Dear Hank & John - 426: The Hank Green Twitter Memorial Garden

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

If John and Hank had to name something after each other, what would it be?  Could a balloon make it to space? Are athletes offended by how we talk about them? Does a Bloody Mary actually help a hangover? Why do dogs smell like that when they’re wet? Do John and Hank watch each other's videos? …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. 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 bringing all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbled and John. Yeah. They robbed a calendar store, and they got caught.

Terrible news. Hmm. They each got six months. John, I recently, I was watching a Conan O'Brien podcast, and he was talking on his Conan O'Brien podcast about the ads that he gets on Instagram Reels. Do you get ads on Instagram Reels? Oh, yeah. I have never been served an ad.

Wow. Well, you are clearly a very special little boy. Congratulations. Well, what is it? I'm not specialer than Conan O'Brien. I assume that you've been somehow whitelisted as a user they do not want to show ads to. Maybe you're immune to advertising. You don't want to get ads for the most, actually.

What do you get? What do you get? I get ads for the Awesome Sox Club and Keats and Co coffee and tea. I would say every fifth reel. Yeah, well, they know what you're into. Yeah, I mean, they know what I'm into, but I'm already a customer. You can't convert me a second time. It reminds me of the all-time great Amazon toilet seat review where the person wrote,

Amazon's algorithm has become convinced that since I bought a toilet seat, I'm in the market for hundreds of toilet seats. it's hard to tell and also you could always buy more at good dot store it is an amazing extent to which they identify your interests for example now when I go on onto Twitter which of course I never do and would never do I'll get a bunch of content in addition to the

the sort of scum at the bottom of the barrel of humanity I will occasionally get a piece of content about Hank Green and I'm like boy you know my interests Oh, boy. Yeah. I mean, how used to me? I had to search for that. What's it like to be hanging out in the internet's worst cesspool? It's so bad. It's saying something. It's so bad. It's scary. I mean, I don't want to talk about it. It is horrifying. Maybe. I'm just going to throw it out there. You should stop going. Yeah. I do think that I am there largely to feel sensations. Like, it provides. provide sensations in ways that the other platforms don't.

And by sensations, I mean, fear, anger, disgust, outrage. All the major feelings that one seeks in life. It knows which ones I'm really looking for. I don't know. I don't know. I'd rather see a toilet seat advertisement. Oh, for sure. It'd be great if the Internet was nothing but toilet seat advertisements,

if they just replaced the entire thing with toilet seat ads. I feel like that would genuinely be a step up for society. I mean, I don't see any strong signs that the near-term influence of the internet has been good. Yeah. TikTok's really got me pegged as a guy who would like to build a small army of men to shoot zombies. Oh, they're always giving you ads for those mobile games. Yeah. And it's like, not this one.

This one's a good one. And I'm like, I don't believe you. I believe if you're paying this much money. to acquire me as a customer, there isn't a way in which it's not going to extract a great deal of money from me once I download it. No, that's absolutely right. That's the right impulse. And in general, that's always the case with advertising, except for when you're advertised items from good dot store. One thing you know is that money is not going to go to some guy somewhere. It's going to go to make the world a better place. And you're going to get good stuff. We got that going for us. We are participating

in a different kind of capitalism that I find a little less problematic, but only a little. Let's move on to a question from Raquel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, if you had to name something after your brother, what would it be? You can choose anything and the other brother cannot stop you for the sake of names, Raquel. This is a great question, Hank. We've both already got one. What's named after me? Well, what do you think of John is? No, no, no, man. I'm not talking about a toilet or like anything. They're saying, like, if you could name a park after them or a bridge, or anything on earth. Oh.

Well, I thought it was like a thing. Like, do you know what a Hank is? Isn't it an amount of yarn? It's an amount of yarn. Yeah. Yeah. Just the right amount. If you Googled Hank Green, you'd get green yarn.

I don't know why I would have Googled Hank Green so many times in my life. Yeah, it's not a great sign. I have to say that for many years, I googled John Green a lot. And then the Internet broke me. It broke me like a wild horse that couldn't be broken. It taught me that, in fact, I am not a buck and bronch. I am just another docile horse that is subservient to man. I completely gave in and do not Google myself anymore ever.

For me, the internet, the horse that is, the internet kicks me in the leg, shatters my femur. Yeah. My femur heals, and I'm like, that's fine. And it'll never happen again. And also this femur, strong as ever. And then it happens again, and I'm like, turns out the femur was not as strong as I thought. Yeah.

