Dear Hank & John

451: We’re Synced, Baby!

41 min
May 6, 202625 days ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

John Green discusses his recent trip to Sierra Leone to visit the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence, reflecting on healthcare inequities and stigma's role in disease. The episode covers listener questions about trains, file organization, camp counseling, and atmospheric optics, plus major news about AFC Wimbledon's dramatic last-minute survival of relegation and organic molecules discovered on Mars.

Insights
  • Stigma functions as a self-preservation mechanism for observers, allowing them to distance themselves from illness by attributing it to personal failings—a pattern that persists across cultures and time periods despite being psychologically protective but medically harmful.
  • Infrastructure reflects colonial and extractive priorities: Sierra Leone's new railway connects mines to ports rather than people to people, demonstrating how development can reinforce inequality rather than address it.
  • Digital curation algorithms exploit human psychology by defaulting to high-salience content over nutritional value, mirroring how people choose immediate gratification (junk food) over long-term health when given algorithmic choice.
  • Institutional morale and staff dignity are measurable outcomes of healthcare infrastructure investment—facilities deemed 'world-class' rather than 'good enough for the region' fundamentally shift how workers perceive their value and mission.
  • Extreme scarcity (two cups of specialized solvent on Mars rover) creates strategic decision-making about which samples to test, with high-value targets chosen first and irreplaceable resources allocated to highest-probability discoveries.
Trends
Healthcare infrastructure as dignity indicator: Global South facilities increasingly evaluated against absolute standards rather than regional comparatives, shifting institutional culture and staff retention.Algorithmic transparency and user control remain theoretically appealing but practically rejected: Users prefer algorithmic curation over customizable feeds, suggesting engagement-optimization may be inevitable rather than imposed.Mars organic molecule preservation through radiation exposure validates hypothesis that biosignatures could survive billions of years, increasing scientific confidence in detectability of past microbial life.Labor movement legacy in modern work culture: Four-day work weeks emerging as productivity-based argument rather than purely humanitarian one, reframing weekend as economic optimization rather than moral right.Extreme sports fandom as emotional investment vehicle: Fan communities experience relegation/survival drama with intensity comparable to major life events, suggesting parasocial investment in team outcomes serves psychological function.Infrastructure colonialism persists in modern development: Extractive industries shape transportation networks in ways that prevent local economic integration, demonstrating how physical infrastructure encodes power asymmetries.Digital file hoarding as psychological insurance: Users retain decades of low-value documents and screenshots despite rational acknowledgment of worthlessness, suggesting digital storage removes friction that previously enforced curation.Atmospheric optics education gap: Widespread misunderstanding of why horizons appear hazy despite clear skies, indicating science communication failure on observable phenomena.Specialized medical treatment access: OCD treatment requires specialized providers rather than standard talk therapy, highlighting how diagnosis alone insufficient without treatment-modality matching.Childhood memory formation through structured activities: Talent shows and friendship bracelets function as core memory anchors for young children despite low objective quality, suggesting social participation matters more than performance.
Topics
Healthcare Equity in Sub-Saharan AfricaStigma as Barrier to Medical TreatmentMaternal and Neonatal Healthcare InfrastructureTuberculosis and Malnutrition ComorbidityInfrastructure and Colonial Economic PatternsMars Organic Molecule DiscoveryRNA/DNA Chemical Precursors on MarsRadiation Preservation of BiosignaturesAmerican Train Infrastructure and UsagePeople Movers vs. Traditional RailDigital File Organization and PreservationAlgorithmic Curation vs. User ControlWeekend History and Labor MovementOCD Treatment and Specialized TherapyAFC Wimbledon Relegation DramaAtmospheric Optics and Horizon HazeCamp Counseling for Young ChildrenFriendship Bracelet MakingAncient Egyptian Labor PracticesDecans and Rest Cycles in Ancient Egypt
Companies
Partners in Health
Organization that operates the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone that John Green visited
Google
Mentioned for Google Photos service and Instagram algorithm discussion regarding content curation
YouTube
Referenced in discussion of Hank Green's early career ambitions to run the platform
Reddit
Mentioned as example of platform Hank attempted to replicate with customizable algorithm concept
Crash Course
Educational platform co-created by Hank Green and Stan, mentioned in context of Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay
Royal Air Maroc
Airline used for John Green's 25-hour return journey from Sierra Leone
Coydew Government Hospital
Healthcare facility in Sierra Leone housing the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence
AFC Wimbledon
Professional football club that John Green is investor in; survived relegation in dramatic final match
NASA Curiosity Rover
Mars rover that discovered organic molecules in rock samples, specifically the Mary Anning III sample
People
John Green
Co-host discussing his recent trip to Sierra Leone and AFC Wimbledon's relegation survival
Hank Green
Co-host discussing technology, algorithms, and various listener questions
Paul Farmer
Namesake of the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone
Nikki Wah
Spearheaded $25 million capital campaign for Maternal Center of Excellence
Stan
Co-created Crash Course Humanities with Hank and plays Red Dead Redemption 2 on his channel
Sarah
John Green's wife who accompanied him on Sierra Leone trip
Antoine Hackford
Scored the 88th-minute goal that secured AFC Wimbledon's league survival
Daniela Arcon
Co-hosts World Cup podcast with John Green
Quotes
"Stigma is fatal. Stigma kills people all the time because the idea of getting treated for an illness, being such a black mark on your social standing that you would choose not to get treated, is real."
