Hank Green Still Believes
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hank Green recently pulled a “reverse OpenAI” - he took his education platform Complexly and made it a nonprofit. In a world where outrage, A.I. slop and “brain rot” are all heavily incentivized by platforms, Hank explains why he’d rather make content that leans into the complexity of our world.
Guest: Hank Green, YouTuber, half of Vlogbrothers, host of Crash Course and SciShow and founder of VidCon and Complexly.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning, John. |
| 0:05.9 | Remember when vlogs were just vlogs? |
| 0:07.8 | When there were just people talking to the camera, almost like a diary entry, but you were just talking? |
| 0:11.7 | Sometimes just what was going on in there? |
| 0:12.7 | It's like a video, almost like a diary entry, like a video blog. |
| 0:18.6 | If you know the name Hank Green, that is probably the context in which you know him, |
| 0:23.8 | talking on the internet as one half of vlog brothers with his brother John, or as someone |
| 0:30.3 | explaining science on YouTube, or as a guy who's written some novels and hosted Crash Course |
| 0:36.7 | and SciShow and started VidCon. There is a lot |
| 0:40.6 | more. The list honestly goes on and on. But I wanted to call him up to talk about his company |
| 0:46.7 | complexly and AI and our very weird information environment. And we did this interview while |
| 0:53.1 | I had a cold and Hank was sick with shingles. |
| 0:57.2 | Hank Green, thanks for coming on the show. Hey. You're such a good sport. You have shingles and you're |
| 1:05.0 | soldiering through this. I put on my nicest fun shirt just to convince my, I need to be distracted. Okay. I could tell you all about the progression of the shingles virus now, though, and why it evolved the way that it did. It's very old. We've had the virus that causes chicken pox since as long as there have been humans. Wow. And it is no way connected to chickens. They did not do this to us. |
| 1:29.0 | No. |
| 1:29.4 | I don't know why it has that name. |
| 1:31.1 | Veracella. |
| 1:31.6 | We'll just call it Veracella. |
| 1:32.9 | Wow. |
| 1:33.4 | Look at you knowing stuff. |
| 1:35.0 | I got kids. |
| 1:36.1 | Oh, kid. |
... |
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