Dear Hank & John - 451: We’re Synced, Baby!

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Do Americans not like trains? What do I do with all my files? How can I make camp memorable? What happened to my town’s clouds? When did the concept of a weekend start? …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. Yours, I prefer to think of it, dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to me to give you to B's advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John recently, Oren looked up at me and he said, can I have a bookmark? Which is lovely. I love that he loves books, but he still does not know that my name is Hank, which is hard.

Har, har, har. are you, John, you recently are returned, not as of the listening, but as of the recording Chris Sierra Leone. How you doing? I got back yesterday. I'm tired. I'm quite tired. I was supposed to have a day with nothing scheduled, but then you insisted on recording this podcast. Did I do that? You did. It's okay. I'm not mad. I'm excited to talk with you. I loved seeing the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence at Coydue Government Hospital. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've had as a vlog brother, as a person. It was just, it was incredible.

It was really spectacular and made me very, very grateful and overwhelmed. That said, like the scope of need in the Kono district is hard to get your head around. You know, I mean, I was with a community health worker visiting with two young women, one, living with age. HIV one being treated for tuberculosis and goodness gracious, this young woman's one-year-old kid who was also being treated for TB was just so sick and has such a hard road ahead. And man, it just sticks with you. Is tuberculosis, like in kids, is that usually like comorbid with like, like, in lack of nutrition or like because like the way I understand tuberculosis is like usually when you're young

and healthy it doesn't like necessarily hit you super hard unless there's other problems well yeah there's other problems this kid was severely malnourished um I thought he was maybe like four or five months old but he was over a year and um just severely severely severely malnourished and they have you know because of stigma and weight diagnosis, just a really hard road. The psychosocial parts of illness are as important as the biomedical parts. And I was just reminded of that,

that stigma is fatal, you know? Stigma kills people all the time because they don't want to, because the idea of getting treated for an illness being such a black mark on your social standing, that you would choose not to get treated is real. That's hard for us to, and certainly we still have this with some illnesses, for sure. We had it way more with cancer.

Like when dad had cancer in the 1980s, it was a really profound thing. Just a lot of people really wanted it to be his fault. Yeah. Because that's protective, you know. It's like a self-preservation thing where like, I'm not going to get it because I wasn't, I'm not a workaholic like Mike or whatever. Yeah, stigma is a way of saying you deserve for this to happen and by extension and I don't deserve for it to happen so I'm safe. What people really want to feel is safe. And it's such a blessing to feel safe and so disorienting when suddenly you don't when you've had it a lot in your life.

Yeah, hey, so before we get to the regular part of the podcast, have you read my book? I haven't. You sent it to me and I have it. I feel so bad. I wanted to make sure, I wanted to make sure that you haven't, haven't read it yet. No. Okay. You haven't even read the first page. Correct. I've read the first paragraph.

All right. As long as you haven't read it yet, then I'm not stressed out. Okay. It's just if you have read it and you're not telling me about it. You're just being quiet because you hated it. That's a worry. Yeah. Yeah.

I, um, it's top of the pile. Tell you that. I appreciate it. You're going to wait for the audiobook? Yeah. Could you, could you quick, just do a quick reading for me? Yeah. Just give me a call, read the book, I'll listen, and welcome to dishes.

Yeah. It's like probably eight hours. We've both got time for that. But it was a great trip to Sierra Leone. I was with some of my best friends. I was with Rosiana, who has been such an important part of this project with Nikki Waugh, who really spearheaded the $25 million capital campaign, which was not a job that she expected to be having. Yeah.

Nicky was there. L.J. who heads up Good Store, where, you know, $12.5 million have been raised for the Maternal Center of Excellence. Yeah. You know, so if you've ever gotten awesome socks, if you've ever donated at p.a.h.org slash Hank and John, or if you could today, if you could get your awesome socks today or donate directly at p.i.h.org slash Hank and John. I mean, it's just, it's incredible to see the first NICU and Sierra Leone to see 120 maternal beds to see a world-class hospital.

What's the vibe among the staff? The vibe is incredible. I mean, the morale is astonishing because, you know, this is a place that for so long has been deemed unworthy of world-class facilities, you know, and has been told that good enough is good enough. And Maternal Center of Excellence is more than good enough. It is not a good hospital for Kono or a

good hospital for Sierra Leone or whatever. It's a good hospital. It's a good place to receive care. I would feel very happy and safe with any member of my family receiving care there. And you know, from

the NICU to the C-Section Recovery Ward, it is just an astonishment. And so I'm super, super grateful. But yeah, it was an awesome trip, man. I mean, if I could snap my fingers and be anywhere in the world most days, I would go to Kono. Wow. The problem is you can't snap your fingers.

