Dear Hank & John - 446: Just Chatting… With Me

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Where does bubblegum flavor come from? Why do our voices change as we get older? Why does moving suck? Can a stump go on living once the top of its tree has been cut off? What are some ways to find a third space and be part of a community? What can I do to not be so nervous speaking in class? …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/dearhankandjohnProduced for Hank and John Green by ComplexlySee 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. And welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is 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 Wimbled and John, what word becomes longer when you remove two letters?

What? Longerer. It's true. It's true. How are you? I'm still struggling. Hank, I have big news. I have a major announcement.

Oh, no. Yeah. I've been keeping a secret from the dear Hank and John audience for the last, like... Is it under your hat? It's under my hat, Hank. He's bald, everybody. No, it's a new book. It's a new book. It's a new book, Hank.

Oh, it's a new book. It's under his hat. You can't see it because it's a podcast. But there it is. I have written a novel. It is coming out September 22nd. Signed copies are available for pre-order now. It is called Hollywood Ending. Hollywood comma ending.

There's a comma in the title, Hank, a controversial comma. Wow. Why is there a comma, Hollywood ending? Hollywood ending. It's about two people in their 20s who are stars of a movie, and the movie, which is about Andy Warhol's last year,

is kind of blowing up, and alongside it, their lives are blowing up in ways that are exciting and intoxicating and also terrifying and painful. And Hank, you haven't read it. it yet. No, it's true. It's true. You've got to send it to me. I know. I feel like I need to prep you for the read before you read it. That's not how it works. Well, I don't know. I'm very nervous about it.

I'm very excited. I've never had this much fun writing. But sometimes that's a bad sign. Usually when authors like their books, I'm always like, oh, no. I have an author friend who just told me, like, I'm really excited for you to read my new book. It's my best one yet. And I was like, no, that's a terrible sign. Like, Mark Twain thought his best book was his biography of Joan of Arc. Did he do a biography of Joan of Arc? Yeah, and there's a reason you don't remember it, Hank. Was it like well-researched? Like, he was just trying to do the work, or? No, it's like a fictional retelling of her life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. At any rate, my book, let's not spend too much time advertising Mark Twain. He's done fine for himself. My new book

is available for pre-order now. And I'm really excited about it. And I hope that people like it out there. I know that we shouldn't be talking about your next book after this book. But... Certainly not. If you could write a book that was a fictionalized retelling of the life of any person, would it or would it not be the man who invented Dr. Pepper?

Charles Alderton? Oh, what a life that man had from treating tuberculosis and other illnesses at his pharmacy in Waco, Texas to eventually developing the 23 special flavors that go into Dr. Pepper. I mean, it's an incredible American story, Hank. And then he sold the formula for it because he just wanted to go back to being a pharmacist, which is so beautiful to me. He's like us. He got to a point where he was like, I can't take it anymore, except instead of becoming a

nonprofit, he sold out. He didn't turn Dr. Pepper into a nonprofit. That would have been awesome. I don't know that you could do that. I don't know if it's enough of a social good. I don't know. I don't know. It would be awesome if he chose to run Dr. Pepper for like tuberculosis care or something.

And Dr. Pepper was still fighting TB. Yeah, sold it to a forest. Yeah, exactly. Hank and I used to work for a magazine that got sold to a forest. It's the weirdest thing because it was like a fun facts magazine and then it became one of the funest facts. Yeah. Anyway, my new book, very excited about it.

I can't believe it's finally here. It's been 20 years, Hank, since I published books in consecutive years. I've been working on this book since 2017, often in the background while working on other things. But it's finally done-ish. It's finally here. I will say immediately after finishing this podcast, I have to go back to my copy edits, but it's almost done. Well, right now I am doing expert review edits. I know.

That's exciting. I'm like deep in the mix of like KRA. is actually an intracellular messenger. You know the fact that I got wrong and everything is tuberculosis that haunts me? Yeah. And it's nobody's fault but mine. But I said that when Robert Koch

looked through the microscope at the TB basilist for the first time, he saw a squiggling. And TB is not motile. It doesn't squiggle. It doesn't squiggle. That's hard. That's hard.

Well, at least you're not the poor people from Project Hill Mary who loaded up an unbalanced centrifuge. Oh, did they? They did. The poor people. No one's being chill about it at all. They are just, and look, some centrifuges are self-balancing. But I will say anybody's ever worked in a lab, you do it by a habit.

You just balance your centrifuge. Right. Well, I'm sure there are things that I get wrong in Hollywood ending about Hollywood and about love and about Instagram. and the relationship between fame and trauma and what we give up when we give up our own memories and experiences to feed the content machine.

I'm sure there are things I got wrong, but I have seen a lot of it up close, Hank. Yeah, I'm working on a video about this that's going to come out before this podcast comes out. Is it going to come out after March 31st? Yes. Then you should advertise Hollywood ending in it. Well, it's already recorded.

