Dear Hank & John - 457: Big Ball Curators

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

How do I best support someone trying to quit smoking? Why do migraines create such strange symptoms? Why are dead people and animals in cartoons often depicted with Xs for eyes? What do I do with a headstone in my backyard that is from the 1800s? How should I display all my nerdfighter memorabilia? Do ducks have ears? …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.

Hello, everyone. Before we get started, I want to tell you about humans. Humans is a podcast where I talk to people about the questions that I have about being a person. And sometimes those conversations are with people who have just had experience being people, like my brother, or the editor of the New York Times game connections. These are just people who've like done it and tried weird stuff. And so I want to talk to them about how they do it. But I also am talking to people who have maybe some special insight into what's going on with humans. Like, Hannah Ritchie, who is a data scientist, who studies our impact on the climate, or Jennifer Schubert, who studies demography and what it means for humans that people are having fewer kids than they used to. I also just had a conversation with the author of the Warriors books. These are books about cats that live in the woods. I did not realize that this was a person who would have so much insight into humanity and also into the responsibilities that we have when we create content for children. That conversation was so good.

It's going to be a while before it comes out. But oh my God. So, yeah, I'm talking to authors and actors and astrophysicists, and it's cool, and it's really interesting and fun, and I've really been enjoying it. I'm so glad it's finally out into the world. The overall conceit is just that, like, it's good to take a little time to zoom out sometimes,

to understand that the thing that we are is very weird and unique in the history of our Earth and also the known universe. and we don't know how to do it. No one's ever been the kind of thing that we are. And so we have to figure this out. And so I want to talk to people about figuring it out. New episodes come out every Thursday.

You can find it wherever you get podcasts. All you've got to do is search humans. And then if that doesn't work, add my name onto the end and you'll find it. First episode is with John Green, a guy you've probably heard of. And I'm pretty sure it's out now. You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Oh, and welcome to dear Hank and John. John.

I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to be advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, do you know how farmers party? How did they party, Hank? They turn up the beets. Oh, they do. Yes, of course.

Yeah. I don't know how you would turn up a beat, but I guess it's like a turducken, but it's a turbeaten. Well, we're currently growing turnips and beets in the same bed in our garden mom garden, so it's not impossible. I don't think that you could cross a turnip in a beat. They seem pretty different to me. Yeah, I don't think that you'd want to. Like, the last thing, I don't like turnips or beets that much.

The last thing I want is the worst of both of them together. But maybe it's the best of both of them. I love beats and I hate turnips. So maybe we could do something about those turnips. Well, Hank, I got my author photo taken today. Oh, you got a new one instead of just going with the same one forever, like every other author who wants to remember the way that they were one. young. Yeah, well, it's, I think somewhat precipitated by the fact that my best friend Marina is a

photographer. And so every time I have a new book out, she's like, what an opportunity to take your picture. Well, that's good. I like a good photo shoot. Do you? I find them, even when it's my best friend taking my picture a little excruciating, but I did my best. I did okay, I think. I, you know, at least Marina can tell me honestly, like, when I look like there's a gun pushing against the back of my back. Yeah, I do feel like that's what I kind of ended up with for the cover shot for the new podcast for humans. I just look a little bit like, I'm not sure how to be a human. Yeah, there's something weird that when a photographer enters the room, You forget what you do with your hands and you forget what your face is supposed to do.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think that my face always looks a little funny, which I'm not because my face looks funny, but because I'm always doing something funny with it. And it's hard for me to turn that off. But a good photographer that most of their job is to try and make you comfortable and say things like, tell me a joke or what did you have for breakfast?

Right. A lot of the job is to be comfortable, but then some of the job is done. understand like light and shadow and all that stuff. Oh yeah. There's also a lot of that shop. And yeah, so Marina's great at that. And it was, it was a fun, it was a fun couple hours. But it was a nice, it was a nice break from signing my name over and over again, which is most of what I've been doing for the last week. Yeah. In an attempt to sign 85,000 copies of my new book Hollywood ending coming out on September 22nd. I'm so nervous about Hollywood ending. I can't. It's like all that occupies my thoughts right now. It's been so long since you've written fiction.

It's been almost 10 years. Are you, are you even a fiction writer anymore? It's John Green. You're, you are an infectious disease writer, John Green. I know. And so will anybody remember their positive feelings for my fiction? Or does anybody even hold positive feelings for my fiction anymore? Have they just moved on? Wouldn't it be fun, though, John, to like just do, and I know that the answer to this question is no, but just to just do some looking for Alaska numbers.

What do you mean? Just like, like when you're looking for Alaska came out. And it's like, oh. 6,000 copies? Yeah. No, that would not be fun, Hank. That would feel terrible. That would mean that they would pulp 79,000 copies of Hollywood ending that I signed.

That would be a terrible outcome. So you've signed 80,000 copies? No, I've signed about 47,500 on my way to 85. Wow, geez. I don't know, man. I don't think I could ever do this. This is how I will never be a successful author. No, it's not.

I simply cannot. Because I'm the only person who does this and lots of authors are successful. In fact, I just read it in Vanity Fair. Ann Patchett complaining about signing 17,000, that's 17, not 70. And I was like, Anne, come on now. 17. What's like work? I've heard people complaining about like 500.

