You Don't Know What Cancer Is
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2023
- I've been trying to work on this for a long time now. Like, of course this is all kinda metaphor, and I've been told that "cancer is you" but...it's not really.
I mean, I don't know what /I/ am...but it's basically a bunch of cells that work together to further the agenda of getting their shared genes to the next generation of human. But cancer is not that, it's acting as a single-celled organism...it just happens to have my genes.
Very Very weird.
The metaphor of cancer as the "selfish ant" works really well, and I feel is a good way to explain it to others.
but the worker ant needs a queen to reproduce...
@@HexerPsySo to does the new "cancer" organism. It is eventually going to kill itself but crucially in Hank's example, he's already had some reproductive success which explains while cancer can still be so prevalent in humanity whereas other mammals have adaptations to prevent it (clearly cancer was more harmful to reproductive success of their genes).
@@HexerPsy In the ant metaphor, the worker mutated the ability to lay its own eggs.
@@x--. No the cancer risk is decided by the size of the animal and the age of the animal, and its reproductive window.
A whale for example, with its long life span and massive size has many copies of its repair mechanisms in its DNA.
Compare that to a mouse, cat or dog, they lead long lives under human car and will frequently get cancer, compared to their wild counter parts. And the whale lives a lot longer still in the wild.
It takes energy to correct DNA in the copying process, so there is a differing selection pressure for the long vs short lived species.
I work in the radiotherapy, so we do a number of children pass by with cancer. Sometimes its just bad luck, often there are mutations involved. So in humans too there is a mild selection pressure against certain cancers. Consider too that treatment can lead to infertility, and 'removes one form the gene pool'.
@@HexerPsy Everything you said in this response seems correct to me so I'm a little confused. Do we disagree? Maybe the analogy has gone off the rails?
Underneath this explaining (which is excellent, as always), I hear Hank wrestling with deeper feelings and deeper questioning. That’s what I sense, at least. Which makes total sense. Processing within while explaining outwards. We love you, Hank.
(Written 3 minutes in as a reaction to tone - guess I’ll see where he goes!)
He is on a journey of meaning after all...
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Love this, love Hank sharing his thoughts.
I have Hodgkin Lymphoma (second chemo session Tuesday) and this video helped me so much, especially why if I relapse later, it will be worse and can't just do more ABVD, it's because those individual cells that survived all 6 cycles are the strong bois and then they got the chance to reproduce and they need to be hit harder. Thank you Hank for this and everything else you've made! I feel much more informed about my treatment and cancer every time 💞
Wishin you the best offense in your fight to commit genocide against this new species of parasite within you
I had Hodgkins Lymphoma a couple years ago. I was in remission after 3 cycles of chemo and this month is my two year anniversary of being in remission. You've got this!!
I hope you get to be in remission too and I’m glad that you have this resource! Stay strong ❤️
Hi, I hope you are holding up all right :) If ever you want a goodie box i could send you something. Hugs
Stay strong keep fighting!!!
Cancer is like if one ant decided to be like, "Well, what if I was queen?" and started to disrupt the colony.
I think that having consumed content from you and John for the majority of my life has fundamentally made it easier for me to comprehend this stuff, but I think that it's really helpful. I like the eusocial insect analogy because it allows you scale up and down more easily. Thanks Hank! Always fun to see how you think.
I find your continuation of Hank's metaphor very helpful!
Sounds like society has cancer
I think it's more like a Joker Cell (problematic, unregulated) going, "I'll make everyone like me" and caos ensues. When you learn the lengths some cancerous cells will go to migrate to other parts of the body (metastasis) they really do seem like the most evil supervillains.
Kinda like a billionaire in our society…
I’m so glad hank is In remission, we’ve lost too many great people to cancer. I’m glad we didn’t lose him as well.
I’m happy to hear that people who have had no effect on my life whatsoever have defeated their cancer, let alone somebody like Hank whose work has impacted me in unknowable ways over so many years!
I can’t say I was particularly worried for Hank after all the effort he’s gone through to educate us on his cancer journey, but hearing that he’s in remission still made me feel incredibly happy, as comparatively curable as his cancer was.
Yet... 🤞
You better go knock on wood, right fucking now
We've lost too many people* to cancer.
Cancer is always a tragedy. Bad people still have value.
Like Hank explained in a previous video, you're never the same post cancer treatment.
I hope he won't die any younger because of the chemo and radiation and the cancer itself and all the other things connected to all of those factors.
But to say we didn't lose him sorta implies he won the war, when he only really won the first set of battles...
This was really informative for me. Personally, when you mentioned how your son has your genetics, but not your cells, that helped me to make the conceptual shift about natural selection. Also, saying, “You are extincting a species of single celled organisms that shares your DNA but is acting on its own behalf” helped with my full understanding of cancer. Thank you so much for sharing 💚
The "evil" of these cells is in greed, selfishness, and deceit. Food for thought.
@@GothAlicePerhaps we could fight the metaphorical cancers in society by looking at how we fight literal cancer.
Upvote!
Legos. Each Lego is a cell. Each prong on the Lego is a gene. Legos make “insert structure”. Would make for easy imagery. Good luck!
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Hank: *rambles and explains things very well for 20 minutes*
Me: I am an anthill.
