Hank: Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. 

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

Hank: This is a podcast where I, Hank Green, and John, my brother, will answer your questions, give you some dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars, the planet, and AFC Wimbledon. John, how you doing?

John: I'm doing well, how are you, Hank?

Hank: I'm pretty good, I've had a bit of an annoying day, I'll be honest. We can talk about that later, but first, can you have a short poem for us?

John: Sure, this is a poem to remind you that as annoying as your day might have been, it's better than World War I was. Today's poem comes from the great World War I poet, A. E. Housman, and here it is.

"Here dead lie we
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young." 

Hank: Oof. 

John: A. E. Housman's poem on death and war, and also I think the centrality of the body. This is something I've been thinking a lot about, Hank. It was really in the first World War that poets in Europe started to grapple with the question of the seriousness of destroying or endangering or acting violently upon a human body, because, you know, for most of European history for the last thousand years, the destruction of the body was secondary to the destruction or endangering of the soul, like, you know, the soul was gonna survive in a way that the body wasn't, and it was really in World War I when poets began to grapple with, you know, that in a world where maybe there aren't human souls or maybe the human soul doesn't survive the human body, that... began to grapple with kind of the seriousness of bodily destruction, and Housman did that very interestingly throughout his career, but I think also in that poem.

Hank: Well, my refrigerator isn't working.

John: Yeah.

Hank: Which is super annoying.

John: That is tough. You know what it reminds me of a little bit is that 20 million actual human beings died in World War I, but I'm sorry about your fridge.

Hank: I've been shuffling materials around and knocking on neighbors' doors so that I can put my frozen vegetables in their freezers and boy, what a... You've ruined all of my complaint, John, I can no longer complain about the thing I wanted to complain about.

John: Can I ask you a question and/or provide you with some dubious advice?

Hank: Okay. Go ahead.

John: When you've paid 89 cents for a small container of frozen green peas, I'm not entirely convinced it's necessary to expend the effort to walk to your neighbor's and beg for a bit of their freezer space.

Hank: Well, it's not just that, John. Katherine and I worked very hard to prepare a great deal of pesto with the ridiculously abundant basil plants in our backyard, and that was a long, long time invested in what is delicious, delicious pesto.

John: Wow.

Hank: But we cannot eat it fast enough, so it has to be frozen.

John: Wow.

Hank: And if it were to unfreeze, we would lose all of that hard work that we, as a couple, expended, and there's a lot more than just pesto in that pesto, John. You know what I mean.

John: Sure, yeah, I know, there's love in that pesto. It, you're almost making me cry, but instead, you're making me bored. Let's take some questions.

Hank: Alright, we have a question here from Angela, who asks, "Dear Hank and John. I'm going into high school this year, and I'm going to a different school from most of my friends. My best friend recently told me that I need to be careful who I befriend in order to protect my image," in quotation marks. "This really confused me because I was unaware that I had an image to protect. He said I should use high school as an opportunity to make something of myself. I'm guessing he means to build my social status, but I really don't know. So my question here is, is it really worthwhile to "make something of yourself" in high school?"

John: Oh boy. First off, I don't like any of your friend's advice. It seems even more dubious than our advice. This idea of protecting your image, being careful in who you befriend, I think you should be careful in who you befriend, you know, just because you wanna be surrounded by, you know, like, positive influences in your life and not people who are gonna be manipulative or destructive or are gonna be hurtful to you, but I don't think that you need to protect your image, and I think that you're quite right, that you don't have an image to protect, like, you have no control over the way that the world sees you, and I don't think you should try much to try to control that, you should try to control, you know, the way that the people who care about you see you, and the way that you see yourself. Those are the people whose opinions ought to matter to you. Now, that's very difficult to do in high school, and by the way, also after high school, but I think that's the job of life, both in high school and afterwards. As for making something of yourself in high school, I am reminded of the great line from The Great Gatsby, in which Nick Carraway says of Tom Buchanan that, I'm gonna butcher the line, I apologize in advance, he says that, "He was one of those men who reached such an acute limited excellence at 21 that everything afterward savors of anti-climax." You don't want to be the kind of person who reaches such an acute limited excellence in your youth that everything afterwards savors of anti-climax, you want to climax much later, ideally, like, when you're 87. 