Sure can. No, it does seem like it took a while to get there. My 25-hour trip home on Royal Air Marocque was a long day, Hank. I had a long day. Sarah had a long day. Chris and Marina had a long day. But we made it home. John, do we have questions from our listeners this week?

I don't know, Hank, because I can't find the document. Well, here it is. The first question is from Abby, who asks dear Hank and John, do Americans not like trains? I've seen videos online talking about how trains or shuttles are called people movers? Is the creation of this new noun due to some stigma toward trains that I'm unaware of? Is calling it a people mover less scary or confusing? A confused Brit Abby from, can it correct me if I'm wrong? A people mover is not a train.

They can be trains, but a people mover almost always is what you might call a shuttle on rails. So a thing that goes from one place to another and then back. Like a monorail. It's very interesting. I don't want to make the whole podcast about Sierra Leone, but this is very interesting because there's a, you know, I talk in the book, everything is tuberculosis about this one Sierra Leoneian physician who said, if you want to understand the challenges of Sierra Leone, look at a map of our trains. and the trains just go from the mineral-rich areas to the port. Like the trains don't connect people to people. They connect minerals to the ocean.

Yep. And there's a brand new gleaming train railway in Sierra Leone that wasn't there the last time I visited, at least not as I recall. That is the equivalent of a people mover, right? because it has no like stations. It has, it takes iron ore and diamonds to the coast. From the mine to the coast and then back. Just to make sure that they don't in any way enrich the country. Yeah, so people move it generally is like usually at like an airport.

Yeah. The traditional people mover is like the airport is so big. that the two, like, wings of the airport are, like, two miles apart. And there's an automated, like, there's not even a person that's piloting this thing. It's just you get in and it just goes back and forth. Yeah. I think that Americans don't hate trains. No.

I think we may have a stigma against trains. We have a little bit of a stigma against trains, but not. I actually think Americans like trains. It's just that they haven't been given the opportunity to love trains. trains by larger forces. Because I'll tell you what, when you go to Europe or parts of Asia, the train situation is, oh, yeah, it's wondrous. Yeah. The train from Amsterdam to Brussels, I wrote a large section of the Fultner Stars taking the train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and then I'd walk around Brussels for a bit and then take the train back to Amsterdam,

because the internet wasn't very good, and so it forced me to write. And it was great. Even the times I've trained in America, like when it's actually like a useful train, when it's a useful train route, like I needed to go from, I was in Los Angeles

and I needed to go to somewhere north of Los Angeles. No, I was in, I don't know. It was some coast of Los Angeles train. And it was beautiful. And it wasn't crowded. And I got to, and there was a plug at my seat and I could stand up at any time,

and you don't have to show up super early and you just get on the train and you do your thing. Yeah. It was great. It's amazing. I love the train from Indianapolis to Chicago.

Great train. Yeah, that's great. Montana, not a train place. That's not an option for us. Well, and to be fair, like I feel like Midwestern cities should be connected by train. Like, there should be

light rail between Indianapolis and Louisville and between Indianapolis and Milwaukee and Detroit and Cincinnati. But you don't understand the difference between the Midwest and the West. No, up there in Montana, it's six hours to the nearest population center. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, there's no people, you got to look at a map of population density of the U.S. There's like a line in the middle, and that's where the rain stops falling. There's just no water out here, so you can't have a lot of people because you can't do a lot of agriculture, which is what the country was based on. So you know we made the like the peak corn crop in America? You would expect that to be like last year. This year. It was like 1930. Really?

Yeah. It was before that, I think. It was back when we had like before cars, when we had to feed animals all the time. As opposed to now when we don't have to feed animals all the time. Oh, to do the work. To do the work. Yeah. All the mules and horses to do the work.

back in the Red Dead Redemption 2 era. Exactly. I've been playing Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 on John's channel. It's such a blast. I have so much fun doing it with Stan. The fact that Stan and I co-created Craft Course Humanities and then went on to play Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 together, it's just it's a wonderful arc. Now, is the redemption Red Dead or is Red Dead being redeemed?