Turns out it turns out I still have some bones. shards in there. Yeah. I think I would name Twitter, Hank Green. I would name it Hank Green's social media service. Yeah. And then Hank would be so inundated with Google messages, he could no longer successfully Google himself, which I really do think, Hank, like, one day you're going to come to me and you're going to say, I stopped Googling myself, and I'm going to be like, you did it. Like, you achieved enlightenment. That was the last thing you needed to shed in order to become the truest version of yourself. John, I think that you, you know those bananas that never turn green, but like, that's what they're never turned yellow. That's what they're supposed to do. And you like eat,

like, you cook them a different way? Plantains. Maybe. It could be. Yeah, I know, I know about plantains. Well, those are John Greens now. Well, maybe it's like a variety of plantains. Actually, I would love to name a park after you. Oh. But not, not in Missoula. Can I do a, can it be a really weird park? You know what I've always wanted to do, John? What? Can I tell you my idea? Oh, God, yes.

So here's what I want to do. I want to create a sort of a contemplative walk, you know, like a labyrinth. You know, one of these places where it's just like you go to spend time with yourself in your mind. And in the same way, there's a place near Missoula called the Garden of a Thousand Buddhas. And it's a sort of like contemplative walk place. And they have inscribed stones that have like Buddhist. thoughts on them. Fewer Buddhas than I would have expected

at the Garden of a Thousand. There's a thousand. Yeah, I guess that I didn't understand how small a number in the scheme of things 1000 is. Yeah. Yes. I was imagining just a vast expanse that stretched out to the horizon of Buddhas. Yeah. And I got sort of a solid acre

of Buddhas. But it's a nice contemplative walk. And I like a nice contemplative walk. And I want one that's like in, just like sort of lovely and has features, but I also want the rocks to be inscribed with drill tweets. It's a bad idea.

Or just like, maybe just like classic tweets. Just like, it's a memorial to Twitter because I do actually grieve for it a little bit. I know that I'm weird, but I know that there are other people like this too, or at least one other person who is like this too because I've talked with them about it. But, but I'd like, there's a, there's a, like, in the same way that, like, Vine gets to live on on TikTok and, like, Vine compilations and stuff. I'd like there to be, like, a physical manifestation of good, of, like, some good, in quotation marks. They're not going to be Buddhist cones, you know. They're going to be dumb tweets, but, like, dumb tweets in, like, a celebration of, like, how dumb humans are.

And I just want, I, like, want a memorial. I want a memorial to Twitter, which is the stupidest thing. I've ever said. I hadn't really considered that that's what the thought actually was until I said it out loud. But that's what I want. I want a nice contemplative walk with dumb tweets inscribed into stones that line the walkway. What would some of those tweets be? Do you have any in mind?

What about this one? Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I love Lady Gaga. I think she's a really interesting artist. That was Britney Spears in one tweet. Also, Ed Balls? Like, you just have Ed Balls. Do you know Ed Balls?

No. Ed Balls is a British politician, I think. And he once tweeted the words, Ed Balls, period, and that's the whole tweet. Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not sure that it's worthy of a Memorial Garden. I can think of greater things that we did as a culture that we should sort of, because that's what a Memorial Garden is all about, right? It's about lifting up the best of us. Yeah.

And I guess I'm going to submit that Twitter was never the best of us and that you are remembering it that way. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I'm not. I don't think Twitter was over the best of us. I think that we should mourn our idiocy. I think that we should celebrate the dumb little flaws of humanity. Like, we were given this tool to say anything we wanted in the whole world. And look, 100% one thing I know for sure is 200 years from now, Twitter will not be a thing.

Micro blogging will not be a thing. People will not do this anymore because they will have realized that it rots your brain. And it rocks society. We only remember yellow journalism for like the bad parts. But there's also stupid parts, dumb little parts of yellow journalism that just have been forgotten. And I want the dumb little parts of Twitter to have a little walk where you walk and you're like, God, we're dumb. All right. Can I expand it?

Yes, expand it. I actually think the problem is that you're so married to Twitter and that lots of other people use Reddit or Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram. and I don't think any of this stuff is going to exist in 200 years. For sure, yes. There might be a video sharing platform in 200 years, but I don't think there will be anything else. Yeah, I agreed. My concept would be a memorial to the social internet,

and I wouldn't make it only dumb, fun things. I would also make it an overall memorial. The way when you go to President Nixon's Presidential Library, they're like, yeah, I mean, you made some bad calls. Yeah, I mean. An overall memorial to the social media. internet as a way of saying also, this is over. We should stop. And we're all very sorry. We're sorry and we're ending it. It's like, it's like a memorial to cigarettes. Like,

this was fun. There was a lot to recommend this at the time. And now that time is old. Yeah, there was a, there was a solid 300 years of tobacco smoking. And then there was like 50 years where we knew, but we didn't know, no, or we knew, but we hadn't accepted, which is the part that we're in now with the social internet? The Hank Green Memorial Twitter Park, but I'm not dead Twitter is. I like the parenthetical a lot. And then eventually you can just like scrape off the parenthetical when you do die.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a million dollar idea. It's great. I'll charge people to get in and I'll charge them cigarettes so that I can give them away to underage teens. thereby capturing what Twitter was really, really good at, which was basically selling children Lucy's. Sort of metaphorical Lucy's, but that's what Twitter was.

The whole time, it was selling children Lucy's. It's just like, would you like more cigarettes? Yeah, we have an infinite number. They will provide you with feelings. Yeah, no, listen, there's 20 cigarettes right here, but if you scroll down, there's 20 new ones forever. But I'm in your brain. Let us decide what reality is for you.

That'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's decide for you what you're going to feel today. You'll like it. You won't like it, but you'll like it. It'll be a really weird thing for you, but you're going to be into it. You're not going to be able to stop, so you must like it. What were we talking about?

Being chronically online. This next question comes from Nome, who asks, dear Hank and John, when a balloon gets released, how far up can it go? I'm guessing it may burn up at a certain point. Could a balloon theoretically be made structurally stable enough to make it all the way to space? What then? I hope this question blows you away. Noam.

Great one, Noam. I got an answer before you answer it. Yeah, hit me. I think a spaceship is essentially a slightly hardened balloon. No. Yeah, it's a balloon. It's a very fancy, hard shell balloon. The defining factor of a helium balloon is that it rises because,

of buoyancy. The defining factor of a spaceship is that it rises because of rocket ship power. All right. Well, that's a pretty big difference. I've been proven wrong in a single sentence. Move on. Okay. I mean, this is so unlike Twitter for you to just accept being wrong about something. I really need you to push back on me, but like in the stupidest way possible. You want me to double down, but be like, be like, balloons have nothing to do with helium. No, no, no, you got to turn it back on me. You got to be like, you got to be like, so you're saying. that the only thing that matters is how you get higher in life. What could be more privileged? Oh, my God.

So the reason the balloons go up is because they're lighter than air. We know that. So they're not going to go up when the air is... Really, really light. Yeah, when they actually become more dense than the air. But what actually happens is that part of what's going on with the balloon is that the air, like inside and the air outside are not totally equivalent. So, blow up a balloon, there's actually more air on the, more, there's more helium molecules on the inside than there are molecules on the outside. That's what's pushing the balloon outward so it

doesn't flop down. So pressure, pressure is actually higher inside. It's just that the molecules way less or the atoms, the particles way less. And then, uh, and as it goes up, the outside pressure gets lighter and lighter and lighter and the balloon gets bigger and bigger and bigger because there's less pushing on it from the outside and more pushing on it from the inside until at a certain height, the balloon pops. And so you have to make, in order to, like, one thing you'll see is, like, when you do like a big old weather balloon to go really, really high up in the air, when it's low down, it doesn't look very big.

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it gets higher because the air pressure around it is getting lower and lower. It's pushing on the balloon less. They have the same number of particles inside, but they look much more inflated. And then eventually that difference becomes so large that it will tear the balloon. So the guy who took a balloon to space and then jumped out of it and parachuted down to earth. Remember that guy?

Uh-huh. He just passed away. He did. I recently found that out. Point being. The Twitter and Felix Boundert Gardner Memorial Garden by Hank Green. I don't think you want that one. That guy was really radicalized by the social internet actually as it happens.

Oh, no. Yeah. Really? For real. No, yeah, that's not a joke. Don't look it up. Okay. He's super disappointing.

