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Hank and Katherine introduce DELETE THIS by delving into dangerous opinions on guns, abortion, and Game of Thrones. Let's talk about all the podcasts that we didn't end up making, as well as Hank's unhealthy business and personal relationship with social media.
(00:00) to (02:00)
Katherine: We don't want to feel like we're in the listeners' ears, like some kind of NPR -
Hank: We could do a little bit of, like, ASMR...
Katherine: No, I'm not into that *laughter*
Hank: Yeah, the NPR, you kind of have to be really close to the mic
Katherine: You get really close and just kind of chilled out. You get a little chilled out, and then you just really lay it on 'em, man.
Hank: Yeah, and it's a little bit relaxing, and also in order to do it we have to be very close together.
Katherine: Very close together! Kissing distance.
Hank: I can feel the warmth of your face.
Katherine: Yes, I can smell your breath.
Hank: Oh, no. *laughter*
Katherine: It's not bad, I'm just - the way it smells. I ate a burrito, so I can't talk.
Introduction (0:39)
Hello, I'm Hank Green, and I'm internet famous. My wife, Katherine Green, has had just about enough of my BS, and she's quite possibly had enough of yours as well. Together we're about to take a look back at the past week by reading, discussing, and critiquing my tweets. Welcome to Delete This.
NewSection (1:00)
Hank: We've been talking about doing a podcast for, oh, I don't know, a thousand years, and it never happened because we just never did it. We kept having good podcast ideas. Night biscuits.
Katherine: (singing) Night biscuits!
Hanks: Because that's when biscuits happen.
Katherine: (singing) In the nighttime
Hanks: Night biscuits. With Hank and Katherine. So I've been trying to come up with an idea for a thing that we could do once a week, we'd have to talk to each other uninterrupted for an hour -
Katherine: Ughhh. I want to look at my phone so bad right now! *laughter*
Hank: And our other podcast idea that we worked on for quite a while was to analyze every single They Might Be Giants song.
Katherine: Ugh
Hank: Which maybe was too big of - they have 84 albums.
Katherine: It was ambitious. Perhaps overambitious. I got really excited about the first one, and then I was like, but like 70,000 more of these?
Hank: Yeah, we could've done just one album, but also like, when I was thinking about -
(02:00) to (04:00)
Katherine: No, the first song. *laugther* I got really excited about the first song.
Hank: Yeah. Well, I kept thinking, like, well this would be better if we got somebody to split out the track so we could hear what the drums sound like, and it just got way too ambitious.
Katherine: Yeah, and I was like, I'll write some music for it on the accordian, an instrument that I do not know how to play. So that's not happening. You gotta lower your expectations kids.
Hanks: That's right.
Katherine: I don't really spend a lot of time on twitter, but I will usually once a day go on twitter and see, what Hank's tweeted today? What's Hank thinking about?
Hank: Where's his brain at?
Katherine: Yeah. And I can get just a little insight - and it also helps me stay up-to-date on what's the important thing happening in the world today, too, because then I'll look at a few other tweets, too. I don't have twitter on my phone anymore, because who needs that?
Hanks: Well, and the other thing that I want this to be is an opportunity for me to talk through the mistakes I have maybe made on social media. The thing about the feed is that it disappears, so these tweets from, a week ago, they're over. They're dead. No one sees them anymore, it's gone.
Katherine: Yeah, I mean, these first ones that are a week old -
Hank: You can hardly believe that that was a week ago, right?
Katherine: It seems like it was at least three months ago *laughs*
Hank: Yeah, so we're just gonna - let's jump in.
Katherine: That was just a week ago that we were watching the Olympics?
Hank: Yeah, so we were watching the Olympics, this is a little bit more than a week ago, and Katherine tells me about this tweet from Adam Rippon that says -it's a retweet of a CNBC interview where Adam Rippon tells CNBC that he's not picky and doesn't have an ideal sponsor, quote "I love money" and then Adam Rippon captioned that "tindr bio" and then I wrote "you're really great" to just everyone
Katherine: Just in the normal tweet box
(04:00) to (06:00)
Hank: Yeah, I did not - I intended that to be an at reply just to Adam Rippon so that only he would see it or people who are following both me and Adam would see it, and then instead I just wrote it to every single person who follows me on twitter, all 750,000 of them, and I assume that that was a nice thing to get. 4.3 thousand people like that tweet.
Katherine: They were very appreciative of your vague...
Hank: Vague appreciation. And I don't like that kind of tweet. And lots of social media, especially people with younger audiences do that a lot, sort of-
Katherine: Yeah, the vague compliments.
Hank: Yeah, I'm talking to you as an individual in this very vague way that - maybe you aren't, I don't know. I don't know if you're great. You might suck.
Katherine: Usually it's like, "you're beautiful and your thoughts are beautiful"
Hanks: Yeah, yeah. You don't know you're beautiful that's what makes you beautiful (sings) And usually it's young men who have a lot of - and I don't understand.
Katherine: It seems very manipulative.
Hank: It does. It seems that way to me. But I'm not in that world.
Katherine: Yeah, I don't know.
Hank: And so then I tweeted, well, I'm sure that you are all really great, whoever you are, I meant to tweet this just to Adam Rippon, I'm just bad at twitter. And that got 4.1 thousand tweets which is actually quite good for me. And so I also want to think about how I'm thinking about -
Katherine: Likes. 4.1 thousand likes.
Hank: Likes, yes, not tweets. I want to think about how I'm judging myself based on the quality of - the numbers on my tweets.
Katherine: Oh, you actually look at that?
Hank: Oh yes!
Katherine: *Laughs* I could not tell you anything about how many numbers...
Hank: I super look at that! Whenever I look at your tweets, I'm like, "Oh, that one did well." You have no idea? Katherine tweets like five times a week, maybe.
Katherine: Maybe. It's usually - It's almost always retweets.
Hank: Yeah, retweets or at replies. You reply to people.
Katherine: I don't really usually have a native tweet-
(06:00) to (08:00)
Hank: Yeah, and I don't think you necessarily should.
Katherine: -'cause I don't want people to think about me when they're on twitter. So don't at me! It's rare that like, someone ats me on twitter and I'm like, "oh, thanks!"
Hanks: From my perspective, and this is just me analyzing you from outside, but it feels like you feel like that's too much pressure. Like people are asking for something from you when they do that.
Katherine: Maybe.
Hank: And you're like, I don't want to feel obligated to you, my audience on twitter.
Katherine: I mean, I just don't see it as an audience.
Hank: Right. You have a lot of followers.
Katherine: I know. Just random people who are like, "why? Why? What are you - what?" Moving on. Let's keep going. February 25, now.
Hank: February 25, we're there. Uh, "Hey, happy Sunday! Do you have time-" Oh, I guess now we're a week away. "Do you have time to do me a favor and take this short survey about money? It will help me make things." So I'm thinking about making a Crash Course Personal Finance.
Katherine: On Sunday he's doing this.
Hank: Yeah, it was a Sunday.
Katherine: I mean, it never stops.
Hank: Well I just - I was out in my office...
Katherine: Uh-huh.
Hank: and I - I do have a - I just need to feel like I got something done every day.
Katherine: Oh *laughing*
Hank: It's true. It's 100% true. And I will feel weird if I don't at least clear out a section of my to-do list or, or like, come up with something that is actionable. And like - yeah, it's a problem. I agree. And this survey was very interesting, in which I found out that a lot of people who have more than ten thousand dollars saved have that all in a savings account. No. But anyway. I mean, like, first of all, good on you for having more than ten thousand dollars saved, but it's not doing anything in your savings account.
