Dear Hank & John - 380: GreenChat 2024

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

What's up with the Green brothers in 2024? Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear I Get John. George, I prefer to think of it dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a DBS advice and bring you all the week's news. From both Mars and the AFC Wimbledon, John, did you hear that the... No. That the...

You did actually. That the... That someone beat Tetris? I did. In fact, beat Tetris? I did. In fact, I broke this news to you. But I want to talk about it because I feel like there's a metaphor in it. Oh, there's so many metaphors in it. So for those who don't know Tetris is a 35 year old video game released in the late 1980s when Hank and I were at our absolute peak of video game prowess.

And Tetris' motto was from Russia with love because it was designed by a Russian video game designer right at this interesting moment when what had long been the Cold War was beginning to thaw as they said. Yeah, they made a whole movie about it. It was a real blockbuster. Oh boy. Oh boy. I thought that we were going to... I thought I was like, oh man, there's no dead joke this week, but you were just waiting for blockbuster. It just was a slow burn. So anyway, people for about 30 years of the 35 year history of Tetris, maybe 25, people always thought, basically the best you could ever do was get around a million points, which is when the game stops counting points. Okay, sure, sure.

So that's one version of beating Tetris. Tetris is not designed to go past that point. Right. So that's key playing, but it's not you've got it. But it doesn't even count your score after that. It's called a max out. Okay. And there was one guy's name is Thor. And he claims his screen name for is his name. No, no, no, his real name is Thor and he claimed to have gotten a max out in like the early 1990s. And everybody was like, well, Thor is really good at Tetris, but that's probably didn't happen. Right.

And people were like, oh, this picture's Photoshopped, whatever, this is for Photoshop, but you know, there was already, there was already, there was already, there was already a lot of different images. Yeah. And then over the last like 10 years, people have gotten really good at Tetris because they can share information in a really open way through videos and stuff, and also through computer programming, like reverse engineering, the Tetris code to understand what the game can and cannot do. And then a few years ago, a new technique for moving the pieces was invented called rolling,

which is invented by a guy named Cheese. It looks very weird. It's very weird. It's very weird. It's almost like real name cheese or is that a screen name? I think that might be a screen name. Great question. But rolling really changes the game because now the game becomes playable even at the highest

possible speed, which was always called the kill screen because for years it was believed that you couldn't really play on it. And so it was the screen that kind of killed your game no matter what. Right. Okay. So, so there was a period of time when you could max out, but you couldn't beat the kill screen. Right. And so, so Tetris is still beating you at that point, even though exactly you can get more points than it can count, it still can kill you. Yeah. And ultimately the way every game of Tetris

until last week ended, I mean, every single game that's been played in all of the history of the game, the billions or whatever of games that have been played, they all end with Tetris winning. You know, your block stack up to the top, the screen and the game is over because you can no longer place blocks because that's the end of the game and you lost.

You always lose. That's always what's been beautiful about Tetris in some ways. Could you, is there a way to get to a point where you are good enough that you can keep, like if you just kept it at level one speed, I could just play forever, right? Is there a way to do that to just play forever? Is that how you'll be Tetris, John? That started to become the question. Can you just play forever at this incredibly impossibly high speed with this new technique of rolling, right? And so a bunch of people...

And to be like a draw. Like you wouldn't be beating Tetris, but Tetris wouldn't be beating you. Right, and Game Boy Tetris is like that. Like you can play the top level of Game Boy Tetris for hours if you're really good at Tetris. People started to think, well, maybe NES Tetris is like this as well for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Then someone discovered that if you

make it to level 256 or something, if you make it to having played over 1,000 lines at this impossible speed, then is that like a thousand lines of the impossible speed? Is that basically like you could go forever? I mean, yeah, if you can go that long, you can go forever. It's just like, but you can't make even one mistake in 40 minutes. So eventually it'll get you. That's always been the thought, but then somebody discovered that if you make it all the way to where the game starts to break itself, the game's code starts to not be able to handle what you're throwing at it.

Like you're so good that the game never imagined this possibility. Right, right. It's like a Y2K bug, but for Tetris. Exactly. So the first thing that happens is that the colors get really weird. There's all these new colors that have never been seen before. The game gets pink, the game gets gray, the game gets orange, you know, the game, the game, it starts to freak out. And then if you keep going through all these colors and you just keep playing and playing and playing, eventually

every time you get a single line, there's a 70% chance, at least on certain levels, that the game will just crash, that they don't need to get a single line. Like, you can't get a Tetris. You can't get a Tetris, you can't get a double, you can't get a triple. It just freezes, it crashes, and you've beaten Tetris. Like, instead of Tetris ending when it gets to the top of the screen, Tetris ended because you broke it. Right. So Tetris, like instead of Tetris ending when it gets to the top of the screen, Tetris ended because you broke it. Right.

