YouTube Star Hank Green Shares His Cancer Diagnosis : NPR

Science communicator, author and YouTuber Hank Green announced in a video that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer.

In the YouTube video, the 43-year-old told the story of his diagnosis. “When you’re in the American healthcare system, you don’t expect things to move quickly,” he said, recounting being tested. “When it starts to get a little effective, it’s actually quite disconcerting.”

He was right to be baffled – the tests came back quickly and positive for cancer. Still, Green was hopeful, explaining that the type of lymphoma he has is very treatable and it seems likely at this point that it was caught early.

In what he called “very Hank Green thinking”, he added “this is the greatest time in human history to get lymphoma”.

Green is a busy designer. He has been active on YouTube since 2007 and currently hosts several podcasts as well as a TikTok account. He’s not sure exactly what this diagnosis will mean for these projects, other than to say he knows his audience will be okay with him taking breaks. He also directed people to his newsletter, which will be easier for him to follow during chemo.

Towards the end of the video, Green adds that he has two requests for his audience. First, don’t give her health advice. And second, to give her suggestions for movies, TV shows, and video games that “are not heavy at all, like no emotion…really stupid stuff that couldn’t make anyone cry.”

And so, an incomplete list of really dumb things that couldn’t make anyone cry: