Dear Hank & John - 458: Ancient vs. Hyper-Mortal (w/ Paige Lewis!)

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Will John release a “John’s Version” of his books like Taylor Swift? How do I start writing again? What can I look forward to in adulthood? How long does it take love to go to the sun and back? Where does our responsibility to ourselves end and our responsibility to others begin? …Paige and John 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 Schuba, 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. Hello and welcome to Dear John and Hank. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear Paige and John. on. It's a podcast where two friends give you dubious advice, bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon and answer your questions. I'm joined today by my ancient friend, Paige Lewis. Wait, ancient is like, I'm really old. No, you're actually very young. Ancient in the sense that that's the nature of your wisdom. You write epics, Paige. Yeah. No, that is, yeah, I like

to be thought of as like the Sybil of Koumei. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I feel like, I feel like I've known you since before Kevin, I got married, which is a long time. I have known you since before you got married. That's pretty cool. It is really cool. It's been very, very cool to see. So for those who don't know, Paige is a poet and most recently the author of a novel called Canon.

That's one of my favorite books of all time. And Canon is a non-binary epic, as it says at the very beginning of the book. And it's this, I hope you take this as a comment, but I hope you take this as a comment. I think it's the strangest book I've ever read and one of the most enjoyable. No, I like that. I think that that, thank you, by the way. That's very sweet. I think that everyone so far has been calling it weird, but I think that that is a good thing.

Yeah. Well, it's not like, it shouldn't be a huge surprise to you that people consider it weird, because it is a different novel from the ones that people are used to reading. Right. I was thinking the other day about how nice your voice is. No, well, and you called me out of the blue like a month ago. Yeah. And I was in an airport and I was going to be in an airport for the next like six hours.

And I was really bummed about it. And then you called, which is weird because no one ever calls. That's like not a thing people do anymore. Right. And after I talked to you, I was totally fine in the airport. And I think it's because your voice is so calming. And that makes me think, I know you're not going to be doing the voices for Hollywood ending, right? Probably not.

No. Which it would be interesting to see you do. But I think that you should get a job sort of recording warnings for people. like, oh no, a nuclear bomb is coming your way. Like, if everyone heard it in your voice, I think it would be fine and everyone would accept it. Good news and bad news, y'all. We've got a tsunami on the horizon, but... Exactly.

But there's really no but to that sentence. Thanks for coming to my party. All right, we are going to answer some questions from our listeners. But first, I just have to say that in addition to being the author of canon, you are also one of the only people who's ever read Hollywood ending. and you wrote me a very nice email about it, which I appreciate very much. So thank you. Thank you for being such a good friend. And thanks for hosting this podcast with me. Yeah, of course. If I hadn't liked it, would I have been allowed on the podcast? If you hadn't liked it, I think you would have

pretended to like it because that's who you are as a person. No, I think that if I hadn't liked it, I wouldn't have said much to you. I would have been like, you did it. You wrote a book. But I read it And I don't often, not that I don't care to write a lot to people, but I don't often get out of my head long enough to tell people about the things that I love about them. And it was exciting to read your book and then want to every like four words text you about how great your book was. And I love all of it. I even like the people that I hate in the book. I don't think of the, like, the bad guys in your book as evil. Yeah.

They feel like people, which makes it feel much more sinister. Like, it just feels very realistic sort of bad guy-y. And I really love that about the book. Yeah, I think the truth of villainy is that it's so much sadder and more depressing than just people who are evil. Yeah. Yeah. No, that is a good way to think of it.

And it is very sad and depressing how the villains work. in your book. Well, thanks, I guess. All right. Now that we're a real mutual appreciation society, let's answer some questions from our listeners beginning with this one from Alia, who writes Dear John and Page. I just finished listening to the 2014 episode, Page, Quick Background in 2014. I was famous and it was unpleasant and I made a podcast about it with my brother, where John expressed the desire to rewrite all of his previous books to which I ask, why don't you release a John's version of the books like Taylor Swift's version albums or an annotated edition like Anne Patchett's Belcanto. I love marginalia and would love to read your marginalia reflected on your own work.

My name pronunciation is too confusing to have a name-specific sign-off, but it's Aalia or Aaliyah or Eile. Why haven't you done that, John? Why haven't you done it? Is the real question? I haven't done it because I would be too embarrassed to reread my books, even to annotate them and tell you how horrible they are. When was the last time you reread one of your old books? I read Paper Towns, which I wrote in 2008. I read in 2010 to write a movie adaptation of it, to write like a screenplay adaptation. And it was a horrible experience on every level.

