A Crash Course on Hank & John Green 🍏

The Vlogbrothers are your new Creator Mag cover stars

Cover design by Alex Fine / Art direction by Moy Zhong

I’ve been keeping this reveal close to the chest for a while now, but I’m honestly still dumbfounded every time I say these words out loud. Hank and John Green—the authors, VidCon founders, “Crash Course” creators, and, above all else, (Vlog)brothers—are your next Creator Mag cover stars.

I began working on this story while at The Publish Press last year, and spent the rest of my 2024 interviewing Hank, John, and a wide swath of fascinating people who have found themselves in the brothers’ orbit. I’ll save more details on the reporting process for the story itself—scroll down to read the intro below.

Before I get ahead of myself, though…hello! If you’re new here, we’re Creator Mag, a print & digital magazine on a mission to Make The Internet Feel Smaller. More accessible, less omnipresent. We do this by documenting the artists, filmmakers, writers, and online personalities impacting culture, bringing readers closer through the stories we tell every week and the regular gatherings we host.

Our print zine releases on a quarterly schedule. At forty-four pages total, this edition (due out March 29) includes original interviews, essays, photography, and artwork, all produced by our team and a core group of collaborators.

Sections include:

• “A Crash Course on Hank and John Green,” unpacking the Vlogbrothers’ wide-ranging impact on the creator world (and beyond)

• “Twenty-Five Calls for 2025,” a series of conversations with twenty-five rising creators as they chart the ideas and trends on the road ahead

• A crossword puzzle

• And more!

Each zine features a unique, handwritten number and ships the first week of April. And as of today, you can now officially preorder your very own copy on our online shop.*

Alright, on to the intro. I can’t wait to share the full cover story with you all soon enough.

— NGL

the vlogbrothers’ first upload

“Hello, John. By now, you have received my message that we will no longer be communicating through any textual means. No more instant messaging, no more emailing. Only video blogging.”

—Hank, “Brotherhood 2.0: January 1st” (2007)

Historians disagree about when, exactly, the annual Western Montana Fair hosted its first weeklong exhibition in the quiet logging town of Missoula.

Some argue it was 1879, not long after the Western Montana Agricultural, Mechanical and Mineral Association incorporated—proceeding to construct a one-mile race track, six feet wide, all for the cost of four hundred dollars. Others say those largely unsuccessful attempts predate the real inaugural event in 1914, which brought twelve thousand excited patrons to Missoula for a week of mesmerizing hot air balloon demonstrations, horse races, and the finest livestock displays ever assembled in Western Montana.

Nevertheless, what’s indisputable is that—over a century later—this unique slice of Americana lives on. It’s a beautiful summer evening in early August, and a colorful fluorescent Ferris wheel lights up the sky. Teens race to toss rings and roll Skee-Balls. Parents plug their noses as they take their kids through the sheep-and-pig-filled petting zoo.

I find myself here, stuffing my face with a bag of homemade kettle corn half my size, just two-miles-and-change away from one of YouTube’s most unexpected—and either seemingly unrealized or acutely understood, depending on your familiarity with the Vlogbrothers lore—success stories.

I wasn’t supposed to be here in August. In fact, I’d originally talked with a Missoula resident named Hank Green about visiting the offices of Complexly—the educational media company he started with his brother, John—in late April.

Yet fate had other plans. I opened my email inbox on the evening of March 13, 2024 to see this message from Hank:

“OK! This sucks,” it read. “I have just been invited to the white house to interview the president about cancer research and the only time they can do it is May 1st, which means I’d be leaving town on April 30 at like 6:30 in the morning.

“Let me know if you have any thoughts here!” Hank concluded. “I know it’s a huge pain in the butt.”

I spent the better part of 2024 chasing a comprehensive chronicling of Hank and John. The pursuit partially came out of a selfish affinity for their work: the best-selling novels such as The Fault in Our Stars and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor; the original creator conference, VidCon; and, of course, the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, which the Greens started in 2007.

But it was also an incredibly remarkable year for Hank and John—which is saying something, given the brothers have experienced many remarkable years over a remarkable two decades. For Hank, who overcame Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a form of blood cancer) in 2023, last year represented a triumphant return to the outside world. For John, the movie adaptation of one of his books premiered, and he laid the groundwork for his next big release.

All the while, the brothers have expanded their philanthropic initiatives to new heights; watched their original educational YouTube channel, Crash Course, pass two billion lifetime views (sort of—I’ll explain this later); and continued vlogging, through thick and thin.

Every once in a while, the president of the most powerful country in the world invites one of them to the White House for a sit-down, too.

I spoke with Hank and John at VidCon ‘24 / Photo via VidCon

My interviews with Hank and John took me everywhere from the Missoula Fairgrounds in Montana to Room 204 of the Anaheim Convention Center to the Improv Theater in Brea, CA. I met dozens of active members of their online community, Nerdfighteria, who reside in places such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Oslo, Norway. I also watched quite a lot of Vlogbrothers videos—there are two thousand three hundred of them, after all.

My goal was not just to understand why Hank and John do what they do, all these years later, but also to grapple with the brothers’ impact on the people, industries, and institutions around them, particularly as YouTube (the platform) nears legal drinking age. I wanted to explore the Greens’ commitment to “making the world suck less” at a cultural moment in time when it’s never been easier to wield influence in an unsavory fashion, from spreading conspiracy theories to promoting pump-and-dump crypto schemes.

The universe that the Vlogbrothers have built is vast, and—as I discovered through many conversations—there’s no lack of entry points into their orbit. But this marks my attempt to offer a crash course on that universe in four distinct sections: The Authors, The Organizers, The Educators, and The Advocates.

And what better place to start than in April, inside a packed theater filled with over a thousand screaming fans?

To read the full story, preorder your unique copy of Creator Mag here.

Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.

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