426: The Hank Green Twitter Memorial Garden

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.

Yeah.

They robbed a calendar store and they got caught.

Terrible news.

Hmm.

They each got six months.

John, I recently, I was watching a Conan O'Brien podcast and he was talking on his Conan O'Brien podcast about the ads that he gets on Instagram Reels.

Do you get ads on Instagram Reels?

Oh, yeah.

I have never

been served an ad.

Wow.

Well, you are clearly a very special little boy.

Congratulations.

Well, what is it?

I'm not specialer than Conan O'Brien.

I assume that you've been somehow whitelisted as a user they do not want to show ads to.

Maybe you're immune to advertising.

You know what what I get ads for the most, actually.

What do you get?

What do you get?

I get ads for the Awesome Socks Club and Keats and Co.

Coffee and Tea.

I would say every fifth reel.

Yeah, well, they know what you're into.

Yeah, I mean, they know what I'm into, but I'm already a customer.

You can't convert me a second time.

It reminds me of the all-time great Amazon toilet seat review where the person wrote, Amazon's algorithm has become convinced that since I bought a toilet seat, I'm in the market for hundreds of toilet seats.

It's hard to tell.

And also, you could always buy more at good.store.

It is an amazing extent to which they identify your interests.

For example, now when I go onto Twitter, which of course I never do, and wouldn't

gross.

I'll get a bunch of content in addition to the

sort of scum at the bottom of the barrel of humanity.

I will occasionally get a piece of content about Hank Green.

And I'm like, boy, you know my interests.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

I mean, how used to it?

I had to search for that.

What's it like to, what's it like to be hanging out in the internet's worst cesspool?

It's

saying something.

It's so bad.

It's scary.

I mean, I don't want to talk about it.

It is horrifying.

Maybe.

I'm just going to throw it out there.

You should stop going.

Yeah.

I do think that I am there largely to feel sensations.

Like it provides sensations in ways that the other platforms don't.

And by sensations, I mean fear, anger, disgust,

outrage,

all the major feelings that one seeks in life.

It knows which ones I'm really looking for.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'd rather see a toilet seat advertisement.

Oh, for sure.

I'd rather see.

It'd be great if the internet was nothing but toilet seat advertisements, if they just replaced the entire thing with toilet seat ads.

I feel like that would genuinely be a step up for society.

I mean, I don't see any strong signs that the near-term influence of the internet has been good.

TikToks really got me pegged as a guy who would like to build a small army of men to shoot zombies.

Oh, they're always giving you ads for those

mobile games.

Yeah.

And it's like, not this one.

This one's a good one.

And I'm like, I don't believe you.

I believe if you're paying this much money to acquire me as a customer, there isn't a way in which it's not going to extract a great deal of money from me once I download it.

No, that's absolutely right.

That's the right impulse.

And in general, that's always the case with advertising, except for when you're advertised items from Good.store.

One thing you know is that money is not going to go to some guy somewhere.

It's going to go to make the world a better place.

And you're going to get good stuff.

We got that going for us.

We are participating in a different kind of capitalism that I find a little less problematic, but only a little.

Let's move on to a question from Raquel, who writes, Dear John and Hank, if you had to name something after your brother, what would it be?

You can choose anything and the other brother cannot stop you.

For the sake of names, Raquel.

This is a great thing.

We've both already got one.

What's named after me?

Well, what do you think a John is?

No, no, no, man.

I'm not talking about a toilet or like anything.

They're saying like, if you could name a park after them or a bridge or anything on Earth.

Oh.

Oh, well, I thought it was like a thing.

Like, do you know what a Hank is?

Isn't it an amount of yarn?

It's an amount of yarn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For a long time.

That's the right amount.

If you Googled Hank Green, you'd get green yarn.

I don't know why I would have Googled Hank Green so many times in my life.

Yeah, it's not a great sign.

I have to say that for many years I Googled John Green a lot.

And then the internet broke me.

It broke me like a wild horse that couldn't be broken.

It taught me that, in fact, I am not a buck and bronco.

I am just another docile horse that is subservient to man.

I completely gave in and do not Google myself anymore ever.

For me, the internet, the horse that is the internet kicks me in the leg, shatters my femur.

Yeah.

My femur heals, and I'm like, that's fine.

And I will, it'll never happen again.

And also, this femur, strong as ever.

And then it happens again.

And I'm like, turns out the femur was not as strong as I thought.

Yeah.

Turns out I still have some bone shards in there.

Yeah.

