If you want evidence of the public’s appetite for science, look no further than YouTube powerhouse, Veritasium, which has clocked over one billion views and turned founder Dr Derek Muller into one of the world’s most influential science communicators.
“I was a kid who wanted to be creative. I wanted to be an actor, director or a filmmaker,” he tells The Brilliant. “But I felt that was a terrible career path, to put yourself at the mercy of some lucky break. It felt like the opposite of a meritocracy.” Science, on the other hand, felt like “a smart life choice, a smart career move. I thought that if at some point I become financially stable enough that I can afford it, then maybe I can explore doing more creative things.”
That day came.
Striking the perfect balance between science and creativity
After studying engineering physics at Queen’s University in Canada, Muller enrolled in a PhD in Physics Education Research at the University of Sydney. Muller asked his supervisor if he could do a joint PhD with the Sydney College of the Arts, and his supervisor agreed. But the rigours of science got in the way, and Muller “ended up as a PhD in the school of physics”, leaving his creative side unsatisfied.
After finishing his PhD, Muller managed the science department of a large tutoring company; though he loved the work and relished its entrepreneurial side, he couldn’t block out the siren call of film. At the end of 2010, Muller cut down his hours and launched into science videos. Only to discover he had a lot to learn.
Those early videos were bad,” he says. “I was not very good at talking to the camera.”
And his programming strategy wasn’t great, either. “I decided to start with simple ideas and then move up to more complicated ideas,” he says, only to find it didn’t work. “People looking for a YouTube video about science don’t want to hear what they already know. I was pitching to an audience that didn’t exist.”
But everything changed after Henry Reich launched Minute Physics in 2011. “His channel just blew up and the penny dropped for me. I realised that I needed to create videos for people like me, who want to know more,” says Muller.
One video, 67 million viewers
Muller now has 8.5 million subscribers – in the last year alone, more than 67 million people watched the video Why are 96,000,000 Black Balls on this Reservoir? Another 30 million tuned in for I Waterproofed Myself with Aerogel.
They are numbers that would turn any television executive green.
Muller himself has worked on television shows, including Netflix’s Bill Nye Saves the World. He felt that show itself lacked impact, because it underestimated the public’s ability to engage with complex ideas.
My experience was that we were unnecessarily walking on eggshells around the audience. One of the things that let the show down was that the producers never wanted to venture into unknown territory, which is death for a show of that sort.”
Muller takes the opposite approach. “I definitely see it as my job to take complicated topics and make them enjoyable.”
Yet while Muller has found his metier on YouTube, he says he’s open to doing more television. “I’m not against it. I just don’t want to see my ideas and creative control diluted. I know how to create science programs that people want to see,” he says.
Growing a global media company
Ten years and one billion views later, Muller is the creator, distributor and marketer of Veritasium, now translated into Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Russian and Chinese. His audience is sought after by large brands. “When someone like Microsoft or Mercedes comes to me, they are paying a fraction of what they would pay an advertising agency and the TV channel – but with me they are reaching a much larger audience.” And he no longer needs to promote his work, because the algorithms do it for him. Muller says that while YouTube is “a strange business model”, it’s more lucrative than a traditional science communication job.
He advises universities and research institutions who want to follow in his footsteps that good science videos are hard to make, because they involve wrestling complex concepts into good narratives. “It takes time, skill and vision. You need to value and find your auteur. I’ve never understood why universities don’t properly invest in this space.”
But it’s work worth doing. “I’ve recently been corresponding with a teacher in New Jersey who has this troubled student who’s been in and out of various foster care homes,” says Muller. “And the only ways he knew science was by watching my videos.” Now, the student meets with the teacher every week to watch one video and break down the science. As Muller says, the videos became a way in to learning “about all sorts of science”.
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Check out Snatoms, the molecular modeling kit launched by Derek
Article by Kylie Ahern
Photo Credit: Photo supplied