Like it was a horrible experience to reread the book and be so disappointed by it. It was a horrible experience to try to write a screenplay. And then the worst of it, page, if I can be frank and a little bit base, the worst of it was that the movie studio that paid me. to write the screenplay was so disappointed with my screenplay that they withheld the final $5,000

of my payment. Oh my gosh, forever? Forever. I saw the guy who did this at the opening of the Fultonar Stars and I embraced him

and whispered into his ear I remember the $5,000. Yeah, that feels very insulting. It was exactly. Exactly. It was insulting. They're not even like

we have notes for you. They're just like, all right, you gave us this and here is $5,000 less than we are. This is not worthy of what you're contractually obligated to be paid. That feels like the worst. Like that would be a thing that you would, as you were writing this screenplay, like you would tell yourself, okay, the worst that could happen is they just give me some notes or they say they didn't like a specific part.

But no, the actual worst that could happen was they would give you way less money. because they thought it was so bad. Yeah. And to think of it being something that you can measure in dollars is also kind of heartbreaking. Like this thing that you made, it can be measured in money. The commodification of art in general is horrifying, right? Like it feels like watching sausage get made in the worst way. But having it laid bare for you like that, like this isn't worth the last $5,000.

I assume that you will be a person of so little import in my life that I don't have to pay you is especially annoying, I think. You had only waited like two years to read it since having written it, right? Or at least having published it, which isn't very long. And I will say I was in high school in 2008. So I wasn't even doing anything cool yet. Yeah. You had already written books. Like that's so exciting.

But that is also, it's been a while since 2008. It has been. If you were to go back and try to rewrite the book or write a new screenplay, do you think it would come out differently? Or do you think you would give up? I think it would come out so differently that it wouldn't be the same book anymore. I can't go back and write looking for Alaska again because it was all so raw then. And I didn't know what I didn't know in ways that probably are things people like about the book. book, but not things I like about the book. I don't know. This is your first novel. So how are you

feeling in the wake of your first novel? Like, have you reread it obsessively since it came out? No. Cavitt, my husband has. He keeps reading it, which is very nice. And he likes it. Like, he's not reading it to point out where I could have done better or to say I should have gotten less money for it. But I'm not a big fit. Like, I don't like the idea of having to go back into that world especially because I want to focus on writing a new thing. But I also think about how often writers talk about, like, editing their work and when the editing process is finally, finally done. And I remember the poet Stephanie Burt giving a reading.

And as she was reading from her poems, she was writing something in her published book, like while on stage. And I asked her afterwards what she was doing. And she said she was editing the poems. And I was like, they're already published. You can't do that. And she's like, of course I can. Like, I'm going to keep reading them to people and thinking about how to change them once I hear them in the air.

And I thought that that was so interesting and also very stressful. Like even saying that I've handed this book to a publisher and gotten it printed doesn't mean that I will stop editing it. I don't know. I don't want to edit forever. I don't want to think about the books forever. And so I imagine doing a John's version of every book you've ever written would just prevent you from writing new books, maybe. Yeah, I also think it would potentially make them worse. Like, do you remember how Auden changed a bunch of his poems, like later in life and like almost exclusively made them worse? Yeah, yeah. The poet Marianne Moore did the same thing, where she had like a really long poem about poetry and then cut everything but three lines.

And then in her- Oh, I love that poem too. It's such a good poem. And like the Marianne's version after is really kind of funny, but it's not, it doesn't have everything that you want from the original poem. And she, in one of her books, she published like an epigraph that just said, omissions are not access. evidence like she meant to take everything out that she took out. And so yeah, I think there's definitely, I'm sure for her she really liked the new editions, but I think that most people prefer the non-edited or non-omitted bits from poems. Yeah, yeah, I think those are the good parts. The first line of Marianne Moore's poem about poetry is one of my all-time favorite lines in a poem.

