421: Sonic’s Butt Game

Audival's romance collection has something to satisfy every side of you.

When it comes to what kind of romance you're into, you don't have to choose just one.

Fancy a dallions with a duke, or maybe a steamy billionaire.

You could find a book boyfriend in the city and another one tearing it up on the hockey field.

And if nothing on this earth satisfies, you can always find love in another realm.

Discover modern rom-coms from authors like Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood, the latest romanticy series from Sarah J.

Maas and Rebecca Yaros, plus regency favorites like like Bridgerton and Outlander.

And of course, all the really steamy stuff.

Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wondery.

That's audible.com slash wondery.

You're listening to a complexly podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank.

It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

John,

what kind of tea is the hardest to fit into a cup?

I don't know, Hank.

What kind of tea is the hardest to fit into a cup?

Mana tea.

Ha ha ha ha.

I actually have my tea right over there.

Can you grab it for me?

No.

Oh, come on.

It's right there.

You go get it.

It's so...

You're closer.

I'm six inches.

You're just in the way.

I can't.

I'd have to go around.

We're in the same place at the same time.

Hank wants his tea.

He's going to get up and get it.

I'm going to go get my tea.

Okay.

He's going going to put down his microphone.

This is the kind of high drama that people come to Dear Hank and John for.

This sort of thrilling audio-based content that people love.

Little ASMR tea.

A little ASMR.

Iced tea.

Yeah, good for you.

I almost tried to drink out of my microphone, John.

I got confused.

So that reminds me of the time that I ate a memory card thinking it was a pretzel chip,

and horror ensued.

And then I eventually had somebody.

Did you need the contents of the card?

Oh, yeah.

I had already filmed my Vlogbrothers video for the day, and i ate my micro my my sd card and i had somebody come and say oh i can fix any broken sd card and they did like a ct scan of it whoa and they were like i can't fix your sd card you bit right through it

I tried to figure out exactly what the problem was, and it turns out the problem was you really treated that like a chip.

You got a hell of a bite on you, Green.

You didn't half-ass that.

John likes a crunchy chip.

I do.

I do love a crunch.

I love a little satisfying crunch.

Now, Hank, we are in the same place at the same time, which is unusual for Dear Hank and John.

Usually Hank is in Montana and I am in Indianapolis, but I have come to Montana for the purposes of doing a bunch of work stuff

and also hanging out with my brother.

This is on Hank's channel as like a video.

Okay, but we usually release the video on Patreon.

True, patreon.com slash dear hank and john.

Yeah.

Okay, do we have anything to advertise if we're going to be getting all these new watchers and listeners?

Wine is over.

Wine is over.

Iced tea is the way.

Iced tea is the future.

You make your own special iced tea.

Catherine just closed our door.

Iced tea is the future, and you can get it at Keats and Co.

Keats and Co.

go to

Good.store.

And not only can you get iced tea, but starting now, you can also get underwear.

That's true.

Now, Hank, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't everyone go to their local underwear company and think, God, I wish this place had tea?

And go to their local tea company and think, God, I wish this place had underwear?

I had a billionaire say this to me, and they were like, there's no way you can do this.

Who would trust their tea people

with their socks?

And I was like, I don't care, man.

I think you don't see the vision.

And he didn't see the vision or she.

But the truth is, you can trust both our underwear and our socks and our coffee and our tea because Hank and I

and our soap.

And our eco-friendly cleaning supplies.

And our eco-friendly cleaning supplies because Hank and I are not paid to say any of this because all the profit goes to charity.

That's right.

Good.store.

It really is a better way to buy stuff you need anyway from underwear to cleaning supplies.

What were we thinking?

That's what I liked.

What were we thinking?

Yeah, I was like,

crazy Johnny with his crazy warehouse.

Oh, yeah.

Our prices are so low that we gave away all the profit.

Our prices are reasonable, but

our profit goes to better places, like tuberculosis care and preventing maternal mortality and stuff like that.

The prices are crazy to me because we price based on margin and

thing to thing.

I'm like, oh, well, some things are cheap and some things are expensive because that's how they actually should be.

Right.

Coffee is just really hard.

Yeah.

Coffee should cost about 95 cents per cup, and that's what ours costs.

And if you get it for less than that, you don't want to know the labor conditions that were involved in its farming.

Yes.

So that's part of what's going on.

Yeah.

I like to have you here in my office.

This is nice.

It's a beautiful office.

It's very visually stimulating.

Yeah.

There's no shortage of visual stimulus in your office.

I had the thought.

Yeah.

If I can make it so that I can see everything, I would never lose anything.

Yeah.

And that was wrong.

Yeah.

I lose things all the time.

I do prefer for things to be out, though.

This is something that my wife and I have a fundamental disagreement about.

I would prefer that the cabinets, because as you know, I don't see anything in my mind when I close my eyes.

I have the aphantasia.

And this extends, because I have a pretty severe version of this.

It extends to not having any kind of map in my head, not being able to know directions.

Like today, I got lost getting to your house, even though I've been to your house a million times.

And

I don't know what's behind the kitchen cabinets.

This drives Sarah crazy.

She's like, we lived in the same house for 15 years.

The cabinets have not changed.

The wine glasses are where the wine glasses always were.

And my position is: who knows what's behind a cabinet that you can't see behind?

Okay.

That's crazy.

That is wild.

I once saw a comment on an Instagram reel that was about a related phenomenon.

And it said, oh, didn't you know, men don't see with their eyes.

They see with their hearts.

I don't know what I see with.

And people are always like, how do you write books with this affliction?

And I'm like, it's not an affliction.

It's the only way I've ever been.

And I am also not convinced that you actually see things in your mind when you close your eyes.

But I am impressed by everybody else's ability to get around and know what's behind closed

doors.

I don't have any closed things in here.