I believe the redemption is red dead for the second time. But the main character, Arthur Morgan, I have heard many times that the video game includes tuberculosis. And the main character just got coughed on by someone quite sickly, which feels like, that's an oversimplification of how tuberculosis usually spreads. But he was like coughed on. very explicitly. And there was like some red, red gleams in the cough. And I was like, oh, I think I got what happened there. I think I don't want to, I don't want to spoil anything for myself or others, but I've

glimpsed how this might end. Is the red dead what they call tuberculosis? I'm choosing to say yes. All right. Ask me another question, Hank. I like not having the questions in front of me. Now you're in, now you're in charge. This one's from Nikki, who asks dear Hank and John.

Over the last years, I have amassed tons of files from projects and receipts to photos and videos. Most of it seems tossable, but I keep hanging on to it just in case. What should I do with all of it? Do I keep everything? What about when I'm long gone? Who gets all these files? What are they going to do with it all? I know it's tricky, Nikki.

Where's all your stuff from when you were in college or first working? I have a little bit. So I have every email I wrote mom and dad and they wrote me back in college because dad printed them. That's nice. Yes. Printing it out is weirdly effective for the things that you actually want to keep. Oh yeah. I've got the book somewhere in this very room. I have the book of emails that Sarah and I wrote back and forth before we started dating when we were just friends. And it's the best. It's the best book to read to each other. It's so sweet and funny. And like I was. so enamored with her and she was so aware of that. There's real categories here. Obviously, you don't need your receipts from 2010. Those are not useful anymore.

It's hard to sort these things and it may get easier in the future and also it is easier than it once was. There may be tools that you could be like, hey, delete all the screenshots. I don't need those. Delete all of the receipts. I don't need those. But they're like, photos is like, you might as well hang on to most of those. And nowadays, you could probably get yourself a Google Photos account or something like that. Get them all on there and then have them be there.

Don't have them be on your hard drive. That thing might just stop working one day. And then you won't have them anymore. Do you need your receipts from 2010? Like, just let it all go. What if it's just like a pick you're going to enjoy looking at someday of you and your friends being Googles? You won't. You'll never look at it again.

I do. How? I go on my Google photos. And I scroll through the years. All right. Okay. All right. Maybe I'm wrong. That's true. And now the iPhone has a new service where it picks a random photograph from somewhere in your camera and shows it to you every hour. And that's nice. You're right. I'm wrong. But then there's like, I have a, and it's a real tour of embarrassments, but I have like my desktop of my desktop of my desktop. So every time I get a new computer, I just like put all, I don't do this anymore. But for a long time, I would put like the desktop, which would have all my stuff on it in a new folder called old desktop. And then, and that would go on my new desktop. And then I'd take that and I put it in my, when I got a new computer again. And so I've got like layers. of old desktops, a real wild tour to go through and see what the heck I thought I was going

to pull off as a 24-year-old, you know? Surely your 45-year-old self is pleased with how things worked out from the perspective of your 24-year-old self. You pulled off all kinds. How could you have been more ambitious than you turned out to be? Well, I was. You thought you were going to be president? What did you think you were going to be?

I thought I was going to create like tech platforms. maybe, you know, I thought I was going to be the guy who ran YouTube, not just a YouTuber. Oh, gross. Yeah, I know. I agree. I had all kinds of ideas. I was like trying to make like the next Reddit, basically. Oh, imagine.

But then, but then also like, like, struggle our lives are in any way. I know. And then we also owned Reddit. Yeah. It was never, the ideas weren't good. I basically, I wanted to do the thing that everybody thinks, which is like, what if we could control our algorithm? and we could tune it ourselves,

which turns out as not what people want to do. They just want you to chalk them full of high salience moments. Just keep me engaged platform. I don't care how you do it. It's like how a certain percentage of people will choose to eat, you know, 12 to 15 servings of vegetables a week. And the vast majority of people, if offered the choice, will choose to eat not.