So Tetris, of course, Tetris is not designed to be able to be beaten. There isn't like a you-did-it screen. Of course not. But this is the equivalent of that because this is the moment where instead of Tetris beating you, you play Tetris until it breaks. So, as of last week, a 13 year old boy named Blue Scooty, and yes, that is his real name. At least for the purposes of this podcast, because we're not going to be talking about the real names.

We're not doxing a 13 year old. A 13 year old boy named Blue Scooty. And by the way, I was there for this. I don't remember. Were you like in the room? Uh huh, not in the physical room. No, I didn't show up at his house. That's doxing, Hank. I was in the Twitch room.

Okay. And Blue Scooty couldn't even be, he's not even like old enough, I don't think to be a Twitch partner. So the only way to donate to him to celebrate this achievement was via PayPal. But anyway, Blue Scooty did it. He did it on the last possible line.

Like his screen was filling up, and like your screen can't get very high when you're at these speeds, because it just becomes impossible to move the pieces. And it's hard to imagine he was going to get another line after this line. And so we had a 70% chance of beating the game for the first time in human history

and a 30% chance of just losing like all the other billions of games of games that have ever been played. And he did it and it froze and he said, oh my God, and suddenly across the world of Tetris enthusiasts, which is a surprisingly large world, everything went quiet as we realized that the impossible dream had come true. And Blue Scooty, this 13-year-old kid who by the way lost his dad just a few weeks ago, and who dedicated this to his dad, he achieved Tetris immortality, becoming the first person in human history not to be beaten by Tetris, but instead to break the game itself.

It was so beautiful. It was such a profound moment. And I'm just really grateful to have seen it. That's fantastic. I have goosebumps all over. And I also feel like we just made an episode of Radio Lab. Or like this American life. Like if this had a little bit more sound design. Yeah.

Yeah, we needed a little more sound design. We needed it to last 40 minutes. There's a lot of history I didn't get into, you know, that I would have gotten into if it was an episode of Radio Lab. But if Radio Lab wants to have me on to talk about the history of NES Tetris, like I don't need to prep

Yeah, it's like when they had me on to talk about geoengineering. I was like right yeah exactly You're just like call anytime. I am prepared Actually did prep for that um, but I bet I bet I could email Lou when I could make that happen John That sounds like a fantastic story. I will tell it anytime. That's very, very cool. Uh, and also I feel like is a real good structure for a story. That's the kind of story that if if we were to remake the Nerdfighteria newsletter into

an actual newsletter, it would be a great story for the newsletter. Yeah, John, that's true. And you've just been talking about remaking the Nerdfighteria newsletter. We were just talking about it because I have been thinking that it could be something that's more like thought through, you know? Yeah, yeah.

What I want the Nerdfighteria newsletter to be really is like almost like a hub for Nerdfighteria, a way of checking in. And right now, let's be honest, it's mostly marketing. Yeah, there's this problem. We've been doing this for a long time. You just made a video that we've been doing it for 17 years, which is older than many YouTubers. And that's enough time to sort of examine the actual reasons why I get drawn into creating and making things on different platforms. And also our friends who like make things

only on their own platforms. So they've just got like a blog, they make their blog, they do it, they control it, or they have like their YouTube channel But then they have their newsletter and because they are better people than me Because I like I Created that hit of public hit Not that hit of anybody could see this and they might hate it And then they're gonna get mad at me or they might love it and become a fan of me.

I get to see how fast the numbers change in comparison to the last time I did it. Ooh, that's a good one. That's a big hit. They got to be moving faster. Or are they moving slower? I kind of got over that. Part of being a tuberculosis influencer, Hank,

is that you just have to get over the idea that the numbers are gonna move fast Yeah, like if I make it if I make a tick talk about tuberculosis that gets a million views or if I make a tick talk about tuberculosis that gets 10,000 views I feel the exact same which is I made a tick talk about tuberculosis that got 10,000 views This is either of those are a lot more than the zero attention to burculosis was getting two years ago. Well, it was getting attention. It just wasn't getting enough attention. Yes.

So anyway, you were saying. It's a big gap. I, so I understand this about myself now and this podcast has actually, we get a lot less feedback about the podcast than we do about a YouTube video, and certainly than about a tweet. And I think that like, it's really true

that social media, that like content platforms pay people to create in numbers going up. Like that's one of the primary forms of payment. And this is one of the reasons why people created on TikTok a lot, is because you could see, oh my god, I got a million views on that TikTok, but like, did you, or did you get like a million people watched two seconds of it?

