Essential videos by topic

The 697 idea-dense videos grouped by the primary topic of the video, oldest first within each topic. Follow one topic down the years to see how the argument develops. Back to the overview.

Topics: Internet & YouTube (100) · Global development (98) · US politics & society (93) · Philosophy & meaning (85) · Science & nature (60) · Books & writing (54) · Health (45) · Everyday life (32) · World affairs (31) · Economics (24) · History & curiosities (23) · Nerdfighteria (16) · Pop culture (13) · Personal life (9) · Projects (7) · Sports (7)

Internet & YouTube

2010-03-03 · Hank · VidCon Schedule Spectacular! — Hank announces the preliminary VidCon schedule and, disagreeing with John about The Marriage Ref but not about Jeff Zucker, argues that YouTube's top channels make a new kind of authentic 'social video', which is why VidCon should exist. (00:00:56)
2010-05-03 · Hank · Net Neutrality in the Shower — Hank, using his shower as the internet, argues for net neutrality: if telecoms may throttle content (BitTorrent first, then YouTube in favour of their own video), they will, killing the open, innovative internet; he asks viewers to read up at savetheinternet.com. (00:01:27)
2010-11-01 · John · Consider the Lemming — Using Disney's staged lemming suicide in White Wilderness, John argues there is a gulf between information and education: the internet is good at interesting facts but education needs their often boring context, which the brothers will try to provide in an educational week starting Friday. (00:01:47)
2011-11-18 · Hank · Top 5 Reasons ████ ██ ██████ — Hank argues that Congress should not regulate the internet through anti-piracy bills such as the PROTECT IP Act: copyright law matters and fair use needs protecting, but these bills would stifle creativity, punish sites for users' uploads and hand takedown power to corporations. (00:00:24)
2011-11-21 · John · Old Man Narrates Young Girl — From an English teachers' conference in Chicago, John explains the two audiobooks of The Fault in Our Stars as copyright working well, then argues that copyright is complex, that fair use limits once cut a Millay quotation from Looking for Alaska, and that the bills before Congress (SOPA) would deepen the advantage of those who can afford lawyers. (00:01:24)
2012-01-20 · Hank · Thoughts on SOPA From New Orleans — Walking New Orleans' French Quarter after the SOPA/PIPA blackout, Hank compares the internet to an infinite street of street performers that can't be regulated like a normal street, argues SOPA protects corporations and old media business models rather than people, and is proud the internet banded together to stop it. (00:00:38)
2012-05-22 · John · You ARE The Product — Answering Hank's question of how a free Facebook can be worth $100 billion, John argues that free services sell their users to advertisers, that ads do shape behavior, and that being commodified should be a conscious choice; he asks Nerdfighters whether ads should fund Nerdfighteria. (00:00:44)
2013-01-11 · Hank · On the Ownership of Ideas — Hank argues that people have the same ideas concurrently and constantly borrow (DFTBA came from John's friend Katie), that feeling ownership differs from owning, that the internet's derivative culture is making strict copyright obsolete while corporations decide what is allowed, and that free ideas are better for society. (00:00:00)
2013-01-29 · John · Across Three Continents: A Tale of Tumblr, Copyright, and Excellent Posters — Replying to Hank's video on the ownership of ideas, John agrees copyright law is broken but says creators need protection; telling how a TFIOS fan poster made across three continents reached DFTBA through a royalty deal, he argues that until the law improves people must be fair to each other and never let copyright make them afraid to create. (00:00:00)
2013-03-15 · Hank · Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes — Hank worries that YouTube is drifting toward the old media system of a few big, rich players and argues that viewers and creators should keep it open; he launches two creative contests, plans daily April vlogs and asks for help and discussion on a better funding model than advertising. (00:00:00)
2013-03-20 · John · Ads Work...but for Whom? — Answering Hank's call to discuss funding, John argues that advertising rewards the most views rather than the best, weighs five funding models from the comments and favours a public-radio-style model in which people support what they value because they want it to thrive. (00:00:39)
2013-05-24 · Hank · What's Up with Start Ups — Hank argues that tech platforms are valued not for revenue but for the users' time they capture, a weird and worrying model; he prefers businesses that treat users as people they need, as he says Vlogbrothers does. (00:00:00)
2014-05-02 · Hank · Hank vs. Hank: The Net Neutrality Debate in 3 Minutes — Hank stages a debate between himself as an internet user and as a cable company, arguing that ISPs should not sell fast lanes, then asks viewers to tell the FCC to classify broadband as a common carrier service. (00:00:12)
2014-08-15 · Hank · The Bizarre State of Copyright — Hank explains copyright, patents, trademarks and fair use, and argues that on YouTube copyright is now policed by Content ID rather than by law: not the fairest or most legal solution, but the only possible one, and kind of cool. (00:02:05)
2015-02-17 · John · Places I've Never Been — John tells how a line long attributed to his novel Paper Towns, and sold as a DFTBA poster, was in fact written by a 13-year-old Nerdfighter, and argues that his own failure to notice shows how broken credit, sourcing and copyright are online. (00:02:36)
2015-06-19 · Hank · 19 Ways to Not Suck on the Internet — Hank, who feels he is from the internet more than from Missoula, offers guidelines for good internet citizenship: treat people online as people, cite sources, attribute creators' work, fix Wikipedia, forgive newcomers and yourself, and leave people and places better than you found them. (00:00:27)
2015-07-17 · Hank · Is YouTube Good for Humanity? — Anxious a week before VidCon, Hank weighs whether online video and the internet are good for humanity: he sees connection, access and tolerance alongside platform consolidation, bias and creator success turning into traditional fame, and says culture can't be controlled but its members should consider its effects. (00:00:39)
2015-10-27 · John · Understanding YouTube Red: Paid Subscriptions and the Future of Online Video — John weighs YouTube Red, the new $10-a-month ad-free subscription: good for creators and a welcome step away from sole reliance on advertising, but he worries it could create two classes of viewers and make YouTube more like cable TV. (00:02:02)
2015-11-24 · John · Crime and Outrage — John argues that because we seek out and share what outrages us, attention hops between small outrages (pennies, Martin Shkreli) while complicated problems go unaddressed, leaving Americans more afraid and pessimistic than the data on crime, health and the economy warrant. (00:01:09)
2016-02-05 · Hank · Honest YouTube Talk Time — Hank, now CEO of a roughly 30-person media company, argues that YouTube has grown crowded and professional, that the pure meritocracy of its mythology is gone and attention flows to those who already have it, likens it to the music industry, urges support for small creators via tools like Patreon, and resolves that he and John should stay authentic even if less relatable. (00:00:50)
2016-07-19 · John · Pretty Bad Ways to Start a Conversation — Using a Kanye West lyric from 'Power', John argues that name-calling, a vague 'they', gotchas and outrage are bad ways to start conversations that still work because hostility gets answered with hostility; he admits his own unsupported gun statistic, praises Hank's plus-sign reply trick, and asks viewers for more ideas. (00:01:04)
2016-07-22 · Hank · Ending the Age of Outrage (at least in ourselves, if not in the world) — Hank argues we have entered an age of outrage because the first age of the social internet rewards angering content regardless of truth; internet communities need conscious leadership and engaged citizens, and he points to plussing, a kind Nerdfighteria and VidCon's Pulse fundraiser as signs of a coming better age. (00:00:00)
2016-09-23 · Hank · How do YouTubers Make Money? — Starting from a reporter's question at the first VidCon, Hank explains how YouTubers make money (AdSense, brand deals, YouTube grants, LA gigs, touring, licensing, own platforms, Patreon), argues that different content needs different monetization and that it has become harder, and presents the Internet Creators Guild he started. (00:00:41)
2016-12-02 · Rosianna Halse Rojas · Logging Off — Guest host Rosianna Halse Rojas, filling in during Hank's paternity leave, describes logging off the social internet and argues that the internet is not intrinsically good or bad but unfinished infrastructure made of people that we keep building; she wonders whether platforms like Twitter were a shortcut that skipped the long hard work, and admits she doesn't know. (00:00:26)
2017-04-18 · John · Framing — John argues that every video and social media feed is a framed, curated construction: telling the truth means choosing which true story to tell, public lives are self-portraiture rather than reality, and remembering that about himself may help him understand others. (00:00:40)
2017-04-21 · Hank · The Adpocalypse: What it Means — Explaining the Adpocalypse, Hank argues that YouTube ads, its whole business, are precarious and undervalue viewers; after advertisers fled over ads on vile videos and the algorithms tightened, he asks whether the radio-era ad model is a holdover and predicts creators will find other ways to be paid. (00:00:51)
2017-05-30 · John · What Should We Keep? — Prompted by his one photo of himself at 23 and an academic library's offer to preserve Brotherhood 2.0 and Nerdfighteria material, John argues that internet users create far more than they preserve, that not everything should be archived, and asks viewers what from Nerdfighteria should be kept. (00:00:29)
2017-12-19 · John · History Is Happening — Tired, struggling with OCD and compulsive scrolling that makes history feel like something happening to us, John says the 11th Project for Awesome (almost $2 million raised) reminded him the social internet can make the world suck less and, via Raj Panjabi's 'no condition is permanent', that we are not mere passengers in history. (00:00:00)
2018-01-05 · Hank · Making a Better YouTube — Asked why he doesn't start a YouTube competitor, Hank frames the choice as revolt or reform and gives six reasons he won't leave YouTube (it works, his problems aren't his viewers', the algorithm, discovery, any big platform would have the same problems, attachment), arguing that you improve a place you love by working for it rather than fleeing; he plugs a creator-focused VidCon Europe. (00:00:00)
2018-01-09 · John · Your Attention — John says everyone agrees the internet sucks, notes that it always has and that any golden age of online discourse is misremembered, yet refuses to accept it: platforms like Twitter are built to capture attention, as a zookeeper paid per roar would keep a lion scared, so our power lies in choosing where our attention goes. (00:01:47)
2018-03-06 · John · The Broccoli Tree: A Parable — Retelling, in the second person, how a Swedish photographer's Instagram pictures made a lakeside 'Broccoli Tree' the social internet's most famous tree until someone sawed it down in 2017, John argues that to share something is to risk losing it, but hoarding what we love still loses it, only alone; the tree is gone but its beauty survives. (00:02:37)
2018-04-13 · Hank · Who is in Control? — Starting from Hugo Gernsback's 1911 prediction of personalized news, Hank argues that today's feeds are chosen by self-built programs serving platforms, that social media sells their power over us (Cambridge Analytica, AI inference from little data), that users are the product, and that if you don't control the feed, the feed controls you. (00:00:00)
2018-05-25 · Hank · Please Unsubscribe — After a creator reported that their subscription feed was no longer chronological, Hank argues that the sub feed, though shrinking and messy, is YouTube's contract with creators and users, the one place not controlled by a computer; YouTube must not fix it by breaking it, and he asks viewers to unsubscribe from what they don't watch. (00:00:10)
2018-07-03 · John · How Does This End? — On vacation, John asks how things end online: his Myspace survives only as nostalgia, YouTube has big problems but is amazing, and his real concern is how Vlogbrothers ends, which he wants to keep sustainable and fun; he asks viewers what they get from the videos and, via a survey, for three weeks of unpunished vacation a year. (00:00:19)
2018-07-31 · John · On Prepositions — John walks through the maddening rules of English location prepositions (in, on, at) and argues that we are not 'on' our phones but 'in' them: a disembodied, thrilling, terrifying and weird space for which he lacks both understanding and language, more like a city than an island. (00:01:58)
2018-08-10 · Hank · My Giant Robot Suit — Hank borrows Patrick Rothfuss's metaphor that everyone online wears a robot suit they cannot see: a big one brings reach, money and influence but also makes harm easy and you look invulnerable, so the powerful must see their power in others' reactions, handle criticism without feeling victimized, and step lightly and kindly. (00:00:00)
2018-11-06 · John · Taking a Year Off — John says his own internet isn't working: social internet companies have hacked his unusually susceptible attention to monetize it, his attempts to cut back have failed, so after the Project for Awesome he will take a year off Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter while staying on YouTube. (00:00:29)
2019-01-08 · John · I Quit Social Media. Here's How It's Going — A month into his year without social media, John reports he is less anxious, has more time and gets bored into having thoughts, but misses it and finds that quitting platforms fixes nothing: the internet is not the problem, his internet is; his Crash Course on navigating digital information helped more. (00:02:12)
2019-02-01 · Hank · We Have Destroyed Copyright Law — Prompted by a rights holder blocking John's Tuesday video with sports clips, Hank explains YouTube's Content ID claims, blocks and strikes, defends the claiming system while naming its flaws, and argues that copyright as written is broken and online is now governed by platform policy rather than law. (00:02:55)
2019-02-05 · John · Deepfake: A Brief History of Unreliable Images — Opening with a deepfake that puts his old mustache on both brothers, John surveys a history of staged, forged and airbrushed photographs used to spread disinformation and argues that such images work because we trust our eyes, so we must learn to live in a world where we cannot believe them. (00:02:55)
2019-03-08 · Hank · Does "The Press" Hate YouTube? — Responding to MatPat's video on negative media portrayals of YouTube, Hank argues that the press covers YouTube, like Montana, only when it is threatening because its powerful readers and ad buyers don't understand it; YouTube also has real problems and power, and either there is no mainstream media anymore or YouTube is part of it. (00:01:11)
2019-03-15 · Hank · Why We Stopped Making Explainers: EXPLAINED — Recalling the channel's decade of explainers since John's 2007 Nepal toilet-paper video, Hank asks why they stopped: 'explained' promises an honest whole story he doesn't trust himself to give, society blurs journalism and opinion, others do it better with editorial rigor, and audiences increasingly trust charisma over rigor. (00:00:29)
2019-05-14 · John · An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers — In an open letter to professional YouTubers, John shares lessons from 12 years of online video: careers are short like athletes', learn personal finance, weigh value against money, remember luck, stay a person amid adulation and hate, and, as Hank says, diversify your identity. (00:00:29)
2019-06-21 · Hank · How to Lie While Telling the Truth — Hank names the 'head lie': a true statement that becomes a lie once it hits your head, often in headlines. Three examples from one week (US birth rates, Tesla Autopilot safety figures, Carnival's sulfur pollution) lead him to argue that misleading true information is little different from lying, and that informers are obliged not to do it. (00:00:00)
2019-10-18 · Hank · They Hacked Me — After hackers got into a couple of his accounts using an old reused password, Hank argues hacking is inevitable, urges viewers to check haveibeenpwned.com, use a password manager and turn on two-factor authentication, and demands that internet companies, or politicians, provide better security tools. (00:00:58)
2019-11-19 · John · Kylie Jenner Shows Me What's Wrong with Reddit — John unpicks a viral Reddit outrage claiming Kylie Jenner thinks she owns 'rise and shine': trademarking a phrase is not owning it, the cease-and-desist story was false, and Jenner's denial was misleading; he argues that distillation becomes deception and that outrage beats nuance online. (00:03:21)
2020-05-29 · Hank · Get Paid — Hank, in favor of creators getting paid, says everyone should know what is being sold: star power sells movies, but people won't follow celebrities to Quibi, and when creators are paid to move to Mixer or Spotify exclusives they are selling their audience, which worries him most for podcasts. (00:01:44)
2020-07-17 · Hank · So Much to See — Drawing on his time on TikTok and McLuhan's 'the medium is the message', Hank argues that platforms and algorithms shape what content gets made and for whom; TikTok's lowered constraints bring us closer to a world of functionally infinite content, which fractures shared touchstones but opens access to people who never had it. (00:00:31)
2020-08-25 · John · Somebody once told me… — John dissects a viral TikTok about Noah, a supposed time traveler from 2030, to show how misinformation spreads: we trust what people tell us, seek what freaks us out, and algorithms reward engagement over accuracy, so even fake claims shape our minds. (00:00:00)
2021-01-15 · Hank · Influencers and Insurrectionists — Hank argues that online creators seek affirmation and status, not money, and that the Capitol rioters filming themselves were influencers as well as insurrectionists, caught in a creator-audience feedback loop and an arms race of radicalization; the word influencer names something bigger and scarier than we thought. (00:01:10)
2021-03-02 · John · What's Not in the Frame — John reveals that the last two weeks were his most stressful in a while because a family member had COVID, explains why weekly videos make it hard to say how he is really doing, and reflects that the social internet shows only what is inside the frame, asking viewers how to navigate it better. (00:01:27)
2021-04-30 · Hank · Are We the Baddies?? A Quick Look at a Discourse — Using two viral tweets about why supervillains care about real problems, Hank argues that Twitter is indispensable but dystopian, oversimplifying ideas to make people angrier, and that the deeper lesson of superhero stories is that individuals cannot solve systemic problems: only we can. (00:00:00)
2021-06-04 · Hank · Is Twitter Redeemable? — Hank argues against abandoning Twitter: it heightens emotions and manufactures outrage, as a paywalled headline about the never-conceived showed, but it is too important a cultural force to leave; new media eventually become net goods, though he cannot see how the internet will. (00:00:29)
2021-06-29 · John · Sneezing is not normal. — John can't stop thinking of a Dear Hank and John listener's doctor who said sneezing is not normal and he never sneezes; he argues that absurd, outrageous statements lodge in minds in a way nuance doesn't, which rewards the loudest stupidity in our attention economy, and that with no bright line between online and real life this shapes who we are. (00:01:41)
2021-07-16 · Hank · Should You Abandon Social Media? — Hank, who worries about social media but likes it and is good at it, rejects the choice between staying on or leaving Twitter: use it the way you wish others did, refuse manufactured outrage, and fix big complicated systems rather than throwing them away, since he still believes in the internet's promise. (00:00:00)
2021-08-17 · John · Who Owns Nerdfighteria? — Prompted by Jennifer Burek Pierce's book Narratives, Nerdfighters, and New Media, John asks who owns the value made in an online community like Nerdfighteria (creators, YouTube, viewers who expand the work), notes that laws, norms and platform terms all govern it, and argues that money is far from the most important thing Nerdfighteria makes. (00:00:58)
2021-10-07 · Hank · We're Thinking About Facebook Wrong — After Facebook's outage and Frances Haugen's leaked research, Hank argues we are at the very beginning of a communication revolution and bad at it, that platforms' promotion feeds a loop of fear and righteous superiority, and that Facebook, already regulating society, should be responsible for what it promotes. (00:06:45)
2022-04-15 · Hank · Are You Stuck in The Sad Gap — Hank names 'the sad gap': learning about a problem first shows its frightening consequences and villains, often oversimplified for engagement, leaving people in outrage and hopelessness; more knowledge reveals complexity and solutions, but an internet that rewards adding worries keeps us stuck on many topics at once. (00:00:00)
2022-05-13 · Hank · What Elon Musk Got Wrong About Twitter — Tracing Elon Musk's statements from his free-speech poll to his deal to buy Twitter, Hank argues that Musk came to want subjective moderation done his way, that Twitter cannot function without subjective moderation, and that the real problem may be letting a private company become the de facto town square. (00:01:00)
2022-06-17 · Hank · Are You Eating a Credit Card Every Week? — Hank says you are not eating a credit card's worth of microplastics a week, and traces how the claim reached mainstream news in 2022: a WWF-commissioned range became a talking point, a Vienna paper cited only its upper bound, peer review missed it, a press release led with it, and outlets fact-checked only as far as the peer-reviewed paper. He concludes that normal biases and the attention economy make sense-making very hard. (00:00:29)
2022-09-23 · Hank · The Real Difference Between YouTube and TikTok — At the YouTube Creator Summit, Hank argues that the real difference between YouTube videos and Shorts, TikToks or Reels is not length or format but whether you choose to watch or choose to keep watching, and that both systems are good, feeds especially for discovering new creators. (00:00:29)
2022-09-29 · Hank · The Kony 2012 of Roads - Solar Freakin' Roadways — Revisiting the viral 2014 Solar Freakin' Roadways campaign, Hank argues big simple solutions are rare because everything is complicated; such stories feed conspiracy thinking when the division of expertise lacks trust, and big problems get solved only when people with varied expertise trust each other and work together. (00:00:29)
2022-10-21 · Hank · This 'Math Test' Changed How I See Humanity — Using a viral, ambiguous math problem (12 or 18?), Hank argues that vague questions on which it is easy to form simple, conflicting opinions are the ones the social internet amplifies, driving wedges even among people who mostly agree, while their answers are often invalid because the questions are wrong. (00:00:58)
2022-10-25 · John · Instantly Debateable — Replying to Hank's video on dichotomies, John argues that 'instantly debatable' framing wins online engagement (his Liz Truss joke tweet versus news of Kissy Psychiatric Hospital's accreditation; his penny crusade), but simple engagement is not the actual engagement (volunteering, fundraising, lobbying) that brought child deaths from 11 million to under 5 million a year. (00:00:00)
2022-11-11 · Hank · Elon Was Right — Hank says Elon Musk was right about two things he missed: Musk's audience has a legitimate worry about unknown people deciding what platforms allow, which is about vibes (who decides) rather than policy, and people flock to Twitter for reality-TV drama rather than stability. (00:00:00)
2022-12-09 · Hank · Things are Changing Very Fast — Following John's AI video, Hank says new technologies push people into camps and it will take years to know even the questions (such as whether AI image models plagiarize); his big worry is that a new AI wrench arrives before society has absorbed the last communication revolution, and that AI will be good at making people fear and dislike each other. (00:01:56)
2023-03-03 · Hank · The Law That Made the Internet — Hank explains Section 230, which keeps platforms from being treated as the publisher of their users' content, and the Supreme Court case asking whether YouTube is liable for its recommendations; he finds that idea a little bit right but hard to draw the line on, is glad the Court looks unlikely to find YouTube liable, and argues new legislation, not 1996 law, should settle it. (00:01:20)
2023-03-31 · Hank · The Coming AI Invasion — Bracing for a coming wave of AI developments, Hank tells how mongooses brought to Hawaii to control rats devastated native species instead, and suggests AI may fill society with invasive 'counterfeit humans' controlled by anyone from a teenager to Vladimir Putin; ecology suggests isolated groups are most vulnerable and careful control can work, and rapid change is coming. (00:01:38)
2023-04-21 · Hank · On TikTok Bans — As Montana, his home state, passes the first state TikTok ban, Hank, perhaps its most-followed TikToker, says the state ban is probably unenforceable and performative, that a national ban raises real worries about China's influence, but that removing a whole platform, with its cultures, would be a dramatic, unprecedented loss. (00:00:47)
2023-08-18 · Hank · The #1 Tip for People Who Use the Internet — Hank gives his number one tip for anyone posting online: by 'the axiom of virality' content with wide reach draws every conceivable take, the rare ones are weird and shocking and get boosted by algorithms, so a take's mere existence does not make it worth attention. (00:00:45)
2024-01-02 · John · Being Old on YouTube — On the 17th anniversary of his first Brotherhood 2.0 video, John reflects that the brothers have been successful but never that successful, says he is not old yet but old on YouTube and likes their way of being YouTubers, and announces he will skip weeks when he doesn't want to make a video, trusting Nerdfighteria to stay strong. (00:00:58)
2024-01-05 · Hank · I'm Scared of 2024...So Here's 3 Optimistic Thoughts — Hank lists his worries for 2024 (AI and young people, nationalism and war, Trump on the ballot, higher education costs, outrage-driven platforms, inequality), then offers three optimistic thoughts: creators' pushback slowing generative AI, a US economy that avoided recession and tamed inflation, and signs people are healing from the twin shocks of content platforms and the pandemic; he is not optimistic about humanity but forgiving of it. (00:03:29)
2024-01-12 · Hank · How to Detect AI Images (and why it doesn't matter) — After Magic: The Gathering's Twitter account insisted an AI-generated background was human-made, Hank gives three steps for spotting AI images, the last being that none of it matters: detection tricks will soon fail, and the real question is when and why we choose to scrutinize anything. He then plugs the P4A matching fund. (00:02:08)
2024-01-26 · Hank · On YouTuber Retirement — Back from eight days of stand-up shows in Southern California that ended with recording his cancer comedy special, Hank contrasts formats that finish (books, songs, specials) with a YouTube channel, which is like one song that never ends; he argues a YouTuber 'retiring' is really a person finishing something, that the channel has become a decades-long unit of creation, and that 'retirement' is the wrong word. (00:01:53)
2024-01-30 · John · How Vlogbrothers Will End — Continuing Hank's discussion of YouTuber retirement, John uses TV shows and professional athletes as lenses to argue that everything ends and a long run is a success, congratulates Tom Scott for completing his project, and says the ideal end for Vlogbrothers is completing the project, though the 'game' hasn't yet told him he's done. (00:00:00)
2024-03-08 · Hank · I Believed These Four Lies — Hank walks through four things he believed and later found false or misleading (a rent-versus-income graph, a quote attributed to Jane Goodall, Jon Stewart's 8% tax figure, and a reading of NOAA's billion-dollar-disaster data), then argues everyone is less skeptical of what fits their worldview and that he must keep a strong alliance to the truth despite the incentives of recommendation systems. (00:00:00)
2024-05-21 · John · Getting Personal about Getting Personal — Using a People article about his marriage, John explains how press interviews feed a 'content machine', tells the Human Stain book-club story he gave the reporter, and argues that, like his rule of not discussing his marriage in public, everyone now needs rules for how much of themselves to share. (00:00:00)
2024-07-19 · Hank · The Assassination Attempt and the Comfort of Certainty — After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Hank argues that doomscrolling is an attempt to learn what world we now live in, but that people pick facts about the shooter, Thomas Crooks, to fit stories they already believe; the one true answer, that we don't know, is the hardest to live with. (00:00:00)
2024-08-23 · Hank · Is Google Training AI on YouTube Videos? — Hank argues that Google appears to train its generative AI on independent YouTubers' videos under the standard terms-of-service license's derivative-works clause, as it does with Reddit content it bought; he says creators never agreed to this new use and asks YouTube to let them opt out. (00:04:52)
2024-08-27 · John · How The Internet Is Rigged — Replying to Hank's video on AI training, John argues that the user-generated internet has always been rigged against its users: early YouTube creators got nothing while investors got rich, platforms still undervalue creators, and Google's training of language models on their work endangers YouTube's revenue-sharing bargain; he names ways forward and says the future is not inevitable. (00:04:52)
2024-09-17 · John · My Consciousness. Their Capital. — John argues that algorithms decide how internet users feel; during his month away while emerging from depression he found that nature, too (a randomized reward while fishing, a coyote in his path), decides how he feels, and that algorithms exploit that biology to turn his consciousness into their capital, which he wants to remember as he returns online. (00:00:00)
2024-09-20 · Hank · Do I Regret TikTok? — Four years after joining TikTok, Hank weighs what he loved there (a culture factory that changed his life) against what he regrets: helping give power to a platform whose attention arms race rewards fear and outrage and that is structurally weak at moderation; he argues platforms are places where we live, with good and bad neighborhoods. (00:00:58)
2024-11-05 · John · Why Do I Still Make YouTube Videos? — Prompted by Hank's extra Sunday video, John asks why he still makes YouTube videos after almost 20 years: not for money (he has enough) or likes and fame (which distort the self), but out of a good web of obligation to Complexly, Good Store and their charity work, and above all out of love for Nerdfighteria. (00:00:29)
2024-11-22 · Hank · Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment — Hank argues that every media revolution (the printing press, radio, now the many-to-many social internet) brings a rise of reckless, anti-establishment populism, which he calls a marketing strategy rather than an ideology; the internet now devours trust in institutions, expertise and the press, and he asks how to shorten the slow road back to a world where better information wins. (00:06:11)
2025-06-20 · Hank · 'Influencer' Must Die. — At VidCon 2025, where he was inducted into the VidCon Hall of Fame, Hank argues that being a YouTuber is a craft, not a business: he hates the advertising-industry word 'influencer', compares creators to musicians, and says the new part of the craft is being your own distribution, which is about empathy and building an audience. (00:00:38)
2025-06-24 · John · Am I Cigarettes? — John compares his compulsive use of the social internet to his years of smoking and Nicorette: he argues the social internet, though it builds community and gave him his life, is not a net positive for humanity, admits he cannot stop, and worries that by contributing to it he is not just smoking cigarettes but is cigarettes. (00:00:58)
2025-06-27 · Hank · You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information — Answering John's 'Am I Cigarettes?', Hank argues the cigarette metaphor is dangerous because information, unlike nicotine, can be good; he proposes food instead: after millennia of scarcity we face an abundance of hyperpalatable information, personalized by platforms, which education alone will not fix, and he hopes simple stories exposing the manipulators will help, as with smoking. (00:01:27)
2025-10-06 · Hank · The Web is Going to Die — In a Thoughts From Places video from Garnet, a Montana ghost town, Hank argues that ghost towns are rare because people and places bind together, but that the internet is full of them: platforms like Vine, Myspace and Google+ were abandoned, the web itself is becoming a ghost town, and one day even Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and this channel will be too. (00:02:22)
2026-02-03 · John · Does the truth still matter? — Distressed by federal immigration enforcement in the US, John tells Hank he does not know how to talk about it online when people are siloed by information systems that reward attention over accuracy, but finds thin hope in evidence that the truth still has power, as public opinion on ICE shifts. (00:00:29)
2026-03-06 · Hank · How Do You Create When You Don't Feel Safe — Previewing a conversation podcast he is making, for which John is planned as first guest, Hank tells John that creating in public feels unsafe, online and always. He says people cope by creating less, creating in safer spaces or safer formula-driven ways, or growing a hard, mean shell. The hardest and rarest option is to be brave, as John is, carefully. (00:00:30)
2026-03-27 · Hank · What is 'Slop' (and why it gives me hope) — Pegged to OpenAI shutting down Sora and the TikTok hit Fruit Love Island, Hank tells John that slop is not simply AI or low effort: it is content so easy to make that its abundance destroys its own value. He argues that this may make people care more about scarce human effort. (00:01:14)
2026-04-24 · Hank · The AI Question that No AI Person Asks — While John visits the Maternal Center of Excellence, Hank argues that AI fails his 'shelter bench' test: housing and TB persist not for lack of intelligence but because those who need help lack power; intelligence, now abundant, is not wisdom, and no one knows whether AI will let wisdom flourish. (00:00:00)
2026-06-02 · John · The Instagramification of Human Experience — John tells Hank why Andy Warhol, subject of the film inside his novel Hollywood, Ending, foresaw the flattening of 3D experience onto screens: repeated images such as Jackie Kennedy after JFK's assassination lose emotional force, algorithms now demand ever more outrageous content, and everyone now trades private experience for public attention. (00:01:27)
2026-06-05 · Hank · The Things We Don't Discuss — Hank tells John that being made out of the internet tempts creators to treat views as metrics, as TikTok's inflated view counts show, though views are people; he launches his podcast Humans with a clip of John on Mark Twain, not sharing everything, and trading trauma for attention online. (00:00:29)
2026-07-10 · Hank · How Status Destroys Us — Rereading John's unreleased Hollywood, Ending, Hank reflects that John helped define authors' relationship with the internet and that The Fault in Our Stars has no real villain, then argues that the status now tied to being a YouTuber distorts people and, in an interconnected world, concentrates in those who want it most; he and John are best goofing where no money or status is attached. He plugs preorders and Smush, a word game made with John. (00:00:29)
2026-08-07 · Hank · Just Trying to Figure Out My Job — After a week of criticism of his public post about being enticed by LLMs, Hank warns against audience capture while valuing honest listening, thanks John, apologizes to Complexly staff whose work was questioned, and announces a personal AI policy: his job is to be himself and make fewer, better things. (00:03:21)
2026-09-18 · Hank · John was Wrong about YouTube Views — Hank corrects John's video on YouTube views: the likes-times-30 trick means dollars per thousand likes, and YouTube's real change is counting autoplay on scroll and hover as views, as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook long have; he calls it manipulative but understandable, and says the channel's viewers are people, not views. (00:04:56)
2026-10-01 · Hank · Are We Still YouTubers? — Replying to John's video saying the brothers aren't the best YouTubers, Hank argues they are good at it but no longer really YouTubers: there is no word for what Vlogbrothers does because few do it and the internet lets weird, unboxed things exist; 'content' is just the default label, and his art is the channel, the brotherhood and what the community builds. (00:00:00)
2026-10-02 · John · the most powerful attention-consuming tools in the history of the world — On his Hollywood, Ending tour and replying to Hank's video on whether they are still YouTubers, John argues that 'consuming content' really means engaging with art, that our attention is enormously valuable and we choose who captures it, that art predates capitalism and the current system will end, and that Nerdfighteria has demanded the brothers make art rather than content. (00:00:00)
2026-10-30 · Hank · The Last Normal Year — Answering video essays that call 2026 the last normal year, Hank argues that 2016 was: that year online ads passed TV, mobile passed desktop and feeds went algorithmic, and since then machine learning that sells our attention to fear and outrage has eroded trust; the For You page is building us. (00:01:59)

Global development

2007-06-28 · John · June 28: How to Be a Microfinancier — John recounts the brothers' visit to poor neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic, explains how lack of credit traps people in poverty and how a microfinance organization's borrowers repay and grow, and proposes that he and Hank (and maybe Nerdfighters) lend through Kiva.org. (00:02:36)
2007-06-29 · Hank · How to be a Microfinancier Part 2 — Following John's video, Hank reflects that meeting the women in the Dominican Republic showed him that poor people are 'just people', not the downtrodden figures of TV commercials, calls microfinance a powerful way for them to improve their own lives, and lends $200 on Kiva.org on camera. (00:01:26)
2008-04-08 · John · Nerdfighting in Bangladesh — John argues that guilt-based charity ads make the poor a 'them', while poverty is an us problem ('there is no them, only facets of us'), and asks Nerdfighters to help fund Nerdfighter Sean's work in Bangladesh as an experiment in community. (00:00:48)
2008-12-11 · Hank · The 2008 Project for Awesome!!! — Hank announces the 2008 Project for Awesome on December 17, a day when the YouTube community promotes charities, explains how to take part by making videos or joining the supporters' mailing list, and says he and John will each give $1,000 to a P4A charity. (00:00:00)
2010-12-17 · John · PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2010: Save the Children and Partners in Health — John launches P4A 2010, pledging with Hank a penny per comment (up to a million) to Save the Children and Partners in Health; through a story of Iraqi graffiti that read 'happy birthday, sir, despite the circumstances', he argues we wrongly imagine distant people as 'other', while Nerdfighteria's projects show they are part of 'us'. (00:00:47)
2011-03-21 · Hank · Helping Haiti — On World Water Day, Hank reports from his trip with Water.org to Savann Tabak, a village near Pignon, Haiti, and introduces its well committee, explaining why Water.org requires a broad community coalition. Having seen how Water.org operates, he asks viewers to follow the village's progress and donate at my.water.org/vlogbrothers. (00:01:01)
2011-04-04 · Hank · Thoughts from The Well — Hank narrates the Savann Tabak villagers' walk to their water source, past a broken well, a sugar cane mill and storehouses on stilts, to a muddy spring, and reports that about six villagers recently died of cholera. He says they need a sustainable well, which Water.org will provide, and asks viewers to follow and give. (00:02:07)
2011-10-26 · Hank · 7,000,000,000 People — As world population reaches 7 billion, Hank argues that calling population 'the problem' is useless and objectifies people; the real problems are distribution of food and water, and the trends (birth rates, poverty, disease, education) make him hopeful. (00:00:58)
2012-12-04 · John · Time for AWESOME — John introduces the sixth annual Project for Awesome, framing it through his own privilege (Kenyon, internet access, $249 cameras) and the importance of extending opportunity, after celebrating Time naming The Fault in Our Stars the top novel of 2012. (00:00:00)
2012-12-17 · John · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. — John launches the sixth Project for Awesome and makes the case for his charity, Save the Children: poverty is complex, Save the Children responds to it complexly and efficiently, and children born into poverty are not 'other'. (00:01:21)
2013-05-31 · Hank · Optimism is Not Insane — Hank says his earlier video on humanity's impact on Earth was paralyzing and wrong in spirit: our brains overweight bad news, humans keep solving problems together, and working for a better future comes from optimism. (00:00:25)
2013-12-17 · John · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! — John launches P4A 2013 and argues for Save the Children: the crises in the Central African Republic and among Syrian refugees are complex and no charity will fix them, but helping children there does matter, because distant people are still our neighbors. (00:02:05)
2013-12-31 · John · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John starts the new year with good news: falling divorce, unintended pregnancy, infant and malaria mortality, poverty, cancer and traffic deaths, rising literacy and internet speeds; this progress is tenuous and partly unsustainable, but real and worth celebrating. (00:00:00)
2014-01-03 · Hank · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! — Replying to doubters of John's good-news video, Hank argues that psychology, probability, entropy, the gradualness of good and confirmation bias make the world seem worse than it is; the world is okay, so be cautious but not pessimistic. (00:01:11)
2014-01-21 · John · Are Poor Countries Doomed? — Drawing on Bill and Melinda Gates's new letter, John argues that poor countries are not doomed, foreign aid is not a waste, and saving children's lives does not cause overpopulation — and that rich countries benefit too. (00:00:00)
2014-06-10 · John · Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John opens the Nerdfighter Book Club discussion of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, arguing that its first four chapters complicate easy ideas about poverty, corruption, microfinance and charity, and that luck drives the narrative. (00:00:28)
2014-07-22 · John · Ambiguous Victories and Real Progress: Behind the Beautiful Forevers — John, discussing charity in the Nerdfighter Book Club pick Behind the Beautiful Forevers, argues that charity's results are rarely unambiguous, that givers should look at what charities do and how well, and that we must embrace complexity while data shows real progress. (00:00:16)
2014-07-29 · John · Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Visiting neonatologist Dr. Mulualem Gessesse's NICU in Addis Ababa, John argues that Ethiopia's falling child mortality comes from supporting Ethiopia's own health strategy, that aid must listen, and that the world's poorest children are our kids too. (00:01:22)
2014-08-12 · John · EBOLA! (...meningitis) — John, recovering from viral meningitis after the internet 'diagnosed' him with Ebola, argues that the West African outbreak spreads because of poor health infrastructure and that Americans make it about a vague 'us', which helps no one. (00:01:04)
2014-08-19 · John · Baby Names: Thoughts from Rural Ethiopia — Touring Ethiopia's tiered rural health system with the Gates Foundation, John argues that the real heroes are Ethiopian health workers, volunteers and mothers, and that the true reason babies are now named at birth — birth certificates — shows heartwarming narratives and boring bureaucracy can coincide. (00:00:13)
2014-08-26 · John · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John explains why food is a weird commodity that traps poor farmers in vicious cycles of low capital and price collapse, and argues that breaking them, as a World Food Programme project in Ethiopia tries to, matters a great deal though there is no magic bullet. (00:01:51)
2014-09-09 · John · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Global Health — In a bonus conversation filmed at an Ethiopian health center, Bill Gates tells John that primary health care and vaccines have sharply cut child deaths, and argues that health is the central lever for a poor country to escape the poverty trap. (00:01:08)
2014-09-09 · John · Going to College (in Ethiopia) — Drawing on his meeting with Addis Ababa University students during his Ethiopia trip with Bill Gates, John argues that Africa and Ethiopia defy the one-place stereotype: Ethiopia is both poor and rising, and children saved by global health can grow up to study. (00:00:00)
2014-09-22 · John · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Agriculture — In a bonus conversation, Bill Gates tells John that better seeds, fertilizer, advice, credit and insurance could triple African farm productivity despite market failures, and that, climate change apart, poor farmers' prospects are mostly a positive story. (00:00:00)
2014-09-23 · John · Looking Away — John admits that in Ethiopia he kept looking away from suffering children and worried mothers, argues that changing the world means not looking away but listening, and, since the people he met named water as a basic need, asks viewers to donate to a Water.org fundraiser matched by Bill Gates. (00:00:52)
2014-09-29 · John · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress — In a bonus conversation, Bill Gates tells John that after smallpox the focus is polio, then malaria; that good inventions must be matched to poor countries' needs; that capitalism's windfalls should go where a dollar saves most lives; and that Ethiopia's falling child death and its 2025 middle-income goal are a largely untold positive story. (00:00:00)
2014-10-21 · John · Ebola: What IS Terrifying — John argues that the small US Ebola outbreak is not what should frighten Americans; the worsening West African epidemic is, and because of globalization threats to anyone's health are threats to everyone's. (00:01:06)
2014-11-19 · John · The Future of the Project for Awesome: Pizzamas Day 8 — Interrupted by Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne on the Paper Towns location, John announces P4A 2014 moves to December 12-13 and proposes a split: day one for efficient global poverty and disease charities with matching money, day two for Nerdfighteria-chosen charities with real discussion instead of comment spamming; he asks for feedback. (00:01:47)
2014-12-02 · John · What You Eat Of Those You Love — John uses his family's Thanksgiving norovirus, started by his one-year-old daughter, to argue that only cheap rehydration solution separates a funny family story from disaster, so we must keep working to decrease world suck. (00:01:24)
2015-01-27 · John · Will Life Get Better for the Poor? — John relays the 2015 Gates letter's prediction that the poorest people's lives will improve dramatically in 15 years, argues the gap between rich and poor worlds is unnecessary, and urges listening better to people in poverty, since there is only one world. (00:00:00)
2015-09-08 · John · Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World — John explains the Syrian and wider refugee crisis, the difference between refugees and migrants and refugees' rights under international law, blames nearly every government for the response, and argues that all countries have legal and moral obligations to give refugees safe harbor and fund host countries. (00:02:27)
2015-09-22 · John · Is Poverty Necessary? Looking back at the Millennium Development Goals — Ahead of the UN meeting on new global goals, John reviews the eight Millennium Development Goals of 1990-2015 and argues they largely worked: poverty, hunger, child and maternal deaths fell, so the new goals deserve attention. (00:00:38)
2015-09-25 · Hank · Pissed Off for a Better World — Answering John's good-news video on the day 193 leaders sign on to the UN Global Goals, Hank argues that good news fails to move people, and urges viewers to get angry for a good reason, hold leaders accountable and share the goals. (00:00:30)
2015-12-11 · John · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 — Opening P4A 2015, John focuses on South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia's Gambella region, argues there is no such thing as other people's problems, and calls donations to Save the Children and the UNHCR investments rather than gifts. (00:02:08)
2016-01-26 · John · Billionaires and Radical Hope: Thoughts from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — Back from the World Economic Forum, John describes its naive ambition and elitist social order but also its real engagement with global problems, and affirms that human progress is possible though not inevitable, sustained by radical hope. (00:02:24)
2016-02-23 · John · How Energy and Time Change Everything — Drawing on the 2016 Gates annual letter, John argues that energy drove the collapse of child mortality, that bringing energy to 1.3 billion people while cutting carbon emissions is the century's big question, and that women's unpaid work limits growth and must be recognized, reduced and redistributed. (00:00:05)
2016-03-08 · John · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — Back from northern Jordan with UNHCR, John marks International Women's Day by telling the story of Syrian sisters Aida (10) and Majeeda (12), newly arrived at the Azraq camp and longing above all for school, and argues that refugees are not a lost generation: we must support UNHCR and fight their dehumanization. (00:03:19)
2016-06-07 · John · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp — John recounts his visit to Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, where refugees told him their worst struggle is being dehumanized, and argues that human nature is not a fixed force but something we create by how we treat each other. (00:02:40)
2016-08-16 · John · Some Good News: 16 Ways 2016 Is Not a Total Dumpster Fire — John argues that although 2016 has been something of a dumpster fire, slow-moving good news abounds (falling child mortality, disease, conflict deaths and poverty, rising literacy), so hope is not misguided. (00:00:00)
2016-12-09 · John · The Difference A Decade Makes: The 10th Annual Project for Awesome Is Here! — Opening the 10th Project for Awesome, John shows what Partners In Health and Save the Children do by looking at a decade of progress in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the world, then, since statistics can be a barrier to empathy, tells how Save the Children reunited a South Sudanese refugee mother with her daughters; little successes are not little when they're yours. (00:00:29)
2017-02-14 · John · Human Life Is Getting Better. Faster Than Ever Before. — Prompted by the 2017 Gates letter, John contrasts 1998 with today (falling child mortality and absolute poverty, rising vaccination), relays the letter's case that foreign aid, vaccines, infant care, nutrition and contraception work, and argues that ending absolute poverty and child mortality within 20 years is possible and up to all of us. (00:00:17)
2017-08-22 · John · The Causes of Cholera — John explains that cholera, once a pandemic killer, was beaten mainly by sewers and clean water, describes the worst cholera outbreak in decades in war-torn Yemen, and argues that fewer people would die if the world paid attention: donating helps, and attention itself shrinks the empathy gap between rich and poor worlds. (00:00:58)
2017-12-12 · John · 2017 is the Best? — Fed up with 2017, John lists five ways it is actually kind of the best: record charitable giving, polio nearly ended, record lows in poverty and highs in schooling and literacy, healthier babies (Liberia's child mortality down two-thirds) and the Project for Awesome, whose fundraiser for Save the Children and Last Mile Health begins tonight. (00:00:20)
2018-01-23 · John · On Emergencies — Prompted by the New Yorker profile of Partners In Health co-founder Ophelia Dahl, John argues that humans respond well to emergencies like Ebola but neglect the long-term health-care problems behind them, as in Sierra Leone, and calls for both emergency response and long-term investment. (00:00:19)
2018-02-13 · John · What Can't a Billion Dollars Buy? — Pegged to the 2018 Gates annual letter and Crash Course Statistics, John argues that $4.6 billion a year cannot solve the world's biggest problems, but, as Bill Gates told him, new tools and delivery systems magnify spending, so how each of us uses money, attention and time shapes the world. (00:01:54)
2018-05-15 · John · Seven Maps to Better Understand the World — Arguing that data reveals larger truths that anecdotes hide, John walks through seven maps (world population in tenths, years of schooling, CO2 emissions, temperature change, the age of national borders, attended births and maternal deaths, life expectancy) that show a bigger world and real progress, giving him hope and, when appropriate, fear. (00:00:00)
2018-08-21 · John · SYSTEMS!!!! — Starting from his own tetanus shot, John argues that boring, interdependent systems (roads, electricity, supply chains, health-worker training) are the key to healthy, productive lives: improving them creates virtuous cycles, as in Thailand, while weak systems, as in Sierra Leone, create vicious ones; he praises Partners In Health's systems focus and says progress is real. (00:00:58)
2018-11-27 · John · On The Melian Dialogue — John retells Thucydides' Melian Dialogue, in which Athens answered neutral Melos with 'the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must', and argues that although the powerful often prevail (as in child malaria deaths), human life is not a zero-sum game: protecting the weak makes life better for everyone. (00:01:27)
2019-04-09 · John · The Only Psychiatric Hospital in Sierra Leone — Visiting Kissy Psychiatric Hospital, Sierra Leone's only mental health hospital, John shows how chained patients and collapsed infrastructure gave way, with Partners In Health support, to medication, power, water and care at home, and argues that isolated interventions fail: only investing in whole systems, and listening, brings systemic results. (00:04:39)
2019-10-01 · John · Why Are Poor Countries Poor? — Ahead of the brothers' Partners In Health Sierra Leone announcement, John explains why Sierra Leone is poor: colonial resource-extraction systems, a diamond-funded civil war, and disease burden feeding vicious cycles such as Ebola; he argues its problems are ours and that investment works, citing the Kono hospital, and is hopeful. (00:00:29)
2019-10-22 · John · Why We're Donating $6,500,000 — John announces that the brothers' families will donate $6.5 million over five years to Partners In Health Sierra Leone; through community health worker Ruth and Sierra Leone's maternal and child mortality emergency he argues for systemic, long-term health-system strengthening in Kono, and asks viewers to donate and to pay attention. (00:00:09)
2020-01-28 · John · Looking Away (Again) — John reports how far Koidu Government Hospital in Kono has come since 2014 and how inadequate it still is, admits he looked away from a dying child there as he had in Ethiopia years earlier because he had not treated these preventable deaths as emergencies, and asks viewers to give and pay attention to the Maternal Center of Excellence. (00:01:27)
2020-11-17 · John · Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update — A year after announcing the brothers' Partners In Health maternal health project in Kono, Sierra Leone, John reports that the Maternal Center of Excellence is still set to break ground in April 2021, that over $18.5 million (93% of the $20 million needed) has been raised, and asks for monthly and large donations to close the gap. (00:01:27)
2021-02-12 · Hank · Doing Better — Hank argues that unequal access to water, health care and other basics is unacceptable, names three excuses our brains make to explain it away, praises people who build lasting systems to fix it, recalls saying yes to John's request to commit his money to that work, and announces that the 2021 Project for Awesome starts today. (00:00:00)
2021-10-01 · Hank · A Lie I Heard this Week — Starting from a false TikTok claim that 'news' is an acronym, Hank explains folk etymologies and that 'news' just means what is new, argues that our bias for the new hides ongoing crises such as infant mortality in Sierra Leone, credits John and the community with raising tens of millions for Partners In Health, and announces Pizzamas text updates. (00:00:58)
2022-01-04 · John · After 15 Years on YouTube, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING — On the channel's 15th anniversary John announces that Nerdfighteria's Partners In Health project in Kono, Sierra Leone is on track to raise over $25 million, shows how Kono's health system is improving through one girl's story and its clinics, and announces an expansion to $31 million, with his family adding $2 million and a donation ask. (00:00:00)
2022-02-22 · John · On the Death of My Hero — Mourning Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer, his friend and mentor, John tells how Farmer and his partners proved the world wrong again and again (HIV treatment in poor communities, MDR-TB, a world-class hospital in Haiti, maternal care in Sierra Leone) and argues that, like Paul, we should never be satisfied with progress amid such injustice. (00:00:29)
2022-04-19 · John · How do you cross the Sad Gap? — Answering Hank's question about crossing the sad gap, John tells how the community's crisis-driven giving, starting with the 2010 Haiti earthquake, left him in the gap until Partners In Health's Dr. Joia Mukherjee asked them in 2014 to stay in Sierra Leone; he argues for choosing priorities and going deep. (00:00:00)
2022-05-17 · John · Reasons Not to Care — Responding to a top reply asking why a pregnant 17-year-old in Sierra Leone was 'unexpectedly' pregnant, John argues that we all look for reasons not to care; empathy has limits, but denying others' suffering harms them and us, health disparities come from inequity, and system strengthening is cutting maternal mortality. (00:00:58)
2022-10-11 · John · Most People Have Never Been 20 — Asking when the median human was born, John finds it was about 2,000 years ago, not because so many people lived then but because so many died young: early death was the norm and most people who ever died never reached 20, but we can choose a world with fewer early deaths. (00:01:27)
2022-11-15 · John · 3 Years In: What Happened, Why, and What's Next — Three years into the community's project with Partners In Health in Kono, Sierra Leone, John reports it is on pace to raise over $35 million: the Maternal Center of Excellence is under construction, supported clinics are growing, child and maternal mortality are falling, and PIH is expanding with new partners, because progress is never inevitable but made by health workers and supporters. (00:00:00)
2023-03-28 · John · My Tuberculosis Reading List — After reading over 20 books on tuberculosis, John recommends three TB reads (Handaa Enkh-Amgalan's memoir Stigmatized, Vidya Krishnan's Phantom Plague with Shreya Tripathi's story, and Paul Farmer's paper on the new tuberculosis) and argues TB persists because of poverty and unequal investment, asking viewers to vote, raise awareness and donate. (00:00:00)
2023-05-02 · John · GOOD NEWS — On his first visit to Kono since Covid, John shows Hank the Maternal Center of Excellence under construction (built largely by newly trained women workers), reports that maternal and child mortality have fallen and that Koidu's special care baby unit now saves most of its babies, and asks for the just over $10 million still needed, calling it what humans can do together. (00:04:23)
2023-07-11 · John · Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter to Johnson & Johnson — As bedaquiline's original patent expires, John explains how Johnson & Johnson is using a secondary 'pen cap' patent to block generic versions of the drug against multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, which experts say will leave up to six million people without it, and asks viewers to pressure the company, arguing evergreening is immoral and bad for its reputation. (00:00:00)
2023-07-18 · John · Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse — John argues that diseases get solved when they have a global constituency that includes the rich and powerful, as COVID-19, HIV and malaria show, and that tuberculosis, a curable disease of poverty, needs the rich world to listen and give its fighters 'a posse'; he credits the community with a big step last week. (00:00:29)
2023-08-15 · John · Henry — John explains his tuberculosis obsession through Henry, a 16-year-old multidrug-resistant TB patient he met at Lakka in 2019 who was saved by a bedaquiline-based cocktail; after their 2023 reunion John asks viewers to follow Henry's YouTube and fund his mother's business, arguing survival should not require extraordinary efforts. (00:05:47)
2023-09-12 · John · Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter to Danaher and Cepheid — In an open letter John argues that Danaher and its subsidiary Cepheid use a printer-ink business model to overcharge poor countries for GeneXpert tuberculosis test cartridges, and asks viewers to press them by phone, email and social media for $5 tests. (00:00:00)
2023-09-14 · John · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — In a livestream panel John talks with TB survivors Nandita Venkatesan and Phumeza Tisile, MSF's Dr. Animesh Sinha and Dr. Carole Mitnick about drug-resistant TB, hearing loss from injectables, GeneXpert diagnostics, bedaquiline and stigma, and asks viewers to keep pressing Danaher and Cepheid. (00:00:00)
2023-09-19 · John · So, um.... GOOD NEWS?!?!?! — John reports that, after the campaign, Danaher cut its standard TB test cartridge from $10 to $7.97 with a zero-profit commitment, calls it a big win, still wants cheaper XDR cartridges, condemns threats against company staff, and recalls that Nerdfighteria's energy first showed in 2007. (00:00:00)
2023-09-27 · John · John Goes ... to the UNITED NATIONS? — John vlogs his trip to the UN High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis, where the political declaration is approved, remembers Shreya Tripathi, and in a two-minute speech argues that TB deaths are now caused by human choices: the cure is where the disease is not. (00:02:58)
2023-09-30 · John · An Incredible Update — In a surprise extra Pizzamas video, John reports that Johnson & Johnson will not enforce its secondary bedaquiline patents in any low- or middle-income country, credits the company and the campaigners, and thanks viewers who pushed for it. (00:00:58)
2023-10-24 · John · A Tale of Two Cancers — Replying to Hank's video on cancer as many diseases, John recalls Hank's Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis and contrasts it with Mondeh, a Sierra Leonean child whose Hodgkin lymphoma took years to diagnose and treat, arguing that the same cancer is not the same cancer when the standard of care differs. (00:00:29)
2023-12-05 · John · MASSIVE Tuberculosis News — John reports the endTB trial results: nine-month regimens of existing drugs cure multidrug-resistant TB as well as or better than the toxic 18-month standard at about $300 instead of $5,000, and argues that because drug companies lack incentive to test existing compounds in new combinations, such trials need far more public and philanthropic funding. (00:03:24)
2023-12-19 · John · End of a Rough Year — Ending a rough 2023, John finds hope in collaboration: Danaher's drug-resistance TB test cartridges are the product of multi-generational research, yet TB activists disagree with Danaher over the price of the drug-resistant cartridge; Danaher is not the enemy, TB is, and to hope is to refuse to accept the world as it is. (00:00:58)
2024-01-16 · John · The Bank of Nerdfighteria — In a suited Bank of Nerdfighteria semi-annual report, John tallies its two arms (Good Store's merch donations, almost $3.5 million last year, and the Project for Awesome's roughly $12 million since 2007) and argues a secret third arm, advocacy that pushed Johnson & Johnson and Danaher on tuberculosis drugs and tests, may matter most, since time and attention matter as well as money. (00:03:17)
2024-03-12 · John · How We End TB — Ahead of a Capitol Hill visit and a Thursday announcement about his family's fight against tuberculosis, John argues that TB, the world's deadliest infectious disease, can be ended as the US once did, through Salmaan Keshavjee's search-treat-prevent (STP) strategy, and that the barrier is resource allocation, not knowledge. (00:00:58)
2024-03-26 · John · I Own Danaher — John asks viewers to sign a petition for Danaher and Cepheid to cut test prices in low- and middle-income countries, revealing he bought a small Danaher stake; he argues that since Danaher says it must serve shareholders, only reputational cost greater than its overcharging profit will move it. (00:00:40)
2024-06-18 · John · The Tea — John recounts how Nerdfighteria's donors and charity clubs helped raise over $40 million for Partners In Health's maternal health work in Sierra Leone, worries about sustaining long-term commitments, and announces that Good Store's coffee and new tea are relaunching as Keats & Co. to back PIH's comprehensive tuberculosis care starting in Lesotho, unsure the community can do both well. (00:01:56)
2024-09-10 · John · The world will change. — John tells how a search-treat-prevent strategy cut tuberculosis among Native Alaskans after 1950, argues that Partners In Health's similar project in Lesotho can show TB can be beaten even in poor places, and officially launches Keats & Co., whose coffee and tea profits go to TB care; he calls ending TB deaths humanity's greatest possible achievement. (00:00:00)
2024-10-25 · Hank · I Don't Want them to Get Away With It… — Hank explains how strep was diagnosed by culture and now by rapid antigen tests, why TB resists such tests, and how GeneXpert's DNA cartridges detect TB and drug resistance; he says cartridge costs leave TB (and lymphoma mistaken for it) undiagnosed, that Danaher cut its standard TB cartridge to $7.97 but keeps drug-resistance cartridges at $15 and has not released its promised audit, and praises John's book Everything Is Tuberculosis. (00:02:55)
2024-11-26 · John · Good News — John explains how disease and maternal deaths are measured per 100,000, then shares good news from Vicky Reed of Partners In Health Sierra Leone: maternal mortality in Sierra Leone is down about 60% since 2017 and close to 80% at Koidu Government Hospital since 2019, which he credits to the government's partnership and long-term attention. (00:02:40)
2025-01-28 · John · This Is Not Normal — John argues that the fall in child mortality since 1995, and centuries of health progress before it, were not natural or inevitable but came from human choices and sustained funding, including US-funded PEPFAR and the Global Fund, and warns that the new US administration's freeze on foreign aid threatens that progress. (00:02:55)
2025-02-11 · John · What's at Stake — Drawing on his book research, John explains why interrupting months-long TB treatment is catastrophic, since untreated TB spreads and becomes drug-resistant, and argues that the US freeze on TB funding risks millions of deaths. He says only governments can respond at that scale, urges support for global health charities through the Project for Awesome, and rejects despair because TB deaths have halved in 25 years. (00:00:29)
2025-02-25 · John · EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS — Reading the first chapter of his book Everything Is Tuberculosis, John traces tuberculosis through James Watt's dying son and his own great-uncle Stokes, and argues that TB, curable since the 1950s, still kills over a million people a year because the cure is where the disease is not. (00:04:14)
2025-05-06 · John · Health CARE: Thoughts from Lima — Reporting from a Partners In Health visit to Lima, John describes Peru's TB active case finding, PIH programs adopted by the Ministry of Health and the survivors Gladys and Brenda, and argues that what health care fundamentally needs is care for the person. (00:02:55)
2025-05-13 · John · I Have the BEST News — Six years after announcing his family's donation for a maternal center in Sierra Leone, John reports that the community raised the $20 million needed, that maternal mortality there fell from 1 in 17 to about 1 in 74, and that the Maternal Center of Excellence will finish construction in October and open in January; he argues that sustained attention and resources change things and asks for ongoing support. (00:01:27)
2025-06-10 · John · 90,000,000 Lives for $20 — John warns that US-led cuts to global health funding, now before Congress (PEPFAR cuts and a halved, re-matched Global Fund contribution), will reverse decades of progress against child mortality, TB and HIV, and asks viewers to call their representatives: about $20 a year per American for PEPFAR and the Global Fund, which saved 91 million lives, is the bargain of a lifetime. (00:01:27)
2025-10-01 · John · Real Reasons for Hope — John offers two under-reported reasons for hope: the cost of curing multidrug-resistant TB has fallen from about $30,000 to under $300 through decades of advocacy, and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone has dropped by over 60% in ten years; he argues that such progress is slow, unglamorous and real, and that today is the middle of the story, not the end. (00:00:29)
2025-10-31 · Hank · We Did It… — Answering people who say John only cares about tuberculosis, Hank argues that problems have size, difficulty and visibility, and that big, solvable problems persist mainly because they lack visibility, which is why John's focus on TB is his genius; he tells how retitling John's Philippines video rescued its views, and announces the ribbon-cutting of the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone that the community helped fund. (00:01:27)
2025-11-04 · John · The Real Question — Back from TB meetings in the Philippines, John tells Hank that his tuberculosis focus is a path into a larger question, why suffering is so unjustly distributed; funding gaps mean people go untreated, and he argues we fail to build systems reflecting that all human lives have equal value, making the injustice a shared fault, including his own. (00:03:24)
2025-11-13 · John · Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders — In a livestream panel on tuberculosis in children, John and guests from Doctors Without Borders (survivor Ani Herna Sari, Mozambique pediatrician Dr. Natalia, Sierra Leone TB program manager Dr. Mariama and MSF adviser Cathy Hewison) discuss misdiagnosis, missing child-specific tests and formulations, weak health systems and aid cuts; John concludes that protecting kids from TB is a question of prioritization and political will. (00:00:00)
2025-11-25 · John · Poverty Is Expensive — John tells how Henry Reider and his mother Isatu, invited to the Union tuberculosis conference in Copenhagen, waited weeks in Ghana for Danish visas and Isatu was denied; he argues that TB and visa injustice show poverty is expensive and that visas shape who is heard about TB, which persists because we fail to treat all humans as equal. (00:02:26)
2026-01-09 · Hank · There is Only One Source of Value — Replying to John's video on hope, Hank argues that since no one can predict the long-term effects of what we do (Fritz Haber, the internet), giving should not optimize for far-future people; the one reliable protection against harm is believing that all lives are equally valuable, a value we generate today that drives a better future, which is why the Project for Awesome backs Partners In Health and Save the Children; he announces P4A 2026 dates and asks for matching donors. (00:00:29)
2026-02-20 · Hank · What We Actually Did. — Hank tells John that the Paul E. Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence opened during the Project for Awesome, with 13 babies born on its first day, and says that the brothers did not give $50 million as a headline claimed: from John's pitch for a long-term project onward, they mainly turned people's attention toward it. (00:01:56)
2026-02-24 · John · Risk Is a Privilege — With the Maternal Center of Excellence now open, John tells Hank that risk-taking is a privilege: the brothers' careers rested on a safety net and on luck, while few would risk anything on Sierra Leone's health system, so the community's bet on it, already paying off, is the one worth making. (00:00:29)
2026-04-28 · John · What I Can't Show You — Visiting Koidu Government Hospital, John tells Hank he can show almost nothing because its wards are packed with patients who now trust it, then tours the new Maternal Center of Excellence and tells of Rebecca, a high-risk mother there: one C-section, two lives saved; there is more work, but he has never been so proud. (00:04:14)
2026-05-01 · Hank · Despair is Not Wisdom — Hank tells John that the replies to his post of a 2,300-year infant mortality graph show how hard it is to hear that something went right; progress made by many people says ask for more, despair is not wisdom, and algorithms amplify our bias toward threats, as with John's under-watched hospital video. (00:00:00)
2026-09-08 · John · The Life Expectancy Lies That Won't Die — John argues that both the old narrative of historical life expectancy (people died before 40) and its popular correction (low averages only reflect child mortality) mislead by distillation: high child mortality dragged life expectancy down, yet death at every age was far likelier than today; progress is real but not inevitable. (00:00:00)

US politics & society

2007-09-18 · John · September 18: In Defense of Chris Crocker — John argues that it is fine to laugh at Chris Crocker for caring so much about Britney Spears but not for failing gender expectations, which culture builds early and dichotomously, as 'in your pants' Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys titles playfully show. (00:00:37)
2008-10-07 · Hank · Hank on the Debate — Hank says the debate question that rang truest to him asked why America asks sacrifice only of young people who go to war; he finds McCain's answer (spending cuts) no sacrifice and praises Obama's call for energy saving and service such as the Peace Corps. (00:00:29)
2008-11-05 · John · On Loving One Another or Dying — After a Louisville stop where Hank sang his Paper Towns song, John argues that, as Paper Towns' characters see only funhouse-mirror reflections of Margo, political discourse, even among Nerdfighters, fails because people do not imagine others complexly: opponents are not evil but complicated people. (00:00:58)
2009-08-16 · John · Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via MASSIVE PIG — Using Walkin' Tall, the Indiana State Fair's giant boar, as a metaphor, John summarises the 2009 US health-care reform options (public option, nonprofit insurers, no change) and argues the US already has inefficient socialized medicine because it treats health care as a right. (00:01:05)
2009-09-04 · John · Health Care Reform Thought Bubble — An animated Thought Bubble version of John's health-care video: via Walkin' Tall, the boar that can't walk, John lays out the US reform options and argues America already has inefficient socialized medicine because it treats health care as a right. (00:01:06)
2009-09-20 · John · Health Care Reform: The Hank Factor — John argues, using Hank (a small-business owner with ulcerative colitis who could not get insurance until Montana's state plan), that US health insurance tied to big employers discourages entrepreneurship, and makes a 'conservative economic argument' for a nationwide public option. (00:00:36)
2009-12-29 · John · Adorable Puppy Explains Health Care Bill — John answers questions put by his dog Willy about the US Senate health-care reform bill: what it does (insurance regulation, subsidized exchanges, about 30 million newly covered), pre-existing conditions, abortion, immigrants, taxes, the deficit, Ben Nelson's vote, and why the individual mandate is needed. (00:00:00)
2010-06-14 · Hank · Be The Change - vlogbrothers — Hank tells how Alan Turing, who helped win World War II and create the computer, was convicted for homosexuality and abandoned by Britain, and argues that change, though slow and hard for young people to see, happens when individuals change; he urges viewers to support the Trevor Project's Be the Change contest. (00:02:00)
2010-08-22 · John · Is Obama a Muslim? Examine the Evidence! — Prompted by a poll finding more than 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, John deadpan-tests Obama's public record against the Five Pillars of Islam, concludes he is either not a Muslim or a really bad one, stresses there is nothing wrong with being Muslim, and asks the media to talk about something else. (00:00:21)
2012-04-03 · John · Idiotic Governance: How Our Political Discourse Hurts Our Economy — John argues, through FAA funding, the highway bill and Medicare, that US political discourse rewards disagreement over sensible compromise, producing costly, inefficient policy; he also laments that the US keeps the penny after Canada dropped it. (00:00:30)
2012-05-11 · Hank · Your Arguments Are Invalid: Gay Marriage — Responding to North Carolina's constitutional ban on gay marriage, Hank rebuts common arguments against it (religion, the Bible, 'undermining marriage', 'unnatural') and argues that the only argument that matters is equality under the law. (00:00:00)
2012-05-15 · John · Religion and Gay Marriage — Following Hank's video, John argues that 'traditional marriage' has never been simply one man and one woman wed in church, that tying legal marriage to a religious covenant breaks down, and that denying gay couples the rights of marriage is discrimination. (00:01:41)
2012-08-31 · Hank · Why The Rich Pay Lower Taxes — Hank explains ordinary income, marginal tax brackets and the flat 15% capital gains tax, then argues, as a self-declared non-expert, that taxing investment gains less than earned income seems unfair and bad ethics; he closes by celebrating Nerdfighteria's $1 million for Kiva. (00:00:31)
2012-09-21 · Hank · You. Must. Vote. — Hank argues that the only wrong vote is no vote, rebutting the common excuses one by one (super PACs, one vote never decides, safe states, no time, nothing changes, not registered), and calls voting in America a responsibility. (00:00:00)
2012-10-12 · Hank · Human Sexuality is Complicated… — Hank explains that biological sex, gender identity, sexual and romantic orientation, sexual behaviour and gender roles are separate spectra rather than two boxes, arguing that understanding this reduces hate and self-hate and that people deserve respect wherever they fall. (00:00:00)
2012-11-04 · John · Policy and Politics: Brotherhood 2.0 Week Begins — Opening a punishment week of daily vlogs, John compares Obama's and Romney's tax plans on ordinary income and capital gains, prefers Obama's (hedged), and argues neither is radical: demonising opponents is more dangerous than either plan. (00:00:00)
2012-11-07 · Hank · The 51st State — Hank argues that the most historic result of the 2012 election may be Puerto Rico's apparent vote for statehood, explains its colony-like status and the congressional hurdles, and suggests the biggest barrier is that Americans dislike changing the number of states. (00:00:28)
2012-11-09 · Hank · The Stadium of Representatives: The End of B20 Week :-( — Answering viewers' questions after his Puerto Rico video, Hank explains why the House of Representatives exists, how its seats were capped at 435 and are reapportioned after each census, and what Puerto Rican statehood would mean for it; he also ends the Brotherhood 2.0-style week. (00:00:29)
2013-01-01 · John · Why Does Congress Suck? — John argues that Congress has become historically ineffective largely because state legislatures draw safe 'landslide' districts, so members fear only primary challengers and will not compromise; he urges viewers to vote in the state elections that draw the lines. (00:01:28)
2013-03-12 · John · Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It's Bananas.) — John explains the US budget, its long-term (not short-term) debt problem and how Congress created sequestration, arguing that its indiscriminate cuts are a self-made, embarrassing crisis that fails to address the real long-term problem. (00:03:51)
2013-08-20 · John · Why Are American Health Care Costs So High? — John argues US health care costs so much because everything costs more and the US does not negotiate prices centrally (save Medicare), not because of overuse, obesity or malpractice alone; the problem is complex, with no simple fix. (00:01:03)
2013-09-03 · John · Bigger Pizzas: A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform — John argues that tying health insurance to big employers and denying coverage for pre-existing conditions keeps would-be entrepreneurs like Henry Reich and Hank from innovating, so publicly subsidized coverage and the ACA grow the economic "pizza". (00:00:58)
2013-10-01 · Hank · The Lowdown on the Shutdown — In a 'special edition of Let's Understand the News', Hank explains the October 2013 US government shutdown: the Republican-led House tied the continuing resolution to delaying Obamacare and the Senate refused; he blames gerrymandered, radicalized districts and calls the shutdown embarrassing but survivable. (00:00:00)
2014-02-04 · John · Should We Raise the Minimum Wage? — John argues that evidence since Card and Krueger's New Jersey study shows minimum-wage rises cost few jobs and reduce poverty, making them 'the cheapest lunch available', and that as an employer he favours paying a living wage. (00:01:11)
2014-03-14 · Hank · Sexual Abuse, Consent, and Culture — Hank argues that a culture casting sex as predator and prey, and refusing to talk about it, enables ubiquitous sexual abuse; relationships need consent, and he announces a task force, a video series and partnerships against abuse. (00:00:15)
2014-04-04 · Hank · Mass Incarceration in the US — Hank argues that US mass incarceration is a cruel, costly, short-sighted failed experiment: America is good at punishment but neglects corrections, though today's prisoners are tomorrow's neighbors. (00:00:19)
2014-10-31 · Hank · Ten Terrible Reason to not Vote (and two good ones) — Hank, addressing young Americans before the November 4, 2014 elections, rebuts common excuses for not voting (only not caring and being unable to reach the polls are good ones) and argues that young people's votes would decide thousands of elections. (00:00:12)
2014-12-30 · John · Racism in the United States: By the Numbers — John argues from data on criminal justice, hiring, education, health care and wealth that systemic racial bias against African Americans in the US is not debatable, while urging listening to people affected by racism. (00:00:00)
2015-01-30 · Hank · Thoughts from the Edge — Hank uses the ecology of ecotones, where biomes blend, to argue that the boundary between political ideologies is productive only as a gradient, and that ideological diversity marks a thoughtful, not divided, nation. (00:01:45)
2015-03-24 · John · Is Obamacare Working? The Affordable Care Act Five Years Later — John argues that five years on the Affordable Care Act is working insofar as it insures people who lacked coverage without disturbing others, but, not being radical, it leaves US health care spending unsustainable; fixing that means facing messy trade-offs. (00:03:20)
2015-08-11 · John · 454 Days: Understanding America's Ridiculous Political Campaigns — John argues that US presidential campaigns, far longer and costlier than other democracies', once helped underdogs like Kennedy but now buy little but crowded-out governing, so he pledges to ignore the 2016 race until 100 days before Indiana's primary. (00:00:35)
2015-09-04 · Hank · Addicted to Outrage — Hank argues that America's most common irrational fear, that half the country is terrible, comes from an addiction to manufactured outrage that blinds people and fuels an electoral arms race; he counters it with awareness of his own biases, belief in others' goodness and compassion. (00:00:21)
2015-09-18 · Hank · Muslims Aren't Dangerous — Prompted by the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed over his homemade clock, Hank argues that Americans' fear of Muslims is our problem, built on ignorance and fear-driven media, and that we should fight it in our own heads. (00:00:20)
2015-10-23 · Hank · Benghazi: Explained — Hank explains the 2012 Benghazi attack and argues that, after eight investigations finding significant but not criminal mistakes, the inquiry has become a partisan, taxpayer-funded campaign against Hillary Clinton, while the attack's real consequences fell on Libya. (00:02:55)
2016-01-05 · John · Who Owns Oregon? Some Historical Context on the so-called Militia Occupation of Public Lands — John argues the militia's claim that the federal government cannot own land fails: the US Constitution and courts back federal land, and US land titles rest on land taken from the Northern Paiute, so if not federal, the refuge belongs to the tribe. (00:03:26)
2016-02-02 · John · Is the Gender Pay Gap Real? — Revisiting his earlier '77 cents' claim after commenters called the wage gap a myth, John argues that the US gender pay gap is real but complex: part is direct discrimination (especially against mothers), part reflects choices, and much comes from social expectations such as women's unpaid work. (00:00:29)
2016-03-04 · Hank · Startling Facts About the Government that Made Me Feel Good — Against the image of a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy, Hank argues the US federal government is effective, efficient and surprisingly small: its workforce has not grown in 50 years, state and local governments employ far more people, and most federal spending goes to Social Security, health programmes, poverty assistance and veterans. (00:00:13)
2016-03-11 · Hank · The Politics of "Parks and Rec" — Using Parks and Rec's Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson, who disagree on almost everything yet respect each other as good people, Hank argues that today's US discourse makes political disagreement feel like an attack on identity, and wishes Americans could care passionately without demonizing opponents. (00:02:14)
2016-03-22 · John · Understanding the Primaries: Delegates, Democracy, and America's Nonstop Political Party — John uses Missouri's 2016 primaries to argue that the parties' delegate rules (superdelegates, proportional and winner-take-all rules, equal delegates for lopsided districts) make presidential nominations far from straightforwardly democratic. (00:00:59)
2016-04-19 · John · Literally Hitler — John argues that Hitler comparisons and insults in the 2016 campaign are inaccurate and counterproductive: the US is not in mortal peril, there was never a golden age, and name-calling pushes people out of policy debate; he and Hank will next examine the candidates' tax plans. (00:00:48)
2016-04-22 · Hank · Clinton vs. Sanders: POLICY IS EXCITING! — Hank lays out the tax plans of Hillary Clinton (keep the code roughly the same, add a top bracket) and Bernie Sanders (raise taxes across the board, mostly to fund single-payer health care), explaining brackets, payroll and capital gains taxes, and concludes that he does not know which plan is best. (00:05:28)
2016-04-26 · John · Understanding the Tax Plans of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — John explains the current US income tax system and the tax plans of Ted Cruz (flat 10% rate, a business VAT) and Donald Trump (four brackets, lower corporate rates), and argues that both cut taxes most for the rich, would sharply raise deficits, and are infeasible without reimagining government's role. (00:06:55)
2016-05-17 · John · A Brief History of the Non-Denial Denial — John traces the 'non-denial denial' in American politics from Nixon's press secretary through John Edwards, Bill Clinton, John Brennan and Chris Christie, and argues that voters in an election season should ask what exactly politicians are denying. (00:00:00)
2016-06-17 · Hank · Hey, Let's Change Some Things — Hank gives viewers homework: within 24 hours, write a letter to someone who represents them in government. He explains how to write an effective one, shares his own requests for an assault-rifle ban and CDC gun research, and argues that letters create more change than shouting online. (00:00:00)
2016-06-21 · John · Syrian Refugees in the United States: One Family's Story — For World Refugee Day, John tells the story of Syrian refugees Mufak, Nada and their five children, whom he met in Jordan and visited after their resettlement in Rockford, Illinois. He argues the US is lucky to have them: refugees come to be protected by the law, and America has always contained multitudes. (00:01:58)
2016-07-15 · Hank · On Lives and Mattering — After Christina Grimmie's murder and the Dallas police shootings, Hank reflects on feeling one's body is frail, notes that black Americans live with that fear their whole lives, cites research on unequal policing and sentencing, and says Black Lives Matter names a deep belief that black lives matter less; he asks viewers simply to listen. (00:00:58)
2016-08-05 · Hank · Our Massive Project: How to Vote in Every State — Hank launches How to Vote in Every State, a 54-video guide to registering, getting a sample ballot and voting in each state, and argues that not voting is no protest: local elections are often decided by one vote and democracy needs participation. (00:00:28)
2016-08-09 · John · Why I Didn't Vote (And Six Reasons You Might Not) — Responding to the six most common reasons Twitter non-voters gave, John argues each is a poor reason not to vote, recounts failing to register in 2000 as one of the great shames of his life, and asks eligible Americans to become registered, informed voters. (00:00:13)
2016-10-11 · John · Understanding Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's Tax Plans — John explains the current US federal income tax system with three hypothetical families, then argues Clinton's plan raises taxes mainly on the wealthiest while Trump's cuts them mostly for the wealthiest and would add far more to the national debt, since tax cuts do not pay for themselves. (00:02:51)
2016-10-14 · Hank · Compassion, Weakness, and the 2016 Election — Hank argues that the rising nationalist rhetoric of the 2016 election rests on the false idea that strength is control and compassion is weakness; he says compassion is the ultimate manifestation of strength and fear-mongering is weakness. (00:00:18)
2016-10-18 · John · Understanding Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's Health Care Reform Proposals — John explains the pre-ACA US health system and what the ACA did and did not fix, then, using RAND's analysis, says Trump's plan would insure fewer people at higher out-of-pocket cost while Clinton's would insure more but raise the deficit more; neither would likely cut overall costs. (00:03:50)
2016-10-25 · John · Will the U.S. Presidential Election Be Rigged? — John argues the 2016 US presidential election will not be rigged: the decentralized electoral system resists fraud, the disputed 2004 Ohio result was not stolen, voter suppression is real but voter fraud is not, and a candidate's rigging claims are lies that erode trust in elections. (00:01:25)
2016-11-09 · John · My Post-Election Thoughts — The day after Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election, John acknowledges the fear his attacks caused, apologizes for hateful discourse and sealed echo chambers (Nerdfighteria included), and argues that citizens must hold leaders answerable and that hope, the founding emotion of our species, is not naive. (00:01:38)
2016-11-11 · Hannah Hart · The Trouble with Wishful Thinking — Filling in for Hank after Trump's election, Hannah Hart argues that wishful thinking (doing less and still expecting what you want) helped bring the result, including the 46% who didn't vote, and urges viewers to have uncomfortable political conversations with family and non-voting friends now. (00:00:52)
2017-01-31 · John · Understanding Trump's Executive Order on Immigration — John explains what Trump's executive order on immigration says (a 90-day entry ban on seven nations, a 120-day halt to refugee admissions, Syrian resettlement suspended indefinitely) and argues it is poorly targeted against terrorism, legally confused and a dangerous statement about refugees, asking viewers to listen to refugees' stories. (00:01:56)
2017-03-07 · John · Hoping for an Airport Reunion: One Refugee Family's Story — John tells the story of Burmese refugee Saw Kyar Aye, who fled forced labour, met his wife Thet Thet in Malaysia and waited over four years, through a clerical error and an executive order, to be reunited with her and their son in Indianapolis, a reunion John witnessed; with a new blanket ban announced, he argues the debate on refugee numbers must start by seeing refugees as people. (00:03:56)
2017-03-28 · John · Why Can't America Have a Grown-Up Healthcare Conversation? — John argues that America cannot have a grown-up health care conversation: the system is expensive and underperforming, but because about 70% of Americans like their own care, every reform (the ACA, the Republican bill, Medicare for All, deregulation) involves trade-offs, and leaders pander unless voters accept them. (00:00:00)
2017-04-28 · Hank · Can You Trust Mainstream Media? — Hank argues that the growing sense that all expertise is false is dangerous: news media and feeds reward hot takes and drama, but actual mainstream journalism remains valuable, expert-driven truth-telling, and the blame lies partly with readers, himself included, who choose the hot takes. (00:00:00)
2017-08-04 · Hank · Why Bullets are Good for the Environment — Hank explains the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act, which funds wildlife management and land conservation from a tax on guns and ammunition: fear-driven gun buying under Obama raised its revenue from $310 million to over $800 million, so a Republican president is, weirdly, worse for conservation. He then plugs DFTBA Games' ROLF Kickstarter and VidCon Australia. (00:00:00)
2017-08-18 · Hank · What I've Been Thinking About — After Charlottesville, Hank tells a story from their mom, raised in segregated Birmingham, who worried that black teachers in Orlando would not teach her sons as well; he argues that white Americans must talk about race because not needing to is a privilege, that tribalism is innate but empathy can be expanded, that racism is America too, and that progress in tolerance is an unfinished process he wants to work on for life. (00:00:00)
2017-09-26 · John · Trump and Russia: An Introduction to What We Know (and What We Don't) — John lays out what is confirmed about Russia's interference in the 2016 US election and the Trump campaign's Russian contacts: the meddling, the 'thing of value' law, Flynn, Comey's firing, Mueller and the Trump Jr. meeting. He argues much is suspicious but none of it is unambiguous evidence of collusion, and almost everything is still unknown. (00:07:17)
2018-02-20 · John · When Your Friend Runs for Governor — Telling how his mathematician friend Daniel Biss went from a seemingly hopeless first race to an effective legislator now running for governor of Illinois, John argues that imagining politicians as larger-than-life heirs and billionaires is self-fulfilling, and that politicians are people to be judged on who would do the job best. (00:02:20)
2018-03-23 · Hank · Trump, Guns, and Net Neutrality...With Governor Steve Bullock?! — Hank interviews Montana governor Steve Bullock, a Democrat reelected while Trump won the state, about his net neutrality executive order, winning and governing by showing up, listening and persuading rather than mobilizing the base, gun policy and young people in politics; Hank closes that writing off opponents may cost the ability to govern. (00:00:00)
2018-04-10 · John · Who Do Tax Breaks Benefit? — Prompted by Sarah's Art Assignment video on art and tax avoidance, John uses four hypothetical families to show that, because of the $28,000 standard deduction, the charitable and mortgage interest deductions mostly benefit the wealthy, above all the richest 1% of US households. (00:00:17)
2018-04-20 · Hank · This Video is About Marijuana — On 4/20 Hank, who doesn't like pot, argues that criminalizing marijuana while alcohol and tobacco are sold everywhere is unjustifiable, giving seven reasons to decriminalize (economies, cartels, medicine, opioids, cigarettes, harms and racial disparity of arrests, the rule of law) and three complications (stoned driving, health risks, implementation). (00:00:00)
2018-05-22 · John · The Liger Delusion — Using a dream in which he reasoned his way to two escaped ligers in his backyard, John argues that much political discourse suffers from the 'liger delusion': starting from the conclusion and finding explanations, believing allegations that confirm one's worldview, and treating opponents as sheeple; he resolves to stop speculating ahead of the facts but does not know how. (00:01:05)
2018-10-26 · Hank · The Rigged Election — Ahead of the 2018 US elections, Hank contrasts the close 2000 Florida result, which Gore and Democratic leaders accepted despite fraud claims, with President Trump's unproven claims of widespread voter fraud, arguing that such lies erode the faith democracy depends on and should be unacceptable to everyone. (00:01:23)
2019-03-29 · Hank · The Largest Theft of All Time — Ranking history's biggest thefts (the 2005 Fortaleza tunnel heist, a 2015 bank hack, MacGregor's Poyais scam, Madoff), Hank finds US wage theft, $20-60 billion a year, exceeds all other property crime combined; few officers police it and almost no one goes to jail. (00:02:16)
2019-08-06 · John · Uncertain and Afraid — Approaching the 80th anniversary of W. H. Auden's poem 'September 1, 1939', John confesses feeling uncertain and afraid amid rising hatred, polarization, loneliness and falling US life expectancy, despite data supporting his hope, and holds to Auden's lines that we must love one another or die and may show an affirming flame. (00:00:00)
2019-08-16 · Hank · ...Not My Proudest Moment — Prompted by John's near-failing story, Hank tells how a teacher let him pass an 11th-grade class even after he kicked a locker door off, and argues that privilege and prejudice are biases we all have: the more you have, the more people are wary of taking it from you. (00:02:11)
2019-09-06 · Hank · Trump is Abnormal, It's His Superpower — Using 'Sharpiegate', Hank argues that newsworthy means abnormal, not important, and that President Trump's real skill is attention: constant abnormal spectacle keeps him in the spotlight to craft a narrative that is always only about himself, which is exhausting because it is dangerous. (00:00:51)
2020-04-10 · Hank · Things I'm Finding Encouraging — Amid omnidirectional worry about the COVID-19 pandemic, Hank lists five encouraging things: a chance to see employer-based health care as cruel, appreciation of others' work, renewed listening to expertise, the necessity of government, and acting as a society; he names his worries, keeps his faith in humanity, and launches a weekly podcast, COVID Sucks, People Don't. (00:00:00)
2020-06-02 · John · --- — Immensely sad during the US protests, John says their root cause is 400 years of violence and discrimination against Black Americans, that white people's context for racism is often inadequate, and that he needs to listen better, so he shares a playlist of Black creators and readings. (00:00:29)
2020-06-05 · Hank · So Much to Do — Hank talks with longtime Nerdfighter and political strategist Maya Rupert about police violence and policy fixes, young activists, money in politics, learning to talk about race, and privilege as power to use for others rather than a source of guilt. (00:00:00)
2020-11-06 · Hank · Just Some Election Thoughts… — Two days after the 2020 US election, before a winner is called, Hank says the result is not the clean verdict on Trumpism he expected: a likely Biden win is a lifeboat, not a repudiation; he explains right-wing populism as the belief that some people are not 'real Americans' and says that belief is not going away. (00:00:29)
2021-03-26 · Hank · Why I'm Worried about 2021 — Starting from two women judging moms who take kids to McDonald's, Hank argues that as vaccinations spread and mask mandates lift, people will make different pandemic choices that average into the total disease burden, and worries that a year of social media and a divisive president will deepen our judgment of each other. (00:00:00)
2022-05-27 · Hank · The Time for Politics — After a new elementary-school shooting, Hank looks back at his Sandy Hook video from ten years ago. He argues that leaders who say 'now is not the time for politics' are refusing to govern while playing politics as theater, and that politicians and pundits have answered parents' fear for their children by promoting fear of the government, a wedge that delegitimizes government. (00:00:00)
2022-06-03 · Hank · What Everyone's Getting Wrong About Student Loans — Hank argues that the student debt debate misreads the problem: average-debt figures hide that 40% of people with student loans dropped out without a degree, mostly under financial and academic pressure, so the country must tackle the dropout crisis and support students, not just forgive debt. (00:00:00)
2022-08-12 · Hank · The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What does it DO!? — As Joe Biden prepares to sign the largest climate bill any country has enacted, Hank explains its three goals (cutting emissions, making the energy shift good for people, and making the US a clean-tech manufacturing centre), walks through its spending, its few sticks for fossil fuels and Joe Manchin's concessions, and says he is more optimistic than ever that climate change can be tackled. (00:04:54)
2022-08-19 · Hank · What if a lot of the Cynicism is Unjustified??? — Hank asks what if people and leaders are mostly well-meaning; reading High Conflict, studying the climate bill's coalitions and the death of his friend, Missoula mayor John Engen, have eased his cynicism about government, and he points viewers to How to Vote in Every State to make a voting plan. (00:00:00)
2022-10-28 · Hank · I'm Changing the Way I Think About Politics — Hank argues that the relentless national focus of political conversation, with its simple stories, isn't good: Montana and congressional candidate Monica Tranel show people are more complex than national narratives allow, so this election he decided to go local. (00:00:29)
2024-09-13 · Hank · My Governor is Weirder than Yours — Hank interviews Ryan Busse, the Democrat running against Montana governor Greg Gianforte, who argues that Gianforte's property-tax rise, Medicaid cuts, abortion restrictions and attacks on public access betray the egalitarian Montana of the 1972 constitution; Hank argues that state and local politics matter as much as the national race. (00:00:00)
2025-02-07 · Hank · What Trump's Doing — Hank argues that the president's unilateral dismantling of USAID is illegal because Congress holds the power of the purse, that the real issue is whether the Constitution and the separation of powers still matter, and that Americans should refuse to believe Trump or Musk are more powerful than the Constitution. (00:00:00)
2025-03-07 · Hank · How Social Security Fraud Actually Works — Hank explains that there are not millions of very old Americans collecting Social Security: most fraud is overpayment, fighting it means bureaucracy for everyone to recover under 1% of benefits, and he condemns Trump and Musk for misleading America about its scale; he ends with a game of Connections. (00:03:53)
2025-04-08 · John · DOGE Is Not Cutting Government Spending — John argues that despite DOGE's layoffs and cuts to foreign aid and science, US federal spending and the deficit are rising, because the items cut are tiny shares of the budget; the cuts are a political choice, not austerity. (00:00:00)
2025-04-15 · John · Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? — After a TB-advocacy trip to Washington, John interviews Senator Adam Schiff, who argues Congress is surrendering its power of the purse to the president yet stays optimistic; they discuss USAID cuts reversing progress against tuberculosis and the meaning of The Fault in Our Stars' title. (00:00:00)
2025-04-25 · Hank · How We Form Opinions — Hank tells how smallpox variolation, brought to Boston by the enslaved Onesimus via Cotton Mather and to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, met opposite reactions in the two places, and argues people judged it by how they felt about its advocates; he sees the same mechanism today with electric cars, vaccines and falling birth rates and argues for taboos against inflammatory fear of outsiders. (00:03:24)
2025-06-13 · Hank · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — Angry and hopeless after deportation raids and protests in Los Angeles, Hank describes how he moves to hope: hopelessness is the less rational position, no one knows the future, and, after the Taoist idea of effortless action, focusing on care and humanizing people instead of shoving on a wall; he closes by announcing that the $50 million for the Maternal Center of Excellence has been raised. (00:00:00)
2025-07-04 · Hank · This Graph Changed My Life — Using Fox News comments calling climate change a hoax and a graph showing that under 10% of Americans are committed climate skeptics, Hank argues that the information ecosystem shows us the most extreme members of a group, a 'cable news fallacy' that makes us fight the wrong fight in despair. (00:00:59)
2025-08-15 · Hank · What Trump is Doing to Universities — Hank places the Trump administration's pressure on universities (withheld grants, a 15% cap on research overhead, visa limits) in a long pattern of authoritarian attacks on universities, argues universities are a ready-made out-group and a threat to a narcissist's self-image, and explains why the decentralised US system should prove more resilient. (00:00:00)
2025-11-14 · Hank · The End of The Penny (and of Congress??) — Marking the likely end of the US penny, which Trump's Treasury stopped minting by ruling the necessary number zero, Hank tells John that Obama thought it needed Congress; he argues Congress has given its power away, mainly through filibuster paralysis, leaving presidents to act alone, and warns this invites an autocrat. (00:02:24)
2025-12-19 · Hank · My Big 2026 Prediction is...Not Fun — In the brothers' last video of 2025, Hank asks viewers to fill out the 2025 Nerdfighteria Census, shows his 2026 bingo card, and predicts that AI, loved by the billionaire side of Trump's coalition and disliked by its populist base, has a good chance of doing a lot of damage to that coalition in 2026. (00:01:57)
2026-10-05 · Hank · Why Are We So Bad at Executing People? — Prompted by Tennessee's botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, Hank argues that US states botch executions (about 7% of lethal injections) because competent doctors, drug makers and suppliers refuse to take part, which shows society no longer really wants executions; he opposes the death penalty because innocent people have been executed. (00:03:53)

Philosophy & meaning

2009-07-07 · Hank · Too Much Love will KILL YOU — Hank argues that we cannot love everyone the way we love those close to us; alongside love we need compassion, a rational caring for the whole world that lets us help without guilt or crushing weight. (00:00:00)
2010-03-19 · John · Foreign John Green Books and the Ultimate Concern — Closing the ultimate-concern week from among his foreign editions, John says utilitarianism is a legitimate value system nobody lives by: we privilege people and threats close to us (he gives to breast cancer, not cholera), and the question is how to balance being safe in the world with making a world safe for all. (00:00:29)
2010-06-18 · Hank · You just lost THE GAME! — After a mock intervention over John's World Cup obsession, Hank makes everyone lose The Game and argues the meme hides a Buddhist truth: every game is lost, so what matters is choosing the right game, and the only real way to win is not to care if you lose. (00:01:29)
2010-06-21 · John · You're Gonna Die — Answering Hank's video on The Game, John says everyone and everything will be forgotten, but that is not nihilistic: we cannot choose whether to lose or to care, only what to care about, so he chooses nerdfighting, books and the World Cup; he then hosts a World Cup edition of Truth or Fail. (00:00:52)
2010-06-23 · Hank · GOOOOOOOL!!!! — Hank, who doesn't care about the World Cup, marks the US advancing and YouTube winning its lawsuit against Viacom, and argues that winning is valuable only because of the hard work, frustration and losing that come before it. (00:01:34)
2011-06-20 · John · On Religion — John argues that people of all faiths and none live in functional nihilism yet all feel called to meaning; debating whether God exists avoids the deeper question of how to bring meaning to human life, which religion and secular humanism both answer. (00:00:29)
2011-06-23 · Hank · Do You Believe in God? — Replying to John's religion video, Hank argues that the words in 'do you believe in God?' are hard to define and that the question's motives are the problem: no one should take his answer as authority, and a one-word answer invites dangerous categorising of people. (00:00:16)
2011-06-24 · John · On Religion (Redux) — Following Hank's point that 'do you believe in God?' needs its terms defined, John argues that religious identities are impossible to define cleanly, since believers disagree within every tradition, and that there was never a golden age to return to. (00:00:19)
2012-08-03 · Hank · I Don't Understand My Life — On Esther Day Hank answers a commenter who felt worthless watching Olympic gymnasts: value is something people give each other, the value we bring comes from whom we love and who loves us, so say 'I love you' to people you don't usually say it to. (00:00:35)
2012-11-16 · Hank · We're all Scared — Hank argues that everyone is a creator, above all of their own self, so everyone fears sharing their creations and being judged; the only remedy he has found is to keep creating in spite of the fear. (00:00:00)
2013-10-18 · Hank · Curiosity is the Greatest Human Quality — After a YouTube education event and a visit to the Exploratorium with fellow educational creators, Hank argues that inspiring curiosity is the heart of education and that curiosity may be the finest human quality, the opposite of judgment. (00:01:15)
2014-02-07 · Hank · Kill All The Humans — Hank asks whether humanity, the root of the environmental crisis, is worth it, and concludes that it is: human creation is as marvellous and unique as nature, and we create more than we destroy. (00:00:52)
2014-05-16 · Hank · The Myth of Greatness — Comparing Missoula (70,000 people) with Renaissance Florence (also 70,000), Hank argues great people are everywhere and that being remembered as great is circumstance; interesting things happen wherever people find what they are passionate about, as Nerdfighteria did for him. (00:00:00)
2014-05-20 · John · Deserving — Prompted by Hank's video on the Renaissance and circumstance, John argues his TFiOS success is luck and privilege, not desert; believing we deserve our fortune breeds self-centred myopia, and since we are not our luck, gratitude and helping each other are the right response. (00:00:16)
2014-07-25 · Hank · Towering Mountains of Ignorance — Hank argues that we confuse thinking with knowing: opinions on complex social questions are value-based guesses that people tie to their sense of self, and the truest thing he can say is 'I don't know'. (00:00:20)
2015-02-06 · Hank · You Will Be Forgotten ...And That's OK — Hank argues that being remembered forever is unachievable and that 'success' does not exist; lasting satisfaction comes from solving problems and making things, not from recognition. (00:00:36)
2015-03-20 · Hank · A Sacrifice of Individuality and the Internets — Hank argues that the internet's distributed crowds make us forget crowds are made of individuals, and that, as he learned at concerts, briefly sacrificing individuality to a crowd can be wonderful because crowds can be kind. (00:00:49)
2015-05-15 · Hank · Happy Graduation, Future Dead People — In a graduation message, Hank tells viewers they are among the most powerful people who ever lived, that their job is to solve more problems than they create, and, via EVE Online, that culture is the collective actions of people, so their actions build our world. (00:00:18)
2015-06-09 · John · What Does It Mean to Be Human? — Prompted by Bill Gates's Big History video contest and his own novel-in-progress, John argues that definitions of humanness by biology, stories or literacy exclude and dehumanize people, and that we confer personhood on each other through empathy, compassion and trust. (00:00:19)
2015-11-19 · Hank · Is Success a Bad Idea? (Pizzamas Day 9 of 10) — Hank argues that 'success' as society uses it (being richer, more powerful or better known than most) rests on scarcity and luck, is not needed for happiness, and that people should be valued in ways that have nothing to do with scarcity. (00:00:29)
2016-01-08 · Hank · Who Am I?! - Some thoughts on Personal Identity — Hank argues the self is a subjective story shaped largely by others' expectations; labels and tests are useful tools but not walls, and people keep becoming someone new, which he finds wonderful. (00:00:00)
2016-01-22 · Hank · Why Are Vegetarians Annoying? (An Exploration of a Cultural Rift) — Hank concedes that vegetarians are right about meat yet keeps eating it, and argues people are annoyed by vegetarians because they work hard to live by values that clash with society's norms, a conflict he calls healthy. (00:01:27)
2016-06-03 · Hank · Redefining What it Means to Matter — Hank argues that culture's measures of mattering (salary, fame, money, singular heroes) are scarce and misleading; people matter because they make life better for others now and in the future, as part of humanity's shared labor. (00:00:00)
2016-07-05 · John · The Horizon Line — On vacation by a Great Lake in Michigan, John reflects on the horizon: once he thought life meant chasing it and saw his return to Indianapolis, the city his father fled, as failure; now he is content to watch it from the middle and thinks he underrated happiness and observing. (00:01:56)
2016-07-12 · John · Our Capacity for Wonder: A Review — John 'reviews' humans' capacity for wonder: Fitzgerald's Gatsby line is beautiful but wrong, since a leaf his toddler son Henry noticed showed that wonder depends on attention, not on what we see; he gives it 10 out of 10. (00:01:53)
2017-02-24 · Hank · Doing Bad Things To Make Good Things Happen — Hank explains why he jumped off the 'Machiavellian train' he rode as a younger man (good people must do what bad people do to win): trust needs people not to be pawns, outcomes are uncertain and often unreached, and there is no final end, since every decision is an end in itself; he now discards ideas that require defying his values and believes tiny actions make humanity work. (00:00:15)
2017-04-11 · John · Making the World's Largest Ball of Paint — John uses the world's largest ball of paint in Alexandria, Indiana, painted by thousands of people since 1977, to argue that the worship of individual genius is misguided: art and life are layers added to a shared sphere, and your layer matters even when it is painted over. (00:00:58)
2017-08-25 · Hank · Trust and Fire - Thoughts from the Smoke — With his Montana valley choked by wildfire smoke and the eclipse just past, Hank argues that trusting experts is not an appeal to authority but to a process of checked work (statistics, peer review, science); accepting scientific consensus beats one's own hunch, and discarding systems of trustable expertise is individualism taken to a dangerous extreme. (00:00:28)
2017-11-03 · John · Because We're Here — As the Turtles tour ends, John recalls watching Hank perform since 2008 and tells how, during a 2005 depression, Amy Krouse Rosenthal turned the WWI soldiers' song 'We're here because we're here' into a proclamation of togetherness and hope, which he believes is the correct response to history. (00:00:36)
2018-05-04 · Hank · When to Attack a Moose — Hank asks why negative events affect us more than positive ones: an evolutionary answer (one lost fight with a moose, or ostracism from the tribe, is fatal) is plausible but a cheat; he argues that we build our identity as a story of self, negative feedback forces costly revisions felt as threats to ourselves, and how we respond shapes who we become. (00:01:44)
2018-06-08 · Hank · Intentionally Ignorant: Does Free Will Exist? — Hank says he rationally accepts determinism (nothing he does was not fixed at the Big Bang) but chooses to ignore it in daily life, because accepting it would hurt his flourishing; he lives in intentional ignorance of a few realities, such as the death of the last human, since his goal is happiness, not perfect understanding. (00:00:00)
2018-06-26 · John · How's the Water? — Using David Foster Wallace's two-fish joke, John says he once believed adulthood would make him the wise older fish and often played that role in vlogbrothers videos, but he does not know what we are swimming in, distrusts the very certain, and suggests that asking the question may be its own answer. (00:00:00)
2018-11-01 · Hank · Should I Feel Guilty? — Starting from a tenant who felt 'made to feel guilty' about pulled-up wildflowers, Hank separates guilt for things one did from guilt for unearned advantages such as never needing student loans, and argues that deserving is the wrong frame: the question is what to do with advantages, letting guilt motivate helping others rather than weigh one down. (00:02:18)
2019-02-26 · John · The Necessity to Struggle / The Futility of Effort — Waiting at an airport gate, John spirals from noticing that everyone there will be dead within a century into nihilistic despair, then argues that both despair and joy in the human enterprise are correct, that the useful question is which view is productive, and that effort is never futile while people share in it and benefit from it. (00:02:26)
2019-04-16 · John · Doing Somethings — After a night at a live Harry Potter and the Sacred Text recording, John reflects that doing nothing feels like a passive default rather than a choice, which leaves him vulnerable to misinformation (about medication, flu shots, philanthropy); passive choices are still choices, and he is always choosing which something to do. (00:00:29)
2019-04-19 · Hank · Making your Nothings into Somethings — Replying with a cold to clips of John's 'Doing Somethings', Hank agrees passivity is part of doing nothing but splits choices into active and passive nothings and somethings, and argues the best use of limited choice-making energy is to set up 'passive somethings' (habits, meal kits, weekly days) so his non-choices aren't nothing. (00:00:52)
2019-05-28 · John · 3 Minutes and 58 Seconds of Darkness — John reflects that cameras both record and distort: his camera cannot show the night sky he saw over Indianapolis, yet images feel like proof; citing Susan Sontag, he admits he documents to fix himself in time and warns that seeing through a camera misses everything it doesn't see. (00:01:04)
2019-07-02 · John · On Sunlight — Looking out from the shore of Lake Michigan, John reflects that all life runs on sunlight, that the sun is god-like and impossible to look at directly, and that its strangest creation is consciousness; a sunset shows how small he is, yet how wondrous it is to be not just in the universe but of it. (00:00:29)
2019-11-06 · Hank · Can You Be a Good Person in 2019? — Hank uses season three of The Good Place, where everyone now goes to the Bad Place, to argue that the modern world's complexity makes being good harder; moral point-counting of every choice is a flawed, individualist tool, so we should seek complex truths without judging ourselves or others as if our accounting were accurate. (00:00:58)
2020-03-31 · John · Let's take a walk. — With his anxiety overwhelming in early spring, John takes Hank and viewers on a calming walk through Indiana woods, creek and floodplain, quoting Annie Dillard, Leanne Shapton, Wordsworth and Lucille Clifton; he ends calmer, finding hope in 'the future is possible' and the feeling of being really here, alive on this intricate earth. (00:02:53)
2020-05-12 · John · We Could All Use a Little Change — John says Kurzgesagt's gratitude journal is a rare book that changed his life: writing daily what he is grateful for, with his brain problems amplified by wider problems, lets him feel rather than merely know his gratitude, mostly to other people, and shows him he is not alone. (00:01:56)
2020-06-23 · John · You'll Never Shine if You Don't Glow — Prompted by Hank's shooting-star video, John traces his changing relationship with fireflies: a childhood emblem of the world's strangeness and beauty, then, from his teens, a beauty he scorned as cheesy for fear of unironized emotion, and now an encouraging example of making light where there otherwise wouldn't be any. (00:01:27)
2020-07-14 · John · The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. — Burnt out, struggling with OCD and dismayed by the US COVID-19 surge, John says a line from Hank's A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, that your own joy can be something you produce, has given him permission to make joy in hard times, as he did by finally solving a Rubik's Cube, because making joy cultivates hope. (00:01:56)
2020-09-29 · John · How 'bout Yours? — After thanking pre-orderers of The Anthropocene Reviewed book, John walks in the woods and, through a Wallace Stevens poem and a memory of Esther Earl noticing his fear on a bridge, argues that we can only say 'my bridge is terrifying, how about yours?' and must truly listen to and believe in others' experience; a repeated walk reminds him that how he is now is not how he will always be. (00:00:29)
2020-10-12 · Hank · What Matters — Starting from how he writes fiction, Hank argues people feel they matter through the overlap of traits they value and traits they think they have; cultures supply those values, but mattering is subjective, a story we find ourselves in, and since adaptability is the most human trait, what matters to us can and will change. (00:00:00)
2020-10-15 · John · Civilization and the Lies We Love — John debunks the viral Margaret Mead quote that a healed femur is the first sign of civilization (no evidence she said it, animals do survive broken femurs, and civilization means writing, records and state power), then argues the lie seduces because its core is true: compassion, empathy and self-sacrifice predate civilization, and protecting the vulnerable makes the human project stronger. (00:02:26)
2020-12-18 · Hank · How to Change What you Want — Hank argues that we cannot stop wanting things but can steer our wants by what we engage with, since engagement teaches us stories about value; society's defaults make some wants easy, so the most successful people are often the least interesting, and prizing the weird keeps you out of societal ruts. (00:00:29)
2020-12-31 · John · Auld Lang Syne: The Anthropocene Reviewed — In an Anthropocene Reviewed episode John interweaves the history of Auld Lang Syne, from Robert Burns to the 1914 Christmas Truce and the soldiers' 'We're here because we're here', with his friendship with Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who launched his radio career and later died of cancer, and argues that the song holds longing without romanticizing it and that hope is true; five stars. (00:09:20)
2021-01-26 · John · The Sycamore Tree: The Anthropocene Reviewed — In an Anthropocene Reviewed essay, John describes his depressive brain's game 'What's Even the Point', argues that despair and ironic detachment are unproductive and that the questions of philosophy matter, and finds an answer of sorts in the shade of an old sycamore tree, which he gives four and a half stars. (00:01:08)
2021-07-27 · John · Savoring: The Sunset Series Returns — Watching the sun set over Lake Michigan, John argues for savoring (taking slow, thick time to take in good things that happen slowly), says we go on because despair is untrue and life is beautiful despite its pain, and hopes Hank savors a sunset too. (00:00:00)
2021-07-30 · Hank · Can You Trust Science Too Much? — Hank argues you can trust science too much, since treating its findings as gospel is unscientific, but that alternatives escape science's harsh constraints and are judged by laxer rules; using ivermectin for COVID as the example, he says science is not facts or an ideology but a human system very good at uncovering truth. (00:00:00)
2021-10-13 · Hank · The Web of Care — Praising John's 17-mile run and a Heavyweight episode about him, Hank uses a vaccinated friend's frustration at catching COVID and his own voting to argue that we act as individuals but the world acts on us collectively, so no one need care about everything: we live in a web of care and can trust others to do their part. (00:00:54)
2021-11-02 · John · enough — Starting from Joseph Heller's reply 'enough' to Kurt Vonnegut, John argues that escaping precarity is impossible (everyone dies) and undesirable, and that if having enough means insulating himself from others' suffering, enough is simply too much. (00:00:27)
2022-01-21 · Hank · How to Be Hopeful About Doomsday — After speaking at the unveiling of the 2022 Doomsday Clock, Hank walks through how he wrote hopeful remarks: zoom out to how wonderful life is, recognise that problems are hard for reasons rather than because humans are awful, and instead of getting mad, get curious and engage deeply with one of the many smaller problems. (00:00:56)
2022-03-01 · John · Hard Week — In an unscripted video after a week in which a close high-school friend and Paul Farmer died and the 15th P4A raised almost $3 million, John argues that despair never tells the whole story: mortality makes our love and solidarity more beautiful, injustice is not inevitable, and our job is to make each other feel less alone. (00:01:27)
2022-03-22 · John · Motivation in Hard Times — Sharing excerpts of a pep talk he recorded for AFC Wimbledon, John says his early career ran on resentment, fear and anger, a fuel that burns bright but dirty; love burns bright and clean and can pull us through hard times, and spring is coming. (00:00:58)
2022-03-29 · John · An H of G — John explains Dr. Paul Farmer's phrase 'H of G', a hermeneutics of generosity: assume others are good and read what they do in a favorable light. It is hard in practice, but it turns injustice into addressable failures of empathy, resource allocation and will, so a better world becomes possible. (00:00:58)
2022-04-01 · Hank · I Don't Have a Good Title for This Video. — Hank says he feels stuck because he doesn't know what to look at: the ships he watched in Seattle with Oren, like things on his desk, both harm and delight. Middle age has made things less clear, but nothing gets done without seeing both harm and joy, ideally at once. (00:00:27)
2022-09-06 · John · Some Advice — John, wary of giving advice, offers some anyway: distrust strangers' advice, floss as an act of faith in your future self, write your memoir, notice when you are happy, remember you matter, collaborate, and attend to where your attention goes. (00:00:29)
2022-09-20 · John · Against Nihilism — Sharing part of a talk to college students, John rejects the popular nihilism that nothing matters: humans are a catastrophe but also wondrous, there is meaning in loving and being heard, and he urges people to hurl words into the darkness and to be an echo for others. (00:00:29)
2022-12-06 · John · AI tells me if AI will write novels. — John plays a ChatGPT-written vlogbrothers script assuring him AI cannot truly write novels, finds its reassurance and cliches unsettling, and says his deeper worry is not technology becoming like us but humans coming to see themselves as digital rather than as organisms among organisms. (00:02:55)
2022-12-27 · John · We're here because were here. — Over a winter walk, John reads his Anthropocene Reviewed essay on Auld Lang Syne, weaving the song's history from Robert Burns to the 1914 Christmas Truce and the trench song 'We're here because we're here' with his friendship with Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and argues the song holds longing without romanticizing it and that hope is true. (00:08:51)
2023-03-14 · John · The Seduction of Despair — Filming with a hurting back, John says despair is seductive because it is simple and easy to justify, but it is neither helpful nor the whole truth: child mortality halved because people collaborated, and hope lies in slow reparative work and quiet kindnesses like his friend Chris listening to him. (00:00:00)
2023-05-09 · John · on hope — John tries to define what he means by hope: a need to believe consciousness, love, art and collaboration are worth it, and a hope that the human story continues and improves; citing a ceremonial coronation as real if insufficient progress, he says very little in history is inevitable, that we will change the world for the better, and that despair is too simple. (00:00:00)
2023-06-16 · Hank · So, About This HAIR… — Hank revisits his old line that you have no obligation to your former self: since he is a story he tells himself, he loves his punk 17-year-old self, who wanted a mohawk at 40, and now chooses to honor him, keeping the amount of obligation he wants. (00:00:00)
2023-12-22 · Hank · Let's Talk About Death — After eating Buddy the Elf's candy pasta, Hank tells John that getting sick shook his sense of what life is for; in a universe without evident objective meaning he still wanted to live, and concludes that striving and 'wanting to want' in community is the point, then plugs a Christmas Eve video and his cancer stand-up shows. (00:00:54)
2023-12-30 · John · John's Review of Auld Lang Syne — In his yearly New Year upload of The Anthropocene Reviewed episode on Auld Lang Syne, John weaves the song's history from Robert Burns to the 1914 Christmas Truce and the trench soldiers' recursive lament with his friendship with Amy Krouse Rosenthal, arguing the song holds longing without romanticizing it and that hope is true; he gives it five stars. (00:09:20)
2024-01-09 · John · Views — Back from his annual hiking trip with friends in Kentucky's Red River Gorge, John muses on the word 'view' and Rudolf Otto's mysterium tremendum, admits great views (even the Grand Canyon) never quite move him, and says he finds the tremendous mystery instead in togetherness, interconnectedness and the wonder of being at all. (00:02:51)
2024-06-04 · John · how it all ends — Drawing on what Katie Mack taught him for their podcast, John argues that human history's rising curve of preserved information will end with Earth absorbed into the Sun's white dwarf, so we cannot leave a permanent mark; we remember and record for the living and for future generations, and maybe are here to ease suffering and live in brief wonder. (00:03:24)
2024-06-14 · Hank · Some Reasons why People Suck — Hank argues that cutting beef is harder than making clean energy cheap because changing behavior needs social or cultural technologies; culture is malleable but changes passively, and he embraces beef days as a cultural technology that adds ritual, while mentioning post-chemo brain fog and announcing John's Partners In Health livestream. (00:01:09)
2024-10-02 · Hank · What I learned from the weirdest day of my life — Replying to John's video on fame, Hank tells how his 2008 deal to sell EcoGeek to Scientific American was paused by the financial crisis and argues that dreams are tools to drop when they cause problems: success is a string of solved problems for yourself and others, which answers 'what's the point'; he links this to his worry about attention-hijacking algorithms and to the Book of Good Times. (00:00:00)
2024-10-03 · John · Broadly in Favor of Humans — John describes how little human life changed until about 300 years ago, compresses human history into one calendar year to show how recent and vast the industrial-age changes are, and argues that humans are neither simply good nor bad: he is broadly in favor of humans, expects we will survive our polycrisis, and thinks humanity is worth the hope and work. (00:02:55)
2024-12-13 · Hank · TIL Some People Have an 'Inner Monologue' — Hank says he has realized he has no internal monologue and thinks in wordless bubbles of ideas, though he remembers having one in high school and college; he argues that introspection reveals little and that his self is probably many separate parts (attention, experience, body, memories, worry) tied together by the story his brain tells about who he is. He ends saying he is not fully fine but fine physically, and plugs the discounted Complexly calendar. (00:01:57)
2025-04-04 · Hank · Morality — Hank argues that morality comes in three kinds: rules by which the powerful control others, arbitrary shared norms (like the taboo on curse words) that bind a society, and real morality about impact and care (taboos on slurs, gambling, scamming, lying) that every society needs; he thanks John and plugs John's book. (00:00:58)
2025-06-17 · John · My Religion — Answering the questions he is most often asked about religion, John says he is an Episcopalian Christian who believes in God without needing to settle God's independent reality, centres his faith on forgiveness, radical hope and work for the marginalized, reads the Bible through an interpretive lens, struggles with the problem of evil, and does not worry about atheist Hank's soul because they are called by the same voice. (00:00:00)
2025-07-11 · Hank · The Ones Who Love Us — Revisiting Keanu Reeves's late-show answer to what happens when we die ('the ones who love us will miss us'), Hank says it answered an unanswerable question with an obviously true answer by reminding everyone they are just one person: what goes on after death is the whole story we are part of, and with the right flashlight we need not mourn missing it. (00:01:42)
2025-12-02 · John · The Meaning of Life with Hank and John — On a Question Tuesday filmed on the set of Ask Hank Anything, John and Hank answer the meaning of life: John says it is being in relationship with others and paying attention, Hank finds meaning in emergent complexity, in something being better than nothing, and in cultivating interest; they agree that what we do with our attention is what we do with our lives. (00:01:58)
2026-01-06 · John · Hope Is Not a Feeling — Prompted by a friend's email about hope, John recalls the Catholic Engaged Encounter he and Sarah attended, where a priest taught that love is a decision, and argues that hope, like love, is not only a feeling but a demanding, repeated decision and practice that can withstand suffering, makes good outcomes likelier, and must be chosen especially when the feeling is distant. (00:01:27)
2026-04-10 · Hank · Moon Joy — Pegged to the week of Artemis II, Hank tells John that the moon looks peaceful only because it is dead and wants nothing; since life is wanting, the coolest thing about the moon is us, and its meaning is our meaning reflected back. (00:00:51)
2026-07-21 · John · One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy — While signing his name some 85,000 times for Hollywood, Ending, John reads Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus: in an indifferent universe repetitive work can bring a quiet flow and contentment, and, unlike Sisyphus's rock, our work can help others, so it matters in tiny, momentary ways. (00:00:00)
2026-07-24 · Hank · One Must Imagine Sisyphus Important — Replying to John's Sisyphus video, Hank uses a planned video question, the most important thing that ever happened, to argue that importance itself began only when experience arose in the universe, so importance is important; the Sisyphus story moves us by making us feel, and his fame outliving the gods may be another joy. (00:01:27)
2026-08-03 · John · Esther Day 2026: Some Thoughts on Loss — On Esther Day 2026, John reflects that Esther Earl has now been gone as long as she lived, that grief over early death can intensify as one learns what the dead have missed, and that he has not reconciled himself to death's injustice; yet he holds that love is stronger than death and survives in others. (00:00:29)
2026-08-21 · Hank · Not (Just) Dunking on Jeff Bezos — Replying to John's video on professional provocateurs, Hank examines Jeff Bezos's claim that a trillion humans would yield a thousand Mozarts and Einsteins: genius depends on circumstances, not population size, and valuing canonized genius over thriving is a frame Hank himself gets stuck in; he argues for optimizing for thriving and the safety creativity needs. (00:01:56)
2026-09-30 · John · The Point of Life — Writing from a Pittsburgh hotel on his Hollywood, Ending tour and building on Hank's video on bit commitment, John argues that the point of life is committing to bits: lifelong relationships, marriage, TB fighting, the vlog project and making art, even though they make us vulnerable; Nerdfighteria's bit commitment built Pizzamas and the Maternal Center of Excellence. (00:00:40)
2026-10-16 · Hank · Is Happiness the Goal? — After joining John's Hollywood, Ending tour, Hank says he is not sure he wants to be happy: his frenetic making brings satisfaction, flow and the sense of being needed, but what he has been missing is space in his life to feel his actual emotions, joy or sadness; a nerdfighter's reply showed him his joy matters to the people he loves. (00:00:48)

Science & nature

2010-01-11 · Hank · Ecosystem Services 101 with Hank — Hank opens a 'teaching' theme week by teaching John about ecosystem services: ecologists and economists put dollar values on what nature does for us (the Catskill watershed, a $33 trillion global estimate), so the environment is good for the economy. (00:00:50)
2010-04-19 · Hank · I Shall BLOW YOUR MIND — Hank builds up cosmic scale (Earth, the Sun, the galaxy's stars) to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, where a blank speck of sky held over 3,000 galaxies, and argues that humanity's act of understanding gives us an important place in the universe. (00:01:58)
2010-05-26 · Hank · How to Be Green Without Being a Prick — Using David Bleja's real-time Breathing Earth map, Hank argues that being green means understanding the complex problems, not buying or doing things to ease personal guilt, so that people can help create solutions that let the world prosper sustainably. (00:01:27)
2010-09-03 · Hank · ANOTHER Oil Rig Explosion?! REALLY?! — Hank argues that the world will never run out of oil, only of easy oil, so companies take ever bigger risks to get the hard oil; because those risks fall on shared things like the Gulf of Mexico, government regulation is needed rather than industry self-regulation. (00:00:29)
2010-09-08 · Hank · Where are the Space Aliens?! — Continuing his Hubble Ultra Deep Field video, Hank explains the Fermi Paradox and its possible resolutions (self-destruction, transformation, hiding, a zoo, our short broadcasting history), concluding that the one civilization we know must be protected from itself. (00:00:29)
2010-11-12 · Hank · Blood!!! — On his way to give blood, Hank explains the human circulatory system by following the life of one red blood cell, 'Arby', from its creation through the lungs and back, and urges viewers to give blood. (00:00:00)
2011-02-02 · Hank · Top 5 Awesome Things About the Webb Telescope — Hank argues that the world gets better both by decreasing suck and by increasing awesome, so space spending is worthwhile, and lists five reasons the James Webb Space Telescope is awesome though it will not cure malaria. (00:00:11)
2011-03-16 · Hank · Why Did Fukushima Explode? — Postponing his thoughts from Haiti, Hank explains nuclear terms and how a reactor works, then why Fukushima is in trouble: decay heat with coolant systems knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami, hydrogen explosions, and uncooled spent-fuel pools. He says he does not know whether nuclear power's benefits outweigh its risks and faults people for making up their minds on a complicated issue. (00:04:11)
2011-04-27 · Hank · NASA: Increasing Awesome — After paying his taxes, Hank argues that government should increase awesome as well as decrease suck, and lists what NASA does with under half a cent of each federal dollar (about $18 billion, 0.45%) to show he is happy to fund it. (00:01:39)
2011-06-13 · Hank · Google Is Alive! — Hank argues that the school checklist of life's traits is not a definition, proposes that life is whatever wants (needs something and tries to get it), adds Schrödinger's entropy definition, and cautiously concludes that Google is alive; he adds that nobody really values all life just for being alive. (00:00:41)
2011-07-06 · Hank · John Green is an IDIOT! And so are you. — Hank argues, teasingly using John as the example, that cognitive bias is a big reason people are 'stupid': bias simplifies quick decisions but, unnoticed, leads to bad ones; he tours blind-spot, anchoring, confirmation and other biases and urges everyone to read about bias. (00:00:21)
2013-05-10 · Hank · Some Mind-Bending Earth GIFs — Hank shares time-lapses from Google's new Earth Engine (built on NASA's Landsat) showing 25 years of human change to the planet and argues that seeing the change, not just knowing the statistics, may help us understand and act better. (00:02:01)
2013-09-27 · Hank · Invalid Arguments: Climate Change — Hank says humanity must first agree that climate change is a real, human-caused problem, rebuts ten common arguments against it, and argues for using fossil fuels less while expressing faith that humanity can solve the problem. (00:00:00)
2014-01-10 · Hank · Global Warming and the Polar Vortex — Hank explains the polar vortex and argues that local cold is the wrong lens on global warming: the word 'global' is the hard part, so he thinks of it as an increase in energy trapped in the atmosphere. (00:00:57)
2015-09-11 · Hank · Yellowstone: The Terror of Change — Hank argues from Yellowstone's supervolcano and ever-shifting geysers that nothing constant is real: change is inevitable, terrifying and exciting, and Yellowstone is honest about it in a way the rest of life isn't. (00:01:07)
2016-12-20 · John · How Giraffes Mate, and Why It Matters — Prompted by a tweet missing their giraffe-sex videos, John explains how inefficiently giraffes mate, why their falling populations struggle to recover, and argues that whether giraffes and the planet's biodiversity survive the Anthropocene is a human choice. (00:01:50)
2017-03-24 · Hank · I Disagree with Me (Thoughts from Lake Powell) — At Lake Powell, the reservoir of Glen Canyon Dam, Hank explains why dams were built and the problems the lake faces, and argues against an environmentalism that frames nature against humans and technology: he loves both nature and the dam, wants contradictory things, and says he needs to disagree with himself. (00:01:58)
2017-06-02 · Hank · The Paris Accord: What is it? And What Does it All Mean? — As the US pulls out of the Paris Agreement, Hank explains how fossil fuels drive climate change and how the voluntary, unenforced agreement divided emission goals among countries, argues it was a gigantic, successful step worth its costs, and says he is ashamed of the US withdrawal. (00:01:42)
2017-07-04 · John · Civil Twilight — On vacation by Lake Michigan, John reflects on sunsets and civil twilight: their beauty is cliché yet universal, the physics of scattering does not rob them of beauty but cannot convey the feeling, and, echoing Toni Morrison, the world's beauty can simply be enough without being photographed. (00:00:29)
2017-09-01 · Hank · What Everyone Gets Wrong About Global Warming — Hank argues that a warmer Earth changes the probability of weather, not any one year's outcome: each hurricane season is one dot from a probability curve, single years show no trend, but more energy and carbon shift the curve toward stronger, wetter storms, making rare years and worst-place hits like Harvey and Katrina less rare and changing what counts as a 100-year flood. (00:00:00)
2018-04-24 · John · This Video is about Red Eyed Tree Frogs? — Inspired by the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and his belief that beauty is mostly a matter of attention, John looks closely at the red-eyed tree frog, at Henry's suggestion: its flashing red eyes may teach predators to look for the wrong thing, as people chasing the novel, loud and bright miss subtler insight; if you only look for red eyes, you miss the frog. (00:00:03)
2018-07-27 · Hank · Why Environmentalists Hate Captain Planet — Hank, an environmentalist, argues that Captain Planet and the Planeteers, though it taught good habits and built support for environmental policy, turned people in extractive industries into subhuman caricatured villains, dehumanizing those environmentalists must negotiate with and deepening a rift that mirrors today's politics. (00:01:12)
2018-10-19 · Hank · This is the scariest graph I've ever seen — Using an ice cube that stays frozen in a warm room, Hank explains the 'scariest graph' he has seen, of sea level rise commitment: today's warming already commits us to more than a meter of long-term sea level rise, and the worst-case path to 2100 to six meters; humans solve problems well, but only ones they recognize. (00:00:48)
2018-11-30 · Hank · We just had our first interstellar visitor...and it's weird. — Hank lays out what is known about Oumuamua, the first observed interstellar object, weighs the comet against the alien solar-sail hypothesis, and argues that because he wants it to be a spaceship he cannot trust himself on it: the universe being weird is perhaps the best argument against aliens. (00:06:35)
2019-05-03 · Hank · What Game of Thrones is Really About — Hank argues that Game of Thrones is an analog of the geopolitics of global warming (a collective-action, prisoner's-dilemma problem where nations that do nothing gain), but that climate change is worse because it can't be beaten, isn't evil and can't be seen; still, resources, technology and coal-to-wind shifts give reason for hope. (00:00:00)
2019-05-31 · Hank · Uncomfortable Nuance: Natural Gas Edition — Hank argues that coal's collapse in the UK and US, very good news for the climate, was largely brought about by cheap natural gas from fracking, which is genuinely bad for local environments; he urges accepting that climate solutions carry their own environmental costs rather than inventing villains. (00:00:40)
2019-06-14 · Hank · What /Actually/ Happened at Chernobyl — Hank explains the physics behind the Chernobyl explosion: the cheap RBMK design (water coolant, graphite moderator, two-way control rods), xenon buildup and nearly all rods pulled, so reinserting the rods spiked neutron flux; the 'graphite tip' is a simplification. (00:06:03)
2019-08-30 · Hank · The Earth Shouldn't Have Oxygen — Correcting last week's claim that the Amazon makes 20% of the world's oxygen, Hank explains the carbon cycle: oxygen accumulates only because some ocean carbohydrates never get burned, so losing the Amazon would not suffocate us, but it would release a huge carbon sink. (00:00:29)
2020-08-21 · Hank · The Water's Getting Warm — Revisiting his line that climate change is humanity's first global collective problem, Hank says COVID-19 is a second: the pandemic's economic hit will leave fewer resources for escaping the carbon economy, which needs prosperity, but six months of collective action make him more hopeful that people will sacrifice when they see what's on the line. (00:00:00)
2020-09-18 · Hank · They Say it Gets Colder — Prompted by this week's report of unexplained phosphine in Venus's atmosphere, Hank explains why Venus's temperate cloud layer is a candidate for microbial life and why the claim needs a mission to confirm, then argues that life elsewhere in the universe is not an extraordinary claim, since what happened once can probably happen again a lot. (00:02:08)
2020-09-22 · John · the world is gonna roll me — Feeling tossed by forces beyond his control, John walks outside on the first day of autumn and contrasts Melville's terror at nature's indifference with Mary Oliver's comfort in it; siding with Oliver, he argues that nature is not truly indifferent to us because we are nature, utterly interdependent with the oceans and each other, and hopes that knowledge carries us through isolation. (00:00:52)
2021-04-16 · Hank · Gene Editing and Intelligence: A Bad — Responding to talk of gene editing prompted by a book about Jennifer Doudna, Hank argues that editing children for intelligence is a dangerous misunderstanding: genetic potential is realized through environment, and intelligence means being well-suited to one's own time, so designing people for today would rob us of the diversity the future needs. (00:00:00)
2021-05-28 · Hank · Aliens — Hank, who thinks life elsewhere is inevitable and intelligent life extraordinarily likely, argues that with unexplained aerial phenomena in the news 'aliens' is a bad explanation because it could explain any mystery; the right move is to say we don't know, investigate and gather data. (00:00:45)
2021-07-09 · Hank · Wrong on the Internet — Frustrated that online arguments run on how ideas feel rather than on data, Hank takes the claim that individual climate action is pointless or distracting and reports research showing that acting individually signals an emergency and leads people to push for more systemic change, not less. (00:01:14)
2021-08-13 · Hank · How We Fix the Climate — Prompted by the week's IPCC report, Hank argues that one of the most important things anyone can do about climate change is understand climate policy, and explains carbon pricing (carbon tax, fee and dividend, cap and trade, paying for removal) and the US 'everything else' approach of standards, investment and justice, favouring all of them. (00:04:35)
2021-10-22 · Hank · A Tool with No Blood on It — Using Vavilovian mimics such as false flax, weeds that evolved to resemble crops, Hank argues that solutions create new problems, as agriculture, fossil fuels and the internet did; borrowing Maggie Nelson's 'tool with no blood on it', he says no such tool exists and the human experiment aims only at a slightly better world. (00:01:56)
2021-11-12 · Hank · Everything a Normal Person Needs to Know About Helium — Hank explains why helium is special (unreactive, tiny, nearly unfreezable) and widely used, and argues the 'running out of helium' story is half true: it comes as a vented byproduct of natural gas and a US reserve sell-off crashed prices, but dedicated drilling and new reserves have ended the shortage for now. (00:01:27)
2021-12-17 · Hank · What State of Matter is Fire — Hank tackles a question that seems easy but is not, what state of matter fire is: like a waterfall, fire is not matter but a process, and its reacting molecules, glowing soot and excited gas fit no single state; he closes by plugging the new Project for Awesome calendar. (00:00:29)
2021-12-24 · Hank · 29 Days of Astronomical Terror — On the eve of its Christmas launch, Hank explains why the James Webb Space Telescope must observe in infrared from a cold, shielded orbit, walks through the tense 29-day deployment timeline, and says curiosity is close to the root of being human. (00:00:29)
2022-02-18 · Hank · You Don't Want a Gas Stovetop — In an unscripted rant Hank argues that viewers should stop wanting gas stoves: they foul indoor air and induction is better, and though stoves burn little methane, people's attachment to them lets gas companies keep piping methane into homes for decades, so changing that belief matters for climate. (00:00:00)
2022-07-15 · Hank · Thoughts From the Universe - Woah — Responding to the first James Webb Space Telescope images, which leave many people feeling insignificant, Hank argues size is the wrong measure: life on Earth has existed for 27% of the universe's lifetime, and the rare particles that know they exist, like our brains, make him feel very big. (00:00:00)
2022-07-19 · John · Why Do Things Exist? — Answering his five-year-old nephew Orin's question 'Why do things exist?', John explains what we know about the universe (stardust, galaxies, expansion, the Big Bang) and argues that we don't know why anything exists, which is exciting: the urge to know is the human superpower and we are the universe trying to understand itself. (00:00:00)
2022-07-29 · Hank · How Climate Change /Actually/ Works...in 4 Minutes — Hank explains climate change without the greenhouse metaphor: more energy now enters Earth's atmosphere than leaves; carbon dioxide and methane are clear in visible light but black at infrared wavelengths, so they absorb photons and heat the air, driving heat, severe weather and change our infrastructure was not built for. (00:00:00)
2022-11-18 · Hank · How Much Does Humanity Weigh? — Hank explains mammal biomass: humans are about a third of it, cows another third, other livestock 30% and wild mammals 4%, after a megafauna extinction and agriculture cut wild mammal biomass 85% while total mammal biomass rose 800%; he calls that bad but complex and urges doing it thoughtfully. (00:00:00)
2022-11-29 · John · The Weight of Life — Following Hank's mammal biomass video, John says humans are a rounding error in Earth's biomass (plants over 80%, bacteria 12%, animals under 1%) and argues that, though powerful, we should see ourselves realistically: the danger is not ending life but making Earth less habitable for us and other complex life. (00:01:56)
2023-03-10 · Hank · Is it Good or Bad that we Haven't Met Aliens? — Filming from a paid booth in an airport, Hank asks whether it is good or bad that we have not met aliens, lays out the Fermi paradox's options (civilizations don't last, the great filter; or they are very rare), and proposes a hopeful third: advanced species may learn to stop taking up all available space, and humans may be starting to. (00:02:28)
2023-07-21 · Hank · The Biggest Weirdest Telescope We've Ever Built — Hank explains that astronomy has relied only on photons until two recent breakthroughs: pulsar timing that detected the gravitational wave background, and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctic ice, which used machine learning to make the first map of our galaxy not based on photons. (00:05:26)
2023-08-04 · Hank · The Biggest Science Story of the Week — Hank argues that the overlooked science story of the week is that a 2020 rule forcing ships to burn low-sulfur fuel cut cloud-seeding ship tracks and largely explains record North Atlantic warming: bad news that warming is worse than thought, but a priceless geoengineering experiment showing we should geoengineer intentionally and carefully rather than accidentally. (00:02:26)
2023-10-03 · John · Nourished by Leaving — After a last-week Pizzamas plug, an anxious John walks in an urban Indianapolis forest and finds comfort that life on Earth is very old and continuous, that the human-made and natural worlds are not really separate, and that trees are nourished by the leaves they let go of. (00:00:19)
2023-10-04 · Hank · A Messy and Unhinged Introduction to Geoengineering — After backlash to his North Atlantic video and a catch-up with climate scientists Adam and Miriam, Hank reconsiders and gives a quick introduction to geoengineering, broadly any intentional change to Earth's systems but today mostly solar radiation management: its techniques, the case for research, and the objections he now finds compelling, and argues that most climate scientists thinking we don't need it yet is good news, since cutting and removing CO2 and methane is the geoengineering everyone favours. (00:12:14)
2024-02-09 · Hank · My Favorite Climate Graph — Using the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve, his favorite climate graph, Hank argues that US emissions can fall a long way at zero or modest climate premiums, so direct air capture of CO2, which he saw at an ASU mechanical-tree test facility, is a distraction for now, though falling costs will eventually make it important. (00:00:00)
2024-06-11 · John · BEEF DAYS — John argues that limiting climate change needs changed social norms as well as technology, as smoking showed, and proposes that his family eat beef only on four commemorative beef days and two flex days a year, inviting Hank and viewers to join and to suggest the days. (00:01:27)
2024-10-04 · Hank · Trees are Destroying the Earth (Again) — On the last day of Pizzamas, Hank marks the shutdown of the UK's last coal-fired power plant by tracing its coal to an ancient evolutionary arms race in which plants grew tall, drew down carbon dioxide and probably caused the late Devonian mass extinction; he ties burning that coal to a flood ravaging part of the US and argues that, unlike the trees, humans have agency and a chance to stop. (00:00:29)
2024-12-20 · Hank · Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones… — Hank argues that the December 2024 drone sightings are most likely ordinary drones, planes, stars and lens effects misjudged by primed observers, amplified by news coverage and political incentives, and that 'I don't know' should not be filled with aliens or secrets, since living with not knowing is how we learn. (00:01:27)
2025-07-22 · John · At Least There Are Trees — Walking in a 12,000-year-old forest, John says trees console him: plants make up most of Earth's biomass, early trees once caused a mass extinction, and ginkgos predate us by ages, yet trees remind him that humans, the only species to name the ginkgo, are participants in life on Earth, not observers. A P.S. plugs a DFTBA shirt whose proceeds go to the Nature Conservancy. (00:00:00)
2025-07-25 · Hank · The Molecule that Changed Everything — Replying to John's 'At Least There Are Trees', Hank explains how trees caused the Devonian mass extinction: lignin, which almost nothing could break down, piled up in swamps; tree-released phosphorus fed algae blooms that stripped oceans of oxygen; those buried trees became coal that powered the Industrial Revolution and now climate change. Unlike trees, humans can choose to stop a second apocalypse. (00:00:37)
2025-09-12 · Hank · This Might Actually be Happening — Hank explains that Perseverance found iron and sulfur chemistry in a Jezero Crater mudstone that is hard to explain without past life on Mars, surveys earlier Mars evidence, the tests that could settle it and what a yes would mean, and argues that big scientific claims become consensus slowly, so even a huge discovery can feel anticlimactic. (00:04:17)
2025-10-02 · Hank · You are Probably Underestimating Jane Goodall’s Impact — Hank argues that Jane Goodall was a revolutionary scientist: by staying, watching and refusing the anti-anthropomorphism rules of animal science, she showed that the tools built to make science objective had hidden animal culture and emotion, and that humans are not alone on this planet. (00:01:27)
2026-03-20 · Hank · I'm Sick Because of the Social Structures of Early Hominins — Sick with shingles, Hank tells John how the varicella zoster virus causes chickenpox, hides dormant in nerve ganglia and re-emerges as shingles, and argues that this two-phase cycle evolved because small, isolated early hominin groups would otherwise have let the virus burn out. That old trait now makes the virus hard to eradicate. (00:02:51)
2026-04-03 · Hank · I Had a Hallucination This Week — After a walk on which his built-up neighborhood suddenly felt like a forest of nest-building animals, Hank tells John that human creations are nested inside life and the universe: a solid rocket booster is both entirely technological and entirely natural, because humans went to the moon out of evolved wanting. (00:00:21)

Books & writing

2007-05-02 · John · Brotherhood 2.0: May 2: Book Banning — John argues against an Oklahoma high school's ban of Maureen Johnson's The Bermudez Triangle, whose only 'offense' is gay characters, says bans also keep books out of libraries, and asks viewers to email the school committee. (00:00:47)
2008-01-30 · John · I Am Not A Pornographer — John argues that his novel Looking for Alaska is not pornographic, that teenagers can read critically, and that a few objectors should not decide what other parents' children read at Depew High School; he asks nerdfighters to attend the school board meeting and write letters. (00:01:17)
2008-07-22 · John · OMFG CATCHER IN THE RYE!!! — Introducing The Catcher in the Rye for the Nerdfighter Blurbing Book Club, John argues against Salinger's 'reader who reads and runs': metaphor opens the hardest questions, and books grow richer when read closely. (00:00:46)
2008-08-02 · John · Catcher in the Rye, Part 1 — John reads the first fifteen chapters of The Catcher in the Rye as a study of loneliness: Holden keeps trying and failing to talk to someone, shields himself with his red hunting cap and says 'you' when he means 'I'; John also suggests the book is a bit misogynistic. (00:01:12)
2008-08-26 · John · The Catcher in the Rye, Part 2 — John sets aside the usual symbols of The Catcher in the Rye to argue that symbolism and metaphor exist to overcome limited empathy: the narrating Holden, unlike the Holden the story happens to, finally gets us to listen. (00:00:49)
2010-01-13 · John · Froghoppin' with Gatsby — Answering Hank's teaching-week jab, John corrects 'froofy' and the Gatsby billboard (the eyes, not the billboard, stand for a God who sees but does not act) and argues that critical reading and a liberal arts education teach what to think about, citing Pat Robertson's Haiti remarks; he also rides the Frog Hopper as his punishment. (00:00:29)
2010-02-10 · Maureen Johnson · HOW TO GET AN AGENT — In her last video standing in for John, Maureen Johnson explains that after finishing a book you need a literary agent, whom you reach with a flawless one-page query letter, and passes on her agent's dos and don'ts. (00:00:34)
2010-09-20 · John · Life Is Like Pizza — In an open letter to 15-year-old Hank, John argues that critical reading (shown through Bloom's definition of a nation in Ulysses) reveals there are no easy definitions separating 'us' from 'them', and that reading is a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves. (00:00:48)
2011-01-21 · John · Looking for Alaska Five Years After the Printz Award — Five years after Looking for Alaska won the Printz Award, John argues that the lone-writer story of the book is too simple: many people wrote parts of it, and the real business of books is done by readers. (00:01:07)
2011-06-06 · John · Men Running on Tanks and the Truth about Book Editors — After reporting on the Indianapolis Museum of Art's US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, John argues that editors exist neither to fix grammar nor to censor: the real work is the editorial letter, and writers may not be more important than editors. (00:01:47)
2011-07-18 · John · Gatsby's American Dream: Reading The Great Gatsby Critically, Chapter 1 — John reads chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby as a novel about the American Dream: its rich characters did not earn their wealth, have it all yet are miserable, and wealth consumes rich and poor alike; he asks viewers whether that portrait is true. (00:00:00)
2011-09-07 · John · The Great Gatsby: Living the Dream in the Valley of Ashes — John reads The Great Gatsby from chapter two on, through its symbols (the Valley of Ashes, Eckleburg's eyes, the green light, gold), and argues that Gatsby's doomed dream of reclaiming a golden past is the American dream and everyone's. (00:04:56)
2012-01-10 · John · The Fault in Our Stars — On the eve of The Fault in Our Stars' publication, John answers viewer questions in an airport: the book grew from his hospital chaplaincy and from knowing Esther (though Hazel is not Esther), explores gender and heroism, and gave him moments of 'fanaa', self-transcendence. (00:00:11)
2012-07-10 · John · Feeling More Alive: Fahrenheit 451's The Hearth and the Salamander — For the Nerdfighter Book Club, John reads Part One of Fahrenheit 451 as a book in which everyone is both alive and dead, notes how Bradbury's predictions about mass media came true, and asks when we feel least like we are wasting our lives. (00:00:00)
2012-07-13 · Hank · An Army of Mindless Drones — Replying to John's Fahrenheit 451 video, Hank defends Clarisse as a stand-in for our culture that lets readers see how weird any culture is, but argues Mildred is unrealistic: mass entertainment hasn't scrubbed people of humanity, and there are no mindless drones. (00:00:29)
2012-09-18 · John · Existential Airport Anxiety — Responding to the second half of Fahrenheit 451 from a TV-filled airport, John argues the novel is about choosing distraction over engagement, revises his view that books are the cure, and with David Foster Wallace links distraction to fear of a deeper pain. (00:01:01)
2013-09-24 · John · Started from the Bottom: Benjamin Franklin and Drake Compared — John compares Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography with Drake's "Started from the Bottom", argues that neither man started from the bottom and that success narratives rarely acknowledge privilege, and calls the self-made individual a deeply flawed idea. (00:01:27)
2014-06-06 · Hank · Thoughts from the TFiOS Premiere! — Hank, back from the TFiOS premiere in New York, argues that while the trend is to hide complexity behind effortless perfection, Vlogbrothers shows how things are made, and says the film is great and adds to understanding of life, love and hurt. (00:01:35)
2014-12-23 · John · Agloe, New York — Home after the Paper Towns shoot, John tells how the paper town Agloe, New York, invented by mapmakers, became real, and argues that imagined things shape reality; readers and the film made Agloe real again, and he thanks them. (00:01:23)
2015-09-01 · John · The Road Less Traveled By — John argues that Frost's 'The Road Not Taken', meant to gently mock agonizing over small choices, is remembered as advice to take the road less traveled because it sounds good, which shows how poetry can really shape choices and why language needs care. (00:01:30)
2016-04-12 · John · On the Banning of Looking for Alaska — After the ALA names Looking for Alaska the most challenged book of 2015, John argues that challengers read one page out of context, that teenagers are thoughtful readers, that teachers and librarians (not authors or a few parents) should decide, and that books do not corrupt. (00:00:46)
2016-09-20 · John · Failing to Follow Up The Fault in Our Stars — Continuing Hank's discussion of failure, John explains that no novel has followed The Fault in Our Stars because its public success coincided with private failures: two abandoned books, intense pressure and writing that stopped being a release; he returned to writing for fun and has become okay with not knowing whether he will publish again. (00:00:00)
2017-06-13 · John · Cheyenne, Wyoming — John explains 'Cheyenne, Wyoming', his shorthand from Rushmore for being absent while deeply immersed in a project, mostly writing: it frees him from body and loneliness but takes him from his family and may yield nothing; replying to Hank's productivity video, he argues creative work needs unrecognized time, space from others and a return home. (00:00:00)
2017-12-05 · John · On the Movies — In Los Angeles, John restates that books belong to their readers but admits the author is present in the book and must decide on its behalf; recalling his fears and luck with The Fault in Our Stars film, he announces that the same studio and production company will try to make a Turtles All the Way Down movie. (00:02:09)
2018-01-26 · Hank · I Wrote a Book. I WROTE A BOOK. How did I do that? — From an independent booksellers' event in Memphis, Hank says what he really wanted was for people to read a book he wrote, and explains what finally got his novel finished: a character he cared about, scenes he needed people to know, and things to say about the internet, fame and power that wouldn't fit a four-minute video. (00:00:21)
2018-08-28 · John · The Book Was Better? — After reading Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker's screenplay of Turtles All the Way Down, John corrects misconceptions about book-to-movie adaptation: authors mostly decide only whether to sell the rights, studios do care about fans but need far larger audiences, and the book is not always better, only different, since a great adaptation can be a great movie. (00:02:59)
2019-01-15 · John · On Burning Resentment — Replying to Hank's burnout video, John recalls writing Looking for Alaska at 24 fueled by resentment: it made him productive but made the work about himself, and the book only became good once he found a warmer fuel and wrote it as a gift for others. (00:00:00)
2019-03-12 · John · Going Home with Alaska and Miles — After showing Looking for Alaska's Hulu leads Charlie Plummer and Kristine Froseth and director Sarah around his old high school, John reflects that he wrote the novel to go home to 1993 and to attempt time travel, that novels don't heal wounds, and that watching the actors walk away he finally let the story go: it's theirs now. (00:00:58)
2019-05-07 · John · How I Read and Why — John, a former Booklist and New York Times Book Review reviewer who favors reviewing, argues that criticism matters most when it lifts up work worth attention rather than cataloguing flaws; he reads to be moved, calls a good book one that repays generous attention, and admits he is now uncertain about everything. (00:01:01)
2019-06-11 · John · Why I Haven't Written a New Book — On the day the Turtles All the Way Down paperback comes out, John explains why he has not written a novel in 510 days: besides other work, publishing a successful book overwhelmed him with fear and destabilizing attention, so he has been writing The Anthropocene Reviewed, a quieter place. (00:00:29)
2019-08-13 · John · How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English — A week after Toni Morrison's death, John tells how he nearly failed 11th grade English and, to pass, read her novel The Bluest Eye, which wrecked him, showed him that skipping class was squandered privilege, and made him an enthusiastic reader; her books survive her. (00:01:27)
2019-11-12 · John · still learning — John traces Auld Lang Syne to Robert Burns and his friendship with Frances Dunlop, then Burns's Comin' Thro' the Rye to Holden Caulfield's mishearing in The Catcher in the Rye, arguing he still likes learning because new learning reshapes old learning and reveals how connected we all are. (00:03:24)
2020-02-04 · John · practice — Starting without a script, John says the true part of Ray Bradbury's '52 short stories' advice is that you have to practice: writing 175-word Booklist reviews and 13 years of vlogbrothers videos taught him that practice works, and that the practice of finding and expressing thought leads to more thoughts. (00:00:00)
2020-02-18 · John · wintry mix — Using Indianapolis's grey winter and the Midwestern wintry mix, John argues that the pathetic fallacy works because weather really does affect our emotions and because we cannot help seeing the world through ourselves: what you're looking at matters less than how you look and who you're with. (00:02:54)
2020-04-07 · John · I am an artist. — A week before its release, John celebrates Sarah Urist Green and her book You Are an Artist: recalling their year of emails and her telling him 'you're writing so you're a writer', he argues that art-making is not optional for humans and that ideas come from paying extraordinary attention to ordinary life. (00:01:27)
2020-07-07 · John · You're a Rock Star — On release day, John tells Hank why A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor means so much to him: its hope never denies suffering yet insists on beauty, wonder and kindness, its characters take him out of himself, and, as An Absolutely Remarkable Thing made him quit the social internet, it has him rethinking how he uses his consciousness; he quotes glowing reviews and announces the launch livestream. (00:00:29)
2020-07-10 · Hank · What a Concept!! — After a week of talking about A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, Hank argues that the two ways its characters get ideas (synthesizing what's around you, and shaking a well-chosen problem with your toolkit) are the same thing, and that every new idea builds on the work of billions of normal-sized people before us, which makes ideas more amazing, not less. (00:00:29)
2020-08-07 · Hank · Her Finger and Her Thumb in the Shape of an 'L' on Her Forehead — Stung by some reviews of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, Hank says responding to critique is a learned skill and sorts criticism into four types: wrong (for you), possibly right and useful, merely mean, and about a work's impact on people, which he says is valid critique because craft is about impact. (00:00:29)
2020-10-20 · John · How to Sign Your Name 150,000 Times — In a second-person guide to signing 150,000 sheets for The Anthropocene Reviewed, John covers the 300 hours and the physical technique, then what the mind does: gratitude for readers' attention, doubts about publicity and commodification, a childhood memory of being refused an autograph, and the flow state on the other side of monotony. (00:00:53)
2021-05-25 · John · The Anthropocene Reviewed, Animated — Reading the first chapter of The Anthropocene Reviewed over animation by Meitar Almog, John tells how labyrinthitis after the 2017 tour, his Booklist years, Hank's joke name and Sarah's insight that there are no observers, only participants, led him to review the human-centered planet, and resolves to fall in love with the world. (00:08:55)
2021-12-14 · John · MAKE. BELIEVE. — Back from his sabbatical, John says he rediscovered how much he enjoys writing: all writing is rewriting, both in revision and in translating thought into language, writing brings him calm, and working on a story gives his wandering mind the joy of make-believe; he updates on his foot and asks viewers to take the Census. (00:00:29)
2022-01-11 · John · The Fault in Our Stars - Ten Years Later — Ill with the flu on the tenth anniversary of The Fault in Our Stars, John reflects that his first three books examined the consequences of misimagining other people and his last three the consequences of misimagining what happens to us, especially illness, which harmful metaphors and blame make doubly painful. (00:00:29)
2022-05-03 · John · My Religion and My Banned Books — With his books being removed from US schools and libraries, John draws on his time as a hospital chaplain and his Christian faith to argue that his books, like a chaplain, 'stand there' and that restricting stories restricts empathy. (00:01:56)
2022-12-20 · John · The Best Books Get Better — John argues that while almost all books get worse over time, a rare few get better, citing The Great Gatsby and Parable of the Sower, and says Hank's two novels are such books, feeling more contemporary as they age; he closes his last video of 2022 noting Vlogbrothers will soon be old enough to drive. (00:00:00)
2023-10-17 · John · My Next Book — John explains why he has not published a novel in six years: after labyrinthitis in 2017 he 'retired' from chasing money and fame, which had made him anxious, and now writes for passion and impact, mostly about tuberculosis; he may never publish another novel but will have a next book. (00:01:27)
2024-02-06 · John · The Truth of How Books Become Movies — John explains how books become movies (options, development hurdles, payment at principal photography, studios shelving finished films), says the outcome still matters to him because he loves the Turtles All the Way Down film, and announces it will come out later in 2024 on Max. (00:00:00)
2024-12-10 · John · On Writing — Having turned in first pass of Everything Is Tuberculosis, John says the book now belongs to its readers; his younger self scorned nonfiction and wanted books to last forever, but forever is an incorrect concept, and he now hopes nonfiction can also reach across the divide between writer and reader, as the book continues his long-running themes. (00:00:29)
2024-12-17 · John · About THAT Scene in Looking for Alaska — John says Looking for Alaska is widely banned over one deliberately unsexy oral sex scene meant to contrast with a tender kiss; read as a whole, the novel is about grief, guilt and radical hope, teenagers can read critically, teachers and librarians should decide, and book banners object not to books but to reality. (00:00:58)
2025-01-21 · John · Do Audiobooks Count As Reading? — Hoarse from recording his Everything Is Tuberculosis audiobook, John recalls how small the audiobook business was when Looking for Alaska came out 20 years ago and argues that audiobooks are definitely reading, for many people the best kind, since the point of reading is taking in words and ideas as transparently as possible. (00:00:56)
2025-10-07 · John · Luck vs. Work vs. Skill vs. Privilege — John weighs what drove his success as a writer: structural advantages, real but limited talent, failures nobody sees, the luck of Nerdfighteria and of The Fault in Our Stars' timing, and hard work; he argues these cannot be separated and that deserving is the wrong framework, since what people do deserve is to love, be loved and be treated as full human beings. (00:00:29)
2025-10-21 · John · Is Book Publishing Dying? An Author's Perspective — John asks whether book publishing is in structural decline: it is a tiny business and sales are falling as attention shifts and books lose their edge as a cheap entertainment deal, but people still read because books add value, and he argues books, a deeper entertainment the reader co-creates, will not go away. He closes by asking viewers to make art for the P4A Nerdfighter Art Perk. (00:02:28)
2026-01-13 · John · why we make art — John tells Hank he has spent recent weeks in 'Cheyenne, Wyoming', his Rushmore-derived shorthand for being engrossed in writing, and says that where he once thought art existed solely for its audience, he now thinks making art is meaningful and fun in itself: writing is for him, and only hopefully also for readers. (00:01:27)
2026-01-20 · John · Am I ... Good? — John tells Hank that a Tumblr quote he had no memory of writing, attributed to Zombicorns, his 2010 Project for Awesome novella, led him to break his rule against rereading his own work; finding it enjoyable makes him wonder whether his published work is better than he remembers, and he concludes that dismissing his writing also dismisses the readers who love it. (00:01:27)
2026-07-07 · John · On the Death of the Author — As he prepares to publish Hollywood, Ending, John weighs Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' against his own public life: he still believes books belong to their readers but cannot keep himself out of his novels, and argues a novel works when author and a generous reader co-create it. (00:00:00)

Health

2009-05-04 · John · Oinkbarf Pandemic! An Intellectual Response to Swine Flu — John, a self-described hypochondriac, says swine flu turned out less deadly than first reported and argues pandemics scare us because they make us face oblivion and the futility of effort, which we should balance with the necessity to struggle. (00:02:10)
2009-11-08 · John · H1N1 Vaccine Fears — John admits an irrational fear of the H1N1 vaccine sparked by the Desiree Jennings story, argues that not vaccinating is also a choice with a worse side effect (the flu), debunks the quack doctor who claimed to cure her, and concludes we play best when we play the odds rationally. (00:00:47)
2010-04-12 · John · On the Separation of Conjoined Twins — On tour in New York, John, a collector of books on conjoined twins, presents Alice Dreger's argument in One of Us that separating conjoined twins reflects our discomfort with unusual anatomy, links it to parents' obsession with normal, and asks whether twins should be separated at birth. (00:00:29)
2011-01-24 · Hank · The 1200% Increase in my Prescription Drug Costs — Hank, furious that the price of his ulcerative-colitis drug Asacol HD jumped from $50 to $620 a month when a patient savings card lapsed early, asks viewers to write civilly to Warner Chilcott's CEO and argues this must be fixed for everyone, not just him. (00:01:26)
2015-05-19 · John · Pain Destroys Language: John after the Dentist — Just after his fourth oral surgery for chronic mouth pain, John says, citing Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain, that pain destroys language; reflecting that his suffering is necessary but much is not, he launches a Save the Children fundraiser for Syrian refugees and pledges to match up to $20,000. (00:00:41)
2015-11-20 · John · On Mental Illness (and the end of Pizzamas) — John, disclosing his OCD and a recent bad stretch while changing medication, argues that chronic and mental illness do not fit the 'get well soon' story, that we invent blameworthy causes for illness, and that mental illness is treatable and there is hope. (00:00:56)
2016-05-10 · John · On Pain — From the dentist, John recounts the 13 years of chronic mouth pain that followed a bike messenger hitting his face in Chicago, and argues that physical pain is unshareable and isolating, yet knowing pain can make people more empathetic, and listening to and believing people in pain can be good medicine. (00:01:18)
2016-07-08 · Hank · Your Illness is Not Your Fault — Still sick, Hank says that years of unsolicited cures for his ulcerative colitis make even ordinary advice sound like 'your illness is your fault'; chronic illness is random chance, he has accepted it, and supporters should recognise sick people's self-blame. (00:00:29)
2017-03-10 · Hank · Do I Have ADHD? — Hank, diagnosed as a child with a sensory processing disorder, describes his attention problems and asks whether he has ADHD (maybe); he argues disorders are ongoing impairments, that he is less impaired thanks to family, teachers, a fitting situation and economic advantages such as an early computer, and that no one has to figure out their own mind alone. (00:01:38)
2017-05-09 · John · Your Neighborhood, Your Life Expectancy — Citing new research, John argues that an American's zip code can affect life expectancy more than smoking or exercise, that the gap is driven by poverty, access to care and other factors, and that its growth in the US, unlike in most rich countries, is not natural and is deeply wrong. (00:00:00)
2017-07-21 · Hank · On Condom Failure — Hank unpacks the '2% condom failure rate' he learned in sex ed: it means pregnancy per year of perfect use, not per act; the risk compounds over years (about 20% over 10 years, 1 in 3 over 20); typical use gives about 20% a year; and implants and IUDs work as well in typical as in perfect use. He wishes sex ed had taught this better. (00:00:10)
2017-07-25 · John · What OCD Is Like (for Me) — John describes what his obsessive-compulsive disorder is like for him: intrusive thought spirals that hijack his consciousness and compulsions that try to calm them, not the visible neatness of the popular image or a romanticized superpower; Turtles All the Way Down began from that experience, and he urges anyone worried about their mental health to seek help. (00:00:13)
2017-08-01 · John · Death and How to Avoid It (...for a while) — Prompted by reaching for Purell while driving, John explains that although human life is improving in almost every way, US preventable deaths from unintentional injury rose 23% (2010-2014) through falls, drug overdoses and car accidents; distracted driving is the main reason road deaths rose in 2015, and he reminds himself that inattentive driving is the greatest threat to his health. He ends with a Turtles signing update. (00:00:53)
2018-10-09 · John · How Big a Problem is Mental Illness? — John explains the disability-adjusted life year and argues that, measured this way, mental illness is one of the world's leading health problems, from the US to Sierra Leone; drawing on his own medication, he says it is mostly treatable and access to care must improve. (00:00:29)
2019-01-11 · Hank · What is Burnout? — Hank admits he does not know what burnout is and proposes that it is not one thing: work needs fuel and the opportunity to burn it, so burnout can be a fuel problem or an opportunity problem; he argues we can diversify our fuels and must value caring for each other and ourselves. (00:00:59)
2019-01-18 · Hank · Should You Burn Dirty Fuel? — Continuing the burnout discussion, Hank reports what people answered when he asked on Twitter for one healthy and one unhealthy fuel, and argues, against John, that unhealthy fuels can produce good work if you recognize them, like taking on debt, while seeking more sustainable alternatives. (00:00:58)
2019-09-17 · John · 'end the stigma' — Prompted by Dr. Bailor Barrie, John explains what causes the stigma of illnesses such as mental illness and HIV (perceived peril, origin and controllability, course instability) and argues that ending it needs better treatment and rejecting moral narratives about illness. (00:00:58)
2019-12-10 · John · On Loneliness — After a P4A that raised over $1.3 million, John describes the loneliness that came with his depression in his mid-20s and again recently: its vicious cycles and sense of meaninglessness, broken by treating his illness as a chronic illness and by actively finding community (Liverpool, activism, his neighborhood, the P4A), which he says gives him meaning and hope. (00:00:22)
2020-03-17 · John · together. — John calls togetherness humanity's superpower, built on collaboration, and says the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly stops us from gathering; we must listen to experts and isolate, but also find ways to stay connected, because the only way through is together. (00:00:00)
2020-03-20 · Hank · The Sudden Obliteration of Expectation — Retelling his ulcerative colitis diagnosis, Hank describes the sudden feeling that the story you told yourself about the future is gone, argues that swinging between denial and fear is a strategy for finding a new normal, and says the pandemic feels similar: it will take time, but we will reach stability together. (00:02:02)
2020-03-24 · John · Mental Health Tips from People Who've Been There — After a hard week for his anxiety and OCD, John shares the ten mental health tips for social distancing from Partners In Health's head of mental health, Dr. Bepi Raviola, drawn from people who lived through outbreaks, with how each works for him. (00:00:58)
2020-05-26 · John · you'll never know — Starting from Skeletor's 'I could write a book about what you don't know', John reflects that we can never know most of the past or the future yet must make informed guesses, and argues that despite COVID-19 failures, expertise has not failed: we are watching it happen. (00:02:26)
2020-11-10 · John · On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals — Inspired by Eula Biss's On Immunity, read by Life's Library, John retells the usual story of Edward Jenner and the smallpox vaccine and corrects it: milkmaids, China, African communities and Onesimus knew inoculation first, and the vaccine did not end smallpox; innovation is species-wide collaboration, so a new vaccine deserves monuments to cooperation, not statues. (00:00:58)
2020-11-20 · Hank · Would I Take a COVID Vaccine? — After promising phase 3 results from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and others, Hank says he would absolutely take a COVID-19 vaccine, for three reasons: vaccine safety testing was not changed or rushed by politicians, preventing infection protects others and keeps hospital beds free, and it helps frontline health-care workers. (00:01:30)
2020-11-24 · John · personal risk · societal risk — Before Thanksgiving 2020, John distinguishes personal from societal COVID-19 risk: even when individual risk is low, the toll is unequal, the pandemic's costs stem from the disease rather than regulation, and an overwhelmed health system kills many more, so he asks Americans who can to stay home. (00:00:00)
2021-02-02 · John · I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again) — John recalls how often he predicted a pandemic, argues pandemics are historically routine and we should be prepared, and, drawing on Melinda and Bill Gates's annual letter, calls for global health as a shared worldwide effort (alert systems, access to health care, vaccines, and fixing the inequities that let disease hit the vulnerable hardest), since we choose how ready we are. (00:00:58)
2021-04-06 · John · How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? — Starting from his favorite meme, How Do You Do, Fellow Kids, John says he can't know other people's experience from the inside, sympathizes with vaccine hesitancy from his own anxiety, argues that shame doesn't work and that immunity is a public space, and asks the worried to seek help and supporters to offer it. (00:00:58)
2021-06-11 · Hank · My Greatest Tool Against Vaccine Misinformation — Discouraged by COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, Hank argues that rebutting claims one by one, mocking, or making pro-vaccine status an identity only deepens a partisan war; what helps is answering good-faith questions and, above all, expressing gratitude to the people who made the vaccines possible. (00:00:29)
2021-08-10 · John · My Physicalmental Illness — Using his labyrinthitis, treated with psychotropic drugs and brain-retraining therapy much like his OCD, John argues that the line between mental and physical illness is a limited category, that mental illness is stigmatized partly because it is poorly understood, and that other people's pain is as real as our own. (00:00:27)
2022-06-21 · John · On Disease — Starting from a new arthritis diagnosis, John argues that disease, a major historical force largely shaped by poverty and human systems, deserves more attention, and that naming illnesses as the body's failures leads us to imagine disease as a personal failing, when our collective choices are what is responsible. (00:00:29)
2022-09-16 · Hank · Here's Why Younger People are Getting Shingles — Hank, recovering from shingles himself, explains that the varicella zoster virus causes both chickenpox and shingles, and argues that US childhood chickenpox vaccination since 1995 removed natural immune boosting, so younger adults like him now get more shingles. (00:00:00)
2023-02-28 · John · Empathy and its Limits — In a loose Format video, John says empathy must have limits but his is too limited; the 19th-century word 'invalid' for people disabled by tuberculosis shows how language limits empathy, illness is universal rather than a moral narrative, and though we cannot know others' pain, we can listen and believe them: we validate each other. (00:00:00)
2023-06-23 · Hank · Understanding Cancer Survival Rates — Prompted by his own Hodgkin lymphoma, Hank explains why cancer survival rates, including the five-year survival rate, contain less information than people think (different cancers, stages and patients differ; a patient is one data point), and argues that a person given poor odds is fully alive now and must not be treated as already dead. (00:00:58)
2023-09-15 · Hank · The Worst Disease in Human History — Hank explains why tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease for most of human history, is so hard to fight: its thick waxy cell wall resists antibiotics, aids biofilms and resistance, and slows growth, which makes culture diagnosis slow; so molecular test cartridges must get cheap, and he calls Danaher and Cepheid allies against TB in getting them to $5. (00:00:58)
2023-10-20 · Hank · My 'Injury' — After his son Orin calls Hank's cancer his 'injury', Hank argues that 'cancer' is not one disease but hundreds to billions of different ones, that calling them all 'cancer' breeds hopelessness and the false belief that we have failed to cure it, and that we must cure cancers, not cancer. (00:00:29)
2023-11-21 · John · Minus Its Charms — John describes a two-month bout of depression, OCD and anxiety that began amid the TB-test win, cites Susan Sontag's 'melancholy minus its charms', and rejects despair as the whole story: the debt jubilee in memory of Casey McIntyre shows people can help each other and be kind. (00:01:47)
2023-12-08 · Hank · Did Natural Cancer Treatments Save My Life? — Hank notes that three of the four chemo drugs that cured his Hodgkin lymphoma (vinblastine, doxorubicin, bleomycin) come from nature and were carefully tested, answers people who urged a 'natural route' instead of chemo by arguing that 'natural cancer treatment' means treatments unproven, ineffective or harmful, and says most cancer deaths happen where people lack chemo, radiation, surgery and screening; he plugs his cancer socks before the Christmas shipping deadline. (00:00:29)
2024-03-15 · Hank · The Worst Things About Not Having Cancer — More than four months into remission from Hodgkin lymphoma, Hank walks through the hardest parts of leaving cancer treatment (losing the feeling of care, the fear of relapse, survivor guilt toward cancer friends, not getting your old body or self back) and argues that good news can still be weird and hard. (00:00:58)
2025-02-28 · Hank · We Will Eradicate Measles — Hank argues that measles can be eradicated because only humans catch it, explains why it is harder than smallpox (more infectious, two doses, less feared), and says its biggest advantage now is that we forgot, reading Roald Dahl's account of his daughter's death; he then condemns the halt of USAID funding and shares a script for calling Congress. (00:03:09)
2025-05-16 · Hank · No One Knows When They Don't Die — Hank argues that people mostly never know when they didn't die: prevention (vaccines, the Clean Air Act, smoke detectors, lead bans, road and building safety, food safety) saves huge numbers of unknown people without stories or celebration, and our minds fail to see statistical deaths, as in maternal deaths in Sierra Leone, as catastrophes worth heroism. (00:00:00)
2025-09-23 · John · Why Can't I Take My Meds? — John explains why so many people, himself included, fail to take medication as prescribed (cost, feeling fine, side effects, stigma around a 'natural' unmedicated state, depression), argues that natural is not what humans are going for, and says the one strategy shown to work is tying medication to an existing daily habit. (00:00:29)
2025-11-10 · Hank · My Cancer Treatment was Not Cutting Edge — Replying to John's claim that he got cutting-edge curative cancer therapy, Hank explains that his Hodgkin lymphoma chemo dates from the late 1970s, but that careful, slow research added anti-nausea care and cut the doses, making treatment better and cheaper. He argues that solutions must both exist and be justly distributed. (00:00:58)
2026-08-25 · John · The Great Thing about Infectious Disease — John argues that the one great thing about infectious disease is that prevention and treatment end lines of transmission, but warns that people are forgetting life before vaccines, antibiotics and clean water, which with misinformation drives regression; the 2,000th birth at the MCOE reminds him progress is also possible. (00:00:00)
2026-08-28 · Hank · Why the Deadliest Virus Was the Easiest to Kill — Hank explains why smallpox, though very hard to eradicate, was an ideal candidate (no reservoirs, stable antigens, low infection rate, high incentive, post-exposure and heat-stable vaccine), why TB, flu and measles are harder, and argues that diseases we cannot eradicate can still be treated. (00:01:27)
2026-10-20 · John · Correcting a Mistake in Everything Is Tuberculosis · 50 x 50 Science — In the Indiana entry of 50 x 50 Science, John corrects an omission in Everything Is Tuberculosis (TB's many efflux pumps, which push drugs out of the cell) and argues that curing TB means solving sociological problems (drug incentives, poverty, nutrition, delivery) as well as biological ones. (00:00:29)

Everyday life

2011-05-18 · John · The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED — Prompted by Hank's commencement poem, John rejects the hard-soft continuum of school subjects: math and literature are both studied to learn a language and to understand our place in the universe, literature has wrong answers, authorial intent is the uninteresting question, and the brain is neither a math nor a literature organ. (00:00:13)
2011-07-25 · Hank · I Am Not a P#$$Y - this video contains mild swear words. — Hank answers a truck driver who called him a pussy while he cycled: taunting from inside a truck is cowardice, not bravery. He then admits he had no good answer to a LeakyCon question about bullying and offers two tips: it's not about you, and your job is to survive it. (00:00:58)
2011-08-31 · John · How to Become An Adult — John tells people leaving school that the 'real world' mixes crushing monotony and paralyzing terror, that adulthood gets much better with time, and that they need a mentor (an 'Ilene'), as Ilene Cooper was for him and Looking for Alaska. (00:00:11)
2012-08-07 · John · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — In an open letter to students returning to school, John argues that compulsory public education is historically recent and underlies modern achievements such as the Curiosity landing, answers students' complaints, and says school exists for everyone's benefit: public education is an investment in students, not a charity. (00:00:00)
2012-08-21 · John · Is College Worth It? — Answering a Nerdfighter's question, John works out that a reasonably good accredited college is criminally overpriced but probably still worth it financially, then argues that college is less about maximizing income than about becoming a better, more informed observer of the universe. (00:02:07)
2012-10-02 · John · What To Do With Your Life — Answering a college freshman, John argues that adulthood is not one fixed choice: you keep deciding all your life and can do many things, so study broadly and, above all, make things with people you like. (00:00:13)
2013-01-25 · Hank · How to Make Friends — Hank argues that real friendship - uncovering and liking each other's brokenness - is rare and undervalued compared with romance; making friends needs repeated, unplanned interactions, initiative, vulnerability and hard questions, and spouses should be best friends. (00:00:00)
2013-11-19 · John · On Middle School Misery — Prompted by a message from a student at his old middle school, John recalls being miserable and bullied, argues his bullies were hurting kids and their cruelty was not about him, credits the kindness of others, and says those years need not be the best of your life: the only way out is through. (00:01:17)
2013-11-22 · Hank · How to Apologize like a Fartbag — Hank argues that after hurting someone you either regain your awesome through a real apology or become a 'fartbag' who blames the person they hurt, and lists do's and don'ts for apologizing: accept blame, feel bad, provide context without excuses, and change. (00:00:07)
2014-04-11 · Hank · What Boys Look For in Girls — Hank argues that attraction standards vary arbitrarily across cultures, so nobody, and especially young women told their worth lies in pleasing men, should base self-worth on being attractive: you exist for your own sake. (00:01:28)
2015-01-16 · Hank · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank argues that education should build a problem-solving toolkit, but American schools often train test-taking over real learning and give everyone the same toolkit, glutting the market; he then announces new Crash Course series and his interview with President Obama. (00:00:38)
2015-06-26 · Hank · How to Get Good at Everything — Hank, daunted by his slow first novel and his writer brother, argues with Carol Dweck's growth mindset that skill and talent are not innate but built through work, so recognizing this is the first step to getting good at anything, including writing a book. (00:00:58)
2015-12-25 · Hank · On Hating Christmas — Hank argues that culture is like light, visible only where holidays focus it, so Christmas draws complaints; holidays are a chance to change culture by choosing traditions without whining at others, and giving shines through. (00:00:34)
2016-01-29 · Hank · Why the Word "Millennial" Makes me Cringe — Responding to John's article, Hank argues the label 'millennial' was imposed by older people to generalise about and belittle a diverse generation, and that the real pressures on young Americans go undiscussed while elders complain they have it too easy. (00:00:38)
2016-09-02 · Hank · One Scientifically Proven Thing Actually Makes People Happier — Hank argues that one non-obvious, well-supported way to be happier is avoiding a long commute, which studies link to stress, ill health and low life satisfaction, and that cities should allow dense development near jobs, since happiness depends on what we do with our time rather than what we have. (00:00:10)
2017-05-26 · Hank · Some Rough Advice for the "Real World" — Addressing the class of 2017, Hank argues that not finding a job you love is normal: careers, diplomas and job interviews are recent cultural constructions, basing self-worth on them makes happiness hard, school was for learning, and the job everyone has is making themselves. (00:00:00)
2017-07-07 · Hank · My Earthquake Story - (And Thoughts About Numbers) — From a minor 5.8 earthquake at his house and the 2010 Haiti quake, Hank argues that numbers like the Richter scale, AP scores or view counts tell something real but not everything: people are not their numbers, and what matters is what your 'shake' does and who you share it with. (00:01:19)
2017-08-29 · John · 40 — Turning 40, John says he once saw adulthood as a destination and an existential death, kept his 20s light to avoid it, but now loves having roots and would not be younger: adulthood is underrated and not a destination, and his settled life feels wilder and more precious than ever. He then reports finishing signing 200,000 Turtles All the Way Down sheets, announces next week's first-chapter reading, and asks Nerdfighters to donate to flood relief. (00:00:00)
2017-10-27 · Hank · The Secret to my Productivity — Hank shares his secret to productivity: he takes every creative project 80% of the way to as good as he can make it and releases it, because 'best' is subjective, multiple, invisible and changing, the last 20% costs most of the work, and shipping often teaches more than polishing. (00:00:31)
2018-02-23 · Hank · Dear Young People, You Terrify Me — Using mutagenesis as an analogy, Hank argues that young people are cultural mutagens built to create change; though middle-aged and frightened by the pace of change, he says society without change is doomed, cultural evolution can be done with intent, and 12-to-24-year-olds are in some ways at their most powerful. (00:01:16)
2018-04-03 · John · On Punctuality — John, who has made 323 consecutive Tuesday videos bar two illnesses, calls punctuality the cardinal virtue he suspects himself of, a way to value others' time; reading E.B. White on punctuality disturbing the peace, he concludes that extreme punctuality can become a vice. (00:00:15)
2018-08-03 · Hank · How Do Adults Make Friends? — On Esther Day, Hank tells John he loves him, answers viewers' Twitter questions about family and friends, and argues that adults find friendship harder not because it is harder but because we forget how hard we worked to value others and be valued; friendship and love take time, energy and work. (00:01:36)
2018-09-04 · John · The Eisenhower Matrix — Stressed by urgent demands that crowd out his novel, John explains the Eisenhower Matrix (do the urgent and important, delegate or automate the urgent, drop the unimportant unless you love it, schedule the important but not urgent), notes humans do the same with climate change, and argues life is about fulfillment, not efficiency. (00:01:27)
2019-02-08 · Hank · Screwing Up: Two Stories From When I Worked at a TV Station — Hank tells two stories from his college summer job at Orange TV, a community access station in Orlando: a botched audio shoot that taught him to speak up when something seems wrong, and an ex-Air Force producer's 'Green, you outrank me' at his thrifted master sergeant jacket, which showed him he wore symbols of other people's identity he knew nothing about. (00:02:45)
2019-02-12 · John · Are Textbooks Obsolete? — Prompted by the Gates annual letter's claim that textbooks are becoming obsolete, John notes that textbook prices have soared while free tools like Mathigon, 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy make them less important, and argues textbooks resist supply and demand because students and teachers rarely choose them; his own late success with geometry leaves him optimistic. (00:00:00)
2019-12-06 · Hank · It is Much Easier to Destroy than Create — Hank, who ties his self-worth to his output, loves jigsaw puzzles because they feel like they matter without mattering; his favorite part, taking them apart, shows how much easier it is to destroy than to build, so everything that works stays built only through human action, which is why the P4A supports the 'master puzzle-solvers' at Partners In Health and Save the Children. (00:00:58)
2020-07-31 · Hank · Your Brain Gets Smart, but Your Head Gets Dumb — Worried about US higher education, Hank argues it is hit by three things at once: decades of price rises driven by competition, a pandemic that makes all-online school less valuable, and a Republican and Trump-administration hostility partly fed by colleges' own elitism; he hopes it survives by bringing costs down. (00:00:00)
2020-08-18 · John · what's wrong with taking the back streets? — Drawing circles on camera, John explains his long-term plan to draw about 170,000 of them: imperfect repetition gives him relief and attention, widens his narrow idea of productivity, and helps him grasp a large number; in comments he says the count is US COVID-19 deaths. (00:01:27)
2020-11-13 · Hank · How We Teach: Individualist Stories — Replying to John's video on individual genius versus collective progress, Hank argues that education is not only information but also stories that serve as shared lenses; simple individualist stories help people remember facts and teach some responsibility for one's fate, but taught alone they harm, so we should teach that nobody does anything alone and everybody contributes. (00:00:44)
2021-09-21 · John · how we spend our days — Starting from Annie Dillard's line that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, John argues that our choices about our days are limited by circumstances not our fault, and that by widening productivity beyond what the world recognizes, to include joy, thinking and being with those we love, he feels better about how he spends his days. (00:00:00)
2025-06-06 · Hank · The Secret Inside my MIT Commencement Speech — Hank explains that he wrote his MIT commencement speech from a survey of the graduating class, the way the brothers' work has been collaborative with its audience; in the speech he urges graduates to orient their curiosity toward the everyday problems of normal people and toward people, not only toward building tools. (00:00:00)
2026-10-09 · Hank · The Productivity Lie — On the last day of Pizzamas, Hank argues that the amount people produce says nothing about their self-control or grit: productivity comes mostly from having the opportunity to work on things that matter, which people give each other, so productivity advice about efficiency is backward. (00:01:01)

World affairs

2007-03-06 · Hank · Brotherhood 2.0: Peeps and Genocide — Hank performs his Peeps punishment while discussing the first Brotherhood 2.0 Book Club book, arguing that the Rwandan genocide shows how ordinary people can be driven to genocide by a recognisable mix of conditions that governments and citizens can learn to stop; he ends by making the four-minute limit a rule. (00:01:12)
2007-11-07 · John · November 7: Discussing the Political Situation in Pakistan — Answering Hank's request, John recounts Pakistan's politics from 1988 to Musharraf's 2007 crackdown while eating 24 Peeps pumpkins, arguing Musharraf fuelled Pakistan's radicalization and cheering the protesting lawyers. (00:00:33)
2008-08-12 · John · PEANUT BUTTER FACE (while discussing the Georgia-Russia War) — Taking Hank's challenge, John explains the 2008 Russia-Georgia war with peanut butter on his face: Georgia's history, the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Russia's invasion, which he reads as Russia reminding Georgia that the West will not help it; he calls most wars as stupid as they are evil. (00:00:51)
2009-01-04 · John · Israel. Gaza. PUPPY! — Pegged to Israel's invasion of Gaza, John argues that an old conflict is not intractable, sketches the history from the 1947 UN partition to Hamas's 2006 election win, and proposes a two-state path to peace. (00:00:32)
2009-01-11 · John · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John explains the recurring war in Chad and Somalia's collapse into three regions with Puntland piracy, argues that combatants and colonialism share the blame and that African wars go uncovered because they lack simple stories, and asks viewers who is at fault. (00:00:32)
2009-03-15 · John · Lighting a candle for Rwanda — Jet-lagged in Holland, John marks the Rwandan genocide's 15th anniversary by arguing that opposing genocide is easy but still important, and that Rwandans abandoned as 'a them' should hear 'you are us'; he asks Nerdfighters to film candle-of-hope videos with the Harry Potter Alliance. (00:00:24)
2009-03-18 · Hank · Lighting Candles for Rwanda — Hank lights his own candle of hope for Rwanda, relays a Rwandan survivor's account that the world's indifference and abandonment were worse than the fear, and asks viewers to send candle videos; he adds asks for an Irish fiddle player and votes for Nerdfighter Travis Ritchie. (00:00:00)
2009-04-26 · John · Peanut Butter Face Discusses Sri Lanka — Wearing peanut butter on his face to get attention, John explains Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers, a war with no good guys, and argues the world ignores it because it lacks obvious villains. (00:01:22)
2009-05-17 · John · Burma! Myanmar? BURMA! — John explains Burma's decades of military rule, from Ne Win's superstitions to Aung San Suu Kyi's annulled 1990 election win and house arrest, and argues that after her arrest over John Yettaw's swim, Burma's neighbours, especially India, must press the junta to reform. (00:02:42)
2009-06-14 · John · Iran Election Fraud: 5 Reasons to Doubt the Results — John gives five reasons (Tabriz, the 2005 runoff, record turnout, superhuman counting, a reported early concession call) to think Iran's 2009 presidential election was stolen for Ahmadinejad, while allowing that the full story is unknown. (00:00:53)
2009-07-12 · John · On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments — John points viewers to Shawn's new Bangladesh video, then answers three commenter objections to his Iran election video, arguing that caring about Iran matters and that Islam, like every religion, is not a monolith. (00:00:59)
2009-12-01 · John · Shaving for Pakistan — While shaving off his Movember beard, John surveys Pakistan's troubles (poor education, low incomes, an over-strong military, weak government, no leadership) and asks where the world should start helping; he then sets Hank's punishment: 15 hours in Missoula's Target plus publicly blending and eating a meal there. (00:00:16)
2010-10-13 · John · On Hope and Chile — While watching the Chilean miners' rescue, John reports on the Beckoning of Lovely and Nerdfighter tattoos, offers a playlist of It Gets Better videos instead of making one, and argues that in a broken world humans are right to hold on to hope. (00:02:10)
2011-01-31 · John · Revolution in Egypt: A 4-Minute Introduction — Asked by Nerdfighters, John explains Egypt's 2011 protests against Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule and argues that, since revolutions have a poor track record, the hard work starts after Mubarak goes, so we should keep paying attention once the story stops being shiny. (00:02:56)
2011-08-08 · Hank · Hackers, Cyber crime, and a New Kind of War. — Starting from the hack of the Your Pants forum, Hank argues that crime and war are on the cusp of a fundamental shift to cyber attacks (Anonymous, Russian mafia, Chinese hackers, Stuxnet), and worries both about the attacks and about ineffective, internet-harming legislation. (00:02:10)
2012-03-06 · John · Know Your News! Understanding the Syrian Revolution in Under 4 Minutes — John gives Hank a four-minute history of Syria since 1946 (coups, the Ba'ath Party, the Assads, Alawism) to explain the regime's violent crackdown on the 2011 pro-democracy protests and the resulting civil war, and asks whether and how to help. (00:00:00)
2013-04-05 · Hank · North Korea: Explained — Hank answers the most-searched questions about North Korea during its 2013 threats: it almost certainly won't attack, its worst threat is to its own people, it is a hereditary dictatorship rather than communist, and it needs the US as an enemy; giving in to its tantrums may only encourage more. (00:00:00)
2013-04-09 · John · Inside North Korea — Prompted by Hank's North Korea video, John retells Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from Camp 14 (Escape from Camp 14) and argues the story shows not the strength of the human will but its fragility: Shin's morality was developed after his escape, not innate. (00:01:06)
2013-04-16 · John · Flags and Helpers — Reacting to the Boston Marathon bombing, John argues that the race's 96 side-by-side flags stand for a larger "us" that needs no "them", that some flags came down not from the blast but when helpers tore down barricades to reach the injured, and that we can always look in hope to the helpers and try to be among them. (00:00:29)
2013-07-05 · Hank · Egypt....Explained! — Hank explains the week's upheaval in Egypt through its four power groups (old regime, Muslim Brotherhood, military, young activists), from Mubarak's fall to Morsi's removal, and argues revolutions bring only incremental change. (00:00:00)
2013-09-13 · Hank · Syria in Five Minutes — Hank explains the background of the Syrian civil war and the 2013 chemical-weapons crisis, argues that anyone claiming to know the right course is disingenuous or uninformed, and asks viewers to help displaced Syrians through the UN Refugee Agency. (00:04:30)
2014-03-04 · John · Understanding Ukraine: The Problems Today and Some Historical Context — John traces Ukraine's history between Russia and Europe (Crimean War, Stalin, the 1954 Crimea transfer, independence, the Orange Revolution, the 2013-14 protests) up to Russia's move into Crimea, sets out two competing narratives, and argues Ukraine needs decades of stability. (00:05:16)
2014-04-22 · John · Understanding the Central African Republic — John explains the Central African Republic's conflict from independence to the Séléka and anti-balaka violence, arguing that we ignore complicated stories without clear good guys and bad guys and must make room in our stories for the world as it is. (00:00:24)
2014-10-03 · Hank · Hong Kong Protests Explained — Hank explains the Hong Kong protests through Hong Kong's colonial history and economic value to China, Beijing's need to look strong and stable, and its plan to pre-select candidates for Chief Executive, hoping China might yet find room for democracy. (00:01:31)
2015-02-10 · John · Understanding Boko Haram — John argues that Boko Haram grew out of a northern Nigeria left impoverished, uneducated and poorly governed by resource allocation and colonial legacies rather than by religion, and that its atrocities must be known and not go unnoticed. (00:02:21)
2015-07-07 · John · Understanding the Financial Crisis in Greece — John explains how Greece's debt crisis developed, from joining the euro and fudged deficits through bailouts, austerity and the 2015 referendum, and argues the Eurozone's root problem is its inability to decide how unified it is. (00:06:32)
2015-11-13 · Hank · Feeling About Paris — Filming while people are being killed in Paris, Hank says this is a time for feeling rather than analysis, that any emotional response is appropriate, and that he wants to think about the rescuers, the bereaved and the lost. (00:00:00)
2016-03-18 · Hank · Brazil's Government is Falling Apart...and it's Good News? — Hank explains Brazil's political crisis (the Petrobras kickback scandal, recession, an unpopular President Rousseff, Judge Moro and social-media polarization) and argues it is bad short-term but good long-term, with Brazil's culture of peaceful evolution as good news. (00:09:31)
2018-07-13 · Hank · Why Do So Few Countries Have Nukes? — Prompted by John's video on the General Crisis, Hank explains why only nine of about 195 countries have nuclear weapons: the history of nuclear states, the non-proliferation treaty, cost, sanctions, alliances, luck and a norm against nukes. He warns that sanctions can push isolated states toward nukes, that barriers are falling, and that after 73 good years we may be getting complacent, and he thanks the people whose work kept the peace. (00:04:17)
2019-08-23 · Hank · The Amazon isn't "Burning" - It's Being Burned — Hank argues the Amazon is not 'burning' but being burned: the fires are set to clear land for cattle under Jair Bolsonaro, driven by money and a nationalist ideology that sees the world's concern as a threat, though losing the rainforest's rain would harm Brazil most. (00:00:00)
2022-03-15 · John · Ukraine and Russia: What Caused the War? — John traces Ukraine's history (the 1917 Ukrainian People's Republic, the Bolshevik conquest, Stalin's Holodomor and deportations, the 1991 independence vote, energy ties) and argues the war is what Putin says it is: a belief that Ukraine is no legitimate nation and Russia was robbed, not NATO or protecting Russian speakers. Ukraine has the right to exist in freedom. (00:05:21)

Economics

2009-02-15 · John · Stimulus Plan Explained — John explains that a deep recession can become a self-reinforcing spiral and argues, following Keynes, that cutting taxes and raising government spending is the right response; he calls the $787 billion stimulus bill an honest attempt to restart the economy. (00:00:20)
2010-04-30 · John · The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes — John explains sovereign debt: rich countries borrow cheaply because markets assume they repay, so debt is not inherently bad; markets' doubt about Greece makes its debt costlier in a vicious circle that could spread, and the problem is not one ideology's fault. (00:00:13)
2010-09-06 · John · I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.) — Inspired by Hank's regulation video, John rants that pennies (and nickels) cost more to make than they are worth, waste time and money, and fail to facilitate commerce, and proposes keeping only dimes, fifty-cent pieces and dollar coins. (00:00:21)
2011-01-17 · John · Cheating Cheaters of Cheatery: The Amazing Story of Brazil's Cotton War with the U.S. — John retells a Planet Money story: the US illegally subsidizes its cotton farmers, Brazil won a WTO case against it, and rather than comply the US agreed in 2010 to pay Brazilian cotton farmers $147 million a year. (00:00:16)
2011-01-26 · John · I OWN WARNER CHILCOTT! — Answering Hank's drug-price video, John buys Warner Chilcott stock to show that the company works for its shareholders, and argues that free markets, good at much, fail at health care, so the US needs universal health insurance for its economy's sake. (00:00:57)
2011-07-08 · John · Kill the Dollar Bill! — Replying to Hank's bias video, John uses the denomination effect to argue that the US should stop printing one-dollar bills and switch to $1 and $2 coins, which the GAO says would save $5.5 billion over 30 years and would also raise consumer spending. (00:00:21)
2011-08-10 · John · Understanding America's Debt Problem — John explains debt, GDP and sovereign default, and argues that although S&P downgraded US debt after Congress nearly defaulted, US borrowing got cheaper because the world still trusts the dollar; trust is the only thing backing currency, and political dysfunction slowly erodes it. (00:00:58)
2012-10-23 · John · Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit — In election season John explains that the $16 trillion US national debt is mostly owed to Americans and is cheap, so it is not a crisis, while warning that deficits must shrink to keep credit cheap; he compares the candidates' modest plans and asks for discussion without yelling. (00:00:28)
2013-03-22 · Hank · How Much is a Human Life Worth? — Hank surveys ways of pricing a human life (wages, organs, ad-sold attention, economists' risk-premium and willingness-to-pay methods, both near $10 million) and argues that valuing life is not crass: its value lies in enabling life, not in preventing inevitable death. (00:01:51)
2013-08-13 · John · Shailene's Hair, Unfair Monopoly, and the Just World Fallacy — John argues from rigged-Monopoly experiments that the just world fallacy makes the advantaged feel deserving and that power wields people; he wants Nerdfighteria to resist that pull, and backs Shailene Woodley's hair donation to Children With Hair Loss. (00:00:00)
2013-08-23 · Hank · Thoughts from Bath: The Legacy of Wealth — Touring Bath with Charlie McDonnell, Hank argues that the Roman Baths and other monuments are artifacts of concentrated wealth we both enjoy and rightly criticise, notes how extreme global inequality is, and says our greatest legacy should be peace, plenty and equality. (00:01:58)
2013-12-06 · Hank · I Am President Snow — Hank argues that, unlike in The Hunger Games, our deeply unequal society has no villain: inequality comes from psychology, sociology, math and complacency, which makes him a kind of President Snow; since it is the path of least resistance and bad for everyone, we need structures to fight it. (00:00:59)
2014-03-18 · John · Is the American Dream Real? — John argues that, by mobility and pay-gap data, equality of opportunity is greater in Denmark, Slovenia and other developed countries than in the US, so the American Dream is a dream; systemic inequality of opportunity hurts all Americans. (00:00:51)
2015-06-08 · John · Monday Bonus Video! — In a four-part bonus video John announces Paper Towns movie tour stops in Europe and a US tour chosen by Tumblr vote, the debut of the Dear Hank and John podcast, and answers Hank on the decoupling of wages and productivity: wealth inequality is one of the biggest US issues, but history is too short for confident economics and the outcome is still ours to decide. (00:00:00)
2015-06-12 · Hank · Why is College So Expensive? — Hank explains that US college costs rose not from instruction, which kept pace with inflation, but from administration, student services and amenities as colleges compete for students as customers; college is still a good deal, but he argues it should be a better one focused on education. (00:01:50)
2015-07-03 · Hank · Thoughts from Yachts — Hank, back from presenting at a lavish advertising convention in the south of France, argues that its displays of wealth come from manufactured discontent and personal insecurity, worries that no one will ever be satisfied, and says real happiness comes from being secure in yourself rather than from money. (00:00:45)
2016-04-05 · John · What's Wrong with Monopoly? — John reviews the Monopoly mobile app as a terrible game and argues that Monopoly's real history, invented by Elizabeth Magie and improved by a community but credited to Charles Darrow, is a story of capitalism failing rather than working. (00:01:23)
2017-01-10 · John · What Is the Real Unemployment Rate? — After the BLS reported 4.7% US unemployment for December, John explains why claims of a 'real' rate from 6% to 38% differ (labor force participation and the U3-U6 measures) and argues that, however measured, unemployment is low but could be lower, while median household income has not fully recovered, so the debate should start from agreed facts. (00:00:00)
2017-05-05 · Hank · Sick and Tired — On his birthday, discouraged by the House health care bill and the fight against net neutrality, Hank calls his representatives and, inspired by John's thumbs-up video, thanks call-takers; he argues via his 'appreciation deficit theory' that money compensates but does not appreciate, and that non-transactional appreciation matters. (00:01:32)
2018-01-19 · Hank · Many Years Ago, Someone Gave Me a Whole Bitcoin...then I lost it. — After John finds the nearly whole Bitcoin a viewer named Sean sent them in 2014, worth $15,000 and donated to Partners In Health, Hank explains that market value is set only by the latest purchase: Google stock rests on Google's ability to make money, while Bitcoin rests on an uncertain bet that people will use it as currency, which he can't advocate. (00:01:04)
2019-07-26 · Hank · The Best $10,000 I Ever Spent — Hank says the best money he ever spent was over $10,000 on prescription drugs while uninsured, then argues that prevailing economics wrongly equates making more money with creating value: price hikes on insulin or his own drug serve fewer people and destroy value, while drug companies favor buybacks and patent extensions. (00:01:16)
2021-01-29 · Hank · The Gamestop Short Squeeze in 4 Minutes — Angered by a former SEC head comparing the GameStop short squeeze to the Capitol siege, Hank explains how hedge funds' bets against GameStop became promises to buy more stock than existed, how a squeeze turned into a mini pyramid scheme and gamble, and argues the instability came from hedge funds, not Reddit; manipulators should be regulated out of existence but were instead memed out of existence. (00:00:29)
2022-02-01 · John · This Video Is Actually Three Videos — John approaches costs and benefits three ways: a Kenneth Koch poem on life's trade-offs, the US penny as a rare cost with no benefit that makes hating it easy, and his OCD medication, which works but has cost him the ability to cry; a cost does not negate a benefit, and treating life like pennies doesn't work. (00:00:00)
2026-02-13 · Hank · Why Isn't Everybody a Nonprofit?! — On the day the Project for Awesome begins, Hank tells John that, having taken Complexly nonprofit, he explains what a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit is (tax-free surpluses, tax-deductible donations, grants) and why most organizations are not: owners want profit and equity, most activities are not exempt purposes (as with Good Store), and the paperwork and legal infrastructure favour businesses. (00:01:27)

History & curiosities

2010-11-05 · John · God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I — John explains the causes and first events of the French Revolution (debt, famine, Enlightenment ideas, the Estates General, the National Assembly, the Bastille, the Women's March), arguing that in 1789 France went from a stable if broke monarchy to a country where no one knew who was running the show. (00:01:42)
2010-11-10 · John · Headless Monarchy: The French Revolution, Part II — John continues his French Revolution explainer from 1790 to early 1793 (Varennes, the Champ de Mars, the 1791 constitution, Pillnitz, war, the republic, the guillotine and the king's execution), arguing that none of it fixed hunger or bankruptcy and that yesterday's revolutionaries became 'the man'. (00:01:58)
2010-11-11 · John · REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III — John finishes his French Revolution explainer (price controls, the Committee of Public Safety and the Terror, the calendar, the Directory, Napoleon), concludes France went from one supreme ruler to another, and argues history is worth studying because the past still shapes the present and studying it is an exercise in empathy. (00:00:46)
2011-02-18 · John · Thoughts from Places: Small Town America — Visiting Knightstown, Indiana and its cemetery, John reflects that small towns and people have futures no one can predict, as with a young widow's headstone, so all we can really do is be kind to each other. (00:01:18)
2011-05-25 · Hank · Thoughts from a Battlefield — After stopping at the Big Hole battlefield, Hank explains that the 1800s Nez Perce were militarily powerful and economically rich, how US greed for their land and gold led to war and the ambush at Big Hole, and argues we should remember places where we lost our humanity. (00:00:37)
2011-05-27 · John · Older Than Gravity In Bruges: Thoughts from Places — In a Thoughts from Places video John hunts for a toothbrush in Bruges, and argues that living amid such old history reminds us we owe the dead and the not-yet-living the awareness that human life is ours only in trust. (00:01:20)
2011-06-01 · John · The Evil Baby Orphanage Returns...for George Washington? — John uses the Evil Baby Orphanage to ask whether George Washington should be removed from history, arguing that without the American Revolution slavery might have ended earlier and the Civil War been avoided, so the truth resists simplicity. (00:00:29)
2012-07-17 · John · Hitler and Sex! — John parodies a sensational cable 'Hitler and sex' show, then argues that the real story is boring and sad: Hitler was a common domestic abuser, and sensationalizing him lets us feel fundamentally unlike people who commit genocide. (00:02:35)
2015-03-17 · John · What Are Paper Towns? — Ahead of the Paper Towns trailer, John explains the real 'paper towns': fictitious entries planted by mapmakers, encyclopedias and dictionaries that sometimes become real, and argues made-up things can matter and that we should imagine the world as complexly as we can. (00:00:46)
2015-08-07 · Hank · Is This Video Cool? — Hank argues that the many, fast-changing words for 'cool' show culture defining itself, that these words mostly come from marginalized cultures and are co-opted by the mainstream in a kind of colonization, and that we should examine that process. (00:00:00)
2015-11-16 · John · On Our Way to the Dance (Pizzamas Day 6) — John reads his favourite photograph, August Sander's 1914 'Young Farmers', as a picture of mass production lifting rural class and of young men walking toward World War I, and argues that history is not inevitable but made of collective choices. (00:01:02)
2017-01-17 · John · How Young Is History? — Comparing the 1,900-year-old Pantheon with the Lascaux paintings (15-20,000 years old) and the far older Chauvet paintings, John argues that history is not a line of progress: almost everything we take as natural or inevitable is very new, so our progress is fragile and today's conditions result from choices we make together. (00:02:28)
2017-09-19 · John · Why Cities? — John asks why humans moved from hunting and gathering to cities, which at first meant worse health, more disease and more work; after reviewing theories he argues settlements eventually made life better by almost any measure, above all through reading and writing, but that every way of life has trade-offs depending on what we take the meaning of life to be. Closing, he celebrates Hank's novel announcement. (00:00:31)
2018-02-06 · John · Sawdust Bread — John describes the sawdust-and-chaff bread behind the 1789 Women's March on Versailles and argues that, measured in lifetimes such as Halley's Comet's 75-year cycle, such hardship is recent, so better lives are possible but not guaranteed and change, though harder than expected, does happen. (00:02:06)
2018-02-09 · Hank · This is Going to Seem Dumb, but Stick with Me — Hank, who has thought about sidewalks since a 2013 viewer-suggested sidewalk interview, explains Missoula's patchwork sidewalks and maker's marks, then tells how a child's footprints leading to a 1909 maker's mark made him feel connected to people long gone and part of something far bigger than himself. (00:01:37)
2018-03-20 · John · The Russian Reversal — John traces the Russian reversal joke from Yakov Smirnoff back to Cole Porter and Laugh-In, calls it a xenophobic Cold War weapon, finds the construction everywhere (Pollan's corn, Richard II, Piglet, Boss Baby, his own novel), and argues that reversing big forces such as algorithms and markets reveals where power really lies. (00:02:28)
2018-07-10 · John · The General Crisis — Curious when the global human population last declined, John learns via Our World in Data that it was 1648, the end of the General Crisis (1608–1648), when disease after the Columbian Exchange, the Atlantic slave trade, the Thirty Years' War, the Ming collapse, silver-driven inflation and the Little Ice Age cut population despite growing wealth. He concludes that progress is never simple, universal or guaranteed, that a changing climate can fuel instability, and that wealth is only good news once we learn to share it. (00:00:39)
2019-06-25 · John · Seemed Like a Good Idea: Eugene Schieffelin and the European Starlings — John tells how Eugene Schieffelin released some 60 European starlings in Central Park in 1890, now about 200 million destructive birds, but argues the acclimatists responded reasonably to history, since moving species around has fed the world; we too have bad ideas that seem good, and history is littered with stories of starlings. (00:02:26)
2019-07-30 · John · The Mexican Repatriation — John recounts the Mexican Repatriation of the Great Depression, when the US deported at least 400,000 Mexican-Americans, most of them citizens, notes that deportations did not reduce unemployment, and argues through Jose Lopez's story that telling it is never unpatriotic. (00:00:00)
2021-08-31 · John · The Woman Who Invented Stuffed Animals — Arguing that inventions come from broad collaborations rather than lone individuals, John tells the life of Margarete Steiff, a disabled woman who built a stuffed-animal company from felt clothing and magazine patterns, to show that history is shaped both by circumstance and systems and by individual choices. (00:00:00)
2021-11-16 · John · Orbital Sunrise: The First Art Made in Space — John tells how cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, after nearly dying on the first spacewalk in 1965, calmed himself by drawing the orbital sunrise, the first art made in space, and argues that art is a window into worlds we will never see and a landing site when we do not know where else to go. (00:00:00)
2022-08-02 · John · Liberty Leading the People: How Revolutions Turn — John reads Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, painted after the July Revolution of 1830 that ended nearly 50 years of French instability, as a painting about both the hope and the cost of revolution; its later history shows there was nothing inevitable about liberty and democracy's victory, and still isn't. (00:01:56)
2025-10-17 · Hank · We Never Know What Anything Means — Using a new Complexly series, Endlings, whose first episode shows that the telegraph helped drive the passenger pigeon extinct, Hank argues that we never know what anything means: stories about the future fail beyond a short horizon, AI's biggest effects are as unforeseeable as the telegraph's were, and the future just grows in ways nobody intends. (00:00:00)

Nerdfighteria

2007-03-05 · John · Brotherhood 2.0: March 5, 2007: Hank's Punishment — John rejects the 'Free Hank' campaign and sets Hank's punishment for textual communication: eat as many of 100 Peeps as he can in six minutes and pay a dollar per uneaten Peep into a new Brotherhood 2.0 fund for decreasing suck levels worldwide. (00:00:39)
2007-12-28 · John · Dec. 28th: John's Last Brotherhood 2.0 Video — In his last Brotherhood 2.0 video John says the project let him know Hank as an adult, a rare pleasure between grown siblings, and that it was finished only because people watched; he argues that Nerdfighters are not about the brothers but a centerless community doing things that don't suck with people who don't suck. (00:00:22)
2009-08-06 · John · Robert Pattinson and DJ Railstone — John argues that most of Robert Pattinson's beauty is collectively constructed, and describes DJ Paige Railstone, a person Nerdfighters invented to see how real a made-up person can become, since all identities are partly made up by others. (00:00:00)
2010-08-27 · John · Rest In Awesome, Esther — John remembers Nerdfighter Esther Earl, who died aged 16: her character and place in Nerdfighteria, his belief in standing still with grief and bearing witness rather than rushing to a silver lining, an ask to give to the Friends of Esther Fund, and a closing clip of her saying family is important. (00:00:00)
2011-02-09 · John · NERDFIGHTERS UNITE! (in your pants) — Answering talk about Nerdfighteria changing as it grows, John sets two rules (don't be mean, DFTBA), recalls the community's recent accomplishments, announces the coming Your Pants forum, and argues that Nerdfighter is an identity you choose and define by living it. (00:02:59)
2013-10-15 · John · Thoughts for Nerdfighteria — John notes Nerdfighteria is growing fast and fears that communities growing without deepening become less important; he recommits to making things together with Nerdfighteria rather than chasing size, starting with his own punishment. (00:01:35)
2013-12-03 · John · Who Owns DFTBA? An Introduction to Trademarks — John explains that the brothers could trademark 'Don't Forget to Be Awesome' to stop companies like Urban Outfitters using it, but won't, because trademarks cannot be enforced selectively and the phrase belongs to Nerdfighteria; the community is defined by its values, not its mottoes. (00:01:15)
2014-03-25 · John · I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration — Noticing Hank skipped the sign-off, John traces the vlogbrothers' sign-off and style to Ian Shoales, a radio commentator they loved as kids, and argues art is not lone genius but people building on influences across time and space to make the world suck less. (00:00:43)
2016-12-30 · Hank · The Most Interesting Thing I've Ever Done — Two days before vlogbrothers turns ten, Hank says that of everything he has done, he is proudest of the community: as traditional community structures give way to individualism, Nerdfighteria, led by its members more than by the brothers, is a rare model for building community in an internet-based, hyper-individualized world. (00:00:27)
2017-02-03 · Hank · Are We Making Things Worse? — Thanking John for his immigration video, Hank worries that talking politics on Vlogbrothers deepens the echo chamber, but says he will not hide his beliefs (on climate change, marriage, discrimination, fear of immigrants) and will use his platform for them some days; he launches a weekend sale of refugee-support art posters for refugee resettlement organizations that lost federal funding. (00:00:00)
2017-02-28 · John · You Are Here — Back from NerdCon: Nerdfighteria, John remembers Esther Earl, whose grave he visited and whose friendships began in the brothers' old BlogTV chat, and argues that ten years of Vlogbrothers are about people making things together, since fandoms are made interesting by the people who build communities around content; he thanks Nerdfighters for being here. (00:00:16)
2021-07-13 · John · The Vlogbrothers Videos I Didn't Make — John describes Vlogbrothers videos he abandoned (one on nation-states he didn't understand, one on the 'sense of impending doom' written for himself, one on Nerdfighteria factions that Rosianna warned would weaken the community) and concludes that Vlogbrothers videos are really about Nerdfighteria as a productive community, so any video that weakens it is a bad video. (00:02:26)
2021-08-03 · John · I L*** Hank — On Esther Day 2021 John tells Hank he loves him, reflects on why vulnerability makes it hard to say, honours Esther Earl's legacy in This Star Won't Go Out and Nerdfighteria's projects, and asks viewers to acknowledge the love in their lives. (00:00:00)
2023-11-03 · Hank · We Need to talk about Sarapocial Relationships — Hank explains parasocial relationships and describes the reverse, a creator's relationship with the audience he imagines, which John named a 'sarapocial relationship'; he wants Nerdfighteria's core to be strong, dense and capable, and admits it costs him parts of himself and means holding space for disagreement. (00:01:40)
2025-02-18 · John · Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara — After a fake-topic title meant to keep casual viewers away, John says the 2025 Project for Awesome lifted him out of a discouraged, fearful month: it shows a strong us needs no them, that people together achieve far more than alone, and that community is what he is proudest of. (00:00:29)
2025-10-03 · John · Is It Time to Retire? — John asks when he should retire from YouTube: as with athletes, of whom it is said the game tells you when you're done, YouTube careers tend to be short; at 48 he is not sure he wants to make a video every Tuesday at 58 or 68 and would like to retire to writing someday, but he values Nerdfighteria and his project with Hank, and he asks viewers whether to wait to know or end Vlogbrothers intentionally. (00:01:23)

Pop culture

2009-11-29 · John · John Reviews Twilight and New Moon — John mocks Twilight's premise and criticises its adult-teen romance and its idea that Bella needs a man, but says the books are engrossing, escapist fun that argue true love wins; he calls New Moon the film stupid and says Harry Potter versus Twilight is 'a question wrongly asked'. (00:00:59)
2013-05-21 · John · Poetry Makes Nothing Happen: Thoughts on Ai Weiwei from the Indianapolis Museum of Art — Walking through Ai Weiwei's 'According to What?' at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, John argues that Ai's rebar work for the Sichuan earthquake's dead children 'makes nothing happen' yet gives form to love, anger and grief, which is why good art matters. (00:02:54)
2014-10-10 · Hank · I Kinda AM Batman — Hank answers John's anti-Batman video: Batman is a simplified reflection of all of us who do the good that makes the world work, but, built to represent everyone, blockbuster heroes keep under-representing the same groups and reinforce a white, male default. (00:00:27)
2015-12-22 · John · The Myth Reawakens — John argues, without spoilers, that the original Star Wars films mattered as myth on Joseph Campbell's hero's-journey model, and that The Force Awakens revives and broadens that myth, especially its sense of who counts as a person. (00:01:12)
2018-10-23 · John · Why Are Humans Suddenly Getting Better at Tetris? — John explains why top players of 1989 NES Tetris have suddenly improved, with max-outs and level 30 now within reach: a small, tightly knit community of enthusiasts connected online and off, the Classic Tetris World Championship and live streaming; he concludes that there is no single internet, only each person's own, which he wants to make better. (00:00:29)
2019-05-17 · Hank · Keanu. — Hank dissects Keanu Reeves's answer to Stephen Colbert's 'What do you think happens when we die?': by answering the question as asked ('the ones who love us will miss us') Keanu broke late-show protocol and suggested that what happens to everybody else may matter more than what happens to us. (00:01:38)
2019-05-21 · John · Keanu Reeves: A Love Letter — John, wary of the celebrity machine, explains why he loves Keanu Reeves: a great actor who listens carefully in interviews and keeps a private self inside the 'Mickey Mouse suit' of fame, a lesson that everyone can be kind and listen carefully. (00:01:27)
2019-07-16 · John · star struck — John describes being starstruck on both sides: nervous and blabbering around people he admires, and weirdly surprised when fans recognize him; on either side he mostly wants to say a believable thank you but can't, and he tells fans embarrassed by their encounters with him that it's okay. (00:00:58)
2020-03-03 · John · Consciously Experiencing Human Dignity — Prompted by a YouTube comment calling The Art Assignment's videos 'exercises in consciously experiencing human dignity', John says that is what he seeks in art and beyond: recognizing the dignity of oneself and others, since humans, for all their harm, are the most interesting thing that ever happened on Earth. (00:00:58)
2020-09-15 · John · All That Glitters Is Gold — John reflects on the lyric 'all that glitters is gold' from Stairway to Heaven and Smash Mouth's All Star: though the proverb says otherwise, he cares less about what the band meant than about how the lyric names magical moments when you can feel a memory forming, and says loved songs hold the warmth of past memory and future hope. (00:02:26)
2020-12-01 · John · The Utah Monolith, What It Means, Why It Matters, and Whether It's Aliens — Using the Utah monolith, a metal sculpture found by wildlife biologists in a remote desert and soon removed, John argues that what thrills him in art is not mastery but mystery: the monolith waited unnoticed for years and vanished once noticed, and the unanswered maybes are what make art feel visceral. (00:01:11)
2022-11-01 · John · Is This Painting Upside Down? — Recalling how he hung Sarah's line painting upside down and the news of a Mondrian painting hung upside down for 75 years, John argues that whether an artist intended a road to wonder matters less than whether a viewer finds it: shared art is a gift exchange of attention. (00:02:26)
2024-10-01 · John · On Fame and Chappell Roan — Prompted by Chappell Roan's public struggle with fame, John recalls having a panic attack at the Paper Towns film premiere while at the top of 'Fame Mountain', calls fame the worst purportedly good thing he has experienced (an intoxicant that brings outsized negative feedback and lost privacy), and concludes, with Mr. Rogers, that how he feels about fame depends on how he uses it. (00:00:29)

Personal life

2013-10-29 · John · Perspective — Prompted by Hank's million-seconds video, John tells how at 24, depressed after a breakup in Chicago, he took leave from Booklist, got treatment and watched Harvey, and argues that you can't know what an experience means until time gives you perspective. (00:02:01)
2016-02-16 · John · Kindness — From a beach vacation John recommends Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and, through two of its lines, thanks Hank for his positive obsession and consoles him that Lemon is dying, arguing that kindness eases change and can undo the world's zero-sum arithmetic. (00:02:14)
2016-02-19 · Hank · Thanks, Lemon — Hank tells John his greyhound Lemon has died of osteosarcoma and, while insisting she was just another dog, argues that she mattered to him and taught him that feeling valued depends more on how you think of others than on how others think of you. (00:01:26)
2017-05-19 · Hank · Should I Have a Baby? — Answering the DadCast's most common question, how to decide to have a child, Hank says you can't know in advance; six months into fatherhood he lists what is hardest and what is unexpectedly best, endorsing doing hard things rather than having kids, and says parenthood really is great. (00:00:22)
2017-12-26 · John · LEAVE IT IN 2017 — In a public version of the year-end letter his therapist suggested, John tells his future self to leave in 2017 the feed (algorithms built to keep him scrolling), wild swings about the social internet, sports-driven moods, career over sanity, excess LaCroix, snark in comments and the idea that the avatar is the person, while keeping exercise, real-life community events and sharing his writing. (00:00:00)
2020-02-11 · John · 1,100 Days: A Mental and Physical Health Update — Three years after 100 Days, John reports on 1,100 days of regular exercise: some benefits plateau and can start a vicious cycle, others keep improving, his mental health is probably the best it has been, and he no longer imagines his mind as separate from his body. (00:00:00)
2020-08-03 · John · you're bundled up now? wait till you get older. — On Esther Day 2020, John remembers Esther Earl and her wish for a day celebrating non-romantic love, reflects that old college pictures show now feels permanent but isn't, tells Hank how hard saying 'I love you' once was and how working together reconnected them, and asks viewers to tell people they love them. (00:00:29)
2023-08-25 · Hank · Remission — Hank announces his Hodgkin lymphoma is in complete remission and argues that cancer is not a single binary saving throw one 'beats' but an ongoing process: lasting side effects, raised risks, a chance of relapse and permanent anxiety. (00:03:38)
2024-08-06 · John · What Helped Through Depression — Back after a nervous breakdown, John lists what helped him through depression: absorbing but undemanding pottery, his communities (Nerdfighteria, friends, AFC Wimbledon), helping others such as Henry Reider's Freetown well, and above all therapy, where his psychiatrist showed him he acted as if he were worthless, against his belief that everyone deserves love. (00:02:26)

Projects

2013-07-26 · Hank · Introducing Subbable — Hank, answering John's request to fix online video's dependence on advertising, introduces Subbable, a pay-what-you-want subscription system launching with Crash Course, and argues that advertisers value views rather than viewers, so Nerdfighteria could drive a cultural shift to voluntary payment. (00:00:33)
2016-10-07 · Hank · Changing Our Business a Bit — Hank reflects that ten years and 1,400 videos of public experiments made him a kinder person and showed that imagining others and the world complexly is what the brothers do, so their production company, until now EcoGeek, is renamed Complexly. (00:01:27)
2018-11-09 · Hank · I Don't Know What Work Is — Starting from reading 45 science fiction novels before his book came out, Hank wonders whether turning everything he loves into work is a good habit or a need to justify joy, thanks John for teaching him (in a 2011 pitch chat) that a good idea must do good, and says he believes in their projects as sustainable engines for good, since work is part of life. (00:00:29)
2022-07-22 · Hank · What are These Boys Doing?? — Explaining why he and John run subscription companies (the Awesome Socks Club and the new Awesome Coffee Club) that give away all their profits, Hank says they now care more about impact than wealth and that the community builds things together, and hopes the coffee club grows beyond anyone knowing who made it. (00:00:33)
2026-02-04 · Hank · We Just Sold Our Company for $0 — Hank tells John that Complexly, which grew from John's 2010 Gchat proposal for a fun French Revolution video and $10,000 of Hank's money, relaunched as a nonprofit on January 1, 2026: the brothers donated all their shares and its savings so that it adds more value than it captures and lasts, and he asks viewers for tax-deductible donations. (00:01:27)
2026-05-22 · Hank · Why I Made Crash Course a Non-Profit — Hank tells John he was long jealous of investment-backed digital media, but they built Complexly slowly, declined buyers and never took its profit because it felt like Nerdfighteria's project; since the end of 2025 he no longer owns Crash Course, and he asks viewers to consider a Crash Course coin. (00:00:29)
2026-05-26 · John · Hank Green Is a Fool — John corrects Hank's clickbait-titled video: Hank did not leave Crash Course, and it was not sold; private buyers saw that free, costly Crash Course makes no economic sense, so the brothers gave Complexly away as a non-profit, and John himself left. (00:00:58)

Sports

2009-09-13 · John · Sex, Sports, and Caster Semenya — On Newsday John discusses the gender test of 18-year-old runner Caster Semenya and argues, following Lauren McLaughlin, that the failure lies with sports, which exists to remove the ambiguity that life (and sex) always has. (00:01:10)
2019-01-29 · John · Do You Believe in Miracles? — John traces his belief in radical hope to watching Boston College's 'Miami Miracle' at seven, says hope is the correct response to the human condition and best shared, and celebrates AFC Wimbledon's 4-2 FA Cup upset of West Ham as proof. (00:00:57)
2019-04-30 · John · The Thing with Feathers — Telling how fan-owned AFC Wimbledon, last in English football's third tier for most of the season, fought out of the relegation zone, John argues that humans' best trait is relentlessness, that every reprieve is temporary, and that since you can't know which effort will work you put the effort in every time, a lesson for his writing. (00:01:55)
2019-06-04 · John · On Sharing the Walk — John tells how his unreliable gut, and thoughts on treasuring versus sharing, led him to give a stranger his Steven Gerrard-signed jersey before Liverpool won the Champions League, and argues that sports matter because they remind us that what we share outweighs what we have: you'll never walk alone. (00:02:30)
2019-07-23 · John · What to Love and How — On a family trip to see Liverpool play a pre-season friendly at Notre Dame, John argues that shared loves bind people into communities that ease loneliness, but that we must be careful how we love so our 'us' does not need a 'them'; lifting the European Cup, he concludes the point of it all is to gather. (00:00:00)
2020-09-08 · John · That's the way. — Borrowing Donald Hall's idea of a 'third thing' that two people attend to together, John argues sports are at core shared sites of joint rapture, and holds up fan-owned AFC Wimbledon, now returning to Plough Lane, as a model where the third thing belongs to the people whose attention makes it valuable rather than to the rich. (00:00:29)
2026-10-06 · John · Make Your Art. — Mourning his friend Michael 'Mikey T' Taliadoros, AFC Wimbledon's longtime commentator who died the day before, John argues that Mikey T was an artist and a hugely successful one despite a small audience, urges everyone to make and share their art despite the vulnerability, calls a football club a collective memory, and regrets not walking up to thank him. (00:00:29)