Yeah, which I really like because from my perspective, it's almost more terrifying to know that there's so many items and artifacts

behind a closed door.

Yeah, I actually want to put more shelves in here, but there is one closed door over there.

It's a very difficult.

And that has the router and stuff in it.

And so you open it and wires just pile out, which I love having that behind a closed door.

Yeah, that is a little stressful.

But there is a lot of visual information in here, but it's not an unpleasant experience.

However, this is an audio-based podcast, so I don't know.

Well, some people are seeing it.

I don't know why we've gone quite so video-centric for our podcast.

Can I?

You said that you have this thing, Avantasia, but it's the only way you've ever been.

Yeah.

What I say, people ask me, like, Hank, are you do have ADD, ADHD?

Yeah.

And I say, I don't know what I have, but whatever it is, I like it.

That's that's what I've gone with.

But it turns out

I recently found my assessment from when I was a child, where I was diagnosed with ADD or whatever it was called back then,

1998, 1988.

I think like 1988.

And

mom and dad were just like, yeah, that's fine.

He's got bigger problems.

You did have bigger problems because you had the sensory integration disorder.

Yeah, I had all kinds of learning dysfunctions.

Learning challenges.

Yes.

Yeah.

But the point is, you are where you are, and you're doing great, and we're proud of you.

And you're now going to answer this question from Zach, who writes, Dear Hank and John, John and Hank.

Dear John and Hank, is it easier to push or pull?

Oh, it's concisely yours, Zach.

Now, do not tell me the scientific answer to this.

I am not interested in your science.

Well, there is a scientific answer to it.

Well, there's a

engineering answer to it.

Okay, my scientific answer is that it's easier to pull.

That's right.

My heart answer is that this

answer pretends that all the human muscles are the same everywhere.

That is true.

Yes.

So

you're exerting less force when you pull.

Exactly.

It's easier to pull, but what if you have tiny little back muscles and huge pecs?

Yeah.

Well, it's really...

Then it might be easier to push.

I think that it's largely that it is

the legs that you want to have involved.

So the legs, did you, I don't know off the top of my head this stat, but somebody once asked me,

if you had...

to eat a part of the body to survive for a long time, what would it be?

The but.

It would be a leg.

Not the butt?

Well, the butt is, as you might have heard.

Oh, my God.

Do not give me butt is legs in this context.

Yeah, but regardless, that area, so like the quads, this is the far, by far the most calories of the body are in the legs.

Sure.

And

that's because those are by far the strongest muscles in the body.

And also, there's a lot of fat storage down there.

Sure.

So

those are the big muscles.

You want to be using those.

And oftentimes when you imagine pulling, you're imagining just sort of like leaning back and pulling with your arms.

But you're actually pulling a lot with your legs.

But when you're pushing, you usually are pushing all with your legs.

So what you have to do is pull by turning your whole body around so that, like, if you're, if I'm pulling you.

Oh, you pull like the way those strong men pull semi-trucks.

Yeah.

That's how you pull.

Semi-trucks?

Semi-trucks?

Semi-trucks.

Semi-trucks.

There's a lot of words for that thing.

An 18-wheeler.

Tractor trailers.

A big rig.

A Randy Jackson.

I've never heard that one, but I believe you.

A lorry is what they call it in the United Kingdom.

Yes.

And in America, they call it a Larry Whitaker.

A Stoops McGee.

They call it a highway bigman.

All right, I think we're good there, Hank.

The point is that when you're a strong person and you're pulling a semi-truck or an 18-wheeler or a big rig or a Stoops McGee, you are...

You're pulling, but you're pulling in the opposite direction.

You're pulling with your legs, which you're often not doing when you're pulling.

Although I guess you're still pulling with your legs.

The point being pulling is easier yeah there's something physically that where like if you're turned around but like this

yeah that kind of pushing is like it's different it's yeah also doesn't it a little bit depend on the object i think that it does like i think that a semi might not matter that much but i know that there's like i did this physics uh like literally i did a physics problem in high school or college that was like is it more efficient to pull or push a lawnmower and it was way more efficient to pull it but you don't pull lawnmowers because if you fall forward, it goes on top of the lower part of your body.

It's going to get you.

Yeah.

Reminds me of that horrifying and lovely poem by Philip Larkin about the hedgehog, groundhog.

I don't remember what kind of animal it is.

You want me to read it to you?

Not usually, but one never knows.

I have aphantasia for poetry.

Once people start talking weird, I can't hear them anymore.

I'm not going to talk weird.

I'm going to read it to you.

I'm going to read it to you the way that I would read it to you if it were a paragraph.

Okay.

So that you don't have aphantasia for poetry.

That works.

And by the way, it's so hard to do with poems.

Immediately you drop into, not you, but one, drops into poetry cadence.

If you're not moved by this poem, I don't know what I can do for you.

Okay.

The mower stalled twice.

Kneeling, I found a hole.

It immediately went into the poetry voice.

All right, I'll try it without the poetry voice and see if that helps.

The mower stalled twice.

Kneeling, I found a hedgehog jammed up against the blades, killed.

It had been in the long grass.

I'd seen it before and even fed it once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world unmendably.

Burial was no help.

I liked it.

I liked it.

It's not over.

Okay.

Next morning, I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence is always the same.

We should be careful of each other.

We should be kind while there is still time.

I think that there's something wrong with my brain.

Yeah.

I mean,

if you're not moved by we should be careful of each other, we should be kind while there is still time.

I don't know what to tell you.

Can you unlock your phone?

Can I try and read it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like it's yeah, this is gold.

People are going to love this.

I just, you, like the poetry voice.

I don't know how to not do it in the poetry voice, but try it.

The mower stalled twice.

Kneeling down, well, I want to, I want to add words because this isn't how people talk.