Because that is the cutoff for counting of you. And so sometimes that might be a million people watching a minute, but sometimes it's a million people watching for two seconds and then swiping and moving on. Right. Right. And so this metric that meant one thing on YouTube, everyone was like, oh, that means the same thing on TikTok, or like that's how your brain feels.

And so a lot of people started creating on TikTok because it felt like they could, it was, and it was also, it's a better engine for discovery than YouTube. But it, that is the, like I recognize that even me, a 43 year old man has been doing this for 17 years, I still, the numbers going up fast is a big part of why I do it. It feels good. It feels good, and obviously it's not particularly healthy. And so like this podcast is a big part of why I do it. It feels good. It feels good. And obviously, it's not particularly healthy.

And so this podcast is a nice place. Books are a nice place. Yeah. Those numbers go so slow with it. Yeah, books have the slowest possible. Like you've worked on it to getting feedback. Like I've been working on a book for, I don't know, six months now. And I've had one person give book for, I don't know, six months now.

And I've had one person give me any feedback on it at all so far. So yeah. And stand up comedy is a very different version of it, where you spend a lot of time writing the show and then you get super immediate feedback on stage. And you cannot write a good standup show without that. And so you take that feedback back and then you change and you edit based on the immediate, like really immediate,

there's a, like everybody gets the joke at the exact same time and everybody gives you their feedback about the joke at the exact same time, and everybody gives you their feedback about the joke at the exact same time. Which is, it's so interesting to have created in so many different ways. But I think that for my health, it is probably good that this short form text platforms

are kind of imploding. At the same time, I also get a lot of good stuff from them. There's a lot of good community there. There's a lot of connection. There's a lot of good data. And I am a little bit low to lose them. So I've been thinking about other ways that we might stay in touch.

If it looks like that's just not a healthy enough place for me. Right. Personally, like a different people are different of course, but like I just, yeah. Yeah. I think there's, I think there's not so much a problem with, of course, there's different platforms do different things than that matters, but there is just also something that's a little bit wrong with the idea of short form text. Well, we are, yeah, so it seems like you're actually identifying two different problems. One is that your relationship with these platforms

may not be so healthy, but you also recognize that we get a lot out of them, which is how I feel, too, right? Like, frankly, I think it's unlikely that Dan or her would have lowered their price of their tuberculosis test resulting in 5 million more people every year getting access to tests if it hadn't been for Twitter. And so how can I be opposed to Twitter when it helped, you know, probably the most important thing, maybe the most important thing that I've been

part of in my life. And so, you know, how can you be opposed to it? That's on the one hand. Yeah. On the other hand, how can you not be opposed to it? That's on the one hand. Yeah, yeah on the other hand. How can you not be opposed to it? The other hand have you ever been on one of these places and seen what it does to people's brains? So there's the per there's the personal part of it, right? Yeah But then there's this sort of almost like business part of it where our whole 17-year career online has been highly, highly dependent upon platforms. The platform of YouTube, the platform of Twitter, to a lesser extent,

the platform of TikTok, to an even lesser extent, the platform of Reddit. And that, you know, we've known for a long time, it is something Hank and I've talked about for, you know, more than a decade, they're like, if something happened to YouTube, if YouTube, what we used to know, more than a decade, that like if something happened to YouTube, if YouTube, what we used to call, we used to say, what happens if YouTube micepaces in our private conversations with each other, we would be like, you know, if YouTube micepaces, nerdfighteria is in big trouble and also like, complexly as a business is in big trouble because Crash Course and SciShow and PBS Eons and everything

else are in big trouble. And now YouTube hasn't MySpace which is wonderful and we're very grateful to everybody who works at YouTube for that hard work of keeping it from MySpaceing because there's nothing guaranteed about that as we have lately learned from Twitter's 75% reduction in value over 12 months. Yeah. One of the greatest eliminations of value since Enron. But, you know, I think I are both concerned about that. And we're, you know, it would be great to have a way, it would be great to have a hub for the community that wasn't contingent upon a platform owned by a large media company.

Now of course, Gmail is still owned by Google, but email is less likely to go anywhere than anything else. On the other hand, I don't want to clog up people's inboxes unless I'm really adding value. And so this is kind of been the conversation that we've been having in the background. I like how this has become not so much a podcast as it is two brothers working through what they want for the future of their lives and their community. It's the first, it's the first one of the of the season, John. It's the 2023, wait, 2024 season has begun.

And I, I don't know if you remember this, but I said a couple of weeks ago, what if the first podcast of the year is just us sort of talking through? And you seem to have forgotten that I suggested that. I have forgotten about it because a lot happened since then. I haven't even told you, we haven't even talked about Christmas. Like we talked briefly on Christmas, but we haven't talked about Christmas. Like I didn't say there was a problem. I don't even, I don't know what your kid got. You don't know what my kid's got.