12 to 15 servings and vegetables per week. And I am in that vast majority, and I'm also in that vast majority when it comes to the salience economy. So like, I will eat when I am fed. I will not seek out necessarily the highest nutrition information. You got to have a mix, but boy, I don't think I'm doing the best. I don't think that I'm doing the best. I don't think that I'm covering myself in glory when I look at my Instagram algorithm, if I'm being honest. More hook-trimming videos than, like, how do we actually address health care and education inequities in our global systems? That's not what Instagram is for. You want to play the game, John? You want to roll and open up Instagram and see what the first thing is? Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it. Let's roll. Now, hold on. Let me get my phone. Oh, well, if he didn't have his phone, I definitely weren't doing it because I'm not going to do this by myself. All right. Here you can go. First thing. I got an American Woodcock video from Stan's Field Guide about the American Woodcock. I got a McElroy video. Macaroy family video.

Come on. Give me a stinker. I got a BB No Money video where BB No Money is talking on half the screen and the other half the screen is a person making stir fry. I just got the American Woodcock video. Hey, hey, hey, our Instagrams are the same and they're not that bad. We're synced, baby. All right, I know Hank Green, if I let him, we'll do this for the next 40 minutes. So put away your phone now.

That's the problem. Nikki, I don't know what's going to happen to all your files when you're gone. I don't think you should worry about that. You should worry about how they serve you now. There you go. There you go. And that's true for art as well. Don't think about how the art is going to live or die when it comes to forever.

Think about how it can serve you and other people now. This next question comes from Izzy who asks, Dear Hank and John, I'm currently getting ready to become a first time camp counselor. I have been preparing by learning all the camp songs and basic games that I can get my hands on. I have also been watching camp movies for inspiration. I will mostly be working with four to six-year-olds. So I fear pranks. Four to six-year-olds, what kind of, this is not a summer camp. I don't think this is sleepaway.

What kind of pranks are they going to pull? Yeah. Have you met a six-year-old? The main prank they're going to pull is peeing at inappropriate times and places by accident. Accident, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, sorry. I fear pranks even small. ones may traumatize them.

Not, I fear, their breaks. What else would you suggest I do to make their camp experience as camp like as possible, smashing s'mores Izzy? Friendship bracelets. I don't know why, but that's the thing you do. Those six-year-olds is a little early for that. I was going to say, I don't know if those little four-year-old hands can necessarily knit together a friendship bracelet, Hank.

But maybe if Izzy gave a friendship bracelet to the four to six-year-olds, that would be pretty magical. That would be very memorable. No pressure, but that would be cool. Though a lot of work, because there's a bunch of them. You can fit a lot of five-year-olds in a little cabin. It's true. It's true.

That sounds so stinking cute camp for four to six-year-olds. I'm sure that in reality, it won't be cute, but it sounds cute from the outside. I think you got to, like, build fairy houses, and it might just be, like, holes, you know? A fairy could live in a little hole that you dig in the dirt. but I'm a big fan of a fairy house. Sometimes I find them in the woods because I'm out there in the woods. Yeah, you spend a lot of time out there in the woods, Hank. I like going in the woods.

Always looking for fairy houses. And then finally, the biggest camp thing that you do, the most important event of any camp, is the talent show. Oh, yeah, you've got to do the four to six-year-old talent show. Because that's going to be a core memory. for you. Maybe not for them. Yes. Yes.

I don't know what they do, but something. Everybody's talent is the same. Little dances. That reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by four to six-year-old talent shows. Four to six-year-old talent shows. It's not about them. It's about you. The podcast is also brought to you by the American Woodcock.

The American Woodcock. It's a cool word. And, of course, today's podcast is brought to you. you by trains. Trains! They're wonderful. And this podcast is brought to you by the Red Death. We're not sure what that one is yet, but we are a little worried. This episode is brought to you by no CD. Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that feels so foreign or distressing that you just can't move on from it? Like suddenly wondering if your headache means you have a brain tumor and then Googling symptoms for hours or having the inexplicable urge to swerve your car

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This next question comes from Anthony, who asks Deer-Hank and John, I'm currently on a walk with beautiful Minnesota weather, not a cloud in sight this afternoon, and as I look up above me, I see a deep blue sky, but as I look around me in any direction, the horizon transitions from this deep blue to a hazy white in the distance. My guess would be that there are clouds above me. I just can't see them as they are. are not dense enough, concerned that the clouds are avoiding my town, Anthony. This is just, that's what they call haze, Anthony.