Katherine: No, it's like-
(08:00) to (10:00)
Hank: Zero percent interest right now. So there are other things you can do with that money that will keep it liquid. I don't know that I would invest in the stock market right at this particular moment, but if you are planning on keeping that money for retirement it is good in something that's going to grow at more than none at all. But this is not a personal finance podcast.
Katherine: I know, I was like, "where are we going- I mean, tune in next week to Hank Green's personal finance advice."
Hank: Hank Green's personal finance judgements.
Katherine: What are you doin' stoopids?
Hank: Your palms are suddenly sweaty. You're like, "I came here for a twitter podcast, and now I'm being shamed for my saving habits!"
Katherine and I are actually sitting on our couch next to the fire, with the cat, the baby's asleep.
Katherine: Yeah, he is!
Hank: It's a really good - this is great.
Katherine: This is a good Sunday night. I ate half a burrito I didn't make.
Hank: Yeah, somone else made that for you. This is also Sunday. I was just trying to pick a They Might Be Giants album for us to listen to here in the house, and GooglePlay music informed me that there were - I could see the six -
Katherine: 84 choices!
Hank: and then I could click for 84 more, so that's a total of 90. There were the six on screen and 84 more, and I tweeted that, and I thought that that was very funny, and that got 500 - 500 likes, Katherine. And I felt -
Katherine: I mean, it's probably a good thing that we didn't do that They Might Be Giants podcast, then, 'cause that's clearly not hashtag relatable.
Hank: Yeah, and then I continued my Sunday
Katherine: Y'all are missing out.
Hank: Yeah. Well, you know, people are into stuff that we're not into, and they probably thing we're missing out. I continued my specific-to-fans tweets with a tweet about the Expanse series
Katherine: Well, yeah, see, this is the thing, like, you're tweeting about the things that you're interested in. That's cool.
Hank: Yeah. I was informed by a lot of people that I had gotten the name of that book wrong.
Katherine. Cool. Cool.
Hank: I wrote Nemesis Gate. The book before that was Abaddon's Gate, and then it was Nemesis Games. And so I had the lovely experience of feeling like, one, a fake fan, and two, like everybody on twitter was telling me that I was wrong about something.
(10:00) to (12:00)
Katherine: Yay! It's so fun when that happens. Like, when you have that impulse like, "I should go correct this person" maybe check the at replies and see if someone else already did it.
Hank: Just like the one person who already told you.
Katherine: That's fine.
Hank: Or don't even! Don't even. It's - I know. I'm aware now. And so I corrected myself with an update. But seriously, the Expanse series is mindblowing and the audiobooks are so good, and they're all read by the same person. And I hate it so much when they switch narrators midseries, which just happened with Harry Bosch, and I do not like it-
Katherine: And now we're going down another Hank Green feelings tangent.
Hank: I'm sorry, I guess I'm not allowed to have feelings on the podcast.
*laughter*
Katherine: No! You can, it's just like-
Hank: These are all the things I don't tweet.
Katherine: I guess, yeah. This is like, where you get the behind the scenes of-
Hank: Behind the tweets
Katherine: Behind the tweets? No.
Hank: Is that what the podcast is called?
Katherine: No, it's not going to be called that.
Hank: Collin Smith says "Always a great day when Crash Course shows up" he's tweeting about being in class. "Note, teacher discribe @hankgreen as being 'a bit of a dork.'" And I said "A bit?!" to be hashtag relatable- 2700 likes. What do you think?
Katherine: It's fine. Yeah, I mean-
Hank: I mostly wanted a way to - I just want to promote Crash Course, tell people that Crash Course is doing things.
Katherine: Yeah, that's a fine thing to do with the twitter.
Hank: I tweeted that I was excited for Olan Rogers's new show Final Space, which I haven't seen yet
Katherine: Nope.
Hank: but I'm sure it's very good.
Katherine: Don't know how to see it.
Hank: Yeah, I don't know how to see it. I assume I can buy it somewhere.
Katherine: Also, like, god, so much.
Hank: It's true. It's a lot of content to watch, Katherine. We're never gonna make it through.
Katherine: Nope.
*laughter*
Hank: We're going to die having not watched so many shows. *sighs*
Katherine: Yeah, oh, that'll be...relaxing.
(12:00) to (14:00)
Hank: Being dead?! *laughs*
Katherine: Just, the pressure's off!
Hank:Not having to worry about what's going happen next week on Drag Race?
Katherine: When Drag Race is in production and seasons are coming out - those weeks feel so much longer.
Hank: The year just flies by until Drag Race starts -
Katherine: Yes!
Hank: -then everything slows to a snails pace.
Katherine: And I'm just like, "Oh my god, it's like-" we just watched it on Friday, it comes out on Thursday, we never watch it on the day it comes out
Hank: Because I'm Vlogbrothersing
Katherine: It comes out on Friday, and on Saturday, I'm like "It's only Saturday!" and then on Sunday I'm like "It's only Sunday!" Every day I'm just like, "How is it still-?! How do I still have so much time to wait until the next episode?"
Hank: That's amazing. That's not really how I feel. But I do very much enjoy it, and I enjoy watching it with you. There will be some tweets later in my stream about Drag Race.
Katherine: I was just thinking that I'm so glad that you do watch it and enjoy it now, because I love it so much! I'm just glad that you can share it with me even if you don't have quite the same investment in it.
Hank: I mean, I was off the couch - I walked up to the TV and I was like, "What?! WHAT?!"
Katherine: We both had very physical, visceral -
Hank: Katherine just fell down.
Katherine: -visceral reactions. No, I definitely- I definitely tossed some things around.
Hank: Yeah, you threw things, you flopped, you humped the floor - you didn't hump the floor, but, like, you were on your belly on the floor, like, sort of writhing a little bit. It was very weird. It was a very, very weird moment in Drag Race HERstory. *laughter*
Katherine: Oh, god. I don't think that's for you. Go on!
Hank: And then I said, "what if you had to go to a place to watch a YouTube video?" What did you call it, getting ratioed?
Katherine: Yeah
Hank: I a little bit got ratioed on this one.
Katherine: Really? Not really.
(14:00) to (16:00)
Hank: Well, 390 responses to 1300 likes is pretty high. And there were a lot of negative responses the that idea. I don't think people understood what I meant.
Katherine: Right
Hank: I didn't mean to watch every YouTube video, which I think people thought.
Katherine: Yeah, well, like a specific one?
Hank: But, like -yeah - if there was some way to eventize
Katherine: Well, you know, there's 280 characters now, so.
Hank: I could've said more
Katherine: Next time, elaborate.
Hank: Well, I kind of, sometimes, so do you want to know the real story behind why I tweeted this?
Katherine: Uh, do I?
Hank: It's because I like to give people the very barest sketch of an idea and have them fill in the cracks for me because then they give me good ideas.
Katherine. Mmhmm. Boy, you are...a white dude.
Hank: What?! *laughter* I'm a Slytherine, is what you mean.
Katherine: That's what I mean.
Hank: Yeah, well I use the tools I have at my disposal.
Katherine: Yeah, no, I mean, yeah. That's extremely, uh...intelligent.
*laughter*
Hank: She says, in the least complimentary way that that sentence has ever been said. Nobody latched onto that one enough to give me a better idea, but I have had more ideas around that idea lately. Something to do with that is going to be back-burnering for two years until it becomes something that is interesting.
Katherine: Yeah, Hank - I came up with this phrase today - Hank came down with an idea. Like, he caught it. He's infected.
Hank: It's a problem
Katherine: It's got this idea infection, disease.
Hank: I haven't yet come down with that idea, but-
Katherine: This is what happens to you, though.
Hank: I was talking to Dave about a version of this and we were close-
Katherine: No, I talked to him about it. Yeah, he brought it up to me.
Hank: It's interesting, but it is - it's work. It's a work idea.
Katherine: Sounds like a lot of work.