Have you read the essay/story "The Goddess of Everything Else"? It makes a really nice metaphor between cancer in multicellularity, selfishness in social animals, and conquest in nations
I like to think about the genes being selected for kind of like a popular book--it's not the physical books themselves that are being passed on/reprinted, it's the story inside them.
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this does click! good analogy
This is fantastic!
Yes! And it's that kind of thinking that led to the word "meme" being coined. It's an idea that functions like a gene, being passed on through the population
Take this a step further and say it’s a “choose your own adventure book” with whole chapters titled things like “IMPORTANT RULES READ FIRST” and “IGNORE THESE TUTORIALS.” Cancer is what happens when a cell interprets the book differently from the rest of the class
I love this rant type explanation, it’s much more like a natural train of thought, and I love watching him just talk and think
Yeah, I'm glad this kind of video didn't end up getting cut out.
Yes. We actually watched Hank learn and organize his own thoughts.
Cancer. Hank style.
It's a helpful representation of processing information out loud. I don't always need feedback to figure something out. But I often need to talk about it out loud to another person, allowing my brain to figure it out.
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Yup, no need to prep Hank.
Your videos about cancer are comforting.. My mother has cervical cancer that has spread, some actually rotted in her body.
I made her a painting before she goes to the hospital tommorow, with a message on the back. I hope she likes it.
I'm glad hank's videos are helpful and sending all the best wishes to your mother for her treatement
@@HelenRosemarySmith Thank you. It means a lot.
Wish you and your mother the best, stay strong, my friend. I don’t pray but I’ll be doing the atheist version of that for both of you ❤
@@TheSecondBeef And as an agnostic pagan, I thank you for it. She has started Chemotherapy again 🥹❤️
Aw, a painting is sweet. Hoping your mother makes it
I am studying medicine, and spend a fair amount of time at the hospital, and I get to bear witness to people having the best and worst days of their life. And I really get frustrated at the weakness in the 'battling cancer' metaphors, or people 'being brave ' because there are a whole range of experiences that are not accurately depicted.
Cancer has this mythology and this stigma and fear associated with it, and I really appreciate you trying to find a way to explain what cancer is, partially because I will be stealing the odd metaphor to help me explain to patients what is happening and to try and demystify the experience as much as possible.
Cancer sucks, but I am so impressed at how you are using this really shitty experience, to try and make it into a way to educate people.
If you haven’t I highly recommend reading Emperor of all Maladies which I believe is partly about how the stigma/idea of cancer being different comes from.
@@emmakane6848indeed, excellent book. There is so much potential for people to overrepresent their own perspective in that kind of book, but he really seems to have found a way to show what he was thinking at important moments during his career while not being afraid to also point out that there were times when a conversation with a patient would make him reevaluate how he looked at the situation.
It was wonderful to hear you talk it through, and you had a great ant-colony analogy! My cancer (a 5" diameter stage 2C ovarian granulosa cell cancer) was "avid enhancing" (liked sugar), had its own blood supply network, and produced inhibin B hormone. I'm now 17 months post-sugery (TAH-BSO) and 12 months post-chemo with no recurrence. I'm so happy to see you doing well! ❤
Congratulations! I hope things keep going well!
I like that you list all the characteristics of the cancer you had. It encourages others to ask” what do I know about my disease?”
Being informed can help people find the best treatment.
Thank you, Hank.
I'm 59 now, but I was 16 in 1980 when my 43 year old Dad died of lymphoma.
You have so many people who watch you so that IF cancer affects their lives, at least they'll have a better knowledge of cancer.
Believe me, it'll help.
Because of you and because you LIVED!
Again, thank you, Hank.
"Ants are wasps that learned how to work together" is a terrifying take. Thank you Hank.
Wait, but wasps can have big nests. Now I need a wasp SciShow tangents!
@@mariannetfinchesGuinness says up to 12 feet long! I think a lot of wasp species don't work as a collective.
Ants are wasps that achieved a state of perfect communism.
It's because you're mainly thinking of hornets and paper wasps. There are actually a zillion species of wasps out there, some almost microscopic in scale, and most of which won't hurt you.
It has long been thought that _coleoptera_ (beetles) are the most diverse group of animals out there, but recently there's been serious argument that _hymenoptera_ (ants, bees, and wasps) actually comprise _more_ species than _coleoptera._ Obviously no one knows the grand total of either family, and the concept of a species is nebulous and arbitrary anyway, but there you go.
@@mariannetfinches He immediately followed the statement with "wasps that learned how to work together BETTER"
Hank, I do have really bad health anxiety and this has helped me a lot. I’m very glad I get to share the time I’m on this planet with you also.
"I am very glad I get to share the time I'm on this planet with you"
Hold on I'm tearing up this is a beautiful comment
I've been watching you since I was 18 years old, and you guys inspired me to start my own UA-cam channel at that age. I'm now turning 32, and I'm still making videos haha. Congratulations on being in remission, Hank. I am happy to keep hearing you talk all these years.
Well start at 10:00 ish he babbles for a while
vlogbrothers inspired me too!! i was probably 10 when i found them. I am 23 now. crazy how time flies.
@@ashleelarsen5002bit of an asshole-ish comment
I recently beat Stage 2 grade 3a Non-Hodgkins follicular lymphoma myself! Happy for you Hank!
