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John Green Tests the Limits of YouTube · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. What's your what's your job? When when people say
0:23
Speaker 1: say your name and your job, what do you say?
0:26
Speaker 1: I usually say that I work in educational video because
0:29
Speaker 1: that shuts down the conversation pretty quickly, or else I
0:33
Speaker 1: say that I that I write books. Depends on the context.
0:37
Speaker 1: I guess you just whatever shuts it down fastest. Most
0:40
Speaker 1: of the time, I want to try to talk about
0:42
Speaker 1: the person I'm talking to, not about myself, and so
0:45
Speaker 1: far as possible, then let me apologize to you for
0:48
Speaker 1: the next album. For the next hour, I'm Jacob Goldstein
0:56
Speaker 1: and this is What's Your Problem, the show where entrepreneurs
0:59
Speaker 1: and engineers talk about how they're going to change the
1:01
Speaker 1: world once they solve a few problems. My guest today
1:04
Speaker 1: is John Dreen. He's the author of several novels, including
1:07
Speaker 1: The Fault in Our Star, which sold millions of copies
1:11
Speaker 1: and was made into a movie, but he has not
1:14
Speaker 1: quit his day job at the educational video company he
1:17
Speaker 1: co founded with his brother. The company is called Complexly,
1:20
Speaker 1: and among other things, the company makes a series of
1:23
Speaker 1: YouTube videos called crash Course. The videos are wildly popular.
1:27
Speaker 1: They've been viewed billions of times, but John wants complexly
1:31
Speaker 1: to do more. The problem he wants to solve is this,
1:34
Speaker 1: how do you make YouTube videos that actually help people
1:38
Speaker 1: make it through college? John's online production company, and to
1:43
Speaker 1: hear him tell it, much of his success as a
1:45
Speaker 1: novelist grew out of his desire to hang out with
1:48
Speaker 1: his brother Hank more often. They lived far apart from
1:51
Speaker 1: each other. They didn't talk much, but John told me
1:54
Speaker 1: they bonded over online video. When we started watching online
1:58
Speaker 1: video in two thousand and six, we just loved it.
2:05
Speaker 1: We loved the way that it just felt wetly different
2:09
Speaker 1: from television. It felt completely different from any other visual media.
2:14
Speaker 1: It felt wide open in exciting and terrifying ways. And
2:21
Speaker 1: you know, back then I was writing books and in
2:25
Speaker 1: my mid twenties, and Hank was running a blog called
2:29
Speaker 1: eco Geek, and watching YouTube videos together was the main
2:34
Speaker 1: point of connection for us. We didn't talk on the
2:36
Speaker 1: phone much, we weren't that close, really, but we loved
2:40
Speaker 1: these YouTube channels and these other non YouTube online video
2:44
Speaker 1: projects so much that it became, you know, the kind
2:49
Speaker 1: of the place for us to connect as brothers in adulthood.
