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Language: en
a question I get asked surprisingly
often is is veritasium a real element
nope I made it up when I was a kid about
10 or 11 years old I went to this
Genghis Khan exhibit at a museum and I
didn't know much about Genghis Khan
except he was some famous warrior who
lived a long time ago so I was thinking
maybe we'd see his mummified body or his
suit of armor or his sword something
like that but when I got to the museum
all they had were like these tiny
fragments of pottery and some old shoes
and I was incredibly disappointed so in
this video I want to tell you my story
but with real pieces of my life
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real photons that bounced off my face
hit a sensor created a current that
created a magnetic field flipping some
domains on magnetic tape which was later
replayed recreating the current passed
into a computer digitized into zeros and
ones being to your device which
recreates the light that's hitting your
eyes right now now there is a direct
path of particles from my four-year-old
face to yours right now and there is
nothing you can do to undo that I grew
up in Vancouver Canada so I'm mostly
Canadian mostly because my family was
South Africa
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after my parents got married they moved
to Vancouver where my two older sisters
were born but I I was born in Australia
and that's because my dad was working
there as an engineer at a pulp and paper
mill at the time
this is the first house where I ever
lived I lived there for the first 18
months of my life
soon after my family returned to Canada
and I guess I was a competitive kid
because I graduated top of my class and
had a full scholarship to go and study
engineering at Queen's University the
problem was I didn't really want to be
an engineer I wanted to be a filmmaker
but there isn't a straightforward path
to becoming a filmmaker like there is
for becoming an engineer or a doctor or
a lawyer plus your chance of success at
filmmaking is very low especially in the
year 2000 when your best bet is probably
to become a PA and try to catch a break
somewhere it didn't feel like a
meritocracy or like your life was in
your own hands so what did I do well I
did the smart thing I took the
scholarship and completed a degree in
engineering physics you know some people
seem to think it's strange to have
interests in both science and film but
to me they are both incredible ways of
getting at the truth I mean film records
everything exactly as it happens and it
never changes so it's like this perfect
observation so you can't fool yourself
later like about how I felt stifled by
four years of engineering I feel like
I've been stifled by four years of
engineering now while I was at college I
did take a few film production courses
as many as I could squeeze into my
engineering timetable my final project
was a film about someone who is really
good at math but really wants to be an
artist so that's really painfully
autobiographical
I also made videos with my engineering
friends but they always wanted to do
something with
like vampires ninjas Bigfoot privatized
Pirates the videos weren't very good and
we didn't even post them to YouTube why
not go because YouTube didn't exist yet
so after the engineering degree I
decided to move to Australia and go to
film school see the Lonely Planet guide
and the film school application on my
desk
I'm leaving in five days and I've done
barely anything to get ready but once I
got to Australia I figured I needed to
get a job and get some film experience
before I could make a decent application
I mean they weren't just gonna accept
this Canadian engineer with some
ridiculous videos and on my sixth day in
the country I auditioned for and got a
role in this play at the University of
Sydney and then I started asking around
about physics tutoring work and within a
couple weeks I had enrolled in a PhD in
the School of Physics so it seems like a
kind of funny place to be in given that
I came here to do film but after a short
time I realized how much I still liked
learning and how much I liked physics
and I was hoping that I could meld the
two physics and film in a PhD about how
to make films that actually teach
physics now I know that sounds
incredibly relevant now but at the time
it didn't really satisfy either of my
passions in physics or film
I know because this is me the night the
data first starts coming in from
students watching videos that contain
misconception I just think that you know
including extra material that is wrong
and stuff into multimedia segments is
just something that no one's ever gonna
really put time and energy into and it's
never really gonna be worth much and
that sort of pisses me off and I wish I
was doing something a bit more practical
after I got my PhD I applied to the film
school now I feel like I'm ready to
become an after student and got rejected
I got rejected again the next year I
applied twice to the drama school but
never made it past callbacks I was
looking for that well-defined path
toward a creative career but failing at
that I did the smart thing and I took a
job as the head of science added to
company where I'd been teaching during
my PhD they were making motors and it
was a great job I love the students and
the other teachers and the flexibility I
had the pay was great and so at the end
of 2010 my friends were a bit confused
when I told them I was quitting
full-time work to start a YouTube
channel but I guess I had reached a kind
of breaking point I was 28 years old and
I'd spent my whole life up to then
building backup plans and doing the
things that were most likely to succeed
engineering and a PhD in teaching and I
wanted to make this shift it was like a
shift in life philosophy towards
pursuing wholeheartedly the things that
I felt to be true the things that I'd
always told myself I wanted to do the
things I told myself I wanted to be I
wanted to aim for that and not just
something that was safe a good strategic
decision in the moment
so is veritasium a real element well for
me it was it was that idea that I wanted
to pursue things I felt to be true now
you think that this would be the
triumphant moment from which I'd never
looked back but the truth is it wasn't
very good at making youtube videos
it attracts any object with mass towards
any other object with mass I was stiff
an online science video blog my
presentation style was unnatural and the
pacing was slow Fiji water has been
recommended to me by a friend for
example the mass of the Sun sometimes I
think it's a blessing not to know how
bad you are because if I had known I
probably would have quit but I didn't
and so I kept working at it and after a
couple of years well I started making
enough money on YouTube that I could
stop doing all other work so YouTube
became my main source of livelihood and
from that point on I've done it so many
amazing things that I never could have a
and the greatest adventure by far is one
that I haven't told you about but it's
when I moved to LA and met a girl and
fell in love and count
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and here we are blended around gonna go
outside now my ability to do what I love
every day is all thanks to you
and I know that may sound cheesy but it
is absolutely true that every video view
and like and comment and share all of
that great stuff is what has made
veritasium and by extension my life
possible so seriously thank you and I
guess I owe a debt of gratitude to
YouTube because they've made possible
something that was unimaginable in the
year 2000 when I graduated from from
high school and it still didn't exist in
2004 when I graduated from college and I
think about the people who are currently
in high school and college and I think
well the job that you will have may not
have been invented yet
or you may invent it so what is the
point of my story is it to say if you
follow your dreams anything is possible
hardly because I'm all too aware of the
survivor bias that is if you look at the
subset of people who are successful at a
particular thing well you're kind of
ignoring all the experience of the many
more people who did not manage to
succeed so when I see actors talking
about just you know pursue your dreams
and you can do anything
it feels really wrong like there's this
statistical bias in it but at the same
time I feel like there's a paradox to
the survivor bias because the one thing
you know about the people who survived
are that they attempted in the first
place that they ignored the logical
choice
that you know survivor bias would have
you believe never try something which is
statistically unlikely they ignored that
and they went for it anyway so I guess
my advice is if there is something you
feel you really want to do
then you should at least try it and
accept that there is a very high
probability of failure but better to try
than the alternative
where you face certain failure now
having kids definitely makes it harder
to make videos mainly because I want to
spend all my time playing with them and
not say editing so thank you for being
patient as the pace of video uploads has
slowed to a crawl but you know having
kids has also made me re-evaluate the
types of videos I want to be making and
what I want to be doing with my time you
know this idea of veritasium was an idea
where I wanted to focus on the things I
really wanted to accomplish and go
straight for those I think that's a
decision you don't just make once but
you have to keep making and keep
reevaluating and that's what I'm doing
trying to decide exactly what I want to
do next for veritasium if you've got any
ideas leave them in the comments below
and thank you for sticking with me as
this channel and I evolve
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