I mean, this is, this is something that's wrong with our relationship. If we're going to, let's finish the nerd fighter, what we're going to do, what, what the future of nerd vitality looks like to us. But then let's talk about what the future of our brotherhood looks like to us. So on the podcast or afterward, no, on the podcast, we've got to have these conversations in public or we'll never have them. Because there's something wrong with us

as you've just identified. Do you think Travis and Jason Kelsey have this issue? Do you think like they're like, you know what, let's just say for the pod. I didn't know that Travis had a brother. You don't listen to their podcast, it's incredible. It's second-party podcast by brothers. Yes.

Oh my God. It's Bimbaam, the Kelsey brothers, and then getting a bronze medal, but in a distant, distant third, like a six-flat heat. But just happening to finish third is dear Hank and John. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry that we don't have an amazing tradition where we name the year every year. And this year we named it fun, fun,

20 fungal or after a magical mushroom wizard, which was a real treat for me at Catherine. Yeah, that's what Mubim Bam named the year. But I think that I have two names for 2024 that I've been playing around with with my kids. 2020 more, like this is the year of doing more. And then 2020, 2020 more, which means this is the year of digging deep.

Oh, okay. And my kids are like, oh God, Dad, how about just like 2024? year of digging deep. Oh, okay. Like I'm old. And my kids are like, oh God, dad, how about just like 2024? And you stop like asking us about our feelings all the damn time. So other, so, so yeah, I don't know. We may or may not do something interesting with the newsletter. If you'd like to sign up for it, it's in the links of every, of every vlog where there's video. And there's a lot of people sign up for it. And we have been using it mostly to sign up for it, it's in the links of every vlog where there's video.

And that's a lot of people sign up for it. And we have been using it mostly to be like, hey, we've launched this new project, or hey, the Cancer Soxor for sale, and that feels a little bit extractive rather than adding additive. And I'd like for that to change. And I think that in general,

that the whole end of the year had a bit of that vibe. Q4 can be a little bit like that in general, but part of that. But here's the thing, Hank. Here's the thing. It's true that I felt it too. I was like, are we being extractive rather than additive, which is a big thing that we think and talk about all the time. Because we really don't want to try to extract more value from our listeners or viewers than

we add to their lives. Of course, that's the number one goal. But our efforts through the cancer socks and good dot store and the coffee and the socks and everything. It's a mess. Yeah. Pete's a mess raised three and a half million dollars for stronger healthcare systems in impoverished communities this year.

And in total, since 2019, have raised seven and a half million. This was by far our biggest year, but like we've had big years before. And so we're at seven7.5 million total. And I just don't think there is another way to raise that kind of money. While also providing good jobs and working with great teams of people and everything else that comes with it. So I get it that there were a lot of advertisements at the end of the year, but one, it's Q4. I think people expect that's quarter four for all of you. But at the end of the year, but like one, it's Q4, I think people expect that's quarter four for all of you.

But the end of the year, as I said at that time, I hated myself. It's gift giving time. It's just like this business is really taking off and it's doing a lot of good. And when something is taking off and doing a lot of good, you want to keep pushing it. And I felt, I remember feeling like that about the fault in our stars. Like, the fault in our stars started to do well, and I started to talk about the fault in our stars much more. And people started to be like,

my god, this guy never talks about anything, but the fault in our stars. But I was like, I was like, you know what I'm saying? What's happening is I see this snowball rolling downhill, and I want it like, I want it to get the momentum. And then it turned out that I didn't want it to have that much. Then you were like, I'll give that one last push. I probably shouldn't have pushed.

Slow it down. No, no. Not the two out of any control over at that point. Yeah. I saw somebody, so like I made a video of the, that, where I talked about how, you know, the goal is to eventually have good store donate as much money as Newman's own has, which I consider Newman's on to be, you know, like a hero business. Like a business.

Yeah, there's a moon. They're the moon in our night sky. Yeah. And we're trying to get it with a rocket. And somebody in the car. No, we're just trying to become a bigger star. And no, I want to be a bigger moon. And I want to eat, I want to build a charity death star. And I want to be a bigger moon. I want to eat what he used. I want to build a charity death star.

And I want to blow up Newman's own. You want to buy Newman's own and then just ruin it. Like you must go on Twitter. I'll be like, my business is going to give all it's going to charity. Newman's own. Now you're going to give all that money to oil companies. Just for fun.

I'm just trying to, I'm just out here trying to ruin the good name of Paul Newman, a lovely deceased man. Yes, and somebody on the subreddit was, so I said like, that's like $600 million. And somebody on the subreddit was like, from us. And I hadn't considered that it could be interpreted in that way.