Hank: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about the phrase "make something of yourself" is the word "something", because what are you making of yourself except for yourself? If that quote just removed "something of" and said "you need to make yourself", then I would be, like, "Yes, you need to make yourself", and however that, whatever that is for you and however you wish to make yourself and make yourself a more self-y person, do that, and do as little as possible, and this is very hard, wondering about what other people are thinking about who yourself is.

John: Hank, that was a very beautiful answer, although perhaps a little bit too long, but very beautiful. I have another question for you. It's from Peen, it's a Dutch... I, I believe this...

Hank: How was my answer too long when you talked for like, 25 minutes?

John: Oh, no, that's the rules, is that my answers are allowed to be long. I am floral in my conversing, whereas you are the like, you're the scientific one, you're supposed to be, it's supposed to be an odd couple thing, where I talk and talk and talk, and then you, in a very, like, quick and precise way, lay down the law and you did that beautifully, but then you kept talking after you'd done it.

Hank: Alright, well, I'm glad now I know the actual structure of our podcast. I thought we were just brothers talking, the way that brothers do. You fartbag.

John: No, you are mistaken, and by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a fartbag, a bag that contains a single fart. I think that you're a bag of like, a million different farts, like, farts from all different kinds of people. Everybody's farts are contained inside of the bag of Hank.

Hank: Well, at least I have fart diversity.

John: This is the worst comedy podcast in the world.

John: Okay, we've got a question here from Peen, Hank, from the Netherlands, "Dear John and Hank, If you could punch anyone in the face with no limitations to space, time, fictional universes, and/or strength, who would it be and why?" What a great question.

Hank: Well, I worry about being as strong as I'd like to be, because I'm afraid that now if I punch someone in the face and I'm like, "Okay, this is going to be a super strong punch", and I punch them, and then I'm like, "Wow, I evaporated their head. I did not expect for that!"

John: Yeah.

Hank: So...

John: Well, I think it's got to be somebody whose head you're ready to evaporate. I actually think there are two questions inside of this question, Hank. There's the question of like, who would you punch in the face because they're the worst person ever, and then there's the question of like, who would you punch in the face just because they need a punch in the face to like, you know, get with reality. Like, I remember, you know my cousin, Eric, also your cousin Eric? Lisa's husband? I was coming back from a volleyball game when I first moved to Chicago, Lisa and Eric were very nice to me. I'd just been dumped by this girl and I was completely devastated about it, and Lisa and Eric would, like, take me to activities to try to, like, get me out of the, this rat infested walk-in closet that I lived in, and we were coming back one day, and I was talking about the girl who dumped me, even though it had been like, four months, and Eric just turned, he was driving, and he just turned around and he smacked me in the face. He didn't say anything, he just smacked me. And it was very helpful, it was very helpful, it was like negative reinforcement. I'm not advising that anyone do that, again, I'm never in favor of violence, but I found that particular act of violence rather useful. I would punch Stalin in the face, and I would punch him very hard and I would try to kill him.

Hank: Yes, like, max out my strength, I want to punch a hole in this man's head. 

John: Yeah, I would go ahead and turn the strength up to 11 and punch Stalin in the face. 

Hank: I, so I'll take one that is just somebody who needs a punch, and I'm gonna say whoever was in charge of all of the awful, awful decisions that led to the mortgage crisis in America.

John: Mmm, a nice punch to a banker's face.

Hank: Yeah.

John: Boy, you know...

Hank: Yeah, 'cause I, just, just 'cause... Mostly because I feel like that person was just having such a good time when they were doing it.

John: Yeah.

Hank: And then now, nobody knows who they are. Just like, nobody knows, and they totally got away with it, and no, it's a bunch of people. So, but I'd like to punch whoever it was that thought that it would be a really great idea to create that culture of "let's make money and who cares if we're going to ruin the entire economy doing it".

John: You know, Hank, I know a lot of bankers, and I often hear from my banker friends and acquaintances that they get a bad rap, and I'm sure that there are bankers listening to this podcast now who feel very oppressed by the sort of general response to bankers, and the truth is there's lots of great bankers out there who provide important services, you know, like the sort of like, short-term loans that small businesses need to succeed and grow and lots of, you know, I'm not... But you know what I mean when I say banker, the Wall Street-

Hank: I do.