2:54
Speaker 1: And then in December of two thousand and six, I
2:58
Speaker 1: came to Hank with the idea, well, what if we
3:00
Speaker 1: made our own YouTube channel. I make a video on Monday,
3:04
Speaker 1: You make a video on Tuesday, and we do that
3:06
Speaker 1: every weekday for all of two thousands seven. So you
3:10
Speaker 1: start doing it. Well, like, what was it? Like? How'd
3:12
Speaker 1: it go? I would say, for like the first hundred videos,
3:16
Speaker 1: for the first six months or so of the project,
3:18
Speaker 1: we had an average of four hundred viewers per video,
3:22
Speaker 1: and that sounds very small by contemporary standards, but it
3:26
Speaker 1: felt amazing to us. Okay, so you got your four
3:29
Speaker 1: hundred people. What happens next? In July of that year,
3:34
Speaker 1: Hank released a song about the Last Harry Potter Book,
3:38
Speaker 1: which is probably like the single most important thing that
3:41
Speaker 1: ever happened to us professionally and the single biggest thing
3:45
Speaker 1: in my professional life looking back at it. Because it
3:48
Speaker 1: was featured on the front page of YouTube, it got
3:50
Speaker 1: a lot of views. But more importantly than getting a
3:54
Speaker 1: lot of views, a large section of the Harry Potter
3:58
Speaker 1: fandom came into our community. And these were people with
4:04
Speaker 1: a lot of experience in how to structure fan communities,
4:10
Speaker 1: how to make message boards, how to do stuff together,
4:14
Speaker 1: and we learned so much from them, and you know,
4:19
Speaker 1: almost overnight we went from having I think two hundred
4:22
Speaker 1: and fifty YouTube subscribers to something like five thousand. And
4:26
Speaker 1: that was scary in some ways, like it was hard
4:29
Speaker 1: to know what to do with that, but it was
4:30
Speaker 1: also really invigorating and exciting. And because those people had
4:35
Speaker 1: so many deep connections in building online communities, we had
4:40
Speaker 1: a huge headstart, which eventually led to the schedule that
4:44
Speaker 1: we have now where every Tuesday I make a video
4:47
Speaker 1: addressed to Hank and every Friday he makes a video
4:50
Speaker 1: addressed to me. And you know, at this point, we've
4:53
Speaker 1: been doing that for fifteen years and it continues to
4:58
Speaker 1: really be the center of my professional life and the
5:03
Speaker 1: part of and really fundamental to everything else that we do.
5:08
Speaker 1: I mean it, it's striking that you call that the
5:10
Speaker 1: center of your professional life. Still given yeah, extraordinary success
5:15
Speaker 1: you've had writing books that you get made into movies
5:18
Speaker 1: and sell millions of copies, right, Like, that's an amazing statement. Yeah,
5:23
Speaker 1: but I don't think that those books would have been
5:26
Speaker 1: as successful without that community. First off, but more importantly
5:33
Speaker 1: to me, we are still in an ongoing learning process
5:39
Speaker 1: with them. I am always learning new strategies for being
5:45
Speaker 1: in community with people, which is I mean to me anyway,
5:49
Speaker 1: kind of the meaning of life. So it is at
5:52
Speaker 1: the center of my professional life. And obviously, like the
5:55
Speaker 1: other stuff that we do, is very very important to me,
6:00
Speaker 1: and now we have large teams of people working on
6:03
Speaker 1: lots of those things. And of course my books are
6:05
Speaker 1: very important to me. But if I think about the
6:07
Speaker 1: thing that I would would most not want to give up,
6:10
Speaker 1: I would most not want to give up the opportunity
6:13
Speaker 1: to make videos for those people every Tuesday. A few
6:17
Speaker 1: years after John and Hank started making those videos, they
6:20
Speaker 1: started hearing from school teachers. Sometimes John would send his
6:24
Speaker 1: brother a video telling him some amazing story from history.
