[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link it’s time for another conversation with an interesting person from the internet and this week at the roundtable of dim lighting we have the one and only Michael Stephens creator of one of the most fascinating channels on the internet you’ve heard of it Vsauce he schools us on who he is the person behind the science is he just the Internet’s version of Bill Nye or something more we also talked about his surprising path to where he’s at with Vsauce now and the unexpected way he came up with the name Vsauce his initial viral success had nothing to do with science so this is convolution happening here we also discussed the secrets to how he gets so many views on his videos does being a Google employee give him an unfair advantage as a youtuber no I got to admit when I talk to someone like Michael Stevens who is obviously a smart gentleman he has reputation for being a smart guy I selfishly like to be able to say oh yeah yeah you know I was an engineer once I majored in civilization I have an engineering degree I have an industrial engineering the career right and so you know that’s your background I took three the levels of calculus right and so we you know this if you’ve listened to us talk about our backgrounds before that you know we have engineering degrees and we did that for a few years now the interesting thing is that we have pretty much done stuff together since we met one another right school first grade on we kind of okay friends let’s kind of have listen we’re doing stuff together except for this a graduate on college now getting engineering now interestingly we were doing the same thing I mean we both got engineering degrees and we both wore khakis and polos to work every day yeah we went to two separate places did you tuck your polo in oh of course you you could not tuck your polo in I think on an occasional Friday I wouldn’t tuck my polo but then you just look like a punk you mean you were you wore khakis with an untucked polo that doesn’t even look good looks kind of sluggish yeah it’s like I’m not gonna trust that guy with any calculations yeah you know on well on Fridays well in Fridays I wore jeans but untucked a polo into them I mean it was casual Fridays we can’t get too casual you’re not gonna wear flip-flops or something but the thing that’s interesting is that I know a fair amount about your time at IBM as an industrial engineer simply through stories that you’ve told now that we do this but you we didn’t talk about it at all at the time I I had no idea what you were doing on a daily basis what was I do I mean what was I supposed to say hey man I got to tell you about this conveyor belt layout that I designed today when the when the refurbished computers come down here I figured out the best way to put them in a box and to take the box I actually bought the machine that tapes the box it’s amazing will you come to work with me and see the automatic box taper that I purchase if you had to talk about it like that I would have shown up oh yeah man and these guys who work back there they’re from Africa and they’re really they’re awesome guys and we’re friends and they tape the boxes that’s that’s how it worked well but isn’t it faster than machine tape isn’t it fascinating that you know now we know too much about each other and I mean we’re with each other all the time so I mean it’s just that the our daily routine what would you have told me that’s what I would have told you I would have said well what I did today is I went on the internet and I just looked at ultralight planes and how they fly around and I looked at some blogs about ultra lights and then my boss came over you procrastinated and he had incredibly horrible breath that he would put his he would put his face up over the top I’m not cubical and talk he wouldn’t come into my cubicle he would just put his head over the top but really so just see his face and he would be like seven to nine feet from my face but I would smell his breath it was like a projectile Alecto so it was like right into my nostrils and so much so that I had to alter my breathing my managers breath stunk really bad too and he had a we had offices we didn’t have cubicles but so you wouldn’t tell me anything about the actual job you did did you actually do work yeah yeah well but it’s because in the specific sector of the engineering world that I was in the energy market at the time with the whole this is kind of boring information but long story short with the Enron scandal it drastically impacted the workload at a firm that was designing power plants so much so that for the whole last year that I worked there we did nothing except like read novels and go on the internet because there was no jobs because it was all job based there was nothing you could do that I told you they wanted you to be reading manuals and like learning standards but no one did that especially somebody like me who knew I wasn’t gonna do this forever what were you supposed to be doing there designing how thick a pipe should be they don’t raise water anyway well now how thick but how big around so the first year ok the first few set that one straight no but how much you know how thick a pipe is is the wall thickness and how the diameter of a pipe is what I would determine so the material in the diameter and how large the retention pond should be so this is actually kind of fascinating if you look at a power plant the entire the grade meaning the slope of the ground when you look at a power plant it’s all graded to one side or to a number of sides and there’s a retention pond basically it’s like okay we put these huge slabs of concrete out here on earth and now we have to take into account that we have changed the characteristics of this particular place so that when it rains we’ve got to take that into account and we’ve got to funnel all this water that comes off of these places put them in a pond and then distribute them you know into the you know off of basically Dam them up so they don’t ruin anything so there was an ecological consequence to what was happening you had to account for that by creating a retention pond didn’t built in like designing drains and then pipes that would route the water to the pond and that sounds awesome I built ponds but you couldn’t even put fish in them I was always like let’s put some catfish out there how come the last thing that we don’t do is turn this into a fishing pond and everyone just looked at me like because that’s not what this is about bro makes me want to go back and do it now that you got me all fired up about it let’s design some ponds ma’am you can but you can tape the boxes and I’ll design the ponds let’s do it no thanks okay I’m pretty grateful and even more so right now after this conversation of what I’m currently doing yeah this is pretty great and now you know why I never told you about that yeah because I’m I’m kind of sleepy now but give me this one concession here everyday no once a week on Fridays we need to start wearing khakis and tucked in polos because I think that it’s like professional the opposite of casual Friday the rest of the world is enjoying casual Friday dressing like we’re dressed right now you have straight-laced Fri straitlaced Friday and everybody here at the studio comes in dressed business casual and we we just be thankful that we have this slacker job basically you know we get to talk to each other every day you know it’s not a slacker job well it’s a fun it’s a fun job is we yeah it’s not just like a job but it’s fun job whistle blows whoo I’m shifting gears now do you want to say about that I was gonna shift back to Michael tucked in polos and get into this thing because who else gets to talk to someone like Michael Stevens about his personal life nobody but us right no one else is doing this I don’t think well that’s not true but it’s nice that you think that