it's a new day destin it's time to make
me smarter excellent
good morning brady i'm cgp gray and uh i
like to make videos um explaining things
and i particularly like things that uh
seem simple at first but turn out to be
quite complicated or have um involve
stories behind them that you're not
going to expect when you first hear
about it so those are the kind of topics
that i really like
well my name is derek and i run a
channel called veritasium i'm vi heart
and i make
videos about cool mathematics
cheese danish sauce
oh one second am i looking at you or am
i looking at the camera my name is henry
reich and i make the minute physics
videos that's pretty good
for three dollars
i'm like a normal guy
that uh happens to
enjoy science
and i like to study it through setting
up little experiments and figuring stuff
out
i call myself a math musician because
that's a title that doesn't really have
any associations so i can make it
whatever i want and i'll say oh yeah
that's what math math musicians do
that's that's fine my most popular
series is doodling in math class and
it's just like stuff all the the doodles
you do in in your math class
kind of finding the mathematical basis
of those
so that you can actually do math in your
math class instead of whatever it is the
teachers telling you
by official trade and training i am a
musician
i went to school for music
my degrees in music from stony brook
university and math has always been my
hobby
well i was really interested in physics
and science i love those things
but i'm also interested in in
communicating and in making films the
craft of you know making something that
people can watch and actually learn
something from so
my phd was about merging those two
passions so i could look at physics and
also how to communicate it how to teach
it it wasn't it wasn't planned at first
to be a sort of faceless youtuber i much
i much prefer to not be on camera if if
possible i really i really like being
able to uh like walk through
london and not not be recognized and so
i very highly value my anonymity and
plus not having my face in the videos
forces me to concentrate much more on
the visual side of an explanation for a
particular topic so i can't just shoot
myself talking about it i have to think
about what pictures are going to be
there
my grandfather was the one person that
changed the way i look at the entire
world
he
he taught me that you know he was a
simple man he was a cotton farmer
he went to war he went to the korean war
and then he came back and he did
rocket design for warner von braun it
was pretty interesting because the same
guy that would teach me about how to
shoot a rifle in the woods or how to how
to look at the trees and identify them
he would also
teach me about the stars
and teach me how far away they were and
he had this saying that he always said
to me he said i love you all the way up
to the comet belt
and that's uh
that really has changed my entire world
view because he you know he was a man of
emotion uh he was a man that that loved
people but at the same time he he was
you know he was aware of his
surroundings and he had a very critical
mind so the symbol for veritasium is
basically just the symbol for an element
because uh i came up with this idea for
the name
veritas in latin means truth
and so adding ium on the end makes it
sound like an element veritasium is the
element of truth so my logo is supposed
to be um like a flask from chemistry
surrounded by a gear on either side and
i like to think of that as representing
the two most powerful forces in the
universe which are science and then
technology the application of science so
there's a p
surrounded by an omega
so the real story was that uh that i
originally called it
one
minute physics and omega
and omega seemed like an appropriate
letter for that it was om was the start
of omega um and the ohm is the union of
resistance uh is represented by omega so
i said well i'll take a p for physics
and surrounded by omega and it kind of
looks cool really i didn't really think
about it that much and then eventually
when i when i actually started the
youtube channel i don't want to put
myself in so much of a box that is one
minute physics so i said i'll call it
minute physics and then people can
interpret minute as meaning you know an
order of magnitude of one minute so it
could be anywhere from 10 seconds to 10
minutes roughly uh and i thought that
was a pretty neat name because it you
know fits on the periodic table so
that's where i got the logo from and
it's got the uh atomic number i which is
the imaginary number the square root of
negative one which i thought was only
fair since veritasium is not actually a
real element
uh and then it's got the mass number 42
which um is sort of a reference to
hitchhiker's got the galaxy and the
answer to uh life the universe and
everything
yeah my happy triangle person
so my happy triangle wind
wind was a character in one of my videos
who lived on a mobius strip
and this character i ended up drawing
over and over just because i really like
triangles triangles are easy to draw and
the reason this character was a triangle
was
because it's just a simple geometric
shape it's in in some ways it's the
definition of euclidean geometry it's
just so euclidean it's so planar so for
drawing on paper for video which is on a
flat screen
triangles just completely exemplify
that
i mean triangles have been used as a
symbol in so many things for this reason
that it's got this three-ness it's got
this simplicity
okay there's a uh my favorite author is
a guy named c.s lewis he wrote a book
called
or a series called the chronicles of
narnia and in the chronicles of narnia
there's a small character named ripa
cheap and reaper chief is a mouse often
these characters go to battle but ripa
cheap has a sword
and it's like he doesn't know that he's
small he doesn't know that he cannot
add much value to the battle but he's
always fighting for truth
and so what's interesting to me is uh
ripa cheap will take on uh he'll take on
a foe that will most certainly kill him
but if the foe is against truth then
he's he's the enemy so he must be
attacked so uh i really appreciate that
sentiment so uh
there's a there's a woman in in ireland
she's a an artist and she drew this
symbol of ripa cheap and i asked her if
i could purchase it from her
and she just gave it to me
so it was really nice of her and uh so
i've kind of taken it on as my symbol
because you know it's the pursuit of
truth
at all cost um and uh you know if you're
not true in the videos then you have
nothing
so i don't know it's about it's about
honor truth and uh doing what's right
it's interesting that you noticed him on
my shirt my wife uh my wife puts these
on my shirt for me it's kind of a it's a
way to i don't know it's a team thing
right so the fact that she puts them on
my shirt is kind of like saying i'm
behind you
i'm behind you destin but it's very
important that you you stay true to the
things that we've agreed on
so it's very important for me that uh
that i remember
why i'm doing this