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

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 description of cancer, which is to say that it's educational, funny, and delivered at a rapid-fire clip that telegraphs his enthusiasm and bolsters our own. It's also one of the most memorable sections of Green's first-ever stand-up special, Pissing Out Cancer.

In May of 2023, Green was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. As he navigated his illness and underwent chemotherapy, he decided that he would write a stand-up show about the experience. "And I would see if I was any good at that," he says in a behind-the-scenes video about the special.

"There were times that were actually funny," Green told Mashable of finding humor in his cancer journey. One moment from his first day of chemotherapy springs to mind, when Green's nurse told him, very tactfully, that "for the next few days, nothing that comes out of you should go into anyone else."

"When that happened, I was like, 'Oh no, I have to do stand-up!'" Green laughed. "The story's too good."

Hank Green performs "Pissing Out Cancer." Credit: Dropout

Green enlisted Missoula-based comedian Sarah Aswell to be his coach, and over the course of eight weeks (including weekly shows), he went from 10 minutes of material to 70. During this time, he sent footage of his act to comedians for honest feedback. Among them was Sam Reich, CEO of streaming service Dropout, which produces series like Game Changer and Dimension 20. (Green himself starred in Dimension 20: Mentopolis.) Reich wrote back and asked whether Green would consider making Pissing Out Cancer a full special with Dropout. Now, it kicks off Dropout Presents, a series of seven comedy specials — ranging from one-person shows to improv specials — that will be releasing on Dropout in 2024.

Green was initially "worried" about the prospect of opening Dropout Presents. "Dropout's first comedy special is from a guy who's not a comedian, he's a TikTokker and and YouTuber," he said. "I don't want people to feel like I'm cutting in line."

"I appealed to Hank by saying, 'if you kick this off, it'll offer a lot of attention to folks with smaller followings,'" Reich told Mashable in a joint interview with Green. "Appealing to his sense of altruism is the way to Hank's heart. That's how you get him to do anything."

Another aspect of working with Dropout that appealed to Green was the chance to candidly share his own cancer journey with a much larger audience. "To have an opportunity to [produce Pissing Out Cancer] in a way that looks a lot better than if I had just done it myself would be better for the material," he said. "If it was just me doing stand-up, that would be one thing. But I actually do quite want to pull the big, dark blanket off of cancer and say, 'it might not be how you're imagining it.' It might be worse, it might be better, but don't have your conception of what cancer and cancer treatment are like stuck in 1995."

Green's candor about his experience was something that appealed to Reich from the very first footage Green sent him. "I imagine that a lot of people can connect to [the material], because unfortunately not only do a lot of people get cancer, but a lot of people are very close to people who get cancer," Reich said.

Hank Green performs "Pissing Out Cancer." Credit: Dropout

Reich also responded to Green's delivery, which he considered especially impressive given how recently Green had started performing stand-up. "It's easy to compare stand-ups to other stand-ups. Hank is very much his own," Reich said. "But he also has this combination of something that feels very personal, almost like Mike Birbiglia does, with something that felt very anecdotal and all over the place in the way that Eddie Izzard is, who I also adore."

"You've put your finger on two of my favorite comedians!" Green added. "Eddie Izzard was my introduction to comedy, and Mike, I'm obviously extremely inspired by him."

Green cites Taylor Tomlinson and Josh Johnson as other inspirations, along with other sets where a comedian grapples with their cancer. Think Nimesh Patel's Lucky Lefty, about Patel's testicular cancer diagnosis, or Tig Notaro's Live, which she performed four days after being diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.

One of Green's biggest touchstones was John Mulaney's Baby J, about Mulaney's struggles with addiction and his experience in rehab. "The whole special was about rehab, and I was like, 'oh, you can do a special that's one story,'" said Green. "That was very freeing for me as a person. Doing comedy as a story is, in a way, easier because you have a beginning, middle, and end set up, and you don't have to be stringing bits together in more nonsensical ways. So [Baby J] was one of the [specials] that I watched right as I was starting to get comfortable with the idea that I might do this. It was sort of a signal that, 'the way you want to do this is OK. That is a thing that is possible to do.'"

While Pissing Out Cancer follows the arc of Green's cancer journey — literally opening with the line, "so I got cancer" — it isn't without its fair share of diversions. Green weaves the ant-cancer comparison into a conversation with his doctor. Elsewhere, he finds time to give us a crash course in how hair grows. And in a standout bit, he takes us into a fever dream involving the assassination of the Baltimore Orioles. ("I went through all the baseball teams, and they were the funniest name," he explained.)

Throughout all the laughs, Green never shies away from the hard truths of his cancer journey. From navigating the hellscape that is the American healthcare system to the physical toll cancer and chemotherapy take, this is a special that can get heavy. Yet there's a hopefulness to it too, with Green raving about how amazing and miraculous life can be not long after ranting about its many pitfalls and pains.

"Illness is a part of life. Death is a part of life. Cancer is a part of life. It's not going to go away," Green said. "There was a time when pretty much every cancer ended the same way, and it wasn't that long ago, but that is not the case anymore. The majority of people who get cancer will die of something else now. [And with the special] we are pulling back the curtain a little bit and saying, 'it's OK to shine some light on this thing.'

He continued: "I think the biggest piece of good that [Pissing Out Cancer] will do is take the temperature down a little bit and say, 'if you're worried about a thing, you need to get to a doctor, because you're not going to get it fixed without them. But don't think there's nothing they can do, because that is definitely not the case.'"

Pissing Out Cancer premieres June 21 at 7 p.m. ET on Dropout.