but we did have a conversation with Michael about his personal life and also everything that led up to is amazing success on YouTube which is six million subscribers on his Vsauce channel with titles of four videos including why are bad words bad is anything real how much money is there on earth what if everyone on earth jumped at once now let’s talk to the man behind these irresistible clickable titles here it is our air biscuit with Michael Stevens [Music] and then already gone through an energy drink you’re going about to go through a coffee and then we’ve got to back up why no but how come you have two waters or three of us well I already got one if I’m betting that we all aren’t gonna need a full bottle an additional yeah we’re gonna share one bottle we’re gonna pass we’re gonna pass it you know I shared a water bottle with him in real winkler once really yeah bonds yeah I went to this film school at in orange at Chapman University for like two weeks over the summer I came and spoke and he left his water bottle on the lectern and afterwards I was like free Fonz spit so I took it and drink it no I wouldn’t dare you know do that and taint the the saliva but I don’t have it I don’t know I might so it was icy when you said that you’re like I shared a water bottle with Henry Winkler I was like oh that means you guys were hanging no tennis together he doesn’t want no water he doesn’t know that I took it and I thought you know if I ever drank out of this it would be a little bit like kissing him yeah when what did you think about that like and so then you drank out of it or they didn’t I was afraid to do that so I just kind of I probably honestly threw it away but just kept telling the story right right because it’s really about the story we really about that we once shared a lobby with Henry Winkler remember that yeah he was in the lobby and so were we that’s pretty much it yeah shared it though yeah they were sharing it really good I remember as a kid being a pro wrestling fan and thinking I don’t know why I thought this because I never saw Pro Wrestling in person but I was thinking if I were to ever be at a pro wrestling event and Hulk Hogan were to run past me and give me five because he would do that as he was going down into the wrestling ring I was I developed a plan that I was going to come home put my hand in plastic and try to capture some of the sweat from Hulk Hogan miss and even though I never was able to execute the plan it was a fully foreign plan in my mind right but you would eventually wash the hand you would just bag up some of the molecules that were still there right and then I would keep the bag and then wash my hand that’s great that’s actually really clever why I’m pretty clever but it wouldn’t work I’m just like trying to bag a fart or something no it’s you never tried to bag a fart why are we always going to head for it’s the three of us and last time you hear on the mythical show we talked in detail about diary and if you like like most of that got cut I’m thinking it’s for like the you know anniversary special deleted scenes bonus but but let me let me put it to you this way you’re breathing in atoms that whole Cogan has breathed in you don’t need to bag up a high five molecule that’s just a point just be just be yourself in theory though but you can’t you can’t point to it yeah this is him you want to create memorabilia that’s why you at least kept the water bottle for a few minutes or days or weeks or whatever it might still be in my closet in my bedroom at home in Kansas but is it true though that means statistically speaking have we breathed the same molecules as Hulk Hogan like oh yeah many times over ain’t many times over atoms are just so tiny they’re so tiny each breath contains quintillions of atoms and so just to get a hundred of them from hulk hogan’s breath it’s statistically very very likely that you’re doing it right now my goodness this is amazing we’re breathing Hulk Hogan’s air and you know what there’s a 100% chance that we have breathe Ric Flair’s air because we shared an elevator with him remember that well that was greg the hammer’ valentine it wasn’t a flare they were both at the same hotel in Knoxville Tennessee you wrote you you and Tommy Rutledge rode the elevator with greg the hammer’ valentine I rode the elevator with the Nature Boy that’s called a bad choice on my part I mean and I’m breathing elevator I breathe deeply when I was saying that when I was in that elevator with the Nature Boy you’re talking about wrestling to it I’m sorry okay sorry junior Pro Wrestling know what I think I was I was born at a different time I was a bit too young during during the whole Cogan era and then the Stone Cold Steve Austin era I was in my like science phase I wanted to know a bunch of facts and own test tubes and so well there’s a lot of physics and progress there there really is and there’s a lot of acting which I was always interested in as well really yeah I did theater all the time all through high school college and in a way now I still perform right to a global audience well let’s do that let’s go let’s go back let’s go even earlier so where you from Stillwell Kansas still well Kansas Stillwell is that’s a small town I’ve never heard of it it’s a pretty small town not named after the stillness of its wells but rather a guy named mr. Stillwell who helped get the railroad through the city or something and by city I mean it was a small town as Overland Park Kansas has grown it has become a bit bigger but it’s still not really a suburb there aren’t sewers there aren’t curbs there aren’t leash laws for dogs but every day there are traffic lights um oh yeah there are a few traffic lights okay yeah I was born in Kansas City Missouri hmm and then as soon as I turned you know five years old start going to school my parents moved to a house that wasn’t right on this big busy road Ward Parkway and we moved to Stilwell Kansas which it’s a bit political right because all my family lived in Missouri and here we are being kanzen people that was there’s controversy there yeah because we’ll be traitors to the state of Missouri yes I think so by leaving by leaving we only lived a mile from the border I could just ride my bike over to Missouri and we would do that we go to Belton Missouri to buy fireworks every year okay oh so they got loose laws over there on the fire yeah yeah yeah South Carolina we would go to South Carolina right yeah right across the border all the firework tents would set up there over the summer yeah yeah so that was the thing oh I’m riding my bike across the border that was that was kind of like an adventure for you as a kid yeah and it was exciting because it’s also a nerdy thing borders to be like wow like I can have one foot in Missouri and one in Kansas and it’s completely an arbitrary thing there humans made up right but you’re like wow there’s something special about this it’s like sitting on the equator we used to do that with the counties we would be like this is the Johnson County Johnston County line was it John Johnson County Johnson County yeah counties were a big deal back in North Carolina Johnson County that’s where Stillwell is Johnson County versus ya know this Johnson guy did a lot of counting Wow I was was Johnston so guy’s a jerk yeah yeah yeah so did you grow up with both your parents what was your family situation like yeah definitely a group with both of my parents and a sister two years younger than me named Melissa okay and she is just so athletic she played semi-professional American football on all girls team what yeah Jesus just bought it yeah Wow she just bought a dirt bike and I’m like oh cool but now she’s doing like BMX tournaments on it and I’m like you gotta be kidding me I break a sweat just peeling an orange but my sister she is so fit and athletic and she does all kinds of sports so what I mean so what is that like growing