Well, then put a little Hollywood ending ad at the end of it, buddy. Okay, we'll see. I thought you loved me. Anyway, I just, the things that flag us, we don't realize how specific our knowledge is. The example I use is that in Project Hail Mary, they load it on balanced censor-fuge. But also in Project Hail Mary, the main character picks up a traffic cone from the surface of an aircraft carrier and pukes into it. And like nobody knows, who doesn't work on an aircraft carrier, that we would never have a loose traffic cone on the surface of an aircraft carrier.

It's going to become like a projectile at any moment. Also, aren't those hollow? Like, wouldn't it just sort of funnel your puke? Also, there is a hole in both ends. Yeah. Usually. But maybe this one doesn't have a hole in both ends. But definitely you would never have one on this.

It's like literally dangerous. against policy to have something loose like that on the surface of an aircraft carrier. But that's not the thing you notice because you don't have that set of experiences, but lots of people do. And so you can't have every single one of those things get caught. And at some point, it's just like,

okay, but which things are good for making a movie? Yeah, I think that we forget some... I mean, obviously, you don't want to be pulled out of your immersion into the story by a fact that's so glaringly wrong. But a lot of this novel that I've been writing is about the life of Andy Warhol. And there are times when I've cheerfully ignored things

about the life of Andy Warhol because they're not useful to me. Like the movie that they're in is about, is called Andy Warhol never gets old. And it's about Warhol's kind of end of life. And there's lots of things that are true to Warhol, but there's also lots of things I made up because isn't that the joy of writing fiction? Like that's what I've missed for the last nine years is being able to make things up.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if I ever write fiction again what that would be like. I think you should, but I also don't want to put pressure on you. I think you should... I like your strategy of not signing a book deal until you've written the book. Yeah, I like my strategy of doing whichever thing feels most pressing at the moment. That is certainly how you've gotten where you got in life, Hank Green, is by following a constant urgency. It's just the urges.

Yes. Many of the urgency is simply the urge. It is not even external urgency. No. No, you have, like, your own internal urgency that tells you, I must write a book about cancer now. Yeah, I'm really frustrated that it's taken as long as it has. It's hard.

It is hard. Writing, writing, I mean, writing books is the best job in the world, and so complaining about it is poor form. But, I don't know, man. Podcasts. We're going to do this. It's going to take an hour. It's going to be done.

That's true. Making podcast is easier than writing books. It's not the best job in the world. This is the best job in the world. We have two of the best jobs in the world, Hank. This is a great one. Yeah. This is a great job.

We actually don't get paid for this part. But I don't get paid for most of my jobs. That doesn't bother me. That doesn't decide whether or not it's a job anymore, whether or not I get paid. It's about more than that now, Hank. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Okay, John. First question, John, what word becomes shorter if you add two letters?

short. That's correct. Yes, okay, I think I got it. Reagan asks, Dear John and Hank, what is bubble gum flavor? This feels like it falls in the ranks of truly artificial flavors like Dr. Pepper. Pumpkins and penguins, Reagan, this is such a good point.

Bubble gum flavor is another purely artificial flavor with no real-world analog that I believe dates to the late 19th century. When we were first experimenting with the idea that there could be tastes that had no real-world analog. Yeah, we're just doing artificial flavors. We were finding these esters that had, like, there were components of fruit flavors.

So there's are things that might be in a strawberry, might be in a banana, but are, like, much simpler than the actual flavors of those fruits. They're just one of the many flavor components or smell components. And we're just like, which ones are easy to make and have strong flavors, and can we have them be somewhat inexpensive? Let's mix them together.

and we ended up with a bubble gum flavor. I really like the word esters, but I think we should name some of these bubble gum flavorings, Hank, like methyl salicylate. That's a great... Why don't they advertise that, but it's got that sweet, sweet methyl salicylate in it? Ethelbutyrate, benzate, I mean...

Mmm. Delicioso. Organic compounds. Yeah, I guess that's the truth, right? They're all organic compounds. It's not like, getting this stuff from Mars or anything, it's made out of flavors.

Well, when I say organic compounds, I just... You don't mean like... Carbon-based. No. Yeah, a lot of these are chemical distillates. They come off of doing chemistry to petroleum products.

But they are also naturally... They naturally occur in, you know, fruits as well. You're telling me that bubble gum flavor is made out of oil, like oil from the ground? Oh, yeah. No, I'm telling you, bubble gum is also made out of oil. It's rubber. It's made out of petroleum? I don't, I think that it is now. It didn't used to be, but I think that it is now. Oh my God. Yes, most conventional chewing gum is from

synthetic petroleum-derived gum base. Oh my God. Actually, bubblegum wasn't invented until 1928. How did we live for 300,000 years with no bubble gum, no Dr. Pepper? What were we doing? I don't know, John. We're about to celebrate bubblegum's 100th anniversary? Wow. We need to clear the calendar for 2028. Right around the same moment, we were discovering that other galaxies were other galaxies. Yeah, like those smudges in the sky were other galaxies. Yeah, that there were many island universes is what they at first called them.