I too dislike it. There are things that are important beyond all-dell. this fiddle. It's so good. She's so good. She's so weird. Yeah. And I always think about her, there's like this sort of anecdote that Elizabeth Bishop would tell about Marianne Moore. And Elizabeth Bishop was kind of like her protege. But Marianne Moore lived with her mother, her entire life. And her mother's entire life. So when her mother passed away, Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore were like in a, they were driving to the funeral. And they passed a sign that said something like lizard exhibition this way. And Marianne Moore like perked up for the first time since her mom died. And then she sort of sat back down and she said, well,

maybe on the way back, which I think is so sweet and says a lot about her as a poet and the things that she valued and loved. And so yeah, I think that, I don't know, I wouldn't want you to write a bunch of new versions of your books. No, no pressure or anything. I wouldn't want you to write a new version of canon. I would want you to write another book. Right. That's the thing. We have so little time left, John. I'm ancient. I know. You are ancient. I mean, the good thing about being ancient is that you've kind of always been here and sort of always will be. Right, right, right. Whereas I feel very mortal. Hyper-mortal. I mean, who don't, like, it might be a thing where where someone discovers a way to keep you on the planet for like 200 years.

Would you want that, page? What is your ideal lifespan? I would like to die eventually, probably before 100. That would be cool. I spoke to a friend recently who said that they would like to live to be 10,000 years old, and I said, I reject that out of hand. And he said, you're just not thinking very hard. about it, you would also like to live to be 10,000 years old. And I was like, I'm almost positive. I wouldn't.

No. Well, and are you thinking about it like the Sibyloukime? Like, would you want to also have eternal youth? Or are you going to be aging all 10,000 years? I think you would have to have some kind of stop aging clause in your 10,000 year journey. You have to really think about that. Like, find all of the ways it could go wrong and get ahead of that before you make your wish. Oh, yeah. No, I read Talk Everlast You do not want to live forever. I forgot about that book. Twilight, too. No, I haven't read that one.

But I feel like I've heard so much about it that I have read it. Yeah, I'm actually a huge, I'm a huge fan of the first Twilight book. I bet it's great. I'm unapologetically enthusiastic about it. All right, let's answer another question. This one from Tessa, who writes, Dear Paige and John, I've loved writing my entire life. I spent most of my adolescence dreaming of being an author one day. I'm now 25 and I work in a library.

and it still gives me a thrill to get to touch so many words and worlds between pages. But in the past three years or so, I've failed entirely to write much of anything. I still love writing and the mechanics of storytelling, but given the choice, I can't get myself to write, even though I have the time. I feel weighted down by the expectations I've put on myself for two decades. And further, I'm afraid that I actually don't have anything to say at all. I feel paralyzed, and the longer this goes on, the more I shame myself for not digging myself out. Do you have any advice on how to get started again?

A backward asset, Tessa. Yeah, I mean, that's such a, I would love to work in a library, though, so I'm a little bit envious already about Tessa's position, right? You get to work in a library and you get to eventually, right? Yeah. But how do we, how do we get tested or write? How do we get back there? I think that it is the weight of expectations as much as anything else. And then secondarily, the feeling that when you write something down, It's, as my friend Daniel Alarcon says, it's a little bit of a faint reflection of what was in your mind. And so there's always a disappointment, I think, between the imagining of it and the languification of it. There's always something, you know, that feels frustrating in that process. But it's still worth it. And I think the key is to give yourself permission to suck, to like tell yourself.

You gotta suck. Nobody starts playing the piano and later that day says, well, I'm ready for Carnegie Hall. Right. Yeah. And I don't even want to meet that person if they exist. No. No, they would stink. Yeah.

It would be a worse person because they would be so annoying. And I think that, yeah, we all suck when we start. And we kind of just, we move toward their horizon of. like sucking less as we write more, but I don't know that we ever reach the, like, the, I am completely great and should go read poems at Carnegie Hall. Maybe there are people who do that, but like not the vast majority of working writers, you know, like the vast majority of working writers are practiced at something that they've spent a long time on and that they're getting, that they're hopefully still getting better at, right?