Hank: It's like a-yeah. So anyway. And then I said that everybody - the amount that everyone hates this idea is for some reason making me think that it's a good idea. And then I tweeted about the Adventure Zone comic which I got an advanced readers copy of and it's very good and hilarious-
(16:00) to (18:00)
Katherine: You did?! I haven't seen it!
Hank: It's on my iPad. Sorry, not a physical copy. I told you I had it. It's on my iPad.
Katherine: *heavy sigh* It's possible you did.
Hank: It's not even, like, the colors aren't even all done.
Katherine: Oh, okay. You told me about this a long time ago.
Hank: It was a while ago, yeah. Um, it's very good, and very funny, and very interesting, and the think that excites me most about it is that I want there to be a full twelve volume set of it.
Katherine: Right, all of them. Yeah.
Hank: And then I say, "Why is Google Play Music's J-Pop selection so baaaaaad..." So that's a..you know. February 27.
Katherine: I was at a meeting.
Hank: Yeah, so I was home alone, trying to listen to Shinohara Tomoe, who I used to listen to a lot in college. Nothing!
Katherine: What? Weird.
Hank: Nothing. I could listen to some YouTube videos, but not even very many of them, and I got really frustrated about it, and so I tweeted. It was not super relatable.
Katherine: Nope.
Hank: To people.
Katherine: I mean, I feel like -
Hank: J-Pop is not as big as...yeah...
Katherine: J-Pop isn't even...
Hank: Not as big as a think anymore.
Katherine: Yeah, the K-Pop is the one that's on the ascendent...
Hank: Yeah, they figured it out in a way that J-Pop did not.
Katherine: Yeah.
Hank: And I think that there was - some responses to that tweet were that Japanese labels were really slow to adopt, and have continued to be slow to adopt digital distribution.
Katherine: Oh, interesting.
Hank: And that has hurt them a lot.
Katherine: Well, I mean, so that's a fascinating thing about twitter, 'cause, like, you have this one off little tweet about something, and so many people see it that some of them know something relevent.
Hank: There's actually kind of a reason.
Katherine: I want to skip this one.
Hank: I...well, okay, well, we've gotten to - we've gotten this far, and this is my first political - I just, I caved in, and I tweeted something political.
Katherine: Sort of, yeah. I mean...
(18:00) to (20:00)
Hank: Well, I retweeted The Hill headline that Pence said abortion in the US will end, quote, "in our time" and then I said "please vote." And then a lot of people...you know, and then, honestly, my timeline for the next two days, my at replies were filled with at debates about abortion and pictures that I didn't want to see, and me muting people, and like, it's just...it's like...yeah.
Katherine: Uh-huh
Hanks: In everyone else's timeline this is something that they saw and they liked, but for me it took over my at replies for a while.
Katherine: Well, and this is the thing, where, like, you know, some people are like, yeah, you have to say these things, you have a "responsibility"
Hank: To fight the fight, yeah.
Katherine: Right, and, like, you have a platform, you must do this, and you're like, "I'm just trying to- I'm just trying to get through the day, guys. Sometimes. And I can't jump on every fight, either."
Hank: And I wonder about us imagining ourselves as, you know, tools in a war, rather than as people trying to live a life, and whether that is sustainable, and ultimately positive.
Katherine: It's not. Yeah.
Hank: So, yeah. This was a hard week to not get political, and I - John and I will sometimes text each other when we want to tweet something. Um...and also I have some YouTube friends that I do that with, where I'll be like, "Hey...here's a tweet I didn't tweet!" and they'll be like "Yep, that's a - I agree with you, and that is a good tweet, and you would've gotten so many likes, and good on you for not doing it!"
Katherine: Yep.
Hank: So, that was eight thousand likes. So that's the thing, like, if you look at the numbers, that's by far the top tweet so far. If you're thinking about it in terms of top tweets. And only sixty-six...
Katherine: Yeah. Our top tweet of the week is...
Hank: It's not the top tweet! We'll get to that one later.
Katherine: That's like, wow. That's like...Mmhmm. Nevermind.
(20:00) to (22:00)
Hank: What?
Katherine: That's a Drag Race periphery...video blog reference...
Hank: That you watched?
Katherine: Yeah.
Hank: *laughing* Okay, I thought that you were just adding as segment in for us.
Katherine: No!
Hank: "Our top tweet of the week is a..."
Katherine: Well, they, uh
Hank: Who is it?
Katherine: It's Raja and Raven, who you don't know 'cause they're from, like, season two. I haven't seen their season either, except just in clips and gifs and things, but they "toot or boot" -
Hank: I've seen "toot or boot!"
Katherine: -the looks of drag queens in a variety of, you know, categories. And then they always have a top toot of the week. That's where that came from.
Hank: I see!
Katherine: You might have to edit that out.
Hank: No, I like it. As much Drag Race as we can get into this podcast, for me-
Katherine: Oooh, it just happens.
Hank: -is good.
Katherine: Yeah, so we don't have to have like, an actual Drag Race centered podcast.
Hank: Yeah, but we can still talk about Drag Race extra
Katherine: We can still talk about it *laughs* extra
Hank: Totally. There should be - by definition, during the season, the end of my tweet stream is going to be about Drag Race.
Katherine: Pretty much, yes, if we're doing it weekly.
Hank: Not, like, the very end, but close to. And then I tweeted another political thing, kind of.
Katherine: *groans*
Hank: I said that I feel - I tried to do it in the best way I could. I said "I feel so separated from the reality other people live in...is there a reason for owning an AR-15 aside from 'It's a hobby that I enjoy a lot'?" I got a lot of responses to that, most of them were snarky, me-type people being like, you know, "I don't care about the sanctity of human life," or "children dying shouldn't interfere with my hobby." So, like, people who agree with me being snarky in response to that.
Katherine: Oh, right, right.
(22:00) to (24:00)
Hank: My cousin actually responded to me, who's a, you know, southern republican, and we talked a little bit about why - he doesn't have an AR-15, but we talked a little bit about why an AR-15 might be useful for hunters, and this is something that I didn't know. So...we probably shouldn't talk too much about guns in this podcast, but if you're hunting deer, you get one shot, basically.
Like, the gun goes off and the deer run away, so you don't need a semi-automatic. You're not going to shoot, like, five rounds in five seconds to shoot a deer, because by the time you've shot the first bullet, the deer is either dead or running away. Or injured and running away.
But anyway, what my cousin told me is if you're a predator hunter, it is good to have a semi-automatic weapon. Because some animals run away from you when you shoot at them, some animals run toward you. So that would be if you hunt mountain lion, or bear, or wild hogs.
Katherine: Oh, yeah.
Hank: And a lot of people in the south hunt wild hogs, my cousin hunts wild hogs. He doesn't use an AR-15, but a lot of his friends do, and they're like, well, this is the- and what he said was - and he's a super-conservative dude, what he said was "it would make perfect sense for that to not to be available to people who have, you know, certain things on their criminal record, and for me to have to take a test every five years to prove that I know how to responsibly use this gun. "
And that, you know, made a lot of sense to me, and it was a good, productive conversation with a guy that I disagree with on a lot, and who has tended to be less snarky to me on twitter,lately, which I appreciate. Because he's outside of my echo chamber, and when I see his twitter feed it's just, it's 100% stuff that I have never seen that he's mad about.
Katherine: Because he's in a different bubble.
Hank: Yeah, and he was literally the only person I had a productive conversation with on that topic.
Katherine: Interesting. I mean, it's extremely polarizing.
(24:00) to (26:00)
Hank: Yeah. And I'm not saying that...
Katherine: I mean, I love that these two consecutive tweets are, one, about abortion, and two, about guns.
Hank: And then would you like to see my next tweet?
