Hank Green: What No One Tells You About the Algorithm

21:45Hank Green:So we got we got too good at making food too delicious. And so people ate more of it because it's so good. And if you have a French fry and then a Coke, you can have more French fry and they pair very well. And that doesn't seem right because Coke is also food. But so we have this like hyper palatability problem in food. We also have a hyper palatability or like a hyper salience problem in media where I and all of my colleague creators are in collaboration with like the most sophisticated software of all time to create stuff that is just a little bit more salient than the person next to me is creating.

22:29Hank Green:And I try to use my powers for good, but I don't know if I always do. But like not everybody is trying to use their powers for good because they're more ambitious than me. They're younger than me. They didn't get lucky as I did and they have to compete. And it's harder to compete when they're them than when they're me.

22:46Hank Green:And so like imagine like trying to understand what a sort of hyper salient information object is like is really interesting to me. So, for example, you would want something that's not just threatening to you, it's maybe threatening to your children. Like, that'd be hypersalient. You'd also want something where it's like, there's like a big nefarious, like, thing that is more powerful than you that you can't control. So that's like another level of threat. And then, like, my favorite, favorite hypersalient object to identify is, what if this thing that you've been told is good your whole life is actually bad?

23:23Hank Green:And so that's like a different scale or like flavor of threat. Yes. And what if I told you a thing where you could tell a story, all three of those stories at the same time about an object and that object is vaccines? I was going to say, or it could be fluoride in the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many things. Or like NPR, you know, like USAID, you know, all of these things that are like FEMA, you know, like there's conspiracies about the Federal Emergency Management Agency. See, the thing that like saves people when things go wrong. Yes. That's like all they do is like negotiate bottled water contracts in case something bad happens.

24:01Hank Green:And it's like, I don't know. That sounds that sounds pretty scary to me. Oh, goodness. So this is this is like a form of the thing that worries me is not really so much that we're polarized. It's the thing that we all have started to agree on, which is that like institutions are bad. Experts are bad. Like completely losing faith in all of society is really bad for society and also bad for systems. And I feel like that's just sort of a lot of what gets traction in a world where everything has to compete with everything else to be as attention-grabbing as possible. Yes. And while we are on the topic of slop on the internet, let's go into AI.

24:44Hank Green:Uh-huh. What is worrying you about AI right now? Can I tell you a weird thought I had that's not worrying? Please. Do you know about Brandolini's Law? No. It's that the, how does it? Do you know about Brandolini's Law?

25:05Hank Green:Creation, to like refuting BS requires an order of magnitude more effort than creating BS. Oh God, I live, I live in Brandolini's Law. We both do. Right. I can't believe this is your entire life. Yes. I swim in this law. Oh, my gosh. Okay, yes. I, so there's, because I would like to make the case that perhaps creating BS isn't just like an order of magnitude easier than refuting it. I think that it's free. And I think it's always been free. And I think that it's never going to be easier because it's as easy as it can be. Like there's nothing easier than just saying some BS. Yes. So you can't actually make that easier.

25:52Hank Green:You can't make saying BS easier. Yeah, you don't need to research BS. You can just say, okay, yes. Now at the same time, I think that they're like, I've seen some true BS artists who will do a lot of research so that they can say clever sounding things to support their BS. And oftentimes they are absolutely certain of, like they like eat the s*** they're full of. Like they believe it. It is the new brand and super dangerous brand of misinformation out there right now, I think. I mean, when you use these complicated sounding words and you really, really sound smart and at the base of what you're saying is just feces.

26:32You know, it's nothing. It's crazy.

26:35Hank Green:I mean, that's what pseudoscience really is. Like that's when we talk about pseudoscience. We mean things that are like putting on the clothes of science and saying a bunch of big words and they're like metabolism, inflammation. Yes. And then you're like, ah, I guess. I don't know. Mitochondria. Yeah. You know, what? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So wait, where do we get to the good? I thought you were telling something good about AI. I have, like, this sense that, like, you can't make it easier to create BS. Yes. So actually AI doesn't make creating BS easier. Right. The bar is locked. Because it's already been at the bottom the whole time.

27:11But you can make more of it. You can pump out more of it.

