On the evening of March 19, 2024, content creator, entrepreneur and best-selling author Hank Green spoke at Macky Auditorium at the University of Colorado Boulder in association with CU’s Distinguished Speakers Board.

At the sold out event, the auditorium was packed with students, staff and members of the Boulder community eager to see the man who taught many of them science as kids through Crash Course and SciShow — the educational YouTube channels Green created with his brother, John Green.

Zach Chagnon, a sophomore at CU, attended the event with his friends. Chagnon was familiar with Green’s work and watched Crash Course as a teenager.

“It was pretty inspirational to see the man who pretty much got me through my science classes in middle and high school in person talk about life experiences with media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok,” said Chagnon.

The event was moderated by the Director of Public Relations Isobel Feiges and the Director of Operations Cooper Baldwin of the Distinguished Speakers Board at CU Boulder. Dubbed “DSB,” the board is a student-run cost center, as a part of CU Boulder’s Student Government.

Bringing a distinguished guest to the campus each semester to speak about their prestigious accomplishments and commendable feats of character is rooted in tradition at CU, where the Distinguished Speakers Board has been doing this for decades. Notable speakers from recent years include Anderson Cooper, Jennette McCurdy, Chloe Kim, Kal Penn and Viola Davis, among others.

Veena Bhatnagar, Chair of the Distinguished Speakers Board and graduating senior at CU Boulder, underscored the impact Green has had on young people making their way in the world.

“I think Hank Green is someone that brings a lot of nostalgia for our age and our generation. I think that’s something our student body really needed to experience, especially those who are graduating,” Bhatnagar said. “The pandemic disrupted the beginning of [the class of 2024’s] college experience. That still affects everyone differently, so I believe this conversation was important in showing that there are nontraditional paths to success,” the board’s chairwoman stated.

“He has a unique ability to combine scientific facts with entertainment, making it something people are interested in seeing,” Bhatnagar continued.

Throughout the evening, Green attributed many of his endeavors to his brother John Green, who is also a bestselling author and content creator. The brothers still work closely on a variety of their projects, such as Crash Course and SciShow, as well as posting regular videos to their shared YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers.

Hank expressed admiration for his older brother and admitted that much of what he does can be accredited to John, whom he looked up to throughout their childhood and into adulthood.

“I always believed that John was the coolest guy on Earth,” said Green. “If he was into something, I didn’t have to ask whether or not it was a good idea to be into it. It just was unassailably the coolest thing on Earth.”

Green also reflected on creating one of the first widely successful channels on YouTube, and how he knew this was something worth investing his time in from the beginning.

“At that point I had a pretty solid liberal arts education, I knew a fair amount about media history… I knew enough that I was like, ‘This feels important,’” Green said. “And I did not understand how big it was, but it felt important, and it felt like it would be really amazing to be among the first people to be making that kind of content.”

When asked about maintaining a healthy work-life balance and what keeps him going on hard days, Green admitted that he does not have a very good system worked out. In May 2023, the internet and media titan announced his diagnosis with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. In August 2023, just about three months after his initial diagnosis, Green announced he was in complete remission in a post on X.

Throughout chemotherapy and treatment, Green continued to create and post content to his accounts on various platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Now years into his internet fame, Green chose to continue to document his life, and began educating the 10 million followers he had on TikTok and YouTube about cancer, experiencing cancer, undergoing treatment and the scientific workings behind it all. Although he highlighted his cancer journey, Green also did not stop making his normal science based content.

“Really, it is honestly the only thing I knew how to do… Like I had no other choice… I couldn’t feel like me anymore if I wasn’t making content,” said Green.

As the final audience question of the night, Green was asked how we, the audience, should make the most out of how we spend our lives. After pausing introspectively for a moment to consider the question, his answer was simple — we don’t.