Like, I heard your husband on stage recently say that he hopes he hasn't written his best book. And I feel the same way. Like, I want to be embarrassed by my past work because I want to be able to make progress from it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, I don't know. I think that I would, I don't believe in a lot of absolutes. But I do believe that if you write more, you will get better. Like, the more you write, the better you will get. And I think that that just means you. start at one point and yes, you suck. But if you write the next day and the next day and the next day, you're going to suck less than you did on that first day. But it's okay to suck because no one necessarily has to see it right away. Yeah. Well, one thing I tell myself almost every day that I spend writing something new is that I don't have to write anything today that ends up in the book. Nope. And so if I'm writing terribly, which I usually am, that's fine because it's not going to end up in the book anyway. Yeah, no one's going to look at it. You can burn it eventually so that no one has to see it

in some library that's bought all of the rights to all of your work, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you're worried about that at all, but I want to burn everything after, after I die. I don't think you should. I'm opposed to that. When Kafka did it, I was disappointed in him and I'll be disappointed in you. But he didn't do it. He was betrayed. Well, when Kafka tried to do it, I was disappointed in him. You didn't even know him. It's like how, it's like how Keats' friends ruined his epitaph, or is it epigraph? How did they ruin it? I didn't know they ruined it.

You mean the something written water? He wanted his epigraph to be here lies one whose name was ridden water. And instead they wrote like, here was a great English poet who insisted that his epigraph be herelots one whose name was ridden water, which misses the whole freaking point of having your name ridden water. That's so funny. I love that. They were like, no way, buddy, we're going to really remember you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually a very sweet thing for the friends to do if I know it ruins the sort of epitaph, but still, it's very sweet. Yeah, I always get my epitaph and my epigraph mixed up. Epigraph is what you put at the beginning of the book. Yeah. And epitaph is what you put at the

end of your life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You start here, you end here. Yeah. Right. Um, um, I think that maybe we need to, maybe we need to scare ourselves a little bit with like jumpstarting our writing. And one thing that Kave and I did early on was, well, it was Kave's idea. I would have never wanted to do this. But he said, we had just started dating. And he wanted us to write a poem every day and share it with each other. and I have never taken writing more seriously than I did for that month where we did that because we were just starting to fall in love.

And if I wrote a really bad poem, it was just like maybe he won't love me if I really, if I do not complete this sonnet in the way that I want to. And so I think that that could be a way of really frightening yourself into writing is to be like, I have to show it to a friend. And they know that I have to show it to them by the end of this, like, set time limit. And I don't know. It really helped me, even though I'm a very anxious person, it helped me get more serious. But I think that also just routine really helps, just like waking up every morning and writing for as long as you can, even if that's just like 15 minutes.

I think that that helps take some of the fear and anxiety out of the process. Yeah, it also takes some of the sense that this is a magical thing that's removed from most people's reality out of the process. Yeah. Where you just, it's like building a chair, you know, like it's something that you do every day and a craft that you get better at over time rather than like, you know, something that is made in ivory towers that are somehow distant or different from you. Like as soon as you put the last period on the work, it goes to the New Yorker or something. Right, right, right. Your story about writing poems with Kava reminded me of when Sarah and I first started dating. I had sold looking for Alaska to a publisher, but it wouldn't be published for another two years.

And I remember sharing a draft with her, like right when we started dating. And she called me. And this was before cell phone. So she called my landline from her landline. And the first thing she said was, it's a good thing I liked that book, John, because if I hadn't, I don't think this would have worked.

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's amazing. But that's kind of real. That's a great compliment. Yeah, yeah. Like, and this is like a new thing. And if you write something, she really hates,

how can she even look at you? But it's also great that you had already, like, written the book and sent it off. had it accepted before, like, or while you and Sarah were getting serious? Because I think that, like, I don't know. Imagine trying to go on a date at like right now. Like, oh, it would be impossible. Like, how do you, how do you know this person likes you for like who you are rather than just like who they see you are on like on the internet or when they listen to you? Imagine dating someone who has listened to all of your podcasts. Right. And you're like talking to them and like,

asking them like what they're interested in and they ask you what you're interested in and you say AFC Wimbledon and they say I know. But like I know everything that you've ever said about them. Right. That would be awful. Glad that doesn't have to happen for you. I do think that I feel really, this is one of the things I wanted to write about in Hollywood ending and one of the ways in which my life is different from their lives, one of the many ways, is that I had, I was settled by the time all that stuff happened. Like I had kids. I had a normal life. I had a dog. I had, you know, like I was where I was going to be for the foreseeable future. And if it happens when you're 22 or 17 like it does for a lot of internet creators or like it does for a lot of young actors these days, I can't imagine how destabilizing it is. Like no wonder they end up mostly dating famous people because like who the hell else understands what it's like to be them.