Glad you beat it! I wish you well
You did a great job too!
Congratulations!
Congrats!!! 🎉🎊
That's amazing!!
I was being diagnosed with both systemic mastocytosis (overgrowth of mast cells) and inflammatory breast cancer at around the same time. Comparing them helped me understand what makes cancer more than just "more cells." Also, the anime Cells At Work has some interesting cancer episodes that explain how it is "selfish" and stops acting in the interest of the organism, including "punching" through organ walls, etc. In mastocytosis, the mast cells are still trying to work together, there's just too many cooks in the kitchen.
Stay strong!!
I can see how this was difficult to articulate and I think you did a good job. The ant metaphor helped a lot to help me follow you. At any point that someone with a fair amount of science background starts talking about what cells "want" and "think", I'm like, ok we're in deep here lol. Glad to hear you're in remission and wishing you all the best moving forward. (... And selfishly waiting for more Delete This/Wet or Dry because Katherine is my favorite in the Vlogbrothers universe.)
Hank is one of the greatest educators of our time. Not only is he constantly seeking knowledge and sharing it in a fantastic way, he is doing it as he's going through one of the greatest horrors one can go through.
Thank you for this, Hank. I was treated for cancer last year (no evidence of active disease so far, yay!) and this explanation made me tear up. i'm so grateful to have new perspective on it.
@karink.4942 - I am so glad for you. Please keep with the follow-up appointments and scans, though. Cancer in 2014. 4 years later, I found that I had a metastasis during a follow-up PET/CT. No symptoms, the scans caught it in time. 2 years after that, without any symptoms, another metastasis showed up on a PET/CT in another place. AARRRGGGHHHH! Again, it was quickly treated. I feel like I am playing cancer whack-a-mole. So, do not lapse with your follow-up visits.
A HEART-FELT PLEA - Get those kids vaccinated for HPV! These are cancers that we can eradicate, people.
I had testicular cancer diagnosed last September. Had surgery on my birthday 4th of October 2022. Surgery went well and first scan after surgery showed the cancer was gone. My second scan cancer came back and was now in a lymph node in my back. 9 weeks of hell later I got the all clear. Funnily on the same day I got the all clear my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. My 2 scan after getting the all clear is in 2 weeks. Beyond scared but hopefully. Mother is really struggling. Cancer is a fucking dick but pulls out the fighter in us all. Stay strong brother better times ahead 💙 Love from a brother in Ireland trying to kick cancers ass 🇮🇪🤛
I sincerely hope you and your Mother are doing well !
I know you hear this a lot lately, but I have an immense amount of respect for how you've turned this arguably traumatic health crisis into a learning experience for you and for us. I followed what you were saying, and you're right, it's pretty wild to think about.
I love the ant analogy, I’ve done quite a lot of research on cancer and I’ve found something else that helps my understanding is looking at what people used to believe cancer was before they really knew about cancer, (The Emperor of All Maladies is a great read on the history of cancer). Maybe in a broader context than what the cells are actually doing, but could expand understanding.
It's a great book but I can't recommend it to loved ones who want to understand cancer but aren't meganerds. Maybe Hank can write something more accessible
@@therabbithat oh absolutely, not an accessible book for those without a background in some kind of biology but as a meganerd i thought others who may want to go deeper into it would like to look into it. It would be great if Hank could make something more accessible, I think this video is an incredible start at that.
The youtube channel kurgesaght (probably misspelled) has some really good medical videos about how the immune system works that are a good balance between accessible and scientific accuracy.
There most recent one is a cancer video and the analogy is if a part of a city decided to rebel and ignore the rules. The city services will show up to shut it down (immune system tries to do its job). And only if it survives many rounds of that will it evolve to be good at hiding and finally be capable of being called cancer.
I also like Hank's insight that its fundamentally some of your cells reverting back to single celled strategies and becoming a special sort of infection that mostly shares your DNA. And how the trouble is like with any infection, if you kill 95% the last 5% are going to be the tough ones who build back as a worse problem.
I like how Hank's two props that he had on hand to use were 2 pointy sharp things
As someone who has lived with increased cancer risk my entire life (family history, living in Southeast Kentucky, being alive in the 21st century, smoking for 7 years, drinking for 12, etc), this gives me a little more perspective on what to expect when it finally does hit me. Thank you, Hank, you're the best.
Living in Southeast Kentucky is a good, subtle way to put it.
@@jiffylou98 listen, I’ve had three cousins on both sides of my family all die in the last 3 years from Cancer. It’s the way of life around bere
This is awesome content. It's like being in the writer's room and knowing Hank is not at his best but it's so important to him to communicate science he has to wing a 20 minute video. This is a bitter bliss, listening to Hank mind dump.
I don't understand the sciencey stuff, but I think in TFIOS it's phrased more like cancer is "made of you", which is similar to "cancer is you", but not quite the same. I'm not sure that's what you're getting at, but sometimes shifting a little bit can help? (also I love hearing the trains of thought that get you to the Fancy Science Thought that we normally hear!)
TierZoo's video on eusocial insects was my first real encounter with the gene as the unit of natural selection. Since bees share more genetic material with their siblings than they do with their parents, their hives very strongly select for behavioral traits that encourage having as many siblings as possible, leading to individual bees being more loyal to the hive than they are to themselves.
