Green brothers
The Green brothers, Hank and John, are two American entrepreneurs, social activists, authors, and YouTube vloggers. The two have collaborated extensively throughout their public careers, beginning with a daily vlog project in 2007 titled "Brotherhood 2.0", in which they only communicated in vlogs posted to YouTube for a year. The Greens' portfolio of online work now includes their main Vlogbrothers channel, Crash Course, SciShow, their podcast Dear Hank & John, and several other projects spanning several forms of media.
Both brothers have found success individually. John has written several books which have received widespread acclaim and popularity, including The Fault in Our Stars. The novel was made into a 2014 film adaptation, which was number one at the box office during its opening weekend and grossed over $307 million worldwide. Hank has founded several companies, including "EcoGeek", a blog dedicated to environmentally beneficial advancements in technology. The blog was originally a class project of Hank's, while he studied at the University of Montana, but eventually progressed into becoming a major environmental publication, which would grab the attention of Time. The company has since evolved into Complexly, the parent company for most of the Green brothers' projects. Hank co-founded the record label and e-commerce merchandise company DFTBA Records with Alan Lastufka and his debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and its sequel A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor debuted as New York Times best sellers.
Together, the two brothers are credited with creating what some have described as a "YouTube media" or "online multimedia" empire. Their collaborative works which include projects centered on education, gaming, and activism, among others, have amassed an active fanbase known as "Nerdfighteria". Other projects founded by the brothers include the online-video conference VidCon and the annual charity event Project for Awesome.
Online video and audio projects
Vlogbrothers
On January 1, 2007, after being heavily inspired by the show with zefrank, the Greens launched the Vlogbrothers channel. Another inspiration for the project was the video blog, lonelygirl15. The project was originally meant to be a year-long way to deepen the bond between the brothers, creating a new outlet to communicate to each other. Prior to the video blog, Hank claims the two "didn't ever talk, really". The project, titled "Brotherhood 2.0", quickly grew an audience, leading to the Greens' success on YouTube. On their following, Hank has stated, "We were never really shouting into the void. There were always people following us. Even if it was just a couple dozen people, they were really engaged." The New Yorker has described the Vlogbrothers channel as "the anchor of an online empire".The topics of videos on the channel vary widely, as the Greens speak about whatever is on their minds at the time.
The first majorly successful Vlogbrothers video, "Accio Deathly Hallows", uploaded on July 18, 2007, was a song about the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The video was featured on YouTube's front page, earned over 1 million views, now has almost 2 million views, and introduced the brothers to the Harry Potter fandom. By the end of 2007, the channel garnered 40,000 subscribers. Another video, in which John announces his support for his friend, mathematician and politician, Daniel Biss, was covered by The Wall Street Journal.
The Brotherhood 2.0 project would end on December 31, 2007, but the Greens announced in their final Brotherhood 2.0 vlog that they would continue creating videos. The channel and its fanbase would grow past Brotherhood 2.0, and eventually in 2013, it reached the 1 million subscriber threshold. The brothers have continued to work on the channel, with Hank stating, "I'm so happy that we get to keep doing vlogbrothers and that people still care about vlogbrothers", adding, "that's still the thing I do. Everything else is just an extension of that thing."
Educational channels
Since gaining a dedicated following through Vlogbrothers, the Green brothers have constantly sought to educate their viewers on various topics. The two have launched and worked on several educational channels since late 2011 under the banner of their company, Complexly, including Crash Course, SciShow and its spinoffs, The Brain Scoop, Sexplanations, How to Adult, The Financial Diet, and Mental Floss. Several of these channels successfully spun off to be sustained by their creators independently of the Greens' original influence.In a 2014 interview with The Washington Post, John Green stated, "I think people support Crash Course and SciShow because they want for Crash Course and SciShow to exist and they believe in our mission to make educational content for free, for everyone, for ever." The brothers have been described as "one of the main voices in YouTube's vibrant education community".
''Crash Course'' and ''SciShow''
Crash Course is an educational channel that was launched on January 26, 2012, by Hank Green and John Green as part of the YouTube Original Channel Initiative. Initially, John presented the humanities courses, while Hank presented the sciences, though the channel has since expanded to include other hosts such as Craig Benzine and Phil Plait. The graphics of Crash Course videos are created by Thought Café.SciShow is a series of science-related videos hosted by Hank and a rotating cast of co-hosts. SciShow, like Crash Course, was launched as part of the YouTube Original Channel Initiative on January 2, 2012. Several scientific fields are covered by SciShow. Among these are organic and thermodynamic chemistry, physics, geology, climatology, astronomy and astrophysics, evolutionary biology, psychology and several miscellaneous fields. The topics on videos uploaded onto SciShow varied; for example, one video detailed the origins of "cute". SciShow landed a national advertisement campaign deal with YouTube, in 2014. As a result, the channel was promoted through several platforms, including billboard ads, as well as a television commercial featured during the fifth season premiere of The Walking Dead.
SciShow has yielded several spin-off channels, including SciShow Space, dedicated to space-related news, discoveries, and space-related science; SciShow Kids, specializing in delivering science topics to children; and SciShow Psych, specializing in psychology and neuroscience.
Other educational channels
Additionally, Hank Green helped Emily Graslie to launch The Brain Scoop, in early 2013. The channel focuses on taxidermy, biology, and natural history. Prior to the channel's launch, Hank Green featured Graslie giving a tour of the University of Montana's Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum on one of his Vlogbrothers videos. Green's fans positively responded to video, suggesting for Graslie to host her own channel, leading Green to e-mail Graslie with an offer to assist her in the launch of this channel. Green later announced that the channel would launch in January 2013, helping the channel to spike to 20,000 subscribers prior to its first upload. The channel would upload videos from Montana, until Graslie became employed at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. In December 2014, the brothers sold the channel, for an undisclosed amount, to the Chicago-based museum. Regarding this transaction, Hank stated, "We helped create The Brain Scoop with Emily and Michael Aranda of our studio because she was just so passionate and enthusiastic about science, history, and her work. I am so proud and pleased that The Brain Scoop and Emily have found what is absolutely their best possible home."Another educational channel, Mental Floss, based on the magazine of the same name, was launched in February 2013. John hosted the channel's first series, The List Show, through December 2017. Prior to becoming a published novelist, Green had written for the magazine, and had attended Indian Springs School with the magazine's first editor, Neely Harris. The channel's success was described in 2014 as "somewhat of an outlier in the magazine industry", by The New York Times, as videos on the channel have outgained videos on other channels launched by magazine companies, such as Wired, and Vogue. The channel later added to its library of videos, launching The Big Question, and Misconceptions hosted by Craig Benzine and Elliott Morgan, respectively. Emerson College's Entertainment Monthly paper listed Mental Floss, as well as the aforementioned Crash Course as top five educational YouTube channels.
Beginning in June 2013, Hank Green served as the executive producer for Sexplanations, a channel dedicated to open and honest conversation and information about sex-related topics hosted by clinical sexologist Lindsay Doe. Doe's videos stopped featuring Complexly as a partner in March 2019.
In February 2014, Hank and John Green announced a new channel, How to Adult. The channel, aimed at young people who have recently entered adulthood, is "dedicated to teaching everything you need to know how to do as an adult that school never got around to". Until August 2016, the channel was hosted by vlogger Emma Mills and Young Adult novelist T. Michael Martin. After a brief interregnum, the channel relaunched in March 2017 with Hank Green hosting alongside Rachel Calderon Navarro. Both Green brothers served as the channel's executive producers through its conclusion in April 2018.
Hank Green also served as executive producer of The Financial Diet, a personal finance advice channel, directed toward young adults and particularly young women, from its September 2015 launch until mutually and amicably separating from the project a few years later.