John: -people, you know, say that their responsibility is to their clients and not to the social order, and they often say, like, "I don't understand why people hate us and like, they just hate us because they need a scapegoat", and there's a little bit of me that's like, "Or maybe people hate you because of the actions that you took, and because of the worldview that you put forward and people just don't like it, like, they just don't agree with it".

Hank: Yeah, I think they need a punch in the face.

John: Yeah, not like Stalin does, though.

Hank: No, no, no.

John: God, it would feel good to punch Stalin. How good would that feel, just to feel his mustache on your fist?

Hank: That's a little creepy.

John: I hate Stalin's mustache.

Hank: I was just imagining it sort of like, brushing against your knuckles, and I was, it was in my head, it was kind of a caring gesture, and upset me.

John: No, no, no, no, no. His mustache is gonna hit the back of his brain when I punch him. You know me, Hank, I'm powerful.

Hank: This question is from Jacob, who asks, "Dear Hank and John. So lots of people have trouble understanding why online communities are so great and how they can actually be fulfilling. I have my reasons that I share, but I'd love to hear your thoughts to be able to add more to the discussion. Thank you."

John: Yeah, that's a great question, Jacob, I think for me, it's just that online communities are a place where I can get really excited about stuff that not that many people in my real life get excited about, so like, in 2006, when I was a member of the lonelygirl15 fan community and a sports-racer, a member of the fan community around Ze Frank's The Show, there just weren't that many people in my real life who were equally excited about online video, you know? And so, it was a place that I could connect to people who shared my interests and passions, and who also were, like, making really interesting, creative work in response to the stuff that I liked that I could also appreciate and even participate in, and so that, to me, is what's so special and so real about online communities, but I also think, like, the friendships that you make online are just as real, or at least have the potential to be just as real as friendships in real life.

Hank: Yeah, and I love both sorts of communities and both sorts of relationships and there is much to be said for surrounding yourself with both of those things, and I, you know, there's something definitely different about real life relationships, I feel like there's more information can be communicated more quickly and sometimes, it is easier to understand another person more fully, and online relationships can be easier to sort of project a version of yourself, though sometimes that's really valuable and really wonderful to do and fun to do, rather than sort of be, like, the, you know, exactly... Or to have the sort of, the way that you communicate, the way that you look and act and talk, sort of be the thing that defines you initially in a relationship in the real world, 'cause there's all of that information that you're passing that you don't intend to pass, just by the, you know, by your language, by your quirks and your, and you know, the various stereotypes that we cannot get away from in our culture. Yeah, there are a lot of advantages and to me, the fact that it's being, you're being, like, that people are asked to justify these online relationships is a little ridiculous and something that is going to go away.

John: Yeah we're one generation away from that going away because certainly when my kids ask, you know, "Can I meet these internet friends, I'll say yeah, you know, as long as you meet them in a public place and I'm, you know, in the car, watching".

John: Hank, we have a question, a very important question from Maggie, who writes "Dear John and Hank, what are fun and cheap date ideas?"

Hank: Oh. Well I have lots of those.

John: This is a great question for Hank, because he rather specializes in things that are cheap.

Hank: Ha ha ha. But not in dating, which I did very little of in life. But I have lots of fun and cheap things that I like to do with my friends and... So there are lots of public spaces that are just there for the funning. Playgrounds are great. And you might think, "I'm an adult, why would I go to the playground?" Well, go after dark, and it's just a whole different experience. It's just a great place to sit around and hang out and swing on swings, and, you know, be both an adult and a child at the same time. You can go to bars and not drink, is a really great way to not spend money. You can do whatever activity they have there, whether it's, like, watching music, or karaoke, or trivia.

John: Pinball.