John GreenEarly in episode
"It felt as good as Wembley. We were all loaded. That's how it felt. I mean, it felt as good as anything can feel in that van."
John GreenAFC Wimbledon news segment
"We're all going."
John GreenDiscussing mortality and centering one's life around undying things
"I don't want to be a rogue planet. I want to have a star. I want to be centered around something undying."
John GreenMetaphorical discussion of life meaning
"We're synced, baby."
Hank GreenDiscovering identical Instagram feeds
Full Transcript
You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. I'd prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you DB's advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John recently, Oren, looked up at me and he said, can I have a bookmark? Which is lovely. I love that he loves books, but he still does not know that my name is Hank, which is hard. John, you recently are returned not as the listening, but as of the recording. Yeah. You're your early own. How are you doing? I got back yesterday. I'm tired. I'm quite tired. I was supposed to have a day with nothing scheduled, but then you insisted on recording this podcast. Did I do that? You did. It's okay. I decided to talk with you. I loved seeing the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence at Coydew Government Hospital. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've had as a vlog brother, as a person. It was just incredible. It was really spectacular and made me very grateful and overwhelmed. That said, the scope of need in the Kono district is hard to get your head around. I was with a community health worker visiting with two young women, one living with HIV, one being treated for tuberculosis. Goodness gracious, this young woman's one-year-old kid who was also being treated for TB was just so sick and has such a hard road ahead. Man, it just sticks with you. Is tuberculosis, in kids, usually comorbid with lack of nutrition? The way I understand tuberculosis is usually when you're young and healthy, it doesn't necessarily hit you super hard unless there's other problems. Yeah, there's other problems. This kid was severely malnourished. I thought he was maybe four or five months old, but he was over a year and just severely, severely malnourished. They have, because of stigma and weight diagnosis, just a really hard road. The psychosocial parts of illness are as important as the biomedical parts. I was just reminded of that, that stigma is fatal. Stigma kills people all the time because the idea of getting treated for an illness, being such a black mark on your social standing that you would choose not to get treated, is real. That's hard for us to, and certainly we still have this with some illnesses, for sure. We had it way more with cancer, like when dad had cancer in the 1980s, it was a really profound thing. Just a lot of people really wanted it to be his fault. Because that's protective. It's like a self-preservation thing, where I'm not going to get it because I'm not a workaholic like Mike or whatever. Yeah, stigma is a way of saying, you deserve for this to happen and by extension, and I don't deserve for it to happen, so I'm safe. But people really want to feel safe. It's such a blessing to feel safe and so disorienting when suddenly you don't, when you've had it a lot in your life. Yeah, hey, so before we get to the regular part of the podcast, have you read my book? I haven't. You sent it to me and I have it. I feel so bad. I just wanted to make sure that you haven't read it yet. No. Okay, you haven't even read the first page. Correct. I've read the first paragraph. All right, as long as you haven't read it yet, then I'm not stressed out. Okay. It's just if you have read it and you're not telling me about it because you're just being quiet because you hated it, that's a worry. Yeah. Yeah, it's top of the pile. Tell you that. I appreciate it. You're going to wait for the audiobook? Yeah, could you just do a quick reading for me? Yeah. Just give me a call, read the book, all of us say it while I'm doing dishes. Yeah, it's like probably eight hours. We've both got time for that. But it was a great trip to see early on. I was with some of my best friends. I was with Rosiana who has been such an important part of this project with Nikki Wah who really spearheaded the $25 million capital campaign, which was not a job that she expected to be having. Yeah, Nikki was there. LJ who heads up Good Store where $12.5 million have been raised for the Maternal Center of Excellence. If you've ever gotten awesome socks, if you've ever donated at pih.org.shankandjohn or if you could today, if you could get your awesome socks today or donate directly at pih.org.shankandjohn, it's incredible to see the first NICU in Sierra Leone, to see 120 maternal beds, to see a world-class hospital. What's the vibe among the staff? The vibe is incredible. The morale is astonishing because this is a place that for so long has been deemed unworthy of world-class facilities. It has been told that good enough is good enough. Maternal Center of Excellence is more than good enough. It is not a good hospital for Kono or a good hospital for Sierra Leone or whatever. It's a good hospital. It's a good place to receive care. I would feel very happy and safe with any member of my family receiving care there. The NICU to the C-section Recovery Ward, it is just an astonishment. I'm super, super grateful. Yeah, it was an awesome trip, man. If I could snap my fingers and be anywhere in the world, most days I would go to Kono. The problem is you can't snap your fingers. Sure can. No, it does seem like it took a while to get there. My 25-hour trip home