I think I would name Twitter Hank Green.

I would name it Hank Green's social media service.

Yeah.

And then Hank would be so inundated with Google messages, he could no longer successfully Google himself, which I really do think, Hank, like one day you're going to come to me and you're going to say, I stopped Googling myself.

And I'm going to be like, you did it.

Like, you achieved enlightenment.

That was the last thing you needed to shed in order to become the truest version of yourself.

John, I think that you...

You know those bananas that never turn green, but like that's what they never turn yellow.

That's what they're supposed to do.

And you like eat, like eat coconut a different way?

Plantains?

maybe

it could be

yeah i know i know about plantains well those are john greens now or maybe it's it's like a variety of plantains actually i would love to name a park after you

but not not in missoula can i do can we can it be a really weird park you know what i want me to do john what can i tell you my idea Oh, God, yes.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to create a sort of a contemplative walk, you know, like a labyrinth, you know, one of these places where it's just like you go to spend time with yourself in your mind.

And in the same way, there's a place near Missoula called the Garden of a Thousand Buddhas, and it's a sort of a contemplative walk place.

And they have inscribed stones that have like Buddhist thoughts on them.

There's more Buddhas than I would have expected at the Garden of a Thousand Buddhas.

There's a thousand.

Yeah, I guess that I didn't understand how small a number in the scheme of things 1,000 is.

Yeah.

Yes.

I was imagining just

a vast expanse that stretched out to the horizon of Buddhas.

Yeah.

And I got sort of a solid acre of Buddhas.

Yeah.

But it's a nice contemplative walk.

And I like a nice contemplative walk.

And I want one that's like in just like sort of lovely and has

features, but I also want the rocks to be inscribed with drill tweets.

It's a bad idea.

That's not a good idea.

Or just like, maybe just like classic tweets.

Just like it's a memorial to Twitter because I do actually grieve for it a little bit.

I know that I'm weird, but I know that there are other people like this too, or at least one other person who is like this too, because I've talked with them about it.

But I'd like there's a, there's a, like in the same way that like Vine gets to live on on TikTok and like Vine compilations and stuff, I'd like there to be like a physical manifestation of good, of like some good in quotation marks.

They're not going to be Buddhist cones, you know?

They're going to be dumb tweets, but like dumb tweets and like a celebration of like how dumb humans are.

And I just want, I like want a memorial.

I want a memorial to Twitter, which is the stupidest thing I've ever said.

I hadn't really considered that that's what the thought actually was until I said it out loud, but that's what I want.

I want a nice contemplative walk with dumb tweets inscribed into stones that line the walkway.

What would some of those tweets be?

Do you have have any in mind?

What about this one?

Does anyone think global warming is a good thing?

I love Lady Gaga.

I think she's a really interesting artist.

That was Britney Spears.

In one tweet.

Also, Ed Balls.

Like, you just have Ed Balls.

Do you know Ed Balls?

No.

Ed Balls is a British politician, I think.

And he once tweeted the words, Ed Balls, period.

And that's the whole tweet.

Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not sure that it's worthy of a memorial garden.

I can think of greater things that we did as a culture that we should sort of, because that's what a memorial garden is all about, right?

It's about lifting up the best of us.

I guess I'm going to submit that Twitter was never the best of us and that you are remembering it that way.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

No, I'm not.

I don't think Twitter was ever the best of us.

I think that we should mourn our idiocy.

I think that we should celebrate the dumb little flaws of humanity.

Like we were given this tool to say anything we wanted in the whole world.

And and look a hundred percent one one thing i know for sure is 200 years from now twitter will not be a thing microblogging will not be a thing people will not do this anymore because they will have realized that it rots your brain and it rocks society we only remember yellow journalism for like the bad parts but there's also stupid parts dumb little parts of yellow journalism that just have been forgotten and i want the dumb little parts of twitter to have a little walk where you walk and you're like god we're dumb all right like expand.

Yes, expand it.

I actually think the problem is that you're so married to Twitter and that lots of other people use Reddit or Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram.

And I don't think any of this stuff is going to exist in 200 years.

For sure.

Yes.

There might be a video sharing platform in 200 years, but I don't think there will be anything else.

Yeah, I agreed.

My concept would be a memorial to the social internet.

And I wouldn't make it only dumb, fun things.

I would also make it an overall memorial.

The way when you go to like President Nixon's presidential library, they're like, yeah, I mean, he made some bad calls.

Yeah, I mean, an overall memorial to the social internet as a way of saying also, this is over.

