Dear Hank & John - 294: We Messed Up, So Let's Talk Crash Course!

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

How can I support the creation of free educational content? Hank Green and John Green have answers!Go to  https://crashcoursecoin.com/ to find out more!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John! The dramatically abbreviated version. It's a podcast where we don't do very much at all. Yeah, so last week... I have a dad joke. Oh, okay, great. So I went to a mint and I finally understand how it works. It just makes sense.

Mm, yes. Okay, I'm really glad that we squeezed that one in because when people see that the episode of the podcast is 80% shorter than they expected, they're like, oh, but God, I hope there's a bad joke in there somewhere. So big relief for all those people. Hey, so last week, Hank and I were in the same place at the same time.

I know what you're thinking. Doesn't that make it easier to record a podcast? Yes, in some ways. And we did record a podcast where we were in the same time at the same place. It's just that we forgot to send the audio of it to Tuna. And then we went on vacation. And then we went on vacation.

We're on the same, look the same space as the audio file. And by the time we got back to the audio file, there was no way that there was a podcast going up today. So instead, we have this abbreviated version of the podcast. Hank and I had a wonderful, really, really wonderful time together. So good, in fact, that there were long stretches

of hours where to tell you the truth, I didn't think about the fact that I had forgotten the podcast footage, it's a second location. Yeah, it was so good and fun. I have to say that our parents are the best. It's so sweet. They're very sweet. Such good grandparents.

So good. So I'm just feeling all the emotions about that. How are your hamstrings after the quadrack had come? Oh, I feel fine. Oh, I don't. I guess you run a lot. Hanks really soar from running 200 meters, which I would argue is maybe a bit of an indictment

of your current fitness form, Hank. Like get moving a little bit. It's hard to run. I feel fine. But also, I did run faster than you. So whatever I did worked. You did, you did. You gave it your all.

And by that, you mean both hamstrings. I was able to run four and a half miles this morning. So I'm doing fine. Wow. I did have a great time with you. It was so, God, it was so wonderful to be in the same place at the same time with you and with your son who is amazing and with Catherine. It was just, it was really great. Of course, there's a lot of logistics, finagling in a time of COVID and with lots of different people there. And I know that that that part was hard at times, but like it was just awesome. It was so great to be together and now I'm home and I'm like happy to be in my house of course, but I am quite sad. I'm feeling

I'm feeling a little sadness, but we're not here to answer your questions or indeed to recount the week that we're about to re-recount on the podcast that's coming out next Monday. We are here. that we're about to re-recount on the podcast that's coming out next Monday. We are here to ask for your help and not for the first time. So we, I just went through the dear Hank and Johnny mail address and I searched for Hank and Johnny G. Mel.com if you wanna send us questions.

And I searched for the words Crash Course because that, I don't know if you know, John, but it's a thing that people talk about a lot in questions to us. Yeah. So we'll get the question and it's the normal question. And then at the end of the question, it is a little message that just says, hey, PS, I, for example, from Amy, I could go on at length about how much crash course helped and continues to help me in myriad ways.

And this one from Calvin, who says, thank you so much for providing an enormous amount of free educational videos through crash course. I'm not digging deep here, John. These are from this month. It's helped me through everything from AP World History to AP Psychology and AP Stats and AP Chem. It's amazing that I can just enter whatever subject I'm curious about and get an easily digestible and entertaining video

providing me with that information. Wow, Calvin, thank you for saying exactly the thing that I needed you to say before I needed you to say it. So Crash Course is so rewarding of a project to work on. It is also very hard to do. And I can think because it is successful, it is watched hundreds of millions of times a year. We reach over 70 million individual students a year and it's used in pretty much every school in the US and a lot of schools elsewhere

and we've also produced stuff in other languages. We've done stuff in Arabic and Spanish. And we are continuing to do that. But it is a thing that has been very intentionally built with a not a great business model. So we are not here to figure out how to charge students and teachers in schools for a crash course. We're here to figure out how to not do that because the moment you start to charge

for educational media, that's when you're raising the barriers instead of lowering them, which is our whole goal, is to lower the barriers to education, whether that's the cost or whether it's just the complexity of the material. And that's the thing that we have as our first priority is going in, we want it to be free, and we want it to do a very good job of taking something

that is complicated and is hard to learn and making it as easy as possible to learn. Yeah, and over the last 10 years, we've been able to do that thanks to a lot of different friends and supporters and funders. To be clear, Crash Course does not turn a profit. It has never turned a profit. It's not technically a non-profit. It's just a company that's designed to break even.

