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- [00:00]
Philip DeFranco
Hey, welcome back to the In Good Faith podcast. My name is Philip DeFranco, and, you know, every week I'm talking to people I think are the most important and influential people in the world. And this week, if you're familiar with me, probably needs no introduction. Hank Green is on the pod. He is a legend. Today, Hank and I, we talked about life. We talked about the future.
- [00:18]
Ben
Hank opened up about his battle with cancer.
- [00:20]
Philip DeFranco
We gushed about our kids, and we talked about how, you know, America is kind of stunlocked right now. And while usually, you know, these conversations.
- [00:27]
Ben
They can feel like important doom spirals, you know, and I love to spiral.
- [00:31]
Philip DeFranco
Today's show and conversation kind of felt like a reminder that life still goes on. You might be locked right now in.
- [00:35]
Ben
A world not of your own making.
- [00:37]
Philip DeFranco
But you still have a claim on.
- [00:38]
Ben
How it gets shaped.
- [00:39]
Philip DeFranco
You still have purpose and responsibilities in.
- [00:41]
Ben
The now and things off in the distance that. That you need to aim at. The last thing I'll say before I release this thing on you is, hey.
- [00:46]
Philip DeFranco
If you enjoy this episode, give it.
- [00:48]
Ben
Five stars on Spotify and Apple and.
- [00:50]
Philip DeFranco
Give it a like on YouTube. Also, wherever you are, make sure you subscribe for this weekly podcast and also leave a comment on what you agreed with, disagreed with, what stood out to you, and maybe even who you'd like.
- [00:58]
Ben
To see next as a guest because you don't want favorite things to do is when someone. Someone's like, look at you. YouTuber Clap.
- [01:05]
Hank Green
I can't. I have to. I feel bad for whoever's editing it, just in case you need it.
- [01:12]
Ben
You feel bad for editors. You treat them like people. If you do that, it'll start spreading. Hank, I feel ridiculous asking you this question as you're wearing the same hoodie. It's a different generation. I was like, I don't like that print. I like this print, but I appreciate you wearing it.
- [01:35]
Hank Green
It's similar. Yeah. It's just the colors are. It might be down to the white balance of the videos. Might be the same. No, you don't.
- [01:44]
Ben
No, I remember this. There was. There was. There was a. I was like, hey, let's.
- [01:47]
Philip DeFranco
Let's do a re release of that.
- [01:48]
Ben
When they made this and they printed it and my team gaslit me, they're like, it's the same. Everything's the same. And I was like, yeah, it's literally.
- [01:55]
Hank Green
Not in screen printing. Colors are an art, man. Like, they're hand mixed. You never get exactly the same thing shirt to shirt. We know too much, you and I. We've been too deep in.
- [02:08]
Ben
Yeah, no, Hank, first question I want to ask you out the gate because you're someone that constantly.
- [02:17]
Hank Green
Why I'm wearing the same hoodie as you. No, no, I got on, and you were wearing it, and it was on the ground next to me, and I was like, I got to put it on.
- [02:25]
Ben
Well, I. I'm getting a little warm, and I feel like I want to take it off. But now I don't want to make you self conscious that I was like, I.
- [02:31]
Hank Green
You know, you take your shirt off all the time now, Phil. I see how it is. One of us gets fit and the other one doesn't, depending on where you go.
- [02:42]
Ben
If someone hasn't seen me, what I hate is, like, the people that have watched me all the entire time, they're like, dude, you're doing so great, man. I saw the fitness photos, and I'm not shooting the show without my shirt on.
- [02:53]
Hank Green
Yeah.
- [02:53]
Ben
So someone will come in from, like, five years ago when I started this thing, and they're like, did Phil get sick? And I'm just like, oh, my God, no. I was like, you know, I actually.
- [03:02]
Hank Green
Got sick, and I just got bigger. The doctors were like, eat whatever you want. Keep the weight on. And I was like, chick fil A every day. Yeah.
- [03:11]
Philip DeFranco
God.
- [03:12]
Ben
But that's also. I was like, one, you. You. You actually got sick. But two, I was like, I feel like we are getting into the age where any weight fluctuation, people are like, what's up? It's like, you didn't make a choice. Life is happening.
- [03:22]
Hank Green
Yeah. You okay, man?
- [03:23]
Ben
It's just like. It's like, oh, man, is the ride okay? And I'm just like, well, who is the ride?
- [03:28]
Hank Green
Okay, that's great.
- [03:30]
Ben
Thank you.
- [03:31]
Hank Green
That's a good man to man ask question.
- [03:34]
Ben
No. You know. Oh, no. That's a sign. This is what. This is a thing that I've realized when you start thinking the most basic ass statements have, like, deep deepness to it. That's how you know you. You're like, just. You're. You're being sporadic. Like, just grasping at anything that'll keep you your head above water. Yeah, yeah. I've been there. I'm there right now.
- [03:53]
Hank Green
Okay.
- [03:55]
Ben
Actually, no, that brings me back to the question that you keep derailing. You're someone that I constantly see crashing out, but also doing so much in creation and trying to foster good things. And so what keeps you driven? What makes it so you feel like you have hope these days? Hank Green.
- [04:15]
Hank Green
God, those are two different questions. It's interesting. You can be driven without hope. I've always had a really interesting relationship with productivity and the want, the ambition of it all. And the reality is that I have so many different fuels. And that's, I think, really the secret. You know, I'm fueled by, like, my obligation to my brother in terms of the vlogbrothers stuff. I'm fueled by obligation to audience all over the place. I'm fueled by, like, an obligation to the truth. And that can be very driving for me. Like, when I see some, you know, idea, some thought spreading around, some fact spreading around, that's just totally B.S. i'm very motivated to be like, I gotta get in front of a camera right now and tell people that that thing that everybody's saying right now is going to make you look like a fool the moment you are confronted by somebody who disagrees with you even a little bit. Because that is made up. Like, that is not a real thing. And so that drives me, you know, John and I have, like, manufactured obligations. Like, we have this obligation to partners in health. We're building this hospital in Sierra Leone. We basically signed up to raise $25 million and had no idea how we were going to do it, which is a motivating thing. You know, I've got obligations, and I'm motivated to, like. Like, there's, like, fun elements to it, too. Like, what a fun job where I get to. You know, sometimes I'm making videos that are, like, I'm mad about something, and I want to be like, you guys, we need to be taking this seriously. Or, like, you guys, we need to stop believing this fake fact. And sometimes I'm motivated because I'm like, man, isn't, like, Earth cool? Like, wait, wait a second. Hold on a moment. And that brings me to the part, the hope part, which, like, what really brings me hope is that, like, this is the, you know, roughly 250,000th year of humans we've been doing. It's been hard the whole time. It's been hard the whole time, and it's been different, hard every year. You know, I don't have to worry about where my next meal is going to come from. I don't even have to worry about getting cold if I don't want to. I live in Montana. I could be warm all the time, which is not how Montana life has been traditionally. And nobody's ever done this. That's what I keep trying to remember. Nobody's ever had a TV in terms of the history of Earth. I'll give you an example and I'll be curious to hear what you think about this one. There's this meme that the world is corrupt and terrible right now because food is poison. This is, you know, it's a purity meme. It's like a bodily sanctity vibe, which is, you know, very human. And there's. I feel ridiculous talking about this. Matching hoodies. We're so cute here.
- [07:11]
Ben
I'm going to take mine off because I'm actually starting to sweat.
- [07:13]
Hank Green
Okay. I'm making you nervous. This idea of food as this, like. Like, it has become corrupt and we must return to, like, a better food. I'll pause for a moment while fill this ropes.
- [07:32]
Ben
Don't draw attention to it. The headphones falling out.
- [07:37]
Hank Green
Okay. You look great now. This looks much more normal. It's almost like I'm just wearing a hoodie. Okay.
- [07:42]
Ben
Wouldn't it be great if I was wearing a pizzama shirt, though?
- [07:46]
Hank Green
I probably am. I am so the. Yeah, so and so. That's like, one version of the story. And I think there's like, a reality to it that we've connected food and capitalism too tightly together. And we've thus used the profit motive to design food that is too good. Like, hyper palatability is what the people in the nutrition space talk about. This is actually the big problem. Fruit food just is too satisfying or not satisfying enough. Like, it is too pleasant to eat, but it doesn't satisfy. And they're designing food to be that way. And I'm like, yeah, no, there's like an evil to that. But also, like, the last 50 years were the first time in human history where, like, a lot of people had enough food. So, yeah, we solved a really big problem that's way bigger than the current problem. And the result is a new problem that was caused by the solution, which is having enough food and all of the systems that brought that food and that abundance in terms of food, there's other things that we don't have abundance of, but abundance in terms of food, that brought that to us and that created a new problem. And now get this. I think we're gonna deal with that problem. We're gonna find ways to solve that problem. And I wish that there was a way to solve that problem without losing faith in humanity. It seems like, like, on the Internet, every single problem is raised to the level of, like, Satan himself did this to us.
- [09:23]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [09:23]
Ben
And that's not new. I mean, that's not new, everyone. Not everyone. I try not to do broad Brush shit. Well, it's.
- [09:29]
Hank Green
But a lot of incentives drive toward that. Yeah.
- [09:32]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [09:32]
Ben
Well, yeah. So algorithmically, you get incentivized to treat everything like it's a. Like a 10 out of 10. Sometimes everything feels like a 10 out of 10, but then, you know, then you lose the appropriate reactions for. For things that are lesser. And then you. You end up looking out and you're like, why does. Why is everyone so extreme? And you're like, oh, well, I'm. I'm having extreme reactions to. To. To every single thing. And then I don't know.
- [10:00]
Hank Green
The crisis.
- [10:00]
Ben
I don't know.
- [10:01]
Hank Green
Everything's a crisis. There's always another. You could make, like, a tier list of the crises now. We should do that. We're changing the subject of the podcast. We're going to do a crisis tier list. What's the S tier crisis? What's the most top tier. S tier crisis?
- [10:19]
Ben
Until I started, I was against it until I started seeing the thumbnail formats that I can't do on the pds, and I was like, I like it. I was like, that'll get it outside of my base. No, something I want to go to because you touched on it, and I want you to. I want to get. I want you to get in the car for the ride. That is this question.
- [10:37]
Philip DeFranco
Okay.
- [10:37]
Ben
Right. So something you mentioned, obviously you're talking about it in relation to starting a hospital, but getting into something that you don't know, like how to. How to do things. You recently put out a video about Jane Goodall, and that was something that you mentioned about her and how she got in and she wasn't hankered down by the way things were seen or done. And so she was able to come at it with this fresh look and operate in areas that were a blind spot. And then later on through the years realizing that, oh, I should have done this thing different. That thing different.
- [11:13]
Hank Green
You're not gonna. You can add.
- [11:15]
Ben
Stay in the car, Hank.
- [11:16]
Hank Green
Okay, I'm gonna stay in the car.
- [11:17]
Ben
The question is, why do I feel like you're against RFK Jr doing that as our leader, Health and Human Services?
- [11:28]
Hank Green
As I made that video, I was like, oh, no, this. Well, in part, you know, I in part made that video. You know, I in part made it because I really do think Jane Goodall added a huge amount to science. And I think that she's mostly imagined as a scientist. I think, in part because of how much her work focused on conservation and in part because she's a woman. Like, I think that we mostly See her as a conservationist rather than a scientist. But her contributions to science were huge. Really, like Nobel Prize worthy in my opinion. But the, the. But I'm not on the Nobel committee, so I don't actually know if they. Someday maybe. So the, the. There is a, There's a reality to having someone come in with a fresh set of eyes and like seeing the structures of science for like, where they might actually be lenses. So like a real, like the. Really at the base what science is, is it's. Instead of saying, I had this idea and I'm gonna fight for it and protect it, it's, I had this idea and I'm gonna let you attack it in every way possible. But before I do that, because I don't wanna make a fool out of myself, I, I'm going to look at it with my most skeptical eyes, in my most skeptical version, and I'm going to be my most intense critic because otherwise I'm going to embarrass myself. That's the actual thing that turned science on its head, that turned knowledge building on its head and that unlocked everything that we have experienced over the last 250 years in terms of expanded knowledge of how the universe works, which is, you know, given us a lot of really good things. I'm fascinated by RFK junior. He is a better science communicator than me, and that's my job. And I feel like I'm really good at it. But the reasons I can never be a better science communicator than him, because he is in fact a lawyer and his job is to do the opposite of science, which is to take his ideas and protect them and to make sure that he figures out how to make them invulnerable to attack. Because that's what lawyers do. Lawyers build cases and make it so that it's hard to fight against their case, whereas scientists build evidence and then figure out whatever direction the evidence goes in. I have like, literally.
- [14:06]
Ben
I have the.
- [14:07]
Hank Green
Real Anthony Fauci on my desk and one of like an exercise. This is RFK jr's book. An exercise I like to do is just pick out any, any paragraph and then spend an hour and a half figuring out why it's a lie. And I can always do it. It's wild like it is just like, figure, just figure out like how he, like maybe not him, maybe this, the, the world of sort of vaccine criticism and fear, but the, the, the wild, like the, the real at the base of it. Reason. RFK Jr will always be better at communicating about science than me is because he can take whatever is the most scary thing and start there. And what is the most scary thing? What's the foundation of every scariest story? Someone is going to poison or steal your child. And that's where he always starts. That's what the entire conversation is about. For the reason the conversation is about that is because it's the scariest possible thing. And it's the thing that is the easiest way to win over a jury. It's because it makes you think, well, if there's even a tiny chance that this is true, we need to stop and do something. And the thing is, there isn't a chance that it's true. We have looked at it in so many different ways, and he refuses to spend any time discussing or looking at any study that like. And we have so much data, and he will never even acknowledge that that data exists. He's so good at this because he's a lawyer. He talks like a lawyer, he thinks like a lawyer, he acts like a lawyer. He doesn't talk or think or act like a scientist because he's trying to make a case and he believes his case. I don't think he doesn't believe his case. You know, I've kind of gone back and forth on that over the years, But I think he believes his case. But I think that he's just as susceptible to bias as everybody else. And the whole point of science is to find ways to fight against your own bias. And he has no interest in doing that because he really deeply believes both a. You know, in. In his case, because I think it delivers him a lot of attention. It delivers him a lot of power. And I think that he, like, believes that he's sort of. I don't know. I won't psychologize to that extent, sure. But I. But I also think that he has, like, a fundamental philosophy that all disease can be cured through some natural living thing. And there's something at the root of it. This is a very understandable bias that we have. Illness is unfair. So there has to be some reason why it's happening, which is just not how it works. As a person who got cancer, there wasn't a reason I got cancer. It just bad things happen. And it's really hard to accept that, like, hard things happen. And it feels like there must be some external source. But, like, the reality is you're 30 trillion cells. I might be a few more than you, Phil, but we're around 30 trillion cells, and they all have to work together. To make you act normal and right. And anytime some of the cells start knock disease. And disease can happen in so many different ways. And of course it can, because we're the most miraculous thing that has ever occurred. Like 30 trillion cells all working together to go from turning glucose into carbon dioxide and water, but at the same time realizing the universe exists. In terms of people who are like, that must have been God. I'm like, yeah, I understand you having that perspective. That's not the one I have. But, like, it does. It is amazing. But, like, things are going to go wrong. And so that's from. And also, like, things are going to, like, see us as food. You know, a lot of illnesses, like, when things are like that seems like a big old pile of food and viruses and bacteria start eating away at us or cancer. Cancer also kind of sees us as food.