Point being, he was at the edge of space. He wasn't in space, right? Because you can't be in space. Oh, correct. For sure. Yeah, 100%. Not a guy in space. But he just, he came from very, very high up where he could see the curvature of the Earth and everything and then came down to what I consider to be Earth.

Yeah. But in some ways, he was in Earth the whole time because he was in our atmosphere still. Yeah, he was, he was just as much on Earth as you when you're jumping. I mean, yeah, sort of. I see what you mean. You know, it's pretty crazy that you can jump and then like the sky is under you. Yeah. No, you're basically parachuting out of an airplane every time you jump. And that's why John hates it so much.

I don't love jumping. I'm not a fan. All right, this next question comes from Gwen, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly John, can you please explain to me why so much of sports talk about players switching teams or retiring makes it sound like they are talking about like race horses or something or like goods being traded? Are players offended by this? Should they be? It always sounds extremely weird to me as someone who does not partake of sports ball. P&P, Gwen. Now, Hank, you may remember when I bought a. player for AFC Wimbledon. I made a video that said, I bought a player for AFC Wimbledon.

And a lot of people were like, whoa there. That's messed up. It's 2025. We don't buy people. You can't be buying a player. And I was like, you're right. There is something wrong with the language. But there is also, there are two competing facts that we must hold in our head at the same time, which is that the player is an asset and the player is a person. An asset in the sense that their future playing has value to the economy. This is not just true of sports ball, by the way, right? This is also true of all of us. And so if you've signed a 10-year contract that some other company has to pay off in order for you to join their company, like that's a trade of you as a human being, but also a trade of the value of your asset. Now, most of us don't sign those contracts

because most of us don't work in those fields, but there are some fields like that. Some AI jobs are like that, et cetera. Okay. As for whether the players feel weird about it, I only have a couple of friends, real friends, who are professional athletes. And yes, they feel weird about it and also are like highly, highly cognizant

of how messed up it is. That billionaires are trading millionaires for their physical assets. That, like, yes, that is a super weird phenomenon of the 21st century that didn't really exist in the same way before the big sports era. Like, as a result, a lot of player contracts are much higher than they used to be.

So, like, if you're in the fourth or third division of English football, you make a pretty good living, which was not the case 20 years ago. But there is something very weird about the idea of, like, the rights to you as a player being, like, a saleable asset. Like, that is weird. We should be bothered by that, I think. Is there a way to do it that's not that? Yeah, I think the way to do it that's not that is to have, and this would not work, just to be

clear. But if players had complete freedom of movement and signed like one game contracts or like you got paid per game, then that would solve the problem. Then you could go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted for more money or whatever. But like that would create its own set of problems and would not be very practical. So I think this way benefits players in a lot of ways, especially in sports that have good contracts with their owners or in sports like football where the owners are always at risk because of the prospect of relegation. But, like, the owners have to be able to experience some risk one way or another in order to motivate a good market, right? So, like, it's one of my issues with, say, American football is that often NFL players are underpaid relative to their

value in part because there is no, like, second NFL that you could go to. Right. There's, like, much inferior professional leagues like the CFL. But in soccer, you know, La Liga is all. almost as good as the English Premier League. And the League in Italy is almost as good. And the league in Germany is almost as good. And there's lots of different ways to make a living. And so you can kind of pressure the market that way. Are there a lot of German players in English football? There are increasingly because now the English Premier League is so much bigger than all those other leagues that like people are moving over, like Florian Vert, who just became a player for Liverpool, for instance. So yeah, it is weird, Gwen. I don't think you should think that it's not

weird, but I also think that to Hank's point, there's no easy way to make it better. You know, I mean, already, like most professional football leagues in the U.S. have pretty strong unions that can collectively bargain. I think in the case of the NFL, they need to collectively bargain a little more aggressively. But, like, there is still significant advantage to those contracts. But, yeah, my friends who are professional footballers all think that it's weird. That's so interesting. I would have expected that you just sort of like, well, this is how things are.

And, like, you know, if you get traded to a better team, that that's really exciting. You sign a new contract. That's like a kind of dream come through situation. Oh, I think it absolutely is. I think it absolutely is. But I think there's something weird about the idea of your rights being like. And players, in England, players have way more control over where they go a lot of, not all the time, but usually they have more control in where they go. So they have some say in where they go.

