Slate Daily Feed ICYMI | Hank Green Started a War With Knitters
Sep 24, 2025
Dive into the knitting drama between Hank Green and the online knitting community. His SciShow episode sparked a wave of passionate responses, with nearly 30-minute reaction videos surfacing. Accusations of belittling language and misogyny fueled the fire, leading to heartfelt apologies and TikTok knitting vows. The hosts share personal knitting stories and explore how an offline hobby morphed into a hotbed of online conflict. This narrative showcases the complexities of community and the interplay between science and craft.
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Hosts Share Their Knitting Origins
- Kate Lindsay and Candice Lim both reveal they knit and share how they learned the craft during college and the pandemic respectively.
- Their personal knitting backgrounds set up why they care about the SciShow controversy and community reactions.
Science Framing Sparked The Backlash
- A SciShow episode framed knitting as enabling physicists to develop new materials, sparking debate over tone and accuracy.
- That framing revealed tensions when popular science explains niche crafts to broad audiences.
Words Show Respect Or Dismiss Skill
- Critics objected to language like "intuition" and "trial and error" because it felt to them like belittling skilled, often-women-led labor.
- The dispute highlights how descriptive word choice can signal respect or dismissal of craft knowledge.
