Dear Hank & John - 468: I Will Not Be Licking Any Doorknobs

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

How do trees decide where and when to grow their branches? How do I call out sick when I’m just exhausted by life?  How biased is our understanding of prehistoric life based on the conditions needed to form fossils? How do I avoid spoilers during John’s book tour? What does it sound like on Mars? …Hank and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohnProduced for Hank and John Green by ComplexlySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. And welcome to Dear Hank and John. Oh, is I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. Sorry, I was drinking Diet Dieter Pepper. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions while drinking diet Dr. Pepper give you deuce advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbled and John. Yeah. Where did Noah keep the bees? Where did he keep the bees, Hank? In the archive.

The archive. The archive. The archive. The archive. The archive. The archive. Well, I think what I like about that one. It's a good pun because you don't have to like mispronounce things a little bit to make it work.

Like if you say archive. I did do that. I did. I gave it a little bit of a, huh, that I wouldn't normally do. But say archive. It still sounds like archive. The archive? Yeah, you'd get it.

Yeah. The archive. But that's way more than two bees. He's supposed to only take one of every, two of everything. And he doesn't even need to. He just needs an inseminated queen. There are a lot of different. kinds of bees from around the world that he had to put in there. And there was there could be no

crossbreeding. That was not allowed. Noah specifically outlawed that before putting them in the archive. And the ants also were a huge problem because there's a ton of those. I mean, not to mention the land-based bacteria that he couldn't have known about because he lived before microorganisms. Yeah, but they can often go into a kind of ton state. You know, they go dormant and you think they could make it 40 days and 40 nights? They can spore up, you know. All right. I don't know. I don't know.

I do know that a queen aunt has babies all her life, but only is inseminated once and just stores that sperm and keeps using it for years, sometimes over a decade. So I don't think that they all do it that way. But ants, ants are that's got so many ways of living. So they only do it once. Some, yeah, during the flight. And the vast majority of ants, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, divergens. Oh yeah. No, they're not, they're not for that. Vast, vast, vast majority. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bees, too. That's not what it's about. Oftentimes the bees die, so it's the males. They don't survive the act.

Well, I'm not sure what to make of that, except that when dad told me about the birds and the bees, he didn't mention any of that. Yeah. Yeah, actually, don't teach them the birds and the bees. The birds, maybe. Maybe. The bees, that's definitely not it. That's not, yeah. That would be a really weird place to start, you know, maybe kick up some wrong ideas from the beginning. Where do babies come from? Well, first, mom lays an egg. No. Now, that's not how bees go. That's how birds go. We have a lot of, we have a lot of listeners with young children. It's true. And some of them listen to this podcast. And what we've just done is make a problem. Possibly. But it's a problem that can be solved. John, recently I was at the Colorado School of Mines. Yeah. Someone said my girlfriend. M-I-N-E-S.

What did you think? Mimes? Yeah. For a second. I was not at the Colorado School of Mimes, though I would go if they invited me. And I was told by a person there that a girlfriend would cringe very much if I mentioned her name on the podcast. Wow. And you're doing it?

It might have been Stephanie. It might have been. Yeah. Could have been another. name. Could have been one of the other names. Yeah. So that's what you get. You know, sometimes you get a delivery, but not the one that you wanted. You get a low quality delivery. Yeah. And I was like, there's almost, there's no chance I'm going to remember to do that. But then that came to mind just now. Speaking of travel. Uh-huh. my book Hollywood ending came out yesterday oh wow it didn't for us but it did for them that's right and we are traveling the country celebrating and by we i mean myself and my publicist to whom the book is dedicated elise marshal fifer yeah that is how much i love my publicist i dedicated a whole

dang book to her and we are traveling the country together we are seeing the war world. We are hoping to see you in towns like Portland, Maine, and Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, and many other locations. But most of all, we're hoping. Those are the ones that have not sold out yet, though, sounds like. Yeah, I'm emphasizing the ones that haven't sold out because I get messages every day from people who are mad at me about the ones that have sold out. So I don't want to say those towns again. We are really excited about the book, Elise and I. and hopefully other people. It's getting good reviews.

It's getting good reviews. The reviews are coming in. The reviews are coming in. It got starred reviews from both Kirkus and Booklist, which is a huge relief and encouragement, but you never know how people are going to feel about the book until they actually read it. Of course.

There in Listening Land, where you have already pre-ordered the book from your local independent bookstore, assigned copies are available now, you are engaging in a world that I wish desperately I was engaging, in because I cannot handle any more the book not being out. I simply, I cannot get through this week with the book not being out, but I'm going to get through it anyway because as the great poet Robert Frost put it the only way out is through. Yeah. You got it, John. You got it. It's scary. I don't really know how to deal with fear. I feel like sometimes I deal with it better and sometimes

I deal with it worse, but sometimes I think that that's actually just that the fear was worse or the fear was less. Yeah. Or like the problem was, yeah, it's like I get through it. I'm like, oh, I handled that one okay. And it's like, actually, what was actually happening is that wasn't as bad as other things. Yeah. Right. The possibility of that thing happening wasn't as terrible as I thought. And that's so true.