We should stop.

And we're all very sorry.

We're sorry and we're ending it.

It's like, it's like a memorial to cigarettes.

Like, this was fun.

There was a lot to recommend this at the time.

And now that time is.

Yeah,

there was a solid 300 years of tobacco smoking and then there was like 50 years where we knew but we didn't know no or we knew but we hadn't accepted which is the part that we're in now with the social internet the hank green memorial twitter park but i'm not dead twitter is

I like the parenthetical a lot.

And then eventually you can just like scrape off the parenthetical when you do die.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a million dollar idea.

It's great.

I'll charge people to get in and I'll charge them cigarettes so that I can give them away to underage teens,

thereby capturing what Twitter was really, really good at, which was basically selling children Lucy's.

It's sort of metaphorical Lucy's, but that's what Twitter was the whole time.

It was selling children Lucy's.

It's just like, would you like more cigarettes?

Yeah, we have an infinite number.

They won't provide you with feelings yeah no listen there's 20 there's 20 cigarettes right here but if you scroll down there's 20 new ones forever

put them in your brain let us decide what reality is for you that'll be fun yeah yeah yeah let's decide for you what you're gonna feel today you'll like it uh you won't like it but you'll like it it'll be a really weird thing for you but you're gonna be into it you're not gonna be able to stop so you must like it what were we talking about being chronically online this next question comes from Gnome, who asks, dear Hank and John, when a balloon gets released, how far up can it go?

I'm guessing it may burn up at a certain point.

Could a balloon theoretically be made structurally stable enough to make it all the way to space?

What then?

I hope this question blows you away, Gnome.

Great one, Gnome.

I got an answer before you answer it.

Yeah, hit me.

I think a spaceship is essentially a slightly hardened balloon.

No.

Yeah, it's a balloon.

It's a nice, it's a very fancy hard shell balloon.

The defining factor of a helium balloon is that it rises because of buoyancy.

The defining factor of a spaceship is that it rises because of rocket ship power.

All right.

Well,

that's a pretty big difference.

I've been proven wrong in a single sentence.

Move on.

I mean, this is so unlike Twitter for you to just accept being wrong about something.

I really need you to push back on me, but like in the stupidest way possible.

You want me to double down?

No, no, no, you got to turn it back on me.

You got to be like, you got to be like, so you're saying that it doesn't, that, that the only thing that matters is how you get higher in life?

What could be more privileged?

Oh, my God.

So, uh, so the reason the balloons go up is because they're lighter than air.

We know that.

Yeah.

So they're not going to go up when the air is really, really light.

Yeah, when, when, when they actually become more dense than the air.

but what actually happens is that part of what's going on with a balloon is that the air it like inside and the air outside are not totally equivalent so blow up a balloon there's actually more air on the more there's more helium molecules on the inside than there are molecules on the outside that's what's pushing the balloon outwards so it doesn't flop down

so pressure pressure is actually higher inside it's just that the molecules weigh less or the atoms, the particles weigh less.

And then and as it goes up, the outside pressure gets lighter and lighter and lighter, and the the balloon gets bigger and bigger and bigger because there's less pushing on it from the outside and more pushing on it from the inside until at a certain height, the balloon pops.

And so you have to make, in order to, like, one thing you'll see is like when you do a, like a big old weather balloon to go really, really high up in the air, when it's low down, it doesn't look very big.

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it gets higher because the air pressure around it is getting lower and lower.

It's pushing on the balloon less.

They have the same number of particles inside, but they look much more inflated.

And then eventually that difference becomes so large that it will tear the balloon.

So the guy who took a balloon to space and then jumped out of it and parachuted down to Earth, remember that guy?

Uh-huh.

He just passed away.

He did.

I recently found that out.

Point being.

The Twitter and

Felix Baum Gardner Memorial Garden by Hank Green.

I don't think you want that one.

That guy was really radicalized by the social internet, actually, as it happens.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Really?

For real.

No, yeah, that's not a joke.

Don't look it up.

Okay.

It's super disappointing.

Point being, he was at the edge of space.

He wasn't in space, right?

Because you can't be in space.

Correct, for sure.

Yeah, 100%.

Not a guy.

But he just came from very, very high up where he could see the curvature of the Earth and everything, and then came down to what I consider to be Earth.

Yeah.

But even in some ways, he was in Earth the whole time because he was in our atmosphere still.

Yeah,

he was just as much on Earth as you when you're jumping.

I mean,

yeah,

sort of.

I see what you mean.

You know,

it's pretty crazy that you can jump and then the sky is under you.

Yeah.

No, you're basically parachuting out of an airplane every time you jump.

And that's why John hates it so much.

I don't love jumping.

Not a fan.

All right, this next question comes from Gwen, who writes, Dear John and Hank, but mostly John, can you please explain to me why so much of sports talk about players switching teams or retiring makes it sound like they are talking about like racehorses or something or like goods being traded?

Are players offended by this?

Should they be?

It always sounds extremely weird to to me as someone who does not partake of sports ball.

PNP, Gwen.

Now, Hank, you may remember when I bought a player for AFC Wimbledon, I made a video that said, I bought a player for AFC Wimbledon.

And a lot of people were like, whoa there, that's messed up.

It's 2025.

We don't buy people.

You can't be buying a player.

And I was like, you're right.

There is something wrong with the language, but there is also

there are two competing facts that we must hold in our head at the same time, which is that the player is an asset and the player is a person.

An asset in the sense that their future playing has value to the economy.

This is not just true of sports ball, by the way, right?

This is also true of all of us.

And so if you've signed a 10-year contract that some other company has to pay off in order for you to join their company, like that's a trade of you as a human being, but also a trade of the value of your asset.

Now, most of us don't sign those contracts because most of us don't work in those fields, but there are some fields like that.

Some AI jobs are like that, et cetera.

Okay.

As for whether the players feel weird about it, I only have a couple of friends, real friends, who are professional athletes.

And yes, they feel weird about it and also are like highly, highly cognizant of how messed up it is that billionaires are trading millionaires for their physical assets.

That like, yes, that is a super weird phenomenon.

of the 21st century that didn't really exist in the same way before the big sports era.

Now, like,

as a result, a lot of player contracts are much higher than they used to be.

So, like, if you're in the fourth or third division of English football, you make a pretty good living, which was not the case 20 years ago.

But there is something very weird about the idea of like the rights to you as a player being like a saleable asset.

Like, that is weird.

That we should be bothered by that, I think.

Is there a way to do it that's not that?

Yeah, I think the way to do it that's not that is to have, and this would not work, just to be clear, but if players had complete freedom of movement and signed like one game contracts or like you got paid per game, then that would solve the problem.

Then you could go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted for more money or whatever, but like...

That would create its own set of problems and would not be very practical.

So I think this way benefits players in a lot of ways, especially in sports that have

good contracts with their owners or in sports like football where the owners are always at risk because of the prospect of relegation.

But, like, the owners have to be able to experience some risk one way or another in order to motivate a good market, right?

So, like, it's one of my issues with, say, American football is that often NFL players are underpaid relative to their value in part because there is no like second NFL that you could go to.

Right.

There's like much inferior professional leagues like the CFL, but in soccer, you know, La Liga is almost as good as the English Premier League, and the league in Italy is almost as good, and the league in Germany is almost as good.

And there's lots of different ways to make a living, and so you can kind of pressure the market that way.

Are there a lot of German players in English football?

There are increasingly, because now the English Premier League is so much bigger than all those other leagues that, like,

people are moving over, like Florian Wurtz, who just became a player for Liverpool, for instance.

So, yeah, it is weird, Gwen.

I don't think you should think that it's not weird, but I also think that, to Hank's point, there's no easy way to make it better.

You know, I mean, already, like, most professional football leagues in the U.S.

have pretty strong unions that can collectively bargain.

I think in the case of the NFL, they need to collectively bargain a little more aggressively.

But, like, there is still significant advantage to those contracts.

But, yeah,

my friends who are professional footballers all think that it's weird.

That's so interesting.

I would have expected that you just sort of like, well, this is how things are.

And, and, like, you know, if you get traded to a better team, that's really exciting.

you sign a new contract that's like a kind of dream come true situation oh i think it absolutely is i i think it absolutely is but i think there's something weird about the idea of your rights being

like

and and and players in in england players have way more control over where they go a lot not not all the time but usually they have more control in where they go so they have some say in where they go like in in baseball you can just find out one day like oh you've been assigned to the red socks and also you're no longer a major league baseball player you're now for playing for their minor league team like that could just happen to you one day.

Yeah, yeah.

Hockey, it's always funny like that when a new hockey player is like traded to the team, they always do like an interview with them and they're like, so why are you excited to move to Seattle?

And they're like, oh, I mean,

why am I excited to like get my kids out of their school and drive them across the country like and like deal with all of the fallout and my wife losing all of her friends and me like having to make a bunch of new friends.