Like in baseball, you can just find out one day like, oh, you've been assigned to the Red Sox. And also, you're no longer a major league baseball player. You're now playing for their minor league team. Like, that can just happen to you one day. Yeah, yeah. Hockey, it's always funny, like, that when a new hockey player is, like, traded to the team, they always do, like, an interview with them. And they're like, so, why are you excited to move to Seattle?

And they're like, oh, I mean, why am I excited to, like, get my kids out of their school and drive them across the country and, like, deal with all of the fallout and my wife losing all of her friends and me, like, having to, make a bunch of new friends, like, I don't really care about Seattle. Like, I had a life, but they have to, like, fake it, you know? They have to be like, oh, it's Seattle, the Space Needle, all the things that I've heard about Seattle, I guess. Yeah. But you're just a, you're a hockey player, so you're doing what you're doing.

It's even more brutal when they come to a new third-tier English football club, Hank, where they have to be like, yeah, I mean, I haven't really caught up on the history yet. Of winching town bulges. But I hear that the Wingingtown Bulges fans are like no other fans in the country. I'm so excited to get started working here at Wingingtown. No, the full name of the town is Wingington Bulges. Oh, okay. I see, Wingington Bulges.

So it's the Wendington Bulges Wanderers is the name of the football club. Yeah. What do you think was this sort of historical trade in Wingington Bulges? Do you think it was cobbling, shoemaking? Yeah, no, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a quarry town. Okay. So, Wingington is the town. And then there's a suburb called Wingington Bulges where the quarries are.

And that's where the football club is located. Well, one of us, Wingington. Yeah, their great rival is Wingington, Wingington, Wingington South. Wingington South, Wingington Wednesday, who, of course, play primarily on. on Saturdays as it goes in English football. That reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Wingington Bulges Wanderer's FC. Wingington Bulges Wanderer FC has never been a better time to get a season ticket.

This podcast is also brought to you by the Hank Green Memorial Twitter Garden. Twitter is dead, not me. For now. And today's podcast is brought to you by balloons that go almost to space, but literally can't go to space. That's a metaphor. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Good Store, Good Store, sending advertisements to John Green and money to partners and health.

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Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-com slash dear hank. free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash dear hank. This episode of Deerhankajun is brought to you by Factor. Fall. It's here. It's lovely. It feels like a reset. The kids back in school. The days are getting shorter. And unsurprisingly, the calendar is still filling itself up. Suddenly, it's 6.30 p.m. standing in the kitchen. Wondering, how is it dinner time, and what am I going to do about that?

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Clarissa. P.S. hi from the Philippines. Thanks for your tuberculosis advocacy. I moved to London and nobody there talks about TB and I hope one day that'll be true back home. That's very nice. Thank you. I can't wait to go to the Philippines next month. Oh, what? What? Yeah, for some TB advocacy work. Amazing. Enjoy. I'm excited. The only downside is that it is literally 12 hours time different. So it does not matter if you go left or right when you are leaving from Indianapolis because it's about the same flight lengths. I hate Bloody Marys. Oh, yeah, me too.

They're disgusting. Like, if you'd given me a billion years and all of the ingredients in the world and said, make a bunch of cocktails, I never would have got to the tomato soup with vodka one. Yeah. No, absolutely. There is some truth to the hair of the dog, Hank, that if you... Yeah, kind of. I mean, in the way that it makes you feel everything less.

Do you want to talk about a dangerous game? Forget Twitter. Continuously eating dog hairs from dogs that do bite you? Hair of the dog is a dangerous game. So I would generally recommend now some people say that there's B vitamins in the Worcestershire sauce

and that's the key because it supports brain function and there's electrolytes in the tomato juice and whatever, whatever. But the truth is you could have a Gatorade with a B vitamin. There you go.

On the table. That is also available to you. Yeah, I think that's the best strategy. In general, the best strategy, and I learned this from my best friend, Chris Waters, who told me once, we were at a party and I was, I was reaching for a beer. And he was like, let's leave in like 10 minutes. And I was like, perfect. And so I reached for a beer. And he said, you know, nobody ever regrets not having the last beer. Especially if you're about to leave, because the beer is to help with the party. If you're leaving the party, you should not still be drinking. Agreed. Absolutely agreed. Not only that. If you take that to its logical

conclusion, the first beer is the last beer. Nobody ever regretted not having zero beers. As a person who has not been drinking much in the last few years, I can say there are parts of it I miss. Yeah, the kind of socialization lubricant function. Yeah, largely that. Yeah. There's also just sort of a pleasant, happy feeling that you can get if the stars align. I will say, it doesn't happen. Doesn't happen every time. And that makes it, that's just like casino vibes. Like, yeah, perfect. I'm going to pull the lever and see.