6:27
Speaker 1: Sometimes Hank would send a video to John describing some
6:30
Speaker 1: absurdly complex detail of biology, and teachers loved it. So
6:36
Speaker 1: John and Hank decided to try to make real educational videos,
6:40
Speaker 1: a series they would end up calling crash Course. But
6:42
Speaker 1: here's the twist. They wanted to make videos that students
6:45
Speaker 1: would love. I remember, almost as a proof of concept,
6:49
Speaker 1: in twenty ten or twenty eleven, Hank made a series
6:52
Speaker 1: of videos about the circulatory system, and I made a
6:55
Speaker 1: series of videos about the French Revolution and I was
6:57
Speaker 1: trying to make videos that pointed out that the French
7:00
Speaker 1: Revolution is not dry or distant. It's wild, yeah, super wild,
7:08
Speaker 1: super wild and hyper relevant to today. And learning about
7:12
Speaker 1: the French Revolution is not something that we do because
7:15
Speaker 1: you have to jump over a series of arbitrary hurdles
7:18
Speaker 1: in order to get a piece of paper that says
7:20
Speaker 1: that you're a high school graduate. It's something that we
7:22
Speaker 1: do because it is wild, and it's actually quite fun
7:26
Speaker 1: to learn about and really instructive for understanding your place
7:31
Speaker 1: in the universe and in human history. And that's what
7:35
Speaker 1: we wanted to try to capture, that feeling that learning
7:38
Speaker 1: can be a true thrill. And so we made these
7:42
Speaker 1: series of videos, but we were again and again coming
7:45
Speaker 1: up against one the limits of our own talents, our
7:49
Speaker 1: inability to edit video with the quality that we wanted
7:52
Speaker 1: to edit it, and two the limits of our own
7:56
Speaker 1: writing capabilities, the limits of our academic expertise. And so
8:01
Speaker 1: that year, which was also the year that I was
8:04
Speaker 1: writing The Fault in Our Stars, we were really trying
8:08
Speaker 1: to find a way to make formal educational content with
8:13
Speaker 1: a small team of one or two people. But it's
8:17
Speaker 1: so hard to go from two people alone in their basements,
8:22
Speaker 1: one in Indianapolis, one in Montana, to hiring someone like
8:27
Speaker 1: I had no idea how to hire someone. I'd never
8:29
Speaker 1: done anything like that. Well, and also, I mean, you've
8:33
Speaker 1: been doing this project with your brother because it's creative
8:36
Speaker 1: and interesting and it connects you to your brother, but
8:37
Speaker 1: it's not a business. Right, And then suddenly now it
8:41
Speaker 1: seems like you're talking about something very different, which is
8:44
Speaker 1: not just a creative problem, but like a whole other
8:47
Speaker 1: set of problems are arising now, right, Yeah, just the
8:52
Speaker 1: existence of a business is a whole set of problems, seriously,
8:56
Speaker 1: Like payroll is a problem, taxes and figuring all that
9:00
Speaker 1: stuff out, like having corporate Like I remember when our dad,
9:05
Speaker 1: thank god, like our dad was like, I can help
9:07
Speaker 1: you set up the corporate by or whatever. And Hank
9:10
Speaker 1: and I read this stuff and we're like, there has
9:12
Speaker 1: to be a president. Who's going to be the president?
9:15
Speaker 1: And I would think the first or a first question
9:18
Speaker 1: you would have to answer if you're going to do
9:21
Speaker 1: that is how are we going to pay this team
9:23
Speaker 1: of people? That was indeed the first question, Yes, how
9:28
Speaker 1: did you pay a team of people? Well, when we
9:31
Speaker 1: first started out, this is ludicrous, but I wrote an
9:35
Speaker 1: advertisement in Craigslist and shout out Craigslist. Shout out Craigslist.
9:42
Speaker 1: By some extraordinary good fortune. One of the people who
9:47
Speaker 1: applied for that job as sort of a videographer and
9:53
Speaker 1: editor was Stan Muller, who's the co founder of Crash
9:58
Speaker 1: Course History and who has extensive experience in history and
10:03
Speaker 1: extensive experience in video production. But to start, I was like, Stan,
10:09
Speaker 1: can't pay you to make history videos yet. I hope
10:13
Speaker 1: we can find a way to pay you for now.
10:16
Speaker 1: The way that I'm going to pay you is that
10:18
Speaker 1: together we are going to make videos where I play
10:20
Speaker 1: the video game Fifa, and that's what is going to
10:25
Speaker 1: pay the bills. And that is basically what paid the
10:28
Speaker 1: bills for the first few months. So you made videos
10:32
Speaker 1: of you playing the video game Fifa, which assume as
10:35
Speaker 1: a soccer video game. Soccer game. Yeah, I played as
10:37
Speaker 1: a Swindon Town fourth tier of English football, and people
10:43
Speaker 1: would watch the videos of you playing the video game
10:45
Speaker 1: and you would run ads over that and you would
10:48
Speaker 1: get money from that and pay stand to make history videos,
10:51
Speaker 1: which was your true dream. Well, at the time, we
10:53
Speaker 1: weren't even yet making the history videos. I was more
10:56
Speaker 1: paying stand to try to get to a point where
10:59
Speaker 1: we could make the history videos. And then what allowed
11:01
Speaker 1: us to make the history videos eventually was support from YouTube.
