progress

concept · in 102 videos (2010–2026)

Improvement in human lives, such as falling poverty and child mortality; in 2015 John said hundreds of millions had left absolute poverty in 25 years and child mortality had been cut by half.

Videos by year: 2010: 2 · 2011: 3 · 2012: 1 · 2013: 2 · 2014: 12 · 2015: 8 · 2016: 7 · 2017: 10 · 2018: 8 · 2019: 5 · 2020: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2022: 6 · 2023: 11 · 2024: 4 · 2025: 10 · 2026: 11

Also known as: progress (in human welfare), best time to be alive in human history, human life is getting better, progress is a process not an event, the world is getting better, social progress

Threads

• Hank: despite the aid cuts, the world is not heading back to how it was in 1880 or even 1950 (2026) — prediction, unresolved, 2026

Questions

• Is human life getting better; is now the best time to be alive?

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

child mortality (13) · extreme poverty (8) · hope (10) · global health (6) · climate change (8) · United States (18) · education (5) · optimism (3) · economic inequality (4) · vaccine (4)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2010

• 2010-06-14 · Be The Change - vlogbrothers — Hank: Thinking about Alan Turing shows how much has changed, Hank says, though there is still a lot of change to make. — 00:02:35
  • Change never happens all at once, with everyone agreeing to be tolerant; it happens very slowly through many mechanisms, the most important being changing yourself. — 00:02:43
• 2010-09-17 · Positive Prank Calls!! — Hank hopes the people he called will feel better about the planet and society; he thinks it is easy to get discouraged only because we get told the bad news and never the good. (hedged) — 00:03:05

2011

• 2011-02-04 · QUESTION FRIDAY: Spelling is Hard Edition — John: Of all periods of history John would live in this one; Rome was fantastic, but a nerd with four days can recreate it in Minecraft. — 00:01:13
• 2011-10-26 · 7,000,000,000 People — Hank says humanity is doing surprisingly well compared with what was expected 40 or 50 years ago, and he is very hopeful: immense challenges, but immense resources. — 00:02:11
• …and 1 statement more in 2011 — all statements of 2011

2012

• 2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says the era of compulsory education has been a good run for humans, from steam engines, the internet and antibiotics to longer lives and landing on Mars, and that this is not a coincidence. — 00:00:38

2013

• 2013-05-31 · Optimism is Not Insane — Hank: Showing a graph of health and wealth of every country from 1900 to 2011, Hank says every country is better off, and some African countries now do better than the US did in 1900. — 00:01:51
• 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says that amid the misery of human life it is easy to forget how much is worth celebrating, so he starts the new year with good news. — 00:00:00
  • John says worldwide infant mortality is at an all-time low, falling from 46 to 35 deaths per 1,000 births in the last eight years. — 00:00:39
  • John says that in almost every country people are now likelier to live to old age than ten years ago, less likely to be hungry, and better connected to those they love. (hedged) — 00:03:07
  • John says this progress is tenuous and much of it unsustainable with current technology, but it is real and worth celebrating; he hopes 2014 is the best year yet. — 00:03:30

2014

• 2014-01-03 · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! — Hank grants that it does seem hard to believe the world is getting better, and says there are reasons for that beyond cable news. — 00:01:02
  • Hank concludes that in fact the world is okay. — 00:03:19
• 2014-01-21 · Are Poor Countries Doomed? — John says more than 6 million children died worldwide in 2013 — horrible and unjust — yet the lowest in quite a while, even as world population steadily increased. — 00:00:01
  • John says Earth has not seen a year with so few child deaths in hundreds of years, maybe a thousand. (hedged) — 00:00:25
• 2014-07-22 · Ambiguous Victories and Real Progress: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John says much data shows that over the last twenty years people with the right resources have transformed their communities: rising income, food security, literacy, lower infant mortality. — 00:02:36
• 2014-07-29 · Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — John says twenty years ago more than fifteen percent of children born in Ethiopia died before age five; today it is less than seven percent. — 00:01:22
• 2014-08-19 · Baby Names: Thoughts from Rural Ethiopia — John: Their progress is real and should be celebrated, but much remains: children should not die of diarrhea, pneumonia or malaria, and far too many still do. — 00:03:07
• 2014-09-09 · Going to College (in Ethiopia) — John says these young people have seen the greatest drops in poverty and infant mortality in Ethiopia's history, yet tens of thousands of Ethiopian children still die yearly of easily preventable diseases. — 00:03:39
• 2014-09-23 · Looking Away — John says child death in Ethiopia has dropped by more than two-thirds in 20 years, alongside huge growth in school attendance and in college graduates. — 00:01:27
• 2014-09-29 · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress — Bill Gates: Gates calls Ethiopia's progress very exciting: health is an enabling piece, the country is pulling together, the system is well designed and donors look for missing tools. — 00:02:38
• 2014-11-28 · Global Health and Human Hair: What the Vlogbrothers are Thankful For — John is thankful that childhood death around the world is decreasing at an astonishing pace. — 00:00:40
• 2014-12-12 · NONSENSE: P4A 2014 - Partners in Health — recommendation: Hank says Partners in Health does heroic life-saving work, now and for a hundred years ahead, and is a big part of the success story of wider health-care access and less suffering, which supporters join. — 00:00:57
• …and 6 statements more in 2014 — all statements of 2014