27:13Hank Green:You can make more, but like more isn't necessarily like I think that we have like a like there's already an infinite amount of information also. Like we've already hit max capacity for information. Keep aiding more crap. And I do hope maybe that there will be tools that will make the other side of the Brandolini's law equation easier. so if if your job as a researcher becomes easier because of tools with which you can research more quickly you can find information you can digest papers you can you can like if if that part becomes easier then like that is and i'm not saying because we're going to talk about other things that i'm very worried about but uh but but like that's like what what i'll say that's a version of the story you can tell where it doesn't actually make it worse.

28:07Hank Green:And so like one of the things I feel about any big transition like this, having lived through a few of them, is boy, do I not predict what's going to happen because I'm always wrong. It's like so, so weird. It's so strange. I'm going to put a prediction out there, though, that I do hear that AI produces a bunch of BS. Then maybe AI produces a bunch of facts and they're just the AI just talking to each other while the world burns. Yeah, a little bit of that. What I will say is I think that absolutely AI will make scamming way easier. Yes. So I think scamming is different than like information BS, but like direct person-to-person scams and grifts, I think like it's so scary right now.

28:52Hank Green:Yes. Where like, I don't know. Like I feel like, you know, I could like watch someone's YouTube videos, clone their voice, call their mom with their voice and be like, hey, mom, can you send me 20 bucks? What's your bank account number? A hundred percent. You got a safe word? You got a safe word? Everybody needs a safe word. Everyone needs a safe word. Okay, so when we zoom out and think about where AI might be headed, I have heard that you have a video that you have not released with the question of will a computer ever suffer? Yeah. But you haven't put it out. What are you wrestling with here?

29:29Do you think a computer will ever suffer?

29:32Hank Green:I think a computer can suffer. And, but I don't, like, I think the kind of interesting thing I want to say here is maybe a computer won't ever suffer because we won't need them to, they won't need themselves to, there will be no reason to build suffering. And there is, like, two sides to this. Like, maybe there will be no reason to build suffering inside of a non-biological thing. Why would you create it? And then there's the other side, which is it is an inevitability. If you have it prefers one thing to another thing, which they already do, then if you tie experience to that, then the feeling of not having the thing that it wants or the feeling of failing or the feeling of, you know, not being able to achieve whatever series of goals it has will feel like suffering.

30:32So.

30:33Hank Green:So. On the topic of suffering, shall we talk about your cancer diagnosis? Sure. Sorry. Segways are so hard, Harry. That's great. No, that's a great one. That's a great one. I just feel bad that I did. I just want to say before we leave AI behind, I am legitimately worried about three weird guys having this much power. Okay, now we can move on. And they've got bunkers or structures, as they call them. A lot of them seem to have structures, which is a little worrying. Yes. Yes. So, in 2023, you had a... Wait, can I do a segue? Absolutely, please. But their structures will not protect them from cancer.

31:21Segue! Segue! Thank you. Thank you. After the break, how Hank peed out his cancer. Literally. Coming up.

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33:40Welcome back. Today on the show, I'm chatting with veteran science communicator, YouTuber Hank Green. Let's jump back in. So in 2023, you found a lump in your lymph nodes and did some tests and the doctor told you, we know you have cancer, we just don't know what kind.

34:01Hank Green:Yeah. In fact, it was better news than that a little bit. She said that we know, they say that you have lymphoma, but they're not sure what kind yet. Okay. Which is good because if you have cancer in your lymph nodes and it's not lymphoma, then that means it's probably metastasized from somewhere else. And that would be worse news. So that was a little bit of good news. And she did tell me about that. So you ended up having to do chemo. You were ultimately diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, which your doctor told you. Yeah. Well, my doctor did not say that. I knew this. In fact, like they did not need to say anything to me.

34:35Hank Green:Like my doctor called me. It was like, we just got it back. I just heard it's Hodgkin's. And I was like, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I just hung up and I told Catherine. And I knew that that was the best outcome. Yes. By the time I got staged, like a 5 % chance that I would not be alive in five years. What possibly, what went through your mind when all of this was unfolding? There's like weird practicalities of like, I got to make sure my passwords are all in great order. In fact, I had had a weird experience before I found out that I like. So I went to see my doctor just to get like anti-anxiety pills.

35:13Hank Green:And I was like, this is a crazy thing to go to my doctor and be like, I need you to help me with my anxiety. And then I was like, second thing to help me with my anxiety. Can you tell me that I'll be alive in three months? Because otherwise I got some stuff to do. And she was like, here's your prescription for your anti-anxiety medicine. I cannot. And so I was like, OK, well, I guess I'm going to do this stuff. So there was stuff to do during that period of time because if it was like metastasized lung cancer or something, I really might not have lived for three months. So that was terrifying.