- [18:15]
Ben
So I guess then connected to that, if it's really more about argumentation and an information battle and really like a battle over marketing and clips and things like that. And outside of just RFK Jr. Yeah.
- [18:30]
Philip DeFranco
Are you.
- [18:31]
Ben
Are you more optimistic or cynical about the future of America in this, this moment right now?
- [18:39]
Philip DeFranco
Oh.
- [18:45]
Ben
I like that you responded like I punched you in the head.
- [18:51]
Hank Green
What.
- [18:51]
Ben
What are you doing?
- [18:54]
Hank Green
No, I mean, optimistic or cynical isn't. I don't think that's necessarily the frame that I'd want to go for. I'm not optimistic. What's the frame?
- [19:04]
Ben
I think that I initially, just so we. I initially wrote the question optimistic. And I was like, I don't think anyone optimistic right now. I was like, I should have.
- [19:12]
Hank Green
But anyway, yeah, yeah, the. I. I'm not pessimistic about the. The future of humans. I think that the American experiment is really interesting and has its flaws. What I. What I will say has its flaws and has its. Has its, you know, sort of unique amazingnesses. You know, I think that America has a lot going for it. I think that I don't, like, I, for example, don't think that America is going to, in any reasonable timescale, not be an important player in the geopolitics of Earth. Like, I think 100 years from now there will be.
- [20:01]
Ben
Oh, you think we have that. We have that staying power? Or are you just saying you might not be number one, but we're in.
- [20:05]
Hank Green
The conversation maybe regardless of what exactly the country is called or the, you know, like, I think that the people who live in. I think the people who live on the land that is currently California will still be important globally, but, like 100 years from now? I can't call exactly. But yeah, I mean if I had to bet, I'd say that the United States of America will still be a sort of unified single 50ish states, hopefully 52 or something we can get.
- [20:41]
Ben
Are you saying that because you feel like maybe we're a part of an authoritarian takeover right now or.
- [20:46]
Hank Green
I don't know. I mean, like, I just think it's a long time scale, so it's hard to say. But. But I, yeah, I do, I do think that there's a lot of tension right now. I think that we, I think that the idea that there's going to be a civil war is kind of silly, but I think that there it we are, 50 states. People forget this. Like the states are different from each other and they've been more different from each other in the past than they are currently. And I could see that, you know, I could see like sort of the, like an anti federalization going on. If like the federal government continues to have more and more power, I think the states will take that back and it won't. It will. Basically it would look more like states sort of defying federal order. But I don't think that there would be any appetite for true like secessionary warfare, which I think that like American lives are kind of too valuable for that. I don't think that we'd offer our sons up for it.
- [21:43]
Ben
You know, that is something I always wonder about. As far as the American appetite. I usually think about it in the sense of protest and what versions of that could evolve into and things like, things like that because online activism has become such a big thing and you know that that can be a spark, but it is not the thing that fully moves. And so I don't know, but I do think that that is going to be tested more and more.
- [22:12]
Hank Green
Yeah, I mean wildly. Like one of the things that, when I think about like the future of America, like a big problem that we have to solve is one that did not exist like three or four years ago, which is artificial intelligence. And like the extent to which, you know, labor is intrinsic to both the economic well being and the psychological well being of people because it's, it's just so intrinsic to how we do things and how, like what does that, what does that look like? What do we, what do we do about that? Bernie Sanders, just as we're recording this just yesterday or the day before, put out a video that's like AI is bad and is going to steal your jobs. And that is the. And like, that's one of the many problems of artificial intelligence. And I do, I do. Like, society would have to be if, if we're actually Talking about like 50% of white collar workers just sort of not being needed anymore, society is going to have to adjust dramatically. It will have to be very different than it is right now. And I don't even know what that different looks like because I also don't know what that future looks like. People who are like, like, I'm a little bit like so scattered at the moment because I'm like, like I feel like I need to be coming up with solutions for problems that I do not know about yet. Like, that's what I feels like. It feels like a bunch of problems that we don't know about yet. So what should we do? And I'm like, you know what I'd like to do is slow it the fuck down.
- [23:41]
Ben
Well, because when you're thinking about whatever the next one to three things are nothing. None of the next things feel like anyone's going to have stable footing. Right? So to your point, does it replace 50% of the workforce? Okay, we have to look at how that affects the world. Okay, let's say it doesn't do that, right? It's, it's minimal. I saw you recently, understandably crashing out about Sora too. Like, is this all just like a weird thing to be able to find a way to deliver more ads? I think, yeah, it can be multifaceted.
- [24:13]
Hank Green
We're already ad satiated. Like, I don't, like, that's not going to make the economy bigger.
- [24:18]
Ben
But then let's say it is a bubble, right? It was, it's been overstated.
- [24:22]
Hank Green
That's. Yeah, we all deal with that.
- [24:25]
Philip DeFranco
What happens?
- [24:26]
Hank Green
Let's say it is a. Look, Phil, let's say it is a bubble.
- [24:28]
Ben
How much of our economy right now is built around this fucking emerging sector? Yeah, it's crazy.
- [24:34]
Hank Green
Yeah, a lot of our economy built even more than that. A lot of people's retirement accounts. And so like, I actually think the economy is not that tied up with AI right now, but a lot of people's retirement accounts are tied up with AI right now. And a lot of wealthy people's money. And like, if I could say anything to somebody whose net worth has gone from 25 million to $50 million in the last four years, give away $25 million right now, that money, you didn't do shit for that money. It's long term capital gains. You've had it the whole time. So you have to pay very low taxes on it. A lot of it you won't have to pay taxes on because you're going to be giving it to 501s, but give away. Start giving away $5 million a year right now until you're back down to 25, because you don't need that 50, first of all. Second, that money is going to go away. Like, the probability that that money's going to go away and do no good for anyone is so high. Oh, my God. I got fireworks about that. The AI was like, he's right.
- [25:40]
Ben
Are you filming this on your Mac camera?
- [25:43]
Hank Green
Yeah, I'm filming it through the Mac operating system. And it does that. Yeah. If you do certain hand gestures, I don't know what they are.
- [25:52]
Ben
The audio. The audio listeners are missing out.
- [25:55]
Hank Green
Yeah. They miss the mic, get dropped by my os. I think that people have had their net worths go up so much. And you can also give it to the next generation. You can give it to people. You know, you could just have a big pot of money and, like, you can. You can give anonymously to the barista at your local coffee shop. Like, just get it into the hands of people who need it more than you.
- [26:23]
Ben
And Hank. Yeah, Hank, you've been doing this long enough. And you're.
- [26:28]
Hank Green
You're. You.
- [26:28]
Ben
You work with more people than I do, and you've seen the people at the highest and lowest levels of all these companies. How many people that ACCRUE More than $25 million are like, I should give away more money? I.
- [26:44]
Hank Green
A lot of these. Honestly, a lot. I don't know. A lot of people.
- [26:47]
Ben
People are, like, built like you. You guys are constantly thinking of, like, how can we be of service but also run a business? Right. Multifaceted.
- [26:55]
Hank Green
Right.
- [26:55]
Ben
No one's. No one's like, pure angel, but.
- [26:57]
Hank Green
Yeah.
- [26:58]
Ben
Yeah.
- [27:00]
Hank Green
I don't know, Phil. I don't know. They're probably not. They might not be listening to this podcast, but they might be. I mean, the thing is, it's like, what's it? Kind of, what's it for? You know, I think that that's a really important question to ask. And, like, one of the things that we're noticing is here's a thing that I never say out loud. I think that as you become wealthier, you imagine yourself as more valuable and you have a harder time. You have a harder time, like, have, like, being in community, and, like. Like, that's worth so much more than anything, you know? So I don't know, but, like, I think that they, you know, I think that if you gave, you know, $5,000 to a barista and they knew about it, it would be really weird. But I don't think that you had like, I don't think that you have to have them know you did it. Like, I, yeah, I will say helping.