And I mean, I have blown this whole, as often. happens with anxiety. I have blown this whole Hollywood ending thing out of proportion. It's just a book. I've written seven of them before. And someday Jupiter's moons will melt, you know? Yeah, I mean, not just that, but the Earth will maybe be consumed by the sun. So I've got sort of simultaneous things. Things get wetter at Jupiter as things get drier on Earth. Yeah. So given the boiling of the oceans, I have nothing to be concerned about. And yet still, I find a way. And indeed, like, given the, the scope of human suffering, I have nothing to be worried about. But I think because it's such a

making fiction is a vulnerable thing inherently, but this book in particular is, you know, raw against some of my vulnerabilities. And that's the nature of writing. That's the nature of trying to engage in creative expression at all, I think. But it's going to take a while before it stops feeling raw either way, like regardless of how the book is received. So, yeah, I'm just taking it. Do you feel like a fake writer, John? You can't. Oh, I do.

Absolutely. I feel like you can create an imposter and like my being an imposter will be revealed to the world at any moment. So I recently heard somebody talking about writing on a podcast. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's not what I do. So it's got to be something. I got to be doing something else.

Oh, no. There's just, there's no one right way. The craft and they were talking about the struggle and they were talking about how, like, you can't think when you're there. You just have to feel. And I'm like, oh, I guess that's not. I guess that's not what I do. I'd really dislike it when people talk about writing as if there's one way to do it.

It's like when people talk about parenting as if there's one way to do it. In this particular conversation, yeah. Like there's a bunch of people who aren't real writers. It was almost kind of the frame that they were talking in. Well, it's very possible that I'm one of those people who's not a real writer. I'm falling on the other side of it. I don't know. I, you know, I think about like art and design a lot because that's what I,

studied more in school in undergrad. And there's like this like part of creating visual systems that have utility and there's part that it's like creating visual systems that are like about what you gain from it and you never know what somebody's going to pull out of it and so it's like

you know, this like art versus design thing. Like design is often about you don't necessarily want to make something beautiful. You want to make something that's useful. And sometimes I think about my writing through that lens where I'm like oftentimes times I am thinking of it mostly from the angle of how do I get this information into a person's head the best way and fastest and lowest barriers way possible. Yeah, I still believe in the old fashion notion that art should be useful. Useful maybe in different ways than design is useful,

but still useful. It still helps us contextualize our selves in the universe, you know. Right. It could feel a little bit like if you're talking about, like there's something more pure about the other thing. Right, but there isn't. But I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to, I don't feel that way when I'm making it. It's still hard. I'm still struggling. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, the last pure art was on cave walls. There's no purity in this game and it's not about purity. It's about trying to make stuff that allows people to visit rooms in their mind. They have no other way of visiting. Yeah, I don't, that's a really interesting thought. I wonder how the cave wall art felt. I bet it felt pure as heck, Hank. I mean, I bet those people didn't feel like impostors.

They were pure. So it's funny how we romanticized the past. Because, of course, they weren't. Like, they were competitive and people would be like, OLAF is terrible. Yeah, I could tell you for sure that it was about status to some extent. It was played some role in human structuring of their society. Yeah, and Olaf would be painting his woolly mammoths or whatever, and people would be like, oh, those are great woolly mammoths. And Olaf would go to sleep at night staring at his woolly mammoths by the firelight and think I am a complete imposter.

Yeah, it's nothing like Philo's. Yeah. It's so much better. Oh, God. Well, and to be fair, Philo was a genius, you know? Yeah, it's not true. sort of plotting around doing his best. Yeah. You ever think, man, it must have been hard to do humanity without words. I did that for a while. We did that for half the time, probably. Yeah.

Yeah, I bet we weren't as good at it. Do you ever think that you're made out of words? No, I always think that I'm made out of meat. I think that I might be made out of both meat and words. It's a beautiful notion, but I'm afraid you're mostly edible. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. This first question comes from both Adriel and Madeline, who asks dear Hank and John, How do trees decide where and when to grow their branches?

We are lucky to live in a neighborhood with lots of big old trees, and one tree in particular has us wondering about this. For almost six years we've lived here, and all of its branches have been a higher than the two-story house next to us, and the trunk doesn't show any sign of lower-brought. branches that have been removed. But for the last six months or so, a handful of branches have started to sprout much closer to the ground and we're wondering, why there, why now, thanks and DFTBA pumpkins and penguins, Andrea L, who is four and a half years old, and Madeline, who is 37. I recently was talking to a plant biologist, person who studies plants, and she was explaining to me

how plants work, and it really drove home the fact that multicellularity happened more than once. they do everything is freaking weird. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think I knew this. Multicellularity happened more than once. Like we went from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms three different times. Yeah, I mean, I actually don't know for sure that it was only three times, but plants, animals, and fungi. I'll all did it separately.

So prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and. They're all eukaryotic. You're telling me that eukaryotic animals happened three different times. No. You're telling me that eukaryotic organisms happen three different times. Eukaryotes happen first, and then the eukaryotic cells split into three different. But that happened before multicellularity. And then multicellularity emerged multiple times from the eukaryotic lineage.

