Dear Hank & John - 470: Which Way is Up?

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

How do you fall back in love with writing or reading? What causes baby teeth to come in? What are the odds I got a unique signature in my copy of “Hollywood, Ending”? What do YouTubers do when they stop making videos? If a human was teleported to Titan how would they die? …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. Good morning, John. Oh, that's not how the podcast starts. Hello and welcome to dear Hank and John. Gors, I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you to dubious advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, you know, I used to hate moustaches, but then they started growing on me.

That's a little funny. Okay, okay. For us, I don't know when this episode comes out, but for us, it's still pizza. I think it will still be pizza-miss while this episode comes out. We're in a weird moment, Hank, because we're making videos back in... Oh, really? Well, I mean, yes, broadly speaking, but also on a micro-level, because we're making videos back and forth every day,

but also I'm on the road for Hollywood ending. So I'm filming videos in hotel rooms and whatnot, but I have to tell you, I'm in Pittsburgh right now. Very excited to perform in Pittsburgh this evening. and I am in a hotel that is a very meta experience for me because on the first page of Hollywood ending, Juniper says that Pittsburgh is not a city known for its hotels, but that Matthew Malone had found the good one.

And I am staying in that hotel. You're in the good one. I'm in the good one. I'm in the hotel that I stayed in like 2015. Oh, wow. And was like, oh, this is a good hotel. Maybe I'll use it in a book someday. And now I'm back.

For your book, I mean, I'm looking at it. It looks fairly typical. Well, I'm not in a suite. So the last time I was here, I was put up in a very nice suite. I believe it was called the tea room. The tea room. And it had a tea theme.

You were just telling me that you were in the Watergate Hotel and you got upgraded into the presidential suite. I stayed in the presidential suite in the Watergate Hotel, which is maybe a dubious honor given what happened at the Watergate Hotel. I feel like they shouldn't have one of those. Yeah, maybe a Prime Minister suite. Yeah, it's like having 413. Just don't do it. Yeah. You got options? I have stayed in really nice hotels.

I've also stayed in some less nice hotels. But I'm enjoying myself on tour very much. I'm so grateful to everyone who's come out to the tour. It's been so special, Hank. I wish that you could be at more than one stop. But it'll be great to see you in San Diego. I also do. Great to end the tour in Los Angeles.

I'm just really excited. So there are still tickets available to a few cities, so check it out at Hollywoodendingbook.com and also order your book. And go to petzumus.com to get all your pizzask here. We've got so much promo to do this week. If people are wondering, Hank, why didn't you go to your brother's book release event?

That seems like a thing you would do. Why on earth would you not be supporting him in that way? Well, ask yourself why John would schedule his book release for my 20th anniversary with my wife? Oh, it's nice of you to think that I scheduled the book release. Yeah. So we were out of, we did not have the power to make this work the way that we would have wanted it to. But I had a lovely 20th anniversary with Catherine. Good. I'm really glad you had a great 20th anniversary. I had a good book launch. No, I was like, can we launch it on September 29th? And they were like, no, Grisham. And I was like, what about September 15th? And they were like, nope, Jody Pico. And I was like, all right, well, I'll be a little bit of a big deal. Hanks' 20th anniversary then. Back in the day. They didn't care when you released your book. You could do it on a Grisham Day.

That's true. Back in the day, they did not care one little bit. Just do it on a Grisham Day. Lots of people are doing it on Grisham Days. That's right. He owns like a fourth of the days already. He doesn't have that many books come out. James Patterson owns a fourth of the days.

That's the one. I get the impression that Patterson might not be writing all those books. Oh, he very openly is not writing all those books. You want to hear a great joke my Uncle Bill told me? Uh-huh. All right, so John Gersham calls up James Patterson, and James Patterson's wife answers and says, James can't come to the phone right now. He's writing a book.

And John Grisham says, I'll hold. Because he's about to be done. He's always about to be done. And then his wife says, I'm sorry to tell you this, but he's actually been dead for 40 years. Is that your idea of a James Patterson plot? No, no, that's my idea of, as far as I know, that man's not been writing any books for 40 years. Wait, you think James Patterson is dead and you think he hasn't. Michael Crichton had a bunch of books come out after he died.

Oh, yeah, no, Tom Clancy, too. In fact, it is explicitly stated in my will, and this should be in your will, Hank, since you now have a will, thanks to the hard work and bullying of Dear Hank and John listeners. Yes. It is explicitly in my will that you're not allowed to do that. Oh, you're not allowed to publish a John Green book after John. But what if there's one that's like 90% of the way there? Then you can publish it.