35:49Hank Green:And then when I knew, though, the landscape was like, OK, like I've got years at least. And that looked very much like, OK, so I have to like prepare for treatment. I have to understand treatment. I have to I like am worrying about like, OK, like, you know, my son's not going to like be grown up for a decade. Like I thought maybe I would be more worried about work. I wasn't worried about work at all. I wasn't worried about like how everybody was going to handle life without me at work. I was worried about like my family. I was worried a little bit about like all the information that's tied up inside of my head and like feeling bad for not having mentored more people.

36:33Hank Green:but I didn't feel another thing that I was surprised is I didn't feel like worried about missing the future like the not like I was worried about like not seeing my son grow up but I wasn't worried about like missing like a mission to Mars or the next scientific advancement which is like I love that stuff so that's like so much what what like I enjoy about the world is like finding some new thing that we have discovered. But I wasn't, I'm like kind of freed to find out that I don't, like when I die, I won't, I maybe won't actually care that I'm going to miss out on the next set of discoveries, even though that is really a source of joy in my life.

37:14Hank Green:So that's very interesting to me. Yeah. And you, you did discover many things about your body and chemo. So one of, I think the most fascinating is tell me what happened when your pee got cloudy. Sure. Yeah. I thought I had a UTI because it burned when I peed, and my pee was super cloudy. And I went in, I called. And so when you're in chemo, they take everything very seriously because you basically have no white blood cells. And so little things can become big things really fast. And so I called, and they were like, come in and do a urine test. And I came in, and I did. And luckily, by chance, my doctor was, like, free at that moment.

37:53Hank Green:So they did it, and he was like, hey, come on in. and we chatted and I was like, he was like, you're all good. Your pee looks fine. And I was like, well, why is my pee cloudy? And he's, well, first I said, why does it burn when I pee? And he was like, that's the chemo. You like pee out the chemo and it irritates your urethra. You pee out the chemo. Yeah. There's a lot of pieces in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, your kidneys filter it out and, you know, it isn't all the way broken down by the time it gets out. So it does some damage. on the way up. But the reason it's cloudy is you are looking at literal pieces of, little bits of cancer coming out.

38:35Hank Green:Yeah, and so I was like, why is it cloudy? And he was like, that's the little, that's like the parts of the cells. It's like fats and proteins from the cells that have broken down in your body and your kidney filters them out. And like a lot of that stuff actually gets recycled by the body, but when you have like a big release of it, it overwhelms those systems and you actually can see the physical effects of the cells exiting you. Did it change the way you looked at your pee? I mean, I find this very inspirational. Everything changed the way I looked at everything. Yeah, no, it was very good.

39:10Hank Green:It was amazing to be like seeing the physical results. And a lot of times you don't really know that you're getting that. And so you're like waiting for the next scan. I was very lucky not just to have the pee, but also I had a lymph node that I could feel. Most of my lymph nodes were underneath my pectoral muscles, so I couldn't palpate them. I couldn't feel what they were up to, but I had one in my armpit that I could feel, and I could feel it changing shape and texture. Wow. Texture is a weird word, but yeah, it was softer, I should say. You could feel improvement. And how are you now? I'm good.

39:47Hank Green:I've been in remission for almost three years, and I remain much more medically anxious than I was. I have had some, you know, almost everybody has a little bit of like some level of disability that they can't carry out of cancer treatment, it turns out, which also is a thing that I never thought about. I have some pain that I didn't used to have. The anxiety is definitely a thing. I got shingles this year so bad, which is apparently a thing that can happen to people who've done chemo. And it was just like I've had shingles. And this was like, I don't know, like 30 times worse. It was so bad. It still hurts.

40:31Hank Green:And it's been like two months. I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's crazy. Thank you to everybody who's ever done a clinical trial, by the way, who's refined these treatments so that they are now so much more tolerable. And gosh, I'm going to try another segue, Hank. I'm really sorry. Just while we're on crappy things. Let's zoom out. Let's zoom out. Yeah. What is it like in the U.S., I guess? I mean, it's so crazy right now. It feels pretty bad. Feels like something I never would have expected. It's heavy, for sure. And maybe I'm, like, just beating this drum because this is my anchor. But, like, I think that when you have a communications revolution, like, existing institutions take a pretty hard hit every time.