All right. So let me just get the way of the land here. We've got prokaryotic organisms, which are one-celled. Yes, but also so are many eukaryotic organisms. Right. But all prokaryotic organisms are one-celled. then we've got three different kinds of eukaryotic organisms, trees, humans, and other, and fungi. Yes, except that you've got to say multicellular eukaryotic organisms, because if you don't, there's a bunch of others.

There's lots of single-celled eukaryotes. We evolved to have more than one cell three different times, but we only evolved to go from prokaryotes to eukaryotes once. Mm-hmm. Wow. that cell that swallowed another organism and formed the first eukaryotic cell was the most important cell ever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that there are other cases to be made that happened earlier on. But yeah, definitely on the, on the, anytime anybody's fighting about the sort of most important thing that ever happened, the transition to eukaryotic cells is a really big deal. And it turns out I've just Googled this that there are a bunch of others. Up to and maybe beyond 25 different times eukaryotic cells evolved into multicellular organisms. Wow. Like there's some various alges that are different. Boring. Yeah, I know.

Some slime molds that are multicellular. But yeah, plants are these big, macroscopic, multicellular, eukaryotic organisms that became, that figured out how to be big macroscopic multicellular organisms completely separately from us. And they do it very differently from us. Like the fact, we have these very regimented strict body plans. Like every single descendant of a fish that lives on Earth, this is not quite true, actually. But has basically the same body plan of like head at the top, butt at the bottom, arms

and legs, or like four arms and legs. Now, whales have lost those, snakes have lost those. But that they don't get more. There's none with like six. You don't get a dragon that has arms and legs and wings. That's like not available. Yeah, that's why there's no dragons. There might, there could have been Wiverns, but we got bats instead. Right, right. For a bunch of reasons that I have been trying to figure out in a script that I have titled, Why Are There Bats? But that's not important. But there are lots, so they decide, they figured out their body plans in like totally different ways. And there's a bunch of different ways that this happens. But I'll just give you one, which is that you don't want a branch coming out right next to another branch. And so the end of a

branch or other portions of the branch can actually release a hormone that travels into the body of the tree and suppresses the growth of new branches around the branch. And that's just like very different from how we would do it, you know. And, but they do have hormones that are just convergently evolved. So they have these ways that their body signal itself to do and not do certain things. And that allows them to function correctly. Now, in the case of this tree that is causing this confusion in your neighborhood, Madeline, I don't know what's going on there.

You need a plant biologist. It's super confusing. And when I talk to plant biologists, I'm like, oh, plants are aliens. They are like a whole different way it happened. They are essentially, and in fact, I would argue that we are the aliens because this is mostly a plant planet insofar as it is a macroscopic organism planet. Yeah, yeah, I mean, for sure. It's kind of how you measure can be weird, but yeah, I mean, it's mostly a bacteria planet. How are you going to measure and find more people?

I'm not saying that it's plants. I'm saying bacteria. Well, I just said macroscopic. Okay. Sorry, I missed that. There's also a case to be made that, like, a tree is just sort of like a living skin over a giant skeleton. So there's, like, not much that, not that much of a tree that's actually alive. Nothing like the actual mass of the tree.

But we don't need to go there. I find it so cool. And the more you look, the more interesting it gets. And that is just how I keep feeling about the world. It's like if we're, I find so much joy and curiosity and hope in looking closer. Yes. Yes, absolutely.

My, the instinct that is brought to me by my culture is to look very broadly. And I get that. But there's so much of my like actual hope and knowledge comes from looking closer. All right, Hank. Well, I'm staring out at a beautiful ginkgo tree right now with newfound respect, even if I still didn't understand why they have branches down low and sometimes don't. This next question comes from Joey, who writes, Dear John and Hank, life has been exhausting me, and I could really use a day or two off.

How do I intentionally get myself just sick enough that I can call out all of my obligations, but not so sick that it's bad? Should I start licking doorknobs, unfortunately healthy, Joey? Joey, take a... Joey. Take a lesson off, Ferris Bueller, my man. It is possible. You know, I have to be a simple lie.

Or it's not even a lie. I don't feel well. You don't feel well, Joey. I can tell you, you just said life has been exhausting you. You're unable to appreciate the beauty of a ginkgo tree. We've all been there. You need a day off. Yeah.

You could take a little bit of like a little too much me relax and be like, oh. I'm just really, I'm a fountain right now. And just the morning, really, you know? If you're sick in the morning, you can't go in for the rest of the day. And nobody ever checked diarrhea, you know? No, if you have a diarrhea illness, they genuinely don't want you coming into work regardless of where you work. There's a joke about this in turtles all the way down where Daisy works at Chucky Cheese and she says if you even imply diarrhea, they tell you to stay home.

Yeah. That has been my experience. I don't think you need to go the full Mirox route personally. I mean, you can if you're a really honest person. Yeah. I think you could just say. Take a normal dose and then accidentally take it a second time. And then you can't go into work in the morning.

You can't. Oops. It's true. It's surprisingly gentle stuff, actually. I've had a lot of good experience with Mirol X. And then you can't. can get into the details of it with your boss and being like, oh, God, I think I took too much Mirolax yesterday. It's like, I'm not going to be productive in the space. You know, whatever

you have me doing, I just won't be particularly good at it. I'm sort of in the opposite position right now, Hank, where for the first time in a few months, I can't have anything bad happened to me for about 24 days. Oh, I thought you were constipated. No, that is actually something that I between meet myself and my family, not something that I bring up on a podcast. Yeah, I was surprised. It makes you unusual among internet creators, but there are places where I choose to have a private life.

I'm actually in the opposite position right now. I am so stopped up. I took too much emotium and it's a problem. I don't know what to do. I have to stay healthy and uninjured for 24 days. I know. This is always really scary. It is. When like you, like the world depends on your body hanging on.

Yeah. And the last week of tour, you are hanging on. You are. I don't know how people do this, you know? Like Taylor Swift's got like a billion dollars writing on nagging diarrhea. Yeah. It's just like, you just have to live that life. Like what?

Like, you know, I don't know. Yeah. No, I'm worried about disappointing 2,000 people. She disappoints like 80,000 if she gets sick. Oh my God. And then she has to figure out how to do the whole thing again, probably, to make it up. Right. Yeah. So I'm going to do my level best not to get sick. I'm going to take precautions. If you see me wearing surgical gloves, just know that that's part of the look. That's part of it. John Green, not licking any doorknobs.

I will not be looking any doorknobs this coming month. This next question comes from Maya, who writes, Dear John and Hank, how biased is our understanding of prehistoric life based on the conditions needed to form fossils. I know that fossils only form under some really specific conditions, but those conditions don't occur in some ecosystems. How skewed is our perception of prehistoric life on Earth due to these limitations from trilobites to triceratops? Maya, Maya, I have a hilarious story about this before Hank gives you the scientific answer. So if you go to the Indiana State Museum, which I really recommend, it's a history of the state of Indiana, but it goes back further than when Indiana was formed as a state in the 19th century.

it goes all the way back to the beginning of earth, but only takes as its area of purview the current state of Indiana. Okay? So, like, that's the thing you need to know about the Indiana State Museum. So the Indiana State Museum has all this information about 3 billion years ago and 1 billion years ago and 600 million years ago. And then the glaciers descend and they don't retreat until 12,000 years ago. ago. And so the whole age of the dinosaurs, et cetera, they're just like, we don't know. We don't know what happened in Indiana. All that stuff got scraped away when the glaciers receded and we don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's like a thousand different ways that this bias shows up. One of them is that we look for dinosaurs in places where we found dinosaurs before. So you like, you're like, this is a great place for dinosaurs. And you keep finding them. You're like, well, we're just going to keep looking here. there's but there's a bunch of others so like as you say the conditions for fossils to form is a real problem and there's a bunch of reasons so i was working on this bat script and you're this bat script you're promoing this bat script more than i'm promoing my new novel hollywood ending that came out yesterday i think i might pass it off to such it as well like i might not actually finish this bats i'm like it's too much somebody take this away um so anyway they're like certain

certain bats, the kinds of bats that eat insects fall into lakes a lot, and so they fossilize really well. But fruit bats, they tend to die where there's a bunch of like, like in tropical rainforests where there's a huge amount of like everything's getting scavenged, nothing's fossilizing. And so we don't know what's up with fruit bats. They're just not in the fossil record. We think like it could be that they evolved relatively recently, but it could be that they just did not fossilize well. And when we look and ask, like there's a couple of ways to like ask the question. And one way to ask the question is, okay, there's about this many species on Earth right now. We can assume that there would be about that many species on Earth during the age of

the dinosaur in any given year. And when we look that way, nothing makes sense. It's just way too many species. So it might be that they were fewer species or it might be that our understanding of that era is just extremely incomplete or it might be some combination of both of those things. So it seems like there's way more species right now than they're ever. were during the age of the dinosaurs. And it might just be that that's true, that there's more diversity. Well, we just engaged in this bias earlier in this very podcast talking about cave paintings where the reason cave paintings have been preserved is not because they were art,

but because they were painted on cave walls. There was no doubt art made by humans that wasn't painted on cave walls. It could have been painted on canvas. Who knows? Maybe it was painted on stretched woolly mammoth canvases. Oh, for sure. And maybe they invented abstraction long before Hilma off-Klimpt came around. Who knows, right? But like, we have no way of knowing because it wasn't preserved,

whereas cave paintings, some of them have been preserved. So we don't know how long humans have been making art. We don't know what kind of art humans made. We only know a small, probably selection of the art humans have been. made. It gives me hope, though, Hank, that, you know, in the distant, distant future, almost everything will be lost the way that almost everything from the past has been lost to us. I think more will be preserved just because we do a better job now of preserving things, passing things down through generations, but still, like a lot of stuff gets lost, you know, like the novel written by our great

uncle is mostly lost. Sure. A couple copies floating around, but only a couple. And that was only 70 or 80 years ago. Here's something I like to think about. There's no way you or I can compete against Faulkner, Tony Morrison, you know, Colson Whitehead, Ernest Hemingway, whoever you want to cite, right? Like, we just, we can't.

And that's okay. We're doing something else. Yeah. But what if 12,000. years from now, an absolutely remarkable thing just happens to have survived, and Shakespeare's plays don't. And people are like, man, this stuff from 12,000 years ago, it was incredible. Like, they were already thinking about technology. It's written in 2017.

And 12,000 years from now. A little bit about AI. And 12,000, exactly. A little bit about me, the AI, who's the only thing alive now. So 12,000 years from now, I'm saying it's perfectly possible, although very unlikely, but possible that you will be considered the greatest literary genius of our time just because nobody else made it, right? Like it's got lost. Yeah. Like there are all these references to great poets other than Ovid, but their work was lost. And so we don't know, we don't know much about how great it was. The greatest poet.

I'm sorry. He did it. Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, that's something. That's a, when I'm feeling really down. and I feel like a complete imposter. I'd like to remind myself that maybe all the people who are better than me

will just be forgotten. Wow. That's, wow, I don't like to think about that. That's wild. Somebody quick cast John's books in bronze. Do it in copper, something that lasts. Make a rosetta stone of them, like one page in Greek, same page in Romanian, same page in whatever language the AIs you're going to use.

Yeah, do it that. Neuralees. Neurlees, right. Which reminds me, John, that this podcast was brought to you by Oloff the Cave Painter. Olaf, the Cave Painter, we remember his work purely because it's the only stuff that stuck around. Yeah. Maybe people were looking at cave paintings back in the day and they would be like, these are so bad. Compared to the stuff we're doing in fiber, this sucks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like our tapestries are astonishing and arresting in their beauty. And these cave paintings are just studies for those tapestries. Today's podcast also, of course, brought to you by trees. Trees, they're a whole different thing. And this podcast is brought to you by the first you carry out. Without whom, there would be no trees. Indeed.

Indeed. Big deal, the first you carry it. And today's podcast is brought to you by taking a little too much Miralax. Taken a little too much Miralax. Can't go to work. Don't do this, everybody. No, just don't go to work. I mean, I don't want to be that guy, but like, take the day off if you don't feel well.

Yeah, if you don't have, if you don't have any vacation days. I just think like an occasional mental health day. I say this is somebody who's about to take 25 flights in 24 days. An occasional mental health day can be very valuable. I do like a weekend. Well, I'll have one in November. This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Wayfair. Here's something that I've never told anybody about before.

I'm a real kicker in the bed. And for whatever reason, I will kick my way through a set of sheets. I will wake up one morning and my foot will be through the fitted sheet on the other side. And I'm like, how did this happen? How did I destroy another set of sheets? It's not great to live with me. There's problems. But when I most recently did this, you know what Catherine and I did?

We went to Wayfair. and we got ourselves some sturdy, lovely sheets. Direct to the house, high-quality product at a reasonable price. Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life and a lot of real kicking with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. And you can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're trying to refresh your space for fall or transform your space for Halloween.

You can use filters, customer photos, and reviews to find the stuff that's right for your home. And there's more than 20 million verified five-star reviews to help shoppers buy with confidence. Plus, Wayfair rewards members with 5% back on every purchase. Transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Awards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-F-A-R.com. This episode of Dear Hand Godron is brought to you by Quince.

You know, there are some things in my closet that I just like, it's so easy to just go to. The sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants, the t-shirt that just always looks good, is just stuff that makes, like, looking, put together, easy. And that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and merino wool. Timeless and versatile styles designed to become dependable pieces that you. you reach for day after day. They make premium pants. They make fitted teas and polos. They make

breathable active wear, quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. In general, there's a ton of stuff available, and they don't just do clothes. They do hotel quality bedding and kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make well-designed pieces for everyday living. And everything at Quince has priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut up the Littleman, so you're paying for the quality, not the markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com slash Dear Hank. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada in the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-com

slash Dear Hank. This episode of Dear Hank of John is brought to you by Factor. He knows something crazy about Factor is sometimes I need a Factor meal, and sometimes the child needs a Factor meal. This isn't in the marketing copy that they sent me, but I do feel like fine about giving my child some factor sometimes. When it's like, I don't have time and I'd like him to have a good meal. And also I can have one too and then problem solved. Factor makes chef crafted, dietitian designed, ready to eat meals so you don't have to choose between real food and convenience when you're feeding yourself or someone else. Factor meals are ready in two minutes and require no prep and no cleanup. So even on the days when your schedule is completely out of control, eating well is still achievable.

Every week you will find over 100 nutrient-dense menu items to choose from and new options like salmon burgers, shredded pork, collared greens, and more. Plus add-ons that you will crave like pumpkin-flavored cheesecakes and protein shakes. Here's some upcoming meals. Browned butter grilled chicken and Yukon mash with roasted green beans and mushrooms. Cheezy Pavlano Rahas grilled chicken with potatoes, peppers, and corn. salsa. Or you get a picotagio Caso burger with potatoes, corn, and cilantro crema. You could choose between so many

different options that are really about your specific interests and goals. Like if you want to eat less beef, just don't choose beef from Factor. They got a lot of different fish and chicken options. Let's eat real. Head to FactorMeals.com slash Deerhank 50 off and use the code Deerhank 50 off to get 50%

off and one free breakfast item per box for one year. While supplies last until October 31st, 2026. That's code Dear Hank 50 off at factormeals.com. Dear Hank 50 off at factormeals.com. See the website for more details. This next question comes from Amy, who asks Dear Hank and John, but mostly, John, I will be attending your Portland, Maine bookstore stop. Bookstore, book tour, stop with my partner. He also just read Heart the Lover in preparation and sobbed. Oh, my God. It's so good.

