Do people achieve more together than as individuals?
From 2010 to 2026 Hank has said no one does anything alone, crediting the community with what his projects achieved, including Crash Course and Complexly. John agrees throughout: he calls the self-made individual a flawed idea, collaboration our species' secret weapon, and in 2026 its superpower.
Axis: collective action beats individual effort ... individuals drive change
Concept: collective action
Positions by date: 98 records in 98 videos. The position was refined (2021, 2026), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-09-12 | first on record | John says that together as a community Nerdfighters make better maps than any of them could make alone. | Adorable Baby and Insufficient Cartography 00:02:16 |
| 2012-10-16 | restate | John says a year of teaching world history taught him that humans generally get less miserable when they collaborate. | Burning Peeps, My OTP, and Velociraptors: It's Question Tuesday 00:03:02 |
| 2013-09-24 | restate | John calls the self-made individual a deeply flawed idea that makes us collaborate too little; nobody, not Drake nor Franklin, succeeds on their own. | Started from the Bottom: Benjamin Franklin and Drake Compared 00:03:16 |
| 2014-03-25 | restate | John: creative works are not singular feats of genius; even Joyce and Beyoncé draw on vast networks of influence. | I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration 00:02:36 |
| 2014-10-07 | restate | John asks why we celebrate the vigilante ambitions of individual billionaires when the real work among humans is done in collaboration, not isolation. | I Kind of Hate Batman 00:03:09 |
| 2014-11-13 | restate | John: history is not about great individuals but an ongoing collaboration among the roughly 96 billion people who have lived; pizza had millions of innovators, no inventor. | The History of Pizza and the History of John: Pizzamas Day 4 00:02:11 |
| 2017-04-11 | restate | John thinks the worship of individual genius is misguided: Edison didn't invent the light bulb, which many people were inventing around him, and Newton didn't discover gravity but pushed our awareness of it further. | Making the World's Largest Ball of Paint 00:01:39 |
| 2018-09-11 | restate | From rugby fields to robotics labs, John says, we really can accomplish so much more together than alone. | Surprise . . . 00:03:24 |
| 2018-09-18 | restate | John thinks we need to raise teammates who know how to collaborate and strive together; in short, we all need to learn how to participate. | On the Participation Trophy 00:03:24 |
| 2018-10-23 | restate | Humanity is better at Tetris because enthusiasts built spaces online and off that connect people over a usually solitary hobby. | Why Are Humans Suddenly Getting Better at Tetris? 00:02:44 |
| 2018-12-11 | restate | John says what he loves about the internet is also what he fears about it: we can do so much more together than alone. | When the Internet Came Home 00:03:21 |
| 2019-03-05 | restate | John says mysteries large and small usually aren't solved by one person: we talk about competition, but our species' secret weapon is collaboration. | Way, Way Down the Rabbit Hole 00:02:55 |
| 2020-01-28 | restate | John thinks that if the project works, it will be because thousands of people come together in solidarity with people in Sierra Leone. | Looking Away (Again) 00:05:45 |
| 2020-03-17 | restate | John says no individual could build water sanitation, electrical grids and transport systems or write Hamlet, but together humans have done all that and much more. | together. 00:00:00 |
| 2020-11-10 | restate | John says true innovation is almost never a heroic individual succeeding by his own effort, and almost always a growing body of expertise and evidence making new breakthroughs possible. | On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals 00:02:55 |
| 2020-12-08 | restate | John says one of the most important parts of realizing an idea, maybe the most important, is collaborating with others. | A Love Letter to My Brother, Basically 00:00:58 |
| 2021-01-05 | restate | We already know, John says, that humans and other superior beings accomplish more in collaboration than in isolation. | SUPERIOR FISH BEINGS 00:02:55 |
| 2021-02-16 | restate | John laughed, cried and felt connected again, reminded that humans are really good at being and working together, collaborating across time and space to do what none could alone. | A Lovely Winter Walk 00:03:10 |
| 2021-04-06 | restate | We can't make other people's choices for them, but the only way to end this is together. | How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? 00:03:24 |
| 2022-01-04 | restate | John says the project got here the only way people get anywhere good: together. | After 15 Years on YouTube, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING 00:08:29 |
| 2022-09-06 | restate | John says collaboration is how we make meaning together, address the disease of loneliness together and solve shared problems together. | Some Advice 00:02:55 |
| 2022-10-18 | restate | John calls Plough Lane the physical embodiment of what a community can accomplish when it sticks together and has a shared purpose. | Terraverse Over Everything: Thoughts from London 00:00:39 |
| 2022-10-25 | restate | John says nothing was inevitable about that progress: it happened because activists, healthcare workers, governments and charities worked together in messy, hard work. | Instantly Debateable 00:03:24 |
| 2023-03-14 | restate | John says that change was neither natural nor inevitable: many people collaborated across time and space, in anger, frustration and disgust, but not in hopelessness. | The Seduction of Despair 00:02:30 |
| 2023-04-11 | restate | John says it wasn't just Foster but players, coaches, owners, groundskeepers and fans who held the club together: Wrexham gave each other that memory, which will make it last and burn bright. | Wrexham's Most Amazing Feeling 00:03:24 |
| 2023-05-02 | restate | John closes: look at what humans can do when we come together. | GOOD NEWS 00:06:49 |
| 2023-05-09 | restate | John says that is why, despite everything, he is broadly in favor of humans: what we can do together awes and horrifies him, and he makes space for both. | on hope 00:03:05 |
| 2023-05-30 | restate | John says that is the story of Crash Course, of JWST, and of how almost everything worth doing gets done: together. | How Does He Do It? 00:04:48 |
| 2023-06-13 | restate | John tells Hank he is super pissed off that Hank got cancer, but grateful to the people who accumulated, shared and built on each other's knowledge for a healthier world. | touched by a king 00:03:08 |
| 2023-07-11 | restate | John tells Nerdfighteria that if they understand the problem together and convince J&J it is pursuing a bad business strategy, they can save many lives. | Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter to Johnson & Johnson 00:00:29 |
| 2023-07-18 | restate | John says new HIV treatments still did not reach impoverished communities until activists in the US, Europe and the Global South worked together to build that constituency. | Tuberculosis Fighters Have a Posse 00:01:56 |
| 2023-09-14 | restate | John says what they are accomplishing is another reminder that human beings do very little alone: almost everything we do, we do together. | Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES 00:58:42 |
| 2023-09-19 | restate | John marvels that 16 and a half years later Nerdfighteria's organizational and creative talents were harnessed together to expand TB treatment and diagnostics to millions. | So, um.... GOOD NEWS?!?!?! 00:05:23 |
| 2023-10-05 | restate | John says the argument of ten years of sponsoring Wimbledon, and of its fan reformation, is that community-held assets and communal action can work: not easily or always, but they can. | America's Second Favorite Fourth Tier English Soccer Team 00:03:45 |
| 2023-12-19 | restate | John says Danaher is not the enemy, tuberculosis is; to end TB we need each other, and together we can drive costs down further and make testing more affordable. | End of a Rough Year 00:03:24 |
| 2024-03-05 | restate | John points to the 20 years of shared commitment and effort that brought the club to this moment. | THE BEST DAY 00:03:15 |
| 2024-03-19 | restate | John says that on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone or the global TB crisis, he is astonished by what Nerdfighteria has done by orienting attention and resources in the same direction, and is grateful. | Our $80,000,000 Bet 00:04:23 |
| 2024-06-18 | restate | John has seen the community's power in reducing maternal mortality in Sierra Leone and driving down TB drug and test prices: never underestimate Nerdfighteria. | The Tea 00:05:45 |
| 2024-08-27 | restate | John says he has long watched people who create value online fail to realize it, because the internet is rigged against independent creators who lack collective bargaining power. | How The Internet Is Rigged 00:06:33 |
| 2024-09-25 | restate | John has come to love it more as an extensive collaboration: online there are still moments capitalism can't capture, when people mash up many people's work across time and space into something better than anyone could make alone. | You have no chance to survive make your time. 00:03:20 |
| 2025-02-18 | restate | The P4A gives John hope: he has only his little bucket for the fire, but others have theirs, and together we accomplish vastly more than alone. | Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara 00:02:55 |
| 2025-06-10 | restate | John says calling feels small and insignificant, but when tens of thousands of people do something insignificant together it becomes very significant. | 90,000,000 Lives for $20 00:05:21 |
| 2025-10-01 | restate | John calls it a concrete example of life getting better for the most vulnerable through broad, decades-long collaboration: too slow and still insufficient, but real. | Real Reasons for Hope 00:02:26 |
| 2025-10-28 | restate | John says it takes many people, from preventive therapy champions to political leaders, to bring lasting change, and he knows lasting change is possible. | Elon Cancelled This...Let's Do it Anyway 00:03:53 |
| 2025-11-11 | restate | John calls it his proudest moment in 19 years of YouTube videos that their corner of the internet made the MCOE possible: helped by many others, but he doesn't think it would have happened without them. | John's Annual Psychophysical Decline 00:02:06 |
| 2025-11-13 | restate | John says TB fighters impress him because they have made a big difference in getting TB care prioritized. | Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders 00:54:39 |
| 2026-02-03 | restate | John thinks real-life collective action matters (protests, videotaping, making one's voice heard inside and outside the ballot box) but doesn't know what to do online. | Does the truth still matter? 00:03:53 |
| 2026-02-13 | restate | John says we can accomplish infinitely more together than alone, and the Project for Awesome always reminds him of it. | Project for Awesome 2026 Kickoff! 01:45:36 |
| 2026-02-14 | restate | John repeats Joia Mukherjee's point that change needs not a majority but enough really committed, organized people pointing their attention and love in the same direction. | Project for Awesome 2026 part 3! 01:06:46 |
| 2026-02-14 | restate | John says thousands of people had to come together to make the Maternal Center of Excellence happen, as is usually the case with things that truly transform a community. | Project for Awesome 2026 part 4! 00:59:33 |
| 2026-03-10 | restate | John says elected officials had something to do with that progress, but so did the quiet, often exhausting work of activists. | Is Hank Green Running for Congress? 00:05:02 |
| 2026-04-14 | restate | John calls collaboration our species' superpower, to be used carefully, and thanks Hank and Nerdfighteria for using it for good. | Babies. Babies. Babies. 00:05:21 |
| 2026-04-28 | restate | John calls it a blessing to stand at a world-class facility in a place too long deemed unworthy of one, knowing the community fought to build it and will fight to maintain it. | What I Can't Show You 00:06:05 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-05-17 | first on record | Hank says the projects would be nothing without the people who chose to work on them; the real story of YouTube is groups doing things together. | My YouTube Story is Short 00:01:34 |
| 2010-12-20 | restate | Hank says thousands of individuals giving what they can add up to a huge number, and the community combined with YouTube's platform is more powerful still. | Thoughts on the Project for Awesome 00:02:51 |
| 2011-09-14 (said on 2011-09-15, implied) | restate | Hank says he could not have made ReadIt1st without the Nerdfighters he created it with. | How to Make Ideas Real: Readit1st.com 00:03:28 |
| 2011-10-07 | restate | In his song Hank says there is so much to be done and many people to do it, together we get through it, and nobody does it all alone; ordinary acts make the world work. | Steve Jobs and a Song 00:01:14 |
| 2012-06-08 | restate | Hank says he can be more productive because he has help from his teams, and that he likes to collaborate and be on a team. | How to be More Productive...With Hank! 00:02:35 |
| 2012-08-24 | restate | Hank: what the brothers are able to do has more to do with the people who do it with them; no one does anything alone. | Happy Birthday John Green! 00:01:42 |
| 2013-05-31 | restate | Hank: we avoid the apocalypse not through one superhero but by doing things together; we are the superhero, none of us individually but all of us together. | Optimism is Not Insane 00:02:47 |
| 2014-10-10 | restate | Hank says Batman is a simplification of all of us who do the good that makes the world work, through the everyday vigilantism of kindness and hard work. → refers to I Kind of Hate Batman | I Kinda AM Batman 00:01:22 |
| 2015-03-20 | restate | Hank says his individual actions are valuable but only really meaningful in combination with many other people. | A Sacrifice of Individuality and the Internets 00:02:59 |
| 2016-06-03 | restate | Hank says the singular-hero stories hide the real story: every human who has existed labored together to build this world. | Redefining What it Means to Matter 00:02:31 |
| 2017-05-26 | restate | Hank asks graduates who may never know what they're doing to get up each morning knowing no one changes the world alone and no one doesn't change it at all. | Some Rough Advice for the "Real World" 00:02:56 |
| 2017-06-02 | restate | Hank says no one country can handle climate change: even the biggest contributors, the US and China, together make up less than half the emissions; everyone must agree. | The Paris Accord: What is it? And What Does it All Mean? 00:01:54 |
| 2018-07-13 | restate | Decades of non-proliferation and only two wartime uses are a remarkable testament to people working together. | Why Do So Few Countries Have Nukes? 00:08:36 |
| 2019-12-06 | restate | Therefore everything that stays built, every solved problem and cured disease, remains so only through human action: billions of people placing puzzle pieces carefully every day. | It is Much Easier to Destroy than Create 00:02:01 |
| 2020-01-17 | restate | Looking honestly at where the value came from, Hank feels much of it came from the employees and the community, less from him, one person. | It's Like Shark Tank, but for Charity 00:01:20 |
| 2020-04-10 | restate | Hank says he just realized we are in the middle of the largest collective intentional action ever taken. | Things I'm Finding Encouraging 00:02:22 |
| 2020-08-21 | restate | Over the last six months Hank has watched collective action unlike anything he has seen in his lifetime, maybe ever. | The Water's Getting Warm 00:02:43 |
| 2020-11-13 | restate | Hank says we need stories recognizing that nobody does anything alone and nobody contributes nothing: everybody adds something to the human story, if only through conversations with friends and family. | How We Teach: Individualist Stories 00:03:23 |
| 2021-01-29 | restate | Instead, in this one way, the manipulators were memed out of existence by a few hundred people who figured something out and a few million mobilized in an unprecedented financial action. | The Gamestop Short Squeeze in 4 Minutes 00:03:42 |
| 2021-02-19 | restate | Everyone puts in work, but Hank says the value that comes out of creating the P4A together is far bigger than the work put in. | Bean Meme Review 00:13:05 |
| 2021-04-16 | restate | Humans are less individual than we imagine: we build systems out of people, and our focus on individuals' power is more cognitive bias than reality. | Gene Editing and Intelligence: A Bad video description |
| 2021-04-30 | restate | Of the answers to why movie heroes don't solve big problems (Disney vilifying leftists, manufacturing consent, selling tickets), Hank offers a sympathetic one: heroes can't solve them; only we can. | Are We the Baddies?? A Quick Look at a Discourse 00:03:20 |
| 2021-05-07 | restate | Different interests and skills are why people work together, and working together is greatly helped by a shared identity. | Are We The Same Person? 00:00:47 |
| 2021-05-14 | refine | Hank argues the brothers influenced each other so much that neither created the form of the Vlogbrothers video: they did it to each other. | This Vlogbrothers Stat Blew My Mind 00:02:20 |
| 2021-10-13 | restate | No individual must care about or do everything, from never getting COVID to cutting maternal mortality in Sierra Leone or cooking every meal: we do all of it in a web of care. | The Web of Care 00:02:36 |
| 2022-01-07 | restate | 2,000 videos and 15 years of doing things Hank couldn't have imagined because they didn't exist, always thanks to people working together to keep each other honest and push for useful things. | For Our 2000th Video: Just a Normal Snowy Day 00:02:26 |
| 2022-03-25 | restate | Hank has seen the work and care behind these and knows that when good people work hard together they really can help solve hard problems. | US College Students Need Help 00:02:55 |
| 2022-07-22 | restate | Crash Course would never have got funding or its initial viewership without this community: it is something Nerdfighteria built, like many of their projects, which Hank sees as things 'we' did. | What are These Boys Doing?? 00:02:20 |
| 2022-09-29 | restate | Hank says big problems only get solved when many people with widely varying expertise trust each other and work together. | The Kony 2012 of Roads - Solar Freakin' Roadways 00:03:26 |
| 2023-02-17 | restate | Hank says that when we work together we can magnify our impact. | COUNTDOWN TO THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 00:02:04 |
| 2023-07-14 | restate | Hank says John got into the rooms where drug-resistant TB is discussed and found a needless barrier; the community asked whether it could go, and within days it was gone. | The Good News Video 00:02:46 |
| 2023-09-22 | restate | Hank says it happened not only through the community's energy but because John spent much time talking to experts and thinking about his tools, so he could, with others, find an opportunity and take it. | A Feeling I've Never Felt Before 00:03:36 |
| 2023-10-06 | restate | Hank says both companies thrived despite, and he hopes partly because of, his part-time leadership, largely thanks to the community, without which neither they nor VidCon could exist. | I Quit 00:06:51 |
| 2023-12-01 | restate | Hank says such a business also needs a foundation, as Newman's Own had: Good Store's success wouldn't be possible without this community, though it is already bigger. | It's OK if you think less of me after this! 00:07:21 |
| 2024-02-16 | restate | Hank says Partners In Health took a chance and they delivered, not because everyone gave but because there are many of them and those who could or wanted to did. | How Much Does it Cost to be a Nerdfighter 00:00:58 |
| 2025-01-24 | restate | Hank says those projects were incubated in Nerdfighteria and grew from its values; their energy to exist and continue comes from this small community that has done really big things. | Am I OK? 00:03:59 |
| 2025-05-23 | restate | Hank says Nerdfighteria, Crash Course, TB Fighters and the Project for Awesome taught him that small groups of people can bring about tremendous change. | I Can’t Believe How Few People it Takes. 00:05:20 |
| 2025-06-06 | restate | Hank says that even having lived through it he does not understand in detail how all this happened, but knows it is not something he did by himself. | The Secret Inside my MIT Commencement Speech 00:02:20 |
| 2025-06-13 | restate | Hank says when they signed on they had no idea how to raise it, but many individuals chose how they wanted the world to look, it is now real, and he can return to it for hope. | Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) 00:07:18 |
| 2025-09-30 | restate | Hank says in a complex, messy world one person can feel powerless, but people working together can make good ideas succeed that might otherwise fail. | WHO ARE WE AND WHAT ARE WE DOING 00:04:23 |
| 2025-10-31 | restate | Hank says the money came from hundreds of thousands of sock sales, dozens of major gifts, a store that donates its profit, and many Nerdfighters giving once or monthly. | We Did It… 00:05:47 |
| 2026-02-20 | restate | Hank says he did none of this: at most he had fun ideas that turned people's heads, and they did the rest; John turned his head, and Paul Farmer turned John's. | What We Actually Did. 00:04:47 |
| 2026-05-22 | restate | Hank thinks the difference is that the community, not he and John, created Complexly: it could not have succeeded without the community's fuel, and it felt like a project of Nerdfighteria. | Why I Made Crash Course a Non-Profit 00:03:30 |
| 2026-05-29 | refine | Asked by Helen Hunt why he wants to perform alone, Hank had no answer then; the one he has since found is that it has been a great joy to share a stage with John. | Chemo Cow Body Odor YouTube Helen Hunt Commute 00:04:21 |
| 2026-10-09 | restate | Hank thinks a huge piece of productivity is external, something people can give each other. | The Productivity Lie 00:09:08 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-07-02 | background | Through the Law of Compound Nerdfighting John argues that 100 nerdfighters together can do what 100 individuals cannot, so together they probably could have started a microfinance bank. (playful) | Brotherhood 2.0: July 2nd: The Law of Compound Nerdfighting 00:00:59 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).