Katherine: *laughs*
Hank: This was from the next morning.
Katherine: This is the one where you were like, "why did I do this to myself?"
Hank: It's a picture of my "retweet to your followers 'add a comment'" box and it says "this is the most dangerous thing in my life right now." And I don't remember what that was about, but it was something from the next morning that I was just like, "I want everyone to know what the hypocrites are doing right now!" It's probably something about gun control in Florida. But I didn't do it, and then I explained that tweet, because everyone was confused by it in my replies.
And I said "This tweet might not make a ton of sense so, quick explanation...it is very difficult for me not to dive into the outrage cycle, but I am doing my best." And I got some support from people on that.
Katherine: I think it's valuable to call that out, too. You know?
Hank: Yeah, the thing is you can't call it out in specific instances, because people will say, "we need to be fighting this fight," but you can do it generally.
Katherine: That's what I mean. Just pointing out the fact that this cycle exists and we don't always have to engage with it. Because that's the other thing with the internet, you don't know who you're talking to, sometimes.
Hank: Well, I certainly don't. You know, with 750-something thousand followers, you have no idea who those people are, and...so. Everybody who has a following on twitter, and that's everybody who has twitter, basically, has this concept of what their audience is, and it's always going to be incorrect. Like, I have a concept of what you are, and I've known you forever, and spend-
Katherine: FOREVER?!
Hank: -the whole time with you, and I still think my idea of who you are is incomplete, and you still surprise me sometimes.
Katherine: Ah, ha!
(26:00) to (28:00)
Hank: And then I tweeted about Rob Scallon's new stuff at DFTBA.com, because sometimes I promo my friends, especially when they sell stuff at my record label.
Katherine: Can you still call it that?
Hank: I shouldn't call it my record label. I should call it my merch company. And then I- this is a fascinating thing. So, axios pushed this...
Katherine: Yeah, I saw this and I was like, "I can't even engage with this"
Hank: So between November and February, so November of 2017, February 2018, the percentage of people who think that the US government will not go far enough to regulate tech companies went from 40% to 55%. A 15% swing, in, like, two and a half months. Like, a shift that fast doesn't happen. And it is - it's just like during the election and now. And I think that we are all feeling the impact that these platforms have, not just on our lives, which they do have a huge impact on our lives, and on our children, but on our culture and our society. Which is kind of why we're talking about this stuff.
Katherine: Mmhmm.
Hank: February 28, still. "Question....do you know anyone who works at or runs or owns or has a relationship with cool factories or other places where stuff gets made? Ideally in Seattle or Portland?" And 124 people responded to this. Lot's of cool responses! There was, like, a dog wheelchair manufactuer, which was neat.
Katherine: People making those in bulk?
Hank: Yeah, there's only one. Yeah, there's one dog wheelchair manufacturer.
Katherine: Yeah, I guess the only experience I have with dog wheelchairs is like, the human society, and just cobbled together, like, somebody, some volunteer made them out of PVC pipe or something, and straps.
Hank: Ooh, yeah, industrial knitting machine. They make, like, nerdy coding scarves. I think we might actually have a blanket from that company that your brother sent us.
(28:00) to (30:00)
Katherine: Ah, I'm not sure it's the same thing, but yeah, no, it was Sarah Green.
Hank: Yeah, but the weirdest thing that came out of that is that then the governor of Montana tweeted at me and said "Tell me what you're looking for, I bet I could help you find it. Also could show you some pretty cool stuff being made right here in Montana." I live in Montana, we live in Montana, and I felt super dragged by the governor, that I was looking in Seattle or Portland, because those are manufacturing cities, they're port cities, they make lots of stuff in those places. There is lots of cool stuff that gets made in Montana. But I did direct message the governor, who's following me on twitter, now.
Katherine: Well, yeah. I mean, you're a very notable resident of Montana, Hank. I'm sure he has interns that are like, "you need to be following these people."
Hank: He's told me about a dog toy manufacturer, laser manufacturer, electric bikes.
Katherine: Cool.
Hank: They make, like industrial lasers. Um, and the only American-made waders. Like that you go fly fishing in.
Katherine: Oh, like for fly fishing? Of course. Of course those are made in Montana. That's cool. Let's go fly fishing.
Hank: I said, "Y'all, I think I just got dragged by the governor..." and then "I just DMd him, this is so weird!" and then the next morning I said "Update, Governor Bullock seems very nice." That happened late at night, and I stayed up late DMing with the governor and didn't go to bed on time.
Katherine: Yeah, one - yeah, that's an instance where twitter is, like, not helping your-
Hank: Sleep cycle?
Katherine: -lifestyle.
Hank: Yeah. But it's so cool, though!
Katherine: Yeah, yeah, I know, but then the baby works at 5:30
Hank: The baby wakes up every morning, no matter what.
Katherine: No matter what.
Hank: And you cannot hit snooze on that alarm.
Katherine: No.
Hank: Because he just keeps crying.
Katherine: He doesn't cry.
Hank: He just goes.
Hank and Katherine: Whooooo. Whoooooo! (hooting noises)
(30:00) to (32:00)
Hank: And I can't just let him sit in there hooting, like a weird human whale owl.
Katherine: *laughing" He's a baby wheel!
Hank: A baby wheel
Katherine: *hooting noises*
Hank: *laughing* oh, god.
Katherine: To be clear, he is very happy. He's just...he eventually gets not super happy.
Hank: Oh, yeah, he starts to cry eventually. What happens is, eventually he gets, he's like, "it's no longer bedtime," and he throws his lovey out of the crib, and then he cries like crazy because he can't get his lovey anymore. And I'm like, "that's one way, I guess?"
Katherine: He's like, "this is the time, this is the sign."
Hank: It's so funny, it's like he's like, "I can't get mad enough to get them to come in in here unless -" I don't know. I don't know what his thought process is, but the throwing of his lovey out of the crib...
Katherine: There isn't one. Honey, you can't try to analyze
Hank: Yes, he is a baby. What is his - he's trying to manipulate us!
Katherine: You can't try and analyze his thoughts! *laughing* He just doesn't want to be alone anymore.
Hank: I guess he just doesn't want to be alone anymore.
Katherine: Also, he probably has a pretty wet diaper.
Hank: Yeah, he's got a super wet diaper.
Katherine: Get this dipe off me.
Hank: March 1, I just got-
Katherine: And then it begins.
Hank: Yeah, and then, like, the Hank Green promo-ing the cover of his book coming out starts, and doesn't end for a while.
Katherine: There's a bunch of that.
Hank: "I just got the final cover of 'An Absolutely Remarkable Thing' and I am so excited to show it off..." I did a cropped cover, "It's going to be a full cover tomorrow!" Oh, this is kind of back to my twitter criticism.
Katherine: That's something else, yeah.
Hank: "Every time I tell someone to not needlessly escalate the flame ware it gets interpreted as 'They're not that bad.'" and then I say, "No! I get it! The people you're fighting believe terrible and destructive things. But that doesn't mean anything and everything you do is immune to criticism." And I feel like I can't say these things, like I shouldn't be ever specifically saying that to a person who's doing the thing.
Katherine: You can't really contextualize it at all.
(32:00) to (34:00)
Hank: But I did do this to Kurt Eichenwald, who's, like, an MSNBC guy, who was being super snarky and dumb about Hope Hicks, and I was like, "why are you talking this way?" It's fine to criticize this person, but you're doing it in this weird...
Katherine: Yeah...
Hank: He was very, like, condescending and patriarchal about it.
Katherine: It feels good.
Hank: I guess, but, like, his job...! But it's not. His job is to get-
Katherine: People to watch MSNBC?