No, but the thing that I, like we talked just a little bit about like extractive versus additive and like I don't want anyone to buy anything because they feel like they have to. That would be extractive. Like I want people to buy the socks because they're like they feel good about the socks and they want socks or they want to give the gift, the socks is a gift. Like I want that to be like the very act of purchasing I want to be additive. I want it to be delivering value.

Like don't buy things if you don't feel like it's adding value. Like I'm not trying to guilt people into buying stuff. Right. If you want to donate to charity, just don't just don't just do that. Just don't do charity. That's much, much more efficient. Yeah. But it's more like we're trying to find markets for socks and coffee.

And so that exists already, people who are already buying that stuff and say, hey, there's a better way to buy this. You know one thing that Catherine got me for Christmas? What is tea? And it's so good! It's so good. It's so good.

It's so good. It's so good. Is this a good time to have the fight that we have about T or should we have that in private? Let's have the fight in public. Everybody, let's do it. Okay. So, do you wanna finish your point before I yell at you? Yeah, yes, great, I will.

The point is that by adding value to folks who we have a close relationship with, we can do a few things. We can learn what's working well. We can hone the sort of packaging and the marketing and the customer support and all of that stuff with people who are maybe a little bit more forgiving than the average customer, which our customer support team very much appreciates. Thank you.

We certainly are not perfect. We're growing quite quickly. We're not going to grow as fast as we did last year this year. And so there were definitely some kinks to work out. So we like, and then the idea is hopefully, you know, there's there's way more people who sort of have like a vague positive association with John and Hank Green than they know that they've ever listened to an episode of Dear Hengen John or has, like, seen, you know, one of our YouTube videos, Unflog Brothers, you know, they've probably seen Crash Course, they've seen a TikTok or whatever. And so hopefully, like, the thing can become much bigger as we get good at figuring out the perfect, like, the great products and how to market them and et cetera.

And then the much broader audience will be the one that, you know, obviously, we're not expecting to make $600 million off of 150,000 people. I am in fact not expecting to make $600 million, but I love your ambition. As always, it's fun to watch it happen, and I wouldn't bet against you because I've learned not to. I do wanna say one thing about that, which is that it's starting to happen

and not just with people who have a vague, positive association with you or me, but just with people who are like, wow, that's a cool business model, and I like those socks, or that's a cool business model, and my friend says that's really good coffee. Yeah. And as evidence for that, I would point to the fact

that our Facebook ads are working in a way that none of us imagined. Yeah. And we're Hank and I, just to stay the obvious, are not on Facebook. So for whatever reason, but we don't know why. We generally, it's not like does, does not hook into my brain. Like it does not feel compelled by it.

It just doesn't give us the feeling. Yeah. The way TikTok gives us the feeling, and to be clear, I don't think that it's good to follow the feeling, I think that it leads to a bad life. But I want to figure out with the not follow the feeling. Good luck getting me to stop. Right. So let's briefly fight about T and then we can talk about something else.

Okay. So Hank maintains that we should sell loose leaf tea. To start it. Only loose leaf tea. Yep. I maintain that since the vast majority of people who drink tea, drink bagged tea, that we should make something that they can use. Ha ha ha ha. I think that we should sell to the majority of people. And I might be wrong because like here, let me, let me, let me just counter act my argument

before I can make against yourself for me to argue against myself. I remember there was a period where all the book covers that they designed for my books that my publisher designed for my books were aimed at the YA market. And they were like the YA market likes pictures of girls faces and or pictures of girls with their heads cut off. That's what it was. That's more common at the time. Yeah, just the course of a girl. Yeah, it was a huge thing in the world of YA book covers. And so they made me some of those covers and they didn't do as well as the covers that were more sort of figurative or more text based.

The reason for that is that what the YA market wanted was not what my readers wanted. That appealing to the people who were going to be my core readership actually led to more overall sales because Word of mouth was better than just trying to like appeal to the broadest possible readership. So that counteracts my argument, but I still maintain that since most people drink their tea in a bag and there's nothing wrong with that, it's not like it's like evil or anything unless I'm missing something. Then like, why don't we just make bag tea? Yeah, I mean, so there are a couple of things that are a little harder with bag T.

Because obviously another step, you have to get the T into the bag, so that adds some cost. There are... So we charge a little more. You have to be at a different scale to start bagging T. You don't have to, but it helps to be at a different scale.

So because of that added cost, there's like equipment that is required. And to invest in the equipment, you have to have a, you have to be selling a certain amount of tea. I think, and I can't explain to you why, but when I make tea with a loose leaf tea, I feel like I am engaging in a higher quality experience than when I make T with a T back.