- [28:00]
Ben
Others and giving, giving, giving money, stuff like that is actually one of the best self serving things in the world. You're like, I changed something. And especially in a world where you feel so helpless to so many things, like to know that you can have an impact to some degree. But yeah, I hear you.
- [28:16]
Hank Green
But yeah, there's just a lot of people who, like, I kind of feel like because the stock market has gone so bonkers, there's a lot of people who had a fair bit just sitting in the s and P500 and they didn't do anything smart or clever with it and their retirement's already set. You know, like, they can, they can live lavishly in retirement and like, the reason they're not retired now is because they like, they don't necessarily need to be making more money. They want to be still doing stuff that's valuable and interesting. But like, I don't know, I just feel like a bunch of money is about to evaporate is the other thing.
- [28:50]
Ben
You know, it's very possible. I mean, I don't know how to navigate this at all.
- [28:57]
Hank Green
And when I say about to, it could be two years from now. Like, so don't think I'm calling the top or anything. Like that'll give you a lot more money.
- [29:05]
Ben
When you say that the floor is gonna turn into lava on a big enough timetable.
- [29:10]
Hank Green
Absolutely.
- [29:11]
Ben
Cut back to the clip, cut back to the cliff. I don't, Yeah, I just live in a world of constant uncertainty right now, whether it be what's happening in the future or to once again to when you were, you were understandably crashing out about Sora to going like, how the fuck are we supposed to navigate this moving forward? If this is the worst it's going to be from here on out.
- [29:34]
Philip DeFranco
Then I'll get you back to the podcast.
- [29:36]
Ben
In just a minute. But let me take a minute to.
- [29:38]
Philip DeFranco
Say credit card companies, they love you. Or I guess they love your money because the second you're late, boom fee. It's like dating someone who charges you.
- [29:44]
Ben
For texting back slow.
- [29:45]
Philip DeFranco
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- [30:41]
Hank Green
It's always the worst it's going to be. But the thing that got me even more than that was the irresponsibility of it. Like, I just think that OpenAI's technology is so powerful and I am getting no signals from the leadership there that they're gonna be careful with it.
- [30:57]
Ben
Well, no, because they don't want to fall behind like China or any other perceived threat.
- [31:01]
Hank Green
Nobody could fall behind. I remember back in the day when they were talking about like, if there's these more advanced AI, we're gonna keep them safe. We're not ever gonna connect them to the Internet. That would be ridiculous. That would be so irresponsible. Why would we ever do that? That would allow them to stuff and be active agents taking actions in the world. So we have to be really careful not to let them be connected to the Internet. And then the moment we had anything even close to it, we were like, everybody gets one for free. There's an API that you can plug into and we've actually coded them to be agents now.
- [31:39]
Ben
Yeah, they can order you something from Instacart. It's great. Yeah, I was like, because God forbid it be connected to a version of the Internet from like a week ago. Something that's not constantly evolving and changing, where no one knows what's going on. Do you have any thoughts about people that reply to tweets? Go rock. Is this true? At this point? It Feels like a bit of a meme to me. I'm like, everyone should do research. But this feels.
- [32:10]
Hank Green
You know, what's a wild thing? I. I don't know about Grok specifically, but we gotta remember that the people of the Internet are also not reliable sources of information. I was recently talking to an AI researcher and he was like, here's a really interesting thing no one talks about. We can't get them to believe the world is flat. We can't make an AI that thinks the world is flat because there's too much inside of it that disagrees with that. And so we're not programming them to, like, argue with flat Earthers. They just do that because they know that the world isn't flat because it's not. And they know a lot of stuff. And so no matter what you do, no matter what prompts you give them, no matter how you do training beforehand, if you start with the base level, you can't create an AI that will argue that the world is flat. They'll just break.
- [33:06]
Ben
I like the idea that there's something.
- [33:08]
Hank Green
Like a little optimistic about that.
- [33:10]
Ben
We put all the experts on it. We can't make AI as dumb as you. It's honestly, it's in a certain way, it speaks to human being.
- [33:23]
Hank Green
Excellence. Just. Yeah, just.
- [33:26]
Ben
We can't mimic the machine anyway. That's like the trick in the future. They're like, is the Earth flat? And it just sweat.
- [33:35]
Hank Green
It's like, yes, okay.
- [33:39]
Ben
It's not a robot.
- [33:39]
Hank Green
That's how you can actually tell.
- [33:43]
Ben
Okay, wait. So I was like, we talked.
- [33:45]
Hank Green
So that's an interesting thing to me. I just try to remember, like, people are like. They make up stuff. They're wrong all the time. And I'm like, well, yeah, that doesn't make me think that they're not like people. People also make stuff up and are wrong all the time. And there's a part of me, and you see this, you see people going to Grok and like, fact checking Elon Musk. And Grok is like, yeah, no, Elon's wrong about. And he hates this. And he would really prefer to have be able to figure out how to code an AI that is like, just make sure that it agrees with Elon all the time.
- [34:13]
Ben
Well, Grok's not wrong. It's just if you disagree with it, it's woke. And Elad will beat the woke out of it.
- [34:20]
Hank Green
He made woke Grok. Yeah.
- [34:23]
Ben
Here's the thing. There's so many more troublesome things with Elon Musk. I Love that he is both, like, the person that's like, we have to have more babies. And he's the guy that is making sexy AI avatars and constantly promoting them. He's like, you don't need a real girl.
- [34:38]
Hank Green
And he tweeted about this because he was getting that exact criticism. And he was like, no, no, you won't believe this, but AI is going to be amazing for human fertility because we're going to code it that way. And I was like, you don't know how AI works. Like, you don't know. You don't know. You think that you can tell the AI, make sure that people have lots of babies, and it'll do that. That's not how they work. We didn't build them. We grew them in a lab. And we don't know how they work.
- [35:08]
Philip DeFranco
They are built.
- [35:09]
Hank Green
They're grown. They're like plants with, like. And we don't. Like, we're like, we. Except we can't even read their DNA. Like, they're just a mystery. You look inside and it's like, okay, there's 18 trillion numbers, and somehow those 18 trillion numbers result in this behavior. And we have no idea. Like, we have some idea. We're starting to do some interpretability work. But, like, it's a mess in there. It's so cool. This is the other problem I have. Like, there's like. There's Hank Green. That's like, wow. I am living through the, like, one of the biggest scientific and communications revolutions of human history. Like, this is the first time.
- [35:49]
Ben
Like.
- [35:49]
Hank Green
Like, I kind of think of things in terms of. You're not going to ask half your questions, motherfucker. I think you're great. You're great. I think of things in terms of, like, okay, so there's, like, biology, and biology passes along information through genes, and then there's culture, and culture passes along information through communication, like, between, like, in various ways. You know, we're doing that right now. And then there's, like, technology, which are, like, objects that contain culture or that. Like, so, like, you can look at, you know, like a book that's a technology where this thing has, like, if you can figure out how to use this thing or just by looking at it, you can be like, oh, you can make something like this, and we can sort of take that apart and figure out how to remake it so it contains this culture. Or if you're, you know, actually know the language, then you can pull apart all of the meaning inside of it. And then. But now we have, like, Another step of that where like the technology is communicating and creating. We have technology that creates like generative AI is a wholly new thing. And I'm with a W just for clarity. I don't think it's a wholly new thing with an H. And so like that's so cool. It's so cool to be alive right now. But may you be cursed to live in interesting times. Turns out cool is also terrifying. Like the bigger the cool thing is, like sometimes I kind of want there to be aliens. Like I want aliens to come down. Cause I want to be there. I want to see. That'd be so fucking big and weird and cool. But it'd be so scary. Also I only think about how cool it would be until it's happening. And then it's like, oh, but also this is very scary.