Well, is it or is this another example of Hank Green doesn't understand optics? Well, I mean, it's what they call haze. I didn't say what Hayes was. No, so if you look up and there's a blue sky. Yeah. I mean, I can say there are no clouds. Uh-huh. I like if you fly up like when you fly on on a on a blue sky day which I have to do pretty regularly

I fly on all kinds of days I fly on most days and so when you fly up in the sky it's not like oh there are the little wisps of clowns once you get up there and you can see clearly like there are no clouds and then the reason the sky is I've always assumed the reason the sky gets less blue as you look toward the ground is not because of haze. It's because of something having to do with optics. It's like the sun has to, the light has to go further or something

so that it just looks less blue. You are looking through more atmosphere. That's what I was trying to say. That is correct. That's what the haze is. Like when you see these, this is like one of the reasons why pictures from the moon look really weird to us.

It's like they look like a video game render because the distant things on the moon look like as clear. as the close-up things because you aren't looking through more atmosphere because there isn't any atmosphere. And on the earth, there's like all these particles of dust and water droplets and stuff. And also like the atmosphere itself, like it scatters light, which is why it's blue. That's also why the sunset has a different color, because if you're looking through the sun as it sets, you're looking through it as it is passing through more atmosphere, which is why it's easier to look at, why the sun like more of the light scatters from your perspective

because it's getting scattered by all that all the stuff in the all the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere and that is giving you scattering more of the blue away and so you're getting all that yellow Hank where would you rank the sun in a list of heavenly bodies uh number one sorry mars

well Mars disappears is fine. Sun disappears. Any star. Any non-sun thing disappears, fine. Sun disappears, not fine. Yeah, even the moon.

Even the moon. Moon disappears. Problems. Well, okay. Do with that. Problems. Not like sun disappearing. Like moon disappearing is like,

oh, I might have to get my foot amputated. Sun disappearing is like, I have to get my head amputated. If Earth disappeared, we would die sooner than if the sun disappeared. but marginally. And not just that.

Maybe it would be worse. What do you mean? Maybe it'd be nice to have those like, like maybe if the sun disappeared, it would be worse than if Earth disappeared. If Earth disappeared, we'd all be gone, but we'd be gone very quickly and without any warning. If the sun disappeared, we would be gone and it would be miserable. Yeah. Like, would you rather have the time to sort of like get your affairs in order? Not that the affairs would matter, but say goodbye, you know, just not just not.

be floating in space with no oxygen? But just so cold and dark. So cold and dark. The oxygen, though, we'd have that for a while. How would we die if the sun disappeared? That's actually interesting question. Of cold. Yeah, probably.

Probably. I don't know. Yeah, the power grid would not last long. Probably not at all. It probably immediately crash. So we'd have to be burned in wood to stay. warm. It would, Hank, it would be beyond cold. It would, there would be an infinite cold. No, no, no. We got, we got buildings. You build a fire inside and it holds onto the warm.

You got to go outside to get the wood and there. John, the sun is, I got to remind you, the sun disappears every day and we make it through 12, or sometimes 16, 18 solid hours. Up in Alaska, they make it through days, weeks. There isn't some residual sunshine sort of filtering in. That's what I always assumed. There's probably a little bit of heat from other places that's getting there. But no, we could, the earth would hold on to some heat. We do have, I'm actually, I got to figure this out how we would die if the sun disappeared.

How long would we make it? Are we talking about, I thought we were talking about minutes. No, I bet some people would last weeks. Oh, that sounds terrible. I could be wrong, though. I feel like we could. Weeks in cave darkness. Absolute cave darkness.

Well, if the moon's still there. Never mind. That's lit by the sun. Hey, oh, Hank Green just got, Hank noted science guy Hank Green thinks moonlights itself. There's always a special fusion skin that it's got starlight. We would have starlight still. Yeah, we would have some starlight, but I mean, you want to talk about some weak light. Starlight is going to be insufficient to our needs. Oh, man. How would we die? I'm so curious.

I think we would die of cold. I think we would die of cold. And I don't think it would take that long. I'm going to take the under on weeks. Yeah. I mean, I'm worried that we'd die of like asphyxiation. So that would be worse. But I think that there's also a lot of oxygen to hold on to. Well, it would be weird for sure. Like, I do not. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't want to be a rogue planet. I want to have a star. I want to, I want to be. I don't want to be hurtling through space. Is that also metaphorically true? Should we all have a star, something that we center around? Yeah, but it has to be something undying, right? Because otherwise, you center your life around something that might go.

