Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday.

Today's video is like the 2023 television adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations, it comes to
you in six parts.

Part 1: John Green's brother.

Hank, the Financial Times recently wrote a lovely article about us and our work. There were lots of great pictures. There's just one thing, which is that the subheadline read, "How the Fault in Our Stars author and his brother built a powerful forum for change." Hahaha! You are still John Green's brother at least according to the Financial Times, Hank! I feel like it simply does not matter what you accomplish in your life, Hank. The headlines will always be like, "The Fault in our Stars Author John Green's Younger Brother Wins Nobel Peace Prize." And it makes me so happy, but of course, that's only in the mainstream media. In real life, I am Hank Green's brother. Like last week at an art show, someone came up to Sarah and was like, "Aren't you Sarah Green from the Art Assignment?" And she was like, "Well, yes, I am." And then they said, "Aren't you also married to the brother?"

I mean, Hank, at least a third of the time I'm recognized. I'm recognized for being Hank Green from people coming up to me and being like, "Hey, it's only because of you that I passed organic chemistry" to the woman who on a Saturday night saw me walking the streets of Philadelphia and just shouted, "Hank Green!" So, yes, Sarah Green is married to the brother.

Part 2: The most banned book in America.

PEN announced today that the most banned book in the United States over the last four years is a quiet young adult novel about grief called Looking for Alaska, which is weird because I wrote that book, or at least like some past version of me did. The coordinated effort to ban Looking for Alaska and hundreds of other books has never been more intense, and it is very strange to think that so many people assume me to be a pornographer when I thought that I was writing a a novel about radical hope and how we live with guilt, which are important themes, but not, like, notoriously hot ones. Now, obviously, it's an honor to share any list with books like Beloved and The Color Purple and The Handmaid's Tale, but I do rather wish people would let librarians and teachers do the jobs that they have trained to do. And most of all, I am grateful to those librarians and teachers who are actually on the front lines of the battle for intellectual freedom and who are finding ways to still share Looking for Alaska and so many other books with readers despite the literal challenges.

Alright, part 3: Mammalian reflexes.

Hank, you are a mammal. And if you're watching this and can turn the sounds I'm making into ideas that live inside your head, you are an organism. You are 30 trillion cells trying to maintain homeostasis, and that's not easy. No wonder it's difficult to be blessed and cursed with consciousness. What a weird situation to be in. It's easy to forget that you're a mammal because you're so busy having consciousness. But yeah, you're a mammal, ok? So give yourself a little slack.

Part four, my new favorite YouTube video.

Hank, congratulations on the launch of Zonderia, your ridiculous and beautiful new YouTube channel that uses white noise to create money for charity. And I have to confess, I've been using it nightly to help me sleep and daily to help me focus, specifically a video called "9 Hours of the Low Hum of an Industrial Air Handler." Now, Hank, YouTube is famous for clickbait for titles and thumbnails that fail to answer the questions they beg. But nine hours of the low hum of an industrial air handler delivers. I mean, it is nine hours of the low hum of an industrial air handler. Just when you think it's gonna end after six hours, it doesn't. It helps me focus; It helps me sleep; It's another Hank Green project that makes my life better.

Part 5: Let's get a check on the weather.

Well, it's pretty but miserable like me in my 20s.

And finally, part 6: The end of a long hard year.

So, Hank, last night I got home from my final work trip of the year. I was speaking to scientists who study the implementation and dissemination of knowledge, a field that is under just a little bit of threat from the architecture of the social internet and just, uh, also gestures broadly. And for many of them, and indeed many of us, it has been a long and difficult year. I know it has been for me. I've traveled over 130 days this year trying to spread the gospel that the world's deadliest infectious disease is both curable and preventable, and it's been thrilling and wonderful and terrifying and overwhelming and exhausting. But it's also just been a long hard year personally for me and for a lot of people close to me dealing with unexpected loss and a certain existential weariness.

And yet the work continues because it has to. The work to ease suffering among those we love continues; The work of trying to make a safer and more just world continues; And the work of trying to figure out how the hell we are going to live with each other continues. And I'm grateful for however long I get to do that work even when it's hard, even when I'm discouraged, which I'll confess I currently am. I'm taking a couple weeks off from vlogbrothers for some family time here at the end of the year. So this will actually be my last video of 2025. And I guess if I have a message at the end of this, my longest year, it's one I borrow from Indianapolis's own Kurt Vonnegut: We must find ways together to fight the terrible diseases of loneliness and isolation.

Hank, thank you for helping me in that fight. I will see you on Friday.