And I don't, this doesn't make any sense. I recognize it doesn't make any sense, but it's like the ritual of it. And it's like the seeing of the leaves and that I get to choose how much T goes in. So you can't put in half a bag of T. And so if I want it to be a little bit stronger, I can do two and a half teaspoons instead of,

or I do one and a half teaspoons instead of one, or if I want it sometimes I want to make it. So we've got the phrase T spoon from. That's how much T goes in T is one teaspoon. What? That's right. Next you'll tell me that 12 ounces of diet Dr. Pepper doesn't weigh 12 ounces.

They did it on the subreddit, it weighed like 12.9. I thought it weighed like 12.09, but maybe. Some, I don't know, it was more. It didn't weigh 12 ounces, so anyway, I'm gonna argue against myself again because that's my specialty. When we made coffee, I think like 70% of the coffee market is ground coffee. And so when we first made coffee, we made 70% ground coffee, 30%

whole bean. And that's what was for sale. You know, we had like 300 bags of whole bean and 700 bags of ground. And about 80% of people bought whole bean coffee because it turns out the people who are wanting to are really conscious of the supply chain and care about the farmers who were involved and the agricultural practices involved and care about every part of the flavor more to. Like, you know, like, no, like, whole bean coffee is definitely better than ground coffee, not to be a snob, but it's fresher, you know, whatever, it's better.

And it turned out that like the people who really cared about that stuff were the people who were most likely to be our customers, because if you don't care about that stuff, then you're probably more likely to buy something at the Because if you don't care about that stuff, then you're probably more likely to buy something at the grocery store, which is fine. Yeah. I'm not here to tell you not to buy grocery store coffee.

Hell yeah. But if you can afford awesome coffee, I'll just tell you flat out, straight up, 100%. It's better. Can you taste the difference? Yes. Like, if you do a blind taste test, can you taste the difference? Absolutely. You can taste the difference. It makes a huge difference. But whatever, drink your coffee, how you want to drink it, good.store. For sure. That's where you get this stuff. Now, in fact, I'm in my marketing mind. So like maybe you're right that like it's true that most people drink bagged tea, but like people who

drink loose leaf tea are more likely to want to be customers of this tea company. I don't know. I think that there's an experience to making it the way that I make it. And I can, but I just think there's a risk in thinking that everyone's like you. Sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And I also think that like the reality is, we're not gonna be cheaper than Twinnings. We're not gonna be cheaper than Tettley. And so, there's a different experience. So you're selling a better product and to have the better product look different and act different in a specific way kind of expresses the fact that it's a better

product. And like, trust me, it's a better product. Like, I have had a lot of black tea in my life. I like tea. And it's just like so delightful to have tea that is actually good in the United States of America, which is not easy. I agree with you, but whole being coffee is better than ground coffee and we still sell ground coffee because lots of people use it and need it and it's better for them. And I don't want to tell people what's best for them. I don't think down that road lies good marketing. I think we provide people provide people with choice. But I hear you that we're not going to be able to compete on price, especially with bag T. And so what are we competing on? We're competing on experience. We're competing on taste. We're competing on it just

being better overall. And maybe that's the only way we can win is with loose leaf tea. Yeah, and I mean, eventually, like the cost will get lower, which is a good thing. Well, you might be surprised, the cost of coffee has not gotten lower. No, it's true, it's hard, it's hard. I think that there are ways, we're still at the beginning. Hopefully, who knows, maybe we're not,

and I'd be fine if we weren't. I think that we are still at the beginning. Hopefully. Who knows, maybe we're not. And I'd be fine if we weren't. I think that we are still at the beginning of this whole idea. Yeah, I think we have to be. I mean, if you look at the fact that it's already raised $7.5 million for charity, like you have to think it has the opportunity to keep growing. And if we do a good job, it will keep growing.

And so we need to, it's something we definitely need to focus some of our time and, and attention on. Yeah. But I also don't want to lose sight of the fact that Nerdfighteria is not primarily a testing ground or a customer base or anything like that. It's primarily a community and one of the ways you see that expressed, you see it expressed. And one of the ways you see that expressed, you see it expressed in lots of different ways. You see it expressed in memes, right? And like, discords and reddits and everything else. But one of the ways you see it expressed is that

it's not only raising money that does good. It's not only shifting buying habits that leads to societal good, right? Like, that's not the only way to engage with big society-wide problems. And you know, the global fund, I don't know how much to talk about this, so I'm going to talk about it a little elliptically, but the global fund gave a big talk recently where they were like, how much money has been saved by the lowering of prices of tests and treatments that the global fund negotiated. Okay.