I do love a casino. Yeah. I don't, but I love other kinds of similar things. You have Twitter, which is the ultimate casino. And this whole job that we have. That's true. A lot of randomized rewards in our career for better awards. It's real weird.

It's a real. Randomized punishment, too. What if you went to a casino and like every thing? 30th poll you won and every 60th pull it kicked you in the nuts. I think people would still go to the casino because what actually happens is that people have a very negative experience when they lose money. You do kind of get kicked in the nuts nine times out of ten. So alcohol is a little bit like that.

There is some, so like obviously alcohol can dull your sensations. So that could be done for you. But there's Tylenol as well that's available. And there is something to like spicy food. maybe for a hangover to just like get you out of it for a second. It's sort of a meant to give you a different discomfort. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, horseradish can be good at that, whereas just get your brain focused on something else.

But I'll tell you what my favorite hangover cure is, is one, not getting them. But then if I do to sleep, if I can make that happen. I love to sleep. I enjoy a large breakfast. Oh, yeah, for sure. Toast. Followed by a long nap. Uh-huh. Yeah.

But in general, yeah, I just, I haven't gotten a lot of hangovers in the last like 10 years, thankfully. But when I do get them, oh, it's like a two-day experience now. Yeah, yeah. All right, Hank, I got another question from you from Worrell, who says, Dear John and Hank, but probably mostly Hank, if we're being honest. Worrell, you underestimate me. Why do dogs smell like that when they're wet? Every time I give my dog a bath, it's followed by three hours of that classic wet dog smell.

I call it the Fritos smell, Laurel, because it smells exactly like Fritos. Oh, no, different smell. That's the dog foot smell. dog wet smells a totally different smell does not smell like fritos wet dog smells like fritos end of end of sentence i have a dog we're smelling different dogs clearly uh shouldn't he smell good after having a bath i don't smell musty and weird and like a frito when i get out of the shower so why does my dog thanks barks and baths laurel does laurel say that it smells like a frito no i added that for myself okay just making sure because i think you're wrong everyone is going to write in to say wet dog smell like fritos and

I don't want to deal with all that extra. Smell like fritos. Dog paws smell like fritos for sure. Yeah, because dog paws are always a little wet. Is there a reason for this, Hank, that you know of? Yeah, I mean, dogs have, look, they have a lot more hair than us. They got a lot. They make a musky smell that is a communication between dogs.

But yeah, there's a bunch of stuff going on there. that is probably intentionally evolved in order for dogs to be able to communicate. All right. No, that's helpful. So there you go. They smell like that because they like to sniff at each other. Yeah. And they got, if you'd like to know, there's some short chain fatty acids.

That can smell kind of sour and a little bit, like gross, like rot. It's mostly salty. And then there's like an earthy musty smell, which is, that's from bacteria on them that produce that in the same way that a lot of our body order smells made by bacteria. And there's also some yeast buy products that you're smelling. So does I make it better? No, but thank you for sharing. This next question comes from Ismar who asks, dear John and Hank, I'm an avid fan of the work you do. However, due to how busy life can get sometimes, I miss videos on your personal channel and I don't watch either of your shorts or TikToks because I don't watch shorts or TikToks. But when I was

watching Hank's latest video on Hank's channel, I was wondering, do you watch? all of each other's videos that are not made or posted on the Vlog Brothers channel. No, it isn't Mar, is Mar. John. Yeah. No. No. I watch all the Vlog Brothers videos.

I do too. I even watched your 20-minute vlog-brothers video. Sorry about that. Well, it has 2.8 million views, so it's hard to complain. I watched all of that. I watch all Vlog Brothers videos, and I have since 2007. I would say I watch most Hank's channel videos Like when the topic interests me

Which it usually does because it's my brother And so I'm interested But I wouldn't say I've watched every Hank's channel video And then I would say I watch about 3% of Hank's TikToks Yeah Yeah, I don't I watch John's TikToks When they come across my feed I'm not going to TikTok.com slash John Green