- [37:34]
Ben
Yeah, but I mean whenever I think of stuff like that, I'm like, well, hopefully they're just not human like in the sense of having any sort of what it is to be human right now. Because then we're done, we're gone. Like we have to hope that it's like this altruistic above everything. Like they, they know the secrets of the universe. Look at you, cute little puppy.
- [37:53]
Hank Green
They're a little self actualized. They're like, you know what doesn't help is killing. You know, never helped anybody. Never helped anybody to rape and pillage a planet.
- [38:02]
Ben
They come down here saying that. I don't know, it sounds a little pushy to me. Sounds like, sounds like, like they need maybe some America to the, to the back of their ray heads.
- [38:11]
Hank Green
Oh, I see you figured it all out.
- [38:14]
Ben
Oh, you think you're better than us.
- [38:17]
Hank Green
Just because you could travel between the stars.
- [38:21]
Ben
God, I do love space. Anytime I see you talking about it, anytime I get to cover it, I get excited. But one of the things that's been really cool is So I have two boys, 11 and 8, and my oldest, through no pushing of my own super into space and astrophysics, that I'm like, what the fuck? And it's been so cool to, to foster that through access. Whether it be things that I can open up here or. I took him to Neil DeGrasse Tyson last week and he was just like, this is the coolest man in the world. And I was like, I'm so. I love that you're into this. Cause I had felt some guilt issues. Cause early on I had gotten him into gaming because I wanted a gaming buddy. And I'm glad that it's fostered into it's moved into this rather than him, like, yelling horrible things while he plays Call of Duty or some shit. So I'm very happy. When. When did you get into. Into anything about, like, really, really learning, I guess, is what. I'll turn that into a question rather than me discussing about my son.
- [39:25]
Hank Green
Yeah, I could do the same about. About mine, who is also quite a nerd. The. I. I think kind of the whole time, I, like, I just. I think that a lot of, like, there's a lot of curiosity and it doesn't. It's oriented in lots of different directions. I just think it's really important to, like, with kids, like, to indulge their curiosities and make their curiosities, whatever they are, seem important and be like, was it. Was it.
- [39:52]
Ben
Did it. Was it just initially like, I'm interested, or did it help you, like, find footing or a place in the world? Was it really even that deep?
- [40:00]
Hank Green
I mean, my dad was the state director of the Nature Conservancy in Florida, so. So, like. And he would be working in, like, with conservationists in the field and would sometimes take me along. So I'd see what science was actually like. And that scientists were like people who, you know, drove ATVs around to count gopher tortoise holes, which was not, like, the picture of a scientist that I had in my head. So there was, like, this much more real version of a scientist that I had from the beginning. But I also, like, I just feel I had a lot of trouble as a kid in school. Like, I had, you know, I had a learning disability that doesn't exist anymore. They call it something else now. And the.
- [40:45]
Ben
I've, like, scared that when I get syndrome, they're like, oh, Jesus Christ.
- [40:51]
Hank Green
It was called sensory integration dysfunction when I was a kid. I think it's now grouped into a bunch of different things. And I would have been diagnosed differently. But I also, you know, I had ADD and all that bag, as you might expect. And the. And was never medicated for it. And because I had, like, bigger issues, I think I was talking. I asked my mom, I was, why do you never give me ADHD medicine? And they're like, well, they wanted to, but, like, you had much bigger problems.
- [41:20]
Ben
Well, apparently you couldn't. We're learning that a lot of moms apparently were just constantly taking Tylenol. That's the answer. That's the answer to so many questions.
- [41:29]
Hank Green
My mom definitely took some Tylenol, if you know what I mean. No. So the. The. But, like, I was very lucky in that, you know, the assessments were like, this kid is smart, but that's. But he's not, like, he's not, like, doing what he could be doing because he's being held back in a lot of ways. And so I was in one of those. I had kind of, like, a little bit of, interestingly for the course of my life that I ended up picking, like, some special ed kind of education and then some gifted kind of education. And in that, I just think that, like, I was just very lucky that people didn't, like, weren't interested in sort of just being like, okay, well, that sounds hard, and gave me that support even in the 80s when that was not legally required or anything. And I think that that's one of the great privileges of my life. And I think it doesn't have nothing to do with the fact that I'm a white boy whose parents were upper middle class. So that was both luck and privilege. And honestly, part of me is like, did I just look like a science kid? And so people, like, gave me science stuff, and I just, like, went in that direction. There's this very weird. And I have this pet theory, and I'd love for someone to do the research, but there's a very weird correlation between intelligence and, like, nearsightedness. And for a long time, they've been like, okay, what are the genes that are both responsible for intelligence and nearsightedness? And they can never really find any, like, smoking gun there. And I think it might be that kids wear glasses, that wear glasses, look smart, so they're, like, treated like they're smarter, and then they just, like, become what people expect of them.
- [43:26]
Ben
That's interesting. I like this idea of, like, could a name help predetermine things? Could glasses. But when you say the glasses thing, I'm like, okay. So then I start thinking generationally where some of those kids naturally ostracized, and so they had to turn to something else.
- [43:42]
Hank Green
That too, for sure.
- [43:43]
Ben
It's all those, like, weird little butterfly effect things.
- [43:46]
Hank Green
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, also, like, was it just more likely that kids that didn't have glasses, like, not now, but in the past that didn't have glasses were, like, you know, kind of seen as dumber because maybe some of them needed glasses and didn't have them. Whereas a harder time to do school if you can't see anything. Yeah.
- [44:05]
Ben
Quick question on glasses. This is so, like, disconnected from how the show.
- [44:12]
Hank Green
People just want to converse.
- [44:14]
Ben
Yeah, yeah. Well, that. The problem is my podcast is no longer a conversation with it's in good faith, but we already had some of that stuff.
- [44:20]
Philip DeFranco
Oh, yeah.
- [44:21]
Hank Green
I would love to do some more hard ones, but yeah, no.
- [44:24]
Ben
Well, okay, wait, wait, wait then. Okay, we'll go back then. I was going to ask if you've been, if you've ever wanted to do Lasik, because I got Lasik and I was like, best decision I ever made. And then I saw, for some reason my feed was like, hey, now that you got Lasik, here's everything that's scary about getting or having Lasik. And I was like, no, no. Yeah, I should have done more than a week of research into this. And by a week of research.
- [44:48]
Hank Green
Yeah.
- [44:49]
Ben
You feel like it's what?
- [44:50]
Hank Green
Look, I think it's, it's, it's both more dangerous than probably. Like the thing about medicine is that there are always going to be some side effects and things do go wrong sometimes. But like it's. The chances are very low.
- [45:03]
Ben
No, but I, when people say like, oh, I have lifelong pain, I'm like, if I have an eye infection and I know that it's going to hurt for five days, I don't want to exist those five days. So I don't know. I don't think I'd be able to deal with chronic pain like that. Like.
- [45:19]
Hank Green
Yeah, so it was the thing with vasectomies too. You can.
- [45:23]
Ben
Are you just talking about stuff I've had done now forever?
- [45:26]
Hank Green
Ball pain? It happens sometimes. I, and I'm like, oh my God.
- [45:31]
Ben
I don't have that. I got a vasectomy because I was, I, as I had to, I was like not going to play. I was like, I'm good. Man on man defense, not going coverage and. But yeah, that's another one though. It's like so scared after the fact.
- [45:45]
Hank Green
Yeah. They don't want to freak you out too much because it's so rare. But what? Yeah, I never wanted to get Lasik because the glasses are an important part of my face. Like, I don't like looking at myself without them.