Hank: Pinball, which does cost money. But not a ton. And yeah, so you can... The people at the bar might be like "Why do you keep coming to the bar, and you are not justifying your presence here by giving us money", but you know. It's a bar. It's a place to hang out. Just being there is a bit of an advantage for them as long as you're not taking up the last table or anything. So, there's that, and also there's just a great deal of fun that can be had on the inside of wherever you dwell, and that is... there are lots of games that you don't even have to buy. One of my favorite is called foldy-foldy-draw-draw, where you write a phrase, and then you fold the paper over, and then the person below draws that phrase, and then the next person tries to translate that drawing into words and then it's like telephone but with drawings and writing. And I know that it's not called foldy-foldy-draw-draw, it has other names, Exquisite Corpse is one of them, but I prefer to call it foldy-foldy-draw-draw, and there are lots of games like that which require nothing more than pen and paper, or maybe a die or just very simple things that it is very fun, and then also just talking. Talking is very cheap. Cheap is free, and, or cooking together. Cooking together is a wonderful thing to do with a friend and so you say, like, let's, "Yes, come over, and this is a little weird, but we're gonna make lasagna or tacos and you're gonna bring margarita mix, and we're gonna have a good night". That's a weird date, but look, it's gonna be way more fun because this is about people experiencing other people, not paying for something to do that some other person has created.

John: Those are all good ideas, Hank, if you definitely don't want to have the relationship work out, but I do, because I like Maggie, I care about her. First off, Maggie's under 21, so your margarita mix suggestion is literally illegal. 

Hank: Hey! Hey, you can have margarita mix without tequila in it. It's just not very good. 

John: It's just awful. Yeah, that's gonna make a date better. Nothing makes a date better like virgin margarita mix. Hank, as you know, I'm a huge fan of the mixed martial arts fighter "Rowdy" Ronda Rousey, undefeated...

Hank: That is actually new information to me, but okay.

John: She's fantastic. You should really read her AMA on Reddit. Anyway, I was reading her AMA on Reddit a couple days ago, and she said that her ideal date, and I trust her, is nothing. Is to do nothing. Is to just sit around and do nothing, because if you go on a date with someone who tries to show you an amazing, amazing time, like, well, are they not interested enough in you to listen to you, and are they not interesting enough to just be themselves with you? So, my recommendation, forget this playground lasagna business, do nothing. Just... And don't play anything foldy-foldy-what do you call it? What do you call Exquisite Corpse? 

Hank: Foldy-foldy-draw-draw?

John: I think it's hilarious that, you know, a game that was played by surrealist artists, that was hugely important to the art history of surrealism, is now called foldy-foldy-draw-draw. Anyway.

Hank: I have complicated reasons why I prefer the name foldy-foldy-draw-draw to Exquisite Corpse, and they are good, artistic reasons that we can talk about some other time.

John: I believe you. I'm just saying that if you're gonna use it as a suggestion, people will be better off Googling Exquisite Corpse than Googling foldy-foldy-draw-draw, although maybe you could register foldyfoldydrawdraw.com and teach people how to play it there.

Hank: Or, or I could box it up and sell it for $20. Just a bunch of pieces of paper and pencils.

John: It comes with a pencil and a piece of paper and instructions on how to play foldy-foldy-draw-draw, the hot new game from Hank Green. Today's podcast is sponsored by foldy-foldy-draw-draw, available now for just $20 at foldyfoldydrawdraw.com. Foldy-foldy-draw-draw, a game that involves nothing but a piece of paper, a pencil, and your imagination, but don't worry, we provide the piece of paper and the pencil.

Hank: This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by Stalin's mustache. Absolutely awful unless pressed against the back of his skull.

John: This episode of Dear Hank and John is brought to you by frozen pesto. Frozen pesto, our nation's number one unrenewable resource. Frozen pesto. You literally can't get it anywhere else, so you'd better hike a five miles to find a neighbor whose freezer you can put it in.

Hank: How far away do your neighbors live? I just walked next door and I was like, "Hey, can I put some stuff in your freezer?" and he was like, "Uh, yeah, come on in."

John: Anyway, yeah, you should do something minimal on the date, and just find out if you like each other, and then once you like each other, I think you can start doing fun stuff like foldy-foldy-draw-draw or, you know, like, going to free concerts or going to bars and only drinking-

Hank: I mean...

John: -Coke, which they usually give away for free if you're not drinking, because you can claim you're a designated driver. Yeah, and then...

Hank: I just disagree. I think that you should have some kind of activity, that you can't just like, be like, hey, let's go on a date. We're gonna sit and look at each other. I think it's good to, like, we're gonna make, we're gonna do something together. We're gonna make lasagna.

John: Well, Hank, I don't wanna brag-

Hank: What's wrong with that?

John: -but which of us has been dumped way more than the other? 

Hank: You have been dumped more than me.

John: Way more. Because I've done so much more dating.