up you know where you kind of you’ve got the stereotypes backwards a little bit in your family you know you’ve got the jock sister and you’re into science yeah so there were still stereotypes though still like well if you’re going to excel at soccer then I’m gonna excel at knowing the most about everything else yeah my my older stepsister anything she liked I decided not to like just because she liked it like music as a kid I decided not to like music use it all Pyarelal period because Amy liked music you could have just picked the genres that she liked and hated those I was that I was that determined to to be different I’m going to swear off all the Arts because you’re a fan of music right so did you consciously say this to people oh I don’t like music yeah that’s when a kid would say yeah it was like yeah that’s her thing yeah but but then I slowly got into it I mean I got like weird al’ yankovic tapes which you know you can argue that’s not really music so I was like okay this is like a comedy thing something like this is this is making fun of music just like I do all the time so have you heard this experiment has not been done before but you have a child step one and then you raise your child only listening to Weird Al Yankovic so that when they go off on their own as as you know an adult and they hear all of these songs the originals they think who are these people ripping off Weird Al and not being funny that’s well that’s a cruel experiment yes sir I’m still fertile I could I can still do it are you still fertile yeah I think so yeah Congrats all right let’s keep going here so your your sister a little bit younger what was it like growing up in that environment or did your parents do what do they do it was a fantastic environment my mother right now is working as a para at a high school and she’s a crossing call what a para a para so she helps all the teachers and she helps with students that need extra help follows them around and gets to be in school all day in high school but then also gets all the high school breaks so she’s off for the holidays in the summer and so just perfect because that makes it easy for my sister I had to come home and visit and not have to like have her take time off work and blah blah blah my dad is a chemical engineer and he worked for a company called Black & Veatch the whole time really uh I know someone who worked for Black & Veatch really my first job out of college was Black & Veatch it’s ret no kidding and we’re in Kansas City Missouri yeah they are to always talk about Kansas City like we’re gonna send you to Kansas City whoa okay so go on what did you do for them I was a civil engineer civil engineer yep yeah I I course it’s a you know a power design firm you know so we in our office in Cary we designed mostly natural gas plants and so I was not just civil but specifically what you know a hydraulic engineer so yeah I would design the waste basically the water retention system that is drainage system funny and then like route some of the piping and stuff did that so excited to it sounds very exciting it was riveting my uncle’s still works for Black & Veatch well I’m sure I know a lot of people who know your uncle because we had like a hundred people in our office still it’s still there in Cary North Carolina and they they went to and fro from Kansas City all the time well your uncle still works there your dad doesn’t anymore but he did work there when you were growing up as a chemical engineer yeah and he worked in sulfur recovery so when you are getting natural gas petroleum out of the ground there’s a lot of sulphur in there more than you need and a lot of these these plants that process or extract petroleum products are really far away and so it’s not like I’ll throw the sulfur in the back of Ted’s pickup and we’ll drive it to the you know place where they make fertilizers or paints or what whoever needs the sulfur it’s usually in the middle of Siberia or something and so my father invented a process called step sulfur to energy process that actually took all that sulfur and then you could in some way use it to actually get energy back to keep running the plant was very popular he has a patent on it oh wow maybe event.this while I was a child so is this like I mean is this the kind of thing you invent this and it’s like a life transformation kind of situation well he invented it while working at Black & Veatch so they owned and okay owned it and then I don’t know exactly all of the details but after I went off to college he got a offer from a company based in Malaysia to start a sulphur recovery group for them so he went off made his own company called KPS and I wondered why did you call it KPS why didn’t you call it David Stephens awesome company or something yeah and he and he gave me this advice he was like Michael I don’t want to meet a client and tell them hi I’m from David Stevens energy recovery I’m David Stevens because then it seems like that’s it you know if you’re right David Stevens from KPS well right what is KPS that sounds huge mm-hmm yeah we digitized your rhettandlink ink yeah it’s like the yeah I’m gonna read from Rhett linking I mean I have to do this all the time when we’re like set you know setting up you know a new phone account or something like that because we do all this ourselves so I said like what’s the company I’m like rhett and Link Inc and they’re like in your name from like Rhett right Laughlin it gets kind of small kind of quick yeah they’re like okay I see what kind of coordination dad is a smart guy any lever yeah now so for you as a kid were you a very inquisitive child kind of nerdy were you you you know how would you describe yourself then and where you’d like take taking after your dad genetically or just socially or what was going on I took after my dad genetically because that’s the law of biology that also got a great question also I took after him after my detention well I wasn’t adopted in my mind it was it made it was a more intriguing question he took me to museums a lot he’s a very inquisitive guy very interested in all kinds of things from philosophy to music to Chemical Engineering to physics to history to art and I call him a polymath which is what I would like to consider myself as well I don’t know how you qualify to be a polymath but what does that mean exactly polymath it’s someone who is interested in and can have meaningful conversations about all kinds of disciplines did you invent that term no not at all no it’s been around since the word poly and math have been around oh yeah I when I think of math I think I like arithmetic right but I think math in this sense can mean discipline okay like Jared Diamond okay that guy is a polymath he’s like oh you want to talk about chemistry and also the Anthropology of tribes in New Guinea I can do that so it’s a nice way to say no at all yeah you want to be a you want to be a palatable know-it-all which that yeah that to make it a compliment cuz no it always look good to call it not a know-it-all but an interested in it all okay okay and and that’s that’s that was my identity you know how in high school you’ve got the the Goths and the jocks and and whatever well I wanted to be the kid who had read the encyclopedia that’s a joke right oh that guy’s so nerdy he read the encyclopedia well I did you did I did I read the Encyclopedia not because well it was interesting sure but I also just really wanted to be able to tell people oh yeah well I read the encyclopedia and okay so it’s okay that’s honest I appreciate that early on you could tell that I was curious but also was a performer okay so you didn’t necessarily have some of the other stereotypical things aspects that come along with someone who’s really interested in science and math and all these other things at that age which might be social awkwardness etc really good question I see I wasn’t that socially awkward because