The mower stalled twice.

Kneeling, I found a hedgehog jammed up against the blades, killed.

It had been in the long grass.

I'd seen it before, even fed it once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world unmendably.

Burial was no help.

Next morning I got up and it did not.

Did not what?

Get up, buddy.

It's dead.

It did not.

Okay.

It's a dead dead hedgehog.

That's how this, a person would say this.

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the absence is always the same.

We should be careful of each other.

We should be kind.

Wow, there's still time.

I don't know.

I just like...

My way was better.

Let's let the people vote.

But not for a brain that can't hear when people start talking weird.

Like, I feel like I had to do so much work

to learn how communication works.

I hear you, and I believe you, like, you believe me that I have aphantasia, even though I struggle to imagine what that would be like.

I also struggle.

But let me tell you that you already do this very well, and you do it with songs.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm sure if I spent a lot of time with poetry, I would totally get it.

That's what I think.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I don't think it's like a fundamental way that I'm broken.

But like, I have it with comic books, too.

I can't read comic books well.

Really?

Because they're not set up the way that I

read.

Learns how to do stories.

Yeah.

It's just like a big leap to try and start understanding a new medium.

My only point is that we should be careful of each other and we should be kind while there is still time.

Yeah.

Yeah, especially in the long grass.

Especially in the long grass.

And let me tell you, we are in the long grass.

All right, this next question comes from Doozy, who asks, Hi from Melbourne, Australia.

My name is Doozy.

Rhymes with Bloozy.

Bandicoots are Bilbies or Bilbies are bandicoots.

Question mark.

It's very confusing and unclear.

They are endangered in Australia and super cute.

Now, Hank, if you had told me that a bandicoot is an actual animal, I would have bet my life savings against you.

I think I knew that, but I didn't know about Bilbies.

Bilbies also,

I would have betted against.

Anyway, Doozy says, they're super cute, and so it would be great for you to promote them and talk about them.

Thank you.

Doozy, I'm happy to promote them and talk about them.

I just don't know what they are.

I also don't.

i know what crash bandicoot is is that a bandicoot yeah are they that's what he's named after are they are they orange let's find out what's a bilby that's now that looks like a bunny well it's not because i'm sure that it convergently evolved to a bunny and it is in fact a marsupial because it's because it's from because it's from oceania and then a bandicoot it appears to be the same thing

it looks a little different They both have huge ears.

Doesn't look like Crash Bandicoot.

Crash Bandicoot looks like...

Crash Bandicoot looks almost nothing like the bandicoots that I've been exposed to in the last 30 seconds.

Yeah, I'm looking at Bandicoots and none of them have jeans.

None of them are wearing jeans.

None of them are wearing shoes.

And does Crash Bandicoot have gloves on?

I guess that's how he goes fast.

Yeah.

That's what helps him go fast.

He's got like driving gloves.

Can you remind me, is Crash Bandicoot a good guy or a bad guy?

He's a good guy.

I'm not entirely sure, actually.

When I think about what actually happens in the game,

I don't know if he's trying to make a good outcome occur or if he's not.

Is he like the Luigi to Sonic's Mario?

No, I think he is his own.

I think that

people saw Sonic and they were like, I we don't have Sonic, we need to make Crash Bandicoot.

Oh, Crash Bandicoot is like the Sonic for Sega, yeah.

He's like, Oh, we have Sonic at home,

he's like the Kirkland brand, he's the John Green to Hank Green, if you will.

Well, yeah, it was like they, somebody, I think Sega had Sega had Sonic, and then somebody, but I but I don't know that for sure.

That's just like the vibe I get because it feels like he capped it after

history

of Crash Bandicoot.

Okay.

I know

Sega was...

That's confusing for me.

Now, can you search for Sonic?

They took inspiration from other games such as Donkey Kong Country, Mario, and Sonic.

Not only that, they jokingly codenamed it Sonic's Ass Game.

What?

It's a direct quote from Wikipedia.

I'll remind you, it's not cursing if you're referring to Wikipedia.

What does that mean?

It's Sonic's ass game, Hank.

What's.

You know.

Crash Bandicoot is like Sonic, but an ass.

But he's not an ass.

He's a Bilby, as we just established.

In fact, right there in the name is Bandicoot.

It's true.

Wait, is Sonic is wait, is Crash Bandicoot in fact a Bandicoot?

We should answer that question next, or is that just his name?

The way some people are named Rabbit.

Yes, Crash Bandicoot is a Bandicoot.

Specifically, he is depicted as a genetically enhanced, anthropomorphic Eastern bard bandicoot

in the video game of his same name.

His ears look nothing like the adorable bandicoot.

He's genetically engineered.

But he was genetically engineered to make his ears less cute?

Yeah, no, so that he could be more powerful.

Sometimes cuteness is a diminished.

It can be a drawback.

It can be a drawback.

Yeah.

Is this what the Australian wanted us to promote as Crash Bandicoot?

I think the Australian wanted us to 1990s video game protection.

I think the Australian wanted us to promote the actual endangered animals, which we are promoting while also saying that Crash Bandicoot is not doing a good job, in our opinion, of depicting a bandicoot and is, in fact, mostly Sonic's ass game.

Right.

But Sonic's Ass Game continues.

There was just a Crash Bandicoot property released in 2023.

Trash Team Rumble.

Do you think Sonic's Ass Game is a better title for an album or a song?

Sonic's Ass Game, to me, I'll be honest with you, I'm having a hard time parsing it in a way that isn't about

how good Sonic is at that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like how well he fills out his genes.

That is how I parse it.

Yeah.

Sorry for all our five-year-old listeners, but I just don't know how to get around it.

We're just quoting Wikipedia.

Sonic's butt game.

He's got a good butt game.

It could be a donkey thing.

Could be a donkey thing.