Yeah. And they're like, oh, I just got to sit in front of the TV and sign my name 500 times. And I'm like, that's 45 minutes. Yeah, no. I just did that for the Crash Course Coin Don't. I know, I did it too, and it was fine. I did that amid signing 85,000 times, and it was totally fine. I don't even, I honestly don't even remember those thousand signatures that I did for the crash course coin. Yeah. Yeah. Now I listen to half a podcast. Exactly. You can't even, you can't even get through the first months of World War I in your audio book. Yeah. People are like, how do you do so much research for your, for your podcast? And I'm like, I listen to podcasts while I sign things. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

When does humans come out? Is it out yet? It's out. Oh, I haven't listened to it. Our episode, well, you haven't. You haven't listened to it because it's not out for you, but it's out for everybody else. What do you mean? It's not out for me?

Because this podcast is recorded before it comes out, John. Oh. Wait, so you're telling me that when people are listening to this, they're in our future? Every time. Oh, my God. I wonder what terrors have struck in the last. three days that we're failing to respond to. You really can't get to your head about it because if you do, it starts to, it freaks me out.

It's like, I can't, I can't talk to these people. They're in there in a future where maybe the machines have taken over. Yeah, who knows? I mean, they could be in a future where I'm gone. They'll be listening. What if somebody listens to this episode in 30 years after I die? What if I don't even live for 30 years? Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, there's a time at which you will no longer be alive. And I hope, like, to the person, who's listening. Hank and John are dead. What the heck are you doing? That's wild.

It's like me going back and listening to some soupy sales. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's like watching a Buster Keaton film, but worse. Yeah. Yeah, except like really designed for quantity rather than quality. Yeah.

So what questions do we have for the people of 2100? Hank. I guess my first question is like, I'm a little surprised to know that you made it. How did you make it? How'd that go? Do you still get colds? Yes. Hank Green thought you would stop getting colds.

I would love to hear if you still get colds. How's, you know, how are you dealing with butt stuff? What? Butt stuff. Just say hemorrhoids. Yeah, that's what I meant. How are you dealing with hemorrhoids? Yeah.

Well. How are you dealing with the, yeah. Is tuberculosis still a thing? God, I hope. Not. Yeah. Here's what, here's like my grim prediction. Okay.

I think people, like healthy people in the developed world, won't get colds anymore, but other people will still get tuberculosis. So I disagree. I actually think the world will be much more equitable in 2100 than it is today. Okay. And I'm making that prediction entirely based on a little thing called hope. there's a there's you could see a little bit of trajectory but like I don't know a little bit not a lot only if you squint the thing is the thing is that there's so much more for the people who have right just so much and like it's very hard to understand the difference between like

like having less poverty in the world and and like having like being able to get on a plane five times a year right it's just like a huge different in the amount of wealth Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know what 2100 is going to look like, but I love the idea that somebody's going to be listening to this particular episode of the podcast in what is for us 74 years into the future. And I just hope we figured out hemorrheds by then because, geez. Well, they're uncomfortable. John, do you have any questions from our listeners? I don't actually, because I don't have the document up. Do you have any? Yeah, I got plenty. This first one comes from Elena, who asks dear Hank and John.

My sister has smoked cigarettes and vaped since she was 12 years old. Now, as a 24-year-old, she has decided to quit. It's been four months, and my whole family is insanely proud of her. However, she is still really struggling. She used vaping and smoking to mask a lot of her difficulties with ADHD and depression, and I'm worried for her. John, you have been open about how difficult it was for you to quit smoking. Do you have any tips for my sister or on how to best support her?

Hank, do you have any tips on operating in the adult world successfully with ADHD tendencies? Any advice, dubious or otherwise, is greatly appreciated. Pumpkins and Penguins, Elena. Well, the thing about quitting smoking is that it does get easier. So I quit smoking in 2001 or two, and I don't think about smoking anymore. I don't think about cigarettes at all, and I don't yearn for a cigarette, and I don't feel anything. So it will get easier. And four months is really, really good return on your initial investment. But like, I remember once I quit smoking, for a year and then started again on the 365th day. Wow.

And I spoke like one cigarette on the 365th day because I kind of thought I was in the clear. I have a very addictive part of me. Like my brain latches on to pleasure buttons that I can hit and I hit the pleasure button as many times. Like if you put me in a, if I was one of those like rats in a cage and you give them a little bit of cocaine every time they hit a button or whatever, I would I would hit the button until I die. Like I love to hit the button. Um, and so I smoked one cigarette one day and I woke up the next day and I smoked 25 cigarettes the next day. Oh yeah. Because I just, I was like, oh, I miss hitting that

button. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just see the flood. There's, there's no way to take your finger out of the dam without all the water coming through. Yeah. So that, I think that, you know, it's great. Of course, it's a struggle because it's something that's like my therapist always says like this must have been useful to you at some point, which is why you do it, but maybe it's not useful to you now. And so maybe you shouldn't do it anymore. And I think that's very much the case for using substances as a way of coping with other stuff in our lives. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why I hadn't thought about that with cigarettes, but I hadn't really thought about that with cigarettes. I think that we're just more judgmental about them because it seems so trivial and we've sort of tabooed it, which of course

is a good thing. I'm glad that we've made cigarettes more taboo because they're very dangerous and silly. But yeah, as a way of dealing with stuff, like now you've got to find other ways to deal with this stuff. And that might be professional treatment, you know, that like when it comes to ADHD and depression, there are people who can help with these things. And like for me, it's really like, as far as my like hitting the button, it's like finding stuff to always be doing. Right. And that can be hard. You know, one of the great privileges I have had in my life is being able to figure out something to do.