Absolutely. Yes, I think about that all the time, like how hard it would be to be like an actor, to be famous and just constantly in some form of spotlight and to, yeah, you can only really date other people who have gone through that. And that sounds like a nightmare. And so it totally makes sense that you have like Kai and Juniper, even though Kai is very, very early in the sort of acting world, these very, very, new to it. It's still going to be something he can't really share with normies. Yeah. Yeah, the way that like when we go out for a drink of club soda, I feel like I had to clarify that. You and I talk shop in a way I can't talk shop with the vast majority of people, right? Like, and it's just, yeah, there's something very, very weird and isolating about fame, even small amounts of it. But the more of it, but the more of it, that you get, the more isolating it becomes until you're like, you know, Tom Hanks or whatever, and you can't, or Barack Obama and you can't walk into a restaurant without everybody turning

their head for the rest of your life. Yeah. Well, and then imagine all of the terrible pictures of you that wind up on the internet. Oh, yeah. Just awful, awful pictures. Yeah, super embarrassing. It's funny that I wanted so badly to be famous when I was in my 20s, but this is a, let's, let's move on to another question. This one from Anonymous, who writes, Dear John and Page, in a recent episode, you talked about how you made it to adulthood without knowing that moonlight exists, which is true, Paige. I did not know that moonlight existed until I was about 22. That's fine. Well, it's not ideal, but I did grow up in Orlando where there isn't a lot of moonlight, to be fair. No, there's nothing in Orlando. That's right. It's a well of metaphorical

and also literal darkness. John was 22 when he realized moonlight existed, and I'm 22, but I don't feel like an adult. I'm almost finishing college and I don't have a job yet, so I've been thinking a lot about becoming an adult and everything I'm going to miss about college. I know you've talked about how there's a lot to look forward to an adulthood, but I don't see it. My question is, what can I look forward to an adulthood and what do you miss most about being 22, anxious about adulthood, anonymous?

Is there anything you miss about being 22? Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I can't say that I do miss much about being 202. I think at the time I thought I was very adult. I remember at one point going out to get drinks with like one of my college professors around that time and thinking that was very cool. And now I look back on it and I'm like, man, that was weird. Yeah, unfortunately that might have been weird.

I wish young me had not thought that that was a cool thing to do. But it depends on the drink. Right, right. It was, I didn't know what to order because I'd never. really ordered drinks before. And so I just ordered what they ordered, which was vodka and Red Bull. Oh, wow. Yikes. Yeah, it was awful. I was thinking we were sort of on a club soda kind of drinking vibe. No, no. Now we are. Now we're on that. Now we are. Now we are on that. What is there, do you miss anything about 22? I mean, besides you thought you wanted to be famous at that age. Yeah, no, I don't miss that.

I don't, no, I don't miss much about being 22. I think it's really, really challenging. If I miss something, it's also something I'm glad I don't have, which is that when you're 22, everything is still possible. Like, I remember applying for jobs as a medical transcriptionist and as a paralegal and as a religion teacher and as an English teacher and having no idea which one of those jobs I wanted to get. That's so many things. Yeah. Yeah, you don't really know what you, I had just got, got into. to grad school for writing and was already teaching. I jumped right into teaching while I was in grad school, which meant that the students I was teaching were just like a few years younger than me. And that was a very, very strange experience.

But because I still teach, I've noticed myself getting much older with just the references that I make don't land as much as they used to because I'm farther and farther away from the age of my students. And so that has been like a really interesting and humbling experience. Because you can sort of map how much older you get every year just based on how much they laugh or do not laugh at your jokes. I remember I was speaking at a high school when the Fall Nars Stars came out. I was speaking at a high school in like San Francisco or something. And I was like, I know how to I know how to make these kids like me and think that I'm cool. I'm going to reference. the musical artist,

K-E-dollar-sign H-A. Ah, yeah. Whom I called Keisha. Oh my gosh. But who goes by Kesha? Yeah, you really messed that up immediately. And then there was the second level of it not landing, which was that they no longer cared about Kesha.

So like in addition to mispronouncing Kesha's name, they were like also Kesha isn't cool anymore. I was like, oh boy, I've really. And then that's when I just, that's when I accepted that I need to, I need to stick with my level of references because they know, they know when you're talking down to them. They know when you're trying to be cool to them. They have a sense of these things. And if they don't have a sense of them, they should, right?