Like I don't really care about Seattle.

Like I had a life, but they have to, like, fake it.

You know, they have to be like, oh, Seattle, the Space Needle, all the things that I've heard about Seattle, I guess.

Yeah.

But you're just a, you're a hockey player.

So you're

brutal.

It's even more brutal when they come to a new third-tier English football club, Hank, where they have to be like, yeah, I mean, I haven't really caught up on the history yet

of Winging Town Bulges.

But I hear that the Winging Town Bulges fans are like no other fans in the country.

I'm so excited to get started working here at Wingingtown.

No, the full name of the town is Wingington Bulges.

Oh, okay, I see.

Winnington Bulges.

So it's the Windington Bulges Wanderers is the name of the football club.

Yeah.

What do you think was the sort of historical

trade in Wingington Bulges?

Do you think it was cobbling, shoemaking?

Yeah, no,

it was a quarry town.

So Wingington

is the town, and then there's a suburb called Wingington Bulges where the quarries are.

And that's where the football club is located because

their great rival

is Wingington, Wingington.

Wingington South.

Wingington South.

Wingington Wednesday,

who, of course, play primarily on Saturdays as

it goes in English football.

That reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Wingington Bulges Wanderers FC.

Wingington Bulges Wanderer FC has never been a better time to get a season ticket.

This podcast is also brought to you by the Hank Green Memorial Twitter Garden.

Twitter is dead, not me.

For now.

And today's podcast is brought to you by balloons that go almost to space, but literally can't go to space.

That's a metaphor.

And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Goodstore.

Goodstore, sending advertisements to John Green and money to partners in health.

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

Fall, it's here.

It's lovely.

It feels like a reset.

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Hank, we've got another question from Clarissa, who writes, Dear John and Hank, does a bloody Mary actually ease your hangover?

Doesn't the body take a while to process that alcohol?

Is it all placebo?

Hoping you'll explain it all.

Clarissa.

P.S.

Hi from the Philippines.

Thanks for your tuberculosis advocacy.

I moved to London and nobody there talks about TB, and I hope one day that'll be true back home.

That's very nice.

Thank you.

I can't wait to go to the Philippines next month.

Oh, what?

What?

Yeah, for some TB advocacy work.

Amazing.

Enjoy.

I'm excited.

The only downside is that it is literally 12 hours time difference.

So it does not matter if you go left or right when you are leaving from Indianapolis because it's about the same flight length.

I hate Bloody Marys.

Oh, yeah, me too.

They're disgusting.

Like, if you'd given me a billion years and all of the ingredients in the world and said, make a bunch of cocktails, I never would have got to the tomato soup with vodka one.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

There is some truth to the hair of the dog, Hank, that if you...

Yeah, kind of.

I mean, in the way that it makes you feel everything less.

Do you want to talk about a dangerous game?

Forget Twitter.

Continuously eating dog hairs from dogs.

Hairs do bite you?

Hair of the dog is a dangerous game.

So I would, I generally recommend.

Now, some people say that there's B vitamins in the Worcestershire sauce, and that's the key because it supports brain function, and there's electrolytes in the tomato juice, and whatever, whatever.

But the truth is you could have a Gatorade with a B vitamin like that

on the table.

That's that's also available to you.

Yeah, I think that's the best strategy.

In general, the best strategy, and I learned this from my best friend, Chris Waters, who told me once we were at a party, and I was reaching for a beer, and he was like, let's leave in like 10 minutes.

And I was like, perfect.

And so I reached for a beer.

And he said, you know, nobody ever regrets not having the last beer.

Especially if you're about to leave, because the beer is to help with the party.

If you're leaving the party, you should not still be drinking.

Agreed.

Absolutely agreed.

Not only that, if you take that to its logical conclusion, the first beer is the last beer.

Nobody ever regretted not having zero beers.

As a person who has not been drinking much in the last few years, I can say there are parts of it I miss.

Yeah, the kind of socialization lubricant function.

Yeah, largely that.

Yeah.

There's also just sort of a pleasant, happy feeling that you can

get if the stars align.

Oh, you got to be real careful to ride that line.

It doesn't happen every time.

And that makes it, that's just like casino vibes.

Like, yeah, perfect.

I'm going to pull the lever and see.

I do love a casino.

Yeah.

I don't, but I love other kinds of similar things.

You love Twitter, which is the ultimate casino.

And

this whole job that we have.