Yeah. And I feel like that's denied to a lot of people. Right. And it is one of those invisible privileges that like we don't get when we talk about privilege, where it's like, well, I don't really see it. And it's like, well, do you see that just having the opportunity? opportunity to try stuff? Yeah. Or is society denying, denying you that are making it more difficult?

The opportunity to take risks, the opportunity to do lots of things with your time, the opportunity to not have to engage in subsistence agriculture in order to survive, etc. Yeah, all that. And also the opportunities that come with speaking the dominant language, like simple stuff. Yeah, that's huge, man. If I didn't write in English, if I were a Latvian author of the Fault our stars, my life would be very different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Latvians, they'd love it. I hope it would have crushed in Latvia. In some ways, it's better to be big on your block than it is to be big globally. And so, you know, maybe the Latvian me would be living the dream. I don't know. But it does benefit you a lot to speak and write in the dominant language. So all of that stuff, if she has opportunities to.

to keep busy. And also maybe there are opportunities that you can add to the world of her life, whether it's going for a nice little walk or taking up professional coffee sommeliering or something where you just like get some hobbies. Because I love a hobby, man. If you can find something that you care about

and did you care about together, it's really great to care about a thing together with your sibling. I speak from experience. It is pretty great. We've got another question. I have personal experience here from Bex, who asks Dear Hank and John. I have had migraines for as long as I can remember,

though they vary in frequency and severity through my life. But they have always come with oras. Often I experience them with my eyes open, but closed as a light show I did not sign up for. Over the last 10 years, I've experienced auditory oras, which, from what I can tell, don't seem to always be fully recognized as a feature of migraines. This most often sounds like my brain latching onto a brief sound,

like a fire truck going by and looping it for ages. This is crazy. I've never heard of that, but I believe it because migraines are super weird. This all seems incredibly rude of my brain, since famously light and sound are bad for a migraine. What gives? Why do scientists think migraines induce such weird activity in the brain?

Is it functionally similar to synesthesia? How do we even study these experiences? Mirages and migraines, Bex. I also, this is relatively new for me when I was doing chemotherapy. I started to get migraines with aura, and I still get them occasionally. Wow. And I mentioned this to our father who was like, oh, yeah, that happens to me. Oh, interesting.

So it happened to me once, and it was freaking terrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first time it happens, you're like, okay, so that's a stroke. I was gardening, and I was like suddenly was seeing oras everywhere. and I stood up, I went inside, and like 20 minutes later, I was still seeing ORAs, so I went to the emergency room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know if I was having a stroke.

I didn't know if I was having some kind of, you know, mental health crisis. I didn't know what the hell was happening. Yeah, so as a very important piece of the medical advice, Uvra, which is our podcast, you know, always come to us for medical advice. You can trust us. If you think that there's like a 1% chance that you might be having a stroke, there's like a hundred percent chance that you should be in a car on the way to the ER. Yeah. Strokes are not to deal with and minutes really matter in that sort of situation.

Right. And wildly, when this happened to me the first time, I was like, is this a stroke? And I sat there for like five or ten minutes before I finally was like, I should go to the hospital, which is so dumb. Yeah. But anyway, now I know what they are like. And we're not sure, but we have taken people who frequently get these kinds of migraine headaches, put them near a hospital. When they start having one, we put them in what's called a functional MRI machine, which images your brain and where the blood is in your brain. And that can show you what's going on in the brain.

And what they see is a wave of something, of some like, I mean, I don't know what this means, but they call it a wave of depolarization happening through the brain that moves at 3.5 millimeters per minute, but it has a state, a speed at which it moves across the brain. And this is what we think migraines are. And we think, this is definitely like even more caveats here, that when that happens in a sort of area of the brain, brain that processes perceptual information, that you perceive stuff that are not actually there. And so the aura and also potentially the auditory phenomenon that you're hearing is like the migraine passing through the section of the brain that processes that. And then the pain

is not entirely clear where it comes from. And some people, including me, get these oras. And then the headache is relatively mild compared to a lot of the people. So I get a headache, but I don't get a headache that's debilitating. Like, maybe I want to, like, go lay down and close my eyes for a while, but, like, I've never had a migraine that is, uh, disabling. And, uh, so, like, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very weird, mysterious thing. And, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and if it's accompanied, if you can't, Yeah, that's cool. Right, right.

But, but, like, there's something in terms of the aura that's like, what you're saying is there's a physical wave of a phenomenon passing through my brain and I can see it. Yeah, no, that's terrifying, Hank. Yeah, okay. Well, I think it's cool. I love that you got this as a result of chemotherapy. You've gotten so much as a result of chemotherapy. Not many gifts, but many results. No, yeah.

