Hanging Out at Crash Course HQ

Key Takeaways

and I become pixelated yeah well you can just shrink yourself on down oh I see what you did there you're so heck is in control of this goog plus hangout on air um but uh but you know I'm here too I matter a little bit hopefully um yeah but anyway yes hi Welcome to our Google Plus crash course hangout we're doing it hopefully um I just went to the crash course page to see if this is working or not it appears to be and you okay great um so uh we want to start by talking about crash course and education and what led us to make this Channel and then we're going to answer your questions on Twitter you can tweet us at the crash course or uh to our individual twitters um real John Green and Hank Green and we'll be answering as many questions as we can but first we're going to talk about um how this channel came about and why we wanted to make it Hank it was all John's idea um you YouTube basically asked us if we had ideas for original content programming stuff that we couldn't afford to do on our own and um I need to enable me ha it's me now um and so we uh we we came at them with two ideas both of them were educational in nature one with saow and this is also saow headquarters here in Missoula you can see if this is familiar to you from the news show uh behind me um and the other was crash course and uh we what we wanted to do was sort of focus on what you know we're good at which is explaining things and learning things and um and sort of something that we thought would would in addition to being entertaining might actually uh help the world be a better place um so that's how we got started was one one of the things that Hank and I always talk about when we talk about our ideas when we talk about what we um stuff we want to make is uh whether it can do any good like whether it can be a useful thing in the lives of of the PE people who uh participate participate in it with us and uh we felt like both with crash course and saow saow you know committed to sharing um scientific learning and crash committed to um you know making educational materials available free to everyone that are engaging and uh fun but also genuinely educational um we felt like both those things could could do some good um so we're really we're really proud of Crash Course and S Show and almost gosh almost five months in now um it's been it's been quite an adventure definitely the most fun interesting thing I've ever done on the internet except for nerd fight areia yeah um it's it's been it's been really rewarding to to watch uh as people sort of actually take the courses and start from you know not much knowledge to uh broader a broader amount of knowledge it's also very rewarding to see people uh being like I passed my AP exam because of you and boy that episode came out right in time for me or else I would have been screwed right um so that's pretty um so there there are lots of people with questions Hank so I want to start asking you questions okay you're going to ask me questions okay I'm gonna ask you some questions this is from Russell despain are you planning we're answering questions on Twitter by the way at the crash course atre joh green Hank Green are you planning to cover more subjects like solman KH at the KH Academy I don't think he's asking if we're planning to cover the subject of solman KH I think he's asking if we're planning to to be like Academy um that's just generally uh very hard but yes I think that it would be fantastic if we can get into other topics um Khan is amazing at uh at breadth and I don't think that we're ever going to have that breadth um at least not in the short term and certainly not was just the two of us um can do it all that because he's a genius um and has a different format than we do and uh we cannot do it by ourselves uh that level of of depth in uh all topic areas which he pretty much has covered all of them now he's pretty much got every topic area there is he's certainly getting there I mean the Con Academy for those of you who don't know about it is this incredible resource that was really is really the brainchild of one person solman Khan and uh I mean there are thousands of videos educational videos but those videos are designed for highly motivated students um they're they're long they you know they're designed for for people who you know go into the video wanting desperately to learn and our our our video series crash course is designed um for more I guess casual Learners um you know people who people who see learning as part of part of their life and not necessarily like just just School focused but also you know hopefully in a way that that can be helpful to to students um Hank do you guys have people editing your Vlog Brothers videos as well as your crash course videos asks KD tman oh I just clicked on the wrong thing sorry I was trying trying to activate myself and I paused a video um the answer to that question is that John and I still edit our Vlog Brothers videos um occasionally Londa will help me edit a vlog Brothers video that's him right there just pure panic but yeah we do we do uh we still we still do all of our Vlog Brothers EDI and uh yeah I edit all videos I mean it's important to note that we also work a lot on Crash Course ands show um but as you may have noticed we aren't great video editors um I am I'm a wonderful editor you're an editor you're you're good at Jump Cuts I mean I I I don't think that you can I don't think I I wouldn't trust you to make a thought bubble let's put it that way yeah though that's that's that's more than just editing but I I mean I think that uh it's a it's a skill set that that uh we have we have just sort of been thrown into whereas a lot of other people are well trained um and so uh for for sicho and crash course we have two full-time editors here and one in Indianapolis so that is a whole different world for us to have that kind of support um but yeah anytime the only time that I would ever not edit a vlog Brothers video if there was literally something I wanted to do that I didn't know how to do and that's what Michael's for yeah I mean we still we we Hank and I both feel pretty strongly about keeping vog Brothers its own separate thing and and kind of keeping it the thing that it always has been um but crash course and Sao allow us to live our dream of making really educational content um which is what we always wanted to do we just never had the ability to do it because it takes a big team of people like I just don't know enough about the French Revolution um to make a video about it you know and Hank no offense but like Hank doesn't know enough about meiosis to make an authoritative video on it and he certainly doesn't know enough about illustrating meiosis to you know do all the animations necessary to to explain it Hank you want to you want to answer some questions or do you want me to keep going I I think that I could if I had the skill to be able to animate I think that I would would I do have the knowledge necessary to animate meiosis but whatever I you're always saying that though no no one no one is more convinced of of of his of of his own breadth of talents than my brother I I'm not saying talents I'm just saying I I understand the basic levels of biology otherwise I could not do this um why is the new history show this is for me consistently focused on Military and religion and why did you choose the particular narrative that it has um well it's not exclusively focused on Military and religion I also talk a lot about the plague and in fact I think I think ultimately arguably uh as I said in in yesterday's Vlog Brothers video um microbes have a bigger effect on human history than either military or religion um but and there's also there's also some focus on on technology and scientific development you know things like uh how Innovation and inventions changed um you know made the world smaller and made it easier to travel for instance across the Indian Ocean things like that um but you know the focus is is on religion partly because that was the or that was one of the focuses certainly of of lives in the time period that I'm talking about so you know people people's decisions their values uh were shaped in a lot of times almost always actually by by their religious beliefs and as those religious beliefs changed a lot of responses to it changed I'm always criticized by military historians for not talking enough about wars so I'm glad you think I talk too much about wars um but you know we I try to be I try to be as broad as possible um but you know our I feel like my job is to try to talk about how decisions that were made over the by by people and also not by people over the course of over the course of world history led to the world that we have now and and that hopefully will allows us to to think sort of more broadly and with greater depth about the decisions that we're making now that are going to shape uh you know the world for the next thousand or 5,000 years or whenever um we end up killing ourselves off he what was your favorite episode of biology crash course so far um I don't know I like the early stuff a lot uh where we're talking about this like I'm a biochemist by training and so that that stuff was uh I get more into that stuff despite the fact that most people don't um so I really enjoyed that I also really enjoyed the episode we just did on natural selection um and uh just because that's the that's the area that sort of gets the most attention in in U our world um you know in terms of policy and and like controversy and I just like you know the opportunity to talk about that in a way that's not talking about the controversy and not like an argument between two sides but just presenting the information which I think John did a really good job of as well you know when you're talking about more hot button topics in history like Islam and Christianity and stuff like that so it's really really you know it's great to have an opportunity to talk about these things in an educational context on the internet when usually they're talked about in a pical context on the internet right I mean Hank and I are really interesting really interested and we have been for a long time in depoliticizing traditionally politicized issues particularly when they aren't political like climate change for instance which is not a political problem um uh or uh yeah or Islamic history which shouldn't be a political problem like people shouldn't be people shouldn't but uh but it is and and you have to you have to acknowledge the the complexity of that like I mean the weird the weirdest part about making that video which was that Islam video I guess was probably my favorite so far um although I like this week's the one that comes goes up tomorrow about mansam Musa in uh in in West Africa a lot but uh the the thing about that Islam video that made me nervous was talking about talking about things that sunnis and Shia still disagree about um and that that was actually that was where most of the hot hot button conversation was I mean the rest of the it was great for the first couple days and we all we always experien this Hank where the first couple days the discourse is astonishingly sophisticated and thoughtful and then slowly it degenerates there are fewer and fewer comments and and uh you start to see that there will be one like usually that crazy comments get pushed down by the uh by the intelligent comments and then eventually there are fewer comments and so the crazy comments don't get pushed down and feel the the uh the need to respond to the crazy people and then you end up with stupid conversations but I do that too I feel that same urge to respond to the troll we have we have I was going to say that after the video goes up you're probably also getting fewer people who are subscribed to the channel because they're interested in content right and more people who find the video because they just Google Islam right and they and they're looking for something to argue about let me just tell you Michael incidentally that um if we can get to that point where you Google Islam and the first thing that comes up is crash course that would be that's winning um we're long ways off from that but I have a question for you uh that no one is going to be polite enough to ask why do you think crash course history gets so many more views than crash course biology because it's about history and not about biology [Laughter] um I mean it's really it's it's it's pretty easy to make history populist I mean to make history something that you would choose to learn about um in there's a relatively low barrier to entry right because we're all um we're all human beings living in mid history and we all remember that there was a French Revolution or something um when it comes to studying biology it it is it is I mean I I don't buy that hard soft science distinction but there is that there is that distinction that like you're going to have to learn some terminology you're going to have to pay attention to the way that cells are built in order to later understand natural selection and uh there's a relatively High barrier to entry there so I think that's the issue although I mean how astonishing is it that just just a few months into this project you know 60,000 or 70,000 people are choosing to watch videos about mitosis yeah yep I I'm pretty consistently shocked what I always say to the people who are like now what do you do and and they're like but who pays for that who watches that and I'm like well people who are learning these things choose to come and find them I or if they're not even learning them they're just curious and that's the most exciting thing to me is that like we creating content that people come out like go out of the way watch instead of you know have to watch in a classroom sorry I forgot to click on myself before my monologue but ohce I'm glad that people got to see me see me listening to you um I have a question from Philip White and this has also been asked by a lot of other people um it's is Crash Course mostly supported by ads and by Google what makes your medium different from television uh and also I've frequently seen um uh are you guys going to charge schools for crash course um we are at the moment supported almost well entirely we are supported entirely by a grant from youtube/google um and that is the reason why we can make the content uh there is a sort of hope that at some point uh this content could be could support itself uh through advertising or through grants from other organizations uh there are lots of educational grants in the world um and uh and also through you know sales of Mongols t-shirts and um we recent you're right Hank that's that's the key yeah M I know W be rich why I'm telling you that's the that's the only path to True success but to answer to answer the other question not yeah um to answer the other question uh crash course is already taught in hundreds of schools which is amazing and something that we are really excited about and really grateful for no we don't charge them no we won't charge them the whole idea of this project is to is is to find a new way to make educational materials possible that that doesn't use that old model of charging academic institutions for the right to show those um to to to share that to share that stuff in class um we don't like that model we think that it's inefficient we think that that schools could spend their money in different and better ways um and we want them to be spending their money in those ways um and we want this to be supported through other things whether it's advertising or or or grants or whatever um so that was that was the idea of Crash Course is is you know we we don't like the we don't like the idea of you know having schools fund uh educational video because we think there's a market for educational video we think people want to watch it we don't think people need to be forced to watch it so um it's also very interesting to have uh come to the realization that um you know this these things like what we're doing when you do it for free people have a harder time taking you seriously and they're like well one you don't have a bunch of money to pay like sales people to go into schools and try and sell the content and try and like explain to teachers like like do a do a symposium at like a you know a teacher conference and talk about how useful this content is and that's what all the for-profit institutions are doing and so we are in this situation where we're creating content that may very well be better is certainly cheaper because it's free um but um a lot of places are less interested in it because they don't understand like how could this be better if it's so much cheaper ER which is an interesting problem right well but you know we're we're just getting started so it'll work out um Hank do you are you looking at Twitter because I'm looking at Twitter I can keep asking questions but I thought maybe you wanted to I don't know I don't understand how you can multitask like that what do you mean look at Twitter and also talk yeah um well I mean that's first off you're do you're when you're talking I'm looking at Twitter I'm not listening to whatever boring crap you're saying so there's that ah ah well there's the there's Katie more importantly no but okay so oh sorry talking um there's Katie who oh shoot who asks uh will crash course ever be used for charitable purposes like teaching people in third world countries who can't afford schooling well it's already used for that in the in the broadest sense I mean the the great thing about the the great thing about the mobile internet and the spread of the spread of broadband internet to uh to the developing world is that it allows us to sort of take a jump in terms of infrastructure development uh at least hopefully so that you don't have to develop Telegraph lines and then telephone lines and then dial up and then this and this and this you can just go to straight to 3G or 4G which means that all of a sudden not just not just students um outside of schools in the developing world but also students in schools in the developing world have the opportunity uh to to take advantage of all of the many educational resources that are freely available on the internet whether it's KH Academy or crash course or Ted Ed which is doing great stuff or minute physics or cgp gray whatever it is and um that's that's really really exciting to us and one of the things that kind of gets us fired up and makes us want to do this is the belief that you know that that education is really Central to development that the biggest hurdle to development on some level is is education and um you know this isn't the only way I don't think that it's a Magic Bullet but I think that it's one way um and so I'm I really excited about that and it's already happening uh we already we already see lots of YouTube comments in Crash Course ands show from the developing world but um you know hopefully in three to five years we'll see many many more I have another question from you this one from Samantha what is the deal with the phrase of the week because I don't really understand it either John yeah it was not probably not a good idea retrospect um and I've never explained it well so here's how it works um every week we take a phrase that someone suggested in comments and we put it in the video we somehow I somehow managed to find a way to insert it into the script of the video um and the idea there was that people would guess at the phrase of the week and then they would suggest phrases of the week but people have mostly found it very confusing which has left us with relatively few phrases of the week suggested even harder to work them into comments which is why I had to write an entire episode about Kim Kardashian I was like there's no way I can work Kim Kardashian's name into an episode of crash course I guess I'm just gonna have to write the episode of Crash Course about Kim Kardashian what a disaster John a question from Neva do you think that crash wordss will Branch out in to literature and the Arts from its more like it's less literature and arts based foundations um yeah I mean we are I don't know I I'd love to I'd love to teach art history down the road and I definitely would like to teach um some kind of world literature class it's challenging um because not everyone everyone is a part of human history not everyone has read Things Fall Apart you know everyone knows there was a French Revolution not everyone is deeply familiar with the plot of McBeth or or desires to read it again um so I think that's one of the challenges but I I I we definitely want to do it and we we have to we just have to figure out the right way to do it um whether it's all of us read the book together and then talk about it or or whatever it is um or whether we focus on shorter Works which which most um uh early college classes tend to do now For Better or Worse um I don't know but yeah that that's something I'd like to do I'd love to do arts um art history and I'd love to do um like comp like English language and and usage and grammar I know that that stuff sounds really boring but it is it is actually astonishingly exciting um and I get really geed out about it and like we get to talk about you know what what's wrong with what what is or is not wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition and what a preposition is and how it functions in the world and how it how it opens up the the the world of observation to us I get really really psyched um so hey what what do you want to teach um I don't know good job stuff stuff yeah more sciency stuff do you want to teach like uh physics or do you want to teach like uh geology um well GE both of those are very interesting to me um I I probably I would really like to teach biochemistry just because that's that's I just know a lot about it and I get excited about it pretty easily um I'd love to have someone teach physics but I don't think I'm the right person um I I also would love to have someone teach physics yeah and I also think uh I I I really there's sort of a a distinction between sort of hard physics of like Newtonian and also Beyond and then there's a discussion of sort of broader like this is how weird quantum mechanics is and I like to talk about that stuff even though at a base mathematical level I'm nowhere near uh understanding it but can you talk about that stuff without talking about the math though I mean that's one of my yeah you could talk about like like what a quirk physically is and why they why they color what color charge means why they change color like what the weak force is what the strong force is um you could talk about that stuff and you can do it in a way that's that's you know let people understand it um and and so like you actually get a pretty like a marvelously good understanding in of of the structure of the universe without having to talk about math and that we we talk about that stuff on S show yeah do to do a course on on quantum physics um would be cool but probably would better be done by someone who is not me right that reminds me of when I was writing will Grayson will Grayson and I I was writing about Schrodinger's Cat and I had this like I had this character this this 17-year-old girl Jane um going on and on and on about the mathematics involved in in the problem that led to the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment um all of which almost all of which was written by my cousin Blake um it wasn't even written by Me by my cousin I mean Sarah's cousin Hank's like it's not we don't don't Blake who Blake he just had a baby Blake he didn't have the baby his wife had the baby this is a disaster of a story um but my my point is that eventually it became obvious to me that having this like six page monologue from this 17-year-old girl about math I didn't understand was not going to be an asset to my novel uh I just have received word that my wife has a question all right I just think that it might be interesting for people to know what the process is making video and I know that it's different for each of you so I don't know if you heard Katherine but what she said was uh maybe our process is creating crash course videos are different maybe we could talk about the actual process behind sure like have to be made yeah from beginning to end yeah Advance mine are made it quite a long time in advance we are recording like Eight Episodes out right now so I by the time the episode goes online I'm like what I don't remember that what is this stuff that's not ideal ours is ours is filmed well in advance too um I think I think we're about the same far same amount out by the way Hank cgp gray is watching us not don't get nervous but um he's asking questions so I think he's watching us um he just asked how do you feel talking about subjects on which you might not be experts yourself to which my answer is uh not so bad I mean I'm not a historian at all and here I am cranking away like an expert I mean we have Educators working working with us so that that's the reason I don't feel that nervous about it but it is a little weird um but to answer Katherine's question um yeah it's very different from from like traditional video blogging because well I'm I don't know about you Hank but I'm in a studio and um Stan and Danica are there with me and you know they're they're there to make sure that you know the lighting is right and all the stuff that I never understood in video blogging and the sound sounds good and um and that that you know Danica makes the beautiful chalkboard illustrations and all that stuff um and then but but rest of it really is like video blogging except that I don't usually make a video blog from a script because I'm you know I'm I'm talking about I'm talking in my own words about something I care about um and so that that is a little bit like video blogging I don't know what your experience is though yeah you know but we we we write scripts for Vlog Brothers videos too but you oh I don't do you a lot yeah I script I script a fair amount wow yeah I goes significantly better if I script I do script uh the the thoughts from places you'll be surprised to hear oh really yeah thing about that crash course that's from pleasure planned the bre of the whole right series of videos right so I mean we start out end you've planned what cover those topics are pretty much chosen right right yeah sat down beginning the beginning of the process and we you know we sat down with a biology textbook with a biology teacher uh with um you know sort of the AP guide to what you're supposed to know at the end of an AP Biology class and we were like okay how are we going to put these into classes and we stuck to that pretty much occasionally there will be a script that is you know 20 pages long and we'll be like we should probably do this in two episodes um but generally um that yeah when we first started the writer R Meer sent a list of 40 topics he wanted to cover and we had a little bit of back and forth about which you know which 40 we should go with and then we we eventually figured it out although now I want to make I want to make a 41st one because I promised the last episode would be about the the t-shirts in the global economy which as you know Hank is is something I find completely fascinating much to your consternation um and I really really want to make that video so we might have to cut something along the way or else do a special bonus episode speaking of special bonus episodes we have a couple surprises and Hank do you want to crank one of those out now since we're at the Midway point of our of our live show yeah let me just get it ready okay Hank is gonna get something ready while he does that I will answer another question um would you let someone outside the vog brothers teaching crash course absolutely um you know the reason that we haven't so far is strictly frankly kind of a budgetary thing um and I are free uh we're free and and we have a lot of experience at doing this and we kind of know how to do it and there aren't that many people who know how to do it and those who do generally aren't free um a lot of people in comments Hank have suggested that we have Neil Tyson uh Neil degraph Tyson teach um physics which would be great that would be great um I I don't think he's available yeah he's a busy guy he's got a bunch of stuff going on project that we do here okay so I'm going to try to do this um there's no guarantee that it will will work but we we have a we have a process by which by which uh we do this so I'm just going to share one of my windows and uh and then we will watch a video hopefully yep um over recording oh God hi my name is John Green and this is crash course world history whoops hi my name is Al my name is John Green I'm the host of crash course world history and that hurt hi there my name is John Green this is champagne in a plastic cup and today we're gonna talk about Egypt as you might have guessed from the hieroglyphics behind me pardon me I'm drunk hi there my name is John Green this is crash course you want to do that again fall of Rome according hi I'm John Green and today God Hank did you just no idea go away can Youk talk I need all of them in order now I'm scared because I'm alone in the live show and the answer is no Hank Hank I can hear what you're saying just so you know Hank hi I missed it next week we will Journey oh hello again Hank is that anti-feminist to never talk about women except when I'm talking about how they're this isn't going well can we exit I've tried can you a great video but uh we'll upload it we'll upload it so that you can actually watch it instead of seeing it in a series of apparent screen caps it's an it's a episode of crash course outakes that uh or that um that's that Stan put together um there's also one of Hank's Hank you're a beautiful black screen right now can you hear me can you hear me I can hear you but you can't hear me yeah I can hear everything you're saying I could hear everything that you were saying while the video was playing too oh was I was I saying did did I say any curse words yeah no I don't think you said any specific curse words but they were implied um anyway is there any way that you could not be a gigantic black screen because it makes me sad I I would also love to not be gigantic black screen I miss when you like a Hank that was my favorite part of the show was when you looked like Hank I also I love I love it when uh I have I have such a good voice though John um find a way to turn off the screen share that's the key oh no I've done that oh you just don't have a is your camera not on anymore do you not have this the little green light that I have is on oh all right right rock and roll man um I guess you should just put me up on the screen and then you will just be a voice you're up on the screen okay it's just gonna be me from here on out it seems like so I will uh I don't know anyway so we both have uh we both made we both made special outtake so we both have oh Hank that was very loud don't do that again um we both have we both have special outake videos for you guys uh that you can watch um but we'll upload them to the crash course Channel or Vlog brothers or something so that you can watch them instead of just um doing doing it this way all right so I guess I will uh I will ask some more questions of the disembodied black screen that used to be my brother um um uh do you do foreign subtitles at all Hank someone asked someone someone offered to make check subtitles to crash course it said if if we if he made them would we use them or she let me just switch over to my black screen here so you guys can see me um yeah I mean we uh we are actually investigating at the moment sorry I figured if they can't see you then I'll I'll do something funny on the screen entertaining while you're talking um yeah yeah we are looking at uh a an application we're looking at helping to create an application of source that will allow us to uh streamline the creation of of subtitles to our videos because that's something that we really want not just for crash course and sow but for all of the internet to right be uh to have access to um we're just not we we I've always felt like there there could be a much better system to do that and hasn't been um the answer to your question first off all all the world history episodes are already subtitled in English the answer to your question would we use Czech subtitles if you gave them to us is yes although we don't know how to use them yet so we would have to learn how to use them but we will um so yes that is the answer to that question um uh someone says that they're listening to dubstep while they uh while while they watch us Hank well that's okay because our our uh manager of the office here listens to dubstep while he manages us wow um that's that's that's crazy um I'm gonna ask you some more questions Hank Okay you can also ask me questions now that you you are you are just a black screen I how much of your houses have been turned into video Studios oh only like a third or so well h house is very small because it's it's a greenhous not in the sense that it is owned by a person named green but in the sense that it is a eco-friendly house right uh I don't know about that um I don't know it strikes me as very green you have like bamboo flooring or something yeah it's uh uh it's it's a it's a new house it is it's fairly small I guess by modern standards uh yeah by modern standards whenever you go into like what that's one of the things that I've been really into actually when researching crash course and I will let you finish in a moment but you know since you're just a black screen I feel I I own the video now um but uh in researching crash course I am always astonished by the luxury that we take for granted that was literally non-existent to 99.9995% of the population until like 80 years ago yeah yeah I mean when I when I went to Haiti and like we I I like went over to someone's house um and it was their um their bedroom uh there was they lived in it was a two room house one of the rooms had a bed in it you walked into the the door it had a door uh you walked into the door and there there was a bed and there was a desk and it was maybe you know 20 square feet and then behind that there was another bed and another desk and another sort of room and the and then and this was a nice like this was a nice house in HEI and then out the back there was a pit toilet and like that was the that was you know like a a couple of people doing fairly well and um so it's always very strange to me when people refer to my house as small yeah no I mean your house is not small but it's small compared to most American houses yeah um so I yeah you know but we got you got the radiant floor heating and it's basically a refrigerator in there terms of letting heat out um so we have to have an air circulation system or else suffocate yeah yeah that all sounds very fancy I just live in a normal American house because unlike you very normal American house with your crazy Montana Wilderness leftism I'm an American I'm a regular normal American so uh long story short I also converted about a third of my house into a video studio um but but my third is bigger right yes um one of one of my bedrooms is a video Studio yeah uh my whole basement is and then I I do some filming upstairs as well um but then I would show you around our office and show you like because right now I'm in I'm in the crash course office this is not my house um yeah I will show you around if you could see me but you can't um um will you um will you look at some questions while while you're there being a black screen so that we can answer good questions questions yeah sure um oh uh man Manu uh on Twitter has a really important question for you Hank which is that have you tried turning it on and off again I mean I could do that but then then the entire hangout would end oh uh there's apparently already a cool app that Philip DeFranco uses for open source subtitles oh really yeah it's called um captiontube.appspot.com so thank you very much for letting us know about that Christine um uh okay Hank oh someone wants Hank to join uh cgp grce suggested Hank joined the video on a third laptop which isn't a terrible idea um okay um so Hank Let's uh do you have questions for me or should I keep asking you questions by the way we're answering questions on Twitter the crash course and also real John Green and Hank Green there are lot of questions about interns Hank I don't know if all these interns live in in Montana or not but there are a lot of them so I thought I'd ask what do you mean by interns our interns do do you do you have do you have need of them there seem to be a lot of people who wish to become your intern oh um yeah I mean we'd need people to help all the time but I don't know uh we we also would need an intern to have the capacity to hire and manage interns yeah sort of the biggest problem that we have right now is figuring out is figuring out that um but yes uh down the road certainly we we do want to have interns um uh Crash Course Indianapolis is going to have an inter over the summer starting uh in a couple weeks um and I think that that will be great for us but uh I don't know I don't know about anything else um um do you have any other questions hanker do you want me to keep going I'm sorry the reason why I'm not um answering questions is because I'm trying to fix the problem that we're having oh okay well then I'll I'll answer some questions um someone asks Nigel Apprentice asks hey how can I score some 2D glasses so for those of you who don't know my brother Hank invented the 2D glasses uh which are like 3D glasses except that you go to a 3D movie and you see that movie in a crisp two Dimensions uh you can get them at 2dg glasses.com is that right Hank whatever just Google 2D glasses um but yeah I think it's of all of the things that Hank has invented and he has invented far too many things 2D glasses are my favorite because they're extremely funny and um also like astonishingly useful so most things aren't um I'm just gonna keep talking while Hank uh mumbles quietly to his team because apparently he's not figured out how to mute himself on video I did I figured it out I just undid it and then I redid it and then I undid it again and it was yeah well hey there's only 15 minutes left so not sure that there's necessarily that much purpose to getting your face back for 10 minutes I'd rather have a high quality conversation between me my face and you a black screen okay let's do that okay great so we'll just do what we were doing until you decided to try to make it work um someone asked when when I got a corgi because recently in a video I showed my myself with a couple of dogs a greyhound and a corgi um that was my Greyhound it was not my Corgi that Corgi is named Abby uh and it it's times lives in our office it is the Corgi of our technical technical director Nick Jenkins who you will sometimes hear me refer to as John will occasionally refer to Stan I will refer to Jenkins or Nick um Don't Call Him Leroy he doesn't like it um I do like I I do like referring to Stan but it has to be said that I'm generally when I make references to Stan it's it's because of actual things that Stan did or said moments before that that was recorded I don't know if that's true for for you and Leroy but um yeah um yeah uh yes um yes Nick is standing there the whole time while videos so um he will he will be telling me to do things and I will uh I will invariably say okay Mom he's always like look at the camera and I'm people have asked me to have asked what my uh to teach a creative writing crash course which I can't do because I don't know how to teach creative writing um I have no idea how to teach such a thing but there are there are people who can do it and I admire them um but I I know absolutely nothing about how to write a story except by by doing it um so I I wouldn't know how to teach that um and right now we're focused on more um I would say traditionally academic subjects that uh that are maybe under taught or not taught as as well as they could be at schools whereas I think um certainly at at colleges creative writing there tend to be really good creative writing professors because you know there are a lot of writers who teach for a living or for part of their living anyway right um I've also got a question uh are we ever going to join forces and make an epic history of biology or the biology of History episode that would be good like do that I like that idea I think I I actually think that's kind of a cool idea um later on when you know when we both maybe in like the 30th week or something when we're crash course world history is relatively modern and biology is relatively human focused um it might be it might be really cool to talk about the relationship between history and microbes or to talk about the relationship between you know evolutionary biology and and contemporary history or something that that might be cool I'm also really interested in in the actual history science um like the the men and women who uh basically created the institution of Science and who right created people who created biochemistry and who like sort of found in genetics and a lot of these people are like we do a series on sa show called great minds is that what it's called y that's what it's called and um and that's been really interesting to do um we I I don't I know this is written but I don't know if we've recorded it yet but we do a we did a great episode on Fritz hobber is that his name right so yeah did the Mary cury one yes the the Marie cury one is like was uh featured in The New York Times and on Jezebel which I find equally impressive my two favorite news sources um and so that people obviously like those a lot but Fritz hobber super interesting dude because he basically saved billions of people by trying to kill people for the Germans in World War I and then went on to uh create chemical weaponry and his wife was so despondent that he uh was only interested in killing people that she told him to stop or else he said no and she shot herself to death wow and then he went to a party wow yeah I mean the there are some you know the people who have a big impact on History tend to be um maybe perhaps a bit eccentric but I do I do also think that it goes both ways that we also sort of look to The Eccentric stories and put them at the center of History you know well I mean the dude figured out how to fix nitrogen which doesn't sound that impressive but he it it basically made it so that you know all of Europe didn't starve at the beginning of the 19th century right cury but uh there but but like I'm just saying I'm just saying there are lots of historical actors important historical actors who weren't crazy yes that's true I that's an under an underappreciated fact of both the history of both history and the history of science like like caner for instance I mean hugely important mathematician but like these days famous mostly for devoting the second half of his life to trying to prove that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare right um and that seems to me it seems to me a little unfortunate that we end up conflating genius and and Insanity um there does seem to be a bit of a casual relationship between the two yeah I would like to see some data on that well I mean I I I know a lot of crazy people who aren't Geniuses um I said I I know a lot of crazy people who aren't Geniuses um including myself that's true I think what we really need to do is sort of figure out the per capita level of crazy right um pretty high yeah I don't I don't know I mean I think it's probably pretty high for Hank besides the AP curriculum how do you determine what to talk about in the biology crash course videos well first he chooses what's sexy that's true actually really we try and find things where we can have the title of the video have the word sex in it easy in biology um no it's uh keep it classy green it's the stuff that I really enjoy that um you know we like to have it you know it's 10 minut long so there has to be kind of a narrative um and so we try and and when we're figuring out to talk about to create a uh a story around it but generally we do choose a lot of it based on exact like those that exact criteria which is you know we we're trying to teach a course here and so there's standards that have been decided upon and I may not agree with them but we're going to agree with them because otherwise we're not helping people right so yeah I think it's I think it's important to to note there that um Hank and I both when we're making these videos and and re and also in sa show and um and in blog brothers too like we do look for narratives um we look for ways to tell stories like even though I was sick yesterday and I'm still quite sick I apologize by the way if I'm off my game a little bit but my my head is pounding with tiny chicken poop um even then um I tried to make a a story about Sarah calling me and telling me that I had to vote and then going to vote um and when when I'm making history vide is I think about that a lot I think about the fact that this is a show um and history is a narrative and that's one of the ways to make it engaging and to to make the learning process I think deeper in a way is if is if you can engage with it as narrative and not just engage with it as a set of facts that appear to have been like laid at your doorstep that you now have to memorize um so for instance a lot of people have asked if if there's any way that we could ever make a crash course about math or if math is just quote too boring well the truth of math is that it's not boring at all as you know if you watch Bart videos um math is really exciting and it's also in many ways very narrative I mean Hank was talking about the history of science but the history of math is is equally uh exciting and and in the same way that the history of science was marked by these you know huge discoveries that that then lead to these big big consolidations of knowledge the same thing happened in the history of mathematics and you know talking about that from a historical perspective turns it into a narrative and I think makes it a lot more fun to learn about so I do think there's a way way to teach math and have it be really interesting I have a question from mooy mcardell it is Michael Aranda is [Laughter] awesome I wasn't aware that that was a question um I I've never doubted Michael Rand is awesome um okay HEK people uh Hector Hernandez says where do you get your information from in Crash Course and why don't you cite it doite it do it biology does citations every video Katherine who is in charge of citations says that biology does citations on every video so this question is clearly for John well biology yeah the biology the biology part is really well cited um we don't we don't site things because um I I wouldn't know how to begin citations so for when we talk we've done a couple of videos I don't think any of them have uploaded yet that are sort of deep reads of of a book of a famous book of History um so we'll take you know one of these modern historical Classics and we'll use it as a way into talking about some historical phenomenon like the Colombian Exchange for instance um which was the exchange of microbes and people and plants and animals between the Europe and Asia and Africa and the Americas um and in that we're going to cite a source because much of the much of the conversation that we're having is about a book but when we we're talking about sort of these broad historical um Trends we don't s sources because they're not really that sourcy um but I guess we could do better citations and uh that's a good suggestion and we'll look we'll look to it I do I will tell you that it is a bit of a pain in the butt well um that's the other reason we don't do it I don't like to I don't like to do things that are hard um yeah do you have other questions we have five minutes left in our Big Show Hank and we're not going to be able to show well we have to upload it do you think we can we upload it to um what we'll do is is uh is what we we'll have it uploaded to to crash course as a as a um a video that is unlisted and we will tweet it from the crash course account why can't we list it why can't we just show it to the people I don't know because maybe in the future we we will want it because I don't because you have a policy of not putting um we can unlist it we can unlist it later what do you mean what we can we can just make it unlisted later oh I see okay I think that'll work yeah let's do it we're putting it up okay I I Hank I'm the one with the face here I make the the face is in charge the face makes the show well that's I remember I now I'm feeling IC for early in the live show when you had a face sorry I know that was those back when I had a face and that wasn't just a disembodied voice you know I always I always get nostalgic for the recent past in this case it's 30 minutes ago when you had a voice um but we will we'll maybe we'll upload one gag reel now and one next week what do you think of that Hank that sounds like a plan all right so we'll upload we'll upload mine that you sort of got to see now and then we'll upload Hank's which I have to say is even funnier and if anything it the thing that surprised me most about watching your gag real Han is how often you had to be bleeped I figured that's what you would say just then um it didn't surprise me how often I had to be bleeped oh uh yes I uh yeah uh it's a dirty time there in the in the studio well it's for me at least it's very high pressure because I know we only have have you know I know we only have like you know six hours or whatever to film two episodes and I get really mad at myself when I screw up and I don't sit and I can't say things right and um the way that I get deal with getting really mad at myself is saying saying words I shouldn't say I have a question for both of you that's kind of related to that before you guys did crash car and sow you both mostly just filmed by yourself in a bedroom or whatever without other people around so what was the transition like having to go into a studio where all of a sudden you've got someone working the camera and someone doing script supervision and you know for Hank there's like uh snake handlers in the room or whatever right they were snake handlers yeah I mean one of the keys for to my success is is no snakes and what no snake handers I don't do well with snakes and I don't do well with people who do well with snakes oh um yeah was definitely a transition the first time I went into the studio and I was like okay there's people in here with me I was not very natural I was not very comfortable um I have gotten over that it's still definitely more pressure than uh filming at home and and I definitely feel drained afterward and I'm like oh I need to go to sleep now oh good I'm glad you have that we have a wrap-up question an excellent wrap-up question from cgp Gray well can I first can I first answer that question though that Michael just asked I thought you did already no okay I I only had a joke answer the real answer is that I didn't feel awkward at all but it's because it's Stan and Danica like the the other day a reporter for the Chicago Tribune was watching me record and I was super bad um and not in the good way but in the genuinely bad way um I was really awkward and I was talking too fast and I couldn't get my lines out and it was really interesting because I I just I had a level of comfort with Stan and Danica immediately that I just don't have with most people and it was a good lesson which is that um I can't do it in front of just anyone I have it has to be the right um the right people so it it's fun because I'm friends with them and I I like them and you know they're nerd Fighters and and I doesn't feel awkward if it if it feels awkward if I feel like I'm being watched I get very bad yeah yeah uh we had like six people in the studio the other day because we had a bug Handler he came in with some giant bugs bug Handler really cool wow I do not like bug handlers um some giant rhinoceros beetles they're like the size of your fist shut up and they had and we brought in a uh he had a pupa like a rhinoceros beetle in the pupa stage God hard casing but it's like writhing around it's so cool oh God so we we were doing you know I know that Henry is my bugs what before we get to the wrapup question can I tell you how I know Henry is my son oh um we saw a beetle the other day we were walking in the woods and we saw a beetle and um Henry Henry said Daddy Beetle and I was like oh God and I I I pulled him away of course because you know Beatles are very harmful potentially and um about five minutes later we were just like walking along the the edge of of the White River and Henry looked up up at me and he said Daddy Beatles scary I was uh I wasn't I wasn't particularly comfortable with the rhinoceros beetles but I was very excited by them yeah I mean this Beetle was the size of maybe a roach but even so I was terrified yeah all right moving on what's our W question from our friend cgp gray our friend cgp gray says if you're looking for a wrap-up question where do you see trash course in a year or two that's a great question let you handle it oh just the black screen talking um yeah I uh I think that there are multiple paths for crash course um and they all excite me and some of them are smaller scale and some of them are much larger um what I'd really like is for there to be broader infrastructure behind the videos where it's not just not just a video but it has a place where it lives there's sort of a better question and answer system than YouTube comments there are potentially like worksheets or other other resources whether or not they're physical or not um ways to ways to you know reemphasize the information that you've got into your head during this crash course episode um because watching a show is one thing but then watching it and taking a doing a worksheet or taking a short quiz uh to reinforce it and then a couple weeks down the line doing that again you really end up with um a lasting knowledge of a topic and that seems like the sort of thing that um like an innovation on top of an innovation that could really be powerful um so that that's something that I'd really like to do um but as far as it being significantly different than it is now um just more of it hopefully yeah yeah I'd like there to be more I'd like there to be more teachers and more courses and um more more stuff that's the first thing that I would like I would also like what Hank wants um and I'd really like to expand the idea to include um you know background on historical events um so for instance uh when you see the Greek debt crisis um or or when when you know when Greece is having a debt crisis which these days is usually um you could it crash course could provide a place where you can go and get background both on debt crises and traditional you know sovereign defaults over the course of history and how that generally affects National economies and whether austerity historically has has led to faster recoveries than defaults and questions like that but you could also get historical background on um you know on Greece's economy or if or if you're looking at the Syrian riots you can or not riots I should say Revolution um you can go and you can get background on the history of Syria over the last 100 or 200 years that will allow you to have a better informed opinion about news stories that are going on today so I see that as as within the the you know the idea of Crash Course and what crash course really want you know is about and what what we can do well um so I'd like to expand it into that that as well that's wonderful um it's an exciting thing that we're doing together John oh thanks I I hope so I mean they decide if it's exciting not us but we are having fun doing it and um it's a real privilege to be able to do it and we feel really really lucky so uh thank you guys all for for watching and for being awesome and Hank thank you for um being a black screen so that I could be the star of the show that was very generous of you yeah thank thanks to all 4,152 of you sorry to leave you in the cold but we will still be on uh on the crash course on Twitter and uh you will see our first outtakes reel being uploaded to crashcourse youtube.com/ crashcourse momentarily all right don't forget to be awesome bfva