Oh, okay. No work, though. Just as written. Yeah. Yeah, like the way I've, you're not going to let me do a last pass? No, no. I almost compared myself just now to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but then I stopped myself. I want to be clear that in saying this, I'm not comparing myself to F. Scott Fitzgerald,

but he wrote The Last Tycoon and it was published unfinished and everything was fine. Hank, we have some questions from our listeners that we need to get to, beginning with this one from Anon, who writes, Dear Hank and John, but mostly John, because I just saw you at the Bookmark Festival, which was amazing, thank you, and I've been mulling over something you said there. You said you fell out of love with writing fiction, and then you fell in love again. How? I'm a librarian for small humans, and I've fallen out of love with reading of all things. This presents a few professional problems, as you can imagine. But I also miss experiencing in my own life the excitement that I see little patrons find in books. So how did you find your way back? Pumpkins, penguins, etc. Lest in the Library. Hank, have you ever fallen out of love with writing fiction? I mean, I have been really annoyed by it. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if that's exactly the same thing,

but there are definitely times where I am doing it out of obligation to my editor or the characters or my future self, you know? Yeah, I think that is actually how we fall back in love is with being quite disciplined. And so taking out our free app focus friend, for instance, and saying, I'm going to set a 45-minute timer here and read for 45 minutes. And that's how you fall back in love with reading.

And I found that's how I fell back in love with writing fiction was by doing it. There was no other way. There was no way to think my way back into loving it. There was only working my way back into it. I mean, this sounds so egotistical, but one of the ways that I do it is I'd, like, read a part of the book that I think is good. And I'm like, well, I did that. And in order for that to get published, I have to keep doing this.

Right. It's nice that you have sections that you're happy with. What is that like? Everyone's been so nice about Hollywood ending, but of course, I'm not hearing anything that they're saying. I'm only looking for the bad things. Yeah. That confirms what I know to be true about myself, which is that I'm a complete imposter. but I am very grateful to everyone who's been so nice.

Yeah, I haven't seen any bad reviews myself. Oh, you've got to look carefully. If you're working hard, you can find them, I guess. Yeah, I have a problem with self-esteem. And it goes back to when I was like 11 years old and it's still a problem. But to get back to this problem of loving reading, I think you have to practice reading to fall back in love with reading. And I've had this experience myself where, Partly because I needed bifocals, I didn't read as much between the ages of like 45 and 47,

and partly because I was so obsessed with what was happening inside my phone. And then I fell back in love with it. I'll even give you a book recommendation to help you fall back in love with it. Hollywood ending by John Green. That's a good one, Hank. I've heard good things about it. I mean, I also, one thing that I've found is I can get like genre stuck, where I'm like, I'm the kind of person who reads this kind of genre.

And then I read like my fifth book in that genre in a row. And I'm like, I don't know. That wasn't that great. And it turns out I just need to like read something very different. Do you think about genre when you're writing? This was my first time thinking about genre when I was writing. Not when I'm writing. I mean, I've been trying to write a mystery, which is like hard as hell.

So hard. I had no idea. And so I'm thinking about genre when I'm writing that, but I didn't think at all about genre when I was writing my first two books. Yeah. I mean, I thought a little bit, when I was writing The Fault and No Stars,

I thought a little bit about the genre of cancer books and how much I was troubled by them. Wanted to move outside of that frame, yeah. Yeah, and you always want to, everyone wants to do that, right? You're writing from inside the confines of a genre, but you're also pushing against those confines, and that's what makes it interesting. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Yeah, I really had a, I mean, I read obviously a lot of science fiction, so I had a good time writing what I felt like was not a science fiction book that was, of course, nonetheless, science fiction. It was pretty science fictiony to me. Yeah, I bet it was. I've been getting a lot of, like, notes on a beautifully foolish endeavor lately, people being like, oh, I just read this book and it is relevant. Hank, with all the love in the world, we're already promoting Hollywood ending and Pizomis. We don't have time for your books right now. Next week. Hank, yeah. This question is from Catherine. She asks, what causes baby teeth to come in? Are they ready the whole time and are just waiting for a signal? Why is the timeline so different from baby to baby? My daughter just turned one and it's only hitting me now how bizarre teeth are. I must know the tooth, Catherine. It is so bizarre. How do baby teeth happen, Hank? That is so, like of the things that are weird about humans. It is super weird. That seems like a very, teeth are very weird.

Yeah, yeah. So baby teeth are like they're starting to develop even before birth. So they're like up in there. But then they continue to develop. And we have a pretty good idea of like the biochemical pathways involved here. So like we know that there's these growth signals and there's like areas that are doing stuff and like tearing down bone and remodeling bone. And we know that stuff. But as far as how like that is timed and why it happens at different times. in different babies, we can look like the macro scale and be like, well, if babies are bigger when they're born, their baby teeth tend to come in sooner. But as far as the genetic and biochemical ways that the actual like all of the stuff is timed for like when it is released, we do not. We do not have an idea of this. I think that it's important to say maybe right now more than in the last few years, the human body is like way way more stuff we don't know than we do.