He could be playing Pin the Tail and the Donkey.

Sonic's donkey game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's an ass game.

That's an ass game.

In fact, fact, I would argue the single most famous ass game is Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Uh-huh.

I couldn't come up with another one.

No.

I guess donkey riding, like donkey racing is Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong.

But he's not an ass.

He's just named Donkey Kong.

Dude, I just realized that Donkey Kong is not a donkey.

He's a monkey.

Oh, yeah.

That's like Crash Bandicoot not being a bandicoot.

It's like Sonic the Hedgehog being a bandicoot.

Or Sonic the Hedgehog indeed being a monkey.

Was Sonic the Hedgehog genetically engineered to be like him?

No, he came from space, bro.

Oh, do you know this because you watched the movie?

Yeah.

Ah.

17 times.

Ah.

He came from somewhere.

I'm not sure if it's space, but I think it is.

Right.

Yeah.

You haven't seen the movie?

No, but that would.

I mean, I am excited to have the Fermi paradox.

well and truly solved by the Sonic the Hedgehog file

film.

Do you know Jim Carrey said that he was retired from acting unless there was an extraordinary role that came along and then immediately after that took the role of the bad guy in Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

You know, I think by extraordinary he meant real fun or lucrative.

Extraordinary could be lucrative.

It could be.

But

I bet that role is really fun.

That's the thing.

I wonder how fun it all is.

Especially once you're good at it, you know?

That's what I've been writing.

You know what you're doing?

That's what I've been writing a novel about for the last several years.

What?

Whether or not acting in Hollywood and being

movie star is fun.

Oh.

Or whether, in fact, it is a trap from which it is difficult to escape.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's ask another question.

That's probably also an important question for us to ask, and for other reasons.

No joke.

This question is from McKenna, who asks, Hello, Hank and John.

My name is McKenna, and I had cancer three years ago, leukemia.

I made it out fine, but my mental worldview shifted dramatically.

I grew up going to Protestant Christian churches and consider myself to have faith in the Bible.

My hospital stay drastically changed me into an atheist.

Or if I do believe in God, I don't like the guy very much.

Believing in humanity is hard, and I've had a hard time coping with that transition.

Any advice?

I think we should turn to the cancer survivor on this one.

I guess, but I haven't had any crises of faith in my life.

That's true.

I have.

So you answer from the cancer survivor perspective, and I'll answer from the constant crisis of faith perspective.

Sure.

I mean, one thing

changing about cancer is that it's usually, not always, but usually you come out with a bunch of friends from that community and those people don't all make it.

And that was the case for me.

That

for me

isn't that hard to sort of place into the history of humanity.

Right.

Or, you know, sort of like my understanding of how physics and biology and chemistry work.

I honestly feel, in terms of humanity, I don't feel like I lost any appreciation for humanity because I saw a lot of humanity.

I saw a lot of humanity in the people who love me and the people who love

my friends who died.

I saw a lot of humanity in the healthcare system.

that obviously can be inhumane, but like in terms of the actual people in it are just a bunch of people trying to do their best given the systems that we have.

And I learned a lot about sort of myself and what I wanted and was a bit surprised and honestly

pleased, pleased to find that I wasn't worried about like missing the future.

I wasn't worried about, you know, lost income, though I, of course, had the privilege of not having to worry about that too much in terms of like practical considerations.

I was just worried about like not being there for the people who

I love

and what they would carry forward if I wasn't here.

And so that made me like kind of feel good about myself.

And it was like lessons that I feel like I don't want to lose a hold of.

I think part of what a lot of people struggle with in the wake of life-threatening illness, and I've had little glimpses of this.

I recovered from a pretty serious, somewhat life-threatening bout of meningitis, for instance.

But I haven't had the kind of glimpse of it that you've had or McKenna's had.

But I think a lot of what people struggle with is on the other side of that, like a lot of your preconceived notions are challenged.

Now, a lot of your preconceived notions weren't challenged, which is interesting, but I think McKenna's were, you know, especially if you grow up hearing everything happens for a reason or you grow up hearing like God has some kind of master plan for us.

And then you see up close that that master plan, if it exists, as McKenna says, is the kind of thing that where I don't like the guy very much.

Right.

I don't love the master plan.

Yeah.

I mean, could we have just like a like, you're a pretty clever guy up there.

Yeah.

Couldn't you have had a better master plan?

Yeah.

Or indeed, like, if the master plan is so far beyond my understanding, why was I given this ability to grieve so deeply and hurt so much?

Yeah, which we don't need to have.

We don't.

Well, I mean, we may, we may in order to

be ourselves.

Maybe.

But almost all the, in my experience, almost all the lessons I learned from my friends dying or from serious illness or whatever are lessons that I could have learned elsewhere more cheaply

that I didn't have to, in my opinion, anyway.

But part of what's happening for McKenna maybe is when they say, I have a hard time believing in humanity, is that they are struggling to see what you have seen, which is that people are capable of astonishing sacrifice and compassion and kindness and generosity, and instead is seeing a lot of what is also true of humanity, right?

Which is that humanity is monstrous and a catastrophe.

And how do you hold those competing ideas in your mind at the same time?

I don't have an easy answer for that, but I think you have to.

Yeah, I also, like, I don't,

I just do, you know.

I know.

Yeah.

You are able to, but a lot of us struggle to.

We want a simple, straightforward answer to: is humanity good or bad?

Is humanity good news or bad news?

Is humanity a gift or a curse?

Like, is consciousness itself something to be reveled in or something to be despised?

But you have a hard one with that.

Like, here's the thing.

Yeah.

I, because I'm, I'm like, sort of

it and also outside of it, I feel very strongly that life is a good thing.

And so obviously, like, I'm part of life, but also

there is a way in which humans are sort of, you know, not just biological, but also cultural and technological.