11:06
Speaker 1: YouTube had a content creator fund. We got a small
11:14
Speaker 1: I guess advance you would say, because we did have
11:16
Speaker 1: to pay it back through advertising revenue. We got a
11:19
Speaker 1: small advance to actually start making Crash Course. And that
11:24
Speaker 1: was the critical moment, was them showing some faith in
11:29
Speaker 1: that idea. And by the end of twenty eleven, which
11:35
Speaker 1: was only a few weeks before the Fault in Our
11:37
Speaker 1: Stars came out, we were able to start making Crash
11:41
Speaker 1: Course videos because by then we'd hired writers, and we'd
11:46
Speaker 1: hired a team of animators, and we had the editors
11:51
Speaker 1: and videographers who we were working with closely. And so
11:55
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of Crash Course. Stan and I
11:57
Speaker 1: filmed the first episodes of Crash Course World History just
12:02
Speaker 1: a few weeks before the Fault in Our Stars came
12:05
Speaker 1: out in January of twenty twelve. And then the Fault
12:08
Speaker 1: in Our Stars was also a big deal, right and tied.
12:13
Speaker 1: It seems very much to what you were doing on YouTube. Yeah,
12:18
Speaker 1: I mean, in a lot of ways, my experience of
12:20
Speaker 1: It was probably different from the outside experience of it
12:23
Speaker 1: in that I saw the success of the book as
12:27
Speaker 1: a chance for me to take a year away from
12:30
Speaker 1: writing and really focus on Crash Course, focus on trying to,
12:35
Speaker 1: you know, make educational video that would reach a lot
12:37
Speaker 1: of people and that would be able to be useful
12:40
Speaker 1: to students in form of educational settings. That is super interesting, right,
12:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to make too much of it,
12:45
Speaker 1: but like the fact that this wild best seller of
12:50
Speaker 1: a novel allows you to pursue your actual dream of
12:53
Speaker 1: making educational videos. Yeah, I mean, I want to be
12:57
Speaker 1: clear that, like, having a best selling novel was definitely
13:00
Speaker 1: also a dream of mine, and I was very It
13:02
Speaker 1: was fun that it happened, and I was very grateful
13:05
Speaker 1: for it. I don't want to sound like that, but
13:07
Speaker 1: my experience of it was that, you know, I mean,
13:10
Speaker 1: when you're a working writer, you have to publish on
13:14
Speaker 1: a schedule. Partly because of the rent and the success
13:18
Speaker 1: of the Fault in Our Stars allowed me to not
13:20
Speaker 1: have to publish on that schedule, and that in turn
13:23
Speaker 1: allowed me to really be able to focus on Crash
13:26
Speaker 1: Course full time. Today. Complexly, the company that John and
13:30
Speaker 1: his brother started to make the Crash Course videos. Has
13:33
Speaker 1: a staff of around fifty people and a multimillion dollar budget.
13:37
Speaker 1: They've made thousands of online videos that have been really successful.
13:40
Speaker 1: Now John and his colleagues that complexly are trying to
13:43
Speaker 1: solve a problem that's even harder than making educational videos
13:47
Speaker 1: that are actually fun. That's coming up after the break.
13:58
Speaker 1: That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back
14:00
Speaker 1: to the show. John and his brother Hank succeeded in
14:03
Speaker 1: making educational videos that students love. Now there's a bigger
14:07
Speaker 1: problem that they're trying to solve, or at least to
14:09
Speaker 1: help solve. Lots and lots of people start college, borrow
14:14
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and then drop out. They never finish,
14:18
Speaker 1: and the reasons they don't finish are complicated and multifaceted.
14:22
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we've had to grapple with,
14:26
Speaker 1: one of the realities that we've had to grapple with,
14:28
Speaker 1: is that this is not just a educational information problem.