They should have stuck with that. Island universe is much prettier than galaxy. We had to figure out what to do about that. We had to be like, okay, so you're telling us, Like the universe, as we imagined it, is much bigger than what it is. But it still makes sense to call the universe whatever there is. Right. So that was like a process of figuring out how to name things, which is crazy.

That's that young. There are so many stars. Yeah. Like you can't get your head around how many. There are more stars than there are chickens. There are more stars just in our galaxy than there are chickens currently on the planet, and there are a lot of chickens. That's a weird analogy because of how it's hard to,

I think most people don't understand how many chickens there are, but it is a frequent topic of the podcast. So listeners, you guys, you all know how many chickens there are. There are more chickens than there are birds. Yeah, if you don't include chickens. and there are more stars than there are chickens and birds combined. Oh, for sure. By a lot.

Just in our galaxy. And our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, maybe infinite. You know, there's that Carl Sagan quote about like the number of stars versus the number of grains of sand on Earth. And what that kind of highlights in a way that you don't realize until you've been in it for a while isn't really how many stars there are, but how few grains of sand there are. There's just like not as many grains of sand as you would expect. Yeah, but if you go to the beach, Hank, with a show. shovel and you like let a handful of sand go through your fingers and you think that's one handful of sand out of millions of handfuls of sand and there are more stars in the universe than that.

That does blow your mind a little bit. Yeah, but people think that like the sand goes out forever, but it doesn't. It's really localized to beachy areas and deserty areas. There's a lot of, we actually have a sand shortage, if you can believe, that sentence. I believe it. We have an everything shortage. If there is something, we will use it in extremists. We really figured out some real uses for sand.

We're making bubblegum from old dinosaurs, Hank. Like, yeah, I believe it. That's what we should be doing with the dinosaurs, you know? There's, like, we shouldn't be burning it. If there's anything we're learning, it's like, that stuff's valuable. We should be using it for, like, high quality, longer-term uses than just, like, lighting it on fire. And yet.

And yet. All right, let's move on to another question. I think we've answered that one pretty darn well. This next question comes from Maya, who asks, Dear Hank and John, why do our voices change as we get older? Not just puberty when the voice drops. Why do singers on reunion tours have less vocal strength than they had when they originally recorded those songs that they're performing?

Mai Tai's and Papaya Maya, because they're old. We're falling apart, Maya. Why did you bring this up? Yeah. I mean, I go back and watch early vlog brothers videos, and first off, I'm screaming at the camera, which is annoying. I wish that I'd just talk like a regular person, but I guess that wasn't the style then.

You're screaming, too, which makes me feel better. That would be way worse than you, yeah. But at any rate, aside from the fact that I'm screaming at the camera, my voice, the timber of my voice is so beautiful. And I remember hating my voice and thinking, like, my voice was so thin and reedy and weak. And now I'm like, oh, what I wouldn't give for that voice? Although I will say, Hank, I will say,

I did just win an audio award for Best Book, audiobook narrated by the author. Oh, God, I want that one so bad. So maybe I have a beautiful voice. Maybe in 20 years I'll look back on my current voice and be like, oh, he sounded so good then. I think that our voices have gotten better. No, our voices have gotten worse.

I mean, even yours has, too. Don't, don't, I'm not just throwing myself out of us. I have a piece of information that I think is correct when I know it is spelled T-I-M-B-R-E but I believe it is pronounced timbre. No way, really? I think so. Really?

Well, I got a check now. That's the kind of thing that you would think an audio award-winning audiobook narrator would know. Yeah, it's timbre. Tambur. The timbre. Well, I'm just exercising that entire word from my vocabulary so that I never have to pronounce it again.

Never happening again. What a lovely little word, timbre. But why would they have there be an eye if it was going to be pronounced timbre? Unacceptable. Unacceptable. I find that your voice changes as you get older and the way to deal with it

is mostly to embrace it and see it as a sign of wisening. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that it's hard. hard for people who are professional singers. There's a certain set of singers who really, I feel like we're signing up to have this problem. Like the scream singing feels like a 20s activity.

And then eventually, like, the muscles get looser, the, you know, all of the stuff that holds the voice is a very specific set of complicated tissues. And those things are going to get less. they're just going to change quality in various ways. It's not, you know, like the muscles are weaker, the tissues are going to be maybe less strong or like have less differentiation between like the soft and the hard parts. I don't know.

But there are things that people do. So people can get, sometimes there's like tremors that you'll get and people get Botox injections when they're singers so that they don't get the unintentional tremor. You can also inject filler or fat to make, the vocal cords larger and there are implants. And of course, also there's lots of vocal therapy. And then like Celine Dion, when she's performing,

she's like, I need the room to be like this temperature, this humidity. She's not messing around. Yeah, I think the real pros know what they need. But I think I'm just going to slowly get huskier and fainter. Well, we should start smoking so that we can get that. Oh, yeah, that's what I need, Hank. It took me so long to get that out of my life. Let's welcome it back in.