Also the universe and in general, I think we need to lean in more as a species to we don't know almost everything rather than we have figured out almost everything. Yeah, there's this idea that like we have all the data and if we could just like line it up correctly, we'd have a periodic table of everything. That's not the situation. We have so much more to learn.

And the body is particularly very confusing. Like there's something about like the universe that's confusing at like the root levels, but the body is confusing at every level. And so we have a lot to learn. And that's not like, it's not things that we haven't thought through. It's data that we don't have. It's experiments we haven't done. So like figuring out all these biochemical pathways that are involved in. in the breaking down and remodeling of bone and the baby jaw

is all just really hard, slow work that we have done over the last decades. But figuring out how it's all timed and what controls that is just, it's like a couple of levels deeper than our current level of understanding. Right, right. You know, being on the road is such a weird experience

because you spend so much time in airports and on airplanes and traveling and you're in a different hotel every night. And it's just sort of, like disembodies you in some way. And then also like when you're actually on stage, you don't feel like you're inside of your body at all. You feel like you're,

you know, hopefully like connected with the people who are also in the room with you, but like mostly just like I feel like I'm floating up in the sky. Yeah, it's otherworldly. It's not in a bad way, just in a specific way. There's like no mental resources left to be a being. Yeah, exactly. And so on the road, my mantra has been,

You're a mammal. So I'll be on an airplane and I'll feel a little uncomfortable. I'll be like, of course you feel uncomfortable. You're a mammal who's 35,000 feet above the ground. Yeah. You're the first mammal ever to be 35,000 feet above the ground. No wonder this feels weird. Yeah.

You're not supposed to sit this much. You're supposed to be gathering. It's supposed to be out there walking around, hanging around, hanging around, talking to people braiding rope, you know, making cordage. That's what you're really supposed to be doing. making a lot of cordage and then, you know, grinding up some meal. Yeah, you got to grind for sure. Doing a lot of grinding.

Yeah, that's what I'm supposed to be doing, Hank. But instead of sitting in a hotel room in Pittsburgh. It's a nice hotel. Matthew Malone found it. No wonder I feel weird all the time, right? I'm supposed to be a hunter-gatherer for God's sakes. And I'm 22 stories above the ground right now. Things are better in many, many ways.

Oh, they're better at all. Aren't they better in every way? Is there a way? I guess like we were a little more socially connected back. Yeah, I think the big way is... When we were socially ostracized, it was certain death. Uh-huh. I don't know that this is true, but I feel like it would be nice to have a more unquestioned foundational stuff in my life.

Well, this is why you're desperate to be religious is you think it would give you that. Yeah, I do. But it would. I don't think that it would. I promise. Yeah. But I think that it has for many people. especially in the past.

I guess so. I mean, religion was certainly at the center of being for the vast majority of people who've ever lived. Do you think that people actually believed in the divine right of kings? Like, did a serf think to themselves, well, that's the king. He is an arm of God.

Yeah, I think they did. I don't have to worry about whether or not the king's decisions are right and wrong. Well, I think they thought that the world was the way that it was because of God. for sure. I think that just sounds... I've been thinking a lot about that great Ursula Le Guin line

about how in the age of Divine Right Monarchy, divine right monarchy seemed inevitable and natural and permanent. Yeah. In the same way that our world today feels inevitable and natural and permanent. Yeah. And it just isn't. It will end. And like the question for us is not whether it will end,

but like how and when it will end and what will replace it? Yeah. And how that transition occurs. Yeah, and how much do we value the world that we currently share, which is, you know, been very good in some ways, right? 60% reduction in child mortality in the last 30 years, but is deeply failed in other ways, right? Like, we could have produced child mortality much faster, for one thing. We have to kind of decide together when we're going to say, like, maybe this divine right capitalism thing isn't a jam. Yeah.

Anyway, I've just been thinking about that. But like to the moment and like the feeling of like we should have power, you know, there was that if there was a sense that like, no, this is the way that the world is and we should not have power, there's a simplicity to that. But then there is like the actual progress that comes from people being empowered. Yeah, from distributing power to more people, building more inclusive systems, building, you know, the structures that allow for more people to thrive. But, right, like literacy rates. And not perfectly inclusive, we're talking. Not even close. But we're talking like going from having, you know, 0.01% of society having power to somewhere north of that.

