mean, it might be okay, I'll let it go for a week. Oh, wow.

I have a lot of potential solutions here. One, you wait for the next April Fool's Day, and then that's a year-long April Fool's joke. And that way you're saying, like, I knew that you would do this. It's not super silly that you did this. It's a whole thing. It also says, I thought about you all year. But I don't love that solution.

Do you have another one? Yeah, you get another identical plant that's really a lot. Yes. Yes. Hey, it's John, retroactively inserting a spoiler alert. I'm about to spoil the entire plot of a tale of two cities. So hit that 15 second forward. that you used to skip the ads.

The Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, you swap them out. Yeah. Is that how the Tale of Two Cities worked? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They swapped one city for another city? No, no, no. They swapped one prisoner for another guy. And then the, you know, the guy sacrifices himself.

And the other guy gets to live happily ever after with his lady. All those people are back now. they don't know about the plot of Taylor 2 cities. You swap out the plant or or or or or cockparnate. What? Here it is. Okay. You say you've taken such good care of that plant.

Can I buy it from you? It's beautiful. And that's a pretty plan. I'll give you a hundred bucks. Cold hard cash. Just like I will do anything. anything. I will do anything to avoid the awkward conversation that we're about to have. Can I buy this plant from you? You could buy a much larger plant and accidentally drop it on the

fake plant and be like, oh, no. Oh, I broke it. I broke the plant. Oh, I lit it on fire. It's on fire. Oh, no. Oops. I was doing the incense and I blit the plant on fire. It's no. They probably don't. They're not flammable, I bet. They probably make a lot of. I suspect they aren't. I suspect they'd be the last thing left after a fire fake plants. Man, this is a tricky one. It's a tough one because this is because what you really need to do is go back in time and not do this, right? Yeah.

But how often in life do you think that? How often in life do you think like, wait, I wish I just hadn't done this. Then I wouldn't be in this mess. You have to hire a spy. Okay. And the spy is. I'm in so far. And the spy is going to say, this is a fake plant to your friend.

And then your friend will be like, did you give me a fake. plant, and you will say, the plant was fake? Oh, yes. Okay. So you have a friend, go to the person, look at the plant and say, I think this plant is fake. And then the friend goes back to Anonymous and says, did you get me a fake plant? And then Anonymous is like absolutely baffled. Yeah. Yes. That's the solution. I bought it at the garden center. I had no idea it was a fake plant. It was near all the real ones. Right. Right. Right. I didn't like, go to Silk Warehouse.

When we were children, there was a place called Silk Warehouse. And my father gave me a lecture on market research and how it can lead to really, truly bizarre outcomes, like building an entire box store just for fake plants. And I remember that forever. Silk Warehouse didn't make it. No. Kind of got swallowed up by Pier 1, which was doing the same thing. But also sold chairs.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I would say I got it at the same. the garden center. I'm very confused by this situation. No one's more surprised than I am to learn that it's a fake plant. I'm worried that there's going to be a lot of mold in this plant. The other thing you could do is when they come to you and they're like, did you buy me a fake plant? You could like take it out of its casing or whatever and be like, I don't think this is a fake plant. I think it's just got plasticy leaves. Eventually, they, don't you notice that the tree

hasn't changed shape at all? Yeah, like, don't you notice that it's not growing? Well, maybe they're messing with you. Maybe they know. Maybe they've reversed pranks. It's a classic, it's a double reverse trick. They're going to make you feel bad until you finally break down. And then they're going to laugh in your face when you tell them. Ha ha!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You just got to play this point. That's what you get. You got to tell them, hey, quick thing, if you listen to the new episode of Dear Hank and John, there's a question from Anonymous that I think might be relevant to our lives. Oh, God. Well, yeah. And then, and then they'll know that even if they weren't reverse pranking you,

they should pretend that they're reverse pranking you. Right. Wow. There are layers on layers, John. Yeah. We can't wait to see how this resolved. This question is like an ogre. You've got to follow up, but you might have to send a couple of emails

because we're getting so many college nickname emails that it's hard to find the other emails. but please follow up with us. All right, Hank, it's time to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. AFC Wimbledon signed three players just today. Woo-hoo, you needed to do that. And there's some drama about it as well, Hank. There's always drama.

How did you get drama? All right, so we signed a young man. They're all young men. One of them is 29, but that's still relatively young. We signed a 21-year-old young man named Antoine Hackford, which is a great name. I mean, Hackford, on a two-year contract. Very exciting.