And so when I'm like, from that perspective, I'm like, boy, it's good that life exists, but there is no suffering in a world without life.

Yeah.

So the fact that the only world without suffering is a world without life.

No suffering on Mars.

If we were to completely destroy all suffering, we could just imagine a world with no living things and it would contain no suffering.

And would that be a better world?

And

I don't have a philosophical reason why, but I just believe that it is better to have life.

Yeah.

And so in the same way, I believe that it is better to have culture and it is

better to have consciousness.

But it's hard to make sense of some of the ways that humans hurt each other.

Oh, yeah.

And

I don't think that ignoring or minimizing or diminishing the horrors we visit upon each other is the right solution.

Right.

I do think that there is space for curiosity about that, which isn't sort of like a first instinct that one has when it comes to horrors.

And there's space for eventual compassion, if not forgiveness, where there's just like a there and I'm you know

not not like a requirement but it is a thing that can happen and can be positive right but I understand having a hard time having faith in humanity and part of how I'm able to have faith in humanity is to believe that you know I am

walking alongside forces of love that are greater than myself right and that's part of how I do it Hank does it a different way

The last thing I'll say about it, McKenna, is that you're on a journey of meaning, to quote the great Hank Green.

You You are.

I don't think that was you, but okay.

Well, to quote the even greater John Green then.

But you are on a journey of meaning that lasts a lifetime.

Like that's what it, that's, that's what we do here is we try to make things easier for each other and try to understand as best as we can.

This next question comes from Shira, who asks, Dear Mr.

and Mr.

Greens, who is your favorite stand-up comedian or your favorite stand-up comedians that are mostly family-friendly?

Thanks for your dubiosity, Shira.

I enjoy Pete Holmes.

He's mostly family-friendly.

I'm actually not positive.

Vibe-wise, he definitely is.

Yeah, yeah.

He might curse now and again.

Yeah.

But vibe-wise, he's family-friendly, and I find him very funny.

He's very funny.

He's also...

He sends up some of my other favorite comedians, like Mike Brubiglia,

who is also my friend.

He sends up Mike Brubiglia in ways that are like simultaneously generous and knowing.

There's something about...

I have seen that clip.

My son calls this bullying, but he's 15 now and he calls, he refers to like when he and his friends bully each other, but he means it in a kind way.

Right.

They spar.

They spar.

There's something about being knowingly and lovingly made fun of that is better than being knowingly and lovingly complimented.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it comes down to individual people.

I know people who do not like this kind of communication.

I do.

Yeah, me too.

I love being teased if it's, if it's from someone I truly love in a way that's truly no good.

It's hard to do well.

Yeah.

So when someone does it well, it's like, oh, it's because you get me.

You know me.

You know how to like, you know how to hit me in that spot that's like

that's strengthening that spot instead of weakening it.

I remember once I asked my friend Maureen Johnson if my eye looked weird.

I said, does my eye look weird?

And she said, I think we've found the name of your memoir.

Which reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by, Does My Eye Look Weird?

The new memoir from John Green.

Oh, yes.

Today's podcast is also, of course, brought to you by Crash Bandicoot.

Crash Bandicoot, this is really the only podcast where you can get a little bit of post-cancer life mulling and Crash Bandicoot content in the same 60 seconds.

This podcast is also brought to you by the human leg.

The human leg, the most calorie-dense part of the body.

and today's podcast is brought to you by the long grass the long grass how do we get out of it

we're here we're here

we're in the long grass because we're in the long grass that's right so you know when a new shirt just becomes your go-to that is what happened to me when i picked up a few new pieces from quince they are my everyday shirts if you see me in a button-down it's almost certainly a quince button down because they're the first things i reach for in my closet lightweight comfortable and always on point quince has all the things you actually want to wear like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners.

And by working directly with top artisans to cut out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without crazy markup.

So elevate your closet with Quince.

Go to quince.com slash dear hank for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e dot com/slash dear hank to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash quince.com/slash dear hank.

This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Factor.

There's so much going on.

And if there is a strategy available to you so that maybe you can outsource a little bit of the labor to somebody else, that's something you might want to take a look into.

Well, Factor helps me eat smarter with tasty, chef-prepared meals that are dietician-approved and delivered right to my door.

And now, with more than 65 weekly meals made for how I live and what I like to eat, I've got more ways to get a real meal regardless of what has been tossed into my inbox.

The variety is a big deal for me because there are a lot of different ways that a lot of different people like to try and eat healthy.

I've got my own version of that.

Also, I'm allergic to shrimp, but they do have premium seafood choices like salmon, which I can eat, and shrimp, which maybe you can at no extra cost.

This is the only body I've got, and I like to try to be kind to it by not having no food in the house and running to the grocery store to get a chicken tender and honey mustard sauce and having that be my lunch.

You could also savor some new flavors for the first time.

Factor's got some Asian-inspired meals.

There's some Chinese dishes, there's some Thai flavors, more choices, and better nutrition.

According to Factor, 97% of customers say Factor helped them live a healthier life.

That's a big deal.

Sour cream and chive chicken, smoky barbecue chicken breasts with mashed potatoes, cream corn, and chive butter green beans, cheesy bacon pork tender wine with mashed potatoes?

Eat smart at factormeals.com slash dearhank50 off and use the code hank50 off to get 50 off plus free shipping on your first box that's code dear hank50 off at factor meals.com for 50 off plus free shipping get delicious ready-to-eat meals delivered with factor All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I have to mention a couple things.

First off, a lot of people have written us about beef days.

Now, beef days is a concept that you and I have embraced wholeheartedly, where instead of having beef whenever we feel like it, we have beef on a few certain days throughout the year wherein we celebrate beef days.

This has cut my personal beef consumption by like 90%.