Hank: Right. I mean, I don't know that you, that makes you qualified to give good dating advice, when you've just had a lot of unsuccessful dates.

John: I'm just saying, Maggie? Maggie? If you wanna get dumped, listen to my advice.

Hank: Alright.

John: If you wanna marry your first love, listen to Hank's. It's up to you.

Hank: This question is from Frances, who asks, "Dear Hank and John. One of my favorite YA authors said she would never write a book about people in their 20s. She said people in their 20s already know themselves, and their definition of who they are is set in stone. Do you think this is true? I'm 26, and I'm still learning who I am as a person."

John: Well, I mean, I think I understand what the author meant, and I've said things about adults that I kind of regret, in trying to explain why I like writing about teenagers, but I... No, I don't think that you're finished when you're, when you get to your 20s or that you already know yourself. I thought that when I was in high school, I thought that when I was younger. I felt like adolescence was all the really interesting human stuff and then you kind of got to be an adult and you just sort of rode it out until death, like you just stayed the person that you'd become until you died. And that has not been my experience at all. I do think that change maybe slows down a little, but the change is still quite dramatic, at least in my life when I look back at my early thirties or my twenties, like, my life was very different in every way and I looked at the world was different, and I still don't feel like I've become myself. You know, I feel like that's a process of becoming rather than like and event I look back on. So, yeah, I disagree, but I do think that there is something uniquely interesting about adolescence. And that's one of the reasons that YA writers tend to focus on teenagers as readers and as characters. But I don't think that you finish becoming a person when you turn 21.

Hank: Agree!

John: Hank, we've got a question here from Hannah, who writes "Dear John and Hank, if you could invent a new word, what would it be and what would it mean?"

Hank: This is a great example of a question that I would typically think about for a few days before answering.

John: Okay, can I ask... Let's try to answer that question on the next podcast?

Hank: Oh, okay.

John: But can I ask a question for this podcast? It's, is there a word that you would eliminate and have it's meaning eliminated from the English language. Because I have one.

Hank: Oh. No, I don't, I don't, not immediately, there's nothing that...

John: Mine is celebrity.

Hank: Yeah, okay, I can see that.

John: I would remove the idea of celebrity and the word celebrity from the language.

Hank: Don't you think that the idea of celebrity would just reappear immediately in some other form?

John: No, because I don't think that it always existed. I think that there was an English language that was fairly comprehensive that did not include the word or the idea of celebrity. It might have included the word or idea for famous person, but not the specific word "celebrity". 

Hank: Interesting. I, I think that the concept of celebrity is a product of the, of our culture as it currently exists, and I don't think that the elimination of the word or the concept would change culture enough to have the concept not reappear. 

John: Maybe.

Hank: But...

John: Good point.

Hank: But it would be a good first step. Yeah, I do not like the idea of celebrity very much, having had some connection to it. What is it about the concept of celebrity that bugs you?

John: Well, I think it's just the, and I'm completely hypocritical in saying this, but I feel like when culture becomes so personality driven and so driven by the people who make stuff rather than the stuff itself, we end up sort of almost offering a kind of, like, divinity or worship toward individual people who are just as screwed up as any other individual people, and I think from my own experiences with celebrity, I feel like it's as destructive to the people who worship celebrity as it is to the celebrities themselves. I don't really know anyone, including the most famous people I know who I think have benefited from celebrity, except financially, and that's no small thing of course, that's a very big deal, but I think that it's been a little bit destructive to a lot of the people I know and I know that, you know, that worship of celebrity can be destructive because, you know, you're inevitably disappointed. Like, you know, we have to be careful what we worship precisely because we give it tremendous power by worshipping it, and when we worship fame and particular ideas of beauty, I think that we maybe give those too much power.

Hank: I mean, having thought during that, during your talking there, the easy answer to that question that you just asked is that there are a number of words that exist solely for the perpetuation of hate, and I would love to eliminate those words and their concepts from our language as well.

John: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great one. There's a ton of words that do nothing. Yeah, that's so true. That are nothing but hateful and help no one.

Hank: Yeah, and yes. And, of course, there's the words themselves that, you know, they're obviously just strings of letters, but the, it's really about the concept and so like, in some ways, you could eliminate, there are words that you could eliminate or concepts that you could eliminate and the word would still be used, because the word is also used in unhateful ways.

