Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John.

Or is I prefer to think of it Dear John and Hank.

This is a podcast where I, Hank Green and John, my brother, will answer your questions,

give you some dubious advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars, the planet,

and AFC Wimbledon.

John, how you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you Hank?

I'm pretty good, I've had a bit of an annoying day, I'll be honest, we can talk about that

later, but first, can you have a short poem for us?

Sure, this is a poem to remind you that is annoying as your day might have been.

It's better than World War I was.

Today's poem comes from the Great World War I poet, A.E. Houseman, and here it is.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life to be sure is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young.

A.E. Houseman's poem on death and war, and also I think the centrality of the body.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about, Hank.

It was really in the First World War that poets in Europe started to grapple with the question

of the seriousness of destroying or endangering or acting violently upon a human body, because

for most of European history for the last thousand years, the destruction of the body

was secondary to the destruction or endangering of the soul.

The soul was going to survive in a way that the body wasn't.

It was really in World War I when poets began to grapple with that in a world where maybe

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