Like if they don't have a sense that it's potentially weird for your professor to take you out and get you drunk on vodka and Red Bull like they should. Yeah. Well, and it's like they, they're ready to be like, don't try to convince. with us. Like, I think that's what's going through everyone's brain when I try to do something like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And or don't try to connect with us as a peer, because, like, we don't see you as a peer. We see you as a, as someone we admire, as a teacher, as, like, someone we look up to. And, like, you've got to accept that role, even if it's

uncomfortable for you. Yeah. Yeah. No. And it's, I am, I am, that is another, uh, horizontal march. I'm just like always marching toward accepting that I am much older than my students. And I think that's fine. But what about what do you like now? What is there something to what is something to look forward to? There's so much to look forward to. Like you can't, when you're 22, you can't know what it's like to have had a friend for 25 years. Wow. Yeah. You can't know what it's like to have those foundational relationships feel very like settled. And also you fall in love with either birds or trees. This is something that I didn't know about.

But like you hit middle age and you're like, you either become a bird person or a tree person. I became a tree person. Oh, yeah. And it's lovely. Yeah. My affection for trees is a genuine astonishment to me. No, that's amazing. Have you learned the names of the trees or is it more of just you appreciate them because they are trees?

Well, I do. I have learned the names of the trees, most of the ones at least in my yard. Amazing. You know, I've got a little stand of trees behind my house. You do. You do. And it's great. Thank you. And I go and I hang out with them. And sometimes one of them falls down and I feel really bad. I have the same feeling. There was a tree because we have a few trees in our backyard. And one of them like split in half during a storm. And I was like, it was as sad as seeing like an animal like get really. old or something. Like I didn't want to see that tree fail at being a tree. And it bums me out

every time I see it. I still think like of individual trees that are in my life that they're kind of more important than I am. Like they're serving such an important purpose and they're like holding all the ground together and they're also reaching up and turning carbon dioxide into oxygen and all that stuff. And I just I just think that what they're doing is really extraordinary and worthy of celebration and I kind of love them. And I didn't have that feeling when I was 22. I thought that like nature was this sort of outside problem and I was an inside cat. Well, you did grow up in Orlando where nature sometimes feels like an outside problem. It does. It does. Because it's so hot there. It's so hot. It's so hot and it's so humid and you just feel

gross all the time. I went to school in Tallahassee, Florida, and didn't have a car, didn't know how to drive. And so I was walking about three miles to campus every day. Wow. And I had to bring a change of clothes because it was so disgusting to, like, get inside and be completely sweaty. And

I'm sure that I smelled really bad for all of my time's teaching. And so I'm sure that's another reason why my students didn't want to connect with me. but but yeah no trees are great i think i'm a bird person like i'm a big tree person but i think i'm i am much more uh delighted when i see like any bird like even like i think robins are amazing yeah there's a way in which some people get very used to particular birds um that they see all the time but i think that they're all so incredible yeah the everyday birds like pigeons and

robins and cardinals you start to think are just ordinary but if you pause to actually look at them, there's nothing ordinary about them, they look like the dinosaurs they are. They're so great. And pigeons especially. There's people that just go around and help pigeons in cities, like when they get string wrapped around their feet, there are just people that go around and catch them and take the string off their feet so it doesn't hurt them. And I want to be one of those people one day. I think that that's what I'm looking forward to with aging, is like one day I will catch pigeons and help them maybe. I love that. Yeah. I love that. So there's that to look forward to in aging, trees and birds and meeting people that you love, like new people. Possibly building a chair of some sort. Like, it's not going to look great, but you're going to want people like Kavei recently built a bench for the first time. He loves it.

Built a bench with my dad when I was a kid. I still think about that bench all the time. What happened to it? Well, we had to leave it when we left Florida. So someone's enjoying it right now, I bet. Hopefully. But the important thing was leaving Florida, page. Yeah, yeah. It took me a while to leave Florida.

I was like maybe 26 when I left Florida. And did you grow up there? Yeah, I grew up in, I grew up near the Everglades. And every sort of field trip was just to go into the Everglades and touch gross stuff. It was great. I knew that, but I just wanted to ask for the benefit of our listeners. No, no, no. You didn't know that I had ever spent any time in Florida.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I never wanted to live in Orlando. No, nobody does. It's such a nightmare there. Well, I should say for our Orlando-based listeners that Orlando is a better town than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It has more cultural offerings. It has fewer, hopefully, bullies. Oh, no.