Well, and I think that it's not a straight line and progression isn't always progression, right? Like, I don't know that we've progressed on that front in the last 30 years very much when it comes to distributing power better. But we are seeing, you know, there's higher rates of literacy than there were 30 years ago. Like, there are indications, not necessarily in the U.S. and the rich countries, but there are indications that things are, that progress is still possible. That, like, when we work together, we still can make the world safer for vulnerable people. Yeah. And the fact that that makes the world more complicated, some people will bemoan this.

And, in fact, I may have just done it, but, like, actually, it's good. Like, things do get more complicated when more people are, you know, part of the ways that we make decisions. Yeah, it's the great Daniel Bisline, is this hard because I'm not a dictator, because if so, I'm glad it's hard. Yeah. All right, let's answer this question from Aislin, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly John, I just got my copy of Hollywood ending available for order now, and my copy's signature was in orange with the words, this is the only one signed in orange.

Wow. I believe it. I'm so glad it ended up with a dear Hank of John listener, Hank. Because I did this with the Anthropocene reviewed, and it ended up with the... the random person in North Carolina who had no idea who I was. How would you know that it went to North Carolina? They posted it on TikTok and said, does everyone's copy look like this? Well, that's good.

At least it ended up with someone. Aisland also writes, first of all, super cool. I feel beyond honored to have this orange copy and can't wait to read the book. I wanted to know, what were the odds of me getting this book? They were one in 85,000, Aisland. That's pretty good. What were the odds of me getting a unique signature at all? Maybe one in a thousand.

Did you do each color of the rainbow? No, I only did orange. Or are you secretly lying and they're all orange? Orange is that I emailed Aislin. Oh! They're not all orange. This is a legendary message. Legendary name specific sign-off.

Yeah, man. That's so cool, John. Yeah. So I signed one in orange at the request of a live stream viewer and wrote this is the only one signed in orange. I think I also signed one in orange for everything as tuberculosis, but that one I never heard of again. I'm so delighted when the ones that I remember signing pop up somewhere. Yeah.

Like the other day, somebody posted the last one that I signed, where I said, like, this is the last of the 85,000 copies I signed. And that one went to an independent bookstore, which made me super happy to know. And eventually was found by a nerd fighter. So that's the best is when it goes to the people you want it to go to. you know, like obviously I want anyone who wants a signed book to get a signed book. And I should say that I'm sorry for the distribution challenges, especially with bookshop.org, that have been making it difficult for people to get their signed books and also Amazon canceling a bunch of international orders, which they've done before. And I really, really don't like.

It's freaking crazy, man. I don't have a lot of control over it, unfortunately. But it is a poor business practice on their part anyway. Yeah, I got to tell you guys, John has been stressing about it. this so much. He is a he is a cute little bean and no one blames him. But he doesn't, it's not, it's not that he thinks people are going to blame him. It's just that he thinks he's like really frustrated that it's happening. It's happening. Yeah. I'm not worried about blame. I'm worried about fixing the problem. So I think much of the problem has been fixed. The Amazon problem can't be

fixed, which is very frustrating. And I, if I were you, I would consider that in the future. when you make your e-commerce purchases, he said, as delicately as he could. But yeah, it delights me, Aisland, that you have received this book. I'm so happy. And I wish that I had signed more uniquely. Boy, does my arm hurt. I saw that somebody got the final signed one, too.

Yeah, that was somebody at an independent bookstore in the U.S., which is great. Nice. So they just opened a book in the bookstore and we're like, oh, a special one. Uh-huh. Is it a problem for bookstores if people want to, like, they got like 20 copies and people are like pulling down the stack trying to find a good one? I don't think that's a problem for bookstores. I think bookstores are delighted to have customers. This is something we forget sometimes, Hank. Like when you call the pizza place and you're nervous to, this doesn't really exist anymore because of DoorDash. But it used to be when you called the pizza place, I would be very nervous to call the pizza place. I would be like, oh my God, I don't want to inconvenience these people.

But of course, they're waiting for your call. They need the work. They're excited by the prospect. Oh, man. Pizza. Miss. It's good stuff, pizza. I just made, I made almost every board, four by three board for the next two weeks.

Pizza board. Nice. Something peripherally to do with pizza. Nice. I love it. Good times. All right. Let's answer this question from Alex.

He writes, Dear John and Hank, I started watching your videos in 2009. And for the first few years, I kept up with lots of YouTubers before, life got in the way. I've always wondered what YouTubers do when they stop making videos. Some obviously make it big or transition to other public-facing roles, but others disappear from public life. People with millions of views may have made a decent chunk of change, but lots of early YouTubers never became household names and must have been too young or to comfortably retire, so one must assume they've taken up some other career or vocation in a private capacity. Without asking you to name-drop people, I assume you might have some insight into where

YouTubers who quietly retreat go to. What kind of careers have you come across? What's the strangest transition. Do they get taken to a farm to live up state for free? Pretty great. Alex. Alex. There's something you should know about the dogs that went to the farm. For free. Yeah. And luckily this is not what happens to YouTubers. They don't put us out the pasture. No. No, but I have terrible news about your childhood dog. Yeah. And ours as well. I know. So, yeah, I mean, they're in all kinds of careers. So, like, probably the most common career I know for former YouTubers is they work in social media.

They, like, work at a company that makes video games, like, designing their YouTube strategy or doing social media stuff or doing marketing or PR. That tends to be. They just have, like, knowledge of how audiences work. But we also have friends who work in publishing, who used to make YouTube video. and we have friends who work in the private sector, who used to make YouTube videos, you know, just doing a regular corporate kind of gig, a management gig, and there's all kinds of ways you can do it.

I mean, it's not dissimilar from professional athletes who tend to have very short careers, careers that are often associated with being very lucrative, but functionally sometimes aren't. Like, if you have a three-year career in the NFL, for instance, you may not have enough money to live on for the rest of your life. And so you're going to have to get a job. And it's hard because a lot of YouTubers,

like a lot of professional athletes, didn't graduate from college, especially if they started doing it really young. And it can be a difficult transition. So we've seen it be a difficult transition. We've seen it be an easy transition. It depends on the person. I, you know, was a novelist before I was a YouTuber.

and Hank was a blogger before he was a YouTuber, and we were both making a living, making our stuff. And that has been really helpful for us because we've never been dependent on the algorithm for revenue. We've been dependent on the algorithm for community, which is extremely important to us, but never as our jobs. And I think that's given us a level of freedom

that very few online creators have. Yeah, I mean, I have a weird... This is not the question, but I have this weird thing where I always want to be doing the thing that YouTubers are doing because I feel like part of my job is understanding the YouTube platform and advocating for YouTubers. And so, like, sometimes I'll do a bunch of brand deals.

And, like, the money is great. But, like, I'm kind of doing it because I want to see, like, what the landscape of brand deals is like and what the work is like. That makes one of us. And when TikTok, was happening. I remember initially being like, I just have to understand this platform so I can understand what it's like to be a TikTok creator.

And that was really like part of the reason I started. And then 100% all of the tools and tricks it uses to addict creators were working on me. Yeah, they really gamify content creation now, especially TikTok and meta.

Really gamify it and try to make it so that it's hard to stop making videos. Yeah, yeah. Like, Instagram's way of monetizing for many years was that it would assign you a random amount you could make this month if you hit certain goals. And it would be different every month. And sometimes it'd be like really big. And then it'd be like 10 times less than that two months later.

And so it was like being in a freaking casino. It's crazy. Well, it is exactly like being in a casino in the sense that it's randomized rewards and the only person who reliably makes money is the house. Yeah. Really messed up. YouTube is not the healthiest place, but when you see the places, how the competitors work.

Yeah. It reminds me, Hank, of the hit new book, Hollywood ending, which is about all this stuff. And this podcast is by chance, definitely actually brought to you by Hollywood ending. I wish we could get Penguin Random House to actually sponsor this podcast.

That would be amazing. It's one of the big brand deals I would definitely do is a brand deal for myself. This podcast is also brought to you by your local bookstore where you can get Hollywood ending without any of this weird stuff going on. And this podcast is brought to you by Pizamist. Pizamist. Oh no. Pizamist.com.

Pizamist.com. It's a weird time of year where John and I make videos like we did back in 2007 and it's lots of fun. This podcast is also brought to you by mammals. Mammals, you are one. The reason you feel anxious on that plane is that no mammal has ever been. that far from the ground ever. Yeah. Super weird looking out of that window.

Seeing all that agriculture made by mammals. And all that turf grass. There might be more turf grass than there is agriculture. In terms of water consumption, almost definitely. This episode of Deer, Hank and John, is brought to you by Wayfair.

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how would they die? Everything about Titan seems very lethal, but what would kill them first? Planets and Penguins, Kai. Kai, that's the name of the kid in the book. It is. What a great name. Look at that. I could have picked any name, Kai, and I picked yours.

