hi I'm John Green and this is crash
course I'm Hank green and I want to
teach you chemistry this is crash course
game crash course economics crash course
astronomy it's a free educational tool
for for everyone
crash courses vision was so big but I do
remember thinking oh man it is fun this
is fun it is it was so fun if I had this
material when I was studying it would
have changed the way I learned it was
being explained in this way that I
actually understood it this is crash
course government crash course
intellectual property crash course
sociology it was wild we were just
trying to figure out what it was crash
course film history crash course
mythology crash school of computer
science I remember just having a huge
smile on my face while I was watching
this videos we want to be useful to
schools and teachers and students but we
also want to be useful to people who are
just excited about learning because it's
possibly the meaning of life
[Music]
way back in 2006 my brother and I
communicated almost exclusively over AOL
Instant Messenger John was a fan of
weird internet shows sports racer racing
sports what's your power move it's
interesting and he thought hey we should
do that hey John
I guess you've heard by now auto power
off still some glitches to work out I'm
not going to be good at this when you're
making as many videos as we did
sometimes you just don't have any good
ideas one two three oh so we decided at
one point to make some educational
videos good morning hick it's Friday
today I share with you a story about
guns indoor tennis courts guillotines
humorous outfits and competing
historical narratives that's right it's
time to learn about the French
Revolution Hank and I got really
interested in the problem of educational
video online like it was expensive to
make which made it kind of impossible to
make on the YouTube of that era our
audience would always respond very
positively and we would enjoy doing it
it's just that it was way too much work
and we had to pay people to do what
little graphics there were and so it
just there was no way to make it work
from a economic perspective at some
point I think it may have been 2008 John
made a video about the American
healthcare system we came upon this
vlogger who had a really great rant
about why you know health care reform
was kind of like this fat pig that he
had met at this fair so what do you do
when you have a pig that's so big he
can't walk you either kill him put him
on a diet or keep feeding him which is
more or less with the health care debate
boils down to wow we could really just
use this voice over make a really
awesome motion graphic video and it
explains it all right in this in this
narration to us at that moment he was
just a really intelligent guy who was
able to describe this issue really
really well
and on top of that the audience that
they have naturally been curating is a
really good fit for the type of audience
that we think would appreciate the work
we're doing so we found thought cafe
because they just decided to make an
animation of a video that John made that
got a lot of views and that was you know
a really good summer summary of American
healthcare system and we reached out to
them and we were like can we do more of
this and they were like yes here's our
budget and we were
like now we can't
[Music]
for years we held on to this dream that
someday we would be able to make like
high quality educational video with cool
production values that you know looked
like YouTube but at the same time was
rigorous and intellectually engaged and
nuanced ultimately the reason that we
have to know that the square root of 4
is 2 is because it helps us to build
cathedrals and think about space and
make out with people but more on that in
a second YouTube came to us because they
wanted some more professional-looking
content on the site with some grant
money to like get channels started up
and we said well that's awesome because
we really want to make these two
educational YouTube shows scishow and
crash course John pitched me crash
course and and I knew that it was an
amazing idea but it to me sounded too
hard and I pitched him scishow well
hopefully YouTube will pick one of these
but I guess our ideas were significantly
cheaper than some of the Hollywood
production Studios ideas so they felt
like it wasn't that much of an extra
risk to fund both of them
[Music]
like all truly meaningful relationships
my relationship with crash course began
with the Craigslist ad I was constantly
looking for work reading the one ads
that was on Japanese television once in
a rollercoaster show I found this job
listing that said looking for an
assistant slash video assistant for New
York Times bestselling author and video
blogger and I called my mom who's a high
school English teacher and said have you
heard of this John Green guy she's like
oh yes he's he's the real deal
Hank mentioned that he was starting a
production company in zua
and he asked me if I wanted to work
there and I was like okay so two months
later I packed my bags into my Mustang
in the winter and drove through some
very snowy conditions to get myself to
Missoula Montana well I heard about
crash course I think just two blog
brothers just being a longtime
nerdfighter and then I heard about the
job and John tweeted about it one time
in 2014 and just applied on a whim that
happened to get it so I had been working
as a teacher and as a freelance
videographer and then I got an email
from Hanks assistant at the time I had
had a bad day or something and decided
okay I'll respond because this sounds
interesting to me I was a fan of John
and Hank in high school and so in
college I saw that John was gonna be
speaking locally and I went to that I
was very excited and actually met him
beforehand and we kind of got along and
luckily he offered me the internship and
I've been here since Stan had was
looking for help for new you know for
other producers and editors and we set
up an interview and it ended up being
with John even though I didn't realize
it was gonna be with John and I panicked
a little but I guess it went well enough
but they hired me so I saw the strop
listing on tumblr and
I made a green screen and my brother's
bedroom and made a very silly video
explaining why they should hire me and
then I sent it off and I thought nothing
would come of it but they they hired me
so now I'm here the first thing I worked
on for crash course was crash course
biology which I loved it also was
incredibly hard because we were building
the car as you are driving it
we had the script and we had a general
idea of how we wanted it to be used but
not necessarily what it was gonna look
like specifically we were testing a lot
of things and it was scary terrifying
really John had lots of ideas about how
it should be shocked I kept saying to
Stan that I wanted it to look like I was
in heaven and like if I wanted
everything to be super crazy white and
my face to be way overexposed and my
shirt to be overexposed and I was like
trust me this is what YouTube looks like
right now Stan you don't understand and
he was like I think this is gonna look
very blue and weird and I was like Stan
we're gonna do it this way and it looked
very blue and weird the way Hank
described it to me once is that I asked
him who are we trying to reach because I
was used to working for these online
operations where the answer was always
everybody just as many clicks as
possible and he said first I'm going to
make sure that people who need to know
this stuff are going to need it and
watch it and also people who are just
interested in it are going to watch it
and that was very clarifying for me you
know we didn't have to be click vadie
about it it was so fun to be working
with Stan working with someone I liked
so much who I respected so much and also
working on something that felt bigger
than me in September 1774 a group of
delegates from twelve of the thirteen
colonies Georgia this is actually a more
EULA or more Allah at least according to
this guy I wonder what's in today's
secret compartment Oh shocking it's a
golf club the writing I find is often
the hardest part one
got scripts and have shaped them up
something that sounds right to us we'll
schedule our out-of-town talent come in
shoot the thing there's a very small
community of science communicators and
I've been presenting science and
technology for quite a number of years
now in television
and then I came to Missoula and met the
team and I just completely fell in love
with the whole concept and everyone
working on it for me Brandon Nicole and
Stan we each are sort of masterminding
the production process of a crash course
series it takes us around an hour or
episode to film the episode mr. science
episode 21 takes for the editor whoever
it is for that series takes footage cuts
it the consultant then looks at that and
make sure that we didn't say anything
that was egregiously wrong or
problematic once we get the okay from
the consultant we send that off to
thought cafe and they do their magic
[Music]
when we got the deal from Google to make
start making crash course the first
people I thought of were thought cafe
because they're passionate because they
love learning because they love to make
funny little jokes in their animation
you know that attention to detail I
think is what makes the cafe so special
when we were brainstorming you know
early on about crash course we wanted to
come to a style that would be easy to
reproduce and that would still be able
to be expressive so you you know crash
course had this thing where it was
really educational and really serious
but at the same time didn't take itself
seriously and has this witty humorous
side to it they're not just doing
graphics they're not just realizing the
script they're also inserting their own
personalities into the script and adding
jokes and adding teachable moments you
have the script with a description of
what should happen and then that gets
passed on to an illustrator and then
that all that stuff gets thrown into the
animator and so while there's the
instructions you still have this element
of not so much broken telephone but
you've got the possibility of each
person sort of inserting their own their
own ideas
[Music]
I think working on crash course has
helped show me how difficult it is to
teach people things most teachers will
tell you that the most effective
teaching is done when students have a
really close personal bond with people
who are teaching them and you wouldn't
think that that's possible in an online
medium but Hank and John have proven
that it is possible crash course is used
by students and teachers at every level
of who those people aren't where they
are it's like I'm consistently surprised
to find out that there are like 10
year-olds washing crash course because
it's pretty complicated stuff but like
kids are smart and then we have you know
a ton of people who watch the courses
just because they want to learn not
because they're trying to do well on a
test or because they're trying to get a
job they just want to learn about stuff
I really don't think there's another
resource out there for high school and
college students that's free and as
easily accessible is most people at
least in the u.s. can access YouTube I
think crash course does something very
serious and very important which is to
provide education for everybody
[Music]
we knew coming out of our period of
Google funding that crash course was
going to become kind of unsustainable
overnight equipment is expensive people
are expensive talent is expensive
there's just a lot that goes into making
a quality product and on educational
content you want it to have a long life
not just making it correct but also
making it accessible and fun and
enjoyable all those things have a lot of
work that go into them to effectively
make good educational content I think it
requires people to edit people to write
people to research people to be very
engaging in camera you know when you
look at the budget there aren't that
many things that are like this is the
big lime share of the budget it's a
bunch of things that are all very
valuable and that we need to be putting
resources toward in funding you want to
not lose the integrity of the videos
that you're making so making really
smart funding choices takes a lot of
energy and a lot of research and trusted
partners crash course and PBS to me is
the most natural partnership that I
could imagine PBS calls itself America's
largest classroom and I think crash
course has the potential to be the
world's largest classroom so digital
Studios has been around for about four
years and we started because PBS on
television really had an audience
problem and they had kids locked up of
course and then really dropped off until
about sixty five-plus so we saw a real
opportunity to build an audience of kind
of loyal engaged fans of PBS that
probably never watched on TV it's a
natural partnership it feels like of
course we and they should be working on
the same thing and really we were
inspired by a lot of the work that John
and Hank were already doing in the
education space and we saw that people
were really looking for content that was
both smart and entertaining so we jumped
in so before we went into crowdfunding
we had kind of two ways to get a crash
course series off the ground the first
was obviously ad revenue but then
there's also partnering and we partnered
with PBS as we know ad revenue can be
very volatile so it's
up and down and you can't really depend
on it but what we can depend on is turns
out crowdfunding the biggest surprise
for me when we launched our patreon was
that it worked I was just astonished and
relieved that people valued crash-course
and that they were willing to support it
on a monthly basis
anybody who has elected to give us money
to produce crash-course Mike I'm so glad
that we proved to you that we're worth
that I don't think there is a way to
adequately communicate to the people who
have given money to this how meaningful
and important that is
we have brainstorming meetings where
we're trying to figure out how best to
give back to the patrons and mostly what
we keep coming up with is that people
just like crash course and they just
like supporting us obviously we want
crash course to continue we want we want
to keep making educational content but
we also want to know what's working and
what's not working
patreon allows us to do that allows us
to have a much more immediate contact
with people who really care about us and
care about what we're gonna be doing
it's not an exaggeration to say that
crash course would not exist without the
people who support us on patreon we
never would have made it to this moment
and I also hope that you feel as we do
like this is something that we're in
together we're working to solve this big
complex multifaceted problem of getting
high-quality information to the kids and
adults who need it and will benefit from
it this model what opens it up to people
that can afford it to help out for the
people that can't and which is great and
that's exactly what we've been trying to
do for this year fact that it keeps it
free most people who watch crash course
cannot afford to support us on patreon
and that's okay in fact that's the way
we want it it's supposed to be free
that's why we're doing it this way my
hope is just that those who can support
it and those who care about it will
choose to do so
[Music]
five years from now we're going to be
covering more detailed more in-depth
topics we're gonna get deeper into stuff
more and more subjects being
communicated there's so many courses
that could be done that aren't ever
taught in schools that are so important
to being a grown-up crash course
translated into as many languages as
possible not just the subtitles but
actually with hosts who speak those
languages and corresponding graphics in
those languages I'm most excited about
the curriculum project we're working on
where we're creating classroom materials
for teachers to use with their students
and I think having a textbook
alternative like that was gonna be so
valuable and if we can manage to do that
in five years I'll be super happy I also
really want crash course to support lots
of different kinds of learners which I
feel like it doesn't do a great job of
right now maybe some sort of you know
game development and that kind of thing
I think there's a lot of potential for
where crash course can go I'd like to
see 300 more subjects at least my hope
and my ambition is that crash course is
seen as the definitive online
educational resource I wanted to have
the most impact that it can have I know
that we're already having a ton of
impact but I'm ready for it to grow as
much as it can
I'm excited in five years ten years in
50 years if crash course is still a
thing to just be able to look back and
see this huge amount of knowledge that
has been encapsulated inside of crash
course ready for anyone to choose where
they want to start what they want to
learn my biggest hope is that in five
years crash course will still be around
and that it will still be teaching lots
of people and not just teaching people
about various topics but helping people
to get excited about learning and to
feel that an ironic enthusiasm that you
can have in those moments where you
realize that this is not just something
that you have to do so that you can get
a diploma this is not some random hurdle
that the system put in your way that you
have to jump over in order to achieve
adulthood or whatever this is instead
like the work of adulthood and that's
what I think crash course can be best at
not just sharing information but also
getting people excited about
learning and so my hope is that five
years from now we'll still be doing that
we'll be doing it for many more people
in different languages and not just
video right now just under 8,000 people
support crash course on patreon and that
support has allowed us to create content
that helps over half a million students
teachers and learners every day but we
really want to get our total number of
patrons up over 10,000 so whether you
want to give one dollar a month five
dollars a month or ten dollars a month
you can be a part of that and a part of
our work to make education easier and
better for students and teachers all
over the world at patreon.com slash
crash course
[Music]
you