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All statements about United States

1099 statements about United States in 412 videos, by upload date.

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2007

Also named in: Brotherhood 2.0: January 2nd, June 21: Gotta Get Outside!

2008

  • 2008-01-30 · I Am Not A Pornographer — John says it angers him when small, well-organized groups of would-be book banners try to take over America's public school systems. — 00:03:15
  • 2008-02-27 · People Who Love Giraffes Who Love Giraffes (The Song) — Hank: The refrain asks where the Vlogbrothers, and America, would be without people who love giraffes who love giraffes. (playful) — 00:01:00
  • 2008-04-28 · Ranting and Giving Stuff Away — John says the US is the richest country in the world yet has a higher infant mortality rate than Slovenia. — 00:02:16
  • 2008-04-28 · Ranting and Giving Stuff Away — John says the US is behind Puerto Rico (on infant mortality, by context), which has almost the same political system; the difference is that all Puerto Ricans have access to health care while millions of Americans don't. — 00:02:45
  • 2008-04-28 · Ranting and Giving Stuff Away — John: Against 'just work for a big corporation', John says the Wright brothers had no corporate benefits, and America's entrepreneurial spirit is being killed by the health-care crisis. — 00:03:14
  • 2008-04-30 (said on 2008-05-01, implied) · BLOOD! I'm a KILLER! — Hank says pooping kills about 14,000 hypothetical people a year in America, and each Super Bowl eats up more than 150 lives. (playful) — 00:02:09
  • 2008-05-30 · The Dread Pirate Fireball Roberts! (And Housekeeping) — announcement: John announces the 2008 Tour de Nerdfighting across America and hopefully a few places in Canada, telling Nerdfighters to mark their calendars for November. (hedged) — 00:00:48
  • 2008-07-04 · America Stands for Awesome — Hank spends the Fourth of July watching a baseball game in Missoula, Montana, which he says he does 'for America'. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2008-07-04 · America Stands for Awesome — Hank calls the game an excellent way to spend July 4th and hopes viewers find a fun way to spend it too, even outside America. — 00:00:41
  • 2008-07-04 · America Stands for Awesome — Hank says Americans celebrate with simulated battles of fireworks, baseball and hot dogs, things bad for bodies and the environment, but sometimes life is just about having fun. (playful) — 00:01:10
  • 2008-07-04 · America Stands for Awesome — Hank: Watching the fireworks, Hank says this is why 'we can't help but love America'. (playful) — 00:01:37
  • 2008-08-12 · PEANUT BUTTER FACE (while discussing the Georgia-Russia War) — John predicts Georgia will have to give the regions up, because neither Western Europe nor America will come to its military aid, which is Medvedev's point. — 00:02:57
  • 2008-10-11 (said on 2008-10-10, implied) · Question Friday — announcement: John: Asked, John says Paper Towns will be out in Canada at the same time as in the United States. — 00:00:29
  • 2008-11-03 · Hank and John from the Road — announcement: Hank: The Great American Tour de Nerdfighting 2008 begins, featuring Hank, John, Katherine and a minivan. — 00:00:00
  • 2008-11-03 · Hank and John from the Road — John says Nerdfighters make him believe in America again. — 00:03:14
  • 2008-11-05 · On Loving One Another or Dying — John says people who disagree with you are not evil, do not want to destroy America, and are neither terrorists nor fascists, but complicated people who contain multitudes. — 00:02:24
  • 2008-12-17 · Project for Awesome: DonorsChoose.org — Hank says John doesn't understand science not because he isn't smart but because science education in the US is bad. — 00:00:58
  • 2008-12-17 · Project for Awesome: DonorsChoose.org — Hank says only about 17% of American adults are scientifically literate. — 00:00:58

2009

  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John sarcastically says these African events are front-page news only in an alternate universe where people care more about others' well-being than about American actresses' narcissism. (playful) — 00:00:02
  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John: The wars can't be explained as age-old tribalism: there is tribalism in Chad, but also in America, as any Alabama-Auburn football game shows. — 00:00:32
  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John: The US and Somalia's neighbours back the anti-Islamist side, putting their weight behind the Transitional Federal Government, which ostensibly runs the south. — 00:02:35
  • 2009-01-18 · PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA Inaugurated: Some Historical Background — John says that on Tuesday Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-01-18 · PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA Inaugurated: Some Historical Background — John argues early American history shows the people involved had no idea their actions would later become so important. — 00:01:23
  • 2009-03-03 · Eating Man Meat — Hank tells John meat is bad: 80% of America's agricultural land is used to feed animals raised for food. — 00:01:50
  • 2009-03-03 · Eating Man Meat — Hank says 50% of America's water is used to water crops that are fed to livestock. — 00:01:50
  • 2009-03-03 · Eating Man Meat — Hank says America lacks the water, energy and food to spare to support its meat-eating, especially when delicious alternatives exist. — 00:03:14
  • 2009-03-15 · Lighting a candle for Rwanda — John says that 15 years ago the US, the UN and Europe got almost all of 'our people' out of Rwanda unharmed, leaving the hundreds of thousands killed to conclude they were 'a them'. — 00:00:54
  • 2009-03-18 · Lighting Candles for Rwanda — Hank opens with his own candle statement: Hank Green, 28, living in the United States, lighting a candle of hope for Rwanda. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-04-14 · The World's Largest Balls — John says that, to his knowledge, all of the world's largest balls are located in the United States. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2009-04-14 · The World's Largest Balls — John: Noting that two major balls of twine have mailboxes, John writes the ball of twine a letter: it says something interesting about America, but he couldn't figure out what, so he cut it from his novel. (playful) — 00:02:47
  • 2009-05-17 · Burma! Myanmar? BURMA! — John refuses to say Myanmar because the junta chose it: if a US military junta renamed his country, he would not want others to use the new name. (playful) — 00:01:04
  • 2009-05-17 · Burma! Myanmar? BURMA! — John says American John Yettaw flew to Burma and swam to Suu Kyi's lakefront house, where she let him recover; he was caught leaving. Her house arrest bars foreign visitors. — 00:02:46
  • 2009-05-26 · A Message to the Class of 2009 — Hank compares graduates to the first generation born in America: they are the first generation born on the internet. — 00:00:57
  • 2009-07-11 (said on 2009-07-10, implied) · Chewbacca for President! Let the Wookie Win! — John: Argument one, that the US already has a suitable president, John grants as fair, except that he is not a Wookiee. (joke) — 00:00:00
  • 2009-07-11 (said on 2009-07-10, implied) · Chewbacca for President! Let the Wookie Win! — John says the US Constitution requires a president to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a US resident for at least 14 years. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-07-12 · On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments — John: Answering a commenter, John says caring about America and caring about Iran are not mutually exclusive; Iranians must solve Iran's problems, but the two countries share a planet. — 00:00:59
  • 2009-07-12 · On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments — John: To the claim that they're all Muslims who want to destroy America, John replies that Islam is not a single monolithic thing; all religious traditions are massively diverse. — 00:01:56
  • 2009-08-16 · Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via MASSIVE PIG — John likens the boar to America's healthcare system: impressively or distressingly huge; the debate boils down to killing him, putting him on a diet, or feeding him. (playful) — 00:00:18
  • 2009-08-16 · Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via MASSIVE PIG — John says nearly everyone, conservative or liberal, agrees the US spends too much of its GDP on healthcare and that its system is radically unfair. — 00:01:05
  • 2009-08-16 · Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via MASSIVE PIG — John says good healthcare in America depends largely on working for a big company, which must provide benefits, and on not having a pre-existing condition, often not one's fault. — 00:01:21
  • 2009-08-16 · Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via MASSIVE PIG — John: Despite cries against socialism, John says America already shares the cost of schools, roads and the military, and already has bloated, inefficient socialized medicine since hospitals treat anyone. — 00:02:47
  • 2009-09-15 · Internetless in Maine — Hank says the era that shaped millions of Americans is something he can never understand, so he struggles to understand many Americans, and their relaxing way of life stresses him. — 00:03:05
  • 2009-09-20 (said on 2009-09-21, implied) · Health Care Reform: The Hank Factor — John casts Hank as the small business people mean when they call small business 'the engine that drives job growth in America'. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2009-09-20 (said on 2009-09-21, implied) · Health Care Reform: The Hank Factor — John says that in the US a big company is required to partner with a private insurer and offer its employees health insurance. — 00:00:36
  • 2009-09-20 (said on 2009-09-21, implied) · Health Care Reform: The Hank Factor — John calls this the real conservative economic argument for a public health-insurance option across America. — 00:02:33
  • 2009-09-20 (said on 2009-09-21, implied) · Health Care Reform: The Hank Factor — John says the current system rewards being poor, old or at a big corporation and discourages the entrepreneurial spirit that made the US economy strong. — 00:02:33
  • 2009-10-02 · Truth or Fail: DRUGS! — Hank: Round one, option one: when an organization tested hundreds of thousands of random US one-dollar bills, four out of five had traces of cocaine (one option is false). (playful, unsure) — 00:00:25
  • 2009-10-02 · Truth or Fail: DRUGS! — Hank: Round one, option two: Kinder eggs are illegal in America because the government fears people will smuggle drugs inside them (one option is false). (playful, unsure) — 00:00:25
  • 2009-11-08 · H1N1 Vaccine Fears — John cites a study finding only 40% of parents of American schoolchildren plan to vaccinate their kids, the top reason being fear of side effects. — 00:00:47
  • 2009-11-10 · ChartJackers, Chris, Touring and Duckies — Hank says the song is so far in the top 100 of the US iTunes chart and the top 25 of the UK's, but needs many more sales for the top 10. — 00:01:09
  • 2009-11-24 · 50 THINGS!! That I'm Thankful For — Hank says he likes the idea of a national anthem but not the US one, which he jokingly sums up as bombs and war; there are things about America he likes more than explosions and war. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2009-11-25 · Things I'm Not Thankful For — Hank says he does not want to belittle Americans' bravery and sacrifice defending those ideals over 200 years, but every country defends its ideals; what he loves is that America has good ideals. — 00:00:29
  • 2009-12-02 (said on 2009-12-03, implied) · This Machine Pwns n00bs: A Song — Hank shows gifts from the tour's final part: a 3D-printed ten-sided die, Kinder Eggs from Canada (after he complained they're unavailable in America), a duct-tape wallet, a bass-amp maker's shirt, a DFTBA headband. — 00:02:44
  • 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — Hank says DARPA, the U.S. military's research arm, which created the internet, is putting up 10 eight-foot weather balloons across the US; the first to locate all 10 wins $40,000. — 00:00:00
  • 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — ask: Hank asks Nerdfighteria and the YouTube community in the continental US, with a car and cell phone and free on Saturday, to join the Search, Discover, and Confirm team. — 00:00:58
  • 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — ask: Hank: Those outside America, without cars or not free on Saturday also have 'very important jobs', revealed only by signing up for the mailing list on nerdfighters.com. — 00:02:22
  • 2009-12-16 · Project for Awesome: The Nature Conservancy — Hank sings that American girls start dieting at eight. — 00:02:51
  • 2009-12-23 · Amazing Christmas Facts With John and Hank — John: Christmas did not become a US national holiday until 1870, so for almost the first 100 years of the union it was not one; the brothers note there were fewer national holidays then. — 00:01:24
  • 2009-12-29 · Adorable Puppy Explains Health Care Bill — John says about 30 million Americans who are currently uninsured or underinsured would be covered under the bill. — 00:00:29
  • 2009-12-29 · Adorable Puppy Explains Health Care Bill — John says illegal immigrants already get health care in America because, as a rule, emergency rooms don't turn people away. — 00:01:41