Okay. So that's the lower price of Badakulin, the drug made by Johnson and Johnson, and the lower price of these tests made by Seffiad, which is owned by Danahir. Now, the global fund did negotiate those deals. I would say they negotiated them with a little bit of help. And the answer is it's like more money

than it's like $70 million. Yeah. And it's like $70 million that goes right very efficiently into expanded access to tuberculosis treatment, right? Because it's $70 million. The global fund was going to spend that now they're not going to spend. And so instead they get, but the money is still there. So instead they get to spend it on more tests and more treatment availability.

And that was accomplished. Nerdfighterias part in that, which was of course only part of that, and in the case of pedacolene, a small part. But Nerdfighterias part in that was accomplished through collective action, through working together, through having that kind of, you know, ability that I think is almost unique to NerdViterion online communities to stick to something, like, you know, for longer than 24 hours and or longer than a week or a month or whatever, like once we get our teeth into something, I mean, I almost feel bad for Danahir because our teeth are into something and like they think that it's over and it's just not. just not like it's gonna be over when we win

It was just what you know, I think eventually Johnson and Johnson Realized is that like this ends this ends when the activist win and so we're gonna back down But yeah, I think like that's an incredible talent that that this community has and it's one of many that like exists way outside concepts of economic productivity. Yeah. And I think that's really important to remember. And the real reason we want to maybe do the newsletter is that we want to encourage those parts of the community to be able to have a new place to thrive. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that you're that you're into it.

And well, I don't want to do any work on it, though, Hank, because I'm so I, I, I have too much work. I know I got a edition of book about tuberculosis this year. It's, I think it's going to come out this year. I know. I hope it does. I hope it does. My book is not going to come out this year. I know, I hope it does. I hope it does. My book is not going to come out this year. I wish it would.

It's hard. I know, man. The only thing that writes a book is time and the sitting down and it's funny. This is like I do every time where I was like, here's what I'll do. I'll just take the stuff that I wrote for the stand up. It's going to be easy. It's going to be like slightly modify it into a book. And then this one is going to be easy.

I've got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got

all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all got all it's just the story of my cancer, and I'm not gonna try to do anything more than that. And then the creep, the mission creep immediately sets in, and I'm like, what if? And oh, this would be really cool. And if I did this alongside that, then it would actually be like a really interesting, and it could be really useful. And here's another way it could be helpful to people. And here's one way where I think like, oh, what if you like, think about it as, you know, the cancer, like, the science guy, not the cancer guy, the science guy got cancer. And so like, how does it feel as a guy who knows a lot

and thinks a lot about science and how science works and how humanity has progressed in its ability to treat disease? How does it feel when like when you're suddenly the story, when the story becomes you, and all of the research that has been done over the last hundred years is in your veins right now. And all that, and I'm like, oh, there's so much better than what I could do in 45 minutes on a stage.

And I can get so much deeper into it and it could be so helpful. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, and now I really have to be like, okay, but I cannot talk about every way that a cancer treatment could possibly work because of course there are, you know, hundreds of cancer treatments and they work in dozens of different ways. Right. Turns out cancer is very complicated and so I can't tell the whole story of cancer treatments and they work in dozens of different ways. Right. Turns out cancer is very complicated.

And so I can't tell the whole story of cancer. I know I was not intending to, but now I have to find where to draw the lines. It's really hard. Yeah. So you have to make space for mission creep because that's where the ambition and the project lies. Yeah. It's very similar, although I don't have TB.

I just got tested. It's very similar to my relationship with that book, which is that I started off thinking, I'm gonna write a history about TB that's gonna be about why the period where we romanticize tuberculosis is not that different from the period where we stigmatize tuberculosis.

And that's pretty straightforward story. It takes place in the mid 18th to early 20th centuries and Bing-Bing-Bing-BOOM. But then I was like, except that you can't really talk about tuberculosis without talking about how it's always been an expression and form of injustice. And once you're doing that, you've got to talk about the present, right?

Like you can't leave that in 1922 because it's a more pressing issue now than it was even in the early 20th century. And then you're telling a contemporary story and exactly, but then you have to decide, you have to let that mission creep happen because that's what makes, I'm sure your book about your cancer is going to be amazing and that's what makes the book good. But then you have to also say enough. Yeah. You have to find a way to say that's that's good.