I absolutely LOVE this hank talking through his through process...I could listen to fucking HOURS of this... I want more of these...all the time...anytime you're thinking through anything...PLEASE do it like this. This is the hank I never knew I always wanted.
I also love how introspective and grand your thought processes have been since your diagnosis. I know that, it must have been a horrible time, going through the scariness of cancer and the pain and vulnerability of taking us along with so much of that ride... but, I think when we as humans glimpse our mortality and thus our humanity...it makes us think differently not just in how we see the world but how we think about or even talk about the world. our internal and external vocabulary for how we talk about and describe the world and concepts around us...changes. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
For someone who is already so intelligent and has such a strong vocabulary and ability to think in the abstract...it's having an even more outsized effect and I love it on you. it looks good on you man. I could see you drinkin' some mushroom tea or DMT or Ketamine or something and blowing my mind with what thoughts and ideas came to you from that...
This idea of thinking of your individual cells as ants apart of an ant colony and cancer being one stray ant that ain't going with the plan definitely has some promise. With a little more talking it out I think you'll get there. It's like a comedian when they think of something funny but are trying to figure out how to make it a joke...you got all the pieces you need, i think you just need to figure out how to put the pieces together.
As always, Love ya bro. Looking forward to more for you, esp if they are deep thought vids like this.
A good friend of mine found out he had cancer ( I believe Hodgkins Lymphoma) not long after hearing about Hank. It was hard for me because like myself he's a father with a baby daughter at home. Listening to Hank explain everything and be so positive has helped me understand and have hope for my friend. He's a great new father and I really hope he's around long enough to see his little girl grow up.
The way I've understood Genes as the fundamental unit of Natural Selection is that in order to reproduce, you must have the information required to do so.
Genes are the fundamental unit of information in any organism, and if a gene carries information that allows it to be reproduced, then it will be reproduced.
Natural Selection can only act on this level of information because all higher levels of organization are pre-determined by the genes, so even if it "wanted" to act on the cell or organism level, there is no mechanism through which it can.
However, such higher order mechanisms are not impossible.
If one considers Self-Cloning, then Natural Selection might be able to act on the knowledge that the clone has, making it more likely that the clone knows how to clone itself.
This becomes possible only because the Clone has a way to store information in a way that isn't fully determined by its Genes.
Such a lineage of Clones could learn over time, solely through Natural Selection, better ways to produce self-clones which know how to produce self-clones (ad infinitum).
Love you Hank. I am so proud of you for keeping us updated with you . Also teaching so many of us . Most of all doing it while I’m pain and sacred. As someone who suffers from chronic pain and other ailments. I know it’s so hard to do the everyday and show up for others. Keep kicking ass love ❤❤❤
I always love when you explain a topic better than multiple courses of my bio major did. Thank you!!
This brings to mind the cancer that dogs can get, which is actually mutated cells from one particular dog that lived thousands of years ago.
It’s as if a cancer figured out to actually perpetuate itself as a separate organism, rather than dying when its host died like every other cancer I’ve ever heard about.
I like you, Hank, am a huge D&D nerd. Cancer IMO, in D&D terms, is a Lich. A good wizard gone bad. Someone who got lost in the sauce and got obsessed with immortality and decides to do whatever it takes to survive. Damn the cost or the collateral damage. You can kill a Lich but it comes back unless you kill the phylactory. Cancer has huge Necromancy vibes.
Thank you for putting out content in this format of conversation-like familiarity! Your cadence and the subject matter and the way it felt, it reminded me so much of my dad who I lost in May this year. We would sit and have discussions and teach each other about subjects and talk through things that we were learning together so we could solidify in our minds and find ways to communicate the info to others who weren’t as attuned to each others wavelength as we were to each other. He would have liked your videos Hank. He loved to think and spent most of the last few years reading every article he could and watching documentaries since he couldn’t work physically anymore.
So sorry for your loss. He sounds like a gem.
I hope you create more videos like this. Honestly, I really enjoyed hearing you talk through these ideas.
Cancer is a selfish cell instead of a selfish gene. Throughout my education the greatest barrier to understanding both cancer biology and evolution (because they are so intrinsically linked) was anthropomorphizing the processes. It is so hard to look at natural selection and not see a grand plan, or species "making choices" to adapt to their environment. Adjusting the mindset to remove intentions from biology helped with my understanding a lot.
We love you Hank, I loved watching your train of thought on this. Can't wait for you to feel 100% again
I've been watching you and John since your Brotherhood 2.0 era- middle school days for me. I hadn't thought about cancer with this frame of perspective and I'm now, once again, so gratful that you have made me, over nearly 15 years after finding Vlogbrothers, made me consider what makes things do what they do.
You're right that the natural selection analogy is kinda hard to grasp, most people get the general idea but the specifics is what this explanation relies on. I think there's another context most people have direct experience with that might work well...
Let's say your body is a company, The You Company™️! Every organ is its own little department: marketing, customer service, logistics, you get the idea. They all rely on eachother, but there's separate tasks and office spaces for each department. Imagine each cell is one worker at The You Company™️.