John: Right.

Hank: But just the idea of saying, like, no, you can't use the word "gay" in a hateful way, like, there's no concept, just the way that there's no, that it's very difficult to come up with a word that just means, like, that there's a hateful word for friend, like, that doesn't exist. 

John: Right.

Hank: So, just like that, there should be no hateful word for a homosexual person, and the fact that, like, this word "gay" means both-

John: Right.

Hank: -both, like, positively, "yes, I'm gay," and also negatively, "that is so gay, you are so gay."

John: Right. Yeah, I mean, the same is true for women. I think there are lots of words that describe women that are very hateful and yeah, we shouldn't have those, or really for any kind of marginalized person. That reminds me of what I would, of the word that I would invent. It has given me an idea for the word I would invent as to Hannah's question.

Hank: Oh, okay.

John: I would invent a word for "lame" other than "lame".

Hank: Yeah, yeah.

John: And a word for... Also, I would invent a word for "idiotic" that didn't rely upon "idiot", this, you know, early 20th century taxonomical way of describing people with intellectual disabilities. I, yeah. I would love to have a word that meant "lame", which is a, because the meaning of lame is a very important thing to have in the world, like, in its colloquial usage, I mean, but the word "lame" is hurtful to a lot of people. So yeah, that's what I would invent.

Hank: Yeah.

John: But I don't know what the word would be. Does anyone, if anyone have any, has any suggestions, please leave them as comments on SoundCloud or you can always Tweet us @johngreen or @hankgreen.

Hank: I, in that same vein, I think that there aren't enough curse words that are actually negative things. Like, a lot of our curse words are, like, well, that's just a bodily function, or that's just an activity that many people enjoy engaging in.

John: Right.

John: Why, like, why... Just because, like, like, we've sort of pulled these things out of our taboos and oftentimes our taboos don't, aren't, don't actually make any sense, I would love to have more curse words that are just actual negative things, I can just like, yell out like, you know, weapon of mass destruction! Like...

John: Right.

Hank: Yeah. 

John: Yeah.

Hank: Things...

John: Sarin gas! 

Hank: Yes. Yeah! That's bad!

John: Stalin's mustache! 

Hank: Yeah! That's good, I like that one. I often say "Poop on a stick". Poop on a stick! Because poop, eh, you know, like, we use lots of different words for poop are our curse words, but you know, that's just a thing that everybody does, we shouldn't be ashamed of that, we shouldn't, you know, tabooify that by making it a vulgarity, but poop on a stick? That's a weapon, and nobody wants poop on a stick.

John: No.

Hank: Nobody wants to have poop on a stick waved in their face.

John: Nobody wants to be hit with poop on a stick. That's doubly painful. You're getting stabbed but you're also getting poop inside of you.

Hank: Yes. Negatives, negatives.

John: Hank, maybe we should move on now to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. 

Hank: Okay that seems like a good place, to, yeah, make that transition.

John: Yes.

Hank: Well in news from Mars this week, one of the interesting things about Mars is that it was at one time covered at least partially in water, liquid water, and that is the main ingredient for life to exist. But the question is...

John: Hank, can I just pause real quick, can we pause. 

Hank: Yes.

John: Was it water like our water is water? Like was it an ocean... Like if I were in the Martian ocean of the distant past would I swim in it and feel like I was in the ocean of Earth?

Hank: Well, we don't know. Yes, it would, except for the fact that we're not sure that you would be breathing with your lungs. So it is possible that, in fact likely, in fact almost certain, that if you were in the Martian ocean and you took a breath, not of the water but of the air, that you would not be able to survive on whatever stuff was in that air.

John: No, I was imagining that I was, like, scuba diving. 

Hank: Right. Oh yes. It would be, yes. If you were scuba diving on Mars and you had a tank full of oxygen it would be exactly like scuba diving on Earth, yeah. Pretty much. Yes.

John: Okay.

Hank: Um, so the Martian water, we know that it was there, but the big question is how long was it there, and where did it, where was it last? So the place where the water stuck around the longest is a really good candidate for where we should go and look to see if maybe there was or still remains beneath the surface, living things based on an entirely different kind of biology than we have here on Earth. And that would be a tremendous and sort of ridiculous wealth of, like, scientific understanding of the universe and of life. So, recently, scientists have discovered basically what they think is the last place, pretty much, probably, that water existed on the surface of Mars, and you can read about this in a number of places just by looking at the, maybe Googling "last lake on Mars" and it's possible that locked beneath the surface there, there are, you know, still certainly signs that life once existed, but also potentially life itself, which would be pretty exciting. So that is definitely, knowing that informs our future missions and also just our understanding of this wonderful planet that exists right here in our solar system. 