41:18Hank Green:Like, right now, I feel like I kind of wish the Internet hadn't happened. But I don't think that that is what I feel will be the long-term opinion of it. Wow, but right now you are craving. I don't have any more ability to feel as if it has made the world better like I used to. And I'm like an optimistic, hopeful person. But this is a mess and it is a mess that is created by the fracturing of communication. You think this is all due to the fracturing of communication, as you put it? There's sort of social media spaces, the breakdown of traditional media. Is that what you're referring to specifically?

42:01Hank Green:I think that that's sort of like a – those are two things that are also emergent of the thing. But the thing is many-to-many communication being free. I participated. I ride that wave. And I don't think that on its own does it. I think that that combined with, you know, social media, like algorithms, social content platform algorithms doing this recommendation and promotion. I think that we do not to any extent understand how much we live in a world constructed by AI. But it is not large language models. It is recommendation algorithms. Yeah. How do you feel that you are in the middle of this?

42:44I mean, you are one of the biggest YouTubers in the world.

42:48Hank Green:It's not true. Thank you. One of. One of the biggest YouTubers in Wendy Zuckerman's world, for sure. I don't know about the others. I mean, you are in this space. And yet, I mean, are you thinking of just pulling the plug and, you know, becoming a gardener? No, like me leave? No, never. No. Yeah, no, like that's not how I think about it at all. I think that it is vitally important for thoughtful people to be engaging with it. in a way where you try and understand it and understand how it's affecting society. And like, that's how we get through. It's like an X. You're breaking up. You're in that middle of breaking up here.

43:31I'm still obsessed with you. And maybe you could be good. Yeah.

43:36Hank Green:Maybe you could come good. I don't actually. Like, that's not... Marissa? I can fix you. Yeah, no, it doesn't sound like that, doesn't it? Yeah. All right, Ike, we're going to end with our oddball questions.

43:51Quick questions to cap us off. Are you ready?

43:55Hank Green:I'm ready. Okay. What is a conspiracy theory that you secretly have a bit of a soft spot for? That caterpillars and butterflies used to be different species and merged. Shut up! And just tell me we didn't land on the moon.

44:18Hank Green:I mean it's definitely not true and there's also all kinds of other bugs that have larvals there's fish who have larval stages larval stages are totally a thing that happens that are normal but like I love the idea like I agree you look at a caterpillar and you look at a butterfly and you're like there's no way that's no way those are different things

44:40and they go into the concared Yeah, it's like, what the hell's going on in there?

44:45Hank Green:No, there was a worm and there was a butterfly, and then they somehow merged, like the mitochondria and the cell. Finish this sentence. Now that I know blank, I'll never look at blank the same way again. Now that I know how cancer works, I will never look at life the same way again. And not mine, just for clarity. The existence of multicellular organisms. Tell me more.

45:14Hank Green:Do you know what cancer is? Nobody knows what cancer— Can you give me the Wendy Zuckerman answer to that question? What is cancer? Sure. I would say cancer is when the DNA mutates in your cells in a particular way that creates a cell that will then replicate faster than other cells in your body. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is at the root of that a mechanism at work that nobody talks about, I think just because it's terrifying, which is that natural selection is acting on these cells. And so any cell that can replicate faster than other cells, there will be more of that cell. Any trait that allows it to replicate faster, there will be more of that trait.

45:49Hank Green:And thus, if you understand how natural selection works, if you're like, wait a second, then multicellularity shouldn't work. Because we should just be having these cancer-type cells. The moment that a multicellular organism starts existing, some cell in that multicellular organism is going to be like, well, if I, like, it's not going to think this. If it acquires a trait that allows it to multiply faster than the other cells in the organism, it will just do that. Not because of anything, just because if it's able to make more of itself, there will be more of it. Yes, and there's so many cells in our body.

46:24Surely one is going to go rogue.

46:26Hank Green:Yeah, yeah. Indeed, it does happen in about 40 % of people. Yes. By the end of their life. But what this means is that like the existence of multicellularity is from the first little weird jelly thing in the Ediacaran has been all based on controlling cancer. It's been controlling cancer the whole time. That's what multicellularity is. It is cells working together to try and pass their genes onto the next colony of cell rather than the next individual cell. And in order to do that, shouting at each other and working constantly to stop each other from becoming a cancer. It's f***ing wild. Yes. That is, I mean, it does kind of make me think of when I was in college, I had this theory.

47:12I worked at a bakery that everything is bread. And now that you've gone through this cancer, you're like, everything is cancer. Everything is cancer. Everything is fighting cancer.