But it was not the best place for me personally to grow up. How long were you there? Until I was 14. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that would be the time for bullying, too. Yeah, middle school was pretty rough, man. It was really hard.

It's just the thing I think about now that I couldn't think about then is that school was not safe for me, which was very stressful and really hard and difficult to navigate. but for so many kids at my school, home was not safe for them. Right. And home was very safe for me. And so, you know, including kids who bullied me, home might have not been safe for them. And, you know, they were acting out dynamics that they probably saw at home. And so, you know, now I can look back on it with a very different understanding of what happened than I was, then when I was experiencing it when I just desperately wanted to be like. accepted. That's a very nice way to think about it. This episode of Dear Hank and John

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actually reach me. Do I need to consider how long my thank you takes to get to the sun, or do you think the sun can hear my heart immediately? Thank you for your hit podcast for 21-year-old kids. I think that nothing travels faster than light, right, including love. And so it's going to take seven minutes to get to the sun and seven minutes to get back, or am I wrong? What if it's a little bit heavier, though? Like you think that, like love might be slightly slower than light. Right. So nothing's faster than light, but lots of things are slower like me. Yeah. Yeah. So far. Like we could probably figure out how to get to that speed eventually, but not now. No. And it seems like things start to break up when they get really close to that speed.

And that's not something I want to have happened to me or indeed to my love. So let's say that Adam Max love travels half the speed of light. That I could see us getting to. Yeah. So then you're looking at about a 30-minute round trip for the love to arrive, get ingested by the sun, the sun to process it, because you don't just like, hear I love you and say, I love you right back. You have to really take it in and then respond with your own separate love. I'd say half an hour. Yeah. So it's like if you watch an episode of The Simpsons with commercials, then at the end of the episode, you will have heard back from the... the sun. Yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah. Also, the idea of saying I love you to someone,

and then they have to take a lot of time to think about it before they say anything back. Like, whatever that amount of time is sounds like an eternity to me and would be like my version of hell a little bit. It's just like the waiting part of whether or not they're going to say anything back. And hopefully it is a nice thing. But it very much might not be. The first time I said I love you to Sarah. It was Easter Sunday 2004. And I would say there were two to three seconds before she said, she responded. And she didn't say I love you too. She said, I love you. As if like she had thought of it herself. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, I really said it first. Yeah. But those were a long two to three seconds for sure.

Sure, because I was like, have I made a terrible error? Right, right, right. And there's part of you maybe that wants to be like, never mind, I didn't say anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I regret. Yeah. Oh, I have definitely regretted saying I love you before, but not that time.

I mean, it's fine. I think that it probably was good at the time for you to do it. It might have prevented someone from crying, which is good. Oh, I think you're thinking of me as much, more of a dumper than a dumpy, but in fact, I am a dumpy. Yeah, I'm sorry. So I would say I love you and they would be like, cool, cool. Sorry.

Sorry that this is so awkward. Oh, yeah. No, that sounds awful. I don't want to experience that anytime. When I said, I love you to Kave, it was through postal. Like, it was mailing, we were mailing letters to each other. And so I had to take quite a long time to hear about. back and get it in writing.

Several episodes of the Simpsons. So many episodes of The Simpsons. It was pretty rough. I don't know why I did that to myself. Did he not call you immediately? No, I don't think he did. I think he liked the idea of the response coming back in the same way that I had given it to him. It's very romantic.

It's very sweet, but also it was very, very anxiety-inducing for a few days. Yeah, I can imagine. Probably wouldn't do that again. No, that's a big one to hold on to. All right, Paige, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and ASC Wimbledon, I have to ask you one more question. Yeah. It's from Mahi, and it's a thinker. It's a deep one.

Dear John and Paige, I've been thinking about our responsibility toward others. There is a neat idea that we should be considered of others as long as it does not affect us in a significant way. However, that's a very blurry line. is our responsibility to ourselves end and our responsibility to others begin? Has anyone else received a memo or is this something that I missed? Longtime admirer Mahi. I think this is like the biggest question in the world. Like where does our obligation to others end and our obligation to ourselves begin? And what do we owe to others versus what do we owe to ourselves is like the hardest question and the most interesting question that there is out there. Yeah. And I feel like my impulses to answer in a joke.

way because I don't know, I don't know the answer yet. I'm still figuring that out. But I am thinking about a subreddit called Girl Dinner. I love Girl Dinner. It's so good. And it's just like people posting pictures of what they're eating and the problems they're going through or like the excitements they're going through. But so often they'll post like an issue like related to a relationship. and then the other Redditors will comment and tell them what they should do, which is almost 100% of the time to leave the person that you're up. It's just always like to get rid of that guy. The slightest problem is like huge red flag abandoned him immediately.

