Hello!!

Did you know that the YouTube series Crash Course now has over 1,500 videos that have been viewed more than 2 billion times and have helped literally hundreds of millions of students in their education?

This is not an easy thing to do efficiently, but we try very hard and, remarkably, we only spend around five cents per person we reach with Crash Course videos. What an extraordinary value! The problem is, when you multiply it by a hundred million, it’s actually quite a lot of money. It’s much more than you could make from YouTube ads.

Crash Course is extremely impactful, but it is also very hard to monetize (without putting it behind a paywall, which we never want to do). That is why, each year, we create some beautiful little pieces of art.

They are not cheap, but that’s intentional. The 2,000 Learner Coin is $100 and it’s minted on pure copper from hand-engraved dies. As the name implies, the $100 coin will allow us to reach 2,000 learners. The 10,000 Learner Coin is $500 and it’s minted on a bi-metallic coin of nickel, silver, and brass. The 20,000 Learner Coin is $1,000 and it’s minted in titanium which is laser anodized to color the coin, and it looks SO COOL.

You can get any or all of them at CrashCourseCoin.com but ONLY FOR THE NEXT WEEK and then never again.

Crash Course can only exist because of crowd-funding efforts like the coin, and it allows us to do so much amazing work. We are always budget-constrained, so thank you so much to everyone who is able to pay so that it can stay free for the people who can’t.

Hank

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• Pastry chef Molly Wilkinson went on a mission to find baguette-scented stamps.

• Orcas seem to be playing while ramming boats, not attacking. They were always innocent in our book.

• Hank discussed his cancer diagnosis and the science of cancer on the Cancer Chronicles podcast by Sam Wilkerson.

• There’s a 15-year-old cat named Hank Green for adoption at the Atlanta Humane Society.

• John will speak on “A World Without Tuberculosis” at Revolution Hall in Portland, OR next week! Tickets are available now.

• You can get 50% off your first Awesome Coffee subscription order of 12oz bags for the next week. Use the link above or use code COFFEE50.

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

On average, people have lived much longer than the period life expectancy at their time of birth

Saloni Dattani

The data on this chart comes from the Human Mortality Database.

It shows that in 1930, people in France had a period life expectancy of 57 years. Period life expectancy is a metric that summarizes age-specific mortality rates in one particular year. This means that newborns would live 57 years on average if they experienced the same death rates at each age of their lives as those seen at each age in the population that year.

However, these newborns actually faced lower death rates than previous generations and lived an average of 69 years. This second measure — the average lifespan of a birth cohort — is called cohort life expectancy. It can only be calculated once all cohort members have died.

Period life expectancy is the more commonly reported “life expectancy” measure. However, these two measures are very different, and the gap can be large, as this data shows.

Read more on the difference between period and cohort measures.

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.

Click here for “Halfway Home” joke context.

This Week at Complexly

What makes some art valuable enough to hang in museums? In the newest episode of Crash Course Art History, we looked at different ways we can figure out the value of art beyond the number on the price tag, and we examined how culture, society, history, and storytelling influence how we evaluate artwork.

In this week's special episode of Dear Hank and John, we answered your science questions with the help of astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack! Hear our dubious answers, and Dr. Mack's much less dubious answers, wherever you get your podcasts!

Some Games to Play!

Blossom (by Merriam-Webster)

Nerdy Connections (by Complexly)

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)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

Our Community Garden

Thank you to everyone who sent us flower art after last week’s newsletter!

You made it to the end!

If you have ever used Crash Course for something, whether learning yourself or teaching others, we’d love to hear how!

Email us at [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.