And you said you felt like it was a terrible failure because lots of people didn't get involved in beef days and it didn't really change the culture.

And the hardest thing in the world to change is social norms.

Hundreds, I'm not exaggerating, of people have written in to say that they also celebrate beef days.

So if we find ourselves at the end of our lives in front of St.

Peter's gate and he lets us in,

just know.

Beef days was part of it.

Beef days was part of it.

Now I'm not going to get into heaven.

In this hypothetical world where St.

Peter exists and you go up to the gates, everyone knows that I'm going to get up there and immediately St.

Peter's going to stare me dead in the eyes and say, I think we both know.

And I'm going to say, yes, indeed, I know.

And he's going to say it was the LaCroix.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a whole household problem, it seems to me, having had your children in my home.

My children love LaCroix.

They're also not going to go to heaven because of the LaCroix.

They're going to be like, you,

even though you quote unquote recycled all this aluminum, the aluminum came from somewhere, buddy, and you knew.

There is a solution to this problem.

You're going to say a soda stream, but I love my LaCroix.

No, there's a solution to this problem that has not yet been invented.

Okay.

Which is whatever soda carbonator does as good a job as LaCroix.

LaCroix on tap.

LaCroix, a keg of LaCroix.

Oh,

you're speaking my language.

I mean,

this Midwesterner just got a shiver that went all through his body.

You got to go to like a dram shop and just bring your Crowlers to put up with LaCroix.

That sounds so good to me.

I mean, I've always thought that there must be a way to make LaCroix at home.

It's not complicated.

All right.

But what are you, what's your concern?

What's why is it not as good to have a home?

Because you have a home carbonator.

I do, and I use it sometimes, but it's just not as good as LaCroix.

Is it the flavor or is it the bubbles?

It's both the flavor and the bubble.

It has worse bubbles.

The best tweet of all time was when somebody said a LaCroix flavor is like you're drinking

plain soda water, and somebody in the next room shouts, grapefruit.

Yeah.

That's that's that's the exact amount of fruit I want, and that's the exact amount of fruit they give me.

Yeah.

I just had one of your spend spend drifts, whatever it's called.

Spend drift is a great actual

modification of this name because you spend.

You do.

It ain't free.

And it's like instead of having an artificial, whatever LaCroix has, they have

actual fruit juice.

It's terrible.

I'm not interested in it at all.

I love them.

They're so good.

So good.

It's like on the packages like,

this, every one of these contains 17 cherries.

All right, Hank, we got one last question before we get to the all-important news from Mars and Anse and Wimbledon.

It comes from Rihanna who asks, dear Hank and John, trying to get my five-year-old to sleep the other night, I somehow wound up explaining to her how eventually there will come a time when there won't be any people left alive on Earth.

Oh, this really helps five-year-olds go to sleep in my experience.

But that Earth will probably still be here.

Yeah.

I was, of course, having feelings of extreme panic inside at saying this out loud.

I think I did a pretty good job of keeping it together and not letting the dread show.

Anyway, my five-year-old didn't seem panicked because she got excited and asked, when that happens, will dinosaurs evolve again?

Well, will they, Hank?

That's not a bad hypothesis, Rayana says.

Yeah, I look, we don't, what I can say for sure is that the Earth has a while.

Yeah.

And also, so, so in both ways,

there's less time than you think for the Earth, because everybody says, oh, the Sun's going to explode in five billion years.

Right.

But in a billion years, the Sun's going to be so hot that it's going to bake off the oceans.

Which is going to be a real problem.

So that's.

Because I'll remind you, we're mostly a water planet and we're mostly water-like.

We're just fish on land.

We're just fish on land.

And so boiling oceans will be a big issue for us.

Lack of fresh water will be a big issue for us.

Right.

So we've got about a billion years.

Which is important to note because that means we're in the second half of life on Earth.

Oh, yeah.

But we are not in the second half of complex multicellular life.

Right.

So for so much of the Earth,

it was just single-celled organisms or really simple multicellular organisms.

As far as like vertebrates go, we are probably at about the halfway point.

Wow.

Which is really interesting.

And not at all how I had been pitched the situation.

No, no.

If you think about vertebrates,

we're 50% in

to life being manageable.

Now, that tells me I think vertebrates are going to be super sticky, for lack of a better term.

I think vertebrates are going to hang around as long as possible.

Do I have a ton of confidence in humanity being there at the end of the vertebrate age?

I do not.

Right.

But I think that

it is possible that very sort of different looking vertebrates could evolve in the future.

It's going to be very dependent on a lot of different things on the level of heat and the sort of composition of the atmosphere, et cetera.

And I think it's entirely possible that another intelligent species could evolve if we totally obliterated ourselves.

That like, you know, primates could do it again or.

Primates could do it.

Yeah.

Maybe I'd be really interested to see what the birds could get up to, but they have like a they have like a problem with the wings.

Yeah.

They can't do stuff with their wings except fly.

Flying birds have had a long, long time to get smart.

Yeah.

And they haven't gotten all the way there.

Yeah.

They've gotten interesting.

They've gotten really interesting, pretty smart, but they haven't gotten all the way there.

I worry that they will struggle to get all the way there.

I think primates have a really good chance.

I think sometimes we underestimate the chance that raccoons have.

Raccoons have a pretty high chance, actually.

Because they've got the hands.

They got hands.

They got hands.

And they're already quite smart.

And also, they have evolutionary pressure toward getting smarter.

Do you think Jewel wrote the song, My Hands Are Small, I Know, but They're Not Mine.

They're Not Yours, They Are My Own, about raccoons?

Yeah, definitely.

I think so, too.

I just want to say that.

She followed you on Instagram if you want me to ask her.

Don't.

That's a weird first question.

I followed her back.

She's a weird follow.

Is she?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just followed her back in case you ever have occasion to DM Jewel.