Now, if one sneaky lil guy decides "hey, what if I could just not follow the rules" and starts hiring people (mitosis in the workplace is a tough comparison, bear with me) who acts the same way. They start asking for budget increases, busting down walls to spread out their office space, siphoning whatever resources they can to benefit their clique.
The problem arises when they can't be fired. They tell HR that "actually my dad is the CEO of The You Company™️ and he said you can't fire me haha", they hide their guys in one department by sitting in the middle surrounded by healthy workers, they lie to HR when confronted with "these ain't the cells you're looking for" and now they are really starting to make running the company tough.
Building cubicles, hire more of their buddies, give themselves huge bonuses, max out their expense accounts, take over marketing and start printing posters of themselves looking smug. Lots of the money the company's got is being drained into their banks accounts.
Oh no! Now accounting takes a pay cut major enough that they have to quit or survive on whatever crumbs the cancer department hasn't gotten to. Accounting doesn't last long, and there's your department (organ) failure.
The You Company™️ needs to bring out external help to survive: they call... idk the cops..? And they bust down the door and arrest all the sneaky boys they can, but cops aren't very smart, so they just kinda arrest everyone hired recently, cancer or not. If sneaky boys remain in the building once the cops leave, they probably learned how to evade arrest by hiding in a locker or showing off their punisher bumper stickers.
Now they can hire more guys, tell em those tricks, and next time the cops come, they might not be able to catch all the new hires, because half of em have fake ID cards that say they've been there for years.
I'll stop here, but you should get the idea I hope.
Another bit: you could consider a cancer to be a new, parasitic organ/organism thats like... a lil piece of you going rogue and deciding it's gonna do it's own thing, flipping the bird at the rest of you. Pretty rude tbh
Hank - I have been watching you and SciShow since your earliest of days there
I lost my father to lung cancer in 2011 - he died the day after my 30th birthday; it was a long sad road for him, he was diagnosed in February and he passed in December - I was his caregiver taking him to his appointees and cooking and cleaning for him, I was his rock…. it was tough, I’d never dealt with someone I know having cancer nor had I ever lost anyone close to me before - I remember watching SciShow even back in those days and the sound of your voice and content always provided much relief during the time my father was fighting for his life - I’ll never forget it
Once again you have provided great insight with this video - thanks much for the upload
Take care of yourself brother - you have a big fan rooting and cheering for you right here - keep the awesome content coming and don’t ever stop my friend, don’t ever stop….
💪🔥🤙
This made me understand how cancer works for the first time! The ant analogy was helpful to start and then go deeper into cancer in a human body and the genes driving things
I love you Hank! You’re my biggest inspiration to move forward and keep learning in life!!
This was very informative and I want to say that seeing your thought process trying to explain something has value on itself, so this video is much more valuable than you might initially perceive Hank! Happy for your remission and hope you keep feeling better and better now :)
I’m currently seeing a haematologist-oncologist to investigate possible lymphoma/leukaemia. (They say they’re not sure yet which it is coz I have labs and symptoms consistent with both groups!). It’s very scary, but Hank’s videos really help me. Thank you Hank.
This episode reminds me of the SciShow episode about the “single cellular dog.”
Ask for venclexta plus azacitidine, that cure my father leucemia N1p1 gene was crippled. ...No more sugar, a lot of water
I actually saw that video recently and when he started off with “Hank, we all know what cancer is!” I lost it a little 🥲
This is how I rant when I'm drunk, and I'm loving every second of it!
It's really cool to see this part of science communication, the initial thoughts in service of a better explanation
I loved this video. A sense of something bugging you at night and you just talked it through. I was anxious that it would worm round to news about your diagnosis but Im pleased youre just musing -, trying to make the complex understandable and reaching out to your community for their input.
I think you nailed it at the end.
That was really cool! I've never thought about cancer like that. It absolutely blew my mind when I realized that ants were basically an extension of the queen rather than individuals. Ants really are like single celled organisms and its crazy that that works for them (and wasps etc.)
So cancer is a selfish ant! That's a great way to think about it. Glad to hear you are in remission hank! Thanks for a great video ❤
Oh you got it down to a single sentence! Perfect!
Nice!
Holy wow! Well, I would like to say congratulations on your own personal extinction event! Glad to still have you around, explaining the intricate world around and within us and just being generally awesome. I feel like "congratulations on your own personal extinction event" could be a sticker or something lol
From the perspective of someone currently going through cancer (from here on out, known as skunk)… This actually really helped me to understands, and honestly, I am glad to hear they cater more to the anxiety then the actual growth of the skunk. The skunk I have is slow growing, but still scary. Like, there is cancer in my body, even if it replicates at 1 yucky smell a year (1 cell a year), I still want it the heck out.. anyways all that to say, the ant analogy totally works… like… its an ant that grew special ar our and special abilities and now it just doesn’t need its own colony anymore, because it can create its own super powered coloney.. i know I’m mixing metaphors.. but i hope thats understandable.. Thanks for your work, its been super helpful.