2015

• 2015-01-27 · Will Life Get Better for the Poor? — John says hundreds of millions of people have left absolute poverty in the last 25 years, child mortality has been cut by half, and more kids than ever are vaccinated. — 00:00:16
• 2015-05-15 · Happy Graduation, Future Dead People — Hank: Addressing a 'future dead person', Hank says the viewer is very likely one of the luckiest and most powerful people who has ever existed. (hedged) — 00:00:22
• 2015-09-22 · Is Poverty Necessary? Looking back at the Millennium Development Goals — John: Overall it has been a really good 25 years for humans: people are less likely to be poor, hungry or illiterate, girls more likely to go to school, mothers less likely to die or lose a child. — 00:03:20
• 2015-09-25 · Pissed Off for a Better World — Hank: After the sign-off Hank says he is honestly amazed at how far we've come, with infant mortality down and education and access to clean water up. — 00:02:45
• 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John: Since January 2010 crime is down, US joblessness has fallen dramatically, the economy has grown and people report being happier than five years ago; yet every month more than two-thirds of Americans have felt the US is headed the wrong way. — 00:03:13
  • John feels we are unnecessarily inundated with bad news because we seek it out and share it, becoming more afraid and pessimistic than we need to be. (hedged) — 00:03:30
  • Then again, John notes, Americans have never been healthier or claimed to be happier, so maybe we are getting exactly what we want without knowing it. (playful, hedged) — 00:03:38
• 2015-11-27 (said on 2015-11-26, implied) · Never Satisfied: The Story of Humans ¦-/ — Hank asserts that, objectively and on average, this is the best time to be alive in human history; we have achieved much to decrease human suffering. — 00:01:49
  • Hank argues that never looking back makes everything look hopeless, so we need a mix of dissatisfaction and work for better, plus recognition of what we have achieved as a species and as individuals. — 00:02:27
• 2015-12-11 · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 — John says infant mortality has halved in the last 25 years, the share of kids in school has skyrocketed, and global poverty has diminished. — 00:03:00
• 2015-12-18 · We're All Gonna Die - A Song — Hank says that against the bad news of death there is lots of good news, then jokes that it all balances out and everything will be fine. (playful) — 00:02:49

2016

• 2016-01-26 · Billionaires and Radical Hope: Thoughts from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — John: Acknowledging it is easier to say from a privileged position, John believes human progress is possible though not inevitable, and is convinced of and moved by the radical hope behind millennia of human effort. — 00:02:56
• 2016-01-29 · Why the Word "Millennial" Makes me Cringe — Hank believes previous generations worked hard to make life better for him than it was for them: gay people can marry, Buffy and all of Netflix cost $7.99 a month, and cars are much less likely to kill people. — 00:02:55
• 2016-02-23 · How Energy and Time Change Everything — John says that too often we refuse even to acknowledge these problems, and that must change now if the next 200 years are to continue the successes of the previous 200. — 00:03:36
• 2016-04-19 · Literally Hitler — John says the US economy has grown each of the last six years, unemployment has dropped through the 2010s, crime is down and 90% of Americans have health insurance, the highest since the 1970s. — 00:01:07
• 2016-08-16 · Some Good News: 16 Ways 2016 Is Not a Total Dumpster Fire — John says 2016 has been something of a dumpster fire, yet there is still a lot of good news around the world. (playful) — 00:00:01
  • John says he isn't claiming all is well on Earth, with much to lament and change, but is encouraged that as a species we've shown the ability to make broad positive changes. — 00:03:34
• 2016-11-09 · My Post-Election Thoughts — John says Orin was born into a better America than his grandparents', made better by people whose hope, from Alabama restaurant counters to Normandy's beaches, held the line in far darker times. — 00:02:53
• 2016-12-09 · The Difference A Decade Makes: The 10th Annual Project for Awesome Is Here! — John says there are similar stories around the world: in the last ten years the global absolute poverty rate has fallen by more than half. — 00:01:21

