On Sunday, Jan. 12, excited patrons flocked to the Ferst Center Theater to see John and Hank Green on their last stop of the “Dear Hank and John: Minotour 2020.” The brother duo, originally famous for their “Vlogbrothers” series on Youtube in which they communicated with each other through daily video blogs, took their podcast series on the road this year, recording live episodes of John Green’s “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” Hank and Katherine Green’s “Earth Bones” and John and Hank’s co-hosted show “Dear Hank and John,” along with other surprise shows and appearances. The proceeds of the tour are going towards building a “Town Center of Excellence.” The brothers are partnering up with Partners in Health in order to push this initiative to help solve the issue of world high maternal mortality rates in Sierra Leone.
The theater was filled with nerdy excitement in the form of John Green “pizza” hats and graphic shirts galore spread among the audience. The anticipation was building as showgoers conversed with each other, sharing their love for the brothers and the brothers’ various ventures throughout the years. Suddenly, the prefilled playlist of music stopped, and a minotaur, in the same shape, look and sound as Hank Green, appeared on stage.
After a laugh-filled introductory monologue from the minotaur, John Green came on stage. “I’m so glad to be back in the state I took my SAT in,” Green said, later explaining that his home state of Alabama only offered the SAT every other month. In good procrastinator fashion, he had prolonged taking it until he was forced to roadtrip to Georgia.
He began to read an essay for his podcast solo show, “The Anthropocene Review,” in which he “rates different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.” This episode’s topic under review was “Auld Lang Syne,” the beloved soundtrack associated with every New Year’s ball drop. Spoiler alert, Green gave the 1788 poem a five star rating.
The minotaur-masked man then came back on stage to introduce Hank and Katherine Green’s duo show, “Delete This,” in which the two analyze Hank’s twitter feed and comment on popular tweets from the past week. The lighthearted show was a welcome follow-up to the slightly existentialist spiral John put the audience through in the prior segment.
Following a short intermission, the Green brothers met each other on stage to record an episode of “Dear Hank and John,” where they read and answered questions submitted by the audience members prior to the show. The brothers’ advice and answers ranged from how to show your mother she is appreciated, whether it would be hypothetically better to be slippery or sticky for the rest of your life and what kind of chair is their favorite — a question inspired from a question referencing Tech’s ID 2202 class, lovingly nicknamed “History of Chairs.”
The show then transitioned to live audience questions, where three lucky people got to ask the Greens about their quandaries. One student asked about how to acquire proper fish custody rights for a goldfish, for which they babysat for an out-of-state friend and to which they had grown attached.
Soon after solving this problem by creating an elaborate scheme to train the goldfish to swim to the person they want it to live with, the Greens then took a question from someone wondering how to run for mayor of their municipality and another question regarding how one should go about introducing their internet-made best friend to their real life friends who ask how the two met.
Not only was the show a celebration of all the awesome things the Green brothers have produced and put into the world, but it was also a joyous reminder of the power of the internet to bring people together. John and Hank Green have truly created a media empire that undoubtedly helped educate a large portion of the Georgia Tech student population in classic literature, science and social studies and their comedic energy and personalities transferred well from their original Youtube platform onto the podcast stage.