I was such a class clown right I was not super attractive I didn’t I wasn’t in the popular crowd but I did on two occasions get invited to their parties because of my attitude in class mm-hmm right I could be sarcastic and talk back and the kids loved it and the teachers didn’t mm-hmm so I got suspended my sophomore year in high school yeah suspended what did you do exactly alright let’s go back and just explain that this particular class I was a really bad but great class clown in right I would get the kids to all laugh at things and I would you know criticize the assignments in funny ways and the teacher really didn’t like that so then one day I was going to make this joke about my friend who was quite nerdy he tucked in his okay he wore his gym shirt to class yeah kind of a no-no kind of a weird thing but he was gym class it’s not gym class it was an English class and he not only wore it to class but tucked it in with the belt hmm it was like okay you’re not fooling anyone that’s it that’s our gym shirt like it even get out of smells so a few days later I wore my gym shirt to that class and everyone’s like oh Michael like he’ll do anything and I said wait I need to tuck it in uh-huh but I was a little bit of a chubster so I had to unbutton my pants to start tucking this thing at all that’s a no-no everything goes according to plan sit back down doing the assignment so so everyone’s in class this is like in the middle of class hold on guys I need to tuck in my shirt that’s part of this journey to open my pants to all of you but everybody got it oh yeah because Ralphie he came in yes yeah because this other student had done it they all got it and didn’t think a thing of it but was his name Ralphie uh almost let’s call him Ralphie okay his identity he seems like a Ralphie to me and so the teacher realized this could be the last straw mm-hmm let’s call this sexual harassment taking you know ants off in class so she won’t mean did you pull your pants down like a toddler no no I just I unbuttoned and probably unzipped a little bit just so I could get my hand in there to tuck the shirt you you weren’t like a toddler using the bathroom you were like an old man tucking in his shirt exactly do this type of thing of public all the time this morning yeah I don’t do that in public anymore but the assistant principal shows up and takes me out and as far as he knows I just tore my pants completely off and did a striptease but cousin because the teacher used the term sexual harassment right so they snatch he snatched you out of class yes there’s the principal and so then I was stuck in what’s called ISS in-school suspension I’ve read that defended a yeah right and I wasn’t able to explain to anybody what had really happened I didn’t even speak with the real principal but I told the assistant principal look what happened is like I had been trying to get up to the cookie jar to steal a cookie which is bad and then as I do it oh whoops I trip and my pants fall off and now I’m in trouble for that but that part was an accident mm-hmm whatever the principal never heard my explanation and so I was suspended for three days Wow yeah and I had to go to all my teachers and tell them that I was suspended for acting up in class and if it up to them to give me any assignments I would miss so that I could do them while I was suspended or they could just say no you deserve this and I’d get zeros on this thing so that was kind of like a walk of shame and you go to all my classes before my parents came and got me and I was in a lot of trouble and that kind of thing ends up being on your record essentially right and we asked you to start trying to get into college yep so when I applied to colleges fill out all the information and there’s that great question it’s just one question with a yes or no checkbox have you ever been convicted of a felony or suspended slap it together they’re together and if you check yes you have to submit an explanation that you wrote separately and you find yourself talking to colleges about your fly being open right it was a kid your rap hands me my button he came to class with his gym shirt on yeah and they would hear that and go okay I I believe you weren’t trying to harass anybody but that’s just not even funny like that’s not even a very clever trick you tucked in a gym shirt at least get suspended for a good joke but here’s here’s what happens so I turned it around and it wound up making my college applications stand out because I was gone for three days I was a little heavy at the time as I explained needing to like do this whole like pants thing because I couldn’t get a shirt in otherwise and that summer I mowed yards and ran and lifted weights every other day and I lost like 40 or 50 pounds whoa okay I got really tan I mean I was hot all right I was hot and I came back that next year and the attention led to a physical transformation exactly huh and and beyond that I did a bunch of community service that summer working at this Nature Park which was cool because everyone else there was my age and they were doing court-ordered community service so they were there because they you know broke stuff vandalized stole things were caught with drugs whatever but I was just the kid who was like I really want to get community service hours and sure enough when I got back to school I was hot I became I think vice president of National Honor Society so on those college I which is what happens when you get hot that’s what happens when we get hot yeah on my applications it all says yes I got suspended but it was a wake-up call a clarion call to change that caused me to better myself and now I’m ready for you University nice yeah yeah when I was doing community service at the Nature Park this one kid that I really liked hung out with a lot he was there because he’d stole a canoe from a sporting goods store that’s tough like how do you do that he’s like it made so much sense if I tried to steal something small I get caught but if I just walk out of there with a whole canoe people will think well he clearly knows what he’s doing no one’s just gonna walk out with a canoe but the problem was his pants were unbuttoned and I think the problem was sexually harassing that canoe yeah yeah if only the problem in his case was that he was like 14 and 14 year olds don’t just like buy canoes and drag them out if you’ve been like a man if you were not a or a woman just an adult person here general or if he was wearing like a you know bright construction vest it would look like oh it’s official like just let him do it yeah so he was there at the at the yeah and what’s neat is because I was the only person there who wasn’t in trouble through juvenile court I was given the most responsibility I got to drive the golf carts around with all the plants and mulch or whatever I got to kind of lead the projects yeah yeah so dad as you can see I hit my nadir and then I could only go up from there and you did yeah that’s what got you into college where did you get into cod University of Chicago and it it was a result of this like the essay that you attached the sexual harassment explanation I think it helped a lot yeah Wow and you wanted to or what did you studied what I studied neuro psychology and English literature mm-hmm okay so and you mentioned that you started getting into theater and performance and stuff so that started a little bit earlier but you carried that into college yeah so in high school I started doing exactly what I do now on Vsauce which is I wrote informative speeches for a program called forensics that’s like a a club at your high school exactly and then on the weekends you would go to different high schools and you would perform informative speeches about seven and nine minutes long to judges and then they would you know at school all public speaking not debate it was not debate it was competitive public speech okay right and there are different events you could also do oration which is a speech that’s a bit longer and it’s more about an opinion letting people know about something or giving them information well it’s different than informative and I did both and I did my first informative speech about ketchup and as a guy who had grown up reading the encyclopedia and I could come up with a lot of things to say about ketchup or tangentially involved in ketchup and I was quite excited about these things I mean I’ve talked the same way I do now my first tournament I got first place I was this fresh matchup for ketchup I called it ketchup on ketchup oh yeah I get it yeah play on words play on words now let me tell you this in high school I went through puberty at like eight years old not even high school so I was you had you had a beard really when did you get the beard is every time ah yeah I think I was still in the womb when the beer was coming in it was sprouting yeah so before all the other guys caught up I was like quite you know mature looking and big and I was the only guy in my high school who could play adult male characters in plays huh so they hear that I’m doing speeches I don’t really act but the drama teacher asked me to audition for Repertory Theater and I just gave one of my speeches and they were I think they just said look we need this guy cuz he looks so old mhm and sure enough I performed in a lot of plays as the dad or the oldest man right I make sense because you’d rather use one of the students as opposed to like the janitors I mean sometimes they use the janitor sometimes they use just a – somebody who works unemployed dad right and then it’s like that’s a little creepy this adult guy right yeah so I could do it and I already had like this kind of receding hairline and that was so lucky I mean if there’s any piece of advice that it’s okay to kind of have a gimmick because you’ll get in faster I didn’t have to necessarily already know how to act and a lot about theater I just was able to say yeah sure I’ll be the dad I’ll be the old male figure and that’s what I did but the other people that I acted with the other kids were so much more talented than I was that was that was amazing because they were so good I had to keep up with them and I had to learn and I always felt like I was surrounded by people more talented than myself and that’s that can make you scared but it could also be really inspiring and so I think my life has been a story of trying to find those moments where I can be the one in the room who knows the least and is the least experienced and can hopefully get some of the surrounding colleagues talent to rub off on me so what where was your mind when you went off to college and had that double major and this this bent towards entertainment I knew I was never going to be that great of an actor but I got really into the theory of theater and directing so William ball and Bogart I read everything they wrote yes so connect the dots for us and how it went from where you were at in college to where you’re at now so I’m doing a lot of theater right especially directing that’s what I love to do and then I saw a video probably on college humor or something I don’t think YouTube was quite there yet and it was a mash-up that took the shining and made it look like a funny movie okay laziness yeah it was a um movie trailer that for a movie called shining which is this feel-good relationship thing behind the Sun and like a family vacay he just the the guy who edited it just chose the right moments to make it look like a family fun thing and then he put music in that really pulled at your heartstrings yeah and it floored me that was so powerful too day we take it as you know well anyone can do that but at the time this was like a landmark thing that you could take a piece of work like The Shining and make it mean something completely different without even needing to own a camera it was just straight up editing and that was huge to me so I immediately joined our campus film group so that I could learn how to use editing software and one of the first things I edited was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off the trailer remixed to look like a horror film okay so you did the opposite I did the opposite shiny and what I did it was so simple but it was a great exercise I just took the entire movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and then I took the trailer for Friday the 13th with Don LaFontaine voice over and I used his voiceover as the template and I just found Ferris Bueller scenes to fit each thing that he said so when he goes 13 of her friends are dead I took the nurse giving a hug to Sloan right yeah and it just it was really easy you just find a thing that kind of matched and then you’d put it in this like spooky music to him and yeah and then where did you post that I posted it on about 16 different video sites everything from Ebaum’s world to I film – Yahoo – yeah CollegeHumor yeah we were there same strategy I we we used to have an account everywhere all those places you just mentioned and many more and it was it was um called super distribution Funny or Die was one yeah and did it take off anywhere yeah on CollegeHumor right so they put it on the front page if you want you today you’re gonna go this is really a clumsy edit but seriously at that time we’re talking about 2006 2005 this was like whoa you just changed a piece of culture and and how many people have watched it two million that’s insane so that made me really excited i remixed george w bush and karl rove into a rap video which again is terrible I called it Bush and Rove thug life so in their own words they were like talking over a rap beat kind of thing there was no auto-tune back no there was well maybe there was some sort of auto-tune thing but I was no opportunist right I just remixed a couple of songs make it rain by Fat Joe and ass one other song and I just found moments like George Bush raising his hand up and then I looped it so it looked like he was going yeah to the beat I mean now I can’t see what I’m doing but it’s very hip hop oh really in tune with dance moves and that’s what I did and that wound up on the front page of Funny or Die with a review by Chris Hinchey Brooke Shields husband and he was like I judge someone’s friendship with me based on the reaction to this video yeah and I got like a hundred thousand views by being on the front page of Funny or Die beyond 2006 and that was giant and the fact that this celebrity talked about it I’m like okay I know what I’m doing this is incredible it’s basically art but it’s also comedy and look how big the audience is and it was just editing just a little bit of editing that you learned by going to this club it wasn’t creating anything from scratch it was basically using that footage ya found footage template and so did you start to branch out at that point or just more the same so then I made a YouTube channel called campaign 2008 but the pain was spelled Pai in like ouch pain did it very clever and I just liked ketchup ketchup on ketchup so there I did all my political remixes I think Bush and Rove thug life might be on that channel and then I just started making an edit for every person running for the presidency in 2008 huh so I did one with Ron Paul that mixed him up with some Chamillionaire song um yeah gosh I kind of him forgetting some of these I did a Hillary Clinton one where I found a speech where she said something about white something like red white and blue and she also talked about like power and so I made it look like just talking about white power yeah it’s really stupid stuff but sensational sensational yeah but really they were exercises that allowed me to learn how to use editing tools so if I saw an interview with Ron Paul with a blue bag I’m like I think I can chroma key that blew out and put him in a Chamillionaire video and sure enough I learned how to do that and it took hours because I was having to like Google how to use chroma key on Final Cut and write stuff you were doing this totally alone I was alone yeah in the basement of the like Biological Laboratory which had a media suite and that’s what I would do you know I didn’t even have my own computer that could run final cuts so I would get up really early and go there and just work you know yeah look at that guy doing biology in there yeah did your very night did your friends at the time know that you were kind of creating these viral videos or was it because typically people who are in college we were creating viral videos it’s more of a collaborative thing oh my friends get together we thought this would be funny I found an interesting that it seems like an interesting isolated experience it was very isolated yeah because I was working with found footage just editing on my own and I at the time I worked in the basement of the big library just opening mail that they received and sorting all the mail and so I would just sit there and I would listen to political speeches and then take notes about ooh the way she said the word but was so isolated there I could easily make like cut that out and make it sound like she talked about her you know a bottom but right and I would just do this and while I opened and sorted the mail and I think because all of my friends in college were older than me by the time I was a senior they’d all graduated and and my closest friend who was my same age he was studying abroad that year so and I moved into an apartment that was a studio so I lived by myself and so it was a very isolated life I think my girlfriend had broken up with me too so all I did was watch political news take notes on the speeches and then go to the library at 7 a.m. when it opened it closed at about 1:00 a.m. and all I did well so were you sad or were you happy no I was super happy I mean I still had a bunch of friends through theater that I hung out with during the day and I’m still going to classes but I’d be calm incredibly focused on each project mm-hmm and it was interesting because then the project itself was faceless so exactly yeah you know it was kind of it was this channel that it wasn’t personality based right right so the most famous episode I ever made through campaign 2008 was called Hillary Clinton farts and I found a moment in a debate where she cleared her throat and I could put in just a little and I made it really subtle and I put a filter on it so it really did I mean it looks realistic and in fact it’s fooled a lot of people uh-huh and when I when I told this story to some people didn’t put it to a beat you did no this was just a 28 second long clip and I watched the whole thing and I made notes of all the other brock obama john edward is that the interviewer and audience members reactions and i got all the right reactions where they just sort of put their heads down or they just kind of walked every blankly and then the very last reaction is this big guy in the audience who’s just looking nodding his head like no that’s my kind of girl and that was 28 seconds long it took off like crazy i think it has something like 9 million views and then a guy just ripped it off of my channel because it was faceless and put it on his and that one has like 12 million views oh really yeah and he cut I did put a campaign 2008 logo at the end that I’d made but he cut that off or you know we just got this was he got ripped everywhere and you can find it in all kinds of video sites when I guess at the time I mean it he’s like a lot of us back in that time 2007-2008 you know you didn’t really had there was no vision there was no business plan associated with this was just like this is really cool and people are watching and exactly doing you kind of get addicted to yeah you know that the attention that these things garner yeah yeah I made one called Barack Obama would where I made it look like Barack Obama was singing a Bollywood song I just I took one of his speeches and I cut out every vowel and consonant sound so that then I could take the Bollywood vocal track and just say okay that’s like an it’s a long a let me get the Barack long a mouth shape and I animated him singing it and that like lip-synching lip-synching exactly and that wound up on around up being written about in Newsweek magazine Wow yeah and I didn’t even know who I was and I didn’t ask they just said you know here’s a still frame from brocco bhalo would a crazy video made by an Obama fan which how did they what didn’t say I was an Obama fan I was just a guy editing a goofy thing but it got in Newsweek and that was insane so at about that time we move on to the next part of the story which is Ben rellis discovering the videos that I was making in Chicago and asking me to make some kinds of edits for barely political which at a time was Ben was the creator of radio yeah yeah and that was huge that was like when that came out people were like wait Obama must have funded this no one just does this on their own a parody video had never really been made like that ever so to this day Obama girl is in textbooks because the 2008 election was this like first election social media was around for and he’s a big deal so so and then creator of Obama girl this this amazing viral sensation contacts you because he’s seeing that you’re doing something political same thing right political comedy yeah yeah and so I made a piece for them that I was paid some flat fee for and it was it was the same as Hillary farts but it was John McCain this time and I got him calling up on a phone laughing and I made it sound he was burping and then I found footage of Hillary Clinton answering a phone and kind of like she’s confused about the thing and so he just keeps farting and burping over the phone and then she’s like what I what and then and then he just like laughs and hangs up and at the end how did that window man I think it has like three or four million Wow yeah but it was on political channel at DEP yeah yeah it so did that transition into a job yeah so so then I started doing a lot of editing for the stuff that Mark Douglas and rusty Ward were writing for barely political and they would like overnight me the footage and I’d edit the thing then when I graduated it kind of turned into I would to work with you guys all the time and they were in New York right they were in New York City so by about September we’d worked out a deal and I was hired full-time by next new networks which I owned barely political and I moved out to New York City and did that for like four years right and there’s a number of things that are fascinating about this for me I mean I I think when I first saw you because we’ve all witnessed you know the explosive growth of your videos over the past year or so especially and like we’re talking a five million subscriber job in like a year time yeah yeah and I think the thing that you know when you see something that becomes incredibly successful on YouTube as youtubers watching that you conjecture and you try to figure out why it’s working and you make assumptions about things and I just was thinking okay this guy obviously is from a science background he’s incredibly smart and he was some professor somewhere some scientists somewhere that got somebody was like hey we know we know how to produce this content and we’re gonna put you here and make you do this and it’s just working great yeah that’s just my the assumption that I brought but it makes so much more sense to hear the story which is obviously you’re a smart guy who read the Encyclopedia who can speak on these subjects with authority but the reason that it’s so successful is because you lived it you discovered how things work on the Internet personally and personally produce these things in a way that you just can’t pull some professor out of a college and say hey talk about this you know I think it’s fascinating even going back to what your you know your you know oration and how you you speak and how it all doing because the background from that – yeah I think a lot of people don’t know that backstory you know they think maybe that I’m just brought in and there’s a whole team producing them but up until a month ago I was doing all the editing and everything I researched and wrote and then I shoot alone just like say Frank you know what the camera has to be close enough to my face that I can reach out and press the record button and focus it yeah to this day I still shoot alone luckily I have an editor now who can help me get that and he can work on the edit while I work on the next step or on other projects but yeah I grew up with the Internet I grew up ever since maybe 2005 I think they’ve only been a few occasions I haven’t made a video during a week since then but some of them were faceless they were just crazy edits or compilations that didn’t say hey I’m Michael Stevens now at some point next new networks that you worked for became was bought by Google or something happened there and kind of at this kind of at the same time with so many changes going on with how YouTube itself worked there was a lot of Vsauce on the homepage of YouTube I remember there was there’s a meeting amongst a whole bunch of youtubers where YouTube people came in and explained all the changes and at one point there was a an outrage where it was like why is this Vsauce can get on the homepage all the time but I can anymore what’s happening and then there’s somebody saying well you know Michael is a Google employee and it’s like oh that’s the answer and of course I don’t believe that’s the answer but you know you wrack your brain and so is that really what it is do we need to become Google employees to really well then explain first this thing the acquisition so that you’re technically working for Google of course yes so first of all no I mean I wish I knew how to get onto the front page that is a super-secret thing that is always changing right which is kind of cool in fact I wish I knew more about how these algorithms are built because there’s not anyone who makes a conscious decision to curate anything onto the front page because that’s that’s not a very you to be thing right it should be this is what people are watching and you can actually surface super cool content faster using mathematical algorithms so they’ll detect wait a second Perez Hilton and Sports Illustrated both embedded this video that’s a weird combo clearly this is something important get it up there it’s important right or it’s being viewed by a very diverse group of demographics get it up there right but the specifics of how all these things are weighted is a super huge mystery I think to almost everybody but you’re a Google employee right so to go to the acquisition next new networks had created a lot of really great shows and we discovered a lot of great talent for instance the Gregory Brothers and auto-tune the news mmm been rellis found Michael Gregory doing his little funny things and and we started collaborating with barely political and an auto-tune the news and so YouTube’s wound up acquiring next new networks so that we could take what we’d learned in the field making all of this stuff and and send it out to partners at scale right and teach them what we had learned and give them advice and all of that and by the way Ben rellis is the reason why the mythical show existed you know working on the innovation side of YouTube from within YouTube’s and what does YouTube wants to invest in well one of those things is long-form I was having a relationship with Ben that that’s where the mythical show came from just as a side note so he got moved over next new networks got moved over and you as a part of that as at Google I’m yeah and it was it was just it was phenomenal because all of a sudden YouTube acquired a company of people that had been using YouTube and Ebaum’s and Yahoo and every possible way to super distribute Netflix Roku boxes all of these things we’ve been using this for years and we’d been building successes and failures and we tried everything so all of a sudden we brought in all these people to youtube who had been using the system for their well being you know if I didn’t get enough views on something well I might just get fired right there was this pressure to always be innovating and to be figuring out secrets like oh if I do this I think I might be able to get more views or I might get onto this chart or I might edit all these things and how do I use annotations to do something that’s really tricky and gets me blogged about like that was our whole mindset it was a really creative environment so then YouTube got all of this knowledge when they acquired next new networks and now I work for YouTube as a programming strategist spreading out my successes and failures and questions and challenges to other Creators letting them know hey I did this once you know two years ago and it worked really well or I did this and people hated it so maybe don’t do that and how did how did the whole moon to London factory so I was a programming strategist in New York City and they needed someone to do that same job in amia which is Europe Middle East and Africa I was going out to London for a week or two at a time to sort of meet with their partner managers and tell them you know hey these are some cool things people are doing there’s some really innovative things people are doing these are some programming strategies that are working shows that don’t just get people to click but get people to subscribe right and I wound up loving the team out there in the UK and all of Europe and Middle East and Africa and then I said hey you’re hiring someone to do what I do in New York can I apply for that and they said sure and I got that job and was lucky enough to get to move to the UK and it’s it’s been amazing I don’t think it’s a coincidence Vsauce has grown as fast as it has since I moved out to Europe and really learned a lot more about the world and about global audiences well let me ask you this I mean are you are you studying not only your audience but these things these other things that are really popping on YouTube are you a student of those type of things in order seeing where V sauce should go and what are those what are your thoughts on that yeah where V sauce should go in my opinion is beyond YouTube you know YouTube is a is a part of a business right and it’s it can be a really powerful part of a business but I think that V sauce has a lot of exciting opportunities offline that will help us let the rest of the world know that we exist who isn’t looking at YouTube as closely and let them know that there’s such great content on YouTube if that means like writing columns for a magazine if that means getting a vsauce board game i mean hello like those kinds of things are really what’s exciting to me right now but it’s it’s all a google entity now right or is vsauce separate is it owned by Google – or yeah it is it is and so part of innovating and part of like figuring out what advice we can give to channels means that we need to run Vsauce like it’s a channel and so if there are opportunities and other media if there are any way we can hell bring more people to YouTube that is what we’re looking for well I got to say that you know the content is very welcome on YouTube from my perspective because you know I love the fact that there the people are responding to content that is challenging that is informative that isn’t tricking people into watching videos that isn’t just about videogames and isn’t just about the latest celebrity gossip I mean I to me that’s you know a lot of people have their opinions about what YouTube videos should be and what the YouTube audience is and I think that the fact that your videos have gotten so popular the test of the fact that there’s people who actually want to learn legitimate information and apparently it’s a very broad audience and that’s I mean that’s encouraging yeah yeah the audience is really broad but youtube is so big there’s room for everything do you make 3 hour-long films perfect YouTube’s great for that do you want to just watch videos of the surgery you’re about to have yeah YouTube has that too right so it’s easy to think that there’s only one type of genre or style or click that is YouTube but YouTube is gigantic does your brain every turn ever turn off you just like veg out yeah for sure no I think I think you know as I kind of get a life back like I said you know I’m taking a vacation of sorts starting Saturday and I like to hang out with people who just don’t even do YouTube so how are you getting a life back yeah are you that implies that a I did your life was taken away yeah or you didn’t have one yeah and so tell us is is that true and then how you go about getting it back what do you mean get your like that look you know if you want to create 13 minute long episodes every week and build an audience and get 5 million subscribers in a year you know and you also want to have a life at the same time you don’t don’t you know now gonna call and gray from CGP grey put it really well he’s like okay look you have four things in life and you get to pick two job friends family and health pick two I’ve been focusing on my job and my job as the two things you doubled down doubled down and that meant that everything I did even watching family guy episodes at 2:00 in the morning was all about huh what if dogs talked okay that’s could be an idea and then I’ll read about anthropomorphism all you think me no but now I’m starting to realize you know taking a break it’s like really good for your mental health for your creativity and spending time with someone who does a completely different job and not thinking about the sauce or thinking about any any you know other project I’m working on and just being a human and learning and hanging out with different people invigorates you so you’re quitting for a while know that what you’re saying no not at all not at all I’ll still make an episode so it’s not really a vacation but it’s it’s just rather than spending 24 hours a day researching and writing I should spend like 21 really what you’re gonna that’s your plan that’s my plan for a relaxing vacation just to taper it a little bit yeah and it’s also important to meet people who do different things because it’ll blow your mind right and that’s why when we say Vsauce is a scientific Channel I think not really I mean I do well what’s the shortest poem you can write what’s the greatest honor you know a lot of these things are more about language and culture and the arts and history and it’s not just laboratory experiments and test tubes well listen man thanks for coming here to the round table of dim light ooh yeah now you need to sign and you can cite it in English yeah I would love to I only know English you’ll say un poco espanol [Music] [Music] and that’s it our conversation with Michael from Vsauce he’s not Vsauce and we would always refer to him as Vsauce but uh but he says Vsauce Michael here but he’s saying Vsauce is the audience and it’s just the thing and then Michael is him here I wasn’t confused by that when he was here in the room so I knew his name was Michael and I appreciated kind of getting to know him as a person I found it very fascinating you know timing is everything I think we’ve learned that from a lot of these stories we’ve heard with the advent of the internet and YouTube and internet a manure three parallel tracks his scientific mindedness and fascination with all those things which become the content of Vsauce his class clown madness and wanting to be an entertainer speech Giver actor and then the third thing in college of just wanting to be an editor and making viral videos that really had nothing to do with the other two and then the three of them come together because his success is Vsauce and because of YouTube you know yeah we definitely can relate to that and how these weird skills and you know desire for something to happen and then the opportunity that YouTube provides leads to a career it’s just it’s nuts but I did find it very interesting he said that his friend said there are only four things I think was his friend well somebody told him there’s four things you can have in life there’s four things in life but you got a pictu job friends family and health and when he said that I immediately had a knee-jerk reaction I was like in my mind that’s not true that’s not true it can’t be true then I started thinking about it and I realized yeah he’s right now the interesting thing is we have the ability to circumvent this a little bit because we work together so while we don’t have a lot of other friends I mean we have some friends but I think it’s clear that we’ve chosen family and job with just a few friends and we don’t exercise yeah there’s we were talking about this is no exercise and we do some active things but there’s no like commitment to health right and beyond our friendship and the few other friendships that we have that are not regular like see people on a regular basis its job and family but it’s interesting that you’re right we’ve kind of gamed the system because we’ve we work together and we are friends and here’s how we are we really friends or coworkers know we’re for that’s that’s the question here but no listen we can totally gain this system all for if we get those treadmills that juice you run on those little elliptical machines that you do while you’re at your stand-up desk right that will never happen I think what you need to think it is but we need to make it an exercise channel we need to we need to totally change our brand to just be like we’re exercise we’re personal trainers well we could do an exercise channel that’s the only way to make it work but just one of the people that we’re training our friends that we’re making in real life and they’re like in the room that’s how we do it that’s how we gain the system completely mm-hmm well we could just get one of those little ellipticals I’m not talking about that like the big elliptical that way I’m talking about this little thing that little stair step thing that wise we’re at our stand-up desk but like if that’s the noise you’re gonna be making the entire time then you’re gonna lose the friendship ask they’re only gonna be making that noise the first three months and somebody adjusted we can adjust this or we could just you know come to grips with the fact that that’s how it is and we’re choosing our two and we get a little bit of friendship too and we should just be thankful and try to game the system without health though we’ll die but we’ll be happy oh okay die happy I went we didn’t you know I wonder what he said right now he’s got just job and job just job and job so he’s only put picked one yeah he doubled down and well can’t blame him well he’s saying he’s a single guy you know he can kind of get away with it right now so thanks Michael for coming in be sure to tweet at Michael and let him know I’m kind of I’m actually looking right now I think it’s tweet sauce if you go to twitter.com slash tweet sauce huh yep that’s it you can let him know that you listen to this weak sauce you have a you’ve gained an understanding of the man behind the science and these two men are gonna be here next week delivering you more stories I want for somebody don’t wanna say stories from the road I don’t know why well that’s a new podcast yeah it sounded like it sounded good we’re gonna start that on Sunday stories from the road but in the meantime we hope you enjoyed this ear biscuit with a little bit of Vsauce on it think about that a little bit of that green Vsauce on your ear biscuit mental picture eat it [Music] [Music]