It's interesting. I talked to my doctor about the migraine, and he was like, But that's not normal. Why do you think that your cancer treatment resulted in only negative side effects? Why didn't you get any Spider-Man-like powers? I did. My ulcerative colitis symptoms are far less severe. Well, I guess that's...

And that's like huge. Would you trade that for aura migraines that aren't painful? I'd trade it for aura migraines that aren't painful that happen at the frequency that they happen to me for sure. Okay. There's other things, like a lifelong increased risk of a number of very dangerous cancers that I would not trade. Yeah. No, I understand.

I understand that you wouldn't come out in favor of prophylactic chemotherapy. Yeah. Oh, man. I had meningitis in 2014, which is very uncomfortable, terrible headaches. And the great thing about meningitis, the gift of it in my life, is that I still can't feel other people's. pain, of course, and, like, that's a barrier past which no human I know of can go. But I am really inclined to believe people when they say that their pain is really, really bad. Because having had really, really bad pain, it is, it's the only thing I had. It's the, it was my whole

freaking life for that time. Hank, why are dead people and animals in cartoons often depicted with X's for eyes. This is from Molly. Where does that trend come from? And when did we start doing this? Curious to hear your thoughts on this, dubious or otherwise. Memento, Omnis, Oculus, X, Habibimus, Molly. I believe that remembers all of our eyes will die. Or all of our eyes will have X's. I don't know the answer to this. I didn't pre-research this topic. I think that it is purely a cultural thing. People were needed to represent this somehow that was relatively non-threatening.

Like, you don't want to show a bunch of gross stuff. And so you're like, nah, probably they don't exist anymore. But I don't think that, like, there are, I don't think that we ever, we put coins on people's eyes. That was a real thing. I don't think that we ever did X's on eyes. Do you know anything, John? This is correct, Hank. So X has long been used as like canceled or don't or no or no longer.

And it was a relatively simple way to do this. Yeah. And so that is why it is done. It was done by Disney. It was done by lots of other people. and it was done early on in cartoons because it was easy and because it was clear to the audience that this person was dead or otherwise incapacitated.

Right, right, on consciousness also, yeah. Not all the time. Sometimes they would recover from the exes over their eyes. They would clear their heads after falling 10,000 feet or whatever. And do you think that in the early days of cartoons there were all sorts of people who were like, kids are going to think this is safe

and they're going to jump off of canyons. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, for sure. That just occurred to me. Anyway, and the other thing about it is that there's no gore, right? There's no blood. There's no other, there's nothing, there's nothing that could be seen as anti-child or child or child unfrageted.

It's like a safe way to represent it. Yeah. Right. And I bet that like in other cultures it wouldn't be immediately clear what is being represented, but we've all just been raised inside of that breath, you know. Yeah. And so it's just like in our brains and that's what it looks like to us. Have you ever gotten your bell rung?

Oh, yeah. Because it does feel like that a little bit. It does feel like roong, wrong, wrong. You can like lose vision. Yeah. That's wild. Getting your head hit hard enough that you like suddenly can't see. It's like, oh, shoot.

Yeah. How long am I going to be dealing with this? It's only happened to me once when I got hit by that bike messenger on a corner of deer born in maple in Chicago. And this is pretty pretty... Happened to me once when I was a kid when I fell off a swing. It also happened to you once, I suspect, when you got tackled into a tree

when we were playing tackle football and mom never really forgave me for being the one who tackled. I don't remember that. I bet you don't. Jaad, do you want to know another reason that I found out on Reddit, why eyes turned into X's?

Why? Because when things die, sometimes they turn into X, like Twitter. Good joke, good joke. That's true. That's true. And then they're just dead, but somehow still going. Oh, my, yeah. Like Tumblr in 2016, just a zombie Twitter sort of like struggling along.

And then even Tommy in it is like, I don't think I can take this anymore. Tommy. Tommy just quit Twitter. Oh, my, that's hilarious. It's like, actually, the, it's so weird how the fracture has gone where I'm like, I like go on blue sky and it's all of my like journalist friends. And I go and then it's like, if I want to hear from Marquez Brownlee, I have to go on threads. And I'm like, this is weird.

Yeah, but then if you want to, then if you want to hear from like 300,000 chatbots talking to each other, you go on Twitter. Yeah, if I really want to hear from somebody who thinks that the singularity is currently occurring. Yeah. Who is being supported in their belief by a bunch of really dumb bots, then I can find that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, if this is the singularity, it's so disappointing. Oh, man.

Well, that's what I'm saying. A week from now when this podcast comes out, maybe everything will have changed. That's true. That's true. Yeah. All right. We got another question, Hank. It's from Amanda who writes, Dear John and Hank, we moved into our house almost six years

ago. Shortly thereafter, we noticed that there was a lot of. a headstone in our backyard. Our house was built in 1890, but the headstone is dated 1885 to 1886. Our best guess is that it was brought by the original family who built the house because it is not attached to a base or in the ground. At this point, we are several generations removed from people who would have been related to this child. This begs the question, what on earth should we do with it? I'm scared to remove it or put it somewhere more sacred because of ghosts. We also just have this random headstone in our yard and it feels like it deserves to be somewhere more worthy.

Pictures attached for reference looking for real or dubious advice, Amanda. Amanda, I think there's a body in your backyard. Yeah, I think that there's a body in your backyard too. I think you have missed the most obvious possibility, which is that somebody knocked over the headstone at some point and like put it off to the side, but there's a body in your backyard. Yeah, but like an 1885 body. Yeah, but still, I wouldn't move that headstone. I would keep it right where it is.

Yeah, I'd prop it up and be like, I guess there's a baby here. Oh, yeah, y'all. One year old. It was such a different world. I think about this all the time that like the death in the 1880s, which was not that long ago. Like I realized that it feels long to our younger listeners. But to those of us who've been around for half a century, we're talking about, you know, one and a half centuries. Yeah.

So not that much longer than I've been here. And trust me, I haven't been here that long. I have no idea what's going on. And yet back then we were losing like 25% of all people born before the age of five in the United States. And that was a dramatic improvement. It was twice as good as it had been historically. It was twice as, it was, you know, a third as good as it had been like 40 years before. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's just, it is mind blowing how routine child death was in the entire world. Yeah. 140 years ago. And yet remember it hurt. Oh, absolutely. There's the sense that I can have in my heart where I'm like, well, if it was happening so often, maybe it was like less awful than it would be for someone to lose a child

today. And I'm like, nope. I don't think it was just as bad. No, I think it was seen as natural. Like in all the reading I've done, it was definitely seen as natural. So it wasn't seen as abnormal or it wasn't seen as like troubling to the social order. but it was personally devastating to people. I mean, people would never recover.

That's why they had these, that's why they made these beautiful headstones is because it was impossible, you know, it was impossible to recover from these losses. And so I absolutely agree with you, Hank. At any rate, point being Amanda, you got to keep that headstone in the backyard, man.

I'm sorry, but like, and I know it's weird, and I know you're going to be, I know it's weird to, like, like mow the lawn over it or whatever and like have porch parties in the backyard and have people come over and be like, and this is our headstone. Yeah. But you're taking a real risk by moving it. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's important to note that like a ghost of a one year old can't cause that much trouble. No. I'm not worried about the ghost issue. Yeah. I just don't you think, though, that like people in general should be relatively near their headstones if they were, if that's how they were originally buried? Yeah. Yeah. And I also think that it's like a great like little reminder of, of, uh, human, uh, ability and, and sacrifice and pain and, and, um, innovation and all of the stuff. But yeah, I think, I don't know. I think you got to like put it back up. And, and like, it's not going to be right where. And I, and I think based on what I know of how this works, I don't think there's any way of finding where it, it, it actually wasn't. Maybe, you know, could have been carried thereby of, of, flood or something, I don't know.

Very unlikely. So unlikely. But I don't think it was carried there by a person. I think that it was almost... No, I think what happened is that the child died in 1886 and when they built the house, they wanted to be, they wanted the child to be near them, and so they reinterred the body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 1886 was like different. We did different things with bodies. We didn't have rules. Yeah, well, they would reinter the body in 1890. That wouldn't even be that weird at the time. Yeah. I don't think. Yeah. Or they would. They were in the house at that moment, or was that not, the house wasn't built then?

The house wasn't built until four years after the child died. Gotcha, gotcha, yeah. Which is just, to me, a reminder of, like, how profound the grief is that you would want to be near your child and reinter their body and everything. That's what I suspect to happen, but that it's pure guesswork. Like, I have absolutely no idea. I just, I wouldn't take the risk, man. Like, whof. Yeah.

Anyway, it reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by ghost. Ghosts, Steer clear. I guess, like, honor them and they shall behave. Yeah,

that's how I've always felt, man. You know? Yeah. This podcast also brought to you by migraine with aura. Migraine with aura. People.

That's your, that's the tagline that you gave migraine with aura. Yeah. Available. Available. Yeah. Speaking of which,

today's podcast is brought to you by cigarettes, also available. Unfortunately. But like $20 a pack now and like, and really bad for you. So steer clear. And this podcast is brought to you by Tommy Init. Tommy In It. He always seemed like a really nice guy to me.

I mean, I have. Oh, no, I like it. Yeah, lovely man from everything I've seen. And this podcast is brought to you by qualifying every time you say you like a creator, just in case. It doesn't come out for five days, so anything could happen. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. 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?

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Let them know we sent you after checkout. Liza.com, promo code Dear Hank. All right, Hank, we got another question. This one from M.K., who writes, Dear John and Hank, I've been a Nerdfighter since the Brotherhood 2.0 era. MK., thank you so much. That is incredible. And we are so grateful that you have spent nearly 20 years of your life following our work.

That is the coolest. As such, I have amassed quite the collection of Nerdfighter ephemera. This includes a signed So Jokes CD. Remember your album's So Jokes, Hank? Holy crap. Yeah, no, I think I have a copy of it. Didn't you like hand make those on a CD burner? No, no, no.