14:34
Speaker 1: It's not just about the availability of information. Ten years ago,
14:37
Speaker 1: I think it was primarily about the availability of information
14:41
Speaker 1: that was the biggest problem then. The biggest problem now
14:44
Speaker 1: is much more complicated, which is that there's a lack
14:48
Speaker 1: of support. I'll give you an example of this to
14:52
Speaker 1: try to understand some of the challenges that people have
14:56
Speaker 1: when they're trying to do online college or when they're
14:59
Speaker 1: trying to do a low residency program. I took a
15:02
Speaker 1: college math course that's offered through an accredited university, and
15:07
Speaker 1: you basically have to pass this college math course in
15:10
Speaker 1: order to even get an associate's degree. Okay, and I
15:14
Speaker 1: think that I am a fairly smart person. I passed
15:18
Speaker 1: high school math. I remember most of high school math.
15:21
Speaker 1: I could not pass this college math course. I couldn't
15:25
Speaker 1: pass it if you gave me five years to pass it.
15:29
Speaker 1: And yet I think that I should be eligible for
15:31
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree. Like I think that the bachelor's degree
15:35
Speaker 1: that I received was deserved at least on some level.
15:40
Speaker 1: So I just I want to understand, like, if this
15:44
Speaker 1: math class is the thing, is it that it's hard
15:48
Speaker 1: to learn on like I don't quite Yeah, yeah it's yet.
15:52
Speaker 1: So it's it's that it's hard to learn online. Yeah,
15:56
Speaker 1: and also that there's not a lot of support. So
16:00
Speaker 1: if I want to understand a concept in college math,
16:04
Speaker 1: and I'm taking most of the sort of online courses. Now,
16:10
Speaker 1: there's not a ton of different ways for me to learn.
16:14
Speaker 1: And what I need when I'm learning is I need
16:17
Speaker 1: like a bunch of different opportunities. I need to be
16:19
Speaker 1: able to hear lectures, but I also need to be
16:22
Speaker 1: able to read books. But I also need to be
16:24
Speaker 1: able to watch videos, and right now there isn't much
16:27
Speaker 1: of a formal structure for that. And so that's what
16:31
Speaker 1: we are interested in trying to solve. How can complexly
16:37
Speaker 1: better support the students who are going to be struggling
16:43
Speaker 1: with those early college classes that we weed out as
16:48
Speaker 1: the wrong word that proved to be needless barriers to
16:52
Speaker 1: so many people getting the education that they want and
16:57
Speaker 1: deserve and will work hard for. It's just that like
17:01
Speaker 1: they need a whole different level of support in order,
17:05
Speaker 1: like I need a whole different level of support in
17:07
Speaker 1: order to pass that college math us. So that seems
17:12
Speaker 1: big and complex and like beyond the scope of a
17:15
Speaker 1: company that makes educational videos. I think that we can
17:19
Speaker 1: be part of solving the problem. But I think that
17:21
Speaker 1: that's a great observation that we are not going to
17:24
Speaker 1: solve it on our own. I am keenly aware of
17:26
Speaker 1: the fact that we are not going to fix college
17:28
Speaker 1: by ourselves. So what are you doing? I mean, have
17:31
Speaker 1: you tried? Are you working on it? Have you made progress?
17:34
Speaker 1: We are trying, and I think we have made progress.