- [45:59]
Ben
See, I can't wear them because I look like Rachel Maddow immediately. And it bugs me. I want to wear glasses. I think, like, I'm like, you know what? I need a facial accessory.
- [46:09]
Hank Green
But then those comments are coming.
- [46:12]
Ben
Oh, oh, no. They're like 100% Maddow. Like, I've looked back at pictures. I'm like, I'm a mid. Like 10 years ago I wore glasses and I was like, I'm a middle aged woman. That's what I look like. No, I Wanted to hop back to RFK Jr. Because you said you want more serious questions or you'd be happy to go back to serious questions. Do you think RFK Jr. Is kind of killing or hurting our hope for an eventuality of a cancer vaccine?
- [46:42]
Hank Green
I think it's hurting it for sure. I mean, I think that it's beyond RFK Jr too. I think the whole Trump administration has been very anti science and sort of like. Well, I mean, it's almost not anti science. It's just sort of like we have to make sure that we are the one place that power is held. And any institutions that hold power that are not us, we must make sure that everyone is very suspicious of and that we hold to account and that we. Which can be seen as good or bad. But also they go after the splashiest targets because they're. They're doing. They're doing their own kind of virtue signaling they're like, okay, we're against the elites. So we have to make sure that. Our negotiation with Harvard. Why is the Trump administration negotiating with Harvard? Our negotiation with Harvard is always in the news, and that way everybody's always seeing, ah, the Trump administration is fighting the elites. And so it's more about that. But all of this is. It just slows stuff down, down so much. There's so much research that's active and so much progress that has been made. That's the other thing that bugs me about all of this. They always are saying, like, well, we spent all this money and nothing's happened. And I'm like, jesus, so much has happened. There's so many people who are alive right now, so many diseases that have been outright cured, so many cancers that have been outright cured. So many. So much. Like, right on the edge of so much interesting biotechnology. We can do so much now that we couldn't do five years ago. And so, like, and leaps beyond 15 years ago, like, things have actually been moving pretty fast. Biotechnology is moving very fast. And there's this sense. Here's what bugs me about it the most. There's kind of a sense that anything that happened, that has happened was bound to happen, you know. Do you get that feeling about the world? I do. Where it's like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we built a bunch of buildings that can handle earthquakes because, like, you know, we get better at stuff. That's sort of how I feel. But, like, actually what happened is we built a bunch of buildings that were better at handling earthquakes. And now like a, you know, a magnitude 7 earthquake can hit a major city and, like, 20, 22 people die. Whereas if it happens in Haiti, like, not only do tens of thousands of people die on that day, hundreds of thousands of people die later of the disease that spread by not having access to clean water, et cetera. So what happened is engineers worked very hard. Policymakers worked very hard. They all collaborated together, scientists and engineers and builders and concrete masons, and all these people worked hard together to create a system that works really well, in which way fewer people die, and no one ever knows when they're the one who didn't die. Everybody just sort of feels like, well, if you've ever been in a serious car accident, there's a really good chance that just anybody listening, there's a really good chance that you would have died if that had happened 30 years ago. You know, like. Like, cars are so much safer now. And that didn't happen for no reason. It happened because a bunch of, like, scientists and engineers and policymakers and, like, all worked together to make it happen. And we just don't see any of that work. It's all invisible.
- [50:17]
Ben
Yeah.
- [50:17]
Hank Green
And so, like, what's. What's right now happening is all of that invisible work is going away, and we'll never even know when the people died, when they didn't have to.
- [50:26]
Ben
Well, that's the thing.
- [50:26]
Hank Green
We'll have no one to blame.
- [50:28]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [50:28]
Ben
Safety and stability, they're very unsexy. You're not thinking about it. You're only thinking to your point when something bad happens. And I think that's why I look at the now. And while I have so many concerns of it maybe not being a pendulum swing, that it could be a nosedive, that I go, well, so much good can come from realization of an experienced pain and unneeded suffering. And that's my, like, hope. That's my glimmer of hope for the future. But it's not. But it is something that. Where I think it's like, we have to still do things in the future. I think, like, the importance of nonprofits right now, more important than ever. I don't. When you're talking about, like, hurting other institutions or a consolidation of power, I'm like, some of them. I'm like, okay, that's what you would do. If you're, like, doing an authoritarian takeover and then others, I'm like, how is making my weather app unusable helping you consolidate power? I don't understand. When we're helping people overseas, I don't know. I get really annoyed with USAID stuff. Obviously, that's not top of mind for a lot of people anymore, but it's like, it's like, like so many things were there things that involve waste or things that were ineffective. Like anything that's that big, of course is going to be that. But the, the amount of suffering that it stopped, the amount of soft power it allowed our country. Because I always, whenever I'm trying to, to, to talk to most people that need convincing of things, I don't, I don't appeal to the heart. I appeal to power and appeal to pocketbooks. And I'm like, it was, it does so good for us. And there, you know what? Hard power matters, the stick matters. But if that's all it is, that's fucking horrifying. And I think it's a very, it's very short term thinking. And we're just, I feel like, I feel like right now we're in this place where we're handing the future to our enemies and allies that we're turning into enemies. It's wild.
- [52:39]
Hank Green
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the China is just like looking like roses over there. It's wild like they're doing. And like, that's not just a Trump problem. You know, like, we have this sort of. I think we have so much value built up that it's very hard to do anything else. Because when, when you've got a lot of value sitting over here and you want to change something, you're taking something away from someone, there's no way to do any big change without harming someone. And we are so like, you know, it's so like politically toxic to harm any, any group. You know, I was just on my like, walk this morning. I was walking home from dropping my son off and I was thinking about, you know, like, we need a lot of housing and so like, what would be like the splash? Because I think a lot about like, not just like what's the good policy, but what's good policy that gets people to like, stand up and listen. That's so important. Like, I think that like beef tallow I'm going to get. Yeah, beef tallow. I'm going to get in trouble right now by saying this. But like, like, like city owned grocery stores are kind of a dumb idea for New York City. Another explosion of fireworks. The AI agrees with me.
- [53:56]
Ben
No, you are, you're getting drone striked right now.
- [54:00]
Hank Green
It's, I think, like, I think it's fine. I think it's kind of silly. Like, like grocery stores don't have huge margins. That's not, that's not the thing that's like raising prices on people. And the only way that it's going to lower prices is if the city's just paying for the food so that they can sell it below cost, which is fine, but like, that's all. That's basically. It's an extension of food assistance, but we're talking about it. And so it's like, if it's like, you know, like 0.5% of the budget, but like, it gets people interested and it like sees, like, you actually see it exist in your community, it's actually there, then that. That matters. So I was thinking about that with housing, and I was like, it's so unsexy to be like, oh, we're going to build a 30 unit affordable housing that's funded in part by city money and funded in part by private money. And good for us. What the government should do is like, build a. Build a city. And I was thinking about, like, how would you do that? I live in Montana. There's a lot of empty land. What you would look at and think that's empty land. But let me tell you, that land ain't empty. It's owned by people. And they hate the government. So you can't just like, come in and be like, look, we're gonna give you like 10 times what your land is worth. Cause we want to build a city here. It's close to an airport, it's close to a major metro area. Major metro. I mean, Missoula. It's close to, like, a place that has amenities. People will want to live here. And like, that town's expensive. This town will be cheap. People will move out here and they'll have a quick commute. And I was just like thinking, my God, the battle. You would have to try and actually get that land to do something with. Whereas in China, they'd be like, hello, Chinese peasants, here's a little bit of money and you go find someplace else to live. You know, like, it's easier.
- [55:52]
Ben
So you're like, we should. The government should be more like China, I think.
- [55:56]
Hank Green
Well, it's like, it's. It's like you understand like how it's sort of a society that, you know, is sort of a little bit. We are where we're going to be to some extent. And I wonder if there's something expand on that.