That was songs from Hank Green's pants, which I think I also have a copy of somewhere. But this is So Jokes, which was made by a real place that makes CDs and it was just an envelope with a CD in it. Well, MK also has a TIFIOS tour booklet, a number of P4A perks and so on. Many of these items were purchased by her with my lovely sister who introduced me to y'all. These objects serve not only as representations of this community in y'all's work, but also of my relationship with her. Also, since becoming a fan of y'all when I turned around 10, 10, 10, I've required degrees in both archaeology and museum studies. M.K., I hope this doesn't sound weird,

but I am proud of you. This is how I feel every time someone tells me that they, like, grew up with our stuff, and now they are doing adulthood. It makes me feel proud of them. And I don't mean that in like a paternalistic or condescending way. I just mean it like that's how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like you're doing the thing and you let us be part of your process of doing the thing. And that's an amazing feeling. Yes, it's great to hear is great to hear. And it like changes the way that I am in the world. It's wild. Totally. Totally. All right. M.K. asks, so I find myself at an impasse which presents itself to most folks who study material culture. How do I both protect and lovingly display these pieces of personal slash nerd fighter history caution and

confusion m k p s shout out to my sister you stink and i love you i you have a thing that i really like john which is there's there's an area of hallway that just has a bunch of things that are like things yeah they're not just photos some of them are photos but they're also like like something that happened once yeah uh you know And I've got like my framed first badge from VidCon. Right. Just like moments that occurred that seem important to have out. Right.

We have a hallway that has like within reach of my desk chair. We have like a hallway that has family photos, but it also has little works of art and little ephemera from over the years, often framed. And it has a picture of Cara DeLavine tickling me with a. rose beneath the Eiffel Tower. Oh, geez. It's got all kinds of stuff there. And most of it is not nearly as embarrassing as that.

I'm not sure why I mentioned that particular piece anywhere. There's some really lovely things from like notes from people who have passed on and like all kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you could do that, MK. Or you could. And like mix it up though. Yeah, yeah. Don't make it all nerd fighter.

That's going to feel too much. But make it nerd fighter. but like with pictures of your sister and stuff. Yeah. Or donate it to a museum so they can begin the first ever vlog brothers studies collection. Yeah. We're working hard to become worthy of a museum.

Oh my God. That would be so embarrassing, actually. It's so embarrassing. Well, here's what it should be, John. Eventually we are going to buy that biggest ball of paint. Yes. And it's going to be the biggest ball of paint and vlogwriters ever a museum. The biggest ball of paint and ballgathers museum.

And it's going to be in rural Indiana. You're going to have to drive a couple hours from Indianapolis to get there. That's not that far. It's not that far. It's like I went because I was at your house and I was going to Ohio for a thing. You know, I was just like on the way. Right. I mean, it was a little longer to go.

But. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait for our dotage where we are. big ball curators. I used to be the 77th most popular podcast in America, but now, now I take care of a big ball. Yeah, it's going to be, it's just going to be lots of old YouTubers, you know, Grace Helping's going to have a big ball.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tyler's going to have a big ball. Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And they're going to stream. they're all going to stream on Twitch in front of their huge balls. Yeah. Yeah, there'll be a separate platform for that. I think we I think we address that question.

So as well, yeah. All right, John, this next question comes from cat who asks dear Hank and John, my daughter, Alma, is three years old and her favorite stuffed friend is baby duck. She recently asked us if ducks have ears. And we weren't sure if they did. Obviously, they can hear,

but do they have ears? Stuffed animals in toddler tutus, cat. It depends on what you mean by ears. Yeah, this is a great question for Dear Hank and John because you actually can't Google it. Because if you Google it, the AI, ducks have ears. The AI will be like confident, but that's wrong.

This is an issue in which you should have no confidence. Well, here's the situation. There's no good answer. This is the thing that I love about the job. and hate about how a lot of people do the job, which is like a lot of people are trying to find the space where there is a clear answer. And of course, ducks have ears.

They have a system through which they can hear vibrations that pass through the air. But that's not an ear. That's not what I call an ear. No, that's not an ear to me. Yeah. We call that an ear in science. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like, if you have no ear, but you can hear, you have an ear? See, for a human, that's a totally different thing. And this is really important. We have much more open systems when it comes to dealing with people because we are people and we're different from science. Right. We're dealing with like human stuff.

And so if someone's had their ear cut off and they want a prosthetic ear, you're not going to say that that person has an ear because they don't have an ear. And until they get one given to them by the prosthetic doctor. I can't give you a prosthetic ear because you already have an ear. Yeah. You can still hear, there's still like a, like, you know, all of the labyrinths and stuff in there doing the work. But no. And I like, I think that this is important because I often see scientists sort of being like, well, in biology, X, Y, Z. And it's like, well, that has nothing to do with humans.

Right. Like, it's also true that you can like have an ear and also not have an ear. So we need to talk about being a human differently because we're solving human problems, not like biological categorization problems. Right. It's a bit of a complicated answer to it for a three-year-old. But the answer is there's no physical ear on the outside, but they do have a hole in the side of their head that air goes through and they perceive sound through it. Do you think that they get water in their ear the way we do? That's a great question.

