From hankschannel.

In May of 2023 I was diagnosed with hodgkin lymphoma. I responded to this in two ways. First, during moments when my brain was working OK, I read a LOT about cancer…basically, I tried to focus my fear into curiosity.

Second, when my brain wasn’t working well, I played Marvel Snap and watched stand-up comedy. Comedy was amazing because, unlike even a sitcom, it doesn’t really matter if you drop in or out. I got kinda obsessed with how comedy works…how comedians perform…how they control an audience, what happens when they lose control, the flow from explanation to joke, to roll, to emotional payoff back into explanation.

So I hired an amazing local comedian, Sarah Aswell, to be my coach to help guide me…to tell me what I was strong at and what I needed to focus on. I treated it like a job for about six weeks and, at the end of that, I had a special. I toured it for a while and then my friend Sam from Dropout.tv told me that they were doing a new live comedy thing on their platform and, perhaps, they could record my special.

It was the best possible outcome, even though I was kinda sad I couldn’t keep touring it after the special came out. But I did ask if, perhaps, they’d let me put it on YouTube a year after it went live on Dropout and they agreed. So now I get to put it here!! I hope y’all enjoy.