Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show on the Stansbury radio network. So I have Hank Green on on the podcast. Hank, is half of the world famous Vlogbrothers. You guys have 2,600,000 followers on YouTube. Your brother is John Green. By the way, I just saw the movie Paper Towns yesterday. Excellent movie by him. You've had 100 of millions of views on your videos. You do educational videos. You do philosophical videos. You've practically defined kind of the YouTuber medium, really. I I don't think I'm incorrect in saying that. And you also run, the VidCon, you know, Super YouTube Conference. I don't know. I'm I'm missing a ton of stuff. You do crash course. You do, which is all these videos on a 1,000,000,000 different topics. What else am I missing in your bio? Oh, god. You're you're, like, talker, man. Make me talk about myself. This whole hour is gonna be you talking about yourself, so get used to it. Okay. Let's see. I made a web series called the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which was an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice into video blogs, which won an Emmy. Just off the cuff, like, oh, I won an Emmy? Nope. There's that that one. We have a we have a merchandise company for online creators to help people make a living, with their with their, Internet things. Do we hear, that's called DFTBA Records. Let's see. What else? We've got a a charity arm called the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, and it's it's a big project every year. It's the project for awesome where we do our best to take over YouTube for for charity, which is fun. And hopefully, this year will be bigger and better than ever. We raised over a $1,000,000 last year. And this is the part where I literally tape in my website to see what else I do because I've forgotten. I I I have the same experience. I invented, 2 d glasses, which allow you to watch 3 d movies in 2 d, which is not a particularly useful, product, but one that we have sold a surprising number of. Now why would somebody buy a 2 d glass? And and there's there's actually a million things we could talk about, but I really am curious why somebody buys a 2 d gla*s. That's the only thing we should talk about the entire podcast is 2 d glasses, my my least successful business venture. I'm gonna buy 3 of them. My least yeah. You should. So the idea is that if you want if you don't if you don't want to see a 3 d movie, if you get headaches, a lot of people get headaches at 3 d 3 d movies, but you don't wanna be the, like, person who is, like, all your friends are gonna go see ant man in 3 d, and you're like, how about we go to the 2 d? Because I have a disability, and your friends all groan at you, then you can have 2 d glasses, and you don't have to make them groan at you. That's sorta like the one like, if 10 people go for Chinese food, the one guy who doesn't share with everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. It it just, like, solves solves one little social problem, with with $10, and is not not the thing I am proud of in my career. No. But I would be proud of it because, like, how did you how did you develop it? How did you make it? Well, I knew how 3 d movies worked, and my wife got headaches in 3 d movies, and I enjoyed 3 d movies. So I was like, oh, well, I can just get 2 pairs of 3 d glasses, punch the lens out of one of them, and put it on the other one, and then I can and I literally just made these things, like, with hot glue and and scissors, and and I had them. And then my wife could go see 3 d movies with me. And then I, explained this to some friends, and they were like, you should sell those. And I called a company in China that makes 3 d glasses, and I was like, I would like the polarization to be the same in in each lens. And they said that would ruin the 3 d effect, and I was like, yes. Correct. That's the one I want. Send me that. And and and how many did you sell? I think we've sold, like, around 10,000 or so. And that's great. I mean, can you can you make can you sell this as a business? Like, someone else is probably a better distributor than you. Yeah. I mean, I I would be super interested if anybody wants to take 2 d glasses off my hands. They want to, they want to, like, be the parent of this product because I don't market it at all. I don't think about it at all. But, you know, we got the the we got the name and we got the product and we got the distribute the the the manufacturing relationship and it it it's a profitable thing. I wouldn't love to do that. I would love for somebody else to run it because I don't think about it at all. I've got other other things on my mind. So so 2 d glasses is for sale. If anybody would like to purchase 2 d glasses, we can we can talk about a a reasonable price, which would not, which would not be, I think, too expensive. Well and I wanna get to this aspect that that you do have other things on your mind, but I also wanna I kinda wanna reel back now to the to the beginning. Like, I'm a a big comic book fan, and what I always love best about comic books is the origin stories, like how Spider Man became Spider Man. And I think your and your brother's origin story is really fascinating because it's like a story of closeness. And maybe you can describe, like, how did you guys start? I mean, you're basically after the Smosh Brothers, you were, like, the first guys to make it big on YouTube. And, like, how did it all start? Well, first, Smosh aren't brothers. Close, but not quite. Okay. The Smosh guys. We I mean, first, we were definitely not the first to make it big on YouTube, and neither were Smosh. I mean, it depends on your definition of big. But the thing about Smosh that is that impresses me so much is that they were very early. They, they looked very similar to a lot of early YouTube and the the sorts of things that they did were, you know, not super complicated, but they were fun and funny. But over the years, Smosh have been Smosh and Ryan Higa really are the people who have held on to the top of the list for all these years having seen so many other people come and go. And that's really fascinating to me and and really impressive. And I am I am proud that John and I, though we've never been at the top of a YouTube list, we've always been, you know, for the most part, we've always been outside of the top 100 even. We we we broke into the top 100 for a little while, but immediately got pushed out. But we, we have also sort of been able to hang on and stay relevant and, like, be doing continue to do interesting things, like, from 2007 until now. And I'm I'm very proud of that, And I'm also very fascinated by the people who have done that more effectively than us because I think that that takes a great deal of, you know, insight and passion and obsession and, because this stuff changes so fast. The kind of content that you're making is very different from year to year. And, and and what you have to do to hold on to your audience changes, and, and and you have to be really thoughtful about that. Well well, how are you thoughtful about that? Because I think every content creator deals with that. Like, let's say you do something for more than a year or 2, your audience is gonna start you have 2 challenges. 1 is the the challenge of coming up with new ways of reinventing yourself. The other challenge is a good audience a good section of your audience loves who you already were. Mhmm. So so how do you deal with that kind of conflict creatively? I and I'm asking this. This is almost like therapy for me. Like, how do I deal with this? Well, there's definitely an aspect of new things. And so you say to your audience, you know well, first, you ask, like, who is my audience? You have to have a good conception of that. And that's, like, the number one thing for all creators is to understand, I think. You know, some people say just create for yourself. But I think that that understanding who your audience is and and making stuff that they're gonna love and be connected to and and, and be affected by, is like, that's why I make stuff. Well well and and and again, I I agree with you. I don't always believe, don't care about your audience because otherwise, we would never have, you know, a Harry Potter, for instance. Like, obviously, every successful author, painter, artist cares somewhat about their audience and somewhat about their own internal passions. But how do you kind of balance that and how do you decide when to change for your audience or what new to do for your audience? For me, it's really under understanding them and seeing, like, opportunities that might exist inside of your audience, because once your audience gets to be a certain size, it's so large that for John and I, who've always seen this as kind of an opportunity for the creation of community rather than the creation of fans, our goal has been, like, how how do we take this and and once that audience gets too big to be a a community in itself, how else can you create new smaller communities within that? So what are the things that we're passionate about that, that parts of that audience might be into, that we can then go off and create that thing that will be really great for a portion of this audience, but not the whole thing. And also, in in that moment, you can sort of capitalize on how culture has changed, how the Internet has changed, how distribution systems have changed, and say, like, you know, how is YouTube different now? If I'm creating a product for a smaller piece of my audience that they're really gonna love, Not all of my audience is gonna go over and love this thing. But if I'm creating that new thing, how also can I think about how YouTube is different now or how whatever medium you're you're producing in is different now and, and use that as an opportunity to do something that really captures what's special about this moment in media? So there's there's a there's a lot there that I wanna kind of understand more, but the latest the last is how is YouTube different now? I mean, the the technology is obviously the same, but how do you see it as different? Well, in some ways, the technology isn't the same. If everything from, like, the something simple like the the quality being higher, but also the algorithms being different. And so the way that YouTube promotes content has changed dramatically over the years. It it used to be that the number one thing you needed was something that someone would click on, and that's all that mattered. As long as someone was clicking on your video, it didn't even matter if they watched it for a half a second. If they clicked on it, YouTube was like, yes, we want page views. We want views. That's the number one metric. The more views we get, the more views we can sell. And now and, you know, starting in 2011, but really, you know, it it it's been an escalation in this trend. YouTube is much more excited about pushing watch time in general. They want they want people to sit there for for minutes at a time watching YouTube videos, and so they more heavily reward videos that are longer that have high retention. And so that's a much sort of more difficult trick to pull off because now instead of trying to design a really good thumbnail and a really good title, you're trying to design a really good video that people will sit and watch for 10 minutes. And that's crazy in YouTube YouTube speak because, like, no who has 10 free minutes on the Internet. Well, and you guys usually keep most of your videos to about 4 minutes. Yeah. I mean, so there's this really interesting thing where most of our videos are about 4 minutes. On the Vlogbrothers channels on the Vlogbrothers channel, all of them are under 4 minutes. On SciShow and Crash Course, SciShow is mostly under 4 minutes, but sometimes we go up to 10. And Crash Course is all over 10 minutes. And we get way better placement in YouTube sidebars, and we also get better advertisements on crash course videos because they're longer and YouTube wants to encourage that kind of content on the site. So it's yeah. So that's like, you know, in the weeds of how YouTube works. So you have to think about how how the, you know, like, what YouTube wants. But then there's also just the culture of what is expected in the medium changes. People want to see, they wanna see higher quality stuff. They they expect higher quality stuff. They expect, you know and and because I feel like my audience is they're like I feel like I have a greater responsibility to them because there's so many people, and people are spending a lot of time watching the content that I make, and I also have more time to make content because I could quit my job, then, you know, the the quality of content on on YouTube has continued to increase. And I don't necessarily mean the the quality in terms of, like, how much someone will enjoy it, but just the the physical quality of it. It looks better. It sounds better. It's written better. It's worked on more of the like, we do animations. And so, like, Vlogbrothers, we've kept it very, like, pretty similar. Though we do work harder on Vlogbrothers than we than we did in the in the beginning. And also we have more space between videos, so we have time to do that. But with Crash Course and SciShow, those things have you know, we spend a lot of money on animation. We spend a lot of money on writing, and we you know, the the video quality itself is much better. Like, there's a team of people working on it instead of just me and my brother messing around in our offices. So so earlier you said, you know, you split off these things into different communities and you partially answered it just now, like, you this is your obviously, your full time thing. But how do you have the time to kind of write all these videos, do the videos, edit the videos? Like, when, you know, I used to work at HBO, which is obviously a video company, and every one minute of video required about an hour of shooting and an hour of editing. And it's it's really hard to make even a 4 minute video. I don't think people realize that. Like, how do you have the time to do all that you do? Well, I have help. We have a team. In video production, I think we have, 12 people, if you count the writing staff too. So that's and then we have some contractors as well. So that's people who are doing animations, people who are editing, people who are writing, and then we have, you know, bookkeeper and and, like, some operations stuff as well. So you're kinda like you're kinda like David Letterman, like, you go in there and you sit down right at the beginning of the show and everything's, like, laid out for you, or you're writing a lot of this stuff? Sometimes. Usually, it's I'm I'm involved in the writing process. I'm certainly involved at the sort of last step of the writing process. This is that's my ideal situation, is if I can be involved at the last step of the writing process. I'm still there. My input is still there, but I haven't had to sort of be in the weeds with, with you know, sometimes we have, like, consultants who are making sure that the content is correct because it's educational, and you don't wanna be teaching people the wrong thing. Oh, that who cares? Or or who cares? And yeah. So my, you know, my and so my voice gets to still be in there. But, but, yeah, with Crash Course and SciShow particularly, we'd really, you know, like, occasionally with SciShow, I will literally go in and not know what the script says. And, like, I don't like to do this, but if, you know, I've been really swamped or, just completely in a funk that week, I might go in and and be, like, okay, here's the script, and I don't know what it's gonna say, and here I'm gonna say the things. And sometimes it's really fun because I'm, like like, in a way more enthusiastic about whatever cool science we're talking about because I didn't know. I'm, like, learning along with the audience about this cool thing. But but I I prefer to I prefer to know what I'm going to be saying before I say it. And and also, you know, there's a certain amount of fact checking that goes on in that last step where I, you know, I wanna make sure that I understand what I'm saying, and and, like, that I have the scientific background to actually be talking about the thing I'm talking about. But I think that energy really comes through though when you're learning at the same time. Like, I think not that people can tell necessarily, but you do have this, youthful way of presenting the material that's very energetic that I'm I'm sure people have told you before. But I wanna also get back to what I said earlier about the origin story because I think we I think we went off on a tangent from that, which was a good tangent. But, again, the origin story was really fascinating to me, and maybe you could describe that. Well, I mean, I think that there's always an element of mythology that goes into these things, but it it really was John was obsessed with online video. And because he's my older brother and the things that he's obsessed with become sort of, like, intrinsically valuable to me. Like, even now, it's sort of like he is the arbiter of cool to me, which is hilarious because he's a total dork. But, he was so excited about this stuff that I was just I I bought directly in. And the things he was excited about back then were lonely girl, which was a, a sort of alternate reality video blog that no one was at that point really sure if it was real or not, if it was this was actually a girl or if it was scripted, which was really cool. It Was a really cool, like, thing that happened. And then Ze Frank who, really was the person who created the format of the video blog. And not the 1st video blogger, but the first person who sort of defined a lot of the tropes of of the video blog. And also of the sort of community focused online video project. Because Zay's understanding of and connection with his audience was really powerful and really, like, really present as a part of his project. So we we just stole blatantly from Ze, and he knows that, and and he's been very kind about the fact that we've stole blatantly from him. Now having had, you know, actually been able to hang out with him a good a good bit. And yeah. And so, like, after that for like, we said that we were gonna do it for a year. We're gonna do it every other day. So, like, I was gonna do 1, and then John was gonna do 1. So we're gonna do 1 every weekday. We're gonna do it for a year, and after that, we were gonna see what happened. Basically, we were mostly thinking we were gonna stop after that year. But having it be sort of like an adult project that we could have to get to know each other better as adults, which we didn't really know each other very well at all. Even though you were only 2 years apart, like, but you were living you were living in Montana. Was he living in Florida? He was living in New no. I think he was living in New York when we started. Yeah. He was living in New York City when we started, and then he went to Chicago and then to Indianapolis. So we we actually he went off to boarding school when I was in middle school. So we really didn't have that much of a connection after childhood. So we and we at that point, we didn't talk very much. Like, we would like, we liked each other, and I think we were so have sort of sort of both always been fascinated by each other and, like, always wanted to impress each other, which was a really good dynamic to have in a video blog, by the way. If you're trying to one up a person every single day. It's a good way to to hone your skills. But we didn't hang out, and I didn't know him very well. I know him very well now, and I, like, you know, I have a very different opinion of my brother now, and and it's much a much richer opinion of of who he is as a person. And so were you guys talking outside of the videos, or was this your main way of communicating to each other? This was our main way of communicating with each other that that 1st year. Mostly, like, because we didn't need to talk that much because we were making videos every other day. So, like, why would why would I need to talk to my brother if I'm if, like, he's sending me a video tomorrow? He's gonna tell me whatever he needs to tell me tomorrow. And we talk a lot more now because not only are we, not making as many videos, but we also are running several businesses together. So we have to talk about business stuff a lot. I sort of feel like your videos kind of kept pace with how young people talk to each other. Like, I see my daughters texting each other all the time, and I feel like your videos are almost like fast paced and and short you know, the the cutting between different shots is very fast paced, almost like video text back and forth. Is that sort of intentional, or is it simply a way to keep under the 4 minutes? It's intentional in a way. First of all, it's it's blatantly ripped off from Ze Frank. And but I think By the way, everybody rips off everybody else. That's okay. Yeah. No. Absolutely. He, but I think that the part of the purpose of that, part of the effectiveness of that, though I do see lots of people who are turned off by it, but it's also obviously been effective, is that there's just so much to do at any given moment when you're online. You've got a 1,000 different demands on your time. You've got Reddit sitting there in the next tab. You got your email. You got Twitter. There's a million other things you could be doing that, might at any moment intrude upon your brain and make you be like, I can't be watching this video right now. This I I need to be doing something else. I they need to be working probably. But if you can really have that content be so information dense that a person in a very active state, sitting in a computer, not leaning back on their couch, but, like, actively paying attention to what's going on in in front of them, that they do not get distracted for 4 straight minutes, that's hard to pull off without some pretty tight edits and some pretty fast talking. So that's really what it's about. It's about keeping a person who is in a very active state of mind engaged. And it's really great. It's, like, having that engaged audience is really cool. It's really valuable because you can get across so much more information so much more quickly. And, and because we've been doing it for so long, it doesn't actually take us that long to create that kind of content. And, you know, I I started working on my video for this week. You know, I I had, like, an idea about it couple weeks ago, and then I'm have to make this video today. And so this morning, I just started writing it, and I started doing a bunch of research. And by, you know, 8 o'clock tonight, I'll be done with the video. What's the video about? It's about cool. It's about the word cool or the sort of, like, the words that mean cool. So, like, that sort of bleeding edge of of culture and this, like, cultural self awareness of, like, culture looking at itself and being, like, what is the thing about me that I like the most? And how that how the words for that change and what those what the what how we change those words, how that reflects on what culture is sort of excited about and prizing at that particular moment in cultural history, and how we can think about our own perspective of what we're prizing right now, and also what might have been like a big deal back in the past. And, like, how did you come up with that idea? So here here we're 7 years into you doing videos. You've never done this topic before. Why today is that topic? And and how will that help your audience? So the the reason that I wanted to make it was because I kept peep hearing people complain about the phrase on fleek. What is on fleek? I never heard that. On fleek is a, is a thing that the kids these days are saying. Do you say that, Molly? What? I'm I'm asking my daughter. She says she's heard of it. Oh, yeah. Your your daughter has heard of it. Yes. It's like just to mean on point or, like, perfect or, like, really aesthetically pleasing. And it's sort of like a you know, it's it has a much more specific definition than cool, but it is kind of a word that, in my opinion, will sort of come to mean just cool, like, aesthetically appropriate for this moment in culture. And, and I hear and I get frustrated when I when people complain about slang in general because, you know, the slang that you were using when you were a kid was dumb too. And and in fact, if you really think about it, it wasn't dumb. It was it was culturally interesting. It was anthropologically and sociologically interesting. And so I wanna talk about past slang so that people can not be not belittle current slang. Though this also gets into a whole conversation about cultural appropriation, which I'm gonna have a little bit of and try not to talk about too much. And but in general, what I think, what I'm trying what I think is good for for this video is one, it it captures this cultural thing. It might be a little late to the on fleek discussion. But, so it captures that. But it also it it gives people an opportunity to say, like, this is, you know, if if culture is self aware enough to be able to identify things about itself and to, like, look at itself in the mirror and say, like, I'm so cool. Isn't isn't me, the institution of mainstream culture, cool? Then we need to take that another step and ask why? Like, are those things that that are being represented by that, that reflection, are those things, those motivations, the the hopes and the fears and the excitements and the passions of culture, are they actually good? And can we can we think about that as culture currently exists and actually have that conversation affect how culture behaves and what culture becomes. So so it seems like just to just to understand, cool is almost like this inflection point between generations. So cool sort of represents what's coming that maybe not everyone has seen that is going to have some sort of cultural impact. And, understanding that actually helps the older generation deal with kind of this change and also potentially help us understand younger people, but also potentially understand, you know, either what types of innovations to explore or what types of art to explore or what types of, you know, whatever to explore to appeal to the next the future. So in addition to talking about how to connect with and how to make things that appeal to people, thinking about, like, the fact that culture isn't external to people, it's created by people. And so if there is something about culture, about like, you know, that that's making these things so appealing, that isn't actually productive, that might be, you know, might be marginalizing populations. It might be, you know, it's like the way that the word gay was used in a derogatory way for a long time when I was a kid, and and still up until like, still is in in some populations. And so, like, thinking thinking about, like, the fact that, these words that we come to embody are a reflection of what we're valuing as a culture and also an expression of that. And if we can be cognizant of that, we can think about that as it's happening, then maybe we can be more effective at changing culture in a positive way. So so two things about that. A, what's an example of something you see as cool right now that, for instance, I might not see? As cool right now that you might not see? Oh, god. See, like, that that's kind of the thing. Like, I don't wanna talk too much about what's cool because I'm 35. Like, I'm I I don't I don't interface with that that much. I like, my goal is to say, like, if if you're interested in cool beyond what it is into what it means, then let's talk about that. Because I'm old guy, and I'm, like, let's I can talk about what was cool in the nineties and use that as a window into people who actually know what's cool now to think about what that means about themselves and about culture. And, like, to be clear to people who might not know who I am, this is this is not, like, what we do every week on Vlogbrothers. It's not like today. Let's let's analyze, do sociology. Sometimes, you know, I'm dancing around in a tutu and sometimes I'm singing songs about science and sometimes John is talking about the, financial crisis in Greece. So we it's the great thing about Vlogbrothers is it's basically a channel where I get to just talk about whatever and do whatever is interesting to me that day, and the aesthetic of the channel is the aesthetic of Hank Green and John Green. So as long as we don't, like, do stuff that we're not interested in, it's not contrary to the brand of the channel, which is very freeing. It's amazing though you talk about all these different things. Like you say, the the the, you know, John did the video on Grease. You're gonna do this video on cool. And yet it manages manages to still, keep this entire community glued together despite the disparity of all the topics. Mhmm. I mean, part of what I like about being a person is being passionate and interested in lots of different things. And, you know, it's not like our channel's huge. We get, you know, between 204,100,000 views a video. That's a lot. And, like, I am astounded by that number and very proud of that number. There's much bigger YouTube channels out there. The you know, what what I like about the channel is that, like, that means that those people are people who are into, like, into that kind of thing. And being able to be a place for those kinds of people to get together and to think, that's really rewarding. And my goal in all things is to think about not what's this is a kind of a topic change, but not to think not about what's super economically important, but to think about what's culturally important. Like, what actually changes the world for people? It's, you know, it's in some ways, it's it's Facebook. It's it's these big, you know, it's like it's unicorns, it's Uber. It's but in a lot of ways, it's not. It's just the way that people communicate with and and interact with each other. Well, it's interesting because like you said earlier, it wasn't about getting page views for you, it was about building community. And at what point did you guys realize, hey, we're not just talking to each other, there's a lot of people listening who like us and wanna talk and interact with us. I mean, that was always there a little bit. Even when we had, like, 200 views, 200 people is a lot of people that have, like, hanging out and looking at you. You know? If I sold out a 200 person theater in my hometown, that would be ridiculous. Right? In Montana, yes. So there was always that. And and because that was one of the things we found so interesting about the show with with Ze Frank, It's something that we always wanted to do. At the end of 2007, after doing it for a year, we felt like there was enough you know, we'd done a couple of, like, community project y things that were, like, cute fun things to do. But we felt like there was enough attention being paid and enough power in the community to actually do something cool, do something like like positive for the world. And so that's when we started the Project for Awesome. And that was when it sort of really felt like a thing. You know? It felt like this is people together, trying to make the world a better place on the Internet, which is not what the Internet is supposed to be for. Like, the Internet they were not what online video is supposed to be for, which is supposed to be a place for silly stuff. And and we were, like, okay. Let's spend a day not having it be about silly stuff. And we got a ton of the top tier YouTube creators to sort of go in on that with us, which was really great. So so, you know, you are doing all these things, like, you know, there's the DFTBA records. There's VidCon, which had, you know, congratulations, had 20,000 people attended this year, I guess. You just you just interviewed or recently, I guess, a few months ago, you interviewed the the president of the United States, joined the Project for Awesome. The list goes on and on, as you've said. How do you organize your time? How do you get this all done? It's it's it's to some people, it seems, too awesome a task to do all of this. And by the way, what was it like to interview the president? Dude, you're a professional interviewer. You can't ask 2 questions at once like that. Where do I go? I'm I'm I'm going off, I'm going off on my own tangents. Yeah. Totally. So as far as time management goes, I'm not a good time manager. I, You only do 20 things a day. Everybody else does 2. Right. But I don't I don't have this I don't have a system to my system is whatever seems most interesting to me right now. I'm gonna do that. And, and I have an assistant who is very helpful in a number of ways. But one of the ways that Julie is helpful to me is that, if there is a thing on my task list that I know Julie needs me to do that will make her life easier, then that makes me prioritize that. Despite the fact that I might not want to do it because it's some form that I have to fill out or an email that I don't want to send because it's a no to a person who I know isn't going to like the no. And so stuff like like having, like, one, having Julie there just as a pressure to make me take care of the things I don't want to take care of. Because if I'd, like, if I don't have a pressure to do something, if I don't wanna do it, I just don't. I, which is not oftentimes can lead to problems. No. But you know what, though? It's an interesting solution to procrastination to be able to almost delegate your procrastination to someone else. Not delegate the tasks, but delegate that feeling. So this is something I you know you're going to feel, so that person's gonna put the form right in front of you and make it as easy as possible for you to deal with the procrastination. Yeah. So that that's, that's how I deal with doing stuff that I don't wanna do. And then when it comes to, like, all the different things that I do, it's because, 1, I really like to start new things. And 2, a lot of the new things I've started still exist. And so I have a responsibility to the people who are involved in those things that either they're my employees or they're people who, expect things of me creatively. I have to do that stuff. And if I didn't, then I would feel real bad about myself. And so that like, my time management is and when I say that I don't have a good time management technique, it's because it's really based on stress. It's based on what's freaking me out the most at the moment. And if nothing is freaking me out at the moment, if I'm, like, in this place where, like, I, like, I really do feel like, you know, there's stuff to do, but there's nothing super important to do, then there's always something interesting to do because one, I have a bunch of creative projects that I might be like, oh, I should I could write a song right now or I could, you know, I could write about this, like, cool science thing I heard about or, boy, isn't this a fascinating thing about online video? I should write an article about that, or isn't this a fascinating thing about online culture? I should think about how if maybe you could turn that into a new business idea that might make money. So, like, when I get when I get sort of separated from from the day to day stress, I always like, it doesn't because I work in a number of different media that are so quickly changing, and I'm really, like, personally obsessed with them, I don't have a hard time coming up with new things to to be excited about. You know you know what would be interesting is I always sort of feel like there's art and there's process. But now because of social media, process has become art. It would be interesting, and I don't know if you've thought about this, to Periscope you guys doing videos. So we actually see kinda behind the scenes what's happening here. Like, I would like to see that. I I would I once uploaded, an entire unedited video, where I just so I I filmed the video, it takes about 12 minutes to film, I cut that down to 3 or 4 minutes, and so there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make it in. And usually that stuff is me, like, being, like, what should I say now? Or saying the thing over and over again, but but not in the way that I like. Or realizing that I've done something wrong and I need to do some quick research. And uploading that and the responses to that, there were 2 responses. One was the the minority response said, this is disillusioning and, and, like, it makes me sort of uncomfortable to know that what I'm watching on the Internet isn't the thing that it is. It's like, this is this is, you know, it isn't you. It's it's a distillation of you. It's it's something that you've created. It isn't just something that you are. And I understand that perspective. The second response was, this is so freeing. Because seeing you do what you do, seeing, like, the the finished product is really intimidating for me as a creator because I feel like how could I ever do that thing? But but seeing the process, it's like, oh, it's not that yeah. It's not that big of a deal. And and, like, knowing that it's okay to say a line 10 times if you can't get it outright, if you're not sure the inflection that you want, and if you need to go back to the drawing board and rewrite that line, knowing that that's fine and that, no, I don't say the perfect thing every time when I'm recording a video. I I mess up 90% of what I say, and I I get the 10% that's good. And also, you don't teleport, like, 3 inches every 2 seconds. Like, I would think I would think that the first group not I'm not criticizing them, but I would think that's more of a vocal minority where Yeah. No. I mean, I absolutely I'm not I'm not affected by that. I I understand where they're coming from because there is an illusion created. I I am doing that. I'm saying, like, in in publishing the video that way, I'm kind of creating that illusion. And there is going to be a certain population that will never have thought about the fact that that illusion that illusion has been created and just think about the content itself and not take that the step into thinking about what happened between when when I moved, like, happened between the cut, you know. Well, even, you know, even before when we were discussing your video that you're gonna do today, the cool video, we talked for more than 4 minutes about it. So clearly, there Oh, yeah. Well, I I mean, the the the hallmark of all good media, in my opinion, is knowing more than you say. And so if, like, my favorite books are are, you know, like sci fi, where I know that the author has done so much research that I'm that I'm sort of getting this glimpse into a world, and this is this can be true of fantasy as well. Glimpse into this world and, I guess, other genres. Glimpse into this world where, like, the the world is so much richer than just the window through which I'm seeing it. And there's all this stuff happening beyond beyond the window that I can't see, but I know it's there because the author knows so much about so much more about the world than I do. And, you know, that's the same when I'm making a video. Like, I need to know 10 times more stuff than I put in the video because I have to pick out the most useful and most interesting bits. And I think that comes across I mean, I'm sure that comes across in the editing because even just the fast clip of the editing, it it literally increases the intelligence factor of the video. Like, I just feel like it's more intelligent because you're talking faster than I could physically talk. Well, I'm talking faster than I could physically talk too. I you know, I we literally cut out like, there there are sounds that overlap in Vlogbrothers videos. That's funny. So you have this you have this great video on, the myth of greatness, which, you know, you talk about, how influential people don't just sort of appear, it's usually as a scene. And this happens in almost every artistic community, scientific community, entrepreneurial community, and people don't really realize the importance of a scene. But you're right now, we're in this new world where social media creates the scenes. Like, you're in Montana, your brothers, wherever, people have to create their scenes through through social media or other means. What do you think are the best ways now for people to create their kind of their communities, their scenes, their tribes? I think it's to be cognizant of it. I think it's to be aware that it's a thing that you want. There's this this myth of the independent thinker and and the person who, you know, just sits in their room by themselves and creates a great, great body of work is pervasive and I think destructive. It's about more than just, creating a scene around around a sort of cons like, a a a central idea or or aesthetic. It's about friendship. You know? It's about, like like, reaching out to people and saying, like, okay, like, we're in this. I like what they're doing so much. I'm so into their thing. I hope that they would be into my thing, and and not having it just be about the content, but have it be about a relationship. And, you know, I I think that, you know, like, friendship is very powerful, and it asks a lot of people, and and that is a project in and of itself, the the project of of interpersonal relationships is something that I I really enjoyed those projects. And that sounds a little bit objectifying when I say it that like that, but I I do feel that way. I feel like my marriage is a project. I feel like my brotherhood with John is a project. And I That actually has a spiritual aspect to it. Like, it's almost like distancing yourself from so you can be the outside observer of the emotions and thoughts and feelings that you have towards towards different people. Right. And I mean, you have to be that way sometimes or else you're going to it's like the inevitable conflict will blow you up. And and so when I think about, you know, I I would like to do this more, but I have had a a great time creating those relationships between me and other creators and really caring about them as people in addition to caring about them as creators and artists, and caring about their work. So I, you know, I think I think that's that's really important. And to think about what it is that not just makes you a good creator, but makes you a constructive member of of a scene as you put it, which I think is, you know, like, if if everybody gets the connotation we're talking about, like like the sort of, you know, Green Day didn't happen all on its own. Green Day was part of a a pretty big scene around Gilman Street and that that there was a lot of really great music that happened around Green Day that nobody knows about, but, that helped create this the thing that became so mainstream and remarkable. Well, you look at any artistic movement, like, look at the the beats from the fifties, you know, they all hung out together. You look at the whole pop art movement lived in South Street Seaport of New York. You I don't know. The whole grunge movement lived in Seattle. This is any artistic movement, but now it's not so much location dependent. It's it's like, how do we connect with each other through YouTube communities? And it brings me to another question which is, you know, I look at the comments on your YouTube videos and they're so nice. Like, when I if I post an article on Facebook, they're usually nice. Like, it's usually people I engage with and they're my friends. But if I were to post on YouTube, or or any place, most other places, it's like half and half. Like, what the hell is this guy saying? And then people who like me. So so how do you guys delete comments or how do you manage your community? We don't delete I mean, we do delete comments. We do it rarely. We only tend to have to delete comments in 2 situations. 1, when a video goes super viral, and so there's a ton of new people coming in, and that means that a small percentage of those people are gonna be just awful. Or 2, when we're talking about something particularly controversial, like if we're talking about racism. And, and you just get people who are just there to piss people off. And, like, that's what they're doing, and they're doing an awful good job. But, you know, sometimes you talk about those things because it's important to talk about them. Like, let's say let's say, I would rather see, for instance, you or your brother make a video about Greece than read some stupid article in the newspaper about Greece because those are usually the most uninformed ways of getting my news. Like literally, I encourage people never to read the news because I mean, I used to work for newspapers and these people have no idea what they're talking about. But like you say, you do the research, you do the fact checking, you're doing the videos. So you do talk about controversial topics and and Greece is one of them and how it affects the economy all over the world. Or you interviewed the president, you can't get more controversial than that, half like him, half don't. So so how do you deal with I mean, you you you encourage controversy to some extent. Well, I don't I mean, I don't know that I'd incur I don't want to encourage controversy. I want to encourage discourse, and I I think that's a different thing. I hope that's a different thing. Well, you would hope, but you don't have a choice. Right. Which is why I think it's important to go through in in on those controversial videos, to go through and take out the people who are not who are not there for discourse. They are clearly there just to to create a conversation around their, you know, like, to entertain them for an afternoon. Like, that's that's really what a troll is. And so taking this like, I have no problem taking those people out because it to me, like, whatever. Like, free speech, sure. But not on, you know, find somewhere else to have your dumb ideas instead of, like, interrupting actual legitimate conversation about a controversial topic. So, yeah. But so in gen in general, back to the original question, it's just everywhere on the Internet you see this. You see when there's a community that, that has shared values, they get along, they, they converse kindly, and sometimes kindness is an actual part of the value of the community. And so when outsiders come in with different perspectives, they are nice to them. Sometimes the kindness isn't part of it and exclusion is part of it. And when outsiders come in, then they're mean to them. But, in general, an an isolated community on the Internet is always a fairly friendly place as long as you're part of the community. What what causes the big culture wars on the Internet is when 2, 2 different communities with very different values end up occupying the same space, and that's when you get gamer gate, you know, that's when you get big. And and and that's on the Internet. When that happens in the real world, that's where you get, like, Israel. Right? Like, it's yeah. I mean, that's how conflict happens. People with different world views occupying the same space. It's funny because I was talking to, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, and he says he deliberately he has a technique for deliberately encouraging controversy, which is he will take a very controversial topic, and he'll take he'll defend both sides equally. So that means so yeah. So that means if you you even if you're for one side and he's defending your side, you can't handle the fact that he's also defending the other side. Yeah. So Yeah. It's really interesting. Like, I know when we do one of these more serious videos, I know we've done it best when I can see, like, a 50 50 mix of people being angry at us but for the opposite reason. Right now, you know, you've you've, started VidCon. You've done all these things. Do you see YouTube as continuing to be the main media, by which we communicate via video? I mean, you talked yesterday, I think, or the day before in an article saying that Facebook video was not quite was not quite what it was claiming to be. Like, do you still see YouTube as the main place where video creators are gonna hang out? I see the future as, ideally, I see the future as being a place where video platform, or video sharing, video creation, it happens in on on a number of different platforms, and those platforms will include television, Netflix, and those platforms will include Facebook and Twitter and Periscope and YouTube and Vine and You now and Twitch, and all of those different platforms create different cultures. They have different technologies. They have different cultures. They have different, they have different user behavior, and they have different technology. So for me, every entrant into the world of video is, I think, good for creators as long as those entrance into the world of video aren't, encouraging theft from creators, which is pretty much the main reason why I'm angry at Facebook right now. What why? Do you think they're encouraging people to take YouTube videos and just, pop them onto their Facebook feed? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes. And and there it is very difficult to track down when people do that, and there is no system except for a manual system in place to get those videos taken down, which takes quite a while. So it's just it's it's it was very it was a very strange decision for Facebook to launch this very large video product and have no system in place to protect rights holders. I just, like it seems a little inexcusable for a company as large as Facebook to just wade into the room like a like a bull in a China shop and just be like, ah, we're gonna do video now. Let us knock everything over. I mean, I guess it took YouTube, like, a good 4 or 5 years before they really had the the controls in place, but hopefully Facebook, it'll be faster. Yeah. I mean, YouTube is a startup. Right? And and no one knew what no one knew what online video is gonna look like. And so it it was until I think they launched Content ID in 2007, which is when they started cracking down on people uploading, like, Family Guy and Daily Show clips and stuff. So that wasn't that was, like, 2 years into YouTube and, like, months after Google acquired them. So it was, you know, there was there was very little time during which a large company actually was problematic in the way that they were handling copyrighted content. It seems very strange to me that Facebook wouldn't know that this was immediately going to be a problem and would have let this go on for so long. Although although I guess they saw the growth in YouTube was basically people on Myspace embedding music videos illegally, and so they figured, let's let's see how long we can do it before anyone notices. Yeah. I guess, but we're talking it's 2015 now. It's not 2007. So So I I read so you you said this really interesting quote that I found fascinating because so many people argue, particularly in today's day, and maybe they've always argued about it, I don't know, I just see the question a lot today, which is what is success? And you say, in the end, it's not about finding success, it's about building the number of things you're capable of because then you could do more interesting things, and we need people to do interesting things in the world. So there's there's a lot in that quote to unpack, but maybe can you explain a little what you mean? Because I I see it how you emulate it in your life. That came from me having had what having been told that I'm successful. You know? Like, people's people's like, it's it's a wonderful thing to have someone tell you that. And But it always feels bad too. It feels like I have to like, for me, it feels like, oh my god. They just told me that now there's a new bar I have to jump over. Yeah. I mean, there's there's also, like, you know, sort of an innate, desire to be humble and not to, like, shout to the world, yes, I am a big deal. Look at me. I'm so special. And also, like, the knowledge that you're not, that special. And and in addition to the the factual knowledge that you're not that special, the objective understanding of that, There's the, the voice in your head that's telling you that you're not successful because you're always comparing yourself to other people and things and and histories and, you know, like and it's this is not something that that I think I would ever have accepted as as as me without having experienced it, but that there isn't really a lot of joy that comes out of big successes. There's certainly a lot of sadness that comes out of big failures, so I won't belittle that. I've I've experienced that. But the joy that comes out of success is pretty fleeting and often for me is accompanied by a crash afterward that is much that is worse than the joy. I don't know if the I don't think that that's just a me problem. I've heard that other people have that problem. No. Definitely. And and the crash might be psychological, but it also might be real. Like, a lot of people I mean, there's evidence, a lot of people who make money in the lottery lose all the money. Mhmm. Yeah. So the thing that has helped me is to think about this as an and and about, like, all of life, like, because you're obviously not working towards some some pinnacle that you will then be, like, I'm here now and I'll just sit down and make camp at the top of the mountain and I'll be here forever. That all of life is working toward making a self, making you, and and allowing yourself to be better at things and to have more tools to do more things because things are cool and things are fun. And, like, it's really about being able to create and having more and more tools to create with. And those tools can be, like, skills, personal skills, they can be knowledge. They can also be, you know, having and putting together a really great team of people who's really great at doing something. And and, you know, having that that expertise to to build that team. And then because you can say, you know, Rita, you are an amazing bookkeeper and you know what you're doing, and I am terrified of your job. I don't have to do this, but now I I in a in a way can because Rita is part of the team, and I like her. And she and we work together to make more things possible. And that's really what, you know, that's sort of kind of a lot of the story of the interestingness of capitalism. But but thinking of it outside of the framework of capitalism, outside of the framework of how do you make the most money and return on your shareholders value. But how how do you do valuable things for the world, not just for the owners of the company? Well, I I like that metric though of do more interesting things, and they don't even have to be the same thing. Like, you don't have to do more videos. They could be just and and again, you're involved in many projects. I like that idea of of having that as a metric, not necessarily of success, but maybe of well-being because it gives you more freedom of choice, it gives you more feeling of competence, and it builds more, relationships with people. Mhmm. Yeah. And also, I feel like it is just a good framework to have in your head. Like, it's a good thing to have in your head space to be like, this isn't about becoming more powerful. It's not about, people thinking I'm cool. It's about being able to do things that are interesting. And so so so what's next for you? Like, are there any untapped passions that you've been kind of, like, keeping on simmer, but you haven't fully, like, let out yet let out of the box yet? Yeah. I'm I mostly, I'm thinking about education right now, which I think is really valuable thing because it helps people build their tool kits. And, and a lot of the story of of human progress has been people having bigger tool kits, individual people having better ways to build their tool kits. And so thing I I don't feel like we've done a great job of harnessing what computers and the Internet is are good at for, like, enabling better and more efficient education. I think that's partially because education is really tough nut in terms of both in terms of the infrastructure that currently exists, which is very established and also has great parts to it. And I don't wanna, like, destroy that infrastructure or anything. A lot of people assume that I do. I don't. But also because it's just hard. It's a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to understand how students' minds work and how and to create a system that, that is more effective for them. So that's what I'm thinking about. That's what I would if I had, you know, $10,000,000, I would spend every dollar of it trying to create materials that make the lives of teachers and students easier, and, and I have some ideas on how to do that if anyone has $10,000,000. Well, and you're you're doing it with your with your crash course videos. I mean, these are Yeah. Incredibly educational videos. Like, I I I go for everything. Like, I educational videos. Like, I I I go for everything. Like, I look at Coursera courses, Udemy courses, Codecademy, linda.com, all and crash course. And your your courses are very educational. Yeah. I think we do a great job. I mean, I think actually they should replace school, but that's my opinion. I don't think they should replace school. I, there's something really valuable about 1 on 1 interaction between teachers and students and also between students and students. So there I think that there could be different ways for schools to exist, and I think that that would be a fun thing for for and is going to be a fun thing for us as a as a society to investigate over the next 50 years. But and also just the expense of higher education right now is ludicrous and damaging to society. So, that needs to be dealt with. But I, I what I what I'm thinking about is, like, crash course is a video. Like, crash course is a video series. We wanna continue making crash course videos. We wanna, you know, continue building that. We also want to create systems within which teachers have an easier time finding materials, systems within which teachers know how to best utilize materials and can communicate with each other about how other teachers are using their materials. That's a that's a that would be an interesting thing that other that people are working on right now. And then in and then more specifically, like, what really, why is there this textbook industry in America when it's it's kind of ludicrously exploitative of students, and and it had been that way forever, and, it's a it's just a a money printing machine, and that's a little bit wrong. So that is if I was gonna disrupt any industry right now, it would be textbooks. Like, that's what I wanna do. Yeah. That's interesting. Particularly, like, my kids, they carry, like, £50 worth of textbooks. I can't understand at the very least why these things aren't on the Kindle. I still don't understand why And you yes. They're printing. Just printing the textbooks that that yours your children carry around costs more than a very nice tablet that could have all of them on it. And that's just the that's just the the hard cost of manufacture. So so, you know, final thing is, like, you guys are so creative, both you and your brother, and your brother obviously has had these these movies out, the Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns. Do you see yourself, writing a novel, going in that route, or are you going more kind of on the education route, or we'll see? It's so it's like the fact that John writes books is the thing that encourages me to not write novels because, it's terrifying. It's it's it's terrifying to be up against. Not up against, but, like, John is very successful, 1, and also really good at that. He's a great writer, and, and I am a very different kind of writer than John. But I, but I do wanna do that. I have thought about it. I am working on a thing, but it's really hard. It's a complete and it's a completely different process than the things that I'm used to, which have much quicker turnarounds. Like, I make a video in a day or or a week at the most. And, this like a book is like you work on it for years, and then and then it comes out before anybody gets to look at it. And you don't even know if you weren't gonna like it until it's that's just terrifying. And also not not the way that I'm used to to operating. But, but it has been rewarding thus far in the the creation of of a story. I just don't know that I'm actually very good at it. So it's it's gonna be an interesting process. Well, I I I look forward to reading whatever you put out. And I also again, I'm impressed by all your videos. I'm impressed by Crash Course and all the other things you're you're working on. Where where is the best place you like people to find you? Well, Vlogbrothers is the sort of, in my head, at least, the central the central processing unit of of our of our endeavors. And you never know what you're gonna find there. We also do a podcast called Dear Hank and John, where John and I talk about we just answer questions. It's sort of an advice podcast, for people of all sorts who just wanna help wanna help getting through life and also ask us really dumb questions that we get to answer as well, which is fun. And, so those that's that's those are 2 things that I'd I'd suggest. Unless you're super into education or science, in which case SciShow and Crash Course are where it's all at. Well, Hank Hank Green, Vlogbrothers, thanks so much for coming on my podcast. This is this has been utterly fascinating. I'm really impressed by everything you're doing, and I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. For more from James, check out the James Altucher Show on the Stansbury Radio Network at stansburyradio.com and get yourself on the free insider's list today.
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