Hello!

This week, I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between anxiety and gratitude. I am, as you may be aware, a Very Anxious Person, and holidays always bring my anxiety to the forefront for whatever reason. I think one of the reasons I like working so much is that when I am working, I am less inclined to Dwell, and pretty much everything is better for me than Dwelling.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how anxiety can be for me a perverse form of gratitude. Like, "I like being alive so let's start worrying about my impending death," or, "I like my car; let's imagine what would happen if it were totaled." Practicing gratitude—as I have been, with the help of Kurzgesagt's gratitude journals—is certainly not an antidote to anxiety, but it is a way for me to engage with thankfulness without ruminating on impending death and destruction and so on. It's a simple practice—I list some stuff I'm grateful for each day—but it has been a really powerful one for me, especially in choppy water. (The seas have definitely been splashing over my boat here for the last few weeks.)

Here are a few things I've been grateful for lately: fallen yellow ginkgo leaves, the way Diet Dr Pepper tastes slightly different when you drink it outside, my kids, Sarah's hand-made coffee mugs, pillows that properly work for my head, and the weighted blanket that a random redditor gave me years ago.

P.S. Here in the United States, we have just celebrated Thanksgiving, which can only mean one thing: The holiday shopping season is upon us, and I am honor-bound as Good Store's unpaid intern to tell you that Good Store can solve many of your holiday shopping needs. Plus, you can get 25% off any order today through Monday with the code SAVE25. All the profit goes to support stronger healthcare systems in impoverished communities.

John

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• John is signing the first 100,000 copies of his new book! He often livestreams while signing, so turn on YouTube notifications if you’d like to join the journey to 100K signatures.

• Rare mirabilite formations were found on Great Salt Lake in Utah.

• Hank spoke about tech billionaires and social media in the latest episode of On the Media.

• Veritasium explained how physics doomed Amelia Earhart.

Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]

The world population grew fast over the last 60 years, but farmers grew fruits and vegetables even faster

Max Roser

For almost all of human history, food was scarce for nearly everyone. The reason for this perpetual scarcity was that whenever food production increased, it did not lead to more food per capita but to more people.

Food production did not increase per capita. Population pressure ensured that living standards remained only barely above the subsistence level. Economic historians refer to this mechanism as the Malthusian Trap, and if you’d like to know more, you could read my article about it.

This changed in the last decades. More and more societies around the world broke out of the Malthusian Trap. We see this in the data as increasing food production in per capita terms. The chart shows that farmers have grown many fruits, vegetables, and nuts faster than the world population has increased.

The increase in global agricultural output was crucial for the reduction of hunger and famines that the world achieved in this period. Whether or not we will be able to end hunger globally will depend on whether this increase in food production will continue.

Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.

This Week at Complexly

Frogs aren't known for their fabulous manes, but the claws of frogs are helping us learn why humans have hair—thanks to a homeobox gene and a weird evolutionary shift.

A large proportion of Chinese people believe in a god—yet most report they don’t belong to any religion. In the latest episode of Crash Course Religions, we learn about two of the Three Teachings of China—Confucianism and Daoism—and explore why Chinese religious practice is much more fluid than the question “What religion do you follow?”

Some Games to Play!

Thanksgiving Connections (by Hank Green)

Mathit (by David Geukers)

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

If you post your results on social media, we’d love it if you post a link for folks to subscribe to “We’re Here” (https://werehere.beehiiv.com/subscribe)

Making time for joy

Last week, we asked you to schedule time for something you enjoy this week. We’re glad lots of you followed this suggestion and had a little extra happiness amidst the chaos. Thank you for all of the updates in our inbox!

That’s all, folks!

Unsurprisingly, we’d love to know what you’re grateful for.

Send your gratitude to [email protected]

We're Here is the newsletter of Nerdfighteria; the community of people that sprung up around Hank and John Green's YouTube videos. That community has many focuses and has spawned many projects but the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection. What makes the world better is groups of people trying to understand and solve problems, and people can only do that for an extended period if they're having at least a little bit of fun.