2017

• 2017-01-17 · How Young Is History? — John says we like to think history moves in a line from naive to sophisticated, short lives to long, poverty to abundance, but the idea that history means progress is very new; most of the 250,000-year human story looks like a sine curve. — 00:02:28
  • Whatever progress we have made toward justice, equality or shared prosperity is fragile because it is new. — 00:02:49
• 2017-02-07 (said on 2017-02-02, implied) · Good News, YA Books, and Bears: It's Question Tuesday — John: Humans on average are living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives than ever before in human history. — 00:00:31
• 2017-06-16 · When Will You Die? — Hank says life expectancy has gone up a lot over the last 200 years, but it has also gone up for each viewer, and goes up every day, for an unexpected reason. — 00:00:16
• 2017-07-18 · Accio Decade Hallows — John recalls Hank's idea that bad news usually comes all at once and good news slowly: declines in absolute poverty, child mortality and violent deaths go unreported because they are decades-long processes, not events. — 00:00:09
• 2017-08-01 · Death and How to Avoid It (...for a while) — John says human life is getting better in almost every way: we are healthier, more prosperous and less likely to die from violence than ever. — 00:00:28
• 2017-08-18 · What I've Been Thinking About — The description says America has a shameful history but also a history of progress, which continues now as people fight a new wave of hate. — video description
  • Hank says the great story of human progress is not only science and technology but increasing tolerance, diversity and human-to-human understanding: a process, not an event. — 00:02:50
  • Hank says we are not done and won't finish in his lifetime: like all great human endeavours, if it can be done before you die, it is too small a goal. — 00:03:06
• 2017-09-19 · Why Cities? — John: Though initially disastrous for their inhabitants, settlements eventually led to better lives by almost any measure: we are less likely than ever to die of infectious disease, malnutrition or violence. — 00:02:36
• 2017-12-12 · 2017 is the Best? — John says many tragedies demand better responses, but on average the human population is healthier, more prosperous and better educated than it ever has been. — 00:01:27
• 2017-12-19 · History Is Happening — John says unequal access to health care and education is not permanent: we have seen dramatic reductions around the world. — 00:02:44

Also named in: Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before.

2018

• 2018-01-23 · On Emergencies — John: Change is visible: life expectancy in Sierra Leone is low but rising, and its woefully underfunded health system is better than decades ago. — 00:02:44
• 2018-02-06 · Sawdust Bread — John says it does mean we can make progress: seen through lifetimes, both the pace and the nature of change are really encouraging to him. — 00:02:15
  • Reading history gives John the uncomfortable but productive feeling that better human lives are possible but not guaranteed. — 00:02:47
• 2018-05-15 · Seven Maps to Better Understand the World — John says life expectancy has risen by over ten years in most nations in the last 35 years, a consistent worldwide increase never seen before and worth celebrating. — video description
  • John calls the benefits staggering: 522,000 mothers died in childbirth in 1991 and 303,000 in 2015; there is a long way to go, but that is real progress. — 00:02:41
• 2018-07-10 · The General Crisis — John: The early 17th century is a reminder that progress is never simple, universal or guaranteed. — 00:03:40
• 2018-08-21 · SYSTEMS!!!! — John: Investing in fragile systems sometimes fails and progress is often not simple or linear, but it is real. — 00:03:38
• 2018-11-20 · Cause for Celebration — John: At a societal level, John says, US median household income is higher than ever and the poverty rate is declining, though not as fast as it should given economic growth. — 00:00:29
• 2018-11-27 · On The Melian Dialogue — John thinks building norms and systems that protect the weak, from the Geneva Conventions to child labor laws, has made the world safer and more just for all of us. (hedged) — 00:03:24
• 2018-12-07 · BABIES! The 2018 Project for Awesome is here… — John says yesterday's babies were born into the healthiest, best-educated moment in human history, more than twice as likely to survive to adulthood as children born in 1990. — 00:01:17
  • John says this did not happen by accident or because progress is natural, but because we as a species decided to prioritize children. — 00:01:33