That's true.

A lot of randomized rewards in our career for better or worse.

It's real weird.

Real weird.

It's a real randomized punishment, too.

What if you went to a casino and like every 30th pull you won and every 60th pull it kicked you in the nuts?

I think people would still go to the casino because

what actually happens is that people have a very negative experience when they lose money.

Like that's the you do kind of get kicked in the nuts nine times out of ten.

Yeah.

So alcohol is a little bit like that.

There is some some, so like, obviously alcohol can dull your sensations.

So that, that could be done for you.

But there's Tylenol as well that's available.

And there is something to like spicy food maybe for a hangover to just like get you out of it for a second.

It's, it's sort of a mental health.

It's a different discomfort.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like horseradish can be good at that, whereas just

get your brain focused on something else.

But I'll tell you what, my favorite hangover cure is, is one, not getting them, but then if I do, two, sleep, if I can make that happen.

I love, I love to sleep.

I enjoy a large breakfast.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Toast.

Followed by a long nap.

Yeah.

But in general, yeah, I just, I, I haven't gotten a lot of hangovers in the last like 10 years, thankfully.

But when I do get them, oh, it's like a two-day experience now.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, Hank, I got another question for me from Laurel.

who says, dear John and Hank, but probably mostly Hank, if we're being honest.

Laurel, you underestimate me.

Why do dogs smell like that when they're wet?

Every time I give my dog a bath, it's followed by three hours of that classic wet dog smell.

I call it the Frito's smell, Laurel, because it smells exactly like Frito's.

Oh, no, different smell.

That's the dog foot smell.

Dog wet smells a totally different smell.

Does not smell like Frito's.

Wet dog smells like Frito's.

End of sentence.

I have a dog.

We're smelling different dogs.

Clearly.

Shouldn't he smell good after having a bath?

I don't smell musty and weird and like a Frito when I get out of the shower, so why does my dog, Thanks, barks and baths, Laurel?

Does Laurel say that it smells like a Frito?

No, I added that for myself.

Okay, just making sure, because I think you're wrong.

Everyone is going to write in to say dogs, wet dogs smell like Fritos, and I don't want to deal with all that extra

smell like Fritos.

Dog paws smell like Fritos for sure.

Yeah, because dog paws are always a little wet.

Is there a reason for this, Hank, that you know of?

Yeah, I mean, dogs have, look, they have a lot more hair than us.

They got a lot,

must

like a they make a musky smell that uh that is a a communication between dogs so but yeah there's there's a bunch of stuff going on there that uh is is probably intentionally evolved in order for dogs to be able to communicate all right well that's helpful so there you go they smell like that to uh because they like to sniff at each other yeah and they got they got if you if you'd like to know there's some short chain fatty acids uh that can smell kind of sour and a little bit like gross, like roughly.

It's really salty.

And then there's like an earthy, musty smell,

which is that's from bacteria on them that produce that in the same way that a lot of our

body order smells made by bacteria.

And there's also some yeast byproducts that you're smelling.

So does that make it better?

No.

But thank you for sharing.

This next question comes from Ismar, who asks, dear John and Hank, I'm an avid fan of the work you do.

However, due to how busy life can get sometimes, I miss videos on your personal channel and I don't watch either of your shorts or TikToks because I don't watch shorts or TikToks.

But when I was watching Hank's latest video on Hank's channel, I was wondering, do you watch all of each other's videos that are not made or posted on the Vlogbrothers channel?

No, it isn't Mar is Mar.

John.

Yeah.

No.

No.

No.

I watch all the Vlogbrothers videos.

I do too.

I even watched your 20-minute Vlogbrothers video.

Sorry

well it has 2.8 million views so it's hard to complain uh i watched all of that i watch all vlog brothers videos and i have since 2007 i would say i watch most hank's channel videos like when the topic interests me what it usually which it usually does because it's my brother and so i'm interested but i wouldn't say i've watched every hank's channel video and then i would say i watch about three percent of hank's tick tocks yeah Yeah, I don't, I, I, I watch John's TikToks when they come across my feed.

I'm not going to tick tock.com slash John Green, whatever it is.

What's your TikTok?

Point being, you don't even know that I haven't made a TikTok in three months, I assume.

No, no, no, no.

That would surprise you.

Well, it wouldn't surprise me, but it's not something that I, if you could have told me that

you've made six in the last week, and I would be just as not surprised.

Right.

Yeah.

So I stopped making TikToks, actually.