on Royal Air Maroc was a long day, Hank. I had a long day. Sarah had a long day. Chris and Marina had a long day, but we made it home. John, do we have questions from our listeners this week? I don't know, Hank, because I can't find the document. Well, here it is. The first question was from Abby who asks, Dear Hank and John, do Americans not like trains? I've seen videos online talking about how trains or shuttles are called people movers. Is the creation of this new noun due to some stigma toward trains that I'm unaware of? Is calling it a people mover less scary or confusing? A confused Brit, Abby, can it correct me if I'm wrong? A people mover is not a train. They can be trains, but a people mover almost always is what you might call a shuttle on rails. So a thing that goes from one place to another and then back. Like a monorail. It's very interesting. I don't want to make the whole podcast about Sierra Leone, but this is very interesting because I talk in the book, everything is tuberculosis. It's about this one Sierra Leonean physician who said, if you want to understand the challenges of Sierra Leone, look at a map of our trains and the trains just go from the mineral-rich areas to the port. The trains don't connect people to people. They connect minerals to the ocean. And there's a brand new gleaming train railway in Sierra Leone that wasn't there the last time I visited, at least not as I recall, that it's the equivalent of a people mover, because it has no stations. It takes iron ore and diamonds to the coast. From the mine to the coast and then back. Just to make sure that they don't in any way enrich the country. People mover generally is usually at an airport. The traditional people mover is like, the airport is so big that the two wings of the airport are like two miles apart and there's an automated, there's not even a person that's piloting this thing. It's just you get in and it just goes back and forth. I think that Americans don't hate trains. No. I think we may have a stigma against trains. We have a little bit of a stigma against trains, but not, I actually think Americans like trains. It's just that they haven't been given the opportunity to love trains by larger forces, because I'll tell you what, when you go to Europe or parts of Asia, the train situation is... It's lovable. Oh, yeah. It's wondrous. Yeah. The train from Amsterdam to Brussels, I wrote a large section of the Fault in Our Stars taking the train from Amsterdam to Brussels and then I'd walk around Brussels for a bit and then take the train back to Amsterdam because the internet wasn't very good and so it forced me to write. It was great. Even the times I've trained in America, when it's actually a useful train route, I needed to go from... I was in Los Angeles and I needed to go somewhere north of Los Angeles. I was in... I don't know. It was some coast of Los Angeles train and it was beautiful and it wasn't crowded and I got to... There was a plug at my seat and I could stand up at any time and you don't have to show up super early and you just get on the train and you do your thing. Yeah. It was great. It's amazing. I love the train from Indianapolis to Chicago. Great train. Yeah. That's great. Montana, not a train place. That's not an option for us. To be fair, I feel like Midwestern cities should be connected by train. There should be rail between Indianapolis and Louisville and between Indianapolis and Milwaukee and Detroit and Cincinnati. But you don't understand the difference between the Midwest and the West. No. Up there in Montana, it's six hours to the nearest population center. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. There's no... You got a look at a map of population density of the US. There's still a line in the middle and that's where the rain stops falling. There's just no water out here so you can't have a lot of people because you can't do a lot of agriculture, which is what the country was based on. Do you know what we made? The peak corn crop in America? You would expect that to be last year. This year? It was 1930. Really? Yeah. It was before that, I think. It was back before cars when we had to feed animals all the time. As opposed to now when we don't have to feed animals all the time? Oh, to do the work. To do the work. Yeah. All the mules and horses to do the work. Back in the Red Dead Redemption 2 era. Exactly. I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on John's channel. It's such a blast. I have so much fun doing it with Stan. The fact that Stan and I co-created Crash Course Humanities and then went on to play Red Dead Redemption 2 together, it's a wonderful arc. Is the Redemption Red Dead or is Red Dead being redeemed? I believe the Redemption is Red Dead for the second time. The main character, Arthur Morgan, I have heard many times that the video game includes tuberculosis. The main character just got coughed on by someone quite sickly, which feels like that's an oversimplification of how tuberculosis usually spreads. He was coughed on very explicitly and there was some red, red leams in the cough. I was like, I think I got what happened there. I don't want to spoil anything for myself or others, but I've glimpsed how this might end. Is the Red Dead what they call tuberculosis? I'm choosing to say yes. All right. Ask me another question, Hank. I like not having the questions in front of me. Now you're in charge. This one's from Nicky, who asks, steer, Hank and John, over the last years, I have amassed tons of files from projects and receipts to photos and videos. Most of it seems tossable, but I keep hanging on to it just in case. What should I do with all of it? Do I keep everything? What