2019

• 2019-02-19 · Battling Apathy and Searching for Meaning on Question Tuesday — John thinks we must see and listen to the pain but also the joy, hope and progress, in individual lives and as a species; that is how he escapes the apathy trap. — 00:03:24
• 2019-05-03 · What Game of Thrones is Really About — Hank: Global warming doesn't want to kill us; it results from people trying to improve their lives, and there is less suffering because of fossil fuels, so calling them immoral while exonerating users rings false. — 00:06:35
• 2019-06-25 · Seemed Like a Good Idea: Eugene Schieffelin and the European Starlings — John says one reason fewer people will starve this decade than in any decade in thousands of years is that we've become good at moving species to where they thrive. — 00:02:55
• 2019-08-06 · Uncertain and Afraid — John says none of that improving data invalidates the contemporary horrors. — 00:01:27
• 2019-12-27 · Why I'm Worried about 2020 — Hank says that in many ways the world, even just America, got better over the last ten years. — 00:00:25

2020

• 2020-11-17 · Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update — John: Not long ago the Sierra Leone figure was 1 in 17 women, so maternal death is declining and progress is real, just not fast enough. — 00:07:09

2021

• 2021-10-22 · A Tool with No Blood on It — Hank says the last hundred years' gains in quality of life and in the value placed on human lives needed coal, oil and gas, fuels that created many problems. — 00:01:56

2022

• 2022-02-22 · On the Death of My Hero — John: Child and maternal mortality are the lowest in human history and health systems are strengthening even in very poor communities, but profound health inequities persist. — 00:02:55
• 2022-03-01 (said on 2022-02-27, implied) · Hard Week — John: When John was a college freshman, children globally were twice as likely to die before age five as today: a massive human success story. — 00:02:26
• 2022-03-29 · An H of G — John: So progress feels possible, John says, and injustice becomes even more horrific because we know that together we can choose a better world. — 00:03:24
• 2022-10-11 · Most People Have Never Been 20 — John says the median human was born 2,000 years ago because so many people died young: early death was not merely common but the norm, as dying at 80 is now. — 00:02:55
• 2022-10-25 · Instantly Debateable — John: The year John graduated from high school, 11 million children under 5 died; this year (2022) fewer than 5 million will, which is still way too high. — 00:03:24
• 2022-11-15 · 3 Years In: What Happened, Why, and What's Next — John says progress is never inevitable: this is happening because of the extraordinary commitment of Sierra Leone's health workers and because of supporters. — 00:02:55
  • John says that when the project began three years ago 1 in 17 Sierra Leonean women could expect to die in pregnancy or childbirth; today it is fewer than 1 in 20, still much too high but real progress. — 00:06:19 · also in: The Tea

2023

• 2023-03-14 · The Seduction of Despair — John says millions of kids will die needlessly of impoverishment this year (2023), but 30 years ago kids were twice as likely to die before the age of five. — 00:02:16
• 2023-05-02 · GOOD NEWS — John: In Kono both maternal and child mortality have since declined dramatically. — 00:00:58
• 2023-05-09 · on hope — John also lives in hope that the human story will go on, if not forever, and that it will get better, though never close to perfect. — 00:01:30
  • John says centuries ago the man would also have got absolute power over a kingdom; making the role ceremonial is real but insufficient progress, and ongoing injustice in power and resources doesn't negate it. — 00:02:00
• 2023-05-19 · So, I've got cancer — Hank told John that this is the best time so far in human history to get lymphoma, which he calls a very Hank Green thought. — 00:04:14
• 2023-06-13 · touched by a king — John: We no longer treat scrofula with the king's touch, which John argues is good on a few levels: kings are no longer thought that powerful, and treatments are much better. — 00:03:08
• 2023-06-23 · Understanding Cancer Survival Rates — Hank credits decades of work by researchers and patients, to whom he is forever in debt, for making today the best time in human history to get cancer. — 00:11:18
• 2023-06-27 · Alone on the Cancer Boat: A Vlogbrothers Reunion — Hank says it's easy to forget that a hundred years ago people did not expect to be cured of a disease; doctors mainly told them which direction they were headed. — 00:04:06
• 2023-07-14 · The Good News Video — Hank calls chemo the least fun thing he has ever done and hates it, but finds it amazing and powerful, and feels lucky to have access, a nearby hospital, and decades of refined treatment plans. — 00:06:11
• 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — John says it is important to understand that progress against drug-resistant TB is possible and has happened, but it is harder than it needs to be. — 00:32:54
• 2023-09-28 · What the Heck is the UN? — Hank says we can make different choices because we already have, showing charts of world deaths by age since 1950, polio burden since 1980 and TB death rates since 1990. — 00:07:13
• 2023-12-08 · Did Natural Cancer Treatments Save My Life? — Hank says 10 years ago his treatment would have been worse, 30 years before that horrible and probably disabling for life, and 30 years before that nonexistent. (hedged) — 00:05:49
• …and 2 statements more in 2023 — all statements of 2023