- [56:10]
Ben
We are where we're going to be. What do you mean?
- [56:12]
Hank Green
I feel a little bit like, in terms of the built environment, we're kind of. We are where we're going to Be like, I don't know how to do, and nobody knows how to do high speed rail in America. And like we've opened up a couple of things, but the moment they get close to a city, it becomes impossible because of, you know, all of the assessments and the price of eminent domain and like all like it just becomes like way, way more expensive than you thought it was going to be and it becomes not worth it. Like it's not actually, you know, the money would be better spent elsewhere. We only have so many, so much resources.
- [56:46]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [56:46]
Ben
I mean I think it's that sort of thinking where I think, okay, once again, if it's not a pendulum swing and things are being broken, whatever the next thing is, it can't be a return. Right. It has to be some sort of evolution and some change up.
- [56:58]
Hank Green
And I think there's no other choice. In part, like, you know, the pain of USAID going away. I can only stomach it if we can bring it back better than it was and it wasn't perfect. Like there's a lot of problems with it and so maybe when you rebuild it with like our current knowledge, then we could do an even better job. But part of me is like, like how, how in a world where like, you know, every, like we have to check a thousand boxes to do one little piece of good hat like how you have to, you have to take away some of the, the checkboxes.
- [57:36]
Ben
Yeah.
- [57:36]
Hank Green
To make it easier to do the good.
- [57:38]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [57:38]
Ben
I don't know. I end up starting think of thinking of everything from a, like a bit of a strategic standpoint or how are things going to play out standpoint. And you, you talking about thinking that, you know, government run grocery store, bad idea. I think more of those things need to be at least mentioned kind of to your point so that the conversation can be had. Because it feels like the worst thing that you end up with is because also I think this thing would work better. Right. Because I think we can come from a standpoint of like the system now is not working for a lot of Americans. Right. It's just not working. So that's why people's ears are perking up and they're, they're listening. I don't know. I, when I was talking to a Trump supporting relative and they were asking me about Mamdani, I was like, I don't agree with everything, but I think it's one of those things where people are in a place and for different reasons. Kind of like when people were open to Donald Trump, where they're like literally anything else. Literally anything else that is. Than what I've been getting has to be better now as far as if that is true. Yeah, that remains to be seen. But I understand where people's heads are of needing some sort of change and things not working. Though I also question if that's true, because when I look at polling, it's like, it seems like a bottom has been met. Unless. Unless there's. Unless the craziest thing happens and then it really could only move three more points.
- [59:03]
Hank Green
Yeah. You mean in terms of Trump's bottom, Trump, Trump support.
- [59:06]
Ben
Yeah, because I'll be talking to someone on the team. They're like, did you see it's a 41. I was like, the only time I saw a dip after under 40% was literally maybe during the insurrection. And then I was like. And then you've looked at how they were able to. To recharacter, like, redescribe that situation where, you know, that's a fucking ridiculous mess. So I was like. I was like, there's a base there. So when you're talking about, like, politically hurting another group of people is like, isn't the. The best move? Everything in my head becomes like, a question of till to what point? Because, you know, as many podcast bros as we have out there going, like, I didn't vote for this. There's so many others going, well, I did. I just didn't want to necessarily see how the fucking sausage was made.
- [59:53]
Hank Green
Yeah.
- [59:54]
Ben
And it's just like, I don't know. I don't. I don't. We're still in it, right? We're still in the woods. I don't. I don't know what the. What the. What the other end looks like. And so I'm still. Even through these conversations, I'm, like, actively feeling and digesting everything.
- [60:08]
Hank Green
Yeah, for sure. Me too. Me too. I feel very scattered. I feel. I feel like there's too many things to.
- [60:16]
Ben
That's so crazy for you to say because you always have so many things. I was like, well, yeah, there's like.
- [60:22]
Hank Green
Also the things that I have to deal with in my own life that I've signed up for, but I just think in terms of, like, the, you know, whether it's like, even talking about USAID right now feels anachronistic. It's like, oh, we've done that. That's over. Stop. Stop worrying about it. Like, and they're so good at that that we're always moving on to the next thing.
- [60:41]
Ben
Oh, yeah, we're on. We're on shutdowns, air traffic control, sending Texas National Guard to Illinois. Because that is a thing. That is normal. That's completely normal and doesn't seem insane.
- [60:55]
Hank Green
Yeah.
- [60:56]
Ben
Yeah. Well, I mean, do you feel like you do all those. Well, maybe not the case before, but do you feel, like, almost inclined to do more? Because then you can not look at the world for a second. Are things gonna go so shit that you're like, you know what? It's time for another book. I need to write another book.
- [61:15]
Hank Green
Yeah, I mean, I am writing a book right now, but it is not relevant to the conversation.
- [61:21]
Ben
Is it relevant to what you've written before?
- [61:24]
Hank Green
No, it's nonfiction. I'm working on a book about the biology of cancer.
- [61:28]
Ben
Oh, okay.
- [61:29]
Hank Green
So which is.
- [61:31]
Ben
Hank, why are you copying your brother? You going fiction?
- [61:36]
Hank Green
I know.
- [61:36]
Ben
I need to.
- [61:37]
Philip DeFranco
I mean, at least you're not writing.
- [61:38]
Ben
A follow up on tuberculosis.
- [61:42]
Hank Green
Well, look, I started writing it when I had cancer, so, I mean, that makes sense.
- [61:48]
Ben
You got them. You got them on that one.
- [61:50]
Hank Green
It's. But the big. The wild thing about having cancer for me is that at first I was like, this is going to suck so much and be so boring. And it sucked so much, but it was not boring at all. It was so interesting. And I think that most people's reaction to having cancer is not tell me everything, but that's what mine was. And so cool.
- [62:11]
Ben
Do you sometimes do Sometimes. So this is an ignorant question. Probably. And probably so stupid. Do you sometimes think of your life as, like, before cancer and after cancer? Are those wildly different experiences or it's just a thing that happened?
- [62:24]
Hank Green
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
- [62:25]
Philip DeFranco
Yeah.
- [62:26]
Ben
And in what ways does it change? Is it just an appreciation or what is that?
- [62:30]
Hank Green
It's really like. It's a demarcation in that it changed the. It gave me a chance to be like, okay, what do I want to be focused on? What's the best use of whatever time I have? You know, so less appreciation. I think that I have never been bad at that. Like, I don't think that I was not appreciating it. I think that what I was being bad at is. And I'm still not great at this, but just sort of doing whatever the incentives were pushing me toward. So if something was succeeding, it was like, all right, push. Push there. Like, if that. If the wall is yielding in this spot, push on this spot. And that has served me very well. But at this point, I have been served so well by that strategy that just accumulating more views and power would be Silly. I think a lot of people end up doing that. It's like whatever's making you money, you make more money. If you have more money, you can make more money with the money that you made. And then you have more money and you can make more money with it because that's, you know, it's a good surrogate for a lot of things. I'm not saying that it's not, but at some point, you kind of have to sit up and ask, okay, so I have this. What I'm going to do with it. Whereas I think a lot of people, even if they are being active and trying to shape the world, and I think this, this is also true of me, they're doing it in such a way that's not going to at all degrade the power that they've already accumulated. The status, that's maybe a better word, that they've already accumulated. But I've been trying to figure out one of the things that when I was not sure if I was going to live, I was surprised by what I was worried about. And of course, almost all of it was family stuff, but the part of it that was professional was all of the stuff that I felt was locked up inside of me. I think in part just through human nature, in part through the structure of the Internet, we put a lot of stuff into people, and people have put a lot of stuff into me, a lot of trust in me, a lot of parasocial relationship kind of stuff, like the vibes. And so I can make the same video as another creator and get 500 times more views. You know, we could say the exact same words. It'd be an interesting experiment, actually, but I know it to be true. Like, I can make the same video on SciShow and on Hank's channel, and it's going to get more views on Hank's channel. So there's just a vibe there. And so there's so much stuff, like, caught up in me, and I kind of want to get it out. And so one of the things that I really wanted was to, like, collaborate more with. With younger science communicators who I think are doing really good stuff, or communicators generally, and then also to advise more people and to help them deal with whatever issue they're dealing with, whether it be technical or audience or, you know, like the. The various tricks and. And problems of doing science communication where, you know, sometimes, like, scientists get mad at you and you're like, well, we're doing different jobs. And, like, I actually feel okay about the way I portrayed that. And I understand that you don't because you're an expert and you think that, you know, you do it differently and like that. But, like, we're doing a different job. So, you know, I think a lot of people can be, especially, I think female science communicators can, if they get like a, like kind of an angry letter from a scientist, can kind of feel like are more likely, I think, to feel like, maybe this isn't for me. Maybe I'm actually not that good at.