about when I'm long gone? Who gets all these files? What are they going to do with it all? I know it's tricky, Nicky. Where's all your stuff from when you were in college or first working? I have a little bit. So I have every email I wrote mom and dad and they wrote me back in college because dad printed them. That's nice. Yes. They're weirdly effective for the things that you actually want to keep. Oh, yeah. I've got the book somewhere in this very room. I have the book of emails that Sarah and I wrote back and forth before we started dating when we were just friends. It's the best book to read to each other. It's so sweet and funny. I was so enamored with her and she was so aware of that. Obviously, you don't need your receipts from 2010. Those are not useful anymore. It's hard to sort these things and it may get easier in the future and also it is easier than it once was. There may be tools that you could be like, hey, delete all the screenshots. I don't need those. Delete all the receipts. I don't need those. But photos is like, you might as well hang on to most of those and nowadays you could probably get yourself a Google Photos account or something like that. Get them all on there and then have them be there. Don't have them be on your hard drive. That thing might just stop working one day and then you won't have them anymore. Do you need your receipts from 2010? Just let it all go. What if it's just like a pick you're going to enjoy looking at someday of you and your friends being Google's? But you won't. You'll never look at it again. I do. How? I go on my Google Photos and I scroll through the years. I just scroll through the years. All right. Okay. All right. Maybe I'm wrong. The iPhone has a new service where it picks a random photograph from somewhere in your camera and shows it to you every hour. That's nice. You're right. I'm wrong. But then there's like, I have a, and it's a real tour of embarrassments, but I have like my desktop of my desktop of my desktop. So every time I get a new computer, I just like put all, I don't do this anymore, but for a long time I would put like the desktop, which would have all my stuff on it in a new folder called old desktop. And then, and that would go on my new desktop. And then I'd take that and I'd put it in my, when I got a new computer again. And so I've got like layers of old desktops, a real wild tour to go through and see what the heck I thought I was going to pull off as a 24 year old, you know? Surely your 45 year old self is pleased with how things worked out from the perspective of your 24 year old self. You pulled off all kinds. How could you have been more ambitious than you turned out to be? Well, I was. You thought you were going to be president? What did you think you were going to be? I thought I was going to, I thought I was going to create like tech platforms, maybe, you know, I thought I was going to be the guy who ran YouTube, not just a YouTuber. Oh, gross. Yeah, I know. I agree. I had all kinds of ideas. I was like trying to make like the next Reddit, basically. Oh, imagine. But then, but then also like strut or large are any way. I am also owned Reddit. Yeah. It was never, the ideas weren't good. I basically, I wanted to do the thing that everybody thinks, which is like, what if we could control our algorithm? We could tune it ourselves, which is turns out is not what people want to do. They just want you to chock them full of high salience moments. Just keep me engaged, platform. I don't care how you do it. It's like how a certain percentage of people will choose to eat, you know, 12 to 15 servings of vegetables a week. And the vast majority of people, if offered the choice, will choose to eat not 12 to 15 servings of vegetables per week. And I am in that vast majority. And I'm also in that vast majority when it comes to the salience economy. So like, I will eat when I am fed. I will not seek out necessarily the highest nutrition information. You got to have a mix. But boy, I don't think I'm doing the best. I don't think that I'm doing the best. I don't think that I'm covering myself in glory when I look at my Instagram algorithm, if I'm being honest. More hook trimming videos than like, how do we actually address healthcare and education inequities in our global systems? That's not what Instagram is for. You want to play the game, John? You want to roll and open up Instagram and see what the first thing is? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's roll off. Now, hold on. Let me get my phone. Oh, well, if he didn't have his phone, I definitely weren't doing it because I'm not going to do this by myself. All right. Here you go. First thing, I got an American Woodcock video from Stan's Field Guide about the American Woodcock. I got a McElroy video, McElroy family video. Come on, give me a stinker. I got a Bebe No Money video where Bebe No Money is talking on half the screen and the other half the screen is a person making stir fry. I just got the American Woodcock video. Hey. Our Instagrams are the same and they're not that bad. We're synced, baby. All right. I know Hank Green, if I let him, will do this for the next 40 minutes. That's the problem. That's the problem. Go away your phone. Nicky, I don't know what's going to happen to all your files when you're gone. I don't think you should worry about that. You should worry about how they serve you now. There you go. There you go. That's true for art as well. Don't think about how the art is going to live or die when it comes to forever. Think about how it can serve you and other people now. This next question comes from Izzy who asks, dear Hank and John, I'm currently getting ready to become a first time camp counselor. I have been preparing by learning all the camp songs and basic games that I can get my hands on. I have also been watching camp movies for inspiration. I will mostly be working with four to six year olds. So I fear pranks, four to six year olds. What kind of this is not a summer camp. I don't think this is sleep away. That's babies. What kind of pranks are they going to pull? Yeah. Have you met a six year old? The main prank they're going to pull is peeing at inappropriate times and places by accident. Accident, yeah. Oh, I. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, I fear pranks. Even small ones may traumatize them. Not I fear their pranks. What else would you suggest I do to make their camp experience as camp like as possible? Smashing s'mores. Izzy, Fred ship bracelets. I don't know why, but that's the thing you do. Those six year olds is a little early for that. I was going to say, I don't know if those little four year old hands can necessarily knit together a friendship bracelet, Hank, but maybe if Izzy gave a friendship bracelet to the four to six year olds, that would be pretty magical. That would be very memorable. No pressure, but that would be cool. Though a lot of work because there's a bunch of them. You can fit a lot of five year olds in a little cabin. It's true. It's true. That sounds so stinking cute camp for four to six year olds. I'm sure that in reality it won't be cute, but it sounds cute from the outside. I think you got to build fairy houses and it might just be like holes. You got fairy because of a little hole that you dig in the dirt. But I'm a big fan of a fairy house. Sometimes I find them in the woods because I'm out there in the woods. It's a real delight. There's been a lot of time out there in the woods, Hank. I like going in the woods. Always looking for fairy houses. And then finally, the biggest camp thing that you do, the most important event of any camp is the talent show. Oh, yeah, you've got to do the four to six year old talent show. Because that's going to be a core memory for you. Maybe not for them. Yes. Yes. I don't know what they do, but something. Everybody's talent is the same. Little dances. That reminds me actually that today's podcast is brought to you by four to six year old talent shows, four to six year old talent shows. It's not about them. It's about you. The podcast is also brought to you by the American Woodcock. The American Woodcock. It's a cute word. And of course, today's podcast is brought to you by Trains. Trains. They're wonderful. And this podcast is brought to you by the Red Death. We're not sure what that one is yet, but we are a little worried. This episode is brought to you by No CD. Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that feels so foreign or distressing that you just can't move on from it? Like suddenly wondering if your headache means you have a brain tumor and then Googling symptoms for hours or having the inexplicable urge to swerve your car while driving, feeling horrified and then spending hours trying to figure out why you had that thought? Well, that's what OCD is like. It's nothing like the stereotype about enjoying things being need. Real OCD causes relentless, unwanted thoughts that make you question everything about yourself and the world around you. It is scary and exhausting and can really take over your life. I have OCD and it is highly treatable when you get the right care. I am living evidence of that. The thing is, standard talk therapy, the kind you hear about a lot online, is not recommended for OCD and can even make it worse. OCD needs specialized treatment. And that's why I want to tell you about No CD, which is the largest provider of specialized OCD treatment connecting people with licensed, highly trained therapists for convenient virtual sessions. Their therapy is covered by insurance for over 155 million Americans and they provide support between sessions. So you're never facing this alone. If any of this sounds familiar, go to No CD dot com and book a free call to learn how they can help. That's N O C D dot com. This episode of Dear Hanging, is brought to you by Quints. I doubt you have noticed, but I do like to be somewhat intentional about what I wear on any given day. There's a lot of, there's a lot of hoodies that get thrown in, you know, there's a lot of decisions that I'm not super proud of, but help has arrived in the form of Quints because I want to open the closet and have there be not a lot of work for me to do, but a lot of things that like work well with each other and look good and almost like maybe I'm doing a good job being an adult. Quints can be a huge help here. You got 100 percent European linen shorts for $34. You got Pima cotton tees that feel the way a T-shirt's supposed to feel. You got pants that are relaxed enough to wear around the house, but put together enough that nobody's got a polite. You'll ask if you're doing OK. And the reason everything costs 50 to 80 percent less than what you would pay at comparable brands is that Quints works directly with the factories and skips the middleman layer. This is how you could do premium materials without the premium brand markup. Refresh your every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quints.com slash Dear Hank for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns now available in Canada to that's Q I N C E dot com slash Dear Hank for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quints dot com slash Dear Hank. This next question comes from Anthony who asks Dear Hank and John. I'm currently on a walk with beautiful Minnesota weather, not a cloud in sight this afternoon. And as