Undying? Yeah. God love. Oh. Friendship. Searching for meaning, whatever it is. I don't think you can make your star. like a single person. I think that's a lot, that's a lot of pressure on that single person. Okay. I know I

understand what you're saying. I'm like, all the things you just listed are things that are not undying technically, but I get what you mean now. You go say that to God, Hank. Well, I apologize about the God thing. That God, that God I can see being undying, but like, you know, like wanting me, like searching, you know, that's an undying thing as long as you're around. And I guess that's the, that's basically identical. You just needed to last longer. than you. Or exactly the same amount of time as you. Right. Exactly. You want it to be at least as undying as you are. It's famously not, but. Not that much. It's true. It's true. We're all going. This is my favorite last words of all time.

We're all going? Yeah, one of the presidents, one of the ones who was assassinated. His wife I want to go to. And he said, we are all going. We're all going. Thanks for coming to our hit podcast for teens. Give me another question, Hank. Christy asks, dear Hank and John, when did the concept of a weekend start? Did ancient Egyptians working on the pyramids get two days off a week? No. Did they have, oh, did they even have weeks like us? Lost in time, Christy. I don't think that the ancient Egyptians, who I don't believe were always Egyptian. working on the pyramids got the weekends off. But maybe something?

Maybe feast days or Sabbaths of some kind. But no, not a traditional weekend. The traditional weekend came about because of the labor movement. Before that, there was the Ten Commandments, one of which was, don't do anything on my day. Yeah, rest on the Sabbath. But, like, that's not a weekend. No, no, no.

It's half of one. Yeah. And then the labor movement was like, what if there was a day that was for you? Yeah. And then one for God. And then back. You could argue that as we increase productivity, we should probably go toward four days a week. Or you could take the Hank Green path of going seven days a week just for fun. Well, if it's, if it's, is it work? If it's fun. It's work. Yes. Correct. You know what my therapist says. I should stop thinking about what I should do and think about what I want and what I need. Because I keep saying should. And she's like, where does all these shoulds come from? Who's telling you you should?

Yeah. It's almost always an email, my shoulds. It's almost always an email. There's like 15 emails right now I should send that I. But I'm so tired. I just got home. Yeah, yeah. But you shouldn't think about that.

the should. You should think about what you need. You need to send that email. Yeah, I guess there are some emails that I need to send. And a few that I want to send. That's almost never an email I want to send now that I stop and think about it. I feel like less than it used to be. Yeah, it used to be a source of joy. Like when I would email Sarah before we started dating, I mean, email in the 2000s, it's almost impossible to explain how enjoyable it was. You've got mail. Now everybody's got mail and they're like, I'd rather not have mail. But, John, before you get to the news from AFC Wimbledon. I know you have a lot to tell us. The ancient Egyptians and the people working on the pyramids, they appear to have had labor crews that worked in rotating shifts.

So they did get time off, but they would have longer periods of time on. And their time, and ancient Egypt was organized around 10-day periods called decans, and sometimes rest would come after like long stretches of work. And then you get like a big hunk of time off, which, you know, that seems like it might have its advantages. I kind of like the idea of like longer work, longer break, but everybody's different. Listen, we've got to get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, Hank, because the news from AFC Wimbledon is incredible. Do Mars first?

You do Mars first. It's incredible. It's astonishing. It's over. It is kind of wild. It's pretty wild. This week in Mars News, scientists have found more organic molecules in Mars rocks. In 2020, Curiosity found a rock sample and drilled some holes in it so that they could run some tests.

And based on that analysis, they found that the rock had 21 carbon-containing molecules. When we say organic in chemistry, we don't mean that they're from life. We mean that they are based in carbon chemistry. And seven of those molecules had never seen before on Mars. One of these molecules is important because it's like kind of a chemical precursor to RNA and DNA. Not the kind of thing that would like break down from RNA and DNA, but it'd be good to have it if you were going to make life in a place. we do not know if these molecules formed via biological or geologic processes, but it does provide evidence that Mars could have been hospitable to life at one point in its history,

and it also shows that these molecules can be preserved in rocks even through billions of years of exposure to radiation on the planet. The rock sample was called Mary Anning 3, after the paleontologist who discovered the first ichthistor and pliosaur, and the solvent used in these experiments on the Curiosity rover is called tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide or TMAH. But the Curiosity rover only has two cups of TMAH, and this was the first sample to be tested because it was considered to be one of the highest value samples. Oh. So we just keep finding little clues, John. They're exciting little clues. Their clues, their indications, their maybes.