God i loved this format bc this kind of meandering, constantly readjusting of phrasing, but still trying to move forward towards the point, or complete the thought process, way of trying to explain something to yourself or to somebody else (either in your vicinity or just in the hypothetical) is EXTREMELY relatable and kinda validating ngl. Like i hope you dont feel self-concious, Hank, bc i’ll do this exact same thing when im trying to figure out the way i want to say something while also trying to more succinctly rap my head around the thing itself. Stay awesome and never stop posting bc its always a treat to hear your voice, my man. ❤ and congrats on extincting that new species of ur own cells that tried to colonize your body btw, gOOd jOb! 👍😀
I had never thought of cancer in terms of evolution, but now it makes so much more sense! I'm definitely going to be using the ant colony analogy if I ever need to explain it to anyone else.
This video made perfect sense to me somehow lol 😅 thanks hank for explaining it in such a way that it's easier to understand ❤ I hope you're feeling better 🫂
This is, I think, my *favorite* Hank Green video ever. This unedited work through style is fucking beautiful. More of this please. You can just forget editing. This is good.
Really good that you talk so much about cancer, it's what I'd be doing if I had it as well, diving into all the intricacies helps destigmatizing it and as a public figure you probably also influence one or the other into researching it. Awareness and information is always good.
Thank you for taking us with you on this thought journey, it is clear to me now that my thought processes are a lot slower than yours. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, I just found it slightly hard to follow all your thoughts throughout the video, but at least I found it interesting. I got a little bit stuck on the fact that ants are mostly identical copies with the same genes that they get from the ant queen. Thinking about the difference between cells in our bodies and that they normally don't work for their individual good, but for the good of the organism, it then becomes profoundly interesting that cancer cells seem to break that pattern in order to create more of themselves, which is not good for the body and organism. Contrasting that to how different humans can be within the limits of a human being, it is surely a lot to take in and deal with in terms of thought process and sorting out what we want to use, maybe to increase our own chance of survival. Thank you again for all these thoughts, it sure is a lot. Then again, if we can't improve ourselves from dealing with facts, how are we going to improve our chances of survival? This will be on my mind for quite some time.
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Thinking slow about complex issues is good for the mind. It's too easy to gloss over important steps otherwise.
Ants are identical genetic copies *but* they are also a product of their environment, as Hank mentions, smell dictates so much of their behavior -- whether it is fighting, building, trash collection, tending to the young larva, or myriad other duties. In away, our cells do the same, they specialize based on stimuli and instructions from DNA. (For an example of how that environment can be so critical, you need only look at kids who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome or other maladies that interfere with the development of important cells).
Hope that helps.
I really do think it's not about speed, it's about familiarity. I'm familiar with all of these ideas already so I can jump around in them more easily.
@@x--. I like the fact that some ant colonies are so large that scientists debate whether they can be counted as the largest living organism on earth, as in one ant colony is a combined organism.
This is a totally unrelated comment but I’ve genuinely been enjoying watching you on mentopolis and I just wanted to share that haha. DFTBA!
Edit: congrats on entering remission - please continue to take care of yourself!
Your "working through it" turns out to be significantly more succinct and self-consistent than a lot of my "final version" efforts. I'd say you've basically arrived at an effective way to communicate these concepts.
Either way, it's a great think piece. I immediately digressed to thinking about human societies as the control mechanisms that allow individual humans to cooperate for the advancement of society rather than strictly individual benefit … and how selfish/individualistic/power hungry persons behave exactly the same way as cancerous cells-transgressing and subverting those cooperative mechanisms. Ultimately to basically the same effect.
My mum got diagnosed about the same time as Hank. I found it to be painfully poetic seen as I’ve followed the green brothers for the best part of their UA-cam careers!
I dunno the best way to describe it, but, I guess fundamentally it helped me feel less alone & give me lots of hope along with information.
Obviously non of this is about me, but, it’s impossible to not feel something seeing someone you love to through all this. It’s real hard to reconcile the fact i shouldn’t be thinking about how I feel but at the same time been super upset. Very weird feeling.
All this has been eye opening for sure. It’s absolutely staggering how far medicine has come!
Good to see you doing well Hank x
Hank for president 2024!!!
❤ You’ve given hope to a lot of people. Also, very good explanation.
God I wish more of youtube was more like this... Hank you're an utterly brilliant man, who is a gift to the world. I can only imagine how your mum must feel and must have felt as she watched you growing up, listening to you pour your brain out to her and others, just in awe at what she created. Well done to her, and well done to you my fellow awesome human..
This was very illuminating for me! So glad to hear you're in remission, and are able to share what you learned from your experience.
no comments? sending love to you, hank. happy you’re doing well.
Dawkins with extra cursing- the Hank Green edition 🧪🧫✨🤬🧬
Hi Hank. Thanks for producing this video. I’m struggling through cancer myself and have spent a lot of time trying to understand what cancer actually is, and how it comes into being. It plainly sucks and I feel unlucky. I really do relate to the topic and I hope that you have a favorable outcome and will be making science accessible for as long as there are interesting topics to cover and willing listeners that have a strong curiosity to understand (or at least try to understand) the nature of reality. Keep it up, please. Science geek, out.
so glad to hear you are doing better. hope you are feeling better. you and your brother both have brighten my day on so many occasion. hope you always the best from Northwest Indiana.