I'm not convinced that it's bad for you. Well, it's a take, and these days that's what matters most. I have read an increasing number of blog posts that seem very convincing. No. Are you serious? No. Oh, okay. I was like, there's no blog post saying smoking is good for you, right? Like they haven't... Oh, no, there are.

No, there aren't. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, nicotine. There's a lot of people who are like the health benefits of nicotine outweigh the health detractions of smoking. Because of course they do, because the entire internet is run on having the craziest ideas possible. Like you can't get attention unless your ideas are silly. And so, of course, every silly idea is having a moment. If nicotine is so beneficial, why not just chew nicotine gum?

Well, that's what they, that's a lot of them. That's what they do. Okay. That seems better than smoking cigarettes. They do zins. And also, for clarity, nicotine. has many, many health impacts that are not good, all on its own. Yeah, I remember when I went to the doctor and he was like, how much knickered are you chewing? And I was like, I don't know, like 20 pieces a day. And he was like, that's like three packs of cigarettes, man.

And I was like, yeah, but it's just nicotine. Nicotine's good for you. And he was like, no, it's not, man. I don't know where you got that. I don't know where you heard that, but that's just not true. Let's answer this question from Avery, who writes, Dear John and Hank, why does moving suck? I have a lot of experience in this area.

I'm currently packing for my 11th move in 12 years. I've gotten fairly efficient at how to move, but it always sucks. Why? Not having a very good time, a very Avery, I get it. I feel like Avery is way more of an expert on this than us. I haven't moved in a while. But like, you got to get all your stuff into boxes.

Yeah, it just sucks. And you got to, especially if you're moving yourself, you've got to, like, then stack the boxes. is into a U-Haul, which is its own unfun, sweaty form of Tetris. And then you've got to drive to your new place, and then you've got to unpack, and unpacking takes forever. People say that moving is like among the top ten sort of discordances in a human life. And it makes sense to me because I'll give you one example, Hank,

because I don't have a very good vestibular system anymore due to labrynthitis, I have to hold on to a piece of furniture while I walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night or I fall over because my vestibular system is very reliant on visual information. And I know exactly how many steps it is. I know exactly what to touch and where to hold, you know. And if I moved to a new place, I wouldn't know any of that. Then you've got the actual, like, if you're actually moving towns, you've got the unbelievable disruption of needing to find a new dentist.

I think we underestimate how horrible it is to find a new dentist. Yeah. That's why you go to Zah. Dockdent.com. Oh, that reminds me that today's podcast is actually brought to you by Zocdent.com. Zockdent.com, a website that we are currently making in the background while making this podcast. We called the people at Zocdoc, and we were like, look, you're missing a huge opportunity. I'm sure you haven't thought of this already.

Oh, God. This podcast is also brought to you by Esther's. Esther's. They're an kind of organic concept. from petroleum distillates. But not that kind of organic compound. Not like they come from organic bananas. More like they come from organic petroleum.

Yeah. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Hollywood Ending. Hollywood ending, the new book for me. I'm so excited. And this podcast is brought to you by your vocal cords and by my vocal cords. Actually, true. It's true.

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like, yeah, there's a reason why it's bad, but how do we make it less bad? And to me, the obvious answer to this question is that you imagine yourself to be some kind of non-human animal or alien. And this is, and just extract yourself, because this is like the moment where you extract yourself from your reality, right? Where suddenly you see all of these things around you for what they actually are. And then when you're in a new place, like, you see them in a way that you, you know, after a couple months, you no longer will. It's all going to be background. But in these moments, we understand that our clothes are our temporary exoskeletons, that our books are our, you know, outsourced brains of other people that we keep on a shelf,

that our, you know, all of the food in the fridge is just, you know, molecules that we will convert into movement and thought and anxieties. And poop. and then also poop. And then all of these objects like have their weird human utility that's based on our weird human activities and human behavior. And then that's how to, that's how I imagine it. And then suddenly I am, I am, you know, doing this extra bizarre activity.

Yeah, I like that. Use it as an opportunity to consider the anthropology of oneself. Yeah, probably only going to work once. Yeah, but I like when I get out of my routine as a human being. Like there are obvious downsides to it. It's uncomfortable. It's exhausting. But also when I'm outside of my routine is when I'm most reminded of the strangeness of consciousness,

which I kind of just take for granted most of the time. I think Annie Dillard said once that we spend almost all of our lives in some sort of insensate waters. And I like those moments that snap me in. into awareness, even if they're kind of unpleasant in the moment. Good luck moving. I know it sucks, man. I did it like 10 years ago, and I don't ever want to do it again. I think I'm going to die in my current house. Yeah, or, you know, on the moon. I'm not going to die on the moon, Hank. There is a zero percent chance. Or in Titusville. I really don't want to die in Titusville. As you know, one of my big ambitions

is not to die in Florida. I just don't want it on my Wikipedia page. Which would you prefer, moon or Titusville. The moon, for sure. If I'm in Orlando and I'm dying and there's a spaceship. Put me on the spaceship. Crash me into the moon.