It is going to be a race, you know, to what kills you first on Titan. One of the cool things about Titan is it has a totally livable atmospheric pressure. So that's barely going to affect you at all. Your ears are going to pop. That's about it. But what's going to get you is almost definitely suffocation, so there's no oxygen. It's extremely cold. No, no oxygen.

at all. There's no oxygen atoms, but there's no oxygen gas. Okay, so you're going to die of suffocation almost immediately. Yeah, so like if a human that breath, so like here's a weird thing, if you hold your breath, you like live longer than if you breathe like a pure nitrogen atmosphere or you stay, you stay conscious longer because when you hold your breath, you're actually holding a bunch of air in your lungs that has oxygen and that your body can continue to use. But if you're breathing in a pure nitrogen

or other methane in the case of Titan atmosphere, you're breathing out all of that oxygen and breathing in no oxygen and breathing out whatever leftover oxygen is in the lungs. So a very few breaths later, you have no oxygen in the lungs, something like less than 30 seconds, you're unconscious. And then from then, you know, nothing matters to you,

but you're not going to come back. So great news Yeah Which is honestly like how I would prefer it to go Because another thing is that you don't actually feel like you're suffocating Because the sensation of suffocation comes from an increase in carbon dioxide concentration in your blood But you're able to continue breathing out carbon dioxide And so you don't have that buildup

And so you just feel dizzy and like a little loopy And you And yeah you don't have any oxygen but you don't get the suffocation signal So you just feel weird until you fall unconscious. Now, as that's happening on Titan, it will be extremely painfully uncomfortable due to the cold. So not just is there a lot of cold, like there's not a lot of heat. There's also a lot of stuff.

So there's a lot of air. You know, there's a lot of molecules in the atmosphere that are able to carry the heat away from you. So there's going to be wind. Like on Mars, actually weirdly, it's cold, but there's not as much stuff to carry the heat away from you. So you would get colder or less quickly. And in this situation, you would get cold quite quickly. This is, for example, why you get cold so quick when you're in water because there's more molecules to carry the heat away from you. So not that much, but similarly, there's plenty of stuff to carry the heat away from you on Titan.

And so you're going to be getting cold really quick and it's going to be very painful and uncomfortable, but you will be unconscious within 30 seconds. So that will not be the thing that kills you. It'll just be miserable. Yeah, it'll be. Yeah, yeah. You're not going to die painlessly, is what I'm saying. Sure. I mean, I'm aware of that.

That's one of my big fears. I'd rather suffocate on Titan than, like, in water. Thanks for coming to our party, everybody. I think suffocation would be really bad. Well, yeah. I mean, there are no great ways. And I know a lot of little kids listen to this podcast because we're a hit podcast for teens

and tweens and also tykes. And the big three, those are our big three demographics, Hank. You know, like kids who use big wheels, big wheel kids. That's not a thing anymore, by the way, but okay. Oh, it very much is. It very much is. It's coming back among, you don't know a lot of three-year-olds, Hank. Not like I do.

I've been studying the demographics. I've been watching what they watch. Like you being obsessed with wanting to understand YouTube, I'm trying to understand content for three-year-olds, podcasts for three-year-olds. That's the future. you got to catch them young. That way they grow up with you.

You'll be like Steve from Blues Clues. Yeah, he's doing great, seems like. He's doing great. What a lovely man. Anyway, point being, we're a hit podcast for very young people, and I want to be conscious of that while also acknowledging to the very young people that everything that we know of in the universe does.

That's right. And there's this problem where all the things that evolved, like the living, things. Yeah. They only were able to survive because they had that built-in want. Evolution selects for wanting to be alive. It's one of the first things it selects for.

And so it makes things that make you not alive really undesirable. And that's where we get suffering. Only creatures that want to be are. Yeah, isn't that crazy? It's crazy. I mean, it might not be entirely true. Like there's definitely a spectrum of consciousness, you know, with the little sillets.

I don't know how much they want, but they certainly act. They want to be alive. They go towards the things that keep them alive and away from the things that killed them. Now, Hank,

I'm going to push back on something you just said. Okay. That's not where all of suffering comes from, because much of suffering comes from love and attachment

and other things that are not primarily about survival. You don't think that love is about survival? I think it's a bummer that you're going to construct it that way.

I can see what you're about to do, and I don't like it. Okay, well, let's move on. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm not, I doesn't make it less beautiful to me. Yeah. I guess it is a little less beautiful if it's purely functional. Last night, I was putting an or into bed.

It was like 10 o'clock. It was way too late for me to be putting them into bed, but we had a number of fun activities that we were doing. And he said, what happens after you die? And I was like, are we being for real right now? and he was like, yeah. And I was like, oh, boy, I'm the right. Wow.

I feel, I don't know. I feel like we've talked about this at, adversions, you know, picked at the sides of it, but never, never have I gotten it flat out. Did you use the standard Hank Green answer of we are in the same place that we were before we were born? Well, the first thing I said was the people who love us will miss us. No, great Keanu Reeves line.

And then he said, Dad, I mean what happens to me when I die. Well, the people who love you will miss you. And then, yeah, well, what I said was, there's many different schools of thought. And he said, tell me all of them. And I was like, well, I don't know all of them.