17:36
Speaker 1: One of the things that we've realized is that, like
17:39
Speaker 1: we are now working with Arizona State on a series
17:41
Speaker 1: of projects, and one of the things we realize very
17:45
Speaker 1: early on is that we can't just make a here's
17:47
Speaker 1: how to do college math series. We have to make
17:50
Speaker 1: a here's how to do college series, Here's how to
17:54
Speaker 1: approach college as a whole, and here are the places
17:58
Speaker 1: where you can go for support that you probably don't
18:01
Speaker 1: know about because they're not frequently shared. So you kind
18:04
Speaker 1: of have to go meta. You've been making educational videos,
18:07
Speaker 1: but you need to make videos we're not just about learning,
18:10
Speaker 1: but about learning how to learn. Yes, yeah, very much. So,
18:13
Speaker 1: so are you actually making videos now that are like whatever,
18:17
Speaker 1: goofy and fun and animated, but about like how to
18:20
Speaker 1: deal with being an online college student. We're trying, But
18:24
Speaker 1: I think you've just identified the challenge, which is, like,
18:27
Speaker 1: how do you make them goofy and fun when they
18:29
Speaker 1: are like about like here's where your advisor is. It's
18:35
Speaker 1: not as fun as the French Revolution, or it's not
18:38
Speaker 1: as funny. That is maybe the underlying problem beneath all
18:42
Speaker 1: the other problems. It's fairly straightforward to make the circulatory
18:47
Speaker 1: system and the French Revolution exciting because they are exciting. Yeah,
18:52
Speaker 1: and they are. They are central to understanding how we
18:56
Speaker 1: got to now. Knowing how to navigate the bureaucracies of
19:02
Speaker 1: large online university spaces is a little less inherently fun.
19:09
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of one video that
19:11
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time trying to think about
19:14
Speaker 1: how to do. How do I make a video that's
19:17
Speaker 1: about where you get help that isn't a boring list
19:24
Speaker 1: of places where you get help, because that I think
19:30
Speaker 1: is literally unwatchable. How do you make that video fun
19:34
Speaker 1: and engaging and not listy? That is an interesting problem.
19:39
Speaker 1: Have you solved it? No at all? Yeah, it feels
19:46
Speaker 1: very listy. Still, can you make it a song? That's
19:50
Speaker 1: a good idea. I can't make it a song, that's
19:55
Speaker 1: for darn sure. But maybe maybe Hank can. He does
19:59
Speaker 1: have a history. That's a great idea. Oh, Hank is
20:03
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna text him. We'll see if he writes back.
20:07
Speaker 1: He probably won't. I think he's homing right now. Actually,
20:10
Speaker 1: that's a great idea, and it also reminds me of
20:12
Speaker 1: something that is a problem for me, which is that
20:16
Speaker 1: I get very stuck in how I used to do it,
20:21
Speaker 1: how it's worked for me in the past, Like how
20:24
Speaker 1: crash course history worked is just not how this can work.
20:28
Speaker 1: And so I need to maybe make the same kind
20:31
Speaker 1: of leap when we were not making vlog brothers videos anymore.
20:34
Speaker 1: Now we're making crash course videos. We're not making videos
20:37
Speaker 1: that are for each other. Now we're making videos that
20:39
Speaker 1: are for students. Maybe I need to make that same
20:41
Speaker 1: kind of leap we're not making videos Hank has replied.
20:46
Speaker 1: He says he says, no exclamation point. I was really
20:51
Speaker 1: excited for like thirty seconds. Then he says it's a
20:55
Speaker 1: good idea, which seems to be a direct conflict with NO.
21:02
Speaker 1: I think the no might might be about not like
21:05
Speaker 1: feeling like now I'm no longer twenty seven years old.
21:09
Speaker 1: I'm now forty three year old CEO, and I don't
21:12
Speaker 1: know if I want to do that, but I'm gonna
21:14
Speaker 1: make it. Oh yeah. He says. The challenge for that
21:16
Speaker 1: is making it so that it's not cringe, and you know,
21:19
Speaker 1: like you don't want it to be the like an
21:21
Speaker 1: educational rap video. That's the worst version of it. Yeah,
21:27
Speaker 1: the worst version of it is an educational rap video.
21:29
Speaker 1: And I think that Hank is concerned that it would
21:32
Speaker 1: be that the bad version of it is indeed very bad. Yes,
21:36
Speaker 1: the bad version of it is bad, and that's a
21:38
Speaker 1: high risk thing. Was there any particular example you want
21:41
Speaker 1: to give it, a thing you tried that didn't work.
