Hey it's me Destin.
Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.
I get a lot of questions because of Smarter Every Day.
Some that are personal, some that are about the channel,
all different kinds of things
and I've never really addressed them in a formal way.
So today on Smarter Every Day we're gonna do a question and answer video.
I've blasted out to all the different types of social media that I use
the fact that we're doing a Q&A,
and people have sent in questions.
So without further ado,
let's look at the questions that my sister Briley has prioritized
and categorized by different things,
like controversial questions,
funny, video answers, personal,
channel specific questions, scientific or advice.
Let's start with a question from the Smarter Every Day facebook page
where I literally post something so that I get Smarter Every Day
and share that with other people.
Where did you get the idea of doing Smarter Every Day,
was it a project that you created with your buddies?
The answer is, no.
I wanted to make a video about how to light a bonfire with rockets.
My wife got a new computer that had video editing software on it
I like to communicate and I like to learn.
So i created the video, it was fun, we enjoyed it,
and people started watching it, I thought that was pretty cool.
Later on I decided to actually formally create Smarter Every Day.
I initially called it Pennywhistle Productions.
Smarter Every Day was an attempt to start creating videos
before any monetization happened or anything.
I wanted to figure out a way to pay for my kids' college.
The next question comes from the Smarter Every Day instagram page
which I'll admit is not very good because I'm not a body builder
and I'm not very good at filters,
but anyway you can check me out there if you like too.
This question is from Justin.
What did you go to school for and what are your degrees?
My undergraduate degree is in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama,
I got a business minor while I was there also.
My masters degree is in aerospace engineering with an emphasis in rocket propulsion.
The next question comes from Lewis on snapchat,
which is like a stream of consciousness for me.
I am ilikerockets on snapchat
and I just post pictures and videos of whatever I'm thinking
at the moment. It's pretty fun. Anyway.
Here's his question.
- Hey Destin. This might be not only my question
but a question from a lot of people.
Can you tell us what do you work with
and what is your relation to rockets?
- I am a flight test engineer for the Department of Defense,
specifically I'm a civil servant for the Army.
I don't work in the Army, I'm not a soldier,
but I work for the Army.
The best thing to do here is just Google the place I work,
Redstone Test Center.
You'll learn everything you want to know.
The next question comes from the Smarter Every Day
twitter page which is something where I'm active
pretty much all the time.
It says how did I meet my wife,
who happens to be in the room,
so how did we meet?
- We met in physics at college.
- We met in physics at the University of Alabama.
Yaaaayyyyy. [laughs]
The next question comes from Instagram.
Hey Destin what would a fish do in the ISS in a water bubble?
Well Dr Mark Weislogel at Portland State University
actually does experiments with this
in a drop facility.
It's pretty cool, check it out.
Fish tries to leave, but it can't.
Eventually it does.
That is cool science.
[laughs]
She sees herself.
She doesn't know what to do.
You're locked in.
Ricky wants to know from Instagram
Can you put up daily videos please.
I do, on snapchat.
From twitter,
How do you deal with the pressure of presenting all of your thoughts
in video to very skeptical and sometimes mean commenters.
What do we do?
People are saying mean things. Do we let it upset us?
No.
Say no.
Next question, from Facebook.
Oh, my sister, I see what she did.
You're called the biggest blank-hole on earth and as ugly as a turd hope you like it.
[laughs]
Ahh, next question, from Instagram.
Do you have any pets?
Yes!
We have three pets.
We have Spotsy, who is a cat who has 21 spots.
We have Buckshot, who is a dog.
She's a mutt and I love her.
And then we have a third dog named Cody.
She is a three legged dog,
we adopted her
and we like her a lot, don't we.
She's pretty cool.
Can I get a kiss? Kiss?
Nope, no kisses. [laughs]
No kisses, alright.
So, next question is from snapchat,
from Keira.
My name is Keira, I'm from New York
and I was wondering if you ever had a career in the Army
because I saw your snapchats
you wear army uniforms.
Very good question Keira,
like I said, I work for the Army, I'm not in the Army,
but I do fly as an aviation flight test engineer,
sometimes I fly in helicopters.
And when I do that I wear a uniform basically.
It's a flight suit,
and that flight suit keeps me from catching on fire.
Next question from twitter.
Were you scared of not knowing anything when you were about to graduate
cause I am.
No I think you're in a good place.
I think it's OK to not be sure of the things that you know,
but you should be confident in your ability to learn new things.
OK a lot of people asked this question.
Am I submitting an application to be an astronaut.
Of course I'm gonna apply to be an astronaut.
I'd love to be on the space station or
wherever we go explore next
doing blog style updates,
Mark Watney style if you will.
That'd be a dream of mine.
Now I'm gonna apply.
I encourage you to do the same.
You've gotta chase your dreams.
There are so many qualified people though
but I'm gonna give it my best shot.
I think it'd be really cool.
Also, say hello to robonaut,
here on space station.
Here's a question from Mike on snapchat.
- Destin, what is the coolest experience you've had making a video?
- Man there are a lot of cool experiences.
I don't know, two things that stick out are
diving on the Great Barrier Reef and something that is not out yet,
something I'm editing now.
I had an opportunity with the air force.
[jet sound]
Mr Almostcool wants to know if gravitational waves are real.
Possibly.
Toilet paper roll. Over or under.
Definitely over.
Do you like potatoes?
Love em.
Here's a snapchat question from Eleana.
- Hi Destin. I'm Eleana. I'm in Philly
and my question is
What does being a father mean to you?
- When I became a father it changed my perspective
on life in general.
I realize that there are these people that
not only am I in charge of providing food and shelter for
and stability for their lives and protecting them,
but it's more than that.
It's about modelling character for them, right?
Because these people are going to make decisions
based on how they observe their leader.
Fatherhood is about giving my children a safe place,
encouraging them to bloom
and hopefully help them build into people that are much greater
tham I am.
I want them to seek truth in everything that they do,
even if it is a negative thing in the short term.
In the long term I want them to focus on truth.
From twitter,
How do you go from an idea to the video itself?
Interesting question.
I don't script things.
I shoot footage of things that interest me
and I learn about it,
over several years in some cases.
Like the most recent video,
the Mars rover,
I had footage of the Mars rover
before other people did.
I did not put it up because I didn't understand it completely.
So I don't go for the quick wins.
I'll have the footage and not put it up.
I will focus on understanding the topic.
And when I understand the topic,
and it's solidified in my mind,
and only then do I put the video together
and try to tell the whole story
of my journey from knowledge to understanding.
From instagram,
What's the biggest mistake I've made in a video.
I can specifically remember two that hurt me even now.
I misspelled viscosity in the honey coiling video.
In the dragonfly video I spoke to an expert in the UK
who said that there was a dorsal trachea and that's where respiration happened on the dragonfly.
I immediately got a call from a true dragonfly expert
whoc challenged me on this and it was wrong.
That one hurts,
because I can't go back and change the video.
I got it from everywhere.
The religion question.
Here's the deal.
From what I've read on the internet,
people think that there's the smart, rocket side of Destin's brain
and then there's this really stupid Jesus side.
And I get it.
People think that faith is a departure from reason.
But I think differently about that.
I feel like personally my faith journey has been propped up
by reason. I know that sounds strange if you're not there with me,
but that's where I'm at.
The most important thing is to remain intellectually honest
and not just believe something because you're scared
of what's gonna happen when you die and all this stuff,
but does it make logical sense,
and I have arrived at a point in my life
where yes, it does to me.
People really want to have this discussion
and argument on the internet
but I'm not interested in that
because the world is already polarized enough.
I want to bring people together,
and so I think the fact that I'm just there,
doing my thing
and people know that I'm a christian,
I think that's OK, and I'm not trying to convince anybody
of anything.
I just want people to look at the world differently
and use their own minds to draw rational conclusions.
That's all I want.
I know this didn't fully answer the question.
I spoke at skepticon and I think they're gonna put a video up about that
so feel free to check that out.
People on twitter, instagram and facebook all want to know
about the postcard project
and I owe you an apology.
Yes, I did coat the inside of an entire room of my house
with nothing but postcards that you sent me
and I read,
and they're fantastic.
People sent clever stuff from all over the world.
People from Bahrain, from England,
from Africa, you cannot imagine.
I read so many delightful things
It was amazing.
I had a management problem though.
I tried to digitize all these things and build a website based around it
but the problem is you have to remove the personal information
I can't show you that cause it's got somebody's address on it.
I had to remove the personal information before I could do that.
So that's why I haven't provided an update.
If you want to send something, go find the address, send it.
Somebody sent a space pen the other day, that was amazing.
Anyway, thank you so much.
I owe you an apology for not doing an update on that
but I'm very very very thankful.
I look at them every time I leave my house.
Question from twitter.
What's your best dad joke?
Don't really do dad jokes.
Question from instagram.
Have you ever been to Eufaula Alabama?
Well if Eufauala me on facebook you'd know,
cause I update it more.
There is a Smarter Every Day sub-reddit and
leakycauldron says What do your kids want to be?
I don't know. Hadn't asked them in a while.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
- I don't know.
A teacher.
- A teacher?
That's a good answer.
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- Cow
- She want to be a cow?
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- A astronaut.
- Who told you that you had to be an astronaut?
- I guess.. [unintelligible]
- You what?
- [unintelligible]
- You wanted to?
- Mm hmm
- Did I tell you to be an astronaut?
- No.
- That's just what you want to be?
- OK. What do you want to be?
- Batman.
- [laughs]
You seem to be so well put together as a husband,
father and a scientist.
What are some of the things that you struggle with?
I struggle with selfish ambition.
I do.
I put that in front of my family sometimes.
And that's horrible, but it's a fact, I do.
You don't see me looking for my keys every morning.
My wife makes everything happen in our family,
everything.
Anybody that knows us as a couple knows
that if they want to get something done they contact her
because I'm busy chasing squirrels or, sometimes literally.
So.. [baby cries]
there she is right now.
Hey babe, come here.
- I need baby food.
- You need baby food?
Hey come here.
The question just came up, what do I struggle with.
You can probably answer that better than me.
- Finding his keys.
- [laughs] I said that, what else?
I struggle with all kinds of stuff.
Don't I.
- Saying no.
- Yeah, I do.
But I struggle, and she makes everything happen.
True or false.
- I make a lot of things happen.
- [laughs] So yes, if I'm ever on anybody's pedestal
please smack me off, cause I don't need to be there.
OK from instagram donskoi92 wants to know
what that flashy thing is.
It's a clock.
Right now it is 7:35. It's pretty easy to read
once you know what you're doing.
I think it's cool because I can go back and look at a Smarter Every Day
from five years ago, figure out what frame of mind I was in
when I was doing it, because I can tell if it's like 3am
and it took me four or five takes because I can look at the time
between cuts.
It's my way of getting back into my brain in the past.
Mark from facebook wants to know Why always the same hat?
I have no idea really.
This was the first hat I wore on the channel,
I got it out of the garage.
It says Hurricane Creek Park on it,
a local park I like to hike at.
It's got ventilation in the back,
it's got white on the front for low solar loading,
I really liked it.
When it started falling apart I was like
oh man my hat looks trashy, what do I do?
So this was the closest thing I could find.
There's no real reason,
it's just something I enjoy.
I bought five of these
hoping they'll last longer
and I'm on hat number two.
So they're lasting me about a year and a half to two years each.
Gashal from reddit,
Could you tell us a bit about your childhood.
Yes.
Really fun family.
Four kids, my parents were auto workers. Doers.
My mom is hilarious.
She's on instagram actually, motherofallgoats.
My dad always took me with him when he would work places at night
so I got to see things about engineering.
He wasn't an engineer but he did engineering.
My mullet was incredible.
Nobody could compete with it, even to this day.
I think it made me better at karate.
So yeah, there you go.
Normal kid, really thick accent.
OK last question from Christie on Patreon.
Patreons are the people that make Smarter Every Day happen.
They literally give for every video that I make.
Do you feel like you're spreading yourself too thin
in any of the myriad aspects of your life,
for instance are you getting any sleep?
Christie, I know you well.
You're in Florida, you were a doctor in the air force,
you played wheelchair soccer,
you've got MS,
you're an amazing person,
you can look at my eyes,
you're intelligent.
You know that I'm tired.
But, the reason I'm able to do so much,
and you're not the only person that asks this question,
is because of my wife.
With our relationship, the whole is really more effective
than the sum of the parts.
My wife, week after week,
sets the ball on the tee
and just lets me hit it out of the park
and she just, she makes it all happen.
She makes Smarter Every Day happen.
For those of you that don't know,
she's DestinsBride on twitter,
and instagram and all that stuff.
Anyway, throw some love her way if you don't mind,
and yes, I do need to get more sleep
and I'm going to concentrate on that in the near future.
Thank you for the question Christie.
Speaking of sleep, the last question leads us to the sponsor.
Bailey Cole says how do you and your wife like your Casper mattress?
I sleep like a baby on the thing.
It's really pretty cool.
They send the thing to your house,
you open it up. It self inflates.
There's this really cool latex foam.
It's firmer than I thought it'd be, I really like it.
Anyway, so if you're interested in getting one of these things,
go to casper.com/smarter
or just use the promo code smarter and get $50 off.
But, Bailey asked my opinion and my wife's opinion,
so Bailey this is on you, this isn't on me.
Let's see what she has to say.
[music]
Hey, how you doin?
Bailey wants to know if you like the mattress.
- [tired] I love the mattress.
- What's the best thing about the mattress?
This is not.. I mean I didn't want to wake you up, Bailey wanted to know.
- Yeah.
- What does Bailey need to know about the Casper mattress?
- Stop.
- Stop what?
- It's firm, it's kind of firm.
- In a good way, or bad way?
- It's perfect.
- If I were to jump right here,
does it wake you up?
Or you feel pretty good about it?
- [whispered] Go away.
- So do you recommend that Bailey gets a Casper mattress or not?
[laughs]
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day.
Q&A was kind of fun.
First time I've ever done that.
Feel free to subscribe if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Support the sponsor, casper.com/smarter.
That's it.
I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day.
Have a good one.