I look up above me, I see a deep blue sky. But as I look around me in any direction, the horizon transitions from this deep blue to a hazy white in the distance. My guess would be that there are clouds above me. I just can't see them as they are not dense enough. Concerned that the clouds are avoiding my town. Anthony, this is just a that's what they call haze, Anthony. Well, is it or is this another example of Hank Green doesn't understand optics? Well, I mean, it's what they call haze. I didn't say what haze was. No, so if you look up and there's a blue sky, I mean, I can say there are no clouds. Like if you fly up like when you fly on a blue sky day, which I have to do pretty regularly, I fly on all kinds of days. I fly on most days. And so when you fly up in the sky, it's not like, oh, there are the little wisps of clouds once you get up there and you can see clearly like there are no clouds. And then the reason the sky is I've always assumed the reason the sky gets less blue as you look toward the ground is not because of haze. It's because of something having to do with optics. It's like the sun has to the light has to go further or something so that it just looks less blue. You are looking through more atmosphere. That's what I was trying to say. That is correct. That's what the haze is. Like when you see these, this is like one of the reasons why the pictures from the moon look really weird to us. It's like they look like a video game render because the distant things on the moon look like as clear as the close up things because you aren't looking through more atmosphere because there isn't any atmosphere. And on the earth, there's like all these particles of dust and water droplets and stuff. And also like the atmosphere itself, like it scatters light, which is why it's blue. That's also why the sunset has a different color because if you're looking through the sun as it sets, you're looking through it as it is passing through more atmosphere, which is why it's easier to look at why the sun, like more of the light scatters from your perspective because it's getting scattered by all that, all the stuff and all the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. And that is giving you, it's scattering more of the blue away. And so you're getting all of that yellow. Hank, where would you rank the sun in a list of heavenly bodies? Ah, number one. Sorry, Mars. Well, Mars disappears is fine. Sun disappears. Any star, any non-sun thing disappears. Fine. Sun disappears. Not fine. Yeah, even the moon, even the moon, moon disappears. Moon disappears. Problems, problems. Okay, big problems. Problems, not like sun disappearing. Like moon disappearing is like, oh, I might have to get my foot amputated. Sun disappearing is like, I have to get my head amputated. If Earth disappeared, we would die sooner than if the sun disappeared, but marginally. And not just that, maybe it would be worse. What do you mean? Maybe it'd be nice to have those like, maybe if the sun disappeared, it would be worse than if Earth disappeared. If Earth disappeared, we'd all be gone, but we'd be gone very quickly and without any warning. If the sun disappeared, we would be gone and it would be miserable. Yeah, like would you rather have the time to sort of like get your affairs in order, not that the affairs would matter, but say goodbye, you know, just not be floating in space with no oxygen, but just so cold and dark. So cold and dark. The oxygen, though, we'd have that for a while. Well, how would we die if the sun disappeared? That's actually an interesting question of cold. Yeah, probably, probably. I don't know. Yeah, the power, the power grid would not last long. Probably not at all. It probably immediately, immediately crash. So we'd have to be burning wood to stay warm. It would, Hank, it would be beyond cold. It would, there would be an infinite cold. It would be, we got, we got buildings. You build a fire inside and it holds onto the warm. You got to go outside to get the wood and there. John, the sun, I got to remind you, the sun disappears every day and we make it through 12 or sometimes 16, 18 solid hours up in Alaska. They make it through days, weeks. There isn't some residual sunshine sort of filtering in. That's what I always assume. Probably a little bit of heat from other places that's getting there. But no, we could, the earth would hold onto some heat. We do have, I'm actually, I got to figure this out, how we would die if the sun disappears. How long would we make it? Are we talking about, I thought, I thought we were talking about minutes. No, I bet some people would last weeks. Oh, that sounds terrible. I could be wrong, though. I feel like we could. Weeks in cave darkness, absolute cave darkness. Well, if the moon's still there, never mind, that's lit by the sun. Hey, oh, hey, oh, Hank Green just got, Hank, noted, noted science guy, Hank Green thinks moon lights itself. There's always a special fusion skin that it's got. Starlight, we would have starlight still. Yeah, we would have some starlight, but I mean, you want to talk about some weak light, starlight is going to be insufficient to our needs. Oh, man, how would we die? I'm so curious. I think we would die of cold. I think we would die of cold and and and I don't think it would take that long. I'm going to take the under on weeks. Yeah, I mean, I'm worried that we'd die of like asphyxiation. So that would be worse. But I think that there's also a lot of oxygen to hold on to. Well, it would be weird for sure. Like I do not I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't want to be a rogue planet. I want to I want to have a star. I want to I want to be I don't want