Hank: Well, he's not- his job is to get people to buy his books and stuff. He just contributes to MSNBC so more people will know who he is. I think. I don't know anything about this guy. But I said "It seems to me as if you are trying to get likes on twitter, not trying to make things better" and that is the thing that I'm trying to find a difference between. But tweets like this don't get a ton of support in the like department.
Katherine: Yeah.
Hank: And it's very, like, if you are looking at the numbers.
Katherine: Oh, yeah. I mean, that's because that doesn't make a person feel...
Hank: Any of the feelings.
Katherine: Yeah. They're not like, "Ugh"
Hank: That kind of sentiment is, like, catching on more now, and I have seen signs that things are getting better, at least in my feed, but that wave is probably going to take a while to crest over the rest of everything that isn't, you know, people who have been using twitter since twitter happened in 2008 or whatever.
Katherine: Yeah, or people who have spent most of their young adulthood on the internet.
Hank: Yeah, understanding the impacts it's having. Ethan tweeted a quote from me from Dear Hank and John. It says "the only to make change happen is to assume and to pretend as if you are living in a world that has already changed." Which is not the most elequent...like, I would edit that, if I had the option.
(34:00) to (36:00)
Katherine: If you weren't just spewing it on a podcast.
Hank: It is a nice thing. And then I said "I can't remember why I said this, but I do know it was dumb..."
Katherine: The reason that you said it?
Hank: Yeah. And then I remembered, it's because I started calling dollars "Sacagaweas" and then decided to be stubborn about it. 1400 likes!
Katherine: *Laughing* Lay some Sacagaweas on me! Sacagawea..wea bills, y'all.
Hank: Sacagaweawea bills!
Katherine: No, 'cause they're not bills!
Hank: *laughing* They're not bills, I forgot. That's the whole point!
Katherine: That's the whole point.
Hank: Katherine and I carry around some Sacagaweas because of the parking meters in town, which are faster if you got the Sacagaweas instead of four quarters. And occasionally I'll drop a Sacagawea at the Taco Bell or something, because I don't want to pay for my one bean burrito with a credit card.
Katherine: And you don't have the cash?
Hank: Yeah, and invariably they're like, "Oh!"
Katherine: "This is money, I guess."
Hank: "I see"
Katherine: "Don't see these much!"
Hank: Yeah. I think we need a- let's all Sacagawea more."
Katherine: Yeah, I'm not opposed to it. I mean, if we're trying to get...
Hank: Pennies gotten rid of.
Katherine: Yeah, let's get a different coin involved in our lives. Although...you know, if I have, like, twenty of them in my wallet...
Hank: Oh, yeah.
Katherine: Because I can carry twenty singles around, no problem. But what am I going to do with twenty dollar coins?
Hank: In general I feel like coins are not convenient.
Katherine: Yeah, not really. I don't have a problem with quarters.
Hank: Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with quarters. I think that pennies are a bad idea, and possibly, also, nickles. They're just so big! Why are they so big? Why are nickles bigger than dimes? Why aren't pennies bigger than dimes? This seems like a foolish set of decisions.
(36:00) to (38:00)
Katherine: I don't know.
Hank: Do we hate Harry Truman so much that we gave him the tiniest thing, even though it's worth ten cents?
Katherine: I don't know.
Hank: Is it Harry Truman?
Katherine: I don't know. I don't know! Why don't you ask someone who likes coins? You want to get someone on here to talk about coins with you.
Hank: Katherine's like, "where's the Drag Race part of the podcast?"
Katherine: Hank's tweeting "who's on the dime?"
Hank: It's apparently Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who's great, why do we give him such a tiny piece of coin?
Katherine: I like the dime, too. It's a precious little implement.
Hank: It's a precious little implement. I think if we only - that's what the name of the podcast is.
Katherine: It's going to be one of these dumb phrases that comes out of my mouth.
Hank: Then I tweet more about my bookcover, then more about my bookcover...Katherine is playing with the cat, because she- forty-three minutes is apparently all we can keep Katherine for.
Katherine: She's got really big eyes! Her pupils got huge, and she was staring at me!
Hank: Okay.
Katherine: I had to stare back at her!
Hank: She does have big eyes. I don't know- Has she had dinner yet?
Katherine: No, of course not.
Hank: Oh, okay, then that's what's up.
Katherine: She's trying to get our attention so we can feed her. Her mush. She wants her mush. Oh, yeah.
Hank: Yeah. "Everyone that visits LA: Hey, I'm in town, we should hang out. By the way, I'm staying 25 miles away and I don't have a car so you have to drive to me, and I'm only free at 6pm." And this is me, I've done this to people. I now don't do it to people anymore. But I- when you go to LA you think "I'm going see other people I know who live in LA," but it's basically like living in a different state if you're in...you might not even be in LA, you might be in, what's it called, Thousand Oaks...
Katherine: Yeah, well, Scalzi's twitter today, did you see?
Hank: No.
Katherine: He's from...
(38:00) to (40:00)
Hank: Yeah, out like...yeah.
Katherine: He's from basically West Covina - which is a place!
Hank: Oh, yeah, I know. The Inland Empire!
Katherine: Yeah, almost. And there's a map with a tiny little red dot that's basically half of LA county, the southern half, where all the people live. The nothern half of the county is deserts and forests. In that tiny little red dot, then there's a map of the United States, and all the other states that have populations that are less than the population of that county. It's, like, most of them. It's -
Hank: There's a lot of people in LA
Katherine: -frickin' ridiculous.
Hank: It's a big...it's a big...
Katherine: What the heck?! I - The thought of that - just the thought of that, like, teeming mass of humanity makes me so nauseated! I'm just like, "why?! Why would you do that to yourself? Ugh!"
Hank: Every time I'm in Los Angeles, I'm like -
Katherine: I'm just - It makes me panicked.
Hank: There are more people on this road than there are in my town.
Katherine: In your state, probably!
Hank: *laughs*
Katherine: Like, if you count from one end of the road to the other.
Hank: Yeah. It's got its charms, though. It has it's beauty.
Katherine: It's too many people, y'all.
Hank: I enjoy LA through the lens of Harry Bosch novels. And I'm just like, yeah, let's live up on the hill and listen to jazz records.
Katherine: Nice work if you can get it. Most people are not living like that in LA.
Hank: Yeah, well, he got a big bump for consulting on a movie, is how he bought that house.
Katherine: Oh, good for Harry!
Hank: This is a fictional character, by the way. Just to be clear to everybody. He's a fictional detective.
Katherine: Who I have - I don't read this at all.
Hank: My mom really likes it, so I've...
Katherine: I'm only familiar because of Hank.
(40:00) to (42:00)
Hank: "My experience in business is that it is human, emotional, flawed, beautiful, chaotic, and complex.
Also, we could use more people who are excited by and interested in that to go to business school or start companies."
I've just been thinking a lot about how business weeds out people who are good at human stuff, and that business is human stuff.
Katherine: Oooh, yeah.
Hank: Of course it's not all human stuff, but small business is.
Katherine: I mean, yeah, small business. And then there's the megalomaniacal business thing.
Hank: Jesus, kitty.
*laughter*
Katherine: The cat is just *crazy noises* in the background.
I just, every time Elon Musk is in the news, I'm like, "That guy?"
Hank: Well, being a person who has done business, there...it selects for, but also creates a certain amount of distance from other people's humanity, because you have to make calls that are really uncomfortable to make, and that escalates from the point of where you have, like, five employees, you really don't have to worry about that. At fifty, you start to be like, I have to make decisions based on what's good for the company, and that's going to hurt individuals. And then at Elon Musk you have no idea-
Katherine: And then you're Richard Cory and you shot yourself in the head!
Hank: Who's Richard Cory?
Katherine (singing) *And I wish that I could be* It's that Paul Simon song.
Hank: Oh, that Paul Simon song.
Katherine: We were listening to - you hadn't heard that one before.
Hank: Yeah, and then I forgot about it.
Katherine: Anyway, sorry, yeah, it's like you...
Hank: Like, it selects for and creates. Like, it does both those things. Like, a certain amount of psychopothy. And I am aware of that, but it - I just think that - my experience with business school is that there should be more small business school for people who need that, as well. Because I think that business school prepares people to, like, go into investment banking and work at big companies, and I dont know who's trying to teach people just how to run your autoshop or your pizza parlour. How do you get that knowledge?
(42:00) to (44:00)
Katherine: Yeah, totally. Most of the businesses in America, for example.
Hank: Like your hair salon. And like, those are things that at least have examples of other people succeeding in that space, so you can sort of base your business model on their business model, but if you're trying to innovate and create something new, that is, like not designed to become the next facebook or spotify or whatever, it's just a very uphill battle, and it's very tiring.
Katherine: Mmhmm.
Hank: Valerie Barr, my friend, says "I'm not taking bikes any more I got too many I'm sorry don't email me" and I said "Val out of context"
*laughter*
Katherine: "Val out of context" would be a good other twitter.
Hank: 387 likes, so that one didn't do particularly well, but Val is a good friend of mine. They are working on a 'zine of people drawing bikes from memory, and got too many bikes.
Katherine: Too many bikes. So look for that 'zine sometime in the future.
Hank: I'm interested to hear what you think about me tweeting this. "Tip for people (like me) who don't know much about Christianity: When The Pope says something, that represents the Catholic Church, not all Christians. Non-Catholics fought wars so that they wouldn't have to care what The Pope says." That got 4.2 thousand likes, so it did well...I have a really hard time not saying that it did well. Like, I need to not think that way.
Katherine: Right, like, what does that metric mean, actually?
Hank: And a fair number of responses. And the responses were generally thoughtful responses, that were like, "but he is a leader in the Christian-" for some non-Catholic Chrstians they still consider the Pople a leader.
(44:00) to (46:00)
Katherine: Sure, I mean, totally. He's extremely influential.
Hank: Yeah, and also people saying, "Well, I'm a Catholic, and the Pope doesn't represent what I think," and I'm like, well, kind of he does, based on how Catholicism works.
Katherine: Yeah, how to do...?
Hank: It's okay to have your own feeling about how your particular Catholocism works, but that's not really how it's supposed to work. But I only - like - my dad was raised Catholic and so I know a little bit about Catholicism, but what I'm getting at here is I see a lot of people say, like, "The Pope says that global warming's really a thing! Why are the Christians still arguing about it?" and I'm like "Well, in America, most Christians are not Catholic."
Katherine: Especially, yeah. Especially in America. I mean, around the world I think most Christians are Catholic.
Hank: Most Christians are Catholic. It's just a thing that I see a lot in people like me, when we're like, "Why aren't the Christians on board with this?" And I'm like, "Guys. There's not just one Christians."
Katherine: Yeah. It's fine. It's a fine tweet.
Hank: I feel like that second sentence maybe didn't need to be there.
Katherine: Yeah...
Hank: "Non-Catholics fought wars so that they wouldn't have to care what The Pope thinks" because, first, no, not the ones who are currently alive. For the most part.
And then I get back into my cover is coming out soon. "One hour!" And then I talk about how I pledged to Ashley Clements kickstarter.
Katherine: It's a great cover.
Hank: And then I - so I released my video to release the title and I feel like I should have just put the title on-
Katherine: Cover.
Hank: Yeah, sorry, I feel like I just should have put the cover on twitter. Now that I've - now that I did this, I feel like I should have just put it up there and said "here it is, you don't have to watch the video" but I wanted people to watch my video!
Katherine: The thing of like, "I need to be the first one to see it, I need to now and-" Like, it's fine. You can make people wait three minutes.
(46:00) to (48:00)
Hank: *Laughs*
Katherine: Like, you will be okay. I don't even watch Drag Race on the day it comes out. You going be okay!
Hank: Yeah. We never get spoiled, either. I mean we haven't so far.
Katherine: No. I- the Drag Race community- I don't follow a lot of, like, relevent things on twitter, or any social media, specifically because I don't want to get spoiled, and most of the people I know-
Hank: Don't watch Drag Race.
Katherine: -don't watch it and don't care. But I think people are also pretty, like...
Hank: Right. They don't want to ruin it for someone else, because they love it and they're- it's a pretty supportive place.
Katherine: Yeah. They'll tweet something, but it's not, like, obvious why.
Hank: Right. You tweet, "oh, my god, did you see the thing that happened?"
Katherine: Right. But there's nobody in there who's, like, trying to ruin your experience of living.
Hank: Yeah.
Katherine: Like there are in other- like everyone that watches Game of Thrones, who must tweet about what happened on Game of Thrones immediately.
Hank: Well, during the episode, yeah! I'm just like, I can't, I'm not going to watch Game of Thrones live! Who watches shows at the moment they happen?
Katherine: Also, like, how is tweeting, like, enhancing your experience of watching, too?
Hank: Well, it's because you get the feeling of watching with a bunch of people. So you're tweeting, and other people are tweeting, and you're following with hashtags...
Katherine: That's what tomorrow is for. Like, watch the show, and then tomorrow you can talk to your friends about it. That's we always did when I was growing up, when I was growin' up.
Hank: *laughter* But why? We have social media now. As we're doing this-
Katherine: Or, like, you can be on the phone with someone.
Hank: Wow. Wow. The Oscars are happening as we're recording this and everybody's tweeting about the Oscars. And, like, people tweet about the Superbowl commercials -
Katherine: Ughh!
(48:00) to (50:00)
Hank: There's an interestingness to having the simultaneous experience. And you can block the hashtag and you can avoid it. And I feel like, in general, spoilers have gotten better on the internet.
Katherine: A little bit.
Hank: And not since, like, Harry Potter, book seven came out have there been, like, rampant, intentional, "we're coming to get you" spoilers, at that level. I hated that so much. Before we even had good comment moderation so you couldn't block people from saying certain people killed certain people.
Katherine: Certain other people and animals.
Hank: And animals! *laughter*
Katherine: I mean, that's not an interesting thing to me.
Hank: Spoiling people?
Katherine: No, the, like, collective...
Hank: Collective viewing on twitter, talking about the thing as it happens.
Katherine: Of a recorded thing! Like, I can kind of see if you're watching something that's actually live, like a sporting event, maybe? Like, it's only going to happen once.
Hank: But that's- there's that same feeling about finding out what Jon Snow did this week, or whatever.
Katherine: I guess, yeah.
Hank: Or that Jon Snow- I guess you're going to be spoiled on that. People are all tweeting about what Jon Snow is doing. If you're in the book world-
Katherine: I don't know what Jon Snow is doing!
Hank: He's - no he's dead!
Katherine: He died.
Hank: He's dead in the book right now. So it's pretty - I had to start watching Game of Thrones again because it caught up with the books. I didn't want to watch it.
Katherine: Of all the things I regret spending my time doing before I had a child and had, like-
Hank: All the time?
Katherine: -a bunch of time, it was reading those damn books.
Hank: Aw, man. Not pulling any punches, here. It's a lot of words.
Katherine: It's a lot of words. Didn't enhance, like, my feeling about the world.
Hank: Didn't help me understand the world any more, really.
Katherine: Yeah, didn't really, like, elevate my life. There's other stories I probably would have enjoyed more.
Hank: Didn't make me a better person.
Katherine: No!
*laughter*
(50:00) to (52:00)
Katherine: Anyway. Engough dragging Game of Thrones. Don't at me! *laughter* I can have opinions!