Yeah. But I gave him the sort of big divide between, you know, It's like exactly as you say. I think that it's like what it was like before you were born. Right. And then there's the other side of the big divide, which is it's like something else. Yeah, that's what we went into. There's a theologian who writes about some conceptions of heaven as heaven for goats that like if you were a goat, you would picture and with field of really thick grass.

and that would be your goat heaven. Yeah. And that like some conceptions of heaven are goat heavens and that like they're sort of, they sort of maybe don't hold up to scrutiny because of course wouldn't you want a mansion in the sky and wouldn't it make sense that that's how you would construct it? Yeah.

But I quite like my goat heavens. Yeah, we talked about that as well. I was like it's always seemed a little bit too perfect to me that we believe these stories that would be very lovely if they were true. Yeah, although we also believe other things about the afterlife that are less lovely and less like a goat heaven.

Oh, for sure. I believe in an afterlife that isn't much like a goat heaven. I think most people in the world do not believe in that kind of afterlife, I think, because in fact, a huge percentage of people in the world believe in some version of reincarnation. and that's a very different way of thinking about what comes after life than, you know, seeing it in cycles is very different than seeing it as beginning, a middle, and an end.

And quite attractive to me, to be honest. Like, a lot of things that seem linear are, in fact, pretty circular and spectral. And I kind of like that idea. But ultimately, Hank, I don't believe anybody who says that. They know. I like the idea that reincarnation is real, but is not limited to Earth. And so the reality that there are probably in the universe infinite thinking beings, you just end up, you never end up on the same planet twice. You could be a crab person next time. Clack, clack. Yeah.

And then you could be up in an airplane and be like, I am a crab. No wonder I feel anxious. I'm not supposed to be up here. I bet it's nice being a crab. I bet their backs don't hurt because they don't have backs. Huge advantage. Structural benefit. Yeah.

All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I got to read this email we got from Ray. It's one of the kindest emails I've ever received in my life. Dear John and Hank, I'm listening to Episode 468, and John mentioned the vulnerable nature of creating art. Once I made a painting depicting the most raw heartbreak of my life, I was nervous to take it to the frame shop because the piece was so vulnerable. I was certain that people working at the shop would look at it.

at the painting and know everything that had happened to me in the preceding weeks. I continually put it off. Finally, I took the art to get framed. When I handed over the artwork, all they said was which way is up? Anyway, I loved Hollywood ending. We're both looking at the same book, but as a reader, I don't know what John's most vulnerable moments were. I see a book with feeling in depth, but I don't know which way is up. Wow. Not Gamma, not sting, Ray. I'm crying. It's a beautiful email. That got me.

Yeah. Well, Hank does know which way is up, but the reader doesn't, of course. Yeah. And that is just what I needed to hear today, Ray. What an amazing ability to see in. I know. Good job, Ray. Geez, I hope I can see him like that sometimes.

Keep painting. Keep making art, Ray. Thank you. everybody who makes art in this broken world. We also have to read this email from Katie, because remember we talked about vintage thank you cards, like sending a thank you card 10 or 15 years later? Is that still good? Katie writes, Dear John and Hank, while I haven't sent one in a while, my husband gets several vintage thank you cards a year, as do most of his colleagues, because he's a middle school writing teacher. And while some students write him cards while they are in his

class, many don't realize the impact he had on them until later. Now they are more emails, but he will still get cards sent to the school from students he had four or ten or even 20 years ago. He keeps every single card he's gotten. Half are in a file at school and half are in one at home. Whenever things are really hard with his work and he's wondering why he bothers, which is sadly more often now, he opens those cards and remembers why he has dedicated his life to this work. Thank you for everything you do and your support of all the teachers fighting the good fight, Katie. You guys. I know, they're making us cry, Hank. They're out here choking us up.

Yeah, I feel bad for every thank you card I haven't written now. I know, right? Thank you cards to your teachers because it's harder to be a classroom teacher than ever. They need the encouragement. Oh, my God. We've got to make this situation easier, man. I keep running into things that are making me real annoyed with the state of things. Yeah, no, it's it is correct.

The correct response to the outrages that abound in every direction is at a minimum annoyance. Yeah, well, I'm annoyed by it because I, like, see all the structures that result in it, and I'm like, I don't know what to do about any of this. I know too much to think that it's even caused by evil. I think it's caused by a bunch of intersecting systems that aren't good at each other. Yeah, no, it's... And also, like, a lack of trust, like a huge amount of lack of trust is...

Yeah. I think especially when it comes to school teachers. Education. Like, yeah, we have this huge, huge problem right now. where we've lost trust in everything. And so it just makes life so much harder. It does. Yeah.