to be hurtling through space. Is that also metaphorically true? Should we all like have a star, something that we center around? Yeah, but it has to be something undying, right? Because otherwise you're you center your life around something that might go. Undying. Yeah. God, love, friendship. I searching for meaning, whatever it is. I don't think you can can make your star like a single person. I think that's a lot. That's a lot of pressure on that single person. OK, I know I understand what you're saying. I'm like, like all the things you just listed are things that are not undying technically, but I get what you mean now. You go say that to God, Hank. Well, I apologize about the God thing. That the God that God I can see being undying. But like, you know, like wanting me like like searching, you know, that's isn't that's an undying thing as long as you're around. And I guess that's that's basically identical. You just needed to last longer than you. Or exactly the same amount of time as you. Right, exactly. You want it to be at least as undying as you are. It's famously not, but not that much. It's true. It's true. We're all going. This is my favorite last words of all time. We're all going. Yeah, one of one of the presidents, one of the ones who was assassinated. His wife said, I want to go too. And he said, we are all going. We're all going. We're all going. Thanks for coming to our hit podcast for teens. What's giving another question, Hank? Christie asks, Steer, Hank and John, when did the concept of a weekend start? Did ancient Egyptians working on the pyramids get two days off a week? No, they have. Did they even have weeks like us lost in time, Christie? I don't think that the ancient Egyptians, who I don't believe were always Egyptian, working on the pyramids got the weekends off. But maybe something. Maybe feast days or or service of some kind. But no, not not not a traditional weekend. The traditional weekend came about because of the labor movement. Before that, there was the Ten Commandments. One of which was, don't do anything on my day. Yeah, rest on the Sabbath, but like that's not a weekend. No, no, no, no. No, it's it's half of one. Yeah. And then the labor movement was like, what if there was a day that was for you? Yeah. And then one for God. And then back, you could argue that we we as we increase productivity, we should probably go toward four days a week. Or you could take the Hank Green path of going seven days a week just for fun. Well, if it's if it's is it work? If it's fun, it's work. Yes, correct. You know what my therapist says? I should stop thinking about what I should do and think about what I want and what I need. Because I keep I keep saying should and she doesn't. And she's like, where does all these shoulds come from? Who's telling you you should? Yeah, it's almost always an email, my shoulds. So almost always an email. It's like it was like 15 emails right now. I should send that I but I'm so tired. I just got home. Yeah, yeah. But you shouldn't think about the should you should think about what you need. You need to send that email. Yeah, I guess there are some emails that I need to send and a few that I want to send. That's almost never an email I want to send now that I stop and think about it. I feel like less than it used to be. Yeah, it used to be a source of joy. Like when I would email Sarah before we started dating, I mean email in the 2000s. It's almost impossible to explain how how enjoyable it was. You've got mail. Now everybody's got mail and they're like, I'd rather not have mail. But John, before you get to the news from AFC Wimbledon, I know you have a lot to tell us. The ancient Egyptians and the people working on the pyramids, they appear to have had labor crews that worked in rotating shifts. So they did get time off, but they would have longer periods of time on. And their time in ancient Egypt was organized around 10 day periods called deck ends and sometimes rest would come after like long stretches of work. And then you get like a big hunk of time off, which, you know, that seems like it might have its advantages. I kind of like the idea of like longer work, longer break. But everybody's different. Listen, we've got to get to the news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon Hank because the news from AFC Wimbledon is incredible. Do you do Mars first? You do Mars first. It's incredible. It's astonishing. It's it is kind of wild. It's pretty wild. This week in Mars news, scientists have found more organic molecules in Mars rocks. In 2020, Curiosity found a rock sample and drilled some holes in it so that they could run some tests. And based on that analysis, they found that the rock had 21 carbon containing molecules. When we say organic and chemistry, we don't mean that they're from life. We mean that they are based in carbon chemistry. And seven of those molecules had never seen before on Mars. One of these molecules is important because it's like kind of a chemical precursor to RNA and DNA, not the kind of thing that would like break down from RNA and DNA. But it would be good to have it if you were going to make life in a place. We do not know if these molecules formed via biological or geologic processes. But it does provide evidence that Mars could have been hospitable to life at one point in its history. And it also shows that these molecules can be preserved in rocks even through billions of years of exposure to radiation on the planet. The rock sample was called Mary Anning III after the paleontologist who discovered the first ichthyosaur and pliosaur. And the solvent used in these experiments on the Curiosity rover is called tetramethylammonium