My rare desmoid tumor was so slow moving that I didn't notice it until it was in a very dangerous area but as I went through the experimental treatments for it (bc there is no set care plan or at least there wasn't at the time) some of them actually sped the cell growth so much I could actually feel it growing in size and scans confirmed that. It's all weird stuff all the different tumors and cancers really because no one in my family has any sort of experience with my type of tumor so the question goes...what is in my genes that activates now but never activated before. It can drive you crazy really. But there is nothing lost in the pursuit of knowledge so I'm glad you are looking for a way to process things on a clear explanation level. I find no matter how many words I have no one truly understands what happened and if I'm fully honest...I probably don't understand things myself as well as I would like to. Thanks for your effort on this.
Stay strong!
the sci-show video about the "immortal dog" is what made me make the conceptual shift in my head about cancer. i think the concepts you were wrestling with here combined with that could be synthesized into a more succinct explanation of what you're getting at.
seeing you work through this in real time made me laugh a bit because i know i must sound similar when i'm stream-of-adhd-consciousness working through something to people at my university.
I really enjoyed this uncensored exploration. Thank you for sharing it. I have a much better understanding of Cancer now and hadn't quite made all those leaps. I was able to follow it, though I suspect you will be able to put it in more succinct phrasing shortly. But the basic idea of our bodies being a multicellular organism that work together and the cancer cells being like "yea, Imma gonna go back to every Cell for Itself" is really neat. And screwed up.
I love the relaxed frankness of this. It feels I'm two drinks in with my smart friend and he wants to tell me something really interesting and I'm all ears and I hope I remember it all. Thank you for the format. It's comfortable.
The Selfish Gene is a great book to help conceptualize this topic! I would like to comment how much I enjoyed my personal takeaway from the The Selfish Gene. The Gene Theory took away an egotistical perspective I had on the reason for my being here. From what I understood, I (and other humans and organisms combined) are just a byproduct that arose from genes just trying to create hosts to better their fecundity, their reproductivity. That means my whole experience and the experiences combined of all organisms (memories, affect, knowledge, our brains, hearts etc.) were never the main goal, it was a lucky byproduct that came from genes needing better hosts to reproduce. Therefore, humans were created! (And animals, and plants, and all other organisms that inherit genes alike!) Some people I talk to find my takeaway sad and even hopeless to think that human beings and their ability for consciousness, feelings, etc are "just" a byproduct, and I can understand that. But I ultimately think there's something kind of cool about having sentience, memories, experiences, and consciousness and all of this experience that I (and all organisms, including humans) experience while not even being the primary goal. It's kinda cool to be the sidebar occurrence, or the unsuspected happening, but still feel like the main character... And above all knowing that, I'm not. I am not the main character at all. (I as in myself, but really as the human race.) **All this is only to be applied if we accept the assumption I proposed in that humans are indeed a byproduct of gene survival, which could 100% be a false perspective** :)
Sorry to give my thoughts, instead of leaving you alone, maybe just don't read but I leave it in case you do want:
1- Not necessarily their fecundity, as in number of children had per individual, but success in reproducing in general, in going to the next generation above harms, scarcities
2- Maybe that's how it started, but once you have a conciousness, "what the gene was doing" doesn't matter for what you think gives meaning to your life.
It only matters, in that, if you become an antisocial species for example, well... you may even stop reproducing altogether. If you just have worse societies, the gene doesn't care.
3- I think meaning is, maximizing pleasure, and for that, to "do the correct thing". The digestive cell, can only be "happy" doing it's job as a digestive cell, if it does its role. If others before and others after, don't do their role, wherever they happen to be placed, then that body won't exist. That cell wouldn't be there in a body if other cells didn't do their role, the correct thing, and future cells won't be where she is, if she doesn't do her job. And the happiest she can be, is as part of such a body. And to ask from others to do the correct, you have to do the correct yourself. So to be happiest, sometimes she has to, be the ant that dies for the colony, for example, if that's her role/place she happens to be in. And so on.
You’re newest video on climate change was privated while I was watching it. Suddenly in the middle it was unavailable, that’s never happened to me before!
same for me! I was so confused
@@Westerlywick the video is back if you wanna finish watching! Lol
thanks for tagging me@@Lauren_Ipsum
Hank, I’ve had cancer for 13+ years. I identify with what you’re trying to describe. I also went through a period where I wondered why my body was receptive to growing cancer. Personally I didn’t find it helpful for me to explore that wormhole too deeply. But I did understood your metaphors and the concepts you were describing. Congratulations on your remission!
Hank, watching this video has finally made an old video, either from SciShow or Eons, make sense for me. It was about "the oldest dog still alive" which was some contagious canine cancer cell from hundreds of thousands of years ago that's still going around. I'd never understood how it worked until you explained it like this!!
Thank you for continuing to be an absolute inspiration and fountain of knowledge even through the tough times :)
it just breaks my heart that one of the penultimate educators of our entire generation is freely having this brain storm about the absurdity of advanced multicellular existence and that most people consuming this will probably not have the capacity to really grapple with the existential discomfort of it to have independent conversations outside of this. Love you Hank, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and experience. You're a treasure.
"what is cancer" bro's truly a philosopher, a Socrates of 21st century asking questions we desperately need answers for
This was one of your best videos ever. I feel like I took a giant leap in understanding not only cancer but also evolution and natural selection.