Remember when you were in the hospital with me in Orlando and the doctor was like, I think we're going to keep you for the night. And I was like, I'm not dying in Florida, buddy. You're not keeping me for the night. Put me in an ambulance and drive me to the Georgia line. Yeah, you were like, drive me to that. And I'm like, John, you're fine.

Oh. It was a little worrying. It was a little worrying. I remember one time when I thought I was dying, which is, I mean, I'm laughing because it is a fairly common experience. But it feels super real when it's happening. But I remember one time I thought I was dying. I said to Sarah, if this is it, know that I've had a good life.

And she said, you're 28. And you have a tummy. This next question comes from Ben, who asks, Dear Hank and John, My neighbors have a huge tree stump in their backyard that they use as a table. I got sad thinking about the fact that since the tree is dead, the stump will eventually rot away as well. However, I wondered, will a stump die? Can a tree live without the top of the tree? How long does it take for the roots of a tree to realize that the top of the tree has been cut off?

Not being Ben. I sew, so, John. Yeah. Usually getting the top of your tree cut off, if you're a tree, is a world-ending event for the tree. Sure. It's also a world-ending event for people. Definitely. Always, always for people.

Yeah. Usually for trees. Oh. So this is interesting. There was a stump in New Zealand that was discovered to be both a stump and alive. this doesn't usually happen, but the fact that it happened once means that it happens, you know,

there's a lot of trees, so it happens a lot. And what happened was this tree was actually connected through root systems to other trees. Tree fell, tree die. But the stump was connected, like all these roots

were valuable to the other trees around it. So the other trees kept feeding this root system. And that actually kept the stump alive. And the scientists were like, this stump, it's not just like not rotting it is actively maintaining itself

and they could see that it was like had like the xylem and phloem act like with stuff moving around inside of it wow and so it was still being fed and was able to sustain itself because of the trees around it continuing to sustain it so not always do stumps die

just because their top gets cut off but usually this fascinates me I've been thinking a lot about the phenomenon of crown shyness where trees choose not to grow together. I have a chapter in my book about Crownshinous. I hope you don't.

I don't. Great. I don't. So you're safe. But I've been thinking about it because there are these two trees that have actually grown together near my house, in the forest near my house. And when the wind is blowing, it makes quite a racket of these two trees like pushing against each other.

And it's a real wine, almost like the wooden version of metal machine music. And if trees didn't cooperate and make space for each other and allow for space in the canopy and everything else, if the world were as so many long argued it was where it's merely a story of competition and merely a story of might makes right, the forests would be so loud. It would be excruciated to walk in a forest.

We would hear nothing. We would have to scream to be heard over the sound of the trees fighting each other. That's a fascinating thought. And yet we don't have that because trees cooperate and collaborate just as much as they compete. The story is so much more complicated and interesting than mere competition. Yeah, and we don't really understand what evolutionary pressures are at work with crown shyness. If we have not explained this, it's the situation where trees don't encroach on each other's space.

They work up to each other. they just stop. And so you can see these like little threads of sky through a mature canopy. And there are some species that don't actually respect crown shyness. And they are often sort of more, there's like certainly parasitic plants, obviously like kudzu isn't going to respect crown shinis. It'll move from tree to tree no problem. But mature trees do this. We don't know what the evolutionary pressures are that is making them do it. And we also don't know what the sort of mechanism that allow them to do it are. Like, how do they know

when they are bumping up against another tree? Yeah. The idea that this would, if this was not the case, it would fundamentally change the experience of being outdoors during a windy day

I'd never thought of before and it really would. I mean, we might have evolved differently since we evolved in forests. We might have evolved language differently. We might have, it would be so freaking loud all the time. Well, monkeys are pretty loud.

That's true. It's a good point. It's a good point. Monkeys are pretty loud. Maybe it wouldn't completely change human history that much, but it would make the forest annoying. Most of the language languaging we did was after we moved out of the forests, I think, too. That's fair enough. All right, we got another question from Anonymous. You writes, Dear John and Hank, I live in the Provo area of Utah, but I am not a practicing Mormon. My family stopped going to church in person during COVID, and we just kind of never went back. That was actually a huge relief for me as I never believed any of the stuff that we learned. So I was able to stop pretending to feel the spirit in church or whatever. However, I am moving in the fall for college

and am looking for other forms of community. I am tempted to attend a different church, but I still have the problem of pretending to believe in something I don't believe. Do you have any suggestions for things to do to find a third place outside of work slash school and home? Anonymity is awesomeness anonymous. What do you think about like folks going to church even if they don't have a strong faith? Hank, let me tell you. there are a lot of people who go to a lot of churches who do not believe in God. There are a lot of agnostics going to church. Yeah.

And I think that's fine. And I think it's interesting. Like my best friend goes to church, even though he is a very staunch atheist. And not the fun kind of atheist, but like the old school, I can't believe you believe all that crap kind of atheist. In fact, one of the first times we have... hung out. I was like, listen, man, I got to go to bed. I got to go to church in the morning. He said, I don't want to be rude, but like, you don't actually believe that stuff, do you? And I was like, we barely know each other. That sounds like him. He's met three times.

I could hear him say those exact words. Yeah, totally, totally. And anyway, but he goes to church because his daughter goes. And, you know, it's interesting. Like, I don't think it's that uncomfortable for him. He does, like, complain sometimes. sometimes afterwards, he's like, I can't believe, because it's an Episcopal church, and he's like, and I'm Episcopan, he's like, I can't believe you guys still say the Nicene Creed. I'm like, it's 1,600 years old, man.

It is cool to say something that is 1,600 years old, even if you don't fully embrace all the nuances of it. But he has a different perspective. So that's one option. Yeah. I, what I'll say is do something and work hard at it.

It's a project and it is work. The nice thing about church is that it's less work. Like people are going to be there. You got a, like there's a system in place. The people, they got a building for it. Oftentimes you have to build them yourself, which is harder. Yeah, but I'm not sure that it's entirely that much harder. Let me give you one example.

Sarah works at a local food pantry here every week. And that's the same kind of community. You know, like it's still a strong sense of community and connection. And you see the same people week after week. week and you're working together and doing stuff together and you're doing real service together. And I think that also works in much the same way that church does. I don't think that you need a religious context in order to bring people together. But it's funny that you're always the one defending religion and I'm always the one being

like, careful now, this stuff is dangerous. This is how we are. When the first episode of my new podcast comes out, people can hear that conversation in depth. Yeah, really. You really were going hard for religion and I was going pretty hard against it and I was like, what is going on with me? That'll happen in June, everybody. We're recording now. I'm excited. Hank, no disrespect, but you're not allowed to promote something in this podcast. I have a book coming out. I have a novel coming out for the first time in nine years. We need clear, focused messaging. It's a big deal, you guys. I mean, it is. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It

Like, it's, are you scared? Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. I'm really scared. So both of my previous books, since Turtles All the Way Down, Anthropocene reviewed was not that scary because everyone had already heard it and had already been fact-checked by thousands of listeners. And everything as tuberculosis wasn't that scary because I'd already made that hour-long crash course deep dive into tuberculosis. And so a lot of it had been. seen and heard and confronted and everything

in ways that were super helpful for the final book. And this is something I haven't experienced in almost a decade where people don't know anything about it and they're just going to read it. It's terrifying. And you don't know how people are going to respond and you don't know if people still care about the idea of you writing fiction. Like if it's been that long, are people still interested?

There's a lot of feelings. at the same time. But I enjoyed it so much. I think like that's the thing I haven't had since I wrote The Fault Nars, is that feeling like I

this isn't just something that I made as a gift for other people, even though it is. Like, it is also something, it is child's play. It is something that I've been doing for fun since I was a little kid. And I felt that. I felt like that feeling

of just getting to live inside a story being joyful in and of itself. Is it, a lot of it for me, I remember the joyful parts being like the problem solving of it all. Totally. That feeling of like when, in fiction, when things click together,

when you have an unsolvable problem and you're very frustrated and then you solve it. It's like playing wordal, but on a bigger scale. Yeah, yeah. It's like one of the hardest puzzle games you could possibly imagine. Like making a book work. And you made it up your

So like there's also the feeling that you created both the challenges and the opportunities. And it's just, it was stinking fun. It was other things too. It was painful and hard and I cried and everything. But it was also, it's also been really nice. I'd forgotten that joy of purely getting to make something. And yeah, but I am terrified now. I've transitioned away from this is fun to this is scary.

But of course I want to share it. I want people to read it. I'm excited for people to read it. And yeah, that's why I'm signing my name 82,000 times. Well, I consider this a formal request for a PDF. All right. Unless you want to chat after the podcast and tell me things you want to prepare me for. But I'm excited.

All right. Okay. I mean, I'm nervous to share it with Hank. that means I must be exponentially more nervous to share it with the public. I mean, I've always been, yes. You've always been a very supportive reader. That's not what I was going to say.

But it's a crazy vulnerability. Especially in the world of you and I having experience where we make things and then we get immediate feedback, but also the world is so set up that way now. Whereas a book is like, you have to make this thing, you have to lock it in place. and then you have to tell people about it and show that's so hard. This next question comes from Anya who asks dear Hank and John,

how do I get better at speaking in class? I found that when I have to participate in a discussion in class, give a presentation, answer a question, even ask a question. I get super nervous and I feel like whatever I say sounds dumb or doesn't contribute anything. I've tried making like a little script of what I want to say, but I always end up cutting it shorter messing up. Dasvid ania. I was so confused until I said it out loud.