And I may start again at some point, but for now,

I'm just not really interested in it.

Like, I just just don't feel the pull.

And unlike Hank, I don't feel an obligation to participate in social media platforms that aren't giving me much back.

Yeah.

As a citizen of the internet, it's a crampy time.

I don't know.

I don't know.

You mean like nervous making?

I guess I was thinking it makes me want to poop, you know, digestive cramps.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I've honestly felt that way since about 2016.

So

it's nothing new for me.

At any rate, there's no TikToks of mine to watch, Ismar, so you're not missing out on anything there.

There's John's channel live streams where I play FIFA with my buddy Stan.

You're not missing out much there either.

I bet Hank doesn't watch those.

I've not watched many of those.

And

yeah, yeah.

So there you go.

That's about the situation.

I'm trying to make stuff right now.

Like Hank is, we're kind of at an interesting crossroads.

I don't know that we've articulated this to each other, but I think we're at an interesting crossroads where I'm trying to make stuff for like extremely small audiences that I'm really interested in, you know, like

through the secret Patreon or through John's channel or whatever.

And you're trying to do like mass media communication about science, which I think are two different but equally valid responses to this moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The less valid thing, which I was thinking about trying to do some in the past, is like participation in the discourse.

Yeah.

Which is just, I don't know.

I just feel so hopeless about it now.

I don't know if it's very productive is the problem.

I might be wrong.

It doesn't feel productive to me right now.

But maybe it is.

I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how to like, it's just so boxed in on all sides.

But yeah, I continue to be excited about the

my ability to be a professional science communicator, which is really great.

It's a great job.

It's a good job.

But it's, it can be tricky.

Here it is.

I'm not always sure what the difference between a Hank's channel video and a Vlogbrothers video is.

I think that this is the problem I've set up for myself.

And so, what really determines whether it's a Hank's channel video or a Vlogbrothers video is whether I have to upload a Vlogbrothers video that day.

Often, not always.

There's stuff that I wouldn't put on Hank's channel.

Right.

But there's nothing that I put on Hank's channel that wouldn't be a good Vlogbrothers video, you know?

I've done everything.

It's not like there's a lane there.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a community focus that isn't on Hank's channel as much.

But, you know, part of building community sometimes is getting videos that get lots of views.

I was just looking at our analytics and I mean, it's really become an interesting divide.

Like, I still make videos that get a lot of views, but

in terms of people who aren't regular nerdfighters, something like 85% of the views that come in come in from your videos, which is really interesting.

And I, but I think it works.

Like, I think like you target the broader audience and like some of those people stay, and I target the people who stay.

I like it.

Yeah.

It's working.

And you, you definitely, like, it wasn't always that way.

You definitely back in the day loved to make a video that would get a bunch of views.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm writing, I'm writing one now that's not going to get a bunch of views, but that's about how I still care about views and I can't break myself of this habit.

Yeah.

The truth is, Hank, like we are not YouTubers in the traditional sense in a lot of ways, but like actually in most of the ways we are.

We are very much YouTubers.

We care about attention.

We compete in the attention economy.

We want to get views.

We want to get people to watch and like and care about our stuff.

And like, we like, we want, there's a bunch of YouTubers that I like care what they think about our content, you know?

That's interesting.

I don't, I don't feel that way, but that's interesting.

I mean, I care what they think about the project.

I don't care what they think about an individual video.

Okay.

Yeah.

But yeah, I've been, I've, I've been, I've been wrestling a lot recently with the question of why did I want this so badly?

and when I got it why did I hate it so much yeah that it being fame and and and outside attention

and I think I've gotten to the core of why I wanted it so much you know I didn't have it as a kid I was lonely I wanted to be popular all that stuff but I don't think I've gotten to the core of why I found it so unpleasant and sort of repulsive

and at the same time intoxicating, right?

Like it's much closer to my relationship with cigarettes, you know, than it is my relationship with anything else where, like, I'm grossed out by it and like horrified by my desire for attention, but at the same time, intoxicated by the attention itself.

And that's, that's a hard thing to like untangle or disentangle from everything, all my other motivations, you know?

Like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to separate out those motivations all the time.

Interesting.

I don't have the same negative vibes around it.

I know, I know, which I find admirable.

But you also don't mind the attention as much.

Right.

Yeah.

And I find those two things inseparable, like the fact that I don't mind the attention plus the fact that I want the attention.

Those are related, but you're saying that you want the attention, but don't like it.

I always wanted it, and I like it a lot less than I thought I would.