Hank: More book cover, and then we watched Drag Race, so March 2, "Celebrated my cover release by watching this week's Drag Race and just finished and..." then there's a gif of Rupaul gasping. "Katherine was literally on the floor..." Katherine replied to this tweet with a gif of Greg Proops falling over.
Katherine: That's not Greg Proops, babe.
Hank: Oh, who is it? Who is it?! Ryan Stiles? It's Ryan Stiles. Which one's Greg Proops?
Katherine: Glasses
Hank: Ah, I got him, I got him, I got him in my head now. And that actually was a response to Grace Helbig, not to me, who said "same."
Katherine: I don't tweet at you, you don't listen to me.
Hank: I do! I do! Every time you tweet at me I see it! Every time!
Katherine: *laughing* I'm just a voice of the...
Hank: Here's a picture of a slushy license plate that fell off the license plate and then refroze on the ground. Katherine spotted this.
Katherine: The comments on one are so weird
Hank: Ok, let's find out
Katherine: Because the people went to, like...you know, you said watch my snapchat story
Hank: I said instagram story
Katherine: Whatever. And they went and watched it, and it's a Washington license plate and all the comments were like, "did you move to Washington?" Like there aren't any other cars in the world, except for Hanks.
Hank: They thought it was my car? I'm not going to post my license plate number on instagram!
Katherine: Yeah, like there's no other way to encounter a license plate in the world, unless it's yours. It's the strangest thing. Like, why would they assume it's your lisence plate?
Hank: Maybe they thought that it was somebody else's license plate, but all the license plates have to stay in their state.
Katherine: Leave your state with your car?
Hank: They just stop you. They're like, no that's the wrong tag.
(52:00) to (54:00)
Katherine: It's because they're all from California. They've never driven anywhere else because they can't. They can't get out!
Hank: It's impossible! There are other cars in the way *laugther* We live in Montana, we don't know what's going on, we don't know how the rest of the world works. Uh, yeah, but I thought that was very cool. Katherine spotted that and she was like, "you gotta put this on your instagram story."
Katherin: I mean, I knew you needed to see it because you're fascinated by frozen water.
Hank: It's true, I am
Katherine: Just, and all the that things it does.
Hank: It's really cool.
Katherine: I mean from Florida it's pretty fascinating. Fascinating *distorted* I've got to make fun of myself before you do it. Every time I say something mildly incorrectly-
Hank: I think that we're having fun together.
Katherine: Hank mimics me.
Hank: I do! I'm so sorry.
Katherine: And I'm like, are you kidding me? Why?
Hank: Why is this a way that things happen? How is that acceptable?
Katherine: It isn't.
Hank: This is a tweet about BlackRock asking questions to - BlackRock is a giant investement capital firm. They invest - they manage, like, six trillion dollars of assets, and so I said this is probably a big deal, for BlackRock to be talkingto gun manufacturers and gun sellers, and I think it is, and probably shouldn't have tweeted it. But maybe, I don't know. I want -
Katherine: Mmm. Well, didn't get that much traction, though.
Hank: It didn't. It got two hundred - maybe the bottom tweet of the week. Honestly. That'll be interesting to figure out.
Katherine: You know why? It's because nobody knows what this is.
Hank: I know and that's like - that's kind of what I want to open people up to, like - this is how a lot of change happens, when the people who manage six trillion dollars of assets go to gun makers and are like, "are you selling to gun stores that don't do background checks? Why? And stop." There are-
Katherine: You don't get your money.
(54:00) to (56:00)
Hank: There are - probably two percent of the gun stores are where a lot of the guns that get used in crimes get sold, and are you the gun maker
Katherine: Right, because that's where - the criminals know that they can go to those stores.
Hank: Yeah, and are you the gun maker looking into that, caring about that, does that matter to you? And if BlackRock says that needs to matter to you, then maybe it matters to you now.
Katherine: Interesting.
Hank: Yeah. And no traction. Maybe I should have explained that more, I don't know. But I didn't want to talk too much about guns.
Katherine: Again.
Hank: I'm just so tired. I'm so tired. "My friend and I had a reaeaaaallly gooood ideaaaaaaa.....but, like, it's work and I don't have time for that!" We already talked about this idea that Dave and I were talking about.
Katherine: Yeah, that came up earlier.
Hank: "Sent my manuscript off to copyediting" True, I sent my manuscript off to copyediting, Katherine. It means that it's gone for, like, six weeks, and then they come back with, like, timeline stuff and punctuation stuff and misused words and all that.
Katherine: Do they do any - they don't do any formatting, no?
Hank: Formatting stuff, yeah. I mean, that will happen during that time, but not - that's not copyediting. And then I said that means only one thing and so I tweeted a picture of me - not starting, but continuing to work onthe second book.
Katherine, Ah, I see.
Hank: Which I've had a good time with!
Katherine: Well, that's great!
Hank: I was working on it and, like, I don't really, hundred percent know how it's going to get from where it is to all the places that I want to go...
Katherine: That's great, you have an idea of where it's going to go. I don't know how you do that.
Hank: It's happening and so far, so good. I have enjoyed the stuff that I've written. And then top tweet of the week, Katherine! Top tweet of the week.
Katherine: Oh, top tweet of the week!
Hank: "Y'all, look at my book cover."
Katherine: Twelve thousand likes!
Hank: And then I immediately moved on and said "Watching an @okaytobesmart video and Orin stares right into Joe Hanson's eyes and says 'Dada.'"
Katherine: Which is what he calls Hank.
(56:00) to (58:00)
Hank: Yeah. Joe Hanson is a fellow science communicator who looks very much like me. It fact my bobblehead -
Katherine: Especially now that you sort of style your hair like his, too.
Hank: I know, mine's a little messier than his. It's, like, the only difference we have.
Katherine: Well, like, his face is square- more square than yours.
Hank: He is square.
Katherine: But, yeah, I mean - Orin's not great at the facial recognition anyway, so.
Hank: Yeah. He is a little baby. It was fun to watch that video with him, he liked it. It was about igloos.
Katherine: He did like it. It was cute. It was funny when he was just, like, staring at the screen - because he's watched your videos before. So he's seen you in that context.
Hank: Yeah, right. Do that very thing. And we were kind of tricking him into watching that so we could feed him, because sometimes he stops wanting to eat certain kinds of food, but if you can get him zonked enough and just watching igloo videos...
Katherine: He'll just open his mouth, and you can put something in there.
*laughter*
Hank: Jim Adkins made a gif version of my novel cover which was really cool. It's kind of creepy and cool.
Katherine: Yeah, totally creepy.
Hank: And then I did a whole thread about the water company in Missoula.
Katherine: This is- I have not caught up to this point yet, so this is new. I have not seen these yet, 'cause it's Saturday. I don't go on twitter on Saturday, or whatever.
Hank: Yeah, so this was yesterday. "The water company in my town was privately owned for decades. Different companies kept buying it from each other for weirdly valued prices...it was being passed around like a chip at a casino. But, like, water companies definitionally have monopolies, you can't lay down a second set of pipes. So eventually the city decided to buy it. And, almost all water systems in the US are publicly owned. But still people came out of the woodwork to say that it was better for some random private equity firm you've never heard of to control our water system than the people who live here. The city finally bought it though, and now we control our water company, and I think that's good. I don't really have a point. Have a nice Saturday Night!!"
*laughter*
Katherine: I just had to get this out!
Hank: I don't know! Like, I started out thinking I was going to get somewhere, but, like, I had already started, so I had to do it!
(58:00) to (1:00:00)
*laughter*
Katherine: You could've deleted the tweet.
Hank: I couldn't! No, so many people had already seen it!
Katherine: So many.
Hank: Uh...and that last one in the series got 1000 likes, so people liked it. I feel like I brought it around and it ended up being good.
