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An Ancient Apocalypse

2024-05-24 · letter vlog · Hank, Katherine Green · 5:14 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, guest or collab, heavy topic

After Katherine's birthday trip, Hank reflects on being famous, on co-founding Nerdfighteria and on being a husband and father, then shows a short vlog in which Katherine explains how a glacial erratic was carried by the Lake Missoula floods; he closes that the floods were an apocalypse for any people in their path, now remembered only as roadside curiosities.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Katherine's birthday trip, Hank's birthday party, and birthdays after cancer

  • ★★ Hank says he and Katherine recently went out of town for her birthday, and shortly before that he had a big birthday party. — 00:00:00 · Katherine Green
  • ★★ Hank says they had not done much big birthday celebrating in recent years, but last year (2023) on Katherine's birthday he got his chemo port placed, so celebrating felt right. — 00:00:00 · Katherine Green, chemotherapy
  • ★ Hank says, as a 'secret', that eventually birthdays stop celebrating being born and start celebrating not being dead yet. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Being famous, co-founding Nerdfighteria, the TikTok science guy, and the job of being a husband and father

  • ★★ On the trip they saw old grad-school-era friends; people repeatedly came up for pictures or to say hi, and the friends concluded Hank is 'famous famous'. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank says that at some point in the last few years he did become famous, and being famous is weird, especially when people ask how he is because they last saw a video a year ago. — 00:00:29 · celebrity
  • ★★ Hank says the vacation was theirs, so he was not thinking much about content the whole time. — 00:00:29 · Katherine Green
  • ★ Hank says he also does not know if he is okay, but as far as he knows he is. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says weirder than fame is being one of the two guys who built a 'maniacally powerful secret society' that anyone can join but most people choose not to. (playful) — 00:00:58 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★ Hank says co-founding the community is also weirder than being 'that science guy from TikTok'. — 00:01:27 · TikTok
  • ★★ Hank says his other weird job is being a guy with a child and a marriage: sharing his life with people, having met a girl at college whose genes are now in the same child as his. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says he often wants to be just that husband and father, but at one moment on the trip he found himself making a YouTube video anyway; it is ingrained. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — A Vlogbrothers video inside the video: Katherine explains the Erratic Rock and the ice-dam floods from Glacial Lake Missoula

  • ★★ Hank inserts that short, unusual video into this one: for the first time, a Vlogbrothers video inside a Vlogbrothers video. — 00:01:56 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ In the inner video Hank says they are going to the Erratic Rock, and Katherine says it comes from where they are from: Glacial Lake Missoula. — 00:01:56 · Katherine Green
  • ★ Hank says the area they are visiting is where Christmas trees come from, which sounds facetious but is true. (playful) — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ Katherine Green: Katherine explains that glacial ice dams built up in the Rocky Mountains and were breached; everything behind them rushed out cataclysmically, carrying rocks stuck in the ice toward the Pacific and dropping them along the way. — 00:02:36 · Katherine Green
  • ★★ Katherine Green: Katherine says such rocks are found all over the flood route; Hank calls this one a very large glacial erratic and she agrees. — 00:03:03 · Katherine Green
  • ★★ Hank says rocks like this do not belong here; finding them puzzled people and led them to build the story of the giant ice dams. — 00:03:32
  • ★★★ Hank says we sometimes talk about theories in terms of proof, but what matters is how far a theory explains things that confuse us. — 00:03:32
  • ★★ A voice in the inner video says the floods flowed with 10 times the combined annual volume of all the Earth's rivers. — 00:04:02
  • ★★★ Hank says something rarely discussed about the Lake Missoula floods is that there were people in North America when they happened. — 00:04:02
  • ★★★ Hank says that, though there is no proof, there were also people in the places the flood went. (hedged) — 00:04:02

00:04:09 — The Lake Missoula floods as an apocalypse for the people in their path, remembered only through forgetting

  • ★★ Hank says the floods would have left no one alive, not even trees or grass. — 00:04:35
  • ★★ Hank says the floods at times traveled over 80 miles per hour and delivered more energy than 10,000 atomic bombs. — 00:04:35
  • ★★★ Hank says he generally thinks the apocalypse has not happened, but it did for those people: an instantaneous winking out of everything, caused by a fluke of geology. — 00:04:35
  • ★★★ Hank says our memorials to that loss are roadside curiosities visited now and then by a couple of people with a birthday cake. — 00:04:35
  • ★★★ Hank concludes that time heals all wounds, but usually just through forgetting. — 00:05:04

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a channel comment Hank says Katherine's degree is in environmental studies, which includes a good deal of geology. — creator comment · Katherine Green
  • ★ In a channel comment Hank says people who approach him in public mostly know him from Crash Course, with TikTok second. — creator comment · Crash Course, TikTok

Humor (significant)

  • After his chemo year, Hank reveals the 'secret' of what birthdays become. — 00:00:00

    “they start being about celebrating the fact that you're not dead yet”

  • Hank calls Nerdfighteria a maniacally powerful secret society, then admits it is not secret at all. — 00:00:58

    “Like, anybody can join up, but most people choose not to.”

  • Hank reduces his marriage to its oddest biological summary. — 00:01:27

    “one day, I met a girl at college, and now our genes are in the same child”

  • Next to a picnic area, the giant rock is presented as furniture. — 00:02:36

    “Why would you need a picnic table when there's a rock?”

  • They nearly drive past the Erratic Rock on the road. — 00:04:02

    “Quick! Quick turn.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: apocalypse · celebrity · Erratic Rock State Natural Site · glacial erratic · Katherine Green · Missoula floods

Also: Organizations: TikTok

Concepts: chemotherapy · Marriage · nuclear weapon · scientific theory

Places: Glacial Lake Missoula · North America · Pacific Ocean · Rocky Mountains

Only in the description or credits: Crash Course

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