And then they have to be like, yeah, yeah, yon, try to get it out. Get to ducks, get water in their ears. I mean, you see them shaking their head sometimes. Yeah, that's what I was thinking is when they shake their heads. Are they just trying to get the water out of their ear like we are when we go swimming? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what they do. I don't know what they do.

Yeah, they have to. I found no websites about this, but the AI summary is confidently telling me that ducks get water in their ears. Well, I mean, it probably confidently tells you that because it's like, of course, ducks get water in their ears, they swim underwater. Yeah. And then the water touches their ears. But that's not what I mean. I mean, do they get water in their ear canals that they then have to go like, sh-ks, sh-shk-sh, They have like jump up and down.

Right, right. That's a great image. Turned in their heads to the side. Yeah. It's like a duck hopping is good. Hopping in place, especially, a very unusual sight to see. You don't usually see that from a duck, which makes you think maybe they don't get water in their ears. I don't know.

Maybe they don't because they got like waterproof feathers all over their body and they just like close up shop. Maybe. Maybe. It's hard. You know, this is an area that is ripe for. study. I mean, when I think about the problems that we face as a species, it seems to me that a significant one of them is not knowing whether or not ducks get water in their ear canals that they then have to clear somehow. Well, I mean, an actual problem that we do have that I really wish we had solutions to is being able to say to a duck, what's it like to be a duck?

Which includes whether or not you get water in years. But like, I so desperately want to know what it is like to be a duck. And I just, I don't think that we'll ever figure that out. Would you take the risk to become a duck for 10 minutes to be able to come back and report to humans what duckness is like? Is the risk that I get predated? Yeah, of course, man. The risk is that or like, what if what if the science only works one way and you're stuck being a duck? If I'm not guaranteed that the science works both ways, I'm not doing it. So you wouldn't be the first one. You wouldn't be the first one to go. But I would love for someone else to do it. Yeah.

And I am worried, though, that even if it were guaranteed, I would fail so hard at being a duck that I would die in that 10 minutes. It's not that I think that the probability of the duck dying in that 10 minutes is too high. It's I think the probability of me as a duck dying would be too high. Right. Like you just try to, like, you're in a lake somewhere and you try to get your balance, but you can't so you just flip over like a kayak and drown. And all the other ducks are like, Steve, what is going on? Steve's just like in the back of the brain being like, I don't know. I can't control him.

He's in me. Or maybe Steve's in my body and I'm dying because Steve can't figure out to do anything. Yeah, maybe the only way to do it is you become a duck, Steve. And then Steve becomes you. And then Steve with your brain is like real quick. I have 10 minutes. Here's what it's like to be a duck. Yeah, he just tells me while I can't.

No, he tells all the scientists while you're busy being a duck. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. He sort of gives a quick TED talk, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Put them on stage.

It would be called on duckness. Yeah. It would be hard to translate the quacks, but. No, we'd figure it out. I love this. I have also, I have also long been. been fascinated by the question of what it's like to be a non-human animal and how that shifts when you're a dolphin versus when you're a duck versus when you're a single-celled organism.

Yeah, I don't think that there's anything that it's like to be a single-celled organism. I've thought about this. But people disagree. Yeah. So what do I know? Yeah. Oh, man, I was at a book signing last night where there was a fight over whether eating oysters is vegan and I wanted to just hide behind my seat.

Oh, that's a strange, it's a strange thing to think is a plant. Well, it doesn't have a nervous system, was the argument. Yeah, I mean, I guess vegans eat living things all the time. Like, it's hard to avoid eating animals completely. Well, there's going to be like microbugs getting into your mouth sometimes. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's incidental, I think, if you swallow a mosquito here or there. I don't think that I don't think that invalidates the project.

I agree. Okay, thank you. I'm glad you weren't coming in with a really bad hot take there. There's no such thing as vegans. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Panic at the disco.

Yeah, that's, I got, I got that one straight off an X.com. Oh, man. The exed out corks. The exed out corpse of Twitter. Yeah. I love it. All right, Hank, it's time to move on to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. What's this week's Mars news?

Well, you heard from us a little while back that the Maven spacecraft, which has been hanging out around Mars for over 10 years now, lost contact with us here on Earth. We've been trying to figure out what's going on. And the official news is that the Maven mission has ended. So data from the deep space network shows that before signals were lost, the spacecraft was rotating at a high rate. And that drained the batteries as it was trying to stop doing that. And also it led to the communication system losing power. Also, it's hard to communicate with a satellite that is spinning unpredictably.

We were also able to get one of the Mars rovers to image the sky at a moment when Maven would be being lit up by the sun and thus visible in the sky, which is amazing, and it was not there. So we don't really know what happened. Something went wrong, probably a thruster fired when it shouldn't have fired and made it spin and change orbit in such a way that we have not, we have not been able to and will not be able to regain contact. This happened at a bad moment also. So there's like moments when spacecraft can't communicate with Earth. And so this began right at a moment when we couldn't send signals to correct it. And so bad luck there, but in general, you know, these missions tend to be expected to not last for 10 or 11 years, which Maven did. So that's great. Right. Right. So you celebrate

the win that it outlasted its expected mission lifetime even as you mourn the loss of Maven. Yeah. So it was part of, Maven was also part of the Mars Relay Network, which uses orbiting spacecraft to help scientists communicate with other spacecraft in orbit or on the surface of Mars. So we've also lost a little bit of a little piece of that, though. It's still working. I just like that the fact that they're all kind of talking to each other. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We're trying to take a picture of the sky where maybe it would be like that feels like there's a bunch of stuff hanging out on Mars.

There is. It feels like at the same time very advanced but also very quaint. Right. A bunch of little, like a bunch, a small number of little robots all sort of doing science together. Right. Well, Hank, the news from AFC Wimbledon this weekend is that our thrilling preseason friendlies have been announced. Preseason friendlies. Yeah.

Now, Hank, as you may be aware, this is a World Cup year. It sounds like where I'm going to go get burgers and fries. This is a World Cup year. So that means that the footballing world pretty much shuts down for June and the first part of July. Right. everybody's doing stuff. Even people on AFC Wimbledon. Well, AFC Wimbledon doesn't have any players going to the World Cup.

We have some former players going to the World Cup, like a Rock's Ali al-Homedy. But no current players going to the World Cup. But even so, nobody's going to go to a preseason friendly when there's a World Cup game to go to, right? Or even a World Cup game to watch on TV. The World Cup, Hank, is the best thing that we do as humans. I talk about this a lot of my podcast. Says the guy who just talked. We talked about infant mortality going from 25% to less than 1%.

Yeah. Yeah. In 150 years. No, that's super impressive. But like the World Cup, Hank, the World Cup is one of the great glories of humanity because it is one moment where most humans are paying attention to the same thing. It's really the only time, and it only happens every four years, and it's the only time when most people on earth are paying attention to the same thing. So that's a really cool,

rare thing, and I'm really excited about it, even though FIFA's corrupt and all that. If you want to hear more about the World Cup and get ready for it and about FIFA's corruption, you should listen to the away end of my podcast with Daniel Alarcon, the great Peruvian novelist who I went to high school with. We make a podcast with our other friend from high school producing it named Sean, and we just have a great time. Anyway, we're playing Sutton United States. the first ever opponent that AFC Wimbledon had way back in 2002 as AFC Wimbledon. We're playing Norwich City, Charlton, Wheelstone, and we're playing a team from the Skybet League Championship that hasn't been announced yet.

But that's still cool. We're going to play a team from the league above us, which is awesome. And we'll see how it goes. So we're playing some pretty big teams. Charlton are pretty big. Norwich City are pretty big. And whoever we play from the championship is going to be big. And then we're playing Wildstone and Sutton, both of whom we should comfortably beat.

And we'll learn a lot. Wheeled stone? Is it like wielding a stone like a spear or is it like a stone that is in the shape of a wheel? It's W-E-A-L-D stone. Yeah, weldstone. I don't know. That sounds very arcane, though. That's like very British.

It's like they found an object and named the town after it. Yes. You know, you got to go to the town that's where the wheeled stone is. You know the wheeled stone. Yeah. What's the, it's, uh, it is a sarsen stone positioned to mark the boundary between the parishes of Harrow and Harrow Weld. I mean, sometimes you read that stuff and then you think like, well, J.R. R. Tolkien was a genius and everything, but like half the book was written for him.

You can go, it's just on the side of the road, John. The weld stone is right there. I'm looking at a picture of it. He just writes down like, oh, and then they went to the wheeled stone. And you're like, oh, man, what a fantasy this guy's having. but no, he just went to the wheeledstone. Yeah, what could they possibly have named this town after? Oh, this big rock. It's not even that big just for clarity. It's like maybe two feet high. It's a border rock.

Yeah, border rock. Yeah, classic border rock. Anyway, that's who we're playing. I'm excited for the new season. I mean, I'm mostly excited for the World Cup. I really want to see how Ali al-Homody does. It would be my dream for a former AFC Wimbledon player to score a goal in the World Cup.

It would be so cool. But we'll see if it happens. In the meantime, there's always next season to get excited about our fixture list, Hank. It will be released on June 25th. So that's when we find out when we're playing the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes and other teams. John, can I read you just a selection of this Wikipedia page because it's really great? Sure, of course. Okay.

Well, the weld stone, the Sarsin Stone, is located outside, I'm quoting now, the Bombay Central Restaurant. which was built as a public house, previously known as the Weldstone, in, and prior to that, the Red Lion. Great. Now that I'm thinking, maybe it was not related to Red Lion Inn, but maybe it was.

Maybe it was. But maybe not. But maybe they just called it the Red Lion. I don't know. To me, that just sounds like it used to be like a double tree. No, I suspect it used to be a pub. But yeah, it was never a double tree, I suspect.

But maybe it's one of those pubs with like three hotel rooms on top. I have stayed in some of those pub hotels in England traveling to see AFC Wimbledon away and beautiful towns like Nottingham and Mansfield. So 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 was edited by Linus Ovenhouse. It was mixed by Andrew Smith.

Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosie on. Hals Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is DiBoki Chakravardi. 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.