2024

• 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John argues that understanding the median shows both where the US is failing and where it has made progress. — 00:03:53
• 2024-06-04 · how it all ends — John says it is tempting to see the human story as ever-accumulating knowledge: a line of progress from before cooking fires to understanding the universe, from nobody's story recorded to everyone's. — 00:00:58
• 2024-06-14 · Some Reasons why People Suck — Hank wants to think about the billions before him who built an imperfect but better world, all of whom made mistakes, laughed and grieved, and that things only got better when people believed they could. — 00:07:46
• 2024-11-26 · Good News — John: Sierra Leone's maternal death rate is still far too high, about 100 times too high, but down about 60% in seven years. — 00:02:26

2025

• 2025-01-03 · My 2025 Bingo Card — Hank says history gives him hope: humans keep messing things up and fixing them, making terrible decisions and then correcting them. — 00:02:28
• 2025-01-07 · The Format but it hurts to stand up — John argues we must hold two equally true ideas at once: the progress against TB is real and worth celebrating, and it is not acceptable. — 00:01:40
• 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says this fall in child mortality was not natural, normal or inevitable, and represents the greatest success in human history. — 00:00:29
  • John says the progress is the result of sustained, ongoing, open-ended funding and collaboration. — 00:05:21
  • John concludes that continued progress for human health is not natural: it will result, or fail to result, from human choices. — 00:05:21
• 2025-02-11 · What's at Stake — John says TB deaths have fallen by more than half in the last 25 years: that progress is under threat but still real, and it shows progress is possible. — 00:05:21
• 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank says we are so lucky to be alive right now. — 00:05:02
• 2025-03-04 · The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE — John says millions of lives are at risk and overall human health will get worse, which should stress us out. — 00:02:00
• 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says graphs of child mortality, TB and HIV deaths since 2000 all bring good news, but this progress will stop and reverse because of the US-led global pullback in health funding. — 00:00:00
• 2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John calls it a concrete example of life getting better for the most vulnerable through broad, decades-long collaboration: too slow and still insufficient, but real. — 00:02:26
  • John is not saying progress is inevitable or that the world will get better, only that these two examples show the world can get better. — 00:04:23
• 2025-11-10 · My Cancer Treatment was Not Cutting Edge — Hank says a solution has two components, the first being whether it exists at all: it is easy to forget how long we had no tools for our bodies' failings, and now we have many. — 00:04:50
• …and 3 statements more in 2025 — all statements of 2025

2026

• 2026-01-09 · There is Only One Source of Value — Hank warns that turning yourself into a moral calculator ignores the real path of progress: lives keep getting more valuable because people believe they are, and that value drives better lives. — 00:02:26
• 2026-02-13 · Project for Awesome 2026 Kickoff! — John says that since he graduated from college, yearly child deaths have fallen from 11 million to 5 million: still far too high, but huge progress that is easy to forget. — 01:46:24
• 2026-03-10 · Is Hank Green Running for Congress? — John calls that progress absolutely insufficient, since nobody should die of TB, but it is still 70 million people who lived longer, healthier lives. — 00:05:02
• 2026-05-01 · Despair is Not Wisdom — Hank says we rightly spend almost all our time zoomed into today's problems, which is how we got this far, but it is also useful to zoom out to see when progress was made. — 00:00:00
  • Hank grants a good reason: some people use progress as a sedative, saying look how far we've come when they mean stop asking for more, we're done. — 00:02:10
• 2026-05-08 · My Deathday — Hank says 60 years after the first curative therapies were cutting edge and available to a select few, they are now available to most of the world's people. — 00:04:52
• 2026-08-21 · Not (Just) Dunking on Jeff Bezos — Hank thinks there is more genius, beauty, thriving and creativity now than in Mozart's era, even if we will not remember it the same way. — 00:09:45
• 2026-08-25 · The Great Thing about Infectious Disease — John: In the fight for better human health, John says, progress is never final, but it is also possible. — 00:05:21
• 2026-08-28 · Why the Deadliest Virus Was the Easiest to Kill — Hank says smallpox was among the five worst human diseases, but its qualities made it a good candidate for eradication, so we now live in a better world. — 00:09:44
• 2026-09-08 · The Life Expectancy Lies That Won't Die — John: It should also be cause for concern, John says: for almost all of human history there was no progress in life expectancy, evidence that progress is not inevitable or natural. — 00:05:21
  • John says this should be cause for hope. — 00:05:21
• 2026-10-30 · The Last Normal Year — Hank sees two reasons things have gotten worse since 2016; the first is that the media environment is worse, which makes people make worse decisions. — 00:04:25
• …and 5 statements more in 2026 — all statements of 2026