Katherine: "I don't really have a point. The End."
Hank: This is about...oh, my god! This is an outrage tweet. It's an outrage tweet. I retweeted Emily Calandrelli, who lives in West Virginia, um, and is also a science communicator. West Virginia is having - it's a terri- like, it's very difficult. It's a difficult situation. They do not have money and they're trying to make their school system work, and it's terrifying to see it kind of fall apart a little bit.
But this state Senator said "These teachers have been putting together bagged lunches for their classes while they're here on strike. They're worried about whether they get fed or not. Now does that tell the common person that those teachers need a pay raise?"
So these students haven't been getting their free lunches because the schools closed, so the teachers are putting together bagged lunches for the students who can't afford food. And this guy-
Katherine: And otherwise would not eat.
Hank: This guys is saying those teachers obviously don't need a raise.
Katherine: They have the extra money to feed these poor children. Yeah, that's what that means.
Hank: Ay, ay, ay, what the heck? Uh, "I once saw someone on Tumblr call John egotistical because he cried because of something that happened to his own characters, but I cry like /every time I write./
My book isn't even that sad."
I was crying about - while I was writing the second book. I was, like, up there being like, "Oh, my god, I can't believe she has to do this!"
Katherine: Hank cries a lot, you guys.
Hank: I do. I'm kind of a crier. In the fam, I'm probably the one who cries more. I, like, I had -
Katherine: What fam are we talking about?
Hank: You and me.
Katherine: Okay *laughs*
(1:00:00) to (1:02:00)
Hank: Orin cries more than me.
Katherine: Yeah, and, okay, I was like, are you talking about the Green's? 'Cause, no.
Hank: *laughs* Yeah, no. This couch family.
Katherine: Your family is a cryin' family, which is fine. You're open.
Hank: Yeah...
Katherine: We're not. I'm not allowed to feel.
Hank: Yeah, Katherine's family is very New England. And I got a lot of support for this tweet, 6.5 thousand likes. I feel a little bit like I was calling out people who were calling out my brother. And that's part of.
Katherine: Oh, yeah.
Hank: I shouldn't've - I maybe shouldn't've gone there. Because honestly I never would have seen that if I wasn't seeking out John Green hate on Tumblr. Which I have done before in my life, and I don't know why that's a thing, where you're, like, looking for people to be mean.
Katherine: Things that are going to make you angry?
Hank: And I dread book reviews. Not only, like, the reviews from critics, but the reveiw from just randos being really - and I'm just going to look for them, and I'm going to find- and it's going to waste so much time feeling bad, but, like, to some extent, maybe it's just me trying to find people who are going to give useful criticism. But maybe not.
Katherine: Mmmmmm....you can tell yourself that. I mean, maybe it's valuable to just be like, "not everyone likes me."
Hank: Yeah. And I think that, like, being receptive to criticism without becoming defensive and angry is a really important part of having power...
Katherine: Oh, yeah, you've got that, that giant robot suit.
Hank: Yeah, the giant robot suit is a metaphor that we use in this household that we're not going to get into in this already hour and twelve minute long episode of Dissect Hank's Tweets. But we're very close to the end.
This morning I said - I retweeted this person's very cool Mercury art, and then I tweeted about an article I read in Scientific American in which scientists argued that the first true human-like AI will be developed in a human-like body raised in a human home and cared for like a human child.
(1:02:00) to (1:04:00)
Katherine: NO!
Hank: It was really interesting...but I'm buggin', as I said at the end of that...I tweeted about Nature League, our new show.
Katherine: Just throwing out a bunch of stuff here on Sunday. It seems to be the thing that you do on Sunday. You're like-
Hank: Well, sometimes I go through my task list, and the task is, like, don't forget to tweet about Nature League.
Katherine: Checking in on the things you need to be talking about and then having thoughts.
Hank: Yep. And then my last tweet of the week!
Katherine: This is a good one.
Hank: "I've had a wonderful time watching people I love succeed in different ways. Some build businesses, some raise kids, some care for their parents, some care for themselves, some make art, some build homes, some got rich, some still struggle, and I am so impressed by them all."
Because I almost tweeted something snarky about something that a fellow internet creator said, and instead this is a subtweet that you can't tell is a subtweet. It's just a nice tweet.
Katherine: The Hank Green Story!
*laughter*
Katherine: The story of Hank Green's twitter: Subtweets you can't tell
Hank: I do - sometimes I think I go on twitter specifically to inspire myself to create a tweet that will be good and that people will like. And I'm looking for something to trigger a good piece of content out of me, and I'm just scrolling, waiting for that inspiration to strike.
Katherine: Oh, my god, it's just so weird that you have that relationship with twitter.
Hank: Well, that's why we're doing this podcast! And now-
Katherine: I know...oh my god, that is not what I do to twitter.
Hank: -for the end of the podcast, we're gonna go through Katherine's tweets from the week.
Katherine: And replies, because really, there's not really any tweets.
Hank: And replies, because otherwise we wouldn't have any...uh, February 25, this is a response to this cat holding a gourd in a good hat.
Katherine: It's a real big vegetable marrow. It looks like a real big, white zuchini.
(1:04:00) to (1:06:00)
Hank: What does it say? "This cat just wanted to live a quiet life in the village until a string of grizzly murders pulled her out of her retirement." And what did you say, Katherine?
Katherine: Poor Meowcule Purrot.
Hank: Meowcule Purrot!
Katherine: Because that's what he did! Poor Meowcule Purrot just wanted to retire in a little English village and grow vegetable marrows.
Hank: Yeah. That was- yeah. That was a part of Hercule's story.
Katherine: Yeah. And then a bunch of other people responded to me, but whatever.
Hank: Yeah, that's good twitter. This person says "standing ovation." You got 47 likes, Katherine.
Katherine: I got 47 likes on that?
Hank: But you got 139 likes for the time when you told this person who was snarky about kids in Florida calling for gun control-
Katherine: Not my best moment.
Hank: -and you just said the word "fuck" and then eight o's and eight f's.
Katherine: I think it was, like, twelve and twelve, but whatever.
Hank: See? Like-
Katherine: Not the best-
Hank: Yeah, it's so hard not to do that
Katherine: Not the best use of my twitter but I couldn't not.
Hank: We didn't go into my replies. My replies probably had some of this shit, too.
Katherine: Ooh, yeah.
Hank: Uh, and then you...retweeted Elliott Morgan coming back and hosting with John on the new Mental Floss, and then there's you tweeting - I forgot his name, I can - Ryan Stiles falling over because of Drag Race. Because that's what you looked like.
Katherine: It is. I mean, the flying, floppy arms, wide open mouth...
Hank: Uh-huh. So those are your three tweets from the week, Katherine.
Katherine: He's got a much bigger feed than me, but other than that.
Hank: Alright. Thank you for listening to this pilot episode of He-WHo-Must-Not-Be-Tweeted, with Hank and Katherine.
Katherine: The other time I tweeted it was a mistake.
Hank: Is that the name of the podcast?
Katherine: I don't know. Tweet your mistakes at Hank Green. At gmail...
Hank: Yeah, if you want to tweet your twitter mistakes to me - Hank Green at gmail is not me.
(1:06:00) to (1:06:56)
Katherine: Nope.
Hank: But I am @hankgreen on twitter
Katherine: Don't at me.
Hank: Don't at Katherine. *laughter* Alright.
Katherine: Or do. If you - you know, if you really must.
Hank: If you really must. But not about Game of Thrones. She rolled her eyes real hard, but quietly.
*laughter*
Katherine: Thanks for the... *laughter* Thanks for interpreting for the audience
Hank: The thing that I was intentionally not showing them! Alright. Thank you, everyone. Goodye.
Katherine: See you later!