Yes.

Just to be like, hey, Jewel, it's me, Hank.

Oh, maybe she could be on Ask Hink Anything.

From the internet?

I had a huge crush on you when I was in high school.

You want to be on my show?

Weird at all.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not weird.

For me, it was Natalie and Bruglia.

Really?

Yeah, and that was my big crush.

I feel like I came out on top on that one.

No, I don't know.

They're both really talented people.

Point being, dinosaurs could evolve again in the sense, here's how I think dinosaurs could evolve again.

And correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not a scientist.

And this isn't science.

This is guesswork anyway.

But what if you sort of get smarter, larger birds like ostriches, that become less and less mobile and less and less feathered

and have an evolutionary reason to get larger and larger, you're getting toward a dinosaur-like thing again.

And we've seen convergent.

I thought you were asking how birds could get smart.

But yeah, totally.

Well, absolutely.

And we've seen convergent evolution recreate things things that we thought were gone.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the hard part would be the arms.

So it's not really a T-Rex unless it's got arms with a little claws on it.

Yep.

But that has not, never happened.

There's a bird called the Watson.

When they're babies, they have little claws on their elbows, which is weird.

That they use to climb in trees.

So I guess,

in terms of intelligence, can I hit you with a weird idea?

Yeah, please.

So birds can do do a lot of manual dexterity.

Sure.

They don't use their forelimbs, of course.

They use their feet, but also they use their tongue.

I think it's totally possible that they could end up with a tongue hand in the same way

that giraffes kind of have like a nose hand.

Yeah.

Or I would argue many monkeys have a tail hand.

They do have a tail hand.

They do.

They do.

They do.

And I don't know what would prevent, honestly, the growing of a hand on the tail.

Now, I have some ideas about why this would be complicated, but

I don't know that it's impossible.

Five-limbed creatures.

I'd love to talk to an evolutionary biologist who's like deep into body planning parts of the genome

and how that all works, about whether or not the body could sort of just be like, well, I'm going to take the hand

system and just put that on the end of the tail.

That seems hard, but I'm not an expert.

Exactly.

So I think we agree that raccoons are likely.

If we boom snuffed out tomorrow, mammals would start to get bigger.

I think.

There would be evolutionary pressure for mammals to get bigger and their brains would get bigger.

I think that number one, probably, maybe not.

Number one would be primates.

Number two, I'm standing by raccoons because of their hands.

I think their hands are incredible.

People are going to be thinking about ocean life, and I think that there are problems there.

I think there are reasons why ocean life never civilization even though it's been around way longer than us i agree and i also think there are problems i think language as you know is a really important part of yeah of intelligence

civilizational intelligence you could do language with hand signals and stuff underwater no no no and you could do yeah

whales do it whales and dolphins do it i i think whales and dolphins have had a fairly long time to create really complex language and probably have done it and we just don't understand it but anyway that is true so point being whales and dolphins are possible but you think it's hard to build.

I think there's other problems.

I think that like...

You think it's hard to build temples?

Yeah, it's hard to build it all when you are an ocean animal.

Yeah, fair enough.

I don't optimize for moving through water, which does not help you optimize toward being able to build stuff.

I don't know how much you need to build to have a civilization.

I think you need specialization of labor.

But for all we know, dolphins already have that.

Yeah, well, you need, but you, well, what is labor?

What does that come down to?

You actually have to be doing stuff together.

Right.

Which is building.

Yeah.

Even if you're not building buildings,

you're building stories.

You're building something.

It's also extremely hard to do chemistry underwater.

Okay.

Good to know.

So chemistry is,

you know.

Was born underwater.

So like chemistry happens underwater, but if you want to do chemistry, you have to control the chemistry to control the chemistry in this pot and in this pot and then mix those two pots together.

That's very hard underwater.

Okay.

All right.

So these are some of the reasons why Hank thinks that water animals are unlikely.

I think it's primates number one by a mile.

Yeah, for sure.

Raccoon-like creatures number two.

And I would prefer that.

I would prefer raccoons.

We had a chance as primates.

Yeah.

Give them a crack at it.

Let's give them a crack.

Oh, and I think, just for clarity, they will do worse than us.

100%.

This is something that people don't understand about people, which is that we are incredibly powerful, and as a result, we cause a lot of harm.

But if you made another animal incredibly powerful, it would also cause a lot of harm and maybe more harm.

Yeah.

I don't know if you've hung out with a raccoon, but it might be worse.

They're super cute.

But man,

the drive is in all kinds of frenetic directions.

Yeah, I mean, so is ours, to be fair.

Yes.

But if you think a bunch of

I mean, if you think ADHD is good for civilization, then raccoons seem to have it in spades.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think we should give raccoons a chance.

I just think that they might be monstrous to each other, the way like chimpanzees rip off each other's faces and stuff.

Chimpanzees are also not nice to each other.

But nor are we.

No.

And bonobos are.

Maybe it'll be bonobos.

That's fingers crossed, man.

Oh, that'd be great.

That'd be great.

I might say

I might be able to hand it off if it was going to be bonobos.

Yeah.

Lots of pleasure seeking.

Yeah, good social bonding.

Deep social bonds.

Not a lot of outcasts within the community.

Yeah.

That would be better.

Less, but still.

Still, of course, it's always going to happen.

Now, let me throw out one final one that I think you're going to love.

Okay.

Dogs.

Dogs.

Yeah, sometimes they walk around on two legs.

Not that that's a necessity.

I don't think that's a necessity.

Absolutely not, but I think they do it sometimes just because it's cute.

They're very, it's interesting.

It would be interesting to see what dogs did without us because we have already selectively bred them to have a bunch of more

social things going on.

Exactly.

That's why I think there's a possibility

of a lot of people.

But now they're not off.