Yeah. And so, which I think is really funny. But maybe Redditors are the ones that will tell us when we should stop giving ourselves and start like caring about helping others, I don't know. Well, if we're going to listen to Reddit, I'm afraid that it's going to lean very heavily on self-care at all costs, which I think there's a case for, but I also, I personally find a lot of fulfillment in like what other people might call sacrifice. Like, when I think about like the first year of my kids' lives or my dog's life or whatever,

there's a lot of sacrifice in there. And it was very valuable sacrifice. for me. And I'm very glad that I made it. And so I don't think it's as simple as like, you know, do what you want in every moment that you can do what you want. I think it's more complicated than that. And I also do not have it figured out. And I'm still trying to figure it out. But the answers that fit on a bumper sticker are kind of by definition to me not good answers. And I think a lot of the internet is focused on answers that fit on a bumper sticker. Yeah, I recently saw a bumper sticker in Seattle that said,

basically it said graffiti, as beautiful as a rock in a cop's face. And I was like, that is the wildest bumper sticker I've ever seen. And so I am just, I'm now interested in what one can fit on a bumper sticker because I didn't know you could fit that feeling or that love. of like street art on a bumper sticker. And so, yeah, I think that there's more to like life than self-care. I think that it is important to care about our beloveds and hopefully they will care for us as well. But I think it's just like you figure it out and you try to get a good balance as you go.

And sometimes you'll feel like maybe you've given too much of yourself. and then you sort of calibrate. I don't know that there's like, I don't know that there's an answer. I don't think there is. It's, what's that Rilke poem? I have to go into the bathroom to find it. Hold on.

You know the one, Paige. No, I don't. All right. So if I sound a little different, it's because I'm on a new mic, and I got cut off from our recording because I tried to get the bathroom to read page or Rilke poem.

It was such a good poem, too. I'm taking you back to the bathroom. I'm going to show the people what it was. All right. And you're sure it's not going to cancel us out again? It might. It might. It's still recording. It's a sister Kareta Kent artwork. And it just says ornery in big letters.

And then she wrote that part of this Rilke poem. Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you because you, would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps someday you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

There you go. A little bit of Rilke for you from my bathroom. Yeah. I mean, it's a good place to have Rilka. It's a good place to have poetry. Yeah. You know, that way I see it every day. My plan is to get a bathroom that's just mirrors on every side.

I hate it. Just make everyone so uncomfortable that they don't come to my house anymore. Yeah, just look at yourself. Okay. That sounds terrible. Yeah, it would be really bad. I won't do that. Paige, I have to tell you the news from AFC Wimbledon, and then you can or cannot tell me the news from Mars according to your whims. Oh, okay. Love that. The news from AFC Wimbledon is that.

our women's team has appointed a new manager, our long-time manager of 10 years, Kevin Foster, left the club at the end of this last season. And we have now appointed Sabia Jamal to be the new women's manager. I'm very excited about this appointment. The big job for AFC Wimbledon's women's team is just to stay in the third tier of the women's pyramid of football. And I think Sabia Jamal is the perfect hire for this job to get us good enough players and good enough results that we can compete in the third division. And I'm really excited. She did an interview to announce her coming to the club that I thought was very

impressive. And I'm fired up. Wow. Yeah. That's good firing. I did not come up with any news from Mars except for the very accurate film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which I would suggest you would watch if you haven't seen it. It includes a monkey that you want to survive and that you love.

And it includes aliens that are trying to destroy our main character. It's pretty good. It sounds great. So check out Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Paige, thank you for potting with me. What a joy it has been. Page's book is called Canon. It's so good.

And John's book is Hollywood ending with a whole comma in there. Yeah, there's a whole comma. Today's podcast was edited by Linus Openhouse. It was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. We're produced by Rosiana Hoss Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Duboki Chakravardi and the music that you're hearing now.

And at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gunnarola. Finally, page, as they say in my hometown, don't forget to read canon. That's not what they say. What do they actually say? They say, don't forget to be awesome. Yeah. Yeah.