He's fast. Everyone says that he's fast. That's what the comments about him on the Internet say. And he's supposed to be good and he's supposed to be able to score goals, which is key. Then we also signed a guy named Danilo Orsi. Very controversial. Okay. Uh-oh.

Is he bad at soccer? It's worse, Hank. It's worse. He used to play for the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes. Whoa. Well, you know, you're a soccer player. You've got to take the opportunities you get. Respectfully disagree and would love to have this conversation with Danilo.

That, in fact, you don't have to take the opportunities as they come. Sometimes an opportunity comes along and you're like, I have to say no because of morality. I don't care about my career. You guys stole a soccer team. I mean, remember that time, Hank, when Coca-Cola came calling and offered us an unfathomable amount of money and you were like, I'm not sure I can take this money for sugar water. You know what I did with that, though? What? I sent it to a friend who needed the money more than I did.

There you go. Yeah. So point being. Yeah. I didn't say, hey, Coca-Cola, you don't get to advertise. I was like, you're going to find somebody. You might as well work with this person who I think is good. Yeah.

And then finally, we signed Nathan Assimwi, or Assimwe, I don't know how to say his name yet, who's, who's, a wingback. And so he replaces Josh Neufel, who departed over the summer for the bright shores of Bradford City. Why is that controversial? Because they're trying to figure out whether or not people are allowed to fly in soccer. What is what? I don't understand. He's all you said he was a wingback. Oh, yes, he is a wingback. I'm sorry. He is, yes, that's good stuff. It's tricky. That's good stuff. You know, it's not your day job. It's kind of cheating. It's kind of cheating. It's kind of cheating to be a wingback. It'd be nice if you could have like rocket power or wings.

But no, Nathan Isimway is just a regular fella who's on loan from Charlton Athletic. Tetrapod. He's a tetrapod, just like the rest of us. He's just a little bit faster and stronger than most of us. And he's pretty good on his feet of like a sports reporter starting out with Nathan Assimway. A new wingbacked tetrapod from Northampton. Oh, the Gannan tetrapod signed a one-year contract. In the family Osteakhthys.

From the only remaining species of the genus Homo comes Nathan Isimway. We don't have enough pedantic phylogeny in sports reporting. What's the news from Mars? Well, the news from Mars, John. You may have heard of the Mars sample return mission. This is a mission where they're trying to go pick up stuff that the Curiosity rover has left behind a little vials. I think of it more as an experiment and can we get to and from Mars with a non-human. Yeah.

Yeah. Can we get to and from Mars spending billions of dollars to get simply like one kilogram of material back regardless of, and it does not have to. like breathe or eat. That program is in a weird spot because it is funded both by NASA and ESA. And the NASA part of it

is in the air as to whether that will ever happen or be funded. The ESA part of it, just going ahead. Just like all of the parts that they were going to make, they're just still making them. And they have actually like the company that was working on the

Earth return orbiter, which which is the thing that will actually launch up from Mars and bring it back to Earth. That team is still operating. And one of the companies that's been subcontradited to work on that orbiter has delivered the orbit insertion module, which will help the spacecraft enter Mars's orbit. They actually finished one of the first modules in 2024. They confirmed that the module can indeed do the thing that it's supposed to do.

And now the orbit insertion module has been shipped to the Airbus Defense and Space place. and that's the company that has been contracted to fulfill the whole thing. And so it's like there's pieces of it that are actually being made and delivered. Yeah. When's it going to get to Mars? I don't know, man, because the part that the U.S. was going to do. Or does not a great partner right now? Is it going to get to – you're telling me, is it going to get to Mars before or after 2027?

After. Okay, so you're telling me we're not even going to – we're not even going to even like get something else, something non-human to and from Mars before 2027. That's correct. Well, thank God Elon's got a plan. Elon's got a plan, so don't worry about that. He sure does. All right.

Well, congratulations slash my condolences on your attempts to get a sample from Mars to Earth before 27. That, by the way, I'm totally in favor of. I think we should get as many non-humans to Mars between now and 2027 as possible. to prepare the way for humans in a post-2020 world when this podcast is called Dear John and Hank on January 1st, 2028. It's coming up.

Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening. You can send us your questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. This podcast was edited by Chris Ankeko. It was mixed by Joseph Tunamettish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halso-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chrock Rivardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast, is by the Great Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, cock, blarn it! That was good. That's good. I liked it. I enjoyed that.