Whatever it is. What's your TikTok? Point being, you don't even know that I haven't made a TikTok in three months, I assume. No, no. no, no. That would surprise you. Well, it wouldn't surprise me, but it's not something that I, if you could have told me that you've made, you've made six in the last week and I would be just as not surprised. Right. Yeah. So I, I stopped making TikToks, actually. And I may start again at some point, but for now I'm not, I'm just not really interested in it. Like, I just don't feel the

poll. And unlike Hank, I don't feel an obligation to participate in social media platforms that aren't giving me much back. Yeah, I was a citizen of the internet. It's a crampy time. I don't know. I don't know. You mean like nervous making or? I guess I was thinking it makes me want to poop, you know, digestive cramps.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I've honestly felt that way since about 2016. So it's nothing new for me. At any rate, there's no TikToks of mine to watch, Ismar. So you're not missing out on anything there. There's John's channel live streams where I play Feastiener. with my buddy Stan.

You're not missing out much there either. I think Hank doesn't watch those. I've not watched many of those. And, uh, yeah, yeah. So that, there you go. That's about the situation. I'm trying to make stuff right now, like Hank is, we're kind of an interesting crossroads. I don't know that we've articulated this to each other, but I think we're at an

interesting crossroads where I'm trying to make stuff for like extremely small audiences that I'm really interested in, you know, like through the secret Patreon or through John's channel or whatever. And you're trying to do like mass media communication about science, which I think are two different but equally valid responses to this moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The less valid thing, which I was thinking about trying to do some in the past is like participation in the discourse.

Yeah. Which is just, I don't know. I just feel so hopeless about it now. I don't know if it's very productive is the problem. I might be wrong. It doesn't feel productive to me right now. But maybe it is. I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how to, like, it's just so boxed in on all sides. But yeah, I continue to be excited about my ability to be a professional science communicator, which is really great. It's a great job. It's a good job. But it's, it can be tricky. Here it is. I'm not always sure what the difference between a Hank's channel video and a vlog where this video is. I think that this is the problem I've set up for me.

myself. And so, like, what really determines whether it's a Hank's channel video or vlog withers video is, like, whether I have to upload a vlog brother's video that day, often, not always. There's stuff that I wouldn't put on, on Hank's channel. Right. But there's nothing that I put on Hank's channel that wouldn't be a good vlog brother's video, you know? Right. It's on everything. It's not like there's a lane there. Yeah. I mean, there's a community focus that isn't on Hank's channel as much. Yeah. But, you know, part of building community sometimes is getting videos that get lots of views. I was just looking at our analytics and I mean it's really become an interesting divide. Like I still make videos that get a lot of views, but in terms of people

who aren't regular nerd fighters, something like 85% of the views that come in, come in from your videos, which is really interesting. But I think it works. Like I think like you target the broader audience and like some of those people stay and I target the people who stay. I like it. Yeah. It's working for me. You definitely, like, it wasn't always that way. You definitely, back in the day, loved to make a video that would get a bunch of views. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm writing one now that's not going to get a bunch of views, but that's about how I still

care about views, and I can't break myself of this habit. Yeah. The truth is, Hank, like, we are not YouTubers in the traditional sense in a lot of ways, but, like, actually in most of the ways we are. Yeah. We are very much YouTubers. We care about attention. We compete in the attention economy.

We want to get views. We want to get people to watch and like and care about our stuff. There's a bunch of YouTubers that I like care what they think about our content, you know? That's interesting. I don't feel that way, but that's interesting. I mean, I care what they think about the project. I don't care what they think about an individual video. Okay.

Yeah. But yeah, I've been, I've been wrestling a lot recently with the question of why did I want this so badly? and when I got it, why did I hate it so much, it being fame and outside attention? And I think I've gotten to the core of why I wanted it so much. You know, I didn't have it as a kid. I was lonely. I wanted to be popular, all that stuff. But I don't think I've gotten to the core of why I found it so unpleasant and sort of repulsive.

And at the same time, intoxicating, right? Like, it's much closer to my relationship with cigarettes. You know, than it is my relationship with anything else. We're like, I'm grossed out by it and, like, horrified by my desire for attention, but at the same time, intoxicated by the attention itself. And that's a hard thing to, like, untangle or disentangle from everything, all my other motivations, you know? Like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to separate out those motivations all the time.