How's that?

Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That totally makes sense.

Things are not

what you think they are going to be.

No, for sure.

And like, I'm very grateful for the attention.

I really am.

Like, it's it's enabled a lot of wonderful things to happen in my life.

And

I'm super grateful for it.

And so that's part of what makes it so complicated to also find it unpleasant.

Let's move on to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, since I didn't expect to get so confessional.

Fortunately, no one whistles into the end of the pod.

What's the news from Mars this week, Hank?

I don't know.

I'm just very, like, there's only...

So we weren't.

You can't get two weeks of news out of the fact that there's probably life on Mars.

I mean, so like, the thing is that these, our episodes are currently coming out substantially delayed.

So when Mars is actually in the news, it feels weird because

people are like, yeah, no, I heard about that many weeks ago.

But yeah, no, that's where my brain's at.

Kind of the news from Mars is a little bit how the news from Mars has been covered, which I think it's been pretty good.

Yeah, I was going to say, most people aren't saying like this is irrefutable proof of life on Mars, but at the same time, they're saying this is a really big deal.

It's a little weird that NASA is currently being run by the Transportation Secretary because there is no administrator of NASA because it's not functioning super smooth over there.

Not in NASA, but in Washington generally.

And so that's a little strange to have like Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, get up and tell us about life on Mars, but he didn't do a terrible job of going through it.

And, you know,

it's been interesting to see everybody's kinds of takes, you know, like the different levels of communication and like, what are we going to talk about?

Like, what's the, are we talking to people who have some understanding of chemistry, no understanding of chemistry?

And the other piece of news from Mars is, I saw I did this video about,

you know, the news.

It got a lot of views.

Wild to me how

it's always such an education when a piece of content gets a lot of views because there will be people in the comments like, when I said, like, when you say life on Mars, I mean like dogs and stuff.

I I don't care if there's microbes on Mars.

And I'm like, wow, I am so far away from where you're at.

Microbes on Mars is actually, would be extremely, just so you know, that would be very big news.

But a lot of people are sort of like, that's not actually

why it's huge news.

And maybe you just assume that because it's been a huge deal to you for your entire adult life.

But it would be a huge deal because we've never established life anywhere else but Earth.

Yeah.

And it would also imply that life is in fact

either really, really common or else life is

co-evolved from Mars and Earth.

Yeah, yeah.

So either life is very common or life is able to travel between planets.

Both of which would be huge deals.

Yes.

No, that's a huge deal.

That's, I would argue, a bigger deal than the news from AFC Wimbledon.

I agree.

It's a big deal.

So what's going on?

What's what's I

texted you

because

what's going on at AFC Wimbledon because you're a fan whether you like it or not.

And I went, you know, I opened Google and it knows I care about AFC Wimbledon.

It was like, here's the score of the game that's happening right now.

I was like, oh, they're down by one.

That game's over.

And then I opened it two hours later and they won by two.

They went from

one nil down to two, one up.

They won by one, but yes, they won.

And they got two goals.

You weren't wrong for thinking that going 1-0 down meant the game was over since we have not come from behind to win a game in 600 days.

Oh, my God.

Are you serious?

So it had been a while.

I think that's right.

I only read it on Blue Sky, so it might be wrong, but I think it's right.

Anyway, it's been a while is the point.

And AFC Wimbledon went 1-0 down on a very annoying goal in a very bad first half.

I mean, we played a terrible first half.

I was frankly disgusted.

And then in the second half, we played great.

Jake Reeves, our captain, our talisman, gave us a goal back to tie the game.

And then Matty Stevens won a dubious penalty.

And

he finished the penalty, and we won the game 2-1.

And I had forgotten what it feels like to come from behind.

It was so exciting.

I was thrilled for the fellas.

Like, they had also forgotten that it was possible to win after losing.

They are now in 11th place.

And I mean, stop the count, Hank.

Let's just end the season right now.

11th place would be amazing.

It would be stupid good.

12 points after eight games.

We probably need about 51 points to stay up.

So

we're on our way.

We're on our way.

Certainly if we kept this up for the rest of the season, we would be easily safe.

But

the expectation is that things will take a turn at some point.

But for now, we're playing great.

Playing great.

This podcast would not exist without questions sent to hank and john at gmail.com.

It's true.

So thank you to everybody who sends you questions.

It's always a pleasure to read them.

This podcast, it's edited by Ben Swardout.

It's mixed by Joseph Tunamedesh.

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 Dabuki Chakravarti.

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

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