- [66:26]
Ben
This.
- [66:29]
Hank Green
Or sense a dynamic. And I just want to be like, you got to push through that. And I don't know, maybe genderizing is a bad idea. I see it in all places where it's like, you should question yourself. You should, like, take that feedback and be like, okay, what do I do with this? And how do I respond to this? And am I doing it right and should I issue a correction or are they actually asking me to do something where, like, they just don't get what my job is? And that's okay because, you know, my job is different from theirs.
- [66:59]
Ben
So when you say, like, I know that you were like, I don't know if genderizing is the right way. Is it. Because I'm not familiar with the field. Is it a field that's crowded with men? And so, like, you're getting kind of hit, but also kind of people that may have historically been less in the space are maybe more inclined to have a kind of a fear.
- [67:20]
Hank Green
Yeah, yeah. So it's not actually that crowded with men. This is a great change that has occurred over the last, like, especially TikTok, I think, helped usher this in. Both the audience and the communicators have become much more diverse. Diverse. So, like, in all directions, Gender, race, et cetera. And the topics that they cover have also become more diverse. Like, there's like a whole area of TikTok that's like the science of personal care products, which is really important and interesting. But what I do kind of sense is especially so, like, you know, I have a little bit of a science background. I have a BS in biochemistry, but I only worked in labs for a couple of years. And I find that women who do work in science, they have a lot of confidence and aren't actually science communicators who are women who work in science. They have the confidence to handle criticism from scientists. But if you're more like me, where you only have a BS And I feel like guys can sometimes be like, I don't know, like, just like, there's a certain. Certain amount of, like, recklessness, I guess. And I don't know if that's cultural or it's biological. It's probably both. But that I definitely have and that I. I feel like sometimes I see. See women who are amazing communicators, amazing science communicators, kind of be scared off from it because they don't have. Because they start, like, they receive some criticism that, you know, maybe is fine and, like, they didn't actually do anything wrong, or maybe they just need to, like, figure out how to handle. And it can. It can. Like I have experienced then the. Sometimes where I'm coaching people through a feeling that they don't deserve it or aren't a real scientist and so shouldn't communicate about science. And. And I feel as if I have done that more with women than with men. And I don't think that it's. I think that if it's external, I think that it's mostly just sort of like the, you know, cultural situation where, you know, it's kind of more okay for men to be reckless than women to be reckless.
- [69:45]
Ben
Well, Hank, I'm going to ask you one more question because I want to let you get back to your day, especially because you guys. You and John are on your old schedule right now. How long? Well, yeah, I guess for how much longer is going to be my question, but is there any kind of last thing that you want to talk about or hit on?
- [70:01]
Hank Green
Oh, man, I don't know. What's. Is there anything on your list you didn't get to know?
- [70:07]
Ben
I mean, a lot of it. I mean, one of the questions a lot of. Here's the thing. A lot of the, like, what we've been doing on this podcast has been talking to people about the state of America, the Trump administration. We hit RFK Jr. Oh, my God. My producer's slamming me right now. I already asked about this question. My producer's Apple weather app used to be very accurate and would tell him when it was about to rain. And then starting back around Doge times, it stopped being accurate. What happened, Hank? How much of this is an Apple issue versus a US Government problem?
- [70:43]
Hank Green
I don't know, man. I think that it could easily be. It could easily actually be happening in your brain.
- [70:53]
Ben
Yes, Ben's brain is broken. That's the perfect answer.
- [70:57]
Hank Green
It's a very normal thing when something big happens in the world. I always noticed this with tiktokers, that anytime TikTok would change anything, they introduced a monetization thing, and TikTokers would join it, and then they'd be like, my views tanked after I joined. And I'm like, what actually happened is your views tanked, and that happens sometimes, but you assigned it, and that's just sort of bad science. So I don't trust Ben's experience here, but if some science has been done on the Apple weather app getting worse, I would be interested in reading that paper.
- [71:31]
Ben
You know what? I love that you are invalidating his lived experience because it needed to happen. It needed to happen from someone that it wasn't me. Although I will say, regarding the TikTok.
- [71:41]
Hank Green
Algorithm, man, I'll tell you, science does. Does do some invalidating of lived experience because it turns out that it's not the only thing. You know, there's lots. There's a. There's 8 billion lived experiences going on. And that can be really. That's very messy. And that's why we have science to help tease out some. Some truth from all the anecdotes.
- [72:03]
Ben
I think it's a perfect note hit on Ben. Kind of a life lesson. Hank, thank you so much for the time, buddy. It was good to catch up with you and good luck with the rest of Pizzamas.
- [72:15]
Hank Green
Yeah, the rest of pizzamas. Yeah. So back in 2007, when Phil and I were both YouTubers.
- [72:22]
Ben
And just that.
- [72:23]
Hank Green
Yeah, John and I would make a video every day, every weekday, and so we'd trade off. So I'd do three, like, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday. And then once a year, we go back to our old schedule, and it is a trip, man. I love it. It's like a work vacation where I just go back to living my old life. I try to, like, not have any meetings and just, like, I just make YouTube videos, and I love making YouTube videos.
- [72:47]
Ben
That's good that you still have that, that, that. That love for it. I go from either every three months, I'm like, should I rethink every single aspect of my life? Or if things are going really poorly, I'm like, every other day I'm like, maybe I just produce, but then I'd go crazy. Like, I need to be in front of a camera for all I complain about it.
- [73:08]
Hank Green
Can I say something to Ben? Yes, Ben, I didn't mean to invalidate your lived experience. What I will say is that lived experience is the foundation of almost every scientific insight. We find things that we experience, and then we test them. And so I will. I shouldn't have invalidated your lived experience or anyone else's we need to like. If you experience something, then we test it and figure out whether or not it's true. And many times we discover things are true. And when we don't listen to lived experience, then we miss things that science should otherwise be discovering. But if we only rely on lived experience, that allows lawyers like RFK Jr. To tell stories that are fake.
- [73:44]
Ben
I don't believe that apology because I see no ukulele in your hands. So thank you so much. I appreciate you and have a A blessed Thursday.
- [73:54]
Hank Green
Thank you.
- [73:55]
Ben
A blessed Thursday. He said.
- [73:57]
Hank Green
You said a blessed a Holy Thursday.
- [74:01]
Philip DeFranco
And that dear listener who made it to the end, thank you for being a part of our buddy chat. Remember, if you're new here, subscribe and if you enjoyed this episode, give it five stars on Spotify and Apple or give it a like on YouTube. And also, hey, leave a comment on something you agreed with, disagreed with, or who you'd like as a guest.
- [74:16]
Ben
But with that said, thank you for.
- [74:18]
Philip DeFranco
Watching I love yo Faces and I'll see you right back here next week.