Greetings from Indianapolis!

This week on vlogbrothers, I told the story of Jimmy Glass, an itinerant goalkeeper who managed to become a legend at Carlisle United, a club he only played three games for. I wanted to tell a story about hope, but a lot of hopeful stories feel quite empty to me at the moment. It's hard, I think, to find the kind of hope that can actually withstand reality as we find it, the sort of candle that can burn even in gale-force winds. But hope is nonetheless justified.

It is not just possible for us to do the inglorious and uninstagrammable work of making life better for each other; it is imperative for us to do that work. Sometimes it takes the form of trying against all odds to score a goal for your football club; more often, it takes the form of visiting a friend or reaching out to someone we know to be suffering.

I used to have a lot of fancy ideas about why fiction exists in the world, and what kind of work I was supposed to be doing, etc. Now I mostly think that fiction and everything else exists to ease and inform our time here, that we should make and be for each other the warmth we would not otherwise find in the world. So I hope that even as winter approaches in my half of the planet, a winter darker than most, you will be able to find warmth.

John

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• Antonia, a cloned black-footed ferret, gave birth to two healthy offspring.

• Hank learned why the US Government spent $4.5M to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine.

• A very sweet video of a dog playing Connect 4 went viral on TikTok.

• BBC Earth showed us what it’s like to be a flying fox.

• An urban designer answered the internet’s city planning questions.

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

When asked if most people can be trusted, responses vary significantly around the world

Edouard Mathieu

For decades, the World Values Survey and European Values Study projects have examined people’s values through their surveys. One of the questions on trust asks: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?”

This chart shows the share of respondents who answered “most people can be trusted” across different countries.

As you can see, reported trust in others varies widely from country to country. In the Nordic nations, over 60% of respondents believe most people can be trusted, while in France and Italy, this figure drops to around 26%. At the lower end, as few as 5% of people in countries like Colombia and Peru express trust in others.

It’s worth noting that interpretations of survey-based “trust” measures are complex: what people mean when they answer this question could reflect various ideas about trust, personal experiences, or cultural attitudes toward trustworthiness.

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

Climate disruption threatens food security around the world, but it's especially dangerous for fish farmers. SciShow explained how high-tech climate information services can help them adapt.

The final episode of Bizarre Beast: Season Zero is here! Thank you for coming with us on this year-long journey to remaster the episodes of Bizarre Beast that were originally created for VlogBrothers. For our final Season Zero episode, the giant fish that enjoys to sun, the Mola Mola.

Some Games to Play!

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress)

Nerdfighteria Crossword (by Rachel Simon)

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)

Spend more, save more

As the name suggests, there's a lot of good stuff over at the Good Store, which is why they've introduced tiered savings for the month of November. Gift away to everyone on your list with 10% for orders over $50, 15% for orders over $75, and 20% over $100. Give some good!

Oops! Both Green Brothers

Have you ever made a wonderful mistake? I made a terrible mistake this week. I trusted someone when I shouldn’t have and I almost got my Facebook hacked. I don’t respond super well to people taking advantage of my trust, it sticks with me for a long time. I tend to ruminate about it for a long time, trying to identify all of the red flags that waved in my face that I somehow managed to ignore.

It’s pretty easy to spend a lot of time thinking about mistakes like those.

Luckily, I seem incapable of staying focused on them for very long, and a couple weeks later, I resort back to the same ridiculously trusting person I have always been. It seems to have worked out OK for me…

A week ago today, I made a different kind of mistake, a wonderful mistake. I assumed that, if I told the newsletter I’d give gift cards to anyone who knocked doors or made phone calls for a political campaign, I might send out a couple dozen, while next election more people might think about doing some of that work.

HAH!

Long story short, I’m sending out around $10,000 of $25 gift cards to Good.Store next week! A wonderful mistake! We’re calling it closed today, otherwise managing it is going to be too much of a burden for Payton. Thanks to everyone who sent in their lovely pictures of them canvassing or writing letters or phone banking, y’all are amazing.

I initially intended to just send out gift cards for each person, but it’s too many, so we are going to be sending out an email with a special code next week for y’all to use.

Thanks for surprising me in this lovely way,

Hank

See ya next week!

Have you gone out of your way to do something kind recently? Has someone gone above and beyond to show kindness to you? Tell us about it!

Send your kind moments 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.