Anya, you are not alone in this. I think everyone who speaks in class either does feel a little bit like an imposter or else should feel a little bit like an imposter. You know what I mean? Like the people who are hyper-confident when they're talking in class, those are always the ones where I'm like,

hmm. Yeah. And they have so much to say. Yeah, gosh, I wish you would temperate, that confidence just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, there's something to be said for very little things. So if you're just, like, speaking up in class, it might be just, like, as simple as, you know, I found this idea was related to this other idea or asking, like, do you think that this

idea was related to this other idea and let the teacher taking it on from there? So, like, you don't even have to save very much necessarily. to be adding like a substantial amount of impact or insight. And then the other thing, and this is important. And I don't know, I don't know any other way to do it. But like you have to get comfortable in your like speaking voice. And the only thing that I ever found that worked for that was finding time where I was alone and talking out loud. Yep.

100%. I agree. I do that all. I still do that. Reading stuff I had written down, reading other people's stuff. like reading the Declaration of Independence out loud, just like spending time using your voice because it's a complicated thing. And then imagining, you know, imagining that you're not just talking, like one-on-one, but talking to a room of people and, like, seeing how that changes.

The timbre of your voice or whatever else. Nicely done. I think that's good advice. I spent the last three weeks walking around the house, talking out loud about what I would say about Hollywood ending because I feel so uncomfortable talking about it and I feel like I don't know how much to reveal or what's a spoiler or all that stuff

and how to get people interested without harming people's reading experiences, yada, yada, yada. And I found it really helpful to just talk out loud. I will say at one point Sarah heard me talking out loud and I had my AirPods in and she mouthed, are you on the phone? And I had to say, no, just chatting with me. Yeah, I mean, a real hard part about this

can be finding the place where you actually do it. Right. And like there's oftentimes there just isn't one. And I remember in college, you know, doing this. I also remember one time being in a hotel room, practicing for a speech, and the hotel security came and were like, you need to stop.

The people next door had called them. And I was like, that is embarrassing. That is embarrassing. But I was preparing to interview the literal president. So... And you were doing it at very high volume. You were shouting, Mr. President, sir!

And I'm like, this guy's got AI psychosis next door. thinks he's interviewing the president. It's just Claude. This was before Claude. Yeah, I think that's good advice. I also think that we can learn something from our grandfather and our uncle Mike, both of whom rarely spoke in meetings, but because they rarely spoke in meetings,

when they did, they were taken very seriously. Yeah, it does not take a lot of words to get the idea across And the other thing, like, I'll say, and this is, this is going to sound silly, but just take a deep breath beforehand. Not like a big visible one, but like just have enough air in the lungs to do the job. Yeah. Because, man, it's hard. Like, this is one of my hardest parts is when I first get up on a stage. I often find myself lacking for air.

Yeah. Because, like, your breathing strategy changes for some reason. Right. It's great. Thanks, physiology, for making me have to pee, for making me breathe weird, for making me. for making me want to talk really fast for some reason. That's all very helpful. Yeah, but you've gotten better at it as you've gotten older.

Yeah, it's just practice. I think that'll be the case for Anya as well. It's the case for most of us. Most of us become calmer as we get older. Like I used to throw up before like a lot of events and now I never do. Yeah, people are always like, you still get nervous. And I'm like, uh-huh. Yeah, every time.

Yeah, but your nervousness is weirdly processed such that You don't seem to be nervous when you're on stage. In fact, sometimes when you're on stage, you don't seem nervous enough. No, I mean, sometimes I'm not nervous enough. Sometimes I am. I get nervous before I go on stage. Once I'm on stage, I'm not nervous until things start going wrong. And then I become very nervous very quickly.

Yeah, I think that's pretty common. So you lose the room. And then... Yeah. Then it's like, oh, and now I have no way of getting you back. That's why stand-up is fun, because at least you've got some jokes written. Yeah, but stand-up is so intimidating precisely. Ask Anya or me to do stand-up, and we couldn't do it.

Even with all the jokes written in the world, like even if Mike Barbiglia wrote all my jokes, I couldn't do it. Because there's nothing between me and the audience, except for, and the job is not to interest them. It's to make them laugh. And then you know for sure whether you're succeeding or failing based on how the room vibe is. Whereas like when I'm reading something or giving a speech or a talk or having a conversation or in public or whatever, I don't feel that precisely because I'm not trying to make them laugh all the time. Oh man. I was the last time I did stand up, I had this like, you know, a lot of times you're working toward a punchline and you like introduce a lot of little punchlines along the way so that you can get there. Yeah.

And I had this great punchline. I can't tell it because it's not a clean joke. but I was working up and none of the like half-y punchlines were landing very well and they shook me so much that I forgot

to do the real punchline completely and I just moved on to the next topic and I was like I was like man that part really didn't work and then I was

as I was walking home from doing the set I was like oh it's because I didn't get to the joke I forgot to tell the joke I was so mad I was so scared I forgot

that the job is to joke. Uh-huh. Yeah. I guess I could get on stage and do like a 12-minute version of the Bessie the Pig joke, but that's about it. I mean, I would... You could do it. You could do it.