hydroxide, or TMAH. But the Curiosity rover only has two cups of TMAH. And this was the first sample to be tested because it was considered to be one of the highest value samples. Oh. So we just keep finding little clues, John. They're exciting little clues. They're clues, they're indications, they're maybes. Yeah. Hank, I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are on the six hour drive from the Kono district to Freetown to fly back to the United States. OK. Now. You're with your friends, Ryan and Warren, Chris and Marina and your wife, all of whom in addition to being huge investors in noted John Green Boondoggle, the maternal center of excellence, are also small investors in noted John Green Boondoggle, AFC Wimbledon. Uh-huh. It was your car full of dorks. Car full of dorks who love AFC Wimbledon, who are deeply invested in this community. AFC Wimbledon have lost six straight games. They have one draw in their 10 games. You kept saying we like we've got so many games to get these last points. And then they were like, I want to make John Green get sweaty. We had 10 games to win one game and we couldn't do it. And so we found ourselves with two games remaining in 20th place at the edge of the relegation zone, which starts in 21st, about to be relegated with nine of our best 11 players injured with an abs, like no starting forwards. Period. What happened? They all got hurt. Marcus Brown, Omar Bugil, Maddie Stevens, they all got hurt. So we were in dire, dire straits. I mean, it just looked, it looked inevitable. It felt inevitable. Our last two games were both against good teams. Exeter City was on a stunning run of win after win below us in the table. So we're driving from Kono to Freetown in a van with my friends. And I would say that Ryan was able to stream about 20 percent of the game on his phone. Like the game would come in for like 30 seconds and then it would go away. We're playing Wigan. Game comes in for 30 seconds. It's nil, nil. It goes away. At one point, we slip down into the relegation zone because Exeter City score and send us into 21st place. And then Burton Albion equalized against Exeter City. And so suddenly it's not looking quite so dire. We're back into one place, but only by one point. And we have a worse goal difference than Exeter. Everything is going against us. We see little bits of the stream. It crashes, then a little bit of the stream, then it crashes. Finally, in the 88th minute, it's still nil, nil. And the stream starts to work perfectly. And we're all watching and we're all just like somehow. I mean, we had 25 percent possession in this game. We looked. Oh, my God. We'll say it awful. Oh, wow. And I was just like, somehow, someone find a way to score a freaking goal. Just just one, just somehow. And then a ball comes in in the last minute of the game, Hank, to Antoine Hackford, who's had a long season on the bench, buries it in the back of the net and Exeter City draw. And AFC Wimbledon have secured their league one status for another season. It felt as good as Wembley. We were all loaded. That's how it felt. I mean, it felt as good as anything can feel in that van. We were jumping up and down. We were hugging each other. I was almost weeping after all the emotion of seeing the Maternal Center of Excellence to see AFC Wimbledon, to see this other boondogle of mine. It was just incredible, incredible feeling. And then and then, Hank, to make it even better, the very next day, AFC Wimbledon's women's team had to win or tie in order to not get relegated. And they tied in the earliest minute. They were down to one and they tied the game. Oh, my God. And AFC Wimbledon's women's team survived as well. Two teams that looked doomed on Friday live again on Sunday. Beautiful. I mean, I cannot believe you started the season so strong. And it's all why is there always drama? And I feel like most teams are just in the middle. I know you would think so. When you were you would think that we could have one season where we end just in the middle. But no, we're always in the playoffs or in the relegation zone every season, no matter what. So it is a huge achievement when we have the second lowest budget in the league. It's a huge achievement to stay up. The last four teams that were promoted via the playoffs from League two all went back down in the following season. So this is a huge achievement, but you're right. We should have achieved it earlier. We should have had a few games without stress. Instead, we only have one game without stress, which I am going to this weekend to see AFC Wimbledon play a game that does not matter in the least. Well, keep it up, boys. Everybody rest up, heal up. Heal up. How bad are those injuries? Everybody will be back for the new season assuming that they have contracts, which is always undetermined. Yeah. So AFC Wimbledon stay up, AFC Wimbledon women stay up. And I've got a World Cup to look forward to. If you're as excited about the World Cup as I am, you should check out the podcast I do with my friend Daniela Arcon at the away end, the away end pod. It's a great. We have a great time making it. It's no dear Hank and John, but it is a wonder. John, thank you for making a podcast with me. Everybody, thank you for sending in your questions. It's Hank and John at gmail.com. If you would like to send us stuff, this podcast was edited by Michael Polk. It was mixed by Andrew Smith. Our marketing specialist is Brooke Shotwell. It's produced by Rosyana Hals-Rohas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now at the beginning of the podcast is by the Great Gunnarola and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. American Woodcock. It's a good ending.