Yeah. Hank, I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are on the six-hour drive from the Kono District to Freetown, to fly back to the United States. Okay. Now, you're with your friends, Ryan and Warren, Chris and Marina, and your wife, all of whom, in addition to being huge investors in noted John Green Boondoggle, the Internal Center of Excellence, are also small investors. and noted John Green Boondoggle AFC Wimbledon. Uh-huh. So it was your car full of dorks? Car full of dorks who love AFC Wimbledon,

who are deeply invested in this community. AFC Wimbledon have lost six straight games. They have one draw in their 10 games. You kept saying, we got so many games to get these last points. And then they were like, I'm going to make John Green get sweaty. We had 10 games to win one game, and we couldn't do it. And so we found ourselves with two games remaining in 20th place at the edge of the relegation zone, which starts in 21st, about to be relegated with nine of our best 11 players injured, with an absolute, like, no starting forwards, period. What happened?

they all got hurt. Marcus Brown, Omar Bougille, Maddie Stevens, they all got hurt. So we were in dire, dire straits. I mean, it just looked, it looked inevitable. It felt inevitable. Our last two games were both against good teams. Exeter City was on a stunning run of win after win below us in the table. So we're driving from Kono to Freetown in a van with my friends. And I would say that Ryan was able to stream about 20% of the game on his phone. Like, the game would come in for like 30 seconds and then it would go away. We're playing Wiggin. Game comes in for 30 seconds. It's nil, nil, it goes away. At one point, we slipped down into the relegation zone because Exeter City score and send us into 21st place. And then Burton Albion, equalize against Exeter City and so suddenly it's not looking quite so dire. We're back into

one place but only by one point and we have a worse goal difference than Exeter. Everything is going against us. We see little bits of the stream and it crashes then a little bit of the stream then it crashes. Finally in the

88th minute it's still nil-nil and the stream starts to work perfectly and we're all watching and we're all just like somehow. I mean, we had 25% possession in this game. We looked awful. Oh, wow.

And I was just like somehow, someone find a way to score a freaking goal. Just one, just somehow. And then a ball comes in in the last minute of the game, Hank, to Antoine Hackford, who's had a long season on the bench, buries it in the back of the net and Exeter City draw and AFC Wimbledon have secured their league one status for another season. It felt as good as Wembley. We were out. We were promoted. That's how it felt. I mean, it felt as good as anything can feel in that van. We were jumping up and down. We were hugging each other. I was almost weeping after all the emotion of seeing

the Maternal Center of Excellence to see AFC Wimbledon to see this other boondoggle of mine. It was just incredible, incredible feeling. And then, and then, Hank, to make it even better, the very next day, AFC Wimbledon's women's team had to win or tie in order to not get relegated. And they tied in the 80th minute. They were down to one and they tied the game. Oh, my God. And AFC Wimbledon's women's team survive as well.

Two teams that looked doomed on Friday, live again on Sunday. Beautiful. I mean, I cannot believe you started the season so strong. It's all, why is there always drama? I feel like most teams are just in the middle. I know. You would think so. You would think that we could have one season where we end just in the middle.

But no, we're always in the playoffs or in the relegation zone every season, no matter what. So it is a huge achievement. We have the second lowest budget in the league. It's a huge achievement to stay up. The last four teams that were promoted via the playoffs from League 2 all went back down in the following season. So this is a huge achievement, but you're right. We should have achieved it earlier. We should have had a few games without stress.

Instead, we only have one game without stress, which I am going to this weekend to see AFC Wimbledon play a game that does not matter in the least. Well, keep it up, boys. Everybody rest up, heal up. Heal up. How bad are those injuries? Everybody will be back for the new season, assuming that they have contracts, which is always undetermined. Yeah. So, AFC Wimbledon stay up.

AFC Wimbledon women stay up. And I've got a World Cup to look forward to. If you're as excited about the World Cup as I am, you should check out the podcast I do with my friend, Danielle Al-Arcon, at the away end, the away-end pod. It's a great. We have a great time making it. It's no dear Hank and John, but it is a wonder. John, thank you for making a podcast with me. everybody, thank you for sending in your questions.

It's Hankinjohn at gmail.com if you would like to send us stuff. This podcast was edited by Michael Polk. It was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Hals Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is to Boki Chalkervardi. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola.

And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. American Woodcock. That's a good ending.