2010

  • 2010-01-29 · An Extremely Brief History of Superbowl Commercials — Hank says the first Super Bowl aired in 1967 and that it has since become America's most watched yearly event. — 00:00:00
  • 2010-01-29 (said on 2010-01-30, implied) · The iPad and Dolphin Murder — Hank says the YouTube rentals are available only in America and a rented movie can be watched for 24 hours. — 00:01:16
  • 2010-01-29 (said on 2010-01-30, implied) · The iPad and Dolphin Murder — Hank says The Cove rental costs $3.99 and, he thinks, is available only in North America and only until this Sunday (31 January 2010), after which it will be on Netflix. (hedged) — 00:02:56
  • 2010-04-12 · On the Separation of Conjoined Twins — John says Chang and Eng, two men from Thailand and the original Siamese twins, were the most famous conjoined twins in American history; they became successful circus performers, bought a plantation, married and had children. — 00:01:27
  • 2010-04-12 · On the Separation of Conjoined Twins — John lists advantages of conjoinedness (going from poor in Thailand to rich in America, never being lonely) and notes ordinary human anatomy has disadvantages too, such as not flying. (playful) — 00:01:52
  • 2010-04-30 · The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes — John says sovereign debt is not a particularly political problem: a chart of US gross federal debt as a share of GDP by president shows no link to party, as in other developed countries. — 00:00:13
  • 2010-04-30 · The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes — John says that in 1945 US debt was over 100% of GDP and the deficit over 20% of GDP, yet this immediately preceded the largest economic expansion in US history. — 00:00:59
  • 2010-04-30 · The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes — John says Greece is probably technically in a better economic position than the US was in 1945, but the market, for partly legitimate reasons, has decided it won't repay. (hedged) — 00:01:42
  • 2010-04-30 · The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes — John: Against those blaming wasteful spending, John says the US isn't close to a balanced budget: it would have to eliminate both its two biggest expenses, Social Security and defense, to come close. — 00:02:36
  • 2010-05-26 · How to Be Green Without Being a Prick — Hank feels that he and his viewers are kind of dual citizens, of the USA and of the internet, and being in the top five twice is troublesome. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2010-05-26 · How to Be Green Without Being a Prick — Hank notes that since they started watching, India's birth indicator has blinked nonstop and China and the USA have flashed red quite rapidly, which he finds frightening. — 00:00:29
  • 2010-05-26 · How to Be Green Without Being a Prick — Hank argues the solution is understanding: without it you can only change yourself, and since China emits faster than the US, changing ourselves will not solve the problem. — 00:01:56
  • 2010-05-26 · How to Be Green Without Being a Prick — Hank says there is not nearly enough land on Earth for everyone to eat the way Americans eat. — 00:02:55
  • 2010-06-21 · You're Gonna Die — John: Truth or Fail option one, one of two purported facts: the US goal against England in the 1950 World Cup 'Miracle on Grass' was scored not by an American but by a Haitian. (unsure) — 00:02:57
  • 2010-06-23 (said on 2010-06-24, implied) · GOOOOOOOL!!!! — Hank reports that the United States is moving on to the next round of the World Cup. — 00:00:35
  • 2010-06-23 (said on 2010-06-24, implied) · GOOOOOOOL!!!! — Hank: The harder fought the win, the better, which is why Hank feels so good about YouTube's freedom from the Viacom lawsuit and about the US advancing. — 00:02:26
  • 2010-06-23 (said on 2010-06-24, implied) · GOOOOOOOL!!!! — Hank says he knows the United States won't win the World Cup and fans will end up frustrated, angry and disappointed. — 00:02:26
  • 2010-07-30 · Demon Four Year Old — Hank says he sometimes forgets that not everyone in America is like him and most people don't live their lives online; many Americans still have dial-up, have never streamed a video, or think LOL means 'lots of love'. (playful) — 00:00:01
  • 2010-09-06 · I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.) — John: In the same update John says the US Mint lost $22 million on penny and nickel production in 2009, not the $70 million it lost in 2008, because the recession had made zinc and nickel cheaper. — video description
  • 2010-09-06 · I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.) — John says it costs the US Mint 1.7 cents to make a penny, so every year $70 million of federal tax money subsidizes the penny. (doubtful: 1.7 cents) — 00:00:45
  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John tells 15-year-old Hank that life is a lot like pizza, asking whether pizza is American, Italian, Greek or Brazilian. (playful) — 00:00:14
  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John says we all want to be on the inside of our communities (Ireland, the US, a clique, Nerdfighteria), and whether insiders need outsiders is a hard question Ulysses explores. — 00:01:39
  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John says asking what we really mean by such identifiers is a better start for conversations about who is American or a Nerdfighter than shouting at each other. — 00:01:54
  • 2010-09-20 · Life Is Like Pizza — John: Applying Bloom's definition, John notes there are Italians in Italy, Italians in America and Italians of Chilean descent. (playful) — 00:02:44
  • 2010-10-15 · TOP 7 FAILS OF HISTORY — Hank says in 1876 Western Union, owning America's communications, rejected Hubbard's telephone patent as an 'electrical toy'; Bell then founded AT&T and the telephone became history's most valuable patent. — 00:02:24
  • 2010-11-05 · God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I — John says the US had just won its Revolutionary War, which would have been impossible without France's support. — 00:00:38
  • 2010-11-05 · God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I — John says France had racked up tremendous debts supporting the American Revolution and fighting the Seven Years' War. — 00:00:44
  • 2010-11-05 · God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I — John: To show the scale of France's debt, John says the US spent 5% of its federal budget servicing its debt in 2009, while France in 1789 spent 50%. — 00:00:51
  • 2010-12-29 · Baby on the Road: Thoughts from Places — John: Driving north, John reflects that his old road trips all went west, partly because that is where America's open space is and partly because of a line in All the King's Men. — 00:01:16

2011

2012

  • 2012-01-06 · Kill your TV — Hank says the average American apparently watches five hours of television a day, so will spend 4.5 years of their life watching advertisements, by his own math. (hedged) — 00:02:27
  • 2012-04-03 · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John sarcastically notes the US keeps its pennies although they also don't facilitate commerce and cost 2.1 cents to make. (playful) — 00:00:10
  • 2012-05-05 · It's HANKO DE MAYO!!!!! — John: In his letter to Congressman Carson, John asks for more federal support for NASA and science: government-backed science has improved every life and is a gift to future people, and the United States should lead in increasing awesome. — video description
  • 2012-06-05 · The Dangling Rope of Terror: It's Question Tuesday — John, in an airport, is going to BookExpo America (BEA), a big book conference, to give a bunch of speeches and is super nervous. — 00:00:05
  • 2012-06-05 · The Dangling Rope of Terror: It's Question Tuesday — John would accept the US becoming more like Canada if that means longer, healthier lives, more employment and less sexual violence, but not putting a queen on the money. (playful, hedged) — 00:01:14
  • 2012-06-22 · Hank is Maybe Crazy — Hank sarcastically calls NutraSweet a fantastic scientific accomplishment for decreasing America's weight, then shows a graph of NutraSweet use and Americans' weight and feigns alarm. (satire) — 00:00:57
  • 2012-06-26 · Insufficient Funds: A Story of Canada — John says Canadian officers searched their car for drugs and turned them around, then US officers searched it again for three hours though they never got into Canada. — 00:01:12
  • 2012-07-31 · Nerd Olympics — John says men's team handball is the only big Olympic sport at which the US does not field a team. — 00:00:58
  • 2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says primary education became mandatory for all American children in 1918. — 00:00:08
  • 2012-08-21 · Is College Worth It? — John says outside the US university is free or very inexpensive, while US education is subsidized but much less so. — 00:00:17
  • 2012-08-31 · Why The Rich Pay Lower Taxes — Hank opens a special edition on the basics of US tax policy and why Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. — 00:00:00
  • 2012-08-31 · Why The Rich Pay Lower Taxes — Hank says that according to the US government there are basically three ways to make money: inheriting it, working (ordinary income) and capital gains. — 00:00:07
  • 2012-09-21 · You. Must. Vote. — Hank says not living in America or being under 18 is the only excuse that gets a pass. — 00:00:20
  • 2012-09-21 · You. Must. Vote. — Hank says the richest, most powerful man in America gets one vote, the same as you, so voting, if nothing else, is fair. — 00:00:35
  • 2012-09-21 · You. Must. Vote. — Hank says American democracy, however inefficient and infuriating, is a pretty good system that has done well by us; America is overall pretty great, democracy a big reason why. (hedged) — 00:02:47
  • 2012-09-21 · You. Must. Vote. — Hank thinks voting in America is not a privilege but a responsibility to the country, ourselves, fellow Americans, the world and the future, because US laws affect everything. (hedged) — 00:03:20
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John says Sarah is organizing a stop on the tour of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's show 'According to What?', and they came to its American opening. — 00:00:12
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John says the inventor of the boat-car was the American Oliver Evans, who designed the first steam-powered amphibious vehicle in 1805. — 00:02:25
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — Sarah Urist Green: Asked before and after the museum, Sarah says her feelings about American history and the United States are mixed. — 00:02:43
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John reports an exhibit at the National Museum of American History explaining that the US has been at war to some degree pretty much constantly for 250 years. — 00:02:47
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John notes everything they did that day was free to all, and argues that inside the neoclassical 'temple-fortresses' the American ideas of equal opportunity and equal access still live. — 00:03:12
  • 2012-10-09 · Attacked by Squirrels and Neoclassicism: Thoughts from Places, Washington D.C. — John says he shares Sarah's mixed feelings about US history but feels it is too soon to say: for better or worse, the United States is just getting started. (hedged) — 00:03:27
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says government debt and deficits are among the biggest issues in global politics, especially in the US because of the presidential campaign and the looming fiscal cliff. — 00:00:00
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says the current US national debt is around $16 trillion. — 00:00:38
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John: Contrary to the guess 'China', John says the plurality of that debt is owned by American individuals and institutions; China owns about 8%, Japan 7% and the UK 1%. — 00:01:05
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says the US also owns foreign debt, including about $235 billion of Chinese and Hong Kong sovereign debt; for every $1 of foreign-owned US debt, the US owns about 89 cents of foreign debt. — 00:01:17
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John argues government debt is unlike a family's credit card debt because the US mostly owes money to itself, so the national debt is very large but at the moment not a very large problem. — 00:01:31
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says the US paid about 3% total interest on its debt in 2011, less in 2012, and the one-year treasury bond yield is 0.17%, 'literally cheaper than free'. — 00:01:52
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says China cannot call in US debt on a day of its choosing, since treasury bonds are repaid only at term, so despite commentators this is not really a risk to the US economy. — 00:02:10
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says deficits are not inherently evil and the current debt does not threaten the American economy because it can be paid back with relative ease. — 00:03:13
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says paying back the debt would cost about 2% of GDP, and the US has done it before. — 00:03:23
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says a debt spiral might be much worse for the US than for Greece, because it enjoys the world's most trusted currency: most US paper currency circulates abroad, keeping its debt cheap. (hedged) — 00:04:01
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says most people think the deficit needs to keep coming down, or the US risks spiraling higher interest rates. — 00:04:31
  • 2012-10-23 · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — John says deficit reduction is important but not a crisis; the best way to keep it from becoming one is to understand it without yelling and not assume those who disagree hate America. — 00:06:02
  • 2012-10-26 · Apples! CGP Grey Style — Hank says almost every apple anyone has eaten descends from wild apple trees in Kazakhstan, so apples are immigrants rather than 'American as apple pie'. (hedged) — 00:00:35
  • 2012-10-26 · Apples! CGP Grey Style — Hank says Johnny Appleseed, unlike Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, was a real person: John Chapman, a businessman, nomad and missionary who crossed the American frontier in the early 1800s supplying apple saplings. — 00:01:38
  • 2012-10-26 · Apples! CGP Grey Style — Hank says many American settlers were required to plant fruit trees on their property as a sign they were improving land they had claimed. — 00:01:54
  • 2012-11-02 · Disney Buys Star Wars and DFTVA! — announcement: Hank says America is about to pick its president; for non-Americans he made a separate video, joking that Americans who watch it are bad people. (playful) — 00:01:12
  • 2012-11-02 · Disney Buys Star Wars and DFTVA! — announcement: Hank announces that the Harry Potter Alliance and the Vlogbrothers are teaming up on DFTVA, 'Don't Forget to Vote, America', for anyone who cares about the election. — 00:01:41
  • 2012-11-05 · Spicy Summer Camp Story — announcement: Hank notes the US election is tomorrow, the brothers have talked about it in every video for the last four or so, and expects John to tomorrow, so today he tells a story instead. — 00:00:01
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank calls the election one for the history books: the first female amputee in Congress, first female Asian American senator, first openly gay senator, first second term for a black president, and first legalizations of recreational marijuana and gay marriage. — 00:00:00
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank notes that Puerto Rico remains, in effect, a US colony and in its 500-year history has been an autonomous country for only four weeks, between Spain giving it up and the US taking possession. — video description
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank says the share of Puerto Ricans favouring statehood keeps rising, and it is an issue the US will have to face some day. — video description
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank suggests the biggest piece of American history yesterday went unreported on the news, may not have been decided in America, but was decided by Americans. (hedged) — 00:00:15
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank: Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico are American citizens: they use American money and passports, can serve in the US military and must obey American laws. — 00:00:31
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank says Puerto Rico is not part of America but a territory, 'a colony, basically': self-governing, yet the US sets its foreign policy, trade and wars; it pays many US taxes but has no vote or representation. — 00:00:41
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank: The bigger barrier may be that Americans dislike change: the 50 states feel numerologically fixed though the number has often changed, and politics follows what feels true. (hedged) — 00:02:54
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank says messing with the fundamental idea of American-ness is generally not a great political decision, even if it is the right decision. — 00:03:22
  • 2012-11-07 · The 51st State — Hank thanks everyone who voted on 6 November 2012 in the US and Puerto Rico and asks all to proceed toward a more perfect union, however many states it has. — 00:03:36
  • 2012-11-23 · Black Friday: An Accident of History — Hank: In 1621 the first English settlers in America had a bountiful crop on a Thursday and were thankful, inspiring the holiday; Hank calls this somewhat mythological. (hedged) — 00:00:15
  • 2012-12-17 · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. — John explains that the $1.25-a-day line uses purchasing power parity, not exchange rates: it means living on what $1.25 buys in the US, so it does not stretch further in Zambia. — 00:00:52