21:44
Speaker 1: I mean everything I've tried so far has been fairly
21:46
Speaker 1: listy or else it's been a little cringe. Yeah, And
21:50
Speaker 1: that's another thing that's changed about the Internet over the
21:52
Speaker 1: last ten years, like the what makes young people feel
21:58
Speaker 1: like they're being talked down to or feel like they're
22:03
Speaker 1: being I guess infantilized has changed a lot over the
22:08
Speaker 1: last ten years. Yeah, and we need to reflect that.
22:11
Speaker 1: I think we've done a good job in general at
22:13
Speaker 1: Crash course of reflecting that in the ways that we've
22:17
Speaker 1: evolved our content as the you know, the needs of
22:21
Speaker 1: our audience has changed. But that's always a risk when
22:24
Speaker 1: I'm writing something because I am out of touch you
22:28
Speaker 1: are cram cringe. Yeah, like I'm super cringe like my kids,
22:32
Speaker 1: you know, are are duly horrified. After John and I
22:36
Speaker 1: talked earlier this year, he and his colleagues released a
22:38
Speaker 1: new series called How to College. A series aims to
22:42
Speaker 1: quote break down how to apply for, succeed at, and
22:45
Speaker 1: graduate from college. John still has not figured out how
22:49
Speaker 1: to make that list video though. We'll be back in
22:53
Speaker 1: a minute with the lightning round. Okay, let's get back
23:03
Speaker 1: to the show. We're going to close with the lightning round.
23:06
Speaker 1: There's a lightning round, John, I'm ready. Okay, what's something
23:11
Speaker 1: you watched on YouTube lately that you loved? I love
23:15
Speaker 1: watching these primitive technology videos where this guy you never
23:21
Speaker 1: see his face, but he's he just smelted iron for
23:24
Speaker 1: the first time. So it started out just kind of
23:28
Speaker 1: building structures, and then he made a kill and so
23:31
Speaker 1: he could have some pottery, and now he's made iron,
23:35
Speaker 1: so he's entered the iron age, which is very exciting. Okay,
23:39
Speaker 1: what is one piece of advice you'd give to somebody
23:41
Speaker 1: who is trying to solve a hard problem. Listen, Listen, listen,
23:47
Speaker 1: listen to the people who you are trying to solve
23:51
Speaker 1: the problem for very good. I don't think we do
23:55
Speaker 1: enough listening. What's your favorite app on your phone? The
23:58
Speaker 1: app I use the most is the I Follow app,
24:03
Speaker 1: which allows you to watch third tier English soccer games.
24:07
Speaker 1: And I'm a huge fan of this third t your
24:09
Speaker 1: team AFC Wimbledon, so that's the one I use the most.
24:12
Speaker 1: More than a fan. For the record, I am more
24:15
Speaker 1: than a fan, It's true. More than a fan. I
24:19
Speaker 1: am a sponsor. They AFC Wimbledon, where our logo on
24:25
Speaker 1: the liminal space between left thigh and buttock on the
24:28
Speaker 1: back of their shorts. I also own a small, small
24:32
Speaker 1: part of the team. But the great thing about AFC
24:34
Speaker 1: Wimbledon is that everybody who pays more than thirty bucks
24:39
Speaker 1: a year is an owner of the team, and everybody
24:41
Speaker 1: gets the same vote no matter how much they contribute.
24:45
Speaker 1: But not everybody gets the liminal space. That's right, Not
24:48
Speaker 1: everybody gets that coveted back of short sponsorship. If you
24:52
Speaker 1: have a ten minute break in the middle of the day,
24:54
Speaker 1: what do you do to relax. I don't have a
24:57
Speaker 1: lot of ten minute breaks. I have one ritual every
25:01
Speaker 1: day during lunch. Though for many years I've watched this
25:08
Speaker 1: YouTube series that only about fifteen thousand people watch, where
25:14
Speaker 1: this guy named Ben plays a video game called Football
25:19
Speaker 1: Manager where he manages a pretend football team, and it's
25:26
Speaker 1: basically just a spreadsheet, but I'm deeply, deeply invested in it,
25:31
Speaker 1: and it is something I spend the entire morning looking
25:34
Speaker 1: forward to and the entire afternoon feeling in the warm
25:39
Speaker 1: glow of wow. And it's also a reminder to me
25:42
Speaker 1: that there are lots of those little communities, well I
25:45
Speaker 1: mean little, fifteen thousand people isn't little, But there are
25:48
Speaker 1: lots of those communities on YouTube, lots of pockets of
25:52
Speaker 1: places that almost everyone doesn't know about, but where for
25:57
Speaker 1: a lot of people there's a deep feeling of connection
25:59
Speaker 1: and contentedness. If you were to imagine a conversation between
26:04
Speaker 1: yourself now and yourself in whatever it was twenty ten,
26:08
Speaker 1: when you're trying to figure how to pay one guy
26:10
Speaker 1: to make videos about the French Revolution? What do you
26:14
Speaker 1: know now that you wish you to the end? What
26:15
Speaker 1: do you think you ten years ago could tell you now?
26:18
Speaker 1: I don't know how does that conversation go. It would
26:22
Speaker 1: be very interesting to have a conversation with my two
26:25
Speaker 1: ten self. I feel like I would tell him the
26:29
Speaker 1: most important thing you are going to do is hire
26:34
Speaker 1: that first person and so be very thoughtful about who
26:41
Speaker 1: that person is. And then there would be some stuff
26:44
Speaker 1: that I would try to tell him about celebrity and
26:47
Speaker 1: about being famous, and I would want to I would
26:50
Speaker 1: probably want to prepare him for that a little bit,
26:54
Speaker 1: because I definitely did not feel prepared, like I thought that.
26:58
Speaker 1: I mean, I never know how to talk about this
26:59
Speaker 1: stuff because I don't want to sound ungrateful. And I
27:02
Speaker 1: am so so grateful that my books have reached such
27:05
Speaker 1: a wide audience. But the process through which you know,
27:09
Speaker 1: someone becomes famous is kind of like a somewhat dehumanizing process,
27:16
Speaker 1: Like people don't think of you as being a full person,
27:20
Speaker 1: and so like there is there is something about being
27:22
Speaker 1: famous that is that is a little uh destabilizing, I
27:25
Speaker 1: guess for at least for me, for my sense of self.
27:28
Speaker 1: And so during that period where my work was like
27:31
Speaker 1: fairly close to the center of pop culture, which was
27:34
Speaker 1: a very brief period, it was weird, and I would
27:37
Speaker 1: want to like get him ready for that. As for
27:39
Speaker 1: what my two ten self would say to me, now,
27:41
Speaker 1: that is a really interesting question that I have never
27:43
Speaker 1: thought about. My two thousand and ten self would never
27:45
Speaker 1: have any idea that you know, my books would become
27:48
Speaker 1: so popular, and so I think he would be like, well,
27:53
Speaker 1: why are you still working? Why are you still working?
27:57
Speaker 1: I love the work that I do and it gives
28:02
Speaker 1: meaning to my life, and if if I don't work,
28:06
Speaker 1: I feel very adrift. So I don't know what the
28:11
Speaker 1: point of life is. I don't know what the point
28:12
Speaker 1: of a human life is. But I know that my
28:14
Speaker 1: life feels pretty empty when I'm not writing. And I
28:20
Speaker 1: mean because most of what I do is writing, even
28:23
Speaker 1: if it's writing a crash course or I'm still I'm
28:28
Speaker 1: still writing. And so my life when I don't write
28:31
Speaker 1: feels pretty not good. So that's what I would tell
28:36
Speaker 1: my two thousand and ten self is just like, we
28:39
Speaker 1: gotta do this man. John Green works in educational video.
28:47
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Edith Ruslow, engineered by Amanda
28:50
Speaker 1: kay Wong, and edited by Robert Smith. Special thanks to
28:54
Speaker 1: Kate Parkinson Morgan for her help on this episode. I'm
28:57
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another
29:00
Speaker 1: episode of What's Your Problem