John: Hank, I wonder if we could make a wager about life on Mars, so that if life is eventually found on Mars, you would win it and if life isn't found on Mars within say, the next 36 months, I would win it. Would that be possible?

Hank: 36 months?

John: Yeah, I think that's long enough in terms of human innovation to find some life.

Hank: Oh. No. No. 

John: No?

Hank: I'll make the bet that in the next 20 years, we will find life on Mars. Or that there was once life on Mars.

John: Mmm. Okay, but I want to amortize the bet so that you have to pay me every year for the next 20 years, and then, if within the next 20 years, there is a discovery of life on Mars, I will pay you back everything that you've paid me plus whatever the bet is.

Hank: Alright, I'm gonna take that bet, except that you have to pay me double what I put in.

John: Mmm, one and a half times what you put in.

Hank: One and 3/4.

John: Done. Alright. So we're betting that life will or will not be found on Mars, a cold dead rock with no life on it in the next 20 years. 

Hank: So we should bet like, $200 so that I have to give you $10 a year.

John: No, I was thinking that we would bet on a sponsorship of AFC Wimbledon so that you would have to sponsor an AFC Wimbledon game every season for the next 20 years unless you're right, in which case, I would have to sponsor one and 3/4 times more games.

Hank: Yeah, I don't like that bet, John. I, let's just do $200.

John: Alright, well, we'll have to keep working on what exactly the stakes should be, but I'm, 'cause I have to get to the news from AFC Wimbledon, which as always, is so important. Hank, the less said about the first weekend of AFC Wimbledon's season, the better. My prediction of a three-nil victory against Plymouth was wrong. Instead, it was a two-nil loss, and then they lost in the Capitol One Cup to Cardiff City, so it's been a difficult week, still no goals scored in AFC Wimbledon's season. But, but Hank, I don't even know if you know this, but there is also a women's AFC Wimbledon team, who are quite successful, and this week, they signed two really good players, a striker named Kelly-Jade Whelan and a goalkeeper named Shanell Salgado, and Kelly-Jade scored in her very first game, well, her first game back, because she was also previously an AFC Wimbledon player. Anyway, she scored her first game in a 3-1 victory over Enfield Town this Sunday, and that's pretty exciting. So I am really excited about the, both the youth sides that AFC Wimbledon put out, and the women's team. There's a women's senior club who've had a very successful last couple of years, but also, you know, teams for younger women and girls as well. So if you live in South London, go be an AFC Wimbledon player. Play for the greatest fan-owned club in history, an institution that is by almost any measure more important than some cold distant rock than no one ever thinks about.

Hank: And that is the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon without any bias at all in either direction.

John: Nope.

John: Bias free.

Hank: And this has been this episode of Dear Hank and John, with John Green, who is my brother, and I'm Hank, and it's nice to have you back for the second episode in a row, John.

John: It's so good to be here.

Hank: John Green, who is apparently just a guest star on this show because he shows up so infrequently. If you don't know who he is, he writes books and makes YouTube videos, and he is, what else do you do, John? You know, raises children, and cares too much about obscure sports.

John: First off, there's nothing obscure about football, it's the number one sport in the world. Secondly, there's nothing obscure about AFC Wimbledon because they have a following around the world, thanks in no small part to Dear Hank and John. What did we learn on today's podcast, Hank?

Hank: We learned that yourself is the thing that you make. 

John: We learned that sometimes the thing that you make is pesto, and that that is incredibly valuable, more valuable than any time or money.

Hank: We learned that sometimes the thing that you make is lasagna and surrealist drawings with new friends.

John: And of course we learned that fartbag is an excellent insult. 

Hank: Yes. Bag of a thousand farts. This episode is edited by Nicholas Jenkins. Our theme music is by Gunnarolla. If you have any questions for us you can send them to hankandjohn@gmail.com, and as we say in our hometown:

Hank and John: Don't forget to be awesome.