468: I Will Not Be Licking Any Doorknobs

Dear Hank & John

The episode features John and Hank Green navigating a variety of topics ranging from biological evolution to space acoustics. John discusses

Key takeaways

• John Green's new novel, 'Hollywood Ending', is currently on a national book tour.
• Multicellularity evolved independently in plants, animals, and fungi at least multiple times.

Main topics

• Book tours and writing anxiety
• Plant biology and multicellularity

Notable quotes

The only way out is through.

Conclusion

A thoughtful exploration of how looking closer at the world reveals un

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Speaker 2 (0:09) Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Speaker 1 (0:13) Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank, sorry I was drinking Diet Dr. Pepper. Speaker 2 (0:16) It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions while drinking Diet Dr. Pepper, give you debased advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, where did Noah keep the bees? Where did he keep the bees, Hank? In the archive. The archive. The archive. The archive. Archive. Well, that's what I like Speaker 1 (0:34) about that one. It's Speaker 2 (0:35) a Speaker 1 (0:35) good... Because you don't have to like mispronounce things a little bit to make it work. Like if you say archive. I Speaker 2 (0:43) did do that. I did. I gave it a little bit of a huh that I wouldn't normally do. But say archive. Speaker 1 (0:47) It still sounds like archive. The archive. Yeah, you'd get it. Speaker 2 (0:51) Yeah. The archive. But that's way more than two Bs. He's supposed to only take one of two of everything. And he doesn't even need to. He just needs an inseminated queen. Speaker 1 (1:02) There are a lot of. different kinds of bees from around the world that he had put in there. Speaker 2 (1:08) And there Speaker 1 (1:09) could be no crossbreeding. That was not allowed. Noah specifically outlawed that before putting them in the archive. Speaker 2 (1:16) And the ants also were a huge problem because there's a ton Speaker 1 (1:20) of those. I mean, not to mention the land-based bacteria that he couldn't have known about because he lived before microorganisms. Speaker 2 (1:27) Yeah, but they can often go into a kind of ton state. You know, they go dormant. Do you think Speaker 1 (1:32) they could make it 40 days and 40 nights? They can Speaker 2 (1:33) spore up, you know? Okay. Speaker 1 (1:35) All right. Speaker 2 (1:36) I don't know. I don't know. I do know that a queen ant has babies all her life, but only is inseminated once and just stores that sperm and keeps using it for years, sometimes over a decade. Speaker 1 (1:51) Wow. So I Speaker 2 (1:52) don't think that they all do it that way. But ants, they've got so many ways of living. So they only do it once. Some, yeah, Speaker 1 (1:59) during the flight. And the vast majority of ants, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, die virgins. Speaker 2 (2:05) Oh, yeah. No, they're not. They're not for that. Vast, vast, vast majority. Speaker 1 (2:11) Mm-hmm. Speaker 2 (2:12) Yeah. Bees, too. That's not what it's about. Oftentimes the bees die. So it's the males. They don't survive the act. Well, I'm Speaker 1 (2:22) not sure what to make of that, except that when dad told me about the birds and the bees, he didn't mention any of that. Speaker 2 (2:29) Yeah. Yeah. Actually, don't teach them the birds and the bees. The birds, maybe. The bees, that's definitely not it. That's not. Yeah. That would be a really weird place to start. You know, maybe kick off some wrong ideas from the beginning. Speaker 1 (2:45) Where do babies come from? Well, first, mom lays an egg. Speaker 2 (2:48) No. No, that's not how babies go. That's how birds go. We have a Speaker 1 (2:52) lot of listeners with young children. It's true. And some of them listen to this podcast. And what we've just done is make a problem. Speaker 2 (3:03) Possibly. But it's a problem that can be solved. John, recently I was at the Colorado School of Mimes. Speaker 1 (3:08) Yeah. Someone Speaker 2 (3:09) said my girlfriend. M-I-N-E-S. What did you think? Mimes? Speaker 1 (3:15) Yeah. Oh. For a second. I was Speaker 2 (3:17) not at the Colorado School of Mimes, though I would go if they invited me. And I was told by a person there that a girlfriend would cringe very much if I mentioned her name on the podcast. Wow. And you're doing it? It Speaker 1 (3:30) might Speaker 2 (3:30) have been Stephanie. Speaker 1 (3:32) It might have been. Yeah. Could have been another name. Speaker 2 (3:34) Could have been one of the other names. Speaker 1 (3:36) Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:37) So that's what you get. You know, sometimes you get a delivery, but not the one that you wanted. You get a low quality Speaker 1 (3:45) delivery. Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:47) And I was like, there's almost, there's no chance I'm going to remember to do that. But then that came to mind just now. Speaking of travel. Uh-huh. Speaker 1 (3:56) My book, Hollywood Ending, came out yesterday. Speaker 2 (3:59) Oh, wow. It didn't for us, but it did for them. Speaker 1 (4:02) That's right. And we are traveling the country celebrating. And by we, I mean myself and my publicist to whom the book is dedicated, Elise Marshall Pfeiffer. That is how much I love my publicist. I dedicated a whole dang book to her. And we are traveling the country together. We are seeing the world. We are hoping to see you. In towns like Portland, Maine and Tucson, Arizona and Los Angeles, California and many other locations. But most of all, we're hoping- Those are the ones that Speaker 2 (4:37) have not sold out yet though, sounds like. Speaker 1 (4:39) Yeah, I'm emphasizing the ones that haven't sold out because I get messages every day from people who are mad at me about the ones that have sold out. So I don't want to say those towns again. We are really excited about the book, Elise and I, and hopefully other people. Speaker 2 (4:57) It's getting good reviews. Speaker 1 (4:58) It's getting good reviews. The Speaker 2 (4:59) reviews are coming in. Speaker 1 (5:00) The reviews are coming in. It got starred reviews from both Kirkus and Booklist, which is a huge relief and encouragement. But you never know how people are going to feel about the book until they actually read it. Of course. So there in listening land, where you have already pre-ordered the book from your local independent bookstore, signed copies are available now. You are engaging. In a world that I wish desperately I was engaging in because I cannot handle anymore the book not being out. I simply, I cannot get through this week with the book not being out, but I'm going to get through it anyway because as the great poet Robert Frost put it, the only way out is through. Speaker 2 (5:39) Yeah. You got it, John. You got it. It's scary. I don't really know how to deal with fear. Speaker 2 (5:51) I feel like sometimes I deal with it better and sometimes I deal with it worse. But sometimes I think that that's actually just that the fear was worse or the fear was less. Speaker 1 (6:02) Yeah. Or Speaker 2 (6:03) like the problem was. Speaker 1 (6:04) Yeah, I think Speaker 2 (6:04) that's true. It's like I get through it and I'm like, oh, I handled that one okay. And it's like, actually, what was actually happening is that wasn't as bad as other things. Speaker 1 (6:11) Yeah. Right. The possibility of that thing happening wasn't as terrible as I thought. And that's so true. And I mean, I have blown this whole, as often happens with anxiety, I have blown this whole Hollywood ending thing out of proportion. Speaker 2 (6:29) It's just a Speaker 1 (6:29) book. I've written seven of them before. Speaker 2 (6:32) And someday Jupiter's moons will melt, you know? Speaker 1 (6:35) Yeah, I mean, not just that, but the Earth will maybe be consumed by the sun. So I've got nothing to worry about in the scheme of things. Speaker 2 (6:42) Things get wetter at Jupiter as things get drier on Earth. Speaker 1 (6:46) Yeah. So given the boiling of the oceans, I have nothing to be concerned about. And yet still I find a way. And indeed, like given the scope of human suffering, I have nothing to be worried about. But I think because it's such a, making fiction is a vulnerable thing inherently, but this book in particular is, you know, raw against some of my vulnerabilities. And that's the nature of writing. That's the nature of trying to. engage in creative expression at all, I think. Speaker 2 (7:17) But Speaker 1 (7:17) it's going to take a while before it stops feeling raw either way, like regardless of how the book is received. So yeah, I'm just taking it. Do you feel like a fake writer, John? You can't. Oh, I do. Absolutely. I feel like a complete imposter and like my being an imposter will be revealed to the world at any moment. So Speaker 2 (7:34) I recently heard somebody talking about writing on a podcast. Speaker 1 (7:37) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (7:38) I was like, well, that's not what I do. So it's got to be something I got to be doing something else. Speaker 1 (7:43) Oh, no, there's just there's no one right way. Speaker 2 (7:46) And they were talking about the struggle and they were talking about how like you can't think when you're there. You just have to feel. And I'm like, Speaker 1 (7:52) oh, I guess that's not I guess that's not what I do. I really dislike it when people talk about writing as if there's one way to do it. It's like when people talk about parenting as if there's Speaker 2 (8:04) one way to do it. It felt really Speaker 1 (8:04) judgmental in this particular Speaker 2 (8:05) conversation. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:09) like there's a bunch of people who aren't real writers. It was almost kind of the frame that they were talking in. Speaker 1 (8:14) Well, it's very possible that I'm one Speaker 2 (8:16) of Speaker 1 (8:16) those people who's not a real writer. Speaker 2 (8:18) I'm falling on the other side of it. I don't know. You know, I think about like art and design a lot because that's what I studied more in school in undergrad. And there's like this like part of creating visual systems that have utility. And there's part that's like creating visual systems that are like about. what you gain from it and you never know what somebody is going to pull out of it. And so it was like, you know, these, this like art versus design thing, like design is often about, like, you don't necessarily want to make something beautiful. You want to make something that's useful. And sometimes I think about my writing through that lens where I'm like, oftentimes I am thinking of it mostly from the angle of how do I get this information into a person's head the best way and fastest and lowest barriers way possible. Speaker 1 (9:05) Yeah, I still believe in the old fashioned notion that art should be useful. Useful maybe in different ways than design is useful, but still useful. It still helps us contextualize ourselves in the universe, you know? Right. It could Speaker 2 (9:21) feel a little bit like if you're talking about like there's something more pure about the other thing. Speaker 1 (9:28) Right. But there isn't. But I Speaker 2 (9:29) don't want to, yeah, I don't want to, I don't feel that way when I'm making it. It's still hard. I'm still struggling. Speaker 1 (9:35) I don't know. Yeah. I mean, the last pure art was on cave walls. There's no, there's no purity in this game and it's not about purity. It's about trying to make stuff that allows people to visit rooms in their mind. They have no other way of visiting. Speaker 2 (9:48) I, yeah, I don't, that's a really interesting thought. I wonder how the cave wall art felt. Speaker 1 (9:54) I bet it felt pure as heck, Hank. I mean, I bet those people didn't feel like imposters. They were pure. So it's funny how we romanticize the past. Because of course they weren't. They were competitive and people would be like, Olaf is terrible. Speaker 2 (10:11) Yeah, I can tell you for sure that it was about status to some extent. It played some role in human structuring of their society. Speaker 1 (10:20) Yeah, and Olaf would be painting his... woolly mammoths or whatever. And people would be like, oh, those are great woolly mammoths. And Olaf would go to sleep at night staring at his woolly mammoths by the firelight and think I am a complete imposter. Speaker 2 (10:33) Yeah. It's nothing like Philo's. Speaker 1 (10:36) Yeah. It's so much Speaker 2 (10:36) better. Speaker 1 (10:37) Oh, God. Well, and to be fair, Philo was a genius, you know? Yeah, it's not true. And Olaf was just sort of plodding around doing his best. Yeah. Speaker 2 (10:46) You ever think, man, it must have been hard to do humanity without words. We did that for Speaker 1 (10:53) a while. We did that for half the time, probably. Speaker 2 (10:57) Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:58) Yeah, I bet we weren't as good at it. Do you ever think that you're made out of words? No, I always think that I'm made out of meat. Speaker 2 (11:08) I think that I might be made out of both meat and words. Speaker 1 (11:12) It's a beautiful notion, but I'm afraid you're mostly edible. Let's answer some questions from our listeners. Speaker 2 (11:17) This first question comes from both Adriel and Madeline, who asks, Dear Hank and John, how do trees decide where and when to grow their branches? We are lucky to live in a neighborhood with lots of big old trees and one tree in particular. has us wondering about this. For almost six years we've lived here, and all of its branches have been higher than the two-story house next to us, and the trunk doesn't show any sign of lower branches that have been removed. But for the last six months or so, a handful of branches have started to sprout much closer to the ground, and we're wondering why there, why now? Thanks in DFTBA pumpkins and penguins, Adriel, who is four and a half years old, and Madeline, who is 37. I recently was talking to a plant biologist. person who studies plants. And she was explaining to me how plants work. And it really drove home the fact that multicellularity happened more than once. And the way they do everything is