I will say if dogs don't make it as a kind of apex civilizational species I can see them being the raccoons pets no

they'd be that they'd because raccoons are so small oh they would be the like pack animals they'd be the pack animals they would be the horses

around raccoons and then raccoons if they could make it would be a way better size for a civilizational species this is a big issue for hank he thinks that we're too big we're too big raccoons way easier to get to space.

Way easier.

They're so small.

They eat less.

Now, that is the truth, Hank.

When we are visited by aliens, they will not look like us.

They will be tiny.

They will,

like, if actually they get to us,

there is a far greater than 50% chance that they will be smaller than us.

I think we're big.

I don't think that we understand how big we are.

Yeah.

It's possible.

Because we're looking at elephants all day thinking about how big they are.

But they, yeah.

I mean, we're, I think we're like fairly average when it comes to mammal size.

No, no, we're big.

We're big for mammals.

Think about all the chipmunks out there.

All the rodents.

Yeah, tons of rodents.

We're so big.

That's my, man.

If I get to do Smarty Pants again, we're too big.

We're too big.

If I get to do Smarty Pants, I'm going to steal that.

Okay, you should.

I would like to.

It's a fun one.

Yeah.

All right.

It's time to get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon.

I'll start.

AFC Wimbledon played their first game against promotion favorites Luton Town, and we lost, which is not a surprise.

We expected to lose, but the manner in which we lost was truly heartbreaking.

We lost on like a bad luck 85th minute own goal.

Well, that's a good sign, though.

It's a pretty good sign that our defense might be ready for league one, or else Luton Town hasn't fully clicked into gear.

But it did make me think, like, okay, we can

maybe survive.

We can maybe make it.

We've also signed some new players, and

everybody looked congealed, I would say.

At no point did it,

I watched the game.

At no point did it look like we were going to score a goal.

Like we did not, we had zero goal-mouth threats, but we looked very good defensively.

And Luton Town also did not look like they would score a goal except for this random, ridiculous thing that happened where it was just like stupid bad luck.

Yeah.

So on the whole, I emerged, and I'm going to be saying this a lot this season because we're not going to win a lot of games.

I emerged hopeful from this loss,

which is all you can hope for.

Nice, nice.

What's the news from Mars?

Well, the news from Mars is kind of the news from Jupiter.

And look, maybe we're just going to mix it up.

Yeah.

And do news from other planets.

News, news from non-Earth.

Messy up.

But this is also news from Mars.

So the Europa Clipper is a mission that is going to Europa.

Yeah.

It's very exciting.

Europa is a very exciting place.

Now, we think that life could be on Europa.

We think that life could be in Europa for sure.

Okay.

Probably not on.

Be a little tricky to be on.

But

it may be in.

There's a lot of water in the moons of Jupiter.

It's liquid water.

Okay.

So on the surface?

No.

Okay.

On the inside.

So Europa Clipper is heading out to Jupiter where it lives and where Europa lives.

And

it has this

tool on it called Reason, which is a radar tool.

They want to calibrate this radar tool.

They want to test how it works.

And they could only do that so much here on Earth.

Sure.

But in order to get to Jupiter...

The Clipper is doing a gravity assist with Mars.

So you have to...

Mars news.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The Europa Clipper just went right past Mars.

So it's going right past Mars.

Getting a slingshot.

Getting a slingshot, getting pulled along a little bit to speed it up, get it out all the way out to Jupiter, which is hard.

And you don't want to carry fuel around that you don't have to because that's mass.

And you want to use that mass for science.

So it's headed out to Jupiter.

And as it does its flyby, they also...

got within like 500 miles of Mars and they tested out this thing.

They did some tests to see how it was working.

It's working.

They do some calibrations and now they have that already so they don't have to do it when they get to Europa.

You're just looking for good news, Hank.

And this is a little bit of good news in the world of space exploration.

Yeah, it means that this tool is working.

Okay.

And we are going to go to Europa.

Not, I mean, not personally, but with our...

No, and I love that.

With our hand satellites.

Our satellites are almost like extensions of our hands that reach out deeply into space.

Yeah.

And they can see in wavelengths we can't see in.

They can hear in frequencies we can't hear.

So it's true.

The monkeys have tailhands, but we have satellite hands.

That's right.

Which are I think sometimes we underappreciate how

beautiful it is that we have learned so much about what it means to be here despite each of us only being here for a little while.

It's wild.

It's wild.

And see, like, I understand why we focus on the problems because they need to be solved.

Yep.

But sometimes...

If we only focus on the problems, then it's like, why would we solve all these problems?

Everything is terrible.

Right.

Why would we even bother?

You can't fall into despair because despair doesn't tell the whole story.

Yes.

We, and the reason the problems matter is because we care.

And care is also something that would not exist without life.

All right.

We're off to film our Patreon-only podcast that we do once a month where we catch patrons up on what we've been up to and how we're doing.

It's a live stream, so it's weird to film it, but yes.

It will be filmed

in the sense that it's a live stream.

Yeah, I don't really think about the fact that you can watch it afterward.

And people do do that.

But it won't be filmed in the sense that there will be no tape.

So I probably could have used a better word for that.

We're about to do our Patreon-only live stream.

There you go, Hank.

And we...

We find out about that at patreon.com slash dearhankajohn.

That's what I was going to say.

Thank you for podding with me.

It is always a pleasure, especially when we get to be together in real life.

It's nice.

We should do it all the time, but I would have to live...

In Indianapolis, because I'm not moving to Missoula.

It's very expensive here.

This podcast is edited by Ben Sport Out.

It's mixed by Joseph Tuna Medic.

Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosianna Halls, Rojas, and Hannah West.

Our executive producer is Seth Radley.

Our editorial assistant is Daboki Trokravarti.

The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gonarola.

And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.