I am loving watching you on Dimension 20. You are a light to the world. I wouldn’t ever want to see a world without you in it. You’re a champ. :) thank you for being you.
@5:30 I'm reminded of a realization in the Baru Cormorant books that gay, lesbian and ace people can be societally/biologically important by contributing to the safety and wellbeing of their reproducing family members! And now I wanna cry again a little. Love you Hank!
idk about you but having my value as a queer individual reduced to merely serving the needs of breeders isn't very appealing
@@rhael42 Hey there, I’m not straight, but I just wanna say straight people “breeders” is kind of gross. There’s plenty of cishets out there who don’t want or physically cannot have children. You almost sound like a sexist going “well yeah women are meant for having babies” and all that. Don’t do that.
You have a point, absolutely I agree with you. Human value should not be weighed by how “useful” you are.
But calling human people “breeders” is so grossly disrespectful. They’re complex human beings just like us. Thank you.
@@rhael42 Not to mention that you and the original commenter are COMPLETELY missing out on the fact that gay people can reproduce just fine…
Like those who had kids before they realised they weren’t straight. Or bisexuals. Or trans people. Etc. Etc.
Or the fact that straight people sometimes can’t reproduce either.
Yeah. Please think about it…
Why'd you delete the climate video?
I love that you can still call cancer “neat” after everything that it’s done to you. Hank, you can truly get along with anyone 💜
This was actually so fascinating and I was able to follow along your train of thought! Thank you so much for sharing, always love seeing your face!!!
I think this was an accidental publish
Edit - appears to be fixed now
i don’t think so, he signs off at the end.
@@flclhackinitially there was no sound, and no thumbnail... Just seemed like it was prematurely published by a few minutes
I followed that entire explanation. Thank you for taking the time to break it down in a way that no one has before.
big biology nerd here so I already knew the gene stuff but I like the way you explained it! You have given me good words to use the next time I must explain to someone :3 proud of you for getting through treatment hank!
It needs a little editing, but this was the clearest description of cancer and explanation of how it works that I've ever encountered.
If I understand your ant colony analogy, in a "cancerous colony", one ant would have almost exactly the same genes as the normal ants in the colony, but would have a mutation that allows it to reproduce itself and "convince" the other ants to ignore its bad behavior. The mutated ant's sole function would be to reproduce, so it would have to use the food and environment provided by the normal ants. Over time, the colony would have a greater and greater proportion of these "selfish" ants, and the normal functioning of the colony would be more and more impaired. Eventually so much of the colony would be made up of the mutated ants that it would die, because the mutated ants couldn't fulfill the functions of a colony.
You suggest that that's what human cancer cells do. They have your genes, but with a mutation that allows them to reproduce themselves and to get around the mechanisms that keep individual cells from reproducing "selfishly" and moving away from their assigned places and functions. Eventually the cancer cells take over the body enough so that it cannot function, and it dies. Because the cancer had your genes, it can't spread to another body, so when your body dies, that specific cancer becomes extinct.
Yes?
I caught my bladder cancer before it got horrible when I was 25. This speaks to me in a way I could never truly express. Thank you for everything you have done but this might be the best to me. Keep it up and I’m happy you are doing ok.
Hey, I can’t help but be a little curious, but how did you manage to catch it early? 😮 I’m glad you’re OK!
I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like this explanation was flawless. I learned a lot, and it also maps on to what I already knew about cancer in a very enriching way. Hanks always teaching us something. ❤
this video was so wildly informative. i knew that basically cancer reproduces faster but it’s crazy how small you have to go to get to the cause. genes are crazy :o
anyways, i’m so happy that you’re in remission!!!
dawg, I've been listening to you talk for a decade and a half and haven't gotten tired of it yet❤❤❤ p.s. I'm so glad you're in remission please please please stay that way😅
thanks for the existential crisis Hank, it's chilling, as usual.
i fully get what you mean when you say 'and this is also true of humans' at 15:09, i just wish the rest of the world would
this video was soooo good, i love this peer into your mind. we are so alike
Just wanted to say I actually really enjoyed that and it made a lot of sense to me. The natural sellection at the gene level thing I’d forgotten and not understood propperly. Some very cool analogies in there. And congratulations. I like all others here I’m sure are glad to hear about the remission if that is indeed the case of course I’m a lazy researcher :) so just happened across that in another comment on this vid. But yeh. I love your work, and the content from all the channels you’re aphiliated with and I’ve learnt heaps and had a bunch of laughs from a bunch of them. Also liked the analogy of the genes being the story reproduced rather than the physical book… if we remember what those are these days of course :) also from another comment on this vid. To take that one step further, if the book is the multicellular organism and the story is the genes maybe cancer is what happens when a page of the book learns to change its own story to reproduce itself… or maybe a better analogy is where that book is scanned into an eBook and the file corrupts itself so one page or chapter or whatever just keeps getting copied and copied until the file becomes so long and disorganised that it becomes unreadable? Sorry all. This was meant to be a short comment but I don’t really know how to do those especially when its after midnight in New Zealand and I’m being nocturnal as usual.
Thank you for sharing yourself and your time. It is precious.
I learned a lot from this video!!
An analogy that helped me along the way was, a community in a zombie apocalypse working together, people have their jobs, then some guy goes rogue and tries to take over