Hank Green finds the humor in cancer in his first-ever stand-up special [Video]

Ask Hank Green to tell you how people get cancer, and he’ll tell you about ants.

The video creator, science educator, and novelist will explain how ant colonies communicate through pheromones, and how they’re built to pass genetic material not to the next generation of ants, but to the next generation of ant colony. But what if one ant — call him Trent, Green suggests — becomes an individualist and decides to only focus on self-propagation, as opposed to the betterment of a whole? Then Trent and his many offspring will hijack the other ants’ pheromonal communication systems, gain more resources from the rest of the ants, and multiply fruitfully. At a certain point, the colony simply won’t be able to support the constantly multiplying Trents. The entire system will collapse.

Now imagine the Trents and ants are human cells, Green explains, and you get cancer.

The ant comparison is a very Hank Green …