Kind: captions
Language: en
as of today
i have been making youtube videos
full-time for 10 years
so to celebrate i am answering your
questions plus
i'm giving away items like this
beautiful spinning top from vorso and
other items from my videos so if you
want to win one of those
then write down the characters that will
appear randomly in the top right corner
of this video those
will be your password to the form in the
description
so let's get into it
[Music]
why did you start doing youtube because
i always wanted to be a filmmaker as a
kid
i loved doing plays and musicals i had
the most
fun of my life when i was working with
creative other people
but i always thought that a career in
the traditional film or tv industry
was a terrible idea and like
your life was out of your control it
seemed to rely on a big break
i don't think those industries were
meritocracies
so for basically my whole life until i
was 28 i did
the safe thing and i studied engineering
and physics and did a phd in physics and
then i taught people physics
and i love science but i also
love just the craft of putting together
a film or a video and sending it out
into the world
and i think this makes a lot of sense
because i liked learning about science
and i liked performing
and that is exactly what making youtube
videos allows me to do
you know the process of doing science is
very different from the process of
learning science
uh and so i think it's not surprising
that this is the thing that i love
more than being a scientist
i have been on youtube for 10 years and
it was starting to show
there was so much gray in my beard
that uh i'm shaving it off to wind back
the clock
i am giving away this fully specked 2017
macbook pro i use this to make a lot of
my videos
and but those are all wiped off here now
so it's just a nicely specced laptop
that
you could use to make more videos if you
wanted
any advice you have for people coming
out of high school or college and
unsure how to take their first steps the
key
is just start doing it
after making my youtube channel for a
few months
i sort of snuck into a science awards
in sydney and australia and there i
found
sort of the executive producer of the
only science show on australian
television
and i got his business card the very
next day i emailed him
and i sent him links to all of the
videos or
you know the videos i was most proud of
anyway and
uh i didn't really expect to hear
anything but three weeks later i got an
email back from him and he was like
these are really good why don't you come
in and we'll have a chat and i think
the key to that interaction was i had
stuff to show him
i didn't go to him and say hey i'd love
to be involved in your tv program
you know what can i do for you what do
you need done you know i came to him and
i said
that's what i'm capable of and if if
that's of interest to you
then great i have literally
thousands of penrose tiles that i will
be sending out
if you want them i'm giving these away i
will send you
21 kites and then
13 darts of another color
what has been the hardest part of your
youtube journey
i would say the beginning you know
everything's like a snowball
it's always hardest to make the snowball
when it's small
and i know that there were a number of
times when i thought that i would just
quit doing youtube because it seemed
like i was getting no traction
i think the other problem with the
beginning was i wasn't very good at
youtube
i wasn't very good at presenting to a
camera i wasn't very good at picking
topics
most people know how to tell apart a
hard-boiled egg
from a raw egg well you're gonna find
out pretty quick
if you uh if you break the shell
i've said it before and i'll say it
again i think i was lucky not to know
how bad i was
because otherwise i really would have
stopped in the early days
i am giving away these ames windows all
lovingly handcrafted by me painstakingly
over hours and hours colored in
beautiful gopro hero4 still works
a little old
do your kids watch your videos some of
them
uh their favorites are the one where
daddy quote blasts off into space
and also the one where the meteor hits
the earth
i actually feel like the kids are a good
barometer of what's gonna be successful
it's like if it appeals to their two and
four-year-old brains then
it will appeal to all of us in some way
i'm giving away these
astronaut shoes which are size 8
us or 41 in europe the salt lamp
from negative ions these platonic solids
there should be five of them what was
the most
humbling response you got from the
audience and for which
video uh depends on what you mean by
humbling
in like brady herron has ruined this
word for me
but if you mean like the most
overwhelming positive response that i've
gotten
you know i would say i did this video on
the bullet block years ago
and there were over a hundred video
responses
which just totally blew me away the
one-way speed of light video
got a huge response from people there's
over 50
000 comments on that video not to
mention the
hundreds of emails i received and the
tweets and
it's incredible to have hundreds and
thousands of people
thinking about science and
the fundamental way that the universe
works
i am delighted that you guys are with me
what do you do apart from youtube well
i have three kids and they take up most
of the time
outside of when i'm doing youtube videos
so that's it i'm a youtuber and a dad
which is pretty great i love going to
the beach
i love hiking up the hill i love riding
our bikes i'm a pretty simple guy
and 2020 has made things even simpler
because there was
really nothing we could do the last
shade balls
all right what would you say was the
hardest part of your phd
okay so the hardest part of a phd is
that it's this
research degree right which maybe is
stating the obvious
when i got into it i remember talking to
someone who had recently finished their
phd and she told me
a phd is a dark time in most people's
lives
and i was like what did i get myself
into
but i realized what she meant because
for
three or four years i was kind of on
this roller coaster
the problem with research is you never
quite know what you're doing that's
the point of research and you never
quite know what you're gonna find
so there's a big risk that it's all
gonna be
worthless that you're gonna spend six
months or a year or
many years depending on your field
working on something and
only to find out that it didn't work or
it's not gonna
happen and for me that is a very
hard thing to do i feel like my
personality is not built
for that kind of research because i need
sort of to regularly achieve things and
to feel like i'm doing practical things
and having a practical impact on the
world what was the best part of it
getting to meet lots of academics and
talk to different people my thesis
supervisor manju sharma was
fantastic and i learned a ton about
academia
and about research and about writing
it was a real nice shift for me to go
into a phd
that was not solely focused on math you
know coming out of engineering physics
it was nice to be focused on something
that involved words and writing and
reading and i realized oh
that whole area of life has been kind of
shut off to me
as an engineering student so that was a
nice transition
what was the most unexpected part of it
well i gotta say that was having more
people than just my thesis reviewers
which are
three people read my thesis and the
reason for it was
i went out and made videos you know
about my phd research
and uh it's funny that a youtube video
is the thing that these days can get
your
thesis or your papers more citations and
better read
in 2010 i made this short video for
tedx in sydney and i initially shot it
like talking to camera
and when i got home all the footage was
corrupted and i couldn't use it it was
the night before the submission deadline
and so i drew stick figures in paint
ask almost anyone about physics and
chances are they will tell you they
don't like it
don't get it or it's just not their
thing and i feel like that's still
one of my the best things that i've done
which is like
there are tons of times when it seems
like you should be discouraged and throw
in the towel
but i did not i just made do with the
crappy tools that i had and frankly i
think the
video was better with the stupid stick
figures than it would have been with
a talking head
okay the garage gets full of
stuff these are boxes of the
snatums expansion kit and i want to sign
them
and send them out to teachers so
teachers use your
school emails uh in the form and
i will send you one of these if you're
lucky
okay lightning round why does veritasium
have 42 mass number
because that's the answer to the
ultimate question of life the universe
and everything
from the hitchhiker's guide to the
galaxy how are you doing well what's
your favorite ice cream flavor
pistachio or rocky road do you truly
love turbulent flow or do you just fake
it for the internet
merch i don't have any would you like
some did you learn any portuguese with
your wife
um dino she hates the way i say bacca
yao
i find it impossible science or maths
science do you miss canada
yes today especially favorite shrek
character
shrek is a hot dog a sandwich how much
do you love science
to the moon and back how many hours of
sleep do you get
not enough not enough if not youtube
what would you be today
i think probably a teacher of some sort
maybe a professor
how big is your team because the
production value of your videos has been
so awesome these days well thank you for
noticing
and yes there has been a team being
built johnny hyman
who can animate edit write music
write programs he's also working on a
channel of his own called verse you
should check it out
my wife raquel is frequently behind the
camera i'm so
incredibly appreciative of that thank
you thank you thank you
yvonne tello is my animator he's been
doing lots of great work in all sorts of
different styles
peter lebedev who's been helping me with
research and writing and doing
everything that possibly needs doing
my former professor of general
relativity at the university of sydney
grant lewis
has been an advisor on many of these
videos a huge thank you to alice for
managing everything that's happening in
chinese veritasium there's veritasium
dubbed in spanish
in arabic in russian we're working on a
veritasium hindi
and i gotta say paying people would not
really be possible without the sponsors
so i gotta say thank you for being okay
with it because that's what allowed me
to
have a rocket built or build an eight
foot tall optical illusion
those are things i just never would have
dreamed of doing in the past because
my investment in every video was
essentially only my time
and now i feel like i can try lots of
different things
so this is a q a video but the final cue
is for you which is what do you want to
see more of
on this channel in 2021 and in the
future
what have you enjoyed the most in the
past i just want to know
what i can do for you what is the thing
that really adds the most value to your
life
uh that's it for me i guess
thank you seriously thank you
you