Yeah. And that's the way that we've had it organized for the last 10 years. And it's worked. It has allowed us to live our dream of making educational video and making it available for free for everyone. And it's allowed lots of other people to have access to educational resources that otherwise they might not have had access to. And so we're very proud of what Crash Course has accomplished in the last 10 years. And like I said earlier, we have lots of different forms of funding. Some of the funding comes from advertising. Some of it comes from grants, from different organizations, organizations that are concerned about educational resources being available.

A lot of it comes from Patreon. A lot of it actually also comes from the Dear Hank and John Patreon, because everybody who supports Dear Hank and John on Patreon, that money goes to fun, Complexly's, work in educational video. But a lot of our best and most popular series are funded by you. One way or another. One example of this is our new series in Crash Course, Black American History with a host Clint Smith, who wrote the New York Times best-selling book, How the Word Is Past. Which is very good. That has been a wonderful series. It's a great book. That's been a wonderful series. It's been hugely successful.

And we could not find funding for it from any source other than you. And so for series like that, that don't have a built-in funding partner, we're able to make them anyway because of the support that individuals who care about Crash Course and care about our work pay to help us make it.

A lot of that money comes from Patreon, like I said, but some of it comes from the new Crash Course Coin. This is Crash Course Coin.com. Now, before we go into this, I think it's important just to say at the outset the truth, which is that I did not want to make this episode of Dear Hank and John. I wanted to take a week off.

I felt like we should be able to take a week off now. And again, and Hank was like, we want to make this episode of Dear Hank and John. I wanted to take a week off. I felt like, we should be able to take a week off now. And again, and Hank was like, we're gonna make this episode because we gotta talk about Crash Course Coin. It's true. And then I was like, there's no way we're gonna raise money from a Dear Hank and John episode

about the Crash Course Coin, which you can buy at CrashCourseCoin.com. He's laying it all out. I was like, there's no way we're gonna raise a bunch of money that way. Hank, let's just take a week off and focus on next week. Hank was like, no, no, we're gonna raise a ton of money at Crash Course Coin.com.

So now, and then I was like, at that point, like, the competitive brother hit me, it was like, fine, we'll do it and I'll be proven correct. Right, well, you have to do a worse job of pitching it. And I'm gonna do a worse job of pitching it, and I'm going to do a worse job of pitching it right now, which is to say that it's already been super successful. The support has been really amazing. It's going to already enable us to do new work that we wouldn't have been able to do

this year and also in future years. So I'm very excited about this. So I have this idea along with the crash first team. We've been tossing this around for a long time. And the idea is basically that there is a coin that exists and it has a currency. And that currency is the amount of people that you are allowing us to reach with our work. And we developed that number by looking at the unique number of learners that interface with Crash Course's content, which is a number YouTube gives us.

And just dividing that into the amount of money that we spend. that interface with Crash Course's content, which is a number YouTube gives us, and just dividing that into the amount of money that we spend. And so we reach a lot of people, and we spend a lot of money. But when you divide those two numbers together, you find out that actually per dollar we spend, we reach a lot of people. So you can buy a $100 coin that allows us, and will allow us to reach 2,000 people, or you can buy a $500 coin that will allow us to reach 10,000 people. So these coins have a currency, and that currency is the number of people who are being helped in their educational journey by Crash Course. And 2,000 people

is a lot of people. And this is actually a secret, John. I haven't told me about this. This is Brandon Brungard's idea. The coins each have hash marks on their borders. And there are a total of 200 hash marks on each side. So as you can actually put your finger and rub it along the hash mark in every little tiny, little buzz of your finger is on the 2000 learner coin that's going to be 10 individual human beings you are helping to learn.

That was, I don't think that was a really good idea. That's a great idea. We developed the coins with all the people at Crash Course and, and, and, and, and, and, complexity, we sort of sent out an email and we were like, what's an image or a phrase or a person or a place that sort of evokes learning for you and Sarri Riley, who you may know from Sci-Shotanjans, but is the currently works for Crash Course, is suggested the first ever illustrations of human neurons by Santiago Romani-Cahal, which are really lovely and look great on a coin,

which I loved because it was like art and it was history and it's science and it's humanity. Like it's the thing that we use to examine and understand ourselves in the world. So it just felt really perfect. And then Adabay, who works for science shows, suggested something that her father and grandfather used to say to her translated into English because they were speaking in Spanish, is knowledge ways nothing carry all you can. So that's the slogan that we've used on the coin. Great slogan.

And I just think that they're great. They are great. And we had such, yeah. And a bