In 2007, John emailed Hank a proposal. Instead of being brothers via text message (which was how they were mostly doing it) they would make videos back and forth to each other for a full year.

Now we run an educational media company, Complexly, that is home to over a dozen educational YouTube channels like Crash Course, SciShow, PBS Eons, Healthcare Triage, and The Art Assignment. Together, those channels have 18 million subscribers and are viewed over 60 million times per month. Always 100% free, and funded through advertising, grants, and support on Patreon, Complexly’s videos are used by teachers and learners in schools all over the world.

We also both write books, though one of us has been at it for longer. John’s novels include “Looking for Alaska,” “Paper Towns,” “An Abundance of Katherines,” “The Fault in Our Stars,” and “Turtles All The Way Down.” Hank wrote “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing,” which debuted at #1 on the New York Times’ best-seller list.

We’re also actively working on some charity projects. For the last 10 years, we’ve been running something called the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, which sounds like a joke but has distributed more than $5 million to charities, non-profits, and educational projects.

We think a lot about what it is to be a person in this peculiar era of history. That’s mostly what we talk about on Vlogbrothers, our primary YouTube channel. That means everything from how to interface with growing inequality, how to prioritize mental health in a world that…does not, and how to find meaning and feel valued.

We like to talk about these things on YouTube, but also in real life, when we get a chance to. Maybe we’re coming to somewhere near you sometime soon!