I don't know. I don't know. Any, one day, I'll do stand up, and one day you'll stand up in class and feel comfortable, but that day is not today. But we get there through practice. One day at a time. All right, John, what's going on with AFC Wimbledon? Well, AFC Wimbledon tied a football game.

That's great. That's half of a win. It's a third of a win. It's a third of a win, and it's a big third because this puts us on 50 points. And theoretically, in past seasons, 50 points has been enough to stay up. So we now have eight games left and very little risk of relegation. And very little risk of making it to the playoffs, I would say. Those are both equally likely.

Most of the teams are in the middle, John. We are going to be somewhere in the middle, which is great. If you told me at the beginning of the season, we would be somewhere in the middle. I would be duly surprised with the second lowest budget in the league. So I am delighted to be somewhere in the middle. It does mean that for the next eight games, we are sort of, as they say, on the beach, where there's not a ton at stake. Gotcha.

But I kind of like being on the beach. I'd want to be on the beach. Most of the beaches are great. You know, I think the beach is Normandy. The beach is the beach. Yeah. Let's enjoy the beach. And people are always like, oh, they're not playing very hard.

They're on the beach. And I'm like, yeah, great. We're not going to injure Marcus. They played hard all seasons so that we didn't have to worry about relegation for the last eight games. This is a miracle. Let's enjoy it. So I'm just going to enjoy the last eight games. We're playing like all the best teams.

We're probably not going to win a lot. As long as we squeeze out one or two points, we should be totally safe from relegation. Great. I'm happy for you. Thank you. I'm so proud of how we've done this season. Mars news continues to be weird. Would you like to hear the weird Mars news?

Please. So NASA just announced its like plans, like what are we going to do? And they are like, this is not. It's a little frustrating because one of the things that happens because leadership changes and leadership is weird is that like NASA just changes priorities maybe a little bit more than it needs to. Right. So, and then, like, you only stay on one track for four years,

and then you are suddenly on another track. But anyway, here's our new track. NASA announced that it's going to be launching a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars by the end of 2028. Now, John, what? Don't think that I'm not an optimistic guy when it comes to Mars. For example, I bet the name of my podcast on humans getting to Mars in 10 years, which is not going to happen. Also, we're not going to launch of nuclear power

to be spacecraft to Mars in 2028. Well, maybe we can. Dream big. Remember when we weren't going to go to the moon within nine years and then we did? That was very impressive. This could be very impressive. It's March of 26.

Yeah. This would be the first time an interplanetary space mission would be powered by nuclear propulsion. If it happened, it would be, be very exciting. It would allow us to maybe travel further or differently into space. Currently, the only spacecraft we have that is able to travel to the outer parts of the solar system, use batteries or solar power because they need too much liquid fuel to get that far.

So the idea is that if we could make nuclear propulsion get to Mars, maybe we can apply it to future missions that can go further away from, that'd be great. Now, is this going to be this theoretical nuclear-powered spacecraft? Is this going to be, this isn't going to have humans on it, right? It's going to have some kind of space probe on it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you the name of the spaceship, John?

Please. It's called Space Reactor One Freedom. Oh, boy. I mean, I think they should workshop it. I'll just tell you. Massad has not given a lot of details on how this thing will work. Yeah.

Everybody I know who's in the business is not optimistic. Well, here's what I'll say, Hank. even if it happens, we're still renaming the podcast because there still won't be humans on Mars by 2027. That's for sure. It keeps getting closer, John. Every year it gets a year closer. Every year it gets closer.

It's looking real bad for your bet, but we don't give up until we have to. I think that we'd have that something's very strange would have to occur. It turns out that you can have a lot of data centers full of AI and it doesn't get humans to Mars. as those things are not tightly related. No.

And I think you sort of overestimated the extent to which people are really able to marshal resources without the assistance of governments. It would be interesting to make that episode when we make the official Dear Hank & John switch where I get into what I overestimated. I think that the main thing I, that the main flaw in my reasoning was, well, who knows? Ten years sounded like a long time. It sounded like a long time ten years ago. And to be fair, it's been a long decade. Yeah, no, we've put a lot of resources toward a lot of things. Yeah, it's just very few of those things have involved space travel.

Yeah. But lots of cool stuff going on, you know? I'm into the Europa Klipper mission. That's happening. Yep. That's great. You know? That's exciting.

Ultimately, Europa might be more interesting than Mars. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, we probably won't see, but someone will see in the future. Humanity will see. Humanity will see. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me. Thanks to everybody for listening.

You can email us your questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Bridget Kennison. It's mixed by Kali Dishman. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hal's Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Duboki Chakravardi. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the

Gunnarola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.