Interesting. I don't have the same negative vibes around it. I know, I know, which I find admirable. But you also don't mind the attention as much. Right. Yeah. And I find those two things inseparable. Like the fact that I don't mind the attention plus the fact that I want the attention

that those are related. But you're saying that you want the attention but don't like it. I always wanted it and I like it a lot less than I thought I would. How's that? Sure. Yeah, yeah. That totally makes sense. Things are not what you think they are going to be.

No, for sure. And like I'm very grateful for the attention. I really am. It's enabled a lot of wonderful things to happen in my life, and I'm super grateful for it. And so that's part of what makes it so complicated to also find it unpleasant. Let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, since I didn't expect to get so confessional. Fortunately, no one listens to the end of the pod. What's the news from Mars this week, Hank?

I don't know. I'm just very, like, there's only, so we record these. You can't get two weeks of news out of the fact that there's probably life on Mars. I mean, so like, the thing is that our episodes are currently coming out substantially delayed. So when Mars is actually in the news, it feels weird because people are like, yeah, no, I heard about that many weeks ago. But yeah, no, that's where my brain's at. Kind of the news from Mars is a little bit how the news from Mars has been covered, which I think it's been pretty good. Yeah, I was going to say, most people aren't saying like this is irrefutable proof of, like,

life on Mars, but at the same time, they're saying this is a really big deal. It's a little weird that NASA is currently being run by the Transportation Secretary because there is no administrator of NASA because it's not functioning super smooth over there, not in NASA, but in Washington generally. So that's a little strange to have like Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, get up and tell us about life on Mars, but he didn't do a terrible job of going through it. And it's been interesting to see everybody's kinds of takes, you know, like the different levels of communication and, like, what are we going to talk about?

Like, what's the, are we talking to people who have some understanding of chemistry, no understanding of chemistry? And the other piece of news from Mars is I saw this video about, like, you know, the news. It got a lot of views. Wild to me, how it's always such an education when a piece of content gets a lot of views because there will be people in the comments, like when I said, like when you say life on Mars, I mean like dogs and stuff. I don't care if there's microbes on Mars.

And I'm like, wow, I am so far away from where you're at. Microbes on Mars is actually would be extremely, just for you know, that would be very big news. But a lot of people are sort of like, that's not actually. But I think it's important to understand why it's huge news. And maybe you just assume that because it's been a huge deal to you for your entire adult life. But it would be a huge deal because we've never established life anywhere else but are. Yeah. And it would also imply that life is, in fact, either really, really common or else life is co-evolved from Mars and Earth.

Yeah, yeah. So either life is very common or life is able to travel between planets. Both of which would be huge deals. Yes. No, that's a huge deal. I would argue a bigger deal than the news from AFC Wimbledon. I agree. It's a big deal.

So what's going on? I texted you. You know what's going on at AFC Wimbledon because you're a fan now, whether you like it or not. And I went, you know, I opened Google and it knows I care about AFC Wimbledon. And it was like, here's the score of the game that's happening right now. I was like, oh, they're down by one. That game's over. And then I opened it two hours later.

And they won by two. They went from one nil down to two went up. They won by one. But yes, they won. Yeah, they got two goals. You weren't wrong for thinking that going one-nill-down meant the game was over, since we have not come from behind to win a game in 600 days. Oh, my God.

Are you serious? So it had been a while. I think that's right. I only read it on Blue Sky, so it might be wrong. But I think it's right. Anyway, it's been a while, is the point. And A.C. Wimbledon went one-nill-down on a very annoying goal in a very bad first half. I mean, we played a terrible first half.

I was frankly disgusted. And then in the second half, we played great. Jake Reeves, our captain, our talisman, gave us a goal back to tie the game. And then Maddie Stevens won a dubious penalty. And he finished the penalty, and we won the game 2-1. And I had forgotten what it feels like to come from behind. It was so exciting.

I was thrilled for the fellas. They had also forgotten that it was possible to win after losing. They are now an 11th place. And I mean, stop the count. Mike, let's just end the season right now. 11th place would be amazing. It would be stupid good. 12 points after eight games.

We probably need about 51 points to stay up. So we're on our way. We're on our way. Certainly if we kept this up for the rest of the season, we would be easily safe. But the expectation is that things will take a turn at some point. But for now, we're playing great. Playing great.

This podcast would not exist without questions sent to Hank and John at Gima.com. It's true. Thank you to everybody who sends your questions. It's always a pleasure to read them. This podcast, it's edited by Ben Swart Out. It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsrowas and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Dubu Krak 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, don't forget to be awesome.