Yeah, and also once you've done that, then you have to go back through the book and make sure that it all makes sense. Right. It is paced at all in any sensical way. You know? Has an arc, has a narrative drive so that people want to keep reading, et cetera. Yeah. So I want you to do that this year, really badly. For me, for the world, I don't want to lose the opportunity to have that Hank Greenbook

because Hank gets busy with a million other things. And that's always the tension. Like we're so lucky to be in a place where we have enough work that we get to make choices, but we do have to make those choices. Yeah, it's tricky. So what choice are you gonna make? What's the next year look like for you? Or are you not ready to make a commitment here

on January 3rd? Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Remember my commitment at the beginning of 2023 was that I was going to take it down in notch and five months later I was the CEO of two mid-sized American corporations. Hahaha. I was, I think, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I was reading through all of the survey responses from last year. And before I had gotten cancer, there were so many people saying, I'm worried about

Hank's health. Yeah. I think I didn't say that last time. Well, what I will say is I've already looked at the calendar and it's remarkably full. I am, for example, going to Southern California to do five-ish nights of stand-up followed by the one that will get recorded to be released as yet. I cannot talk about how it will get released. Um, and-

Can you tell me? I can tell you, yeah. What? How? Okay, we're going to cut tuna. Don't put this in. Is- All right.

What do you think about that, John? I, you guys, so cool. Um, I already have a subscription, so I don't even need to sign up for anything. Can I say that? I don't know if you can, but I think I'm subscribed to Frickin' Everything. I even have a Paramount Plus membership. I'll say it's not Netflix. Don't think that I've got some that happening. I don't. But I didn't know how it worked. So I said to the guy who does, I was like, how does it work?

And he was like, you're not going to, that's not going to happen for you, my man. Maybe in 30 years. Yeah. It's like when I asked Mark Watson, if he thought I could ever be on Taskmaster and he said, well, you could start out with a small set at Edinburgh Fringe and work your way up from there. And I was like, thank you so much

for putting me in my place. I really appreciate that. That's, I really needed that. Thank you. I think you'd be great on Taskmaster for the record. You know, who else thinks he'd be great on Taskmaster is me. Hank Green, Hank Green. God to have Hank Green's confidence to wake up every day and be like,

you know what this world needs? My stand-up special and my book. Anyway, if you want, if you're in the Southern California area, I'm gonna be everywhere from like Oxnard down to San Diego if the tickets are not on sale yet for all of those shows. They are for some of them. And you can find that in the link of my most recent vlog with this video.

Wow, this podcast that was gonna be all about how we need to focus on being additive instead of being extractive. It suddenly become a little extractive. Well, the two shows that I'm doing that I getting filmed are free. So there's that at least. Okay. All right, we have to go. I believe you realize.

So I'm going to give you the news from AFC Wimbledon real quick. I hope you enjoyed this podcast where Hank and I just talked like we regularly talked to each other next week. We'll be back with dubious advice and more question asked answering. But the news from AFC Wimbledon is mixed. We lost to Sutton United, our South London rivals, which was unfortunate because they're at the bottom of the table. But then we absolutely flumixed.

I believe Colchester, five, three. We scored some phenomenal goals, including one by Ali Alhamadi. And I know what you're wondering. It's January. As is Ali Alhamadi going to leave AFC Wimbledon. We don't know yet, though, the word on the street is maybe, but it's not yet certain. So we cling to hope like a buoy in the open ocean. Yeah, but do that because several of those other goals, it certainly had him involved in them.

Oh, yeah, he's overwhelmingly our best player right now. Hey, what's the news from Mars? It's looking like it might be more volcanically active than we once thought. Mars does not have tectonic plates, which is why the volcanoes are so big, because they just keep happening in the same spot over and over again. It's sometimes thought to be, because there's no plates,

it's sometimes we think of it as being geologically inactive. But as we learn more about Marsquakes, that does not seem to be the case. Last year scientists were studying the Elysium Plenicia region, and that showed that hotter magma under that area could have driven seismic and volcanic activity to further study that. The University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary laboratory has been looking at images and data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to reconstruct what the area below the surface, like, like 500-ish

feet below the surface might have looked like in the past, finding evidence of more than 40 volcanic events. We certainly are very interested in volcanic stuff on Mars because one thing that Mars has is water and another thing that it has is heat. And so if those things can come together, then they wouldn't be ice. So there could be ways that that might harbor, have once harbored life or even could continue harboring life. So that's very exciting because it certainly appears that in the distant past, Mars didn't just have oceans, it also would have had hydrothermal vents, which are the kinds of places where life

maybe can get started. That's where we got it. I guess what we think, it's looking more like that. That's one of the big arguments going on. We still don't know where the life came from, John, or all the stuff. Yeah, well, we don't even know why there's stuff in the universe, so.

Yeah, that's, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for potting with me. Thanks for ponding with me, John I hope that everybody liked this one and sorry it was weird. We'll back with normal Next time this podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna. Medicens produced by Rosiana Hals Rojas our communications coordinator is Brooke shot Well our editorial assistant is Deboky truck for Varty the music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great Gonna roll up and as they say in our hometown don't forget to be awesome The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great gunorola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.