I mean, for teachers as well as for parents, because parents feel like they can't trust teachers and teachers feel like it's really hard to do your job when you're not trusted. And I think you're right to say it's intersecting systems and the ways that they're intersecting now is leading to the impoverishment of education. in the U.S.

I would like to tell you the news from AFC Wimbledon. Okay. You seem like you're getting ready for something. Hank, AFC Wimbledon is good? Question mark, question mark, question mark? Once again, we're in a stopped account scenario, Hank, where AFC Wimbledon is currently eighth in League 1. we have a hilariously bad goal difference for being eighth in league one.

We have a negative two goal difference. We've scored fewer goals than we've given up. But we've scored those goals at the right time. Our most recent game should have been a victory, even though we were outplayed in every sense of the game. But we were winning until the last minute of the game against Cambridge United. But then they came back and tied 1-1, which was a deserved score. And before that, we played the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes,

which was a nil-nill draw. Well, I'm just happy. I'm happy to get out of that with all of our limbs intact, frankly. I mean, the dons, they could go down. Or they could go up. Oh, you mean the MK? Yeah. Sorry, the franchise.

They could go down. They could go down. That would feel very good. That's where they deserve to be. They should not be in the football league. they should not exist. So if they go down, that's great. That's a step on the road to the right outcome,

which is them not existing. Okay. They don't look like they're winning many games at all. They're down there with Wiggin. Poor Wiggin. Wiggin, a few years ago, Wiggin won the F.A. Cup, like the biggest competition in England

that involves all the teams in England. Uh-huh. And now they're at, sitting at the very bottom of League One down there with the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes. I believe the franchise currently applying its trade in Milton Keynes, and this is my favorite fact about them this season.

They haven't won a game, but they've drawn six of them. They've drawn six of their seven games. Wow. And that's why they're down there in 22nd place. I love to see it. It's the only thing better than team. Weird to have the same goal differential as AFC Wibbled him.

They do. But look at them. They're in 22nd place and we're an eighth. It all matters. It matters where the goals go. What's the news from Mars, Hank? And news from Mars. NASA has awarded $300,000 to Chenieri, UKJ, in what is called the Deep Space Food Challenge,

Mars to Table Edition. So this is a contest that launched in January. There have been similar challenges over the years run by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. and this version was get teams to envision a complete food production system in space that could make a variety of foods while not having it be like the only thing that the crew spend time on. So basically help future missions that don't want to pack as little food as possible because that's all mass that you have to carry. So if you're going to Mars for a long period of time, basically, and contestants were asked specifically to create a system that could feed a 15 person. an astronaut crew for 513 Earth days or 500 Mars days. And the winning design combined agriculture, fermentation, and fungus cultivation with

closed loop nutrient recycling to help the hypothetical crew grow 50% of the food that they need when they are away from Earth. Oh, I thought it was going to be just like buy baby chickens and wait until they get big, but no, it's fungus production. Well, fungus is fine. You don't like fungus? I'm not a huge fungi guy. I love

I love I love I'm also I'm also not a very fun guy no that's

you know I mean you're fun yeah medium like it's not like it's not like the first

attribute someone's no nobody like nobody who knows me well is like you want a good time hang out with that guy

it's a different different goals different kind of good time you know yeah I have a different friendship love language if you will

I am and so I guess that's like mushrooms and stuff? Yeah, mushrooms and stuff. Yeah, I'm out.

My guess is that it's all mushrooms. I don't know. It might be other things. Sometimes you can make like weird stuff from other fungi, but mostly mushrooms. Man, that sounds like hard work farming in space. I'll tell you what. It's scary, too. My mom and I have a little quarter acre garden in Indianapolis, and that's hard enough.

Yeah, I feel like stuff starts going wrong with your spaceship garden. Yeah, that's hard to fix. That gets tense. Yeah, that's tense. It's not like when you're like, oh, I think we got some, I think we got some Aphids. No, it's a proper emergency. Yeah. Oh, man, I just opened up our YouTube channel and that thumbnail for your first

Pizzevus video is intense, John. I didn't see it. Ah, it's real good. It was chosen by the YouTube algorithm. They picked the perfect one. Good. I'm glad to hear it. Well, Hank, thank you for potting with me.

Thanks to everybody for being part of NerdFiteria and Pizza Miss. Thanks for coming out on tour. Thanks for your support of Hollywood ending. It means the world to us. We're just so grateful. And yeah, thank you. You can email us your questions at Hank and John at gmail.com. This podcast is edited by Linus Obenhaus.

It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Meddish. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosiana Halsoh, and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Dubu Krak Rivardi. The music you're hearing now, and at the beginning of the podcast, is by the great Gunnarola, as they say in our hometown. Don't forget to be awesome.