47:20Hank Green:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, we look and like tumor suppressor genes are among the oldest genes in... It's crazy. It is a crazy thought now that you think about it. Yeah. That is almost the basis of multicellular life, just fighting cancer. Yeah, just like bread. What's your favorite title to a scientific paper that you read recently? I was rereading the scientific paper that Thomas Hodgkin wrote about Hodgkin's lymphoma when he discovered it, which was titled, On Submorbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen, which we used to have better titles to papers. No. I love that. Wow.

47:56Yes. All right. Can I tell you, Hank Green, my theory as to why when you fart and light a match, the smell goes away?

48:06Hank Green:Okay. Hit me. I have, now I have a guess, but. Okay. You want to, have you thought about it? Like, have you used this strategy when you do a fart? I have not, but I've heard of it. I do a farty person. Oh, yeah, but we're just very chill about the fart smells in our house. Yeah. That means you're not a really farty person. You don't know. You don't know what it's like, mate. We're all fine with farts, but there comes a level you need to use the match. Okay. Why do you think it works? Um, I have, I, so it is not the match lighting, but the match going out would be my guess. Mm-hmm. That when the match goes out, it creates a smell that overwhelms the fart smell.

48:56Okay, the mask, the typical masking theory. Yes.

49:00Hank Green:Is the masking theory, yeah. It's been, it's been proposed. This is what I think the internet thinks, but I think it goes deeper. Okay, I'm excited. I think it goes, it goes caterpillar butterfly deeper. And now I finally have someone to tell you. We should have a podcast together. This is ridiculous. I don't know why we don't. This is lovely. I'm so excited. Do you know how many people I have tried to tell this theory to and they could not give a s***? And I'm like, I want to spend every, I would spend an hour with you a week forever is how I respond.

49:35Okay. All right. Here it is. Here it is. Here it is. Okay. So when you light a match, red phosphorus is at the end. And the ignition point of red phosphorus is 260 degrees Celsius, which is 500 Fahrenheit. The reason a fart is smelly is because of hydrogen sulfide in the fart. In part. In part.

50:02Hank Green:That's often the smelliest part. Often the smelliest part. Famously rotten egg smell. guess what the ignition point of hydrogen sulfide is? You think you're burning hydrogen sulfide in the air? I think it's exactly 260 degrees Celsius. I think through the magic of chemistry, the smell, the hydrogen sulfide is splitting apart and you are creating whatever. I think it becomes maybe water, H2O in the air. And some kind of sulfur. I think the smell disappears. I think it's more than masking. I don't know, Wendy, because I feel like you'd have to get all of the air to 262 degrees Celsius, which would definitely be bad.

50:50Hank Green:Because it's not like it's not going to spread around. The fart smell isn't just at the strike point on the matchbox. It's a good point. At grades, got it again. We need to do some actual science. Actual science, exactly. Catch us next time on Hank and Wendy. Ten years I've been trying to figure out how to do science on whether butt hair prevents chafing, and I still haven't gotten it done. Because when you had chemo, you lost your butt hair. It's true. Yeah, yeah, it was great. Way preferable to the alternative, I have to say. Did you have any less chafing? Well, I wouldn't know. I wasn't jogging.

51:34Hank Green:You know? I was in bed watching Seinfeld and eating Chick-fil-A.

51:46Hank Green:There's not like much opportunity for chafing when I went up and down the stairs once a day. Thank you so much, Hank. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you. I'm a huge fan. It is so great to be here. Keep doing the good things you do. That was my chat with the science communicator, Hank Green. Now, soon after I interviewed Hank, some people got a bit miffed because of how he's used AI to help make some of his content. And you might have heard about some of that controversy. Hank has, in the meantime, released a new AI use policy, which you can find on his YouTube channel. You can also find Hank at SciShow.

52:22And his comedy special is called Pissing Out Cancer. It came out in 2024. We'd love to know what you thought of this episode. You can find us all over social media. We're on Instagram and TikTok. We're also on YouTube now. So come and find us at Science VS Podcast. If you're already watching on YouTube, hello, please like and subscribe. And if you like this episode, then why don't you share it with one of your friends? This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, and Ikedi Foster-Keys with help from Meryl Horne, Rose Rimler, and Michelle Dang. Editing by Blythe Terrell. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord.

52:59Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, So Wiley, Fumi Hidaka and Emma Munger. An extra thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.