2013

  • 2013-01-29 · Across Three Continents: A Tale of Tumblr, Copyright, and Excellent Posters — John sums up: his book written in the US inspired a painting by a reader in the Philippines, which inspired a poster by a reader in Norway, and international copyright law isn't ready for that. — 00:02:18
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says he is on a plane to England right now; three weeks earlier he decided to film this video, knowing America would be in a Super Bowl frenzy. — 00:00:00
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says one in three people in America will spend time watching football this year (2013). — 00:00:00
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says football's ability to hold attention, and its many breaks for advertising ('America's second favorite pastime, being advertised to'), have made it an economic powerhouse. (playful) — 00:01:59
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says the average American spends over 500 hours a year watching TV advertisements, 12 full-time work weeks per adult. — 00:01:59
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says the top US broadcast ever was the MASH series finale (over 60% of households), but last year (2012) Monday Night Football was the top-rated series, ending American Idol's eight-year streak. — 00:02:27
  • 2013-02-01 · Football For Nerds — Hank says it costs an average American family of four over $500, including food, drinks and merchandise, to attend a football game. — 00:02:57
  • 2013-02-19 · Doing Things, On the Importance of — John: Most importantly, John says, for the first time in American history a sitting President acknowledged that pennies are a terrible idea and a metaphor for what's wrong with government. (playful) — 00:00:14
  • 2013-02-19 · Doing Things, On the Importance of — John is three episodes into teaching the history of the United States, which he jokingly calls Canada's pants. (playful) — 00:02:34
  • 2013-02-22 · Translating Dance Songs — Hank: Gangnam is a super wealthy district in Seoul; many people who don't live there act as if they do and struggle terribly to keep up the image, a problem America has too. — 00:01:06
  • 2013-02-22 · Translating Dance Songs — Hank: The Macarena heard in America had only its innocuous verse; in the original's next verse Macarena's boyfriend is drafted and she has sex with two of his friends, then wants to go shopping. — 00:01:36
  • 2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says the US has a long-term debt problem but not a short-term one: it can borrow extremely cheaply because it is a strong economy that has never defaulted. — 00:01:36
  • 2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says in the long term the US must cut benefits, raise revenues or both, or the deficit will spiral, debt will get more expensive "and Greece". — 00:02:10
  • 2013-03-12 · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John says in 2011 the US nearly defaulted, not because it could not pay but because Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling it was hitting because of its own budgets. — 00:02:25
  • 2013-04-05 · North Korea: Explained — Hank says yearly joint US–South Korea military exercises always raise North Korea's rhetoric. — 00:01:02
  • 2013-04-05 · North Korea: Explained — Hank says North Korea hates the US first because the US supported South Korea in the Korean War, which defines North Korea, and remains its strongest military ally. — 00:02:31
  • 2013-04-05 · North Korea: Explained — Hank says military dictatorships need an enemy; rattling sabres at the US lets the regime pretend to its isolated citizens that it is a global power. — 00:02:48
  • 2013-04-05 · North Korea: Explained — Hank hopes North Korea's leaders are less idiotic than their rhetoric and says they know the US would wipe them off the map if they bombed another country. (hedged) — 00:03:11
  • 2013-04-09 · Inside North Korea — John says Shin is a hero because he developed an ethical center after escaping, in China, South Korea and the US: in Shin's words, evolving into a human being. — 00:02:41
  • 2013-05-10 · Some Mind-Bending Earth GIFs — Hank says America's appetite for cheap coal to power its lifestyles has led to mountaintop removal mining in much of Appalachia, which he finds astounding and terrifying to watch. — 00:00:49
  • 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
  • 2013-07-05 · Egypt....Explained! — Hank says the US also called for quick elections, which Islamists won with a majority of parliament, leaving revolutionaries feeling betrayed by the military and the US. — 00:03:50
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says that, although free health care elsewhere is said to be paid for by higher taxes, the US spends more tax money per capita on health care than Germany, Australia, the UK or Canada. — 00:00:08
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says only about 28% of Americans get health insurance through government-funded programs (mostly poor people, old people and congresspeople); most are privately insured through employers, and private spending is far higher than anywhere else. — 00:00:39
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says the US spends about 18% of its GDP on health care, against 9% in Australia. — 00:00:55
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John compares prices: a hip replacement costs $13,000 in Belgium but often over $100,000 in the US; a colonoscopy over $1,100 in the US vs $655 in Switzerland; a month of Lipitor $124 in the US vs $7 in New Zealand. — 00:01:20
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says the richer US spends not a little but a ton more and gets nothing for the extra money (like paying people to dig and refill holes): it ranks 33rd in life expectancy, and a nonpartisan study finds outcomes not notably superior. — 00:01:40
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says overutilization is not the problem: Americans go to the doctor less than Europeans and spend much less time in hospitals, though seven nights in a Dutch hospital cost what one American night does. — 00:02:13
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says the US has more obesity but fewer smokers and less alcohol consumption, so compared with the British or French it is probably a wash. (hedged) — 00:02:47
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says the biggest item, inpatient and outpatient care lumped together, is $500 billion a year more than expected for the size of the US economy. — 00:04:51
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says the reason is that the US does not negotiate as aggressively as other countries with providers, drug makers and device makers, as the UK's NHS does when it puts a huge hip contract out to the cheapest safe bidder. — 00:05:11
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says that without centralized negotiation the US lacks leverage, and the one big exception, Medicare, not coincidentally always gets the lowest prices. — 00:05:52
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says that until the US negotiates with health-care providers as effectively as Australians and British people do, its costs will keep rising faster than anywhere else without better outcomes. — 00:06:41
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John says health care costs are probably the biggest single drag on the American economy and must be grappled with meaningfully rather than treated as political theater. (hedged) — 00:07:20
  • 2013-08-20 · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John welcomes Hank back to the United States, where "everything is peachy". (playful) — 00:07:35
  • 2013-08-23 · Thoughts from Bath: The Legacy of Wealth — Hank says most of what we see of cultural history is an artifact of concentrated wealth, and our age's greatest objects - the Burj Khalifa, iPhone, Harry Potter films, Hubble - likely will be too, much of that wealth American. (hedged) — 00:02:32
  • 2013-08-23 · Thoughts from Bath: The Legacy of Wealth — Hank says inequality is worse globally than within America: an income of $35,000 a year puts you in the richest 1% of the world, and $2,000 in the bank makes you richer than half the world. — 00:02:56
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John returns to the subject of America's inefficient health care system to make a capitalist argument for reform, starting with a brief defense of capitalism. — 00:00:00
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John says that in the US the poorest 40% of Americans get less than 0.3% of the economic "pizza", which he calls problematic. — 00:00:00
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John: the only way to get that growth is to make the world safe for innovation and competition, which also creates jobs; the US health care system is bad at facilitating this. — 00:00:29
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John says most Americans get health insurance through their employers; the vast majority of companies with more than 50 employees offer health plans. — 00:00:58
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John says the choice between career and health, lived by tens of millions of Americans, has inhibited innovation, prevented job creation and made the pizza smaller. — 00:04:22
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John calls this his capitalist, fiscally conservative case for health care reform: the US has privileged employees over entrepreneurs, but needs entrepreneurs like Henry and Hank to maximize growth. — 00:04:52
  • 2013-09-03 · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John thanks Hank for being the engine of American job growth and for giving lots of people jobs, including John. (playful) — 00:04:52
  • 2013-09-06 · Undigested Lump (A Song) — Hank thanks John for the health care update, expects it will not be John's last video on it, and apologizes to non-Americans because it is a big deal in the US now. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2013-09-13 · Syria in Five Minutes — Hank quips that although the Cold War is over, apparently no one has told the United States defense budgets. (playful) — 00:01:05
  • 2013-09-13 · Syria in Five Minutes — Hank says claims that someone else used the gas feel like 1960s America, when white people believed African-American radicals bombed an African-American church to make the KKK look bad. — 00:03:07
  • 2013-09-20 · 42 Amazing Maps — Hank shows a map splitting the world into seven regions of about one billion people each, with North America, South America and Australia together making up one. — 00:00:57
  • 2013-09-20 · 42 Amazing Maps — Hank says such maps show the US lagging behind on the metric system, maternity leave and executing juveniles, which he calls a little embarrassing. — 00:01:54
  • 2013-09-20 · 42 Amazing Maps — Hank says Africa is very big: bigger than the United States, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, all of Eastern Europe, China and India. — 00:02:46
  • 2013-10-01 · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — Hank explains that America has two chambers of lawmakers that must agree for something to become law, and they approve the budget, the law that makes it legal for the government to spend money. — 00:00:21
  • 2013-11-12 · But Is Worm Pizza Poisonous? — John: From Carroll's books, John reports: Americans are not more likely to commit suicide around Christmas. — 00:01:30
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says US divorce rates have fallen every year since 2006 and are at their lowest level since 1970. — 00:00:10
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says US cancer mortality rates fell 20% in the last 25 years, mostly because people quit smoking, plus better treatment and screening for colon, breast and other cancers. — 00:01:44
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says US internet speeds rose 27% in 2013 over 2012, and rose worldwide, from 75% in Guatemala to 32% in Thailand, making it easier to stay in touch and collaborate. — 00:01:58
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says US road deaths per 100 million miles fell from 3.5 in 1980 to 1.1 in 2011; against a 1980 baseline, safer cars and drivers saved 60,000 American lives in 2013. — 00:02:28
  • 2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says things are improving for domesticated animals: about 17 million cats and dogs a year were euthanized in the US in the 1990s, now closer to 5 million. — 00:02:47

2014

  • 2014-01-03 · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! — Hank says it is not all good news: income inequality in the US is ridiculous. — 00:03:25
  • 2014-01-03 · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! — Hank says the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. — 00:03:25
  • 2014-01-10 · Global Warming and the Polar Vortex — Hank says that, unusually, an offshoot of the polar vortex dipped down into America and stayed; it was colder in Georgia than in Alaska. — 00:00:46
  • 2014-01-10 · Global Warming and the Polar Vortex — Hank: Testing himself, Hank guesses the US covers 5% of the world's area; he looks it up and finds 1.9%, including Alaska. — 00:02:09
  • 2014-01-21 · Are Poor Countries Doomed? — John: Quizzing viewers, John says foreign aid is 3% of the budget if you're Norwegian and less than 1% in the United States. — 00:01:48
  • 2014-02-04 · Should We Raise the Minimum Wage? — John says the United States is a rich country and that growing evidence suggests the US does not benefit from having poor workers. (hedged) — 00:03:31
  • 2014-02-14 · Happy Third Chocolate Day! — Hank says Valentine's Day ranks third for chocolate consumption in the United States, after Halloween and Easter. — 00:00:09
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — In the description John notes that, according to a study he links, female programmers in the US are in fact paid the same as male programmers, despite his programmer example. — video description
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says American national self-understanding of the American Dream rests on anecdotes like the mover's and Andrew Carnegie's, but the actual data are less dreamy. — 00:00:44
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says 42% of American men raised in the bottom 20% of incomes stay there, against 30% in the UK and 25% in Denmark. — 00:01:10
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says that by almost any measure, being born rich or poor predicts ending up rich or poor more in the US than in Canada, Europe or any developed country. — 00:01:19
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says socioeconomic mobility and equality of opportunity in the 21st century are better described as the 'Danish Dream' than the American Dream. — 00:01:30
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says women in the United States make 77 cents for every dollar men make in the workforce. — 00:01:42
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John calls the US pay gap horrifically unjust and economically problematic: people should be paid by skills and contributions, not by sex. — 00:01:47
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says Canada's pay gap is worse than the US's, while women make 83 cents per men's dollar in Australia, 84 in the UK, 85 in Sweden and 97.5 in Slovenia. — 00:02:00
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John grants that the regulations and redistributive tax policies that improve equality of opportunity elsewhere limit innovation, partly why Apple, Twitter, Google and In-N-Out Burger began in the US. — 00:02:31
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John worries systemic inequality of opportunity will deny promising future innovators their chances and make the US progressively less appealing to the most skilled. (hedged) — 00:02:45
  • 2014-03-18 · Is the American Dream Real? — John says a female programmer with Slovenian and American passports is probably still best off in the US today, but if trends continue that may not hold in a decade. (hedged) — 00:03:02
  • 2014-03-25 · I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration — Ian Shoales: In the clip, Ian Shoales advises young people to avoid Colonial American Literature, mocking its authors as all dull. (joke) — 00:00:51
  • 2014-03-28 · New Album, New Channels, New Fabric, New Internet Thing! — ask: Hank tells uninsured Americans to sign up at the health care exchange, since the deadline is about three days away (31 March 2014) and they would otherwise be fined. — 00:00:40
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank writes that America's 40-year policy of mass incarceration is deeply unethical, not very effective, and secures the few at the expense of the many. (hedged) — video description
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — sponsor: Hank says the company Visually asked him to pick any issue for a high-quality animated video; he chose incarceration in America because it is messed up. — 00:00:02
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says the US, 'really good at punishment', has about 4% of the world's people and about 25% of its incarcerated people. — 00:01:01
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, up over 400% over the last 30 years. — 00:01:10
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says 41% of American juveniles and young adults have been arrested by age 23. — 00:01:17
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says children as young as 13 have been sentenced to die in prison, and US prisons violate international standards. — 00:01:22
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says solitary confinement increases instability and violence, is torture under international law, yet in the US is regulated only by prison officials, with no appeals. — 00:01:30
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank calls solitary confinement arguably the most devastating punishment the US uses, yet one with no appeals process. (hedged) — 00:01:42
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says the US deliberately makes it harder to get a job with a conviction; convicts are ineligible for welfare, student loans, public housing and food stamps. — 00:01:49
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says the US came to think being tough on crime meant being tough on criminals, but they are not the same thing. — 00:02:10
  • 2014-04-04 · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank says 2010 was the first year in nearly 40 years that the US incarcerated population did not increase; policymakers are starting to see the failure, but there is a long way to go. — 00:03:16
  • 2014-04-08 · I Don't Even Know — recommendation: John: For the prison segment John lists his sources: a story in The Economist on America's prison population, an article on racial bias in sentencing, an explainer on what incarceration rates mean, and a piece on how drug laws affect the US incarceration rate. — video description
  • 2014-04-08 · I Don't Even Know — John reports a 2013 US Sentencing Commission study finding African Americans on average receive sentences 20% longer than white people for similar crimes. — 00:00:55
  • 2014-04-08 · I Don't Even Know — John says several European countries admit more people to prison per capita each year than the US but give much shorter sentences, a big reason the US has the world's highest incarceration rate. — 00:01:14
  • 2014-04-08 · I Don't Even Know — John says the US problem is not sentencing so many people to prison but sentencing them for so long, driven largely by long sentences for drug offences. — 00:01:24
  • 2014-04-08 · I Don't Even Know — announcement: John says the TFIOS film comes out June 6, the promotional travel starts now, and he, Nat, Ansel and Shailene will visit several US places, doing he doesn't know what yet. (hedged) — 00:01:46
  • 2014-04-11 · What Boys Look For in Girls — Hank says 19th-century European women squeezed their waists, Mauritanian girls are sent to fat camps to eat 10,000 calories a day because stretch marks are sexy there, and American women paint faces and shave. — 00:01:00
  • 2014-04-22 · Understanding the Central African Republic — John says people, especially in the US, imagine Africa monolithically as poor, undeveloped and other, though it is a large continent of very different nations. — 00:00:04
  • 2014-04-22 · Understanding the Central African Republic — John asks who the good guys were in the American Revolution: the Americans stood for freedom and democracy, except for slaves, who probably would have been better off under English rule. (hedged) — 00:04:41
  • 2014-05-30 · Nerdfighteria Census 2014 Results! — announcement: Hank announces The Night Before Our Stars: US-only screenings (not everywhere, not Missoula) on June 5, the day before release, then a livestream with John, Nat Wolff, Ansel Elgort, Shailene Woodley and Josh Boone. (hedged) — 00:02:58
  • 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John says it is actually Saturday because he will be on vacation on Tuesday; the TFiOS film came out in America the day before (6 June 2014) and he is extremely tired. (playful) — 00:00:01
  • 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John says the TFiOS film looks set to be the number one movie in America this week (week of 9 June 2014), beating films that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. (hedged) — 00:00:10
  • 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John jokes that graduating by reading CliffsNotes is also possible at some American universities. (playful) — 00:01:54
  • 2014-06-17 · Old. — John is auctioning his World Cup support for sarcoma research; as of Tuesday he is no longer for the United States but all in for Mexico. — 00:00:03
  • 2014-07-15 · Exciting Announcements and Mosquito-Borne Illnesses — John says the US has excellent health facilities, information and infrastructure (clinic power rarely fails), which help it handle mosquito-borne and other communicable diseases relatively effectively. — 00:02:07
  • 2014-07-25 · Towering Mountains of Ignorance — Hank says everyone is now expected to have opinions on solving the Syrian Civil War, creating US jobs and cell phones' effects on youth; he knows he doesn't know, yet everyone else seems to. — 00:01:24
  • 2014-08-12 · EBOLA! (...meningitis) — John: Ebola is not coming for this vague 'us' either: John says it is not going to spread widely in the US or Europe. — 00:02:46
  • 2014-08-12 · EBOLA! (...meningitis) — John: When Americans make the Ebola outbreak about America, they do a great disservice to themselves and to the communities actually affected. — 00:02:51
  • 2014-08-15 · The Bizarre State of Copyright — Hank: Intellectual property is the idea that you can own things that are not physical objects; in the US there are three ways to own it. — 00:00:23
  • 2014-08-15 · The Bizarre State of Copyright — Hank: Controlling an idea is weirder and scarier, so the US government regulates patents, which must be applied for and granted. — 00:00:37
  • 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: Most of Ethiopia's food aid traditionally came from the US; now almost half comes from within Ethiopia, which is cheaper, more efficient and raises yields. — 00:04:17
  • 2014-09-22 · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Agriculture — John says agriculture is a weird market: capitalist, yet the US gives what amounts to direct assistance through crop insurance; like health, it is kind of a market and kind of not. — 00:00:56
  • 2014-09-29 · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress — Bill Gates: Gates says rich countries like the US assume reliable refrigerators, 24-hour electricity and easy access to doctors, so matching good ideas with big needs is a pretty imperfect process. — 00:00:59
  • 2014-09-29 · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress — Bill Gates: Gates says in the last ten years Ethiopia cut its childhood death rate from over 15% to about 8%; the US is below 1%. — 00:02:03
  • 2014-10-03 · Hong Kong Protests Explained — Hank says that in America mocking a politician on TV can make them seem stronger, but in tightly controlled China such criticism makes a politician look extremely weak; its culture accepts no derision. (hedged) — 00:02:10
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John says that in the 20th century about as many people died from smallpox as currently live in the United States. — 00:00:01
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John reports that currently three people have contracted Ebola in the US. — 00:00:30
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John says the current US outbreak is not terrifying: infection controls are good enough that the disease won't spread widely. — 00:00:54
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John: The Ebola survival rate so far in the US is over 80% thanks to excellent supportive care, versus closer to 30% in West Africa. — 00:01:00
  • 2014-10-21 · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John: The heroes will be the American, Cuban, Botswanan and many West African people who build and run the clinics, doing courageous work on behalf of all humans. — 00:03:00
  • 2014-10-24 · #Octothorpe - A Symbolistic Journey — Hank: The # has different names in different countries: in America shifted-three is the 'pound sign', in the UK shifted-three is also the 'pound sign' but a different character. — 00:00:10
  • 2014-10-24 · #Octothorpe - A Symbolistic Journey — Hank: The symbol was nearly out of use until the end of the 19th century, when the Teletype Corporation was inventing binary codes; the US gave the UK pound-sign code 10111 to the obsolete # instead of £. — 00:00:50
  • 2014-10-24 · #Octothorpe - A Symbolistic Journey — Hank: Bell Labs chose the asterisk and the little-used # because they were not confusing; via the phones # became a standard symbol and went onto the American keyboard in place of £. — 00:01:54
  • 2014-10-24 · #Octothorpe - A Symbolistic Journey — Hank: The social-media hashtag is another use enabled by the symbol's prevalence; most of the world says 'hash sign', while America still says the confusing 'pound sign'. — 00:02:51
  • 2014-10-31 · Ten Terrible Reason to not Vote (and two good ones) — ask: Hank says the video is for young people in America and asks others watching to send it to young Americans they know. — 00:00:01
  • 2014-10-31 · Ten Terrible Reason to not Vote (and two good ones) — Hank says American democracy could be more representative, notes ballot measures in many states designed to make it less so, and says voting is the only way to make it more representative. — 00:02:29
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — In the description John adds that African American students are more than twice as likely as white students to be suspended, even in preschool. — video description
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John says recent surveys show about 75% of white Americans see no racial bias in criminal justice, and a slight majority don't see racism as a significant problem. — 00:00:12
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John says that, as far as he can tell, whether systemic bias against African Americans exists in the US is not really debatable, so he will look at data. (hedged) — 00:00:24
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John cites a US Sentencing Commission report from last year (2013): African American men's prison sentences averaged 20% longer than white men's for similar crimes, and the gap has widened over the past decade. — 00:00:37
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John quotes an American College of Physicians report: overwhelming evidence shows racial and ethnic minorities get poorer-quality health care, even controlling for insurance status. — 00:02:31
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John says the US's tremendous economic inequality is a factor in racial disparities, but race also factors into class and economic status. — 00:02:58
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John says much of the US racial wealth gap is inheritance: white people far more often inherit, largely because African Americans basically couldn't accrue wealth for most of US history. — 00:03:06
  • 2014-12-30 · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John concludes that, though he is only scratching the surface, denying systemic racism means denying a huge body of evidence that racial bias affects almost every facet of American life. — 00:03:21

2015

  • 2015-03-06 · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism — Hank says some companies want to pay to speed up their content, which competitors can't afford, to maintain their stranglehold on the American psyche. — 00:00:54
  • 2015-03-06 · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism — Hank says net neutrality's supporters are mostly ordinary people, who often feel they have little influence on how the American government is run. — 00:01:02
  • 2015-03-06 · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism — Hank reports that the internet in the US has been reclassified as a public utility, giving the government the power to keep it neutral, and new FCC rules guarantee it will. — 00:02:03
  • 2015-03-10 · Travel Tips (and Paper Towns Movie Updates) — John says almost every airport in the United States has a gate that is empty all the time; in Indianapolis he makes vlogs at that empty gate. — 00:00:32
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says that in 2009 more of his US tax dollars went to health care than would have in Japan, the UK or Australia, yet the US did not get their universal health care. — 00:00:13
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says that in 2014 the US spent about the same share of GDP on health care as in 2009 and still lacks universal health care, but has "less un-universal" care. — 00:00:28
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says that before the ACA, in 2009, the government insured the elderly through Medicare and some poor people through Medicaid, others got insurance through jobs or bought it, and 44 million people were uninsured. — 00:00:41
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says uninsured people's unpaid hospital care was absorbed by everyone else through higher prices or taxes, so the US had only an emergency-care kind of universal health care, not real universal care. (playful) — 00:00:59
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says the US spent more than 17% of GDP on health care, while Canada, France, Australia and the Netherlands spend under 10% with similar or better outcomes. — 00:01:38
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John's verdict: the ACA has worked insofar as things are better than before, and not insofar as the US is nowhere near sustainable health care spending. — 00:03:20
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says US health cost growth has slowed but spending is still over 17% of GDP, while most developed countries spend far less and their citizens live longer, healthier lives. — 00:05:08
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says that if nothing changes, health care costs will still crush the US in the long run, because the ACA is not particularly radical. — 00:05:34
  • 2015-03-24 · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John says the US spends far too much and gets too little; taking that seriously requires radical change such as price controls, a single-payer system, or a truly free market that denies care to those who cannot pay. — 00:05:53
  • 2015-05-26 · Sixteen Parts — announcement: John: Rosianna Halse Rojas is here: the brothers have brought her from England to the United States on a visa; John can't yet reveal the full plan, but soon. — 00:01:14
  • 2015-05-26 · Sixteen Parts — announcement: John: The Paper Towns film comes out in about 56 days in the US, at different times elsewhere; John will travel to support the release, at least to Brazil and the UK and probably other places. (hedged) — 00:02:58
  • 2015-06-08 · Monday Bonus Video! — announcement: John, Nat and Cara will tour the US in July, visiting the states with the most votes at papertownsmovie.com/tour, where one Tumblr like or reblog counts as one vote, until June 15. — 00:01:10
  • 2015-06-08 · Monday Bonus Video! — John says the decoupling is a big part of the dramatic rise in US wealth disparity over about the last 20 years; the richest 1% of Americans control about 40% of total wealth. — 00:02:02
  • 2015-06-08 · Monday Bonus Video! — John thinks wealth inequality is one of the biggest US issues and the wage-productivity decoupling very worrying, but we are mid-history and can collectively decide whether declining mobility is permanent. (hedged) — 00:03:18
  • 2015-06-12 · Why is College So Expensive? — The description says rising US higher-education costs have priced some people out of an education and built over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. — video description
  • 2015-06-12 · Why is College So Expensive? — Hank says US college costs have more than tripled since 1980, rising faster even than the cost of medical care. — 00:00:01
  • 2015-06-12 · Why is College So Expensive? — Hank: About 70% of US students graduate with debt, averaging $29,000, which Hank says means $312 a month for ten years of loan payments. — 00:00:07
  • 2015-07-07 · Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece — John: As an example, John says the United States has a strong economy and has run a deficit quite consistently for fifty years. — 00:02:29
  • 2015-07-07 · Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece — John: Despite signs of recovery, Greek unemployment is over 25 percent, 30 percent live in poverty, almost one in five cannot afford adequate food, and the depression matches the US Great Depression. — 00:04:41
  • 2015-07-21 · PAPER TOWNS IS HERE AND JOHN IS A BALL OF ANXIETY — announcement: John says the movie comes out Friday, July 24th, with a special screening on Thursday at many theaters around the US and Canada. — 00:00:47
  • 2015-08-18 · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria — recommendation: John recommends The Bail Trap, a New York Times article exploring one reason people in poverty are disproportionately imprisoned in the US. — 00:00:19
  • 2015-08-18 · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria — John says he doesn't want his hair put to a popular vote; the question made him get a haircut, and he fears a hair arms race like the US-Soviet one of the 1980s, until one brother goes bankrupt. (joke) — 00:01:47
  • 2015-09-04 · Addicted to Outrage — Hank calls the fear that the 50% of Americans around us are thoughtless, terrible and foolish America's most common irrational fear, as irrational as guacamole tarantulas. (hedged) — 00:00:21
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John: The United States is to blame too: it has accepted a tiny number of Syrian refugees, fewer than Brazil. — 00:05:59
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John: Instead of seriously discussing the refugee crisis, John says, the US immigration debate has become increasingly racist and irrational. — 00:06:05
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John says the common claim that immigrants disproportionately commit crimes is untrue: a huge body of data shows US refugees and first-generation immigrants commit crimes far less than other Americans. — 00:06:11
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John: The powerful are at fault when the oppressed and marginalized die for it; Aylan Kurdi would be alive had the EU, Canada, Australia, the US or Brazil welcomed his family. — 00:07:02
  • 2015-09-08 · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John partly blames the mess on the delusion that regional crises lack global importance: Ebola in Liberia is Liberia's problem until it's Nigeria's, Germany's and America's; so with Syria's war. — 00:07:36
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank writes that the vast majority of people are good, that the debate rests wholly on the idea that this is not true of Muslims, and that many in America have come to believe it, which terrifies him because it rests only on fear and prejudice. — video description
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: On the other hand Hank finds it not shocking, because Ahmed Mohamed is Muslim and many people in America are afraid of Muslims. — 00:00:11
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank admits that he himself sometimes falls into this fear trap, like many Americans. — 00:01:09
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Though Muslims have been in America since America existed, they are a minority of less than 1%, so most Americans don't know much about Muslims or Islam. — 00:01:16
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Muslims in America know the hatred and discrimination, Muslims abroad know extreme American views, and Hank bets other countries mostly hear about the scariest Americans. (hedged) — 00:02:37
  • 2015-09-18 · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Hank: Since other countries will put Americans in a little box, Hank asks whether we want the 'hates Muslims' box or the 'values religious freedom and provides opportunities' box. — 00:02:55
  • 2015-09-24 · Continents are Dumb — Hank: In America, at least, people are taught there are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. (hedged) — 00:00:38
  • 2015-09-24 · Continents are Dumb — Hank: A continent is supposed to be a large contiguous landmass defined by ocean borders, but that breaks down: North and South America are connected, and Africa is connected to Asia. — 00:00:56
  • 2015-10-06 · Question Tuesday: My Social Media Hiatus, My Excellent German, and Books! — John: Asked how he is, John says he is good but a little annoyed about the overall quality of political discourse in the United States. — 00:00:26
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — recommendation: John lists the sources behind the video's claims: violent crime halved in the US since 1990 and property crime falling, a Gallup poll on Americans believing crime is rising, Our World in Data on homicide history, GBD Compare on causes of death and disability, a study on sharing outrage online, falling unemployment, growth since 2010, the World Happiness Report, and Rasmussen polls on the country's direction. — video description
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John says the US violent crime rate has fallen dramatically since 1990: there are about half as many violent crimes per 1,000 Americans as 25 years ago. — 00:00:01
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John: Overall crime rates are also down dramatically, yet every year since 2006 at least 60% of Americans polled have said they feel crime is going up. — 00:00:16
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John: On a chart of US causes of death, interpersonal violence (war, terrorism, murder) is small; measured in disability-adjusted life years it grows because victims are disproportionately young, but stays smaller than suicide, drug overdoses, asthma, preterm-birth complications or traffic accidents. — 00:00:32
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John: Violence is shrinking faster as a cause of death and disability in the US than any other major cause except HIV. — 00:01:01
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John admits he has done this too: in 2010 he made a video about how outrageous it is that the US keeps minting pennies. — 00:01:20
  • 2015-11-24 · Crime and Outrage — John: Even before the price hike, the drug cost 30 times more in the US than in the UK. — 00:02:13
  • 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
  • 2015-11-27 (said on 2015-11-26, implied) · Never Satisfied: The Story of Humans ¦-/ — Hank argues we need to focus less on who our opponents are and more on what we are actually trying to achieve; increasingly in America he sees the discourse as 'the problem is those people in our way' rather than 'the problem is the problem'. (hedged) — video description
  • 2015-11-27 (said on 2015-11-26, implied) · Never Satisfied: The Story of Humans ¦-/ — Hank notes that everyone watching (except babies under six months) was born into an America where couples could be denied marriage because of their gender, yet we have already stopped being excited about the change. — 00:01:27
  • 2015-11-27 (said on 2015-11-26, implied) · Never Satisfied: The Story of Humans ¦-/ — Hank says his mother was born into an America where black people had separate schools and bathrooms. — 00:02:10
  • 2015-12-01 · John's Book Giving Guide for the Holidays! — recommendation: John's favorite book of the year is Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, a short, relentless and brilliant meditation on race and history in the United States. — 00:00:18
  • 2015-12-18 · We're All Gonna Die - A Song — Hank reports that scheduled flights between the US and Cuba are to resume for the first time in 50 years. — 00:02:52

2016

Also named in: Understanding Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's Tax Plans

2017

Also named in: The Life Changing Magic of Thumbs Up

2018

2019

2020

  • 2020-01-21 · Gifts That Changed My Life — John: Something like three billion dollars in gift cards goes unspent every year in the United States, John says. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • 2020-03-06 · I Did Not Get Leprosy! — Hank says the nine-banded armadillo is the only armadillo native to the US and also lives elsewhere in North, Central and South America. — 00:02:09
  • 2020-03-06 · I Did Not Get Leprosy! — Hank says the US subspecies are all genetically very similar, suggesting only a few made it this far north before establishing a population. — 00:02:16
  • 2020-03-27 · Take a Break with Some Feather Stars — Hank says around 100 million years ago North America was two or three large islands, with a massive shallow ocean, the Western Interior Seaway, between them. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-03-27 · Take a Break with Some Feather Stars — Hank says little cylinders found all over interior America, which look like crystals or fossilized plant parts, are really the remains of crinoids from that sea. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-04-10 · Things I'm Finding Encouraging — Hank says if America will ever recognize that getting health care through one's employer is arbitrary, cruel and ludicrous, this is the moment. — 00:00:24
  • 2020-04-10 · Things I'm Finding Encouraging — Hank says America tells an individualist story of how things get done; it is empowering and does good, but it is not really true: we live in a society. — 00:02:08
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — John worries his talking about the US protests may sound like, and could be, virtue signaling: making a statement is easy, long-term work toward justice is hard. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — recommendation: The description recommends online essays: Clint Smith on parenting in the age of Black Lives Matter, Carol Anderson on 1919 and now, Ibram X. Kendi's 'The American Nightmare', and The 1619 Project. — video description
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — recommendation: The description lists books and essays John found helpful on racism's centrality to American life, by Kendi, Anderson, Lorde, Coates, Morrison, Evans, Baldwin, McWhirter, Woodson, Hurston, Wilkerson and Washington. — video description
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — The description says John and Sarah focus on supporting underfunded public libraries serving large African American communities and on criminal justice reform, including bail misuse (The Bail Project). — video description
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — John says the root cause of the US crisis is the ongoing violence and discrimination Black Americans have experienced for over 400 years. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — John says this continuing racism is in every facet of American life. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — John says Black mothers in the US are far more likely to die in childbirth than white mothers, regardless of economic or educational background. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-06-02 · --- — announcement: John: With input from friends and colleagues, John made a playlist of videos by Black creators on the long history of African American experience, from the Red Summer to poetry and vlogs. — 00:01:57
  • 2020-06-16 (said on 2020-06-07, implied) · a cool place — John says the island is in the center of the 12th largest city in the United States. — 00:01:21
  • 2020-06-23 · You'll Never Shine if You Don't Glow — John: Ohio's state insect is the seven-spotted ladybug, an invasive species introduced to the United States in 1973. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-07-10 · What a Concept!! — Hank: Where ideas come from matters to Hank, as a weekly video maker and as a person, because almost everything is an idea: justice, America, money, borders, political parties, businesses. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-07-14 · The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. — John: The US is experiencing an explosion of new COVID-19 cases even as many other countries make serious progress against the pandemic. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-07-14 · The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. — John: The last 12 weeks have been the deadliest 12-week period in the US in many decades, yet people still call it a hoax. — 00:01:27
  • 2020-08-18 · what's wrong with taking the back streets? — In a comment John explains the number: at least 170,000 Americans had died of COVID-19 as of the day before. — creator comment
  • 2020-08-18 · what's wrong with taking the back streets? — In a comment John says the video ends on circle 589 because 589 people in the US died of COVID-19 the day before. — creator comment
  • 2020-09-01 · get the show on — announcement: John: As he did with The Fault in Our Stars, John says he will sign the entire first printing of the American and Canadian edition. — 00:01:27
  • 2020-09-01 · get the show on — announcement: John says copies ordered from outside the US or Canada, even the American English edition, will probably not be signed, because international printing and shipping systems don't allow it. (hedged) — 00:01:56
  • 2020-09-01 · get the show on — announcement: John says anyone in the US or Canada who pre-orders the book will get a signed copy. — 00:01:56
  • 2020-09-11 · If you don't go… — Hank says the video is mostly for US citizens: in the US people decide things together by voting, from president and lawmakers to laws, judges, sheriffs and ballot initiatives. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-09-11 · If you don't go… — Hank says a huge amount of how America is governed happens at the state and local levels. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-09-11 · If you don't go… — Hank says elected leaders listen to voters more than to the average American because voters hire and fire them, so turn yourself into a voter: that is how you get served. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-10-09 · The Rax Guy — John: Only about five Rax restaurants are left in America, but many of the buildings remain, and John can tell when a restaurant used to be a Rax. (hedged) — 00:00:52
  • 2020-10-09 · The Rax Guy — ask: John asks viewers eligible to vote in the US to vote and make a voting plan, recommending an accountability buddy to make sure they carry it out. — 00:01:50
  • 2020-10-13 (said on 2020-10-05, implied) · Me from the Past: A Pizzamas Miracle — John: On 5 October 2020, John predicts that US newly diagnosed COVID cases the day before upload were higher than a week earlier, probably by around 10 to 12%. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • 2020-10-13 (said on 2020-10-05, implied) · Me from the Past: A Pizzamas Miracle — John notes the main news on the morning he films: the US President has been hospitalized for COVID, and many people close to him caught it after indoor maskless gatherings. — 00:01:56
  • 2020-10-14 · John Predicts the Future! — Hank reports US new COVID cases rose week to week from 41,601 to 45,791, almost exactly 10%, so John's prediction was a win. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-10-23 · 10 Reasons to Vote RIGHT NOW — ask: Hank: Ten days before the US general election, Hank encourages everyone to vote right now, or, where they must wait, to make a plan now for when and how to vote on November 3rd. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-10-23 · 10 Reasons to Vote RIGHT NOW — Hank: Reason one: voting tends to be quick and easy; long lines are a problem in places, but 94% of Americans are in and out in under 30 minutes, which should be 100%. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-10-23 · 10 Reasons to Vote RIGHT NOW — Hank: Reason three: your vote affects people beyond you, neighbours and people worldwide; the US is very powerful and citizens have a responsibility to engage with that power. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-11-03 · Alaska for Looking — ask: John: On election day John asks those eligible to vote in the United States to do so, and points to vote.org to find their polling place. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — The description, written after recording, says Joe Biden is almost certain to be the next president of the United States. (hedged) — video description
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Hank says the result is close enough that Trump can falsely claim the election was stolen from him, and many of his supporters will completely lose faith in the American system. — 00:00:58
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Hank: On the evening of November 3, 2020, as Florida turned red, it made sense to Hank for the first time that Trump is president; for four years it had seemed surreal to him. — 00:01:27
  • 2020-11-06 (said on 2020-11-05, implied) · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Hank says the US has a right-wing populist president because many believe people who are not 'real Americans' make their lives worse, a label drawn culturally, racially, by politicized oversimplification or by loyalty to Trump. — 00:02:01
  • 2020-11-10 · On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals — John says African communities had effective inoculation strategies too: Cotton Mather, often credited in America with inventing smallpox inoculation, learned it from an enslaved African named Onesimus. — 00:01:56
  • 2020-11-24 · personal risk · societal risk — John: In the US a 75-year-old with COVID-19 has well over a 90% chance of surviving; at John's age, even with some pre-existing conditions, over 98%. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-11-24 · personal risk · societal risk — John: Infectious disease never treats people equally because social orders don't; in the US mortality is far higher among people of color. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-11-24 · personal risk · societal risk — John: COVID killed over 10,000 Americans last week (week of 16 November 2020). — 00:03:24
  • 2020-12-15 · America's Capital of Dead Vice Presidents — John says Indiana limestone built many famous American buildings, including the Empire State Building, but none of them is in Indiana. — 00:00:00
  • 2020-12-15 · America's Capital of Dead Vice Presidents — John says no Indiana vice president went on to become president: 18% of US vice presidents who never became president are from Indiana, which has just 2% of the US population. — 00:01:27

Also named in: Your Brain Gets Smart, but Your Head Gets Dumb

2021

  • 2021-02-02 · I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again) — John: From the Great Dying in the Americas to the Black Death in Eurasia, infectious disease has long been a central force in human history, and not only ancient history. — 00:00:29
  • 2021-02-02 · I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again) — John: Since the first US AIDS-related death, when John was four, tens of millions have died of AIDS-related illnesses, mostly in impoverished communities denied antiretroviral therapy for decades. — 00:00:29
  • 2021-03-16 · How a Book Cover Gets Designed — announcement: The description notes that only the US and Canada editions will be signed. — video description
  • 2021-03-26 · Why I'm Worried about 2021 — Hank says that sometime in the next month 25% of people in the US will be fully vaccinated, many of them the most at-risk. — 00:00:29
  • 2021-03-26 · Why I'm Worried about 2021 — Hank: A society has an acceptable disease burden: in the US something like 30,000 people die of flu each year, some of them infants and children, yet beyond vaccines and hygiene advice life went on as before. (hedged) — 00:01:56
  • 2021-03-30 · I did it! — announcement: The description points readers in the US or Canada to pre-order a signed copy of The Anthropocene Reviewed book. — video description
  • 2021-04-06 · How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? — John: The COVID vaccines approved in the US and much of the world are safe and effective; over 100 million people have received them, and they dramatically reduce personal and societal risk. — 00:01:27
  • 2021-04-20 · Breaking Ground!!! — announcement: John: Every pre-order of the US and Canadian hardcover will be signed, and some signed copies will be available at UK bookstores. — 00:02:15
  • 2021-04-20 · Breaking Ground!!! — John: If someone abroad manages to order the US edition, John thinks it will be signed but can't promise, given international copyright and shipping. (hedged) — 00:02:44
  • 2021-04-23 · Young People and the COVID Vaccine — Hank: In the US everyone over 16 can now get a COVID vaccine; over 200 million doses have been given and around 40% of people have had at least one dose. — 00:00:00
  • 2021-05-21 · The 19 Best Facts — Hank: Honorable mention: some individual sharks alive today were born before the United States existed. — 00:00:38
  • 2021-05-21 · The 19 Best Facts — Hank: The second-largest purchaser of explosives in the US is the happiest place on Earth. — 00:02:04
  • 2021-08-03 · I L*** Hank — John: Childhood cancer treatment can be very expensive in the US, with indirect costs such as a parent leaving work; the charity helps families spend more time with their kids. — 00:00:58
  • 2021-08-06 · Remembering What's Special — Hank: Few Nerdfighters disagree with Hank about vaccines; he jokes that Nerdfighteria is the most vaccinated state in America. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • 2021-08-13 · How We Fix the Climate — Hank says US per capita CO2 emissions are lower than in 1918, then admits that was very cherry-picked data. — 00:00:58
  • 2021-08-13 · How We Fix the Climate — Hank: Frustratingly, all carbon pricing looks less and less likely in the US, partly because leaving it to the market gives little control: costs may fall on marginalized communities and benefits go to the well connected. — 00:11:12
  • 2021-08-13 · How We Fix the Climate — Hank: In the US the right will not vote for any of this, so without every Democrat's vote there will be no carbon tax. — 00:12:10
  • 2021-08-13 · How We Fix the Climate — Hank: So the US plans 'everything else': many laws, policies and regulations, the more progressive, controlling approach, versus the conservative market approach. — 00:12:10
  • 2021-08-27 · Is it Better Not to Know? — Hank: That is complicated and means understanding that many things aren't really about me, you or us, a kind of un-American idea. — 00:02:19
  • 2021-08-27 · Is it Better Not to Know? — Hank: Ocean plastic is about 50% fishing equipment, and almost all the rest comes from places without robust waste management systems like those in the US. — 00:02:48
  • 2021-09-28 · 11 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read — announcement: In a comment John says he read a viewer-recommended book, Dear America, on another Nerdfighter's recommendation, should have included it, and will add it to the Bookshop list. — creator comment
  • 2021-09-28 · 11 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read — recommendation: John: Lastly John recommends the 1945 cookbook How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao, a Chinese physician who emigrated to the US in the 1920s: out of print for decades, wonderfully postmodern. — 00:02:55
  • 2021-11-12 · Everything a Normal Person Needs to Know About Helium — Hank says the US had a gigantic strategic helium reserve, and Congress ordered it to sell all its helium by a set date at any price, tanking helium prices so gas producers had no incentive to refine helium. — 00:01:56

Also named in: A Lie I Heard this Week

2022

2023

  • 2023-01-13 · Why is There an Egg Shortage (And More) — Hank explains that in the US, Canada and elsewhere flags fly halfway up in mourning, for national tragedies or deaths of officials and public servants, varying by state. — 00:02:00
  • 2023-01-13 · Why is There an Egg Shortage (And More) — Hank says diesel is pricier partly because it is taxed a bit higher and because the US recently began requiring low-sulfur diesel for health reasons. — 00:02:55
  • 2023-01-24 · Behind the Scenes of my TUMBLR MEME LORD ERA — John says the Awesome Coffee Club supplies coffee, now including decaf, to over 10,000 subscribers in the US and Canada and donates 100% of its profits to charity. — 00:02:58
  • 2023-01-27 · An Announcement 3 Years in the Making — Hank says a few years ago they set out to help US students bridge from high school to college, starting by researching their barriers and talking with people in higher education. — 00:00:50
  • 2023-03-14 · The Seduction of Despair — John says destruction is fast, loud and dramatic, reparative work slow and quiet; that's where his hope is, in big projects (a maternal hospital in Sierra Leone, US voting rights) and quiet human moments. — 00:03:10
  • 2023-04-21 · On TikTok Bans — Hank: Not claiming to understand US-China relations, Hank says what the Chinese government would do with its influence over TikTok in 10 years may differ greatly from today. (hedged) — 00:01:33
  • 2023-05-19 · So, I've got cancer — Hank says nobody expects the American health care system to move quickly, so when it suddenly gets efficient it is disconcerting, like a horse with hands or a flight attendant running mid-flight. (playful) — 00:00:54
  • 2023-06-20 · Reflections from a Terrible CEO — John says they are working, in small and insufficient ways, on the injustices of high US college costs and high global maternal mortality. — 00:04:08
  • 2023-06-23 · Understanding Cancer Survival Rates — Hank says about 9,000 people in the US get Hodgkin lymphoma each year and about 900 die of it, a crude figure of 10% killed. — 00:00:58
  • 2023-06-27 · Alone on the Cancer Boat: A Vlogbrothers Reunion — John says a big thing both learned about cancer is how unequal access to treatment is, in the US and rich countries and especially between rich and poorer countries. — 00:05:44
  • 2023-07-18 · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John thinks Ronald Reagan first mentioned HIV four or five years after it emerged in the United States. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • 2023-07-18 · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John says new HIV treatments still did not reach impoverished communities until activists in the US, Europe and the Global South worked together to build that constituency. — 00:01:56
  • 2023-08-04 · The Biggest Science Story of the Week — Hank predicts that within 10 or 20 years it will be hot enough to cause many marine extinctions and many human deaths, including heat deaths in the US. — 00:04:40
  • 2023-08-15 · Henry — John says a better, less toxic treatment protocol built on bedaquiline had been available for years in the United States and other rich countries. — 00:00:58
  • 2023-08-22 · The Panera Phenomenon — John: Citing the book, John says that in 1852, when Franklin Pierce was elected US president, his wife was sick with tuberculosis. — 00:00:58
  • 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — Animesh Sinha: Dr. Sinha says TB has classically gone with poverty: incidence rises after wars and in poor places and falls as living conditions, nutrition and immunity improve, as in the US. — 00:21:03
  • 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — John says much of that funding came from the NIH and American taxpayers, and some from taxpayers outside the US. — 00:41:20
  • 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — John recalls a memoir by a woman who had TB as a child in mid-20th-century US sanatoriums until streptomycin saved her; going home, she had forgotten being touched with love. — 00:48:37
  • 2023-09-25 · PIZZAMAS IS HERE!!! — announcement: John shows Cheez-A-John, a John that grows plant hair, sold only in the United States because it has seeds. — 00:02:47
  • 2023-09-25 · PIZZAMAS IS HERE!!! — announcement: John shows Pizza John's hot sauce, which tastes much like the hot sauce he makes with his mom but cannot legally sell; it is US-only as food. — 00:03:00
  • 2023-10-04 · A Messy and Unhinged Introduction to Geoengineering — Hank says US carbon dioxide emissions already cause death and suffering, but incidentally, not on purpose; doing it on purpose matters, though part of him thinks it shouldn't. — 00:06:45
  • 2023-10-04 · A Messy and Unhinged Introduction to Geoengineering — Hank says cutting a neighbour's rainfall feels intentional in a way US and Chinese coal burning does not, and he is trying to accept that how it feels matters. — 00:08:04
  • 2023-10-20 · My 'Injury' — Hank says the US recently passed a milestone: more than half of people diagnosed with cancer will not be killed by it, either cured or dying with it rather than of it. — 00:03:25
  • 2023-11-17 · WHAT AM I DOING — Hank says the channel has also tried several high-impact strategies to reduce the barriers to higher education in America. — 00:00:38
  • 2023-11-17 · WHAT AM I DOING — ask: Hank tells viewers outside the US that today is the last day for standard shipping guaranteed by Christmas on the socks, Good.Store, Complexly calendars, DFTBA.com, McElroyMerch.com and the Dropout TV Store. — 00:01:05
  • 2023-11-24 · It Wasn't Supposed to be Thanksgiving Yesterday — Hank describes Black Friday as the day Americans turn off their lights from 6 to 7 p.m. to honor sailors lost before the US Lighthouse Service, then admits the 'fact' isn't true. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2023-11-24 · It Wasn't Supposed to be Thanksgiving Yesterday — Hank says the early US had a holiday, Evacuation Day, on the last Thursday (23 November 2023) of November, marking the day the British left; Thanksgiving eventually took its place. — 00:00:38
  • 2023-11-24 · It Wasn't Supposed to be Thanksgiving Yesterday — Hank says FDR was a little bit right: in years with more days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, US employment numbers significantly increase. — 00:03:04
  • 2023-12-08 · Did Natural Cancer Treatments Save My Life? — Hank says some people on Earth today live the reality of the US 80 years ago, and we don't have to live in a world like that. — 00:05:59
  • 2023-12-08 · Did Natural Cancer Treatments Save My Life? — announcement: Hank says the same Christmas Eve shipping deadline applies to everything at good.store and dftba.com for US buyers; for international orders all bets are off. — 00:06:23

2024

  • 2024-01-05 · I'm Scared of 2024...So Here's 3 Optimistic Thoughts — Hank worries AI will make it even harder for young people to find a place in the American economy, already hard because policies and systems steer wealth to older people. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-01-05 · I'm Scared of 2024...So Here's 3 Optimistic Thoughts — Hank's second thought: the expected big recession did not happen; the US had a stronger economy and labor market than nearly any developed country and reined in inflation best. — 00:03:00
  • 2024-01-16 · The Bank of Nerdfighteria — In a comment John says Partners In Health works in the US and the Navajo Nation, but as an international community Nerdfighteria wants to keep an international focus. — creator comment
  • 2024-02-09 · My Favorite Climate Graph — Hank says the graph's abatement axis starts at 5 gigatons, the amount of CO2 the US emits per year. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-02-09 · My Favorite Climate Graph — Hank says US CO2 emissions already peaked in 2007 at 6 gigatons a year, a fact that still surprises him. — 00:00:43
  • 2024-02-09 · My Favorite Climate Graph — Hank says that is why researchers work on it now, and why the US government and private companies are working with universities on the details. — 00:04:58
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says he recently fell down a rabbit hole trying to learn what he could establish about the median resident of the United States. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — announcement: In a comment John says Jessica's traits other than her name are medians for American adults, not for 38-year-old women. — creator comment
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says the median US age is 38.1, so the median person was born in 1986; since there are more women than men, she is female, and she is white. — 00:00:14
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John names the median American Jessica, the most popular name in 1986, the year she was born. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says imagining Jessica is interesting, but few if any people are much like her because the US is extraordinarily diverse. — 00:03:24
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says the US has relatively high economic inequality, so people are more likely than elsewhere to be much richer or much poorer than Jessica. — 00:03:53
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says the US is racially diverse and race is a huge factor in socioeconomic class and mobility. — 00:03:53
  • 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
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John: As progress, John notes that 20 years ago the median American did not believe in equal rights for LGBTQ people. — 00:03:53
  • 2024-02-27 · I Was Wrong about the Average American — John says little progress has been made on the median American's personal or financial security, showing where systems need reform to include more people. — 00:04:22
  • 2024-03-08 · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank says he should have known, having read many times that the average US tax burden is 25%. — 00:04:14
  • 2024-03-08 · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank says the US tax burden as a share of GDP is low globally, so there is no need to make anything up about it. — 00:05:28
  • 2024-03-08 · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank: NOAA provides data on the number of natural disasters causing over a billion dollars in damage per year, which Scientific American graphed. — 00:05:58
  • 2024-03-08 · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank: Voicing Twitter critics he found convincing, Hank says the US population grew from 230 million to 340 million since 1980, all requiring building. — 00:06:27
  • 2024-03-08 · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank says NOAA and Scientific American did not misrepresent the data: Twitter users did, and others then attributed that misrepresentation to the two institutions. — 00:06:56
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John: Replying to a viewer about a key driver of the US chest x-ray screening campaign, John says that person is in his book. — creator comment
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John's great-uncle Stokes died of tuberculosis in 1930, when TB was still one of the leading causes of death in the United States. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says that in 1900 the US had almost as many hospital beds for TB patients as for all other health problems combined. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says TB is still a problem in the United States, but its death rate there has fallen by over 99%. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says that from the 1950s the US built x-ray vans and sent them across the country offering everyone free chest x-rays to identify TB cases, and it worked. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says the US has used preventive therapy for over 60 years, a key reason TB rates have plummeted there. — 00:02:52
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John thanks those behind the project: USAID's Cheri Vincent and Atul Gawande, PIH's Garrett Wilkinson and Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee, the Philippine Department of Health, activists and NGOs. — video description
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — announcement: Replying to a confused viewer in a comment, John clarifies the yearly funding is spent every year for the next four years, unless USAID pulls funding. (hedged) — creator comment
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John says the US and many other countries drove down TB rates by over 99% in the 1950s and 60s by searching for cases, curing everyone with TB and giving close contacts preventive therapy. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — announcement: John reports that at a Thursday briefing USAID announced a program funding comprehensive TB care in regions of Ethiopia and the Philippines, meant as a blueprint and beacon for ending TB worldwide. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John says that in the Philippines USAID will give $10 million a year, his family $1 million a year, and the Philippine government $11 million a year, matching both. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John says many are involved, from USAID to the Philippine Department of Health, the Partners In Health community and Philippine NGOs, and seeing them plan together has been inspirational. — 00:02:26
  • 2024-04-05 · Two Reasons Why This Eclipse is So Dangerous — Hank: In a reply to a viewer comment urging seatbelt use, the channel says life insurers ask about seatbelts because in the US seatbelt wearers live about a year longer on average, an average in which very few people die but those who do die very young. — creator comment
  • 2024-04-05 · Two Reasons Why This Eclipse is So Dangerous — Hank says that around the 2017 eclipse, US car-crash deaths rose from a background rate of about 7.9 per hour to over 10 per hour. — 00:01:33
  • 2024-04-09 · Hank and John Reunited WITH RAX — John: Passing a sign for rent, John wants to rent it and replace its Jesus messaging with a pitch for the other gods, such as Zeus, American Gods style. (joke) — 00:03:51
  • 2024-04-09 · Hank and John Reunited WITH RAX — announcement: John: Answering viewers, John says the Turtles All the Way Down film will stream on Max in the UK, the Netherlands and other listed places, out May 2 in most places including the US. — 00:04:57
  • 2024-05-03 · Everything Wrong with Turtles All the Way Down — Hank says the US taxes any gift over $17,000 (in 2023, when the film is set), so Davis's money given to Aza and then to Daisy is two taxable events, double-taxing Daisy's money. (playful) (doubtful: $17,000) — 00:01:13
  • 2024-05-03 · Everything Wrong with Turtles All the Way Down — announcement: Hank says the film is on Max; in the US Max can be had through the Play Store, the App Store, Amazon Prime or Max.com. — 00:02:39
  • 2024-05-03 · Everything Wrong with Turtles All the Way Down — announcement: Hank says that outside the US the film is probably on a Max-like service. (hedged) — 00:02:39
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John says the average US resident eats around 220 servings of beef per year. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John was surprised to learn Americans used to eat more beef: in the 1970s something like 275 servings per year. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John says Americans still eat about twice as much beef as people in Germany or the United Kingdom. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John says US beef consumption is declining, albeit slowly. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John says Americans agreed most cars should be SUVs or pickups, so the average new car weighs a thousand pounds more than in 1985, and houses are a thousand square feet bigger than in the 1980s. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-06-11 · BEEF DAYS — John says smoking became less cool partly through government regulation making tobacco more expensive and good anti-smoking campaigns, and US smoking and smoking deaths have dropped. — 00:02:58
  • 2024-06-14 · Some Reasons why People Suck — Hank says that when he started his EcoGeek blog in 2005 he would have guessed US CO2 emissions would never start falling. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • 2024-06-14 · Some Reasons why People Suck — Hank says US CO2 emissions started to go down in 2005, the very year he started his EcoGeek blog. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-07-05 · Should I Run for President?? — Hank says government is complex: the US president manages nearly 3 million federal employees, deals with foreign leaders, sends Americans to war, leads a party and must work with 535 members of Congress from 50 states. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-07-05 · Should I Run for President?? — Hank says Trump's other signature act is refusing to accept the results of every election he lost, helping destroy many Americans' faith in America. — 00:02:59
  • 2024-07-05 · Should I Run for President?? — Hank concludes that people without experience of how government works should get some before leading the United States, so he should not run for president. — 00:03:28
  • 2024-07-12 · My Identity Crisis — Hank says he will absolutely not stop being a sock guy and thinks he is on his way to being America's premier sock guy. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • 2024-07-12 · My Identity Crisis — Hank says he will not be anyone's president but can be America's sock guy. (playful) — 00:02:15
  • 2024-08-02 · My Letter to the Future — Hank says America a hundred years ago seems bizarre: women had only just voted in their first presidential election, children often died of infectious disease, and getting from New York to Los Angeles in less than a week took luck. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-08-02 · My Letter to the Future — Hank predicts today's agricultural land use will be seen as outrageous, much of the American interior will be wild, and America will have more than 10 million bison. — 00:01:28
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says the US and China tied in gold medals, partly because a French basketball player's toe was on the three-point line for a buzzer-beater. — 00:00:29
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says it makes sense to break the gold tie with silver and bronze, so the US wins. — 00:00:58
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank cites a tweet mocking Americans for addressing everyone as Europeans: Europe as one country would have 116 gold, 122 silver and 160 bronze medals. — 00:00:58
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank: Rejecting tweets about how different US states are, Hank says until Connecticut speaks Connecticutian he won't believe states differ as much as European countries. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says Europe has far more people than the US, continental Europe around 750 million. — 00:01:27
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says Europe still won more gold medals per capita than the US even without Russia competing: 0.15 per million people against 0.12. — 00:01:56
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank: So Hank finds it fine for the US to rank by total medals if that puts it on top, and the rest of the world by golds, since neither means much. (playful) — 00:02:26
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank found someone ranking countries by the value of the metal in their medals, which he calls as good as any other way; the US still wins. (playful) — 00:03:12
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says the US is good at swimming partly because of its many pools and school swim teams with Olympic-regulation pools; eight of its 40 golds came in swimming. — 00:03:41
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank notes Europe's 160 bronze medals: 0.21 bronze medals per million people, far more than the US's 0.12. — 00:04:39
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank says the US was very consistent at 40, 44 and 42 medals, while China was weighted toward gold: 40 gold, 27 silver, 24 bronze. — 00:04:39
  • 2024-08-16 · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery… — Hank: Since money and socioeconomic status usually explain most things, Hank guesses less affluent countries may invest in elite athletes but less in those further down; China fits, but the affluent US shows no pattern. (hedged) — 00:05:58
  • 2024-09-25 · You have no chance to survive make your time. — John sets the scene: mid-2005 at the American Library Association in Chicago; Looking for Alaska had just been published and he was a production editor at Booklist. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-09-25 · You have no chance to survive make your time. — John: The story starts in 1991, when the Japanese video game Zero Wing was imported to the United States with truly terrible translation. — 00:00:52
  • 2024-10-18 · My Ballot Made Me Angry — Hank explains that each US state has its own election laws, and counties must comply with them but can be creative within them. — 00:01:12
  • 2024-10-18 · My Ballot Made Me Angry — Hank says the channel's audience surveys show viewers vote more than almost any group in America: over 90% of eligible respondents vote. — 00:01:47
  • 2024-10-25 · I Don't Want them to Get Away With It… — The description says Hank didn't call for action against Danaher now partly because so much is happening in US national politics that it is hard to ask viewers to take on more. — video description
  • 2024-10-30 · Sipping the Tea with Hank — John: Answering a viewer who asks them to punch tuberculosis in the face, John says that if there were a lot of tuberculosis in the US, it would be dealt with. — 00:09:35
  • 2024-11-08 · These Maps are Lying (if you let them) — Hank says election maps mainly show who won, because the US president is elected by the states, not the citizens; some variants show each state's electoral power. — 00:02:35
  • 2024-11-08 · These Maps are Lying (if you let them) — Hank says the popular vote-swing maps show something important but specific: the 2020-to-2024 percentage change in the Republican–Democrat spread in each county. — 00:03:04
  • 2024-11-13 · Some New Things… — announcement: Hank says Good Store's tea and coffee only ship to the US, Canada and Europe; they might start shipping tea overseas, since tea keeps its quality far longer than coffee. (hedged) — 00:14:21
  • 2024-11-13 · Some New Things… — John: Reading an order from Alberta, John jokes that the buyer, not living in America, has health care, which he calls phenomenal. (playful) — 00:55:07
  • 2024-11-26 · Good News — John: Since most people in the US survive Hodgkin lymphoma, its mortality rate is only about 0.28 per 100,000, close to the US tuberculosis death rate of about 0.22 per 100,000, or several hundred deaths a year. — 00:00:34
  • 2024-11-26 · Good News — John: In Lesotho the tuberculosis mortality rate is around 213 per 100,000 people, so a person is a thousand times likelier to die of tuberculosis there than in the United States. — 00:00:57
  • 2024-11-26 · Good News — John: The United States, with a weaker health care system and much more unequal access, has a maternal mortality rate over five times Germany's, at 22 deaths per 100,000 births. — 00:01:56
  • 2024-12-17 · About THAT Scene in Looking for Alaska — John says that according to PEN America, Looking for Alaska, which he wrote, is the second most banned book in the United States. — 00:00:00

2025

  • 2025-01-03 · My 2025 Bingo Card — Hank says that a hundred years ago one in five children in the US died before age five. — 00:02:57
  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says about 46% of people born in the US in 1800 died before five, similar to rates thousands of years earlier, and by 1840 it had only fallen to 43%. — 00:00:58
  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says that between 1920 and 1960 the chance of dying under age five fell from 18% to 3%. — 00:01:27
  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says that in the US and globally none of this happened naturally: it is not natural for the world to become less hungry or less sick. — 00:01:27
  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says someone born in the US now has a 99.1% chance of living to age 20. — 00:01:56
  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says tuberculosis is rising in rich countries; the US will see around 10,000 active cases this year (2025), a reminder that TB is airborne. — 00:04:22
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says USAID does lots of amazing work and is a very cheap way to keep the world more stable, with more diseases controlled and fewer people suffering. — 00:00:00
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — recommendation: The description links news coverage of lawsuits seeking to halt the dismantling of USAID, plus Ezra Klein's video essay. — video description
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says the shutdown of USAID is not the core issue: the core issue is the extent to which the Constitution matters anymore. — 00:00:11
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says USAID was created by a law passed by Congress and is funded by laws passed by Congress. — 00:00:36
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says Congress has the power of the purse: it decides how almost all money in America is spent, not the president. — 00:00:42
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says the president unilaterally dissolving USAID is illegal. — 00:00:54
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says the legal route would have been to work with Congress to pass a law dissolving USAID, which the president did not do. — 00:00:59
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank does not know whether USAID is a good first target for this, since it does not immediately affect many Americans and so has few defenders at home. (unsure) — 00:01:46
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank voices the first, Trump-sympathetic view: the US is so corrupt and broken that the Constitution must be set aside for a while, letting the world's richest man into the Treasury to stop payments at his whim. (satire) — 00:03:09
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says separation of powers is a very good idea, created by people who had lived under a king and did not want to anymore, and that hard work produced America. — 00:04:50
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says the times the US violated those principles are real and shameful, and we do not want to live through or be part of one. — 00:05:10
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank hopes Americans will say not merely that courts blocked Trump, but that his action was unconstitutional, and that they like no president as much as they like America. (hedged) — 00:05:21
  • 2025-02-07 · What Trump's Doing — Hank says multiple lawsuits have already been filed outlining why shutting down USAID is illegal. — 00:05:40
  • 2025-02-11 · What's at Stake — John says the United States is currently the main funder of the TB response in impoverished communities. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-02-11 · What's at Stake — John says it is devastating to watch the US haphazardly and chaotically freeze, in effect, all TB funding. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-02-11 · What's at Stake — John says that although the US government can claim medicines are still flowing, he hears again and again from people on the ground, from Tanzania to Sierra Leone, who cannot get their TB medication. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-02-11 · What's at Stake — John says philanthropy cannot replace USAID's at-scale responses, but supporting global health charities is more important than ever. — 00:04:22
  • 2025-02-21 · No Video Today!! — Hank says humans have made mistakes and that the US as a country is currently making a big one. — 00:01:18
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — The description's talking points say nobody seems to know who decided to suspend most of USAID's life-saving work, which is scary, very weird and illegal. — video description
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank: As an illustration, Hank says that if everyone in America were infected at once, about 700,000 would die of measles but more than 70 million of smallpox. — 00:02:11
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank says it is also hard because we forget: in 1962 measles deaths were common enough to terrify, but before this year (2025) the last US measles death was in 2015. — 00:05:31
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank says everyone seems to agree USAID should continue its life-saving missions, including Marco Rubio, who runs USAID. (hedged) — 00:06:08
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank says Congress legally passed the laws funding USAID's work, yet 90% of USAID's funding has been halted. — 00:06:08
  • 2025-02-28 · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank's script says USAID helps America by increasing its influence, making other countries more stable and making it less likely disease outbreaks reach the US. — 00:07:56
  • 2025-03-04 · The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE — John is anxious because he cares about human health, which he says is entering a bad period as the US especially, and also countries like the UK, dramatically pull back health investments. — 00:00:39
  • 2025-03-07 · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — The description says that, unsurprisingly, there are not 20 million Americans over 100 collecting Social Security benefits. — video description
  • 2025-03-07 · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — Hank says the US seems to do a pretty good job of controlling fraud where many people collect dead people's benefits, and he can prove it. — 00:03:53
  • 2025-03-07 · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — Hank says a more frequent audit shows only about 90,000 people over 99 (he also says over 100) are collecting benefits in the US, which is what matters, not the database count. — 00:04:35
  • 2025-03-07 · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — Hank says the US Census Bureau estimates roughly 86,000 Americans are over 100. — 00:05:04
  • 2025-03-07 · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — Hank says what he really dislikes is the most powerful and the richest man in the world teaming up to intentionally mislead America about the scale of Social Security fraud, which shows a really significant lack of respect for the country and its people. — 00:07:20
  • 2025-04-11 (said on 2025-04-10, implied) · How Actually Crazy is This Mess? — Hank says it makes sense that the US buys more than it sells: it is the third biggest country and the largest economy. — 00:12:36
  • 2025-04-11 (said on 2025-04-10, implied) · How Actually Crazy is This Mess? — Hank says this destroys trust between the US and the world, isolating it, opening the way for more trustworthy partners, destabilising the global economy and weakening US strength: S tier. — 00:13:05
  • 2025-04-25 · How We Form Opinions — Hank's lesson: it is good for things not to become a fight; electric cars are a fight but heat pumps, a better way to heat most American homes, are not, and the longer kept out of fight territory the better. — 00:05:04
  • 2025-04-25 · How We Form Opinions — Hank rejects the right's framing (a failing of educated American women, the end of white people) as terrible, but says the situation exists; if saying so alienates you from your tribe, the mechanism is at work. — 00:07:01
  • 2025-05-02 · I Found the Dumbest Time Zone — Hank says an uninhabited island and its neighbour, US government property managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, are the reason there are 26 hours in a day. — 00:00:00
  • 2025-05-02 · I Found the Dumbest Time Zone — Hank says daylight saving time is dumb and the US should stop doing it. — 00:00:59
  • 2025-05-16 · No One Knows When They Don't Die — Hank says the US passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 and the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990. — 00:00:58
  • 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
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says the US Congress is deciding whether to codify $400 million in cuts to PEPFAR and $500 million in cuts to other US health aid. — 00:01:27
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says the cuts would save about $3 per American, less than one ten-thousandth of the federal budget, yet that $3 does so much good. — 00:01:27
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says the US now gives $1 to the Global Fund for every $2 raised by other partners, and the proposal would change that to $1 for every $4. — 00:02:26
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says they want about $2 billion in US federal spending for the Global Fund, about $6 per American a year; with PEPFAR's full budget, about $20 a year per American. — 00:03:53
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says the US is not the only challenge: about 43% of the Global Fund's money comes from the UK and the EU, which are also pulling back on global health spending. — 00:04:22
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John says chaotic, massive US spending cuts are the main reason hundreds of thousands have had TB treatment interrupted and millions living with HIV have been imperiled. — 00:04:52
  • 2025-06-10 · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — ask: John asks viewers with a say in their governance to tell their elected representatives that $20 a year per American to save millions of lives is the bargain of a lifetime. — 00:06:41
  • 2025-06-27 · You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information — Hank says the first American generation that mostly did not have to worry about getting enough food is still alive. — 00:02:35
  • 2025-06-27 · You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information — Hank says there are ways to speed this up, recalling how successfully America decreased smoking. — 00:12:46
  • 2025-07-01 · What #1 New York Times Bestseller Actually Means — John says Everything Is Tuberculosis is a #1 bestseller because for its first couple of weeks it was the best-selling nonfiction book in the US by the Times' count. — 00:00:29
  • 2025-07-01 · What #1 New York Times Bestseller Actually Means — John says the USA Today list, combining all books, better shows overall sales: Everything Is Tuberculosis is number 80 there but number 6 on the NYT nonfiction list. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-07-01 · What #1 New York Times Bestseller Actually Means — John: To be fair to the Times, John says only 5 of the 79 books ahead of his on USA Today would qualify for the nonfiction list, so here it is fairly accurate. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says that seeing such comments, most people think all Fox News viewers, all Republicans and half of Americans think this way: imagining a group, we assume all its members believe the same things. — 00:01:28
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says that for nearly two decades the share of Americans who are committed climate skeptics has been consistently below 10%. — 00:02:27
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank says that asked whether global warming is happening, roughly four-fifths of Americans say yes. — 00:02:56
  • 2025-07-04 · This Graph Changed My Life — Hank: The graph changed Hank because it clashed with his perception: before, he would have said about half of Americans thought climate change a scam or hoax. — 00:03:20
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — ask: The description asks viewers to check out and support Stand Up for Science, the American Association of University Professors and the ACLU. — video description
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says academics are often, and in the US increasingly, politically homogeneous in ways that don't match the country as a whole. — 00:06:05
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says maybe most important, universities generate ideas challenging the in-group's self-image, which is what 'woke' is, and this looks like an attack on what it means to be American. — 00:06:52
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says this doesn't mean it will work in the US: America is potentially particularly resistant. (hedged) — 00:08:52
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says the US university system is unusually decentralised with no central ministry; federal money is a lever, but only one, unlike more top-down countries. — 00:09:05
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank concludes there are clear reasons the US would be more resilient to these attacks, and that this is visible in how it is playing out. — 00:10:40
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says American universities and research are very powerful and important and do a huge amount of good. — 00:10:52
  • 2025-08-15 · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank says a person using taxpayers' money to force institutions to act as he wants is deeply un-American, and we should recognise it and find it unacceptable. — 00:10:58
  • 2025-08-19 · The Problem with My Brother's Hit New App — John says that as of recording Hank's app Focus Friend is the most popular app in the United States, ahead of ChatGPT, TikTok, Gmail and all others. — 00:00:03
  • 2025-08-22 · Are Languages Alive? — Hank says 'howdy' is hilarious, America's version of 'good day', and he loves saying it in other countries. (playful) — 00:01:30
  • 2025-09-23 · Why Can't I Take My Meds? — John says so-called patient non-compliance contributes to over 125,000 deaths a year in the United States alone, about as many as die from murder and diabetes combined. — 00:00:29
  • 2025-09-23 · Why Can't I Take My Meds? — John says cost is one of the biggest factors: in the US and many other countries people can't afford their medication, which he calls medical unaffordability rather than patient non-compliance. — 00:00:58
  • 2025-09-26 · I've Not Been Doing Well — Hank finds it horrifying that Americans' tax dollars are now being spent to intentionally mislead and misinform the American people. — 00:00:59
  • 2025-09-26 · I've Not Been Doing Well — Hank fears for people he loves who he thinks are less safe in their country than before, and fears losing things he believes in and is proud of about America. — 00:03:06
  • 2025-10-09 · I Like Being Alive — John says some individual trees in the United States are ten times older than the United States itself. — 00:02:37
  • 2025-10-09 · I Like Being Alive — John says the oldest known tree in the world, a bristlecone pine, is in the United States, and the Forest Service keeps its location secret to prevent vandalism. — 00:02:37
  • 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank's example: anyone who 30 years ago told a story starting with America Online rolling out to millions of American homes would not have extended it to what actually happened. — 00:00:20
  • 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank: Once the telegraph spread across the eastern US, people sent word of where the birds were and hunted them en masse; with canning and rail reaching distant markets, this did the passenger pigeon in. — 00:01:41
  • 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — a guest: The clip says passenger pigeons, a few hundred years earlier, numbered an estimated 3 to 5 billion, darkened the sky for hours, and made up as much as 40% of North America's birds. — 00:06:08
  • 2025-10-31 · We Did It… — Hank says a case of cancer in the US costs north of $100,000 per patient, while TB costs around $1,000 per patient. — 00:03:46
  • 2025-11-04 · The Real Question — John says that, before antibiotics, the US and many other countries reduced TB rates by over 80% just by improving nutrition and housing. — 00:00:58
  • 2025-11-04 · The Real Question — John says we know exactly how to drive down TB rates and have done it all over the world, from Chile to Japan to Australia to the United States; the world lacks sufficient money to do it globally. — 00:00:58
  • 2025-11-13 · Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders — John says a man in the US who got TB in the 1940s was treated the same way by his mother, an 85-year gap that John finds damning for how we treat TB in kids. — 00:01:17
  • 2025-11-13 · Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders — John says in the US he would be offered TPT without problem if a relative got TB, but not in many high-burden countries like Indonesia, which reveals problems we face as a world. — 00:10:49
  • 2025-11-13 · Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders — John says advocacy has shown it can make a difference, in initial drafts of the US aid budget for 2026 and in Canada's pledge to the Global Fund. — 00:55:08
  • 2025-11-24 · Good Store Holiday Gift Guide LIVE with Hank and John — announcement: John: Answering 65 viewers, John says US customers must order by December 8 for delivery by Christmas. — 00:21:54
  • 2025-11-25 · Poverty Is Expensive — John says it is impossible for Henry and Isatu to visit him in the US because the Trump administration has imposed a total travel ban on people from Sierra Leone. (doubtful: total) — 00:02:26
  • 2025-11-25 · Poverty Is Expensive — John says the US ban on Sierra Leoneans exists for no reason other than that Sierra Leone is poor. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-12-09 · Hank Green, from A to Z — John says VidCon, a more successful venture, grew from a hotel basement into one of the largest US conferences; it still exists, but the brothers have not owned it since before the pandemic. — 00:04:22

Also named in: The Web is Going to Die

2026