Willie King is so great. I can't wait to be on stage with her. I'm so nervous. Talk about somebody who can't feel like an imposter. There's no way Lily King feels like an imposter, but the rest of us do. After listening to you so vehemently avoid spoilers while promoting your book on the podcast, I'm very nervous that the book talk will inevitably spoil some of the book.

I often go to the movies without even watching a trailer. Are there parts during the show that I should plug my ears? Should I show up and get the book and then scurry out of there? Although that would be sad because I would be excited

to see you and Lily King talk about books and writing. Nervous in Maine, the way life should be, Amy. So it's a great question. There are inevitably spoilers when you talk about a book. Like even when I read from the first chapter, that spoils the first chapter, right? So, like, that's just part of it. And it is what it is. I have one bit in the show that's a tiny spoiler, but only for, like, the first 30 pages, you know, which I think is fine. I actually am more bothered by the, like, flap copy that talks about something that doesn't happen until 100 pages in the book.

That bothers the heck out of me. Yeah. And I really don't like doing that. I'm okay with, like, the first 30 pages. I think it might even be the first 15 pages. You find out that I'll just tell you the spoiler, Hank. Okay. You've read the book twice.

You're not going to be spoiled. But very early on in the novel, you're told that Juniper is not making Andy Warhol never gets old as the only film she'll ever make, right? Like, she's part of a career. And she's trying to set up her next thing. And as she tries to set up her next thing and figure out what her next thing is going to be, she reads this novel called Gods of Indromeda. That's like a big epic fantasy novel that's very matriarchal where women are the rulers and men are mostly sort of, male handmaids. And she's interested in the book.

But that's not a spoiler. That happens on like page 20. So there is a reference to that. Sure. That story, gods of Andromeda, in the show. But that's the only thing that would count as a spoiler. Even in the conversation part, though? In the conversation part, I think we'll talk more about themes than we will about, like, what happens in the story.

Gotcha. I don't like talking. I really hate spoilers. because here's my feeling. So this nice person has agreed to come see me in person, has paid 40 bucks or whatever to come, probably more than that,

to come see me in person. And most of what they're getting out of that. And you don't get the book until you get there. Exactly. You don't get the book until you get there. And part of what you want is that feeling of like reading in community, that feeling of being in community

with other people who also share an affinity group with you or whatever. And I don't want to take that away from people. I want them to have the opportunity to read the book in community. I want them to have the opportunity to like read the book with their partner and like talk about it with their partner. Like that's such a, that's, there's two things that can happen when you, when you write a book that are the greatest honors to me. And one is when your book inspires other art, like whether it's fan art or fan fiction or whatever. And the other is when your book is read in community, whether that's in a classroom or, uh, by a couple or by a book club or whatever, those are the coolest things that can happen.

I don't want to spoil that. So I'm going to try really hard not to have spoilers. Okay. All right. Well, I'm glad that you're going to Portland, Maine. I'm excited. I haven't been to Portland, Maine for a show ever. Oh, yeah, I guess me either.

I go to Portland, Maine, not unusually because I have family there. Yeah, and we try, although we don't always succeed, not to mix family and work too much. Yeah, indeed. All right, we got a question from Michael, Hank, who writes, Dear John and Hank, what does it sound like on Mars? It occurred to me today as I was sitting in the shade of a carab tree, listening to the sounds of birds chirping and leaves. Michael, come on, man.

Your wife is too good. Your wife is too good sitting in the shade of a carab tree. Did you take a double dose of Miralex this morning? Be honest with me. Listening to the leaves rustling in the wind, that these living things make sounds. sounds, and that exists in my mind as a kind of background noise, to which I hardly ever pay attention. That's such a good observation, Michael.

I think of these sounds as a kind of quiet, but of course they aren't really. It makes me wonder what the sounds on a lifeless planet would be. I imagine one could hear the weather maybe. Can we know what Mars sounds like listening carefully, Michael? Oh, you can go listen to Mars right now, Michael. We've recorded the Perseverance Rover has recorded Mars, and it sounds like. like wind as you might. Is it sound like, is it, is it constant wind?

Like, is it a windy planet? Uh, it's, it's a windy planet. I don't think that it's always windy. Um, but yeah, you can hear, you can, you can go and hear it sound on Mars. Now, it does have some, some qualities that are different. So that, you know, the, the rustling of the wind in your ears is like a weird verbulence effect. Can you even hear, can you even hear wind?

Sure. I don't want to, I don't want to be a Buddhist. here, Hank. But if a wind wins, and there's no one there to hear it, does it actually make a sound? Well, but we're talking about a situation in which Michael is there to hear it. No, we're not.

Michael just said, what does it sound like on Mars? He's not proposing going to Mars. The Perseverance Rover's microphones are there to hear it, and they send it back to us digitally. Okay. All right, but I'm just saying, like, without perseverance there, without the wind to hit something that then becomes sound.

Sure. Wind doesn't make a sound, does it? I actually, I'm not sure if what's holding you up is that they're needing to be a conscious observer. No. Okay. Then yes, wind does make a sound. So wind as it goes around things, as it hits stuff,

emphasis on things, emphasis on things. And there's things. It's hitting rocks. It's hitting... All right, there's rocks. It's like going through the space between rocks and, yeah. The way that it would like go through, you know, the tree branches and make a noise here. There's enough stuff that there would be the turbulence that causes the wind noise,

which I actually don't know where that comes from. Like the whistling of the wind is it what's happening there? It's just like when I whistle what's happening? What does that make a noise? I don't know. This is, I bet there's fluid dynamics involved and that's one of the ones I don't look at. Okay, fair enough. That and optics.

Count me out. So that's primarily what you're going to hear. Now, the sound that's made somewhere else and traveling to you is different from like the wind rustling in your ears. That stuff's going to be really faint because Mars has a very thin atmosphere and sounds are carried through the air. Also, the actual content. of the atmosphere affects what sound waves pass more easily through the air. So a carbon dioxide atmosphere is going to be able to carry higher frequency sounds less effectively. Don't ask me why.

But that is a thing, according to the Mesa. So they really like base. They really like base on carbon dioxide. Yeah. You won't get as much whistle. Whistle noises. Higher pitch noises won't travel as far. So it will be, it is actually like literally a different sound.

You were standing there talking to a person. and you would hear it very differently than if you were on Earth. Now you would also asphyxiate immediately, but if we imagine that part isn't happening, then it's still a big problem. Wow. I don't want to go there. Yeah.

I mean, in addition to asphyxating immediately, a bunch of other bad things would happen. Also, cold air carries sound more slowly, which you would only really notice at a distance. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still a little stuck on weather. or not wind makes a sound if no one is there to observe it.

Well, that's just, that's just, I feel like we're having an old conversation. This is, this has never felt answerable to me. No, I just, I understand that. It's like the tree falling in the woods is a, is a unanswerable question. I'm saying like, does wind make a sound? If you, if you take off your spacesuit and you blow into the air, the vacuum of space. Okay.

That breath continues forever, right? Because there's nothing there to stop it until it hits, I don't know, Jupiter or something. The particles will bounce off of each other, so it'll spread out. But yeah, they will have a collective direction of momentum. And I guess a lot of the air will keep going in a direction. If I'm three feet away from that, when that burst of air hits me, I'm going to hear something. But the reason I'm going to hear something is because it hit my, body, my ears.

If it doesn't hit a body, it makes no sound, right? If it doesn't hit a rock or a person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know for sure, but I think you're right. So wind itself is soundless. Wind is soundless. It's the thing where the wind hits stuff that makes sound. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Just think about that, Hank. Yeah, it's sort of like imagining a column of wind. wind is silent except that earth life makes it loud. Well, give me my metaphor. Stuff makes it loud. Oh, thanks for coming to my party. All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon,

we've got to get to one thing here. Okay. It's from Paula. Paula writes, Dear John and Hank, I have a correction. You know how we love corrections on this podcast, Hank. I feel like I feel like I've been out of my depth several times today, so. I'm sure we'll get lots of them. As an adoring listener of your show, I was super excited to hear my country's own Teresa Mannion,

quoted by Hank on episode 466, don't make unnecessary journeys, et cetera. However, critically, Teresa is from Ireland, not Scotland. Oh, did I say Scotland? Oh, no. Now, I don't know, Hank, how closely you've followed politics over the last few centuries, but that's a mistake they don't love you making. That clip is a precious Irish artifact. Oh, no. It is.

This may be a mix-up to rival the Irish settlers' Irish setters confusion on a previous episode of the pod. Oh, no. I need to stay friends with the Irish. It's important. They're my exit strategy. It reminds me of when I had a Polish doctor in Chicago. And one time I asked if, because I speak a little.

bit of Russian. I asked if she was Russian and she said, this is the worst thing you could have said to me. Oh my God. Yeah. Okay, Hank, it's time for the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Let's start with the news from AFC Wimbledon because it's good question mark, question mark, question mark. AFC Wimbledon can't seem to stop winning football games. Yeah, they're scoring goals. Well, one at a time, but we're keeping clean sheets, which is the important thing. We beat both Bromley and Doncaster in the last week, rocketing us up to seventh place in the still early days of the League one season. What?

That's wild. We are defending really well, but most of all, we have this new goalkeeper who's an old goalkeeper, Joe Bersick. He was a child for us. He started playing for us when he was like 10. And then he left when he was like 17 to go play for fancier clubs. But now at the age of 26, he is back on loan. temporarily playing for AFC Wimbledon, and he is playing lights out.

He made nine saves against Doncaster, the most saves by an AFC Wimbledon goalkeeper since I believe 2019. Whoa, right. Yeah, he's crushing it. You needed those saves. We needed those saves, and some of them were very good. So shout out Joe Bersick. And then the other thing I want to mention is that our women's team is playing amazingly well.

Our women's team is currently fourth in the table and have been playing also lights out. They won their most recent game 2-0 against Rayall Bedford, which is a hilarious name for a soccer team. But anyway, Rayleigh Bedford. Let me make sure that's what they're called. It is really funny. Rail Bedford. Yeah, I didn't make that up. It's so good.

It's so good, Rail Bedford. Like, I mean, it reminds me that AFC Wimbledon, when they were first, when in 2002, when the club had to reform because of the Milton Keynes tragedy, they wanted, they asked what the new club name was going to be because they couldn't say Wimbledon F.C because Wimbledon F.C. had moved to Milton Keynes, according to the English F.A. And so they wanted to say Rayall Wimbledon. And the guy who was taking the application just shook his head and said, no. So they were like, what about AFC Wimbledon? And he was like, all right. Wow. And that's how AFC Wimbledon got their name. It's too much power for one man to hold. Indeed, indeed.

So all good news on the AFC Wimbledon front. Now, I will say between when we are recording this and when it will come out, a critical juncture in the AFC Wimbledon season is coming, which is that this Thursday, or last Thursday, if you're listening, AFC Wimbledon will be playing at Plow Lane, the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes, the most important game of our season, and we'll see how it goes. I want to beat those franchise so bad. Yeah.

So bad. John, you know how I watch AFC Wimbledon as I look at the scores? And then I'm like, hmm, they beat that team. They sound like, and I was like Doncaster, that sounds like a legit one. That sounds like probably one of the really good teams. And I looked them up. are the last place team in the league. Haven't won a game yet.

Yeah. And we barely beat them. They dominated us, is the truth. They have those nine shots on goal, all of which were stopped by Joe Bersick. So yeah. Really? I've got to kick that ball harder, apparently. We've got a ways to go.

But as my friends reminded me, six games into the season, we only need 40 more points to survive. Okay. I don't know. That seems like a lot. No, I mean, if we average, if we just draw the rest of our games, we'll escape relegation. Right. I feel like that would be true of all the teams. Nope.

Oh. Not true for Doncaster. All right. Well, this week in Mars News, John, China is continuing its work on the Tianwin III Mars sample return mission. They want to launch in 2028. They want to bring samples back to Earth by 2031, which would put us to shame. It would be very embarrassing for the U.S.'s sample return attempts, which we keep saying we're going to do. And then the price of it continues to increase embarrassingly so.

And then the Irish newscaster says, don't make unnecessary journeys. And it does start to feel like an unnecessary journey. Yeah, and NASA's like, I guess. So the Tianwin III mission is going to be looking for signs of weird life. actually, and the researchers are looking at finding candidate sites for the mission based on things like the chance of maybe there being ways to preserve biosignatures. There's also a plan to construct a, quote, planetary protection laboratory as a two-way system to both Earth and the samples to make sure that there's no possible cross-contamination. Because there's a big problem.

If you want to find life on Mars, you just end up finding a bunch of life, and you're like, well, what if that's just Earth life that got on board somehow? So this is a tricky thing, but they are working on it. And it's exciting. 2031 would be a big deal. I encourage them to put us to shame. I believe it's possible, Hank. Just as long as it doesn't happen with humans before 2028, I'm good with it.

Yeah, John, I have given up. Well, there could be a miracle, you know? You never know. There's always the possibility of a miracle. I keep being told that five years from now, all diseases will be cured. And if that's the case, I saw somebody, like somebody who's taken seriously, say that the probability of there being a Dyson sphere in 2030 is above 10%. And I was just like, man, if there is a bet, I would take. Yeah, exactly.

If I could take a bet. I mean, I think the probability, the thing is, like, curing the disease. This is me banging on my drum, I know, but like curing the diseases is one thing. I actually think we could cure all this, not with it, not by the end of the decade, but like, we could cure all diseases within a hundred years. For sure. I agree. Getting that cure to the people who need it requires systems and structures and infrastructure that

we just seem completely unwilling to engage with. Like we're perfectly willing to engage with endless spending on data centers. We are unwilling to engage with spending on structural and systemic infrastructure that will allow us to actually get stuff to people. There's a real sense that everything is defined by technology and that the entire world is just the technology and its effects. And it seems like not hard to see how that's not the case. Like it seems like pretty obvious. Well, it's only obvious if you don't spend all day looking at technology and thinking about technology. But I do wish that folks who do spend all day looking at technology and thinking about technology

would spend a week in a deeply impoverished community trying to understand how technology actually touches the lives of people living in poverty. Yeah. But that's neither news from Mars nor AFC Wimbledon, so we should probably be on the podcast. Nor is it really news is all. No, not really news. People we've known. Yeah.

We've known that for like five or six centuries. Yeah. Yeah. Well, John, this podcast is edited by Linus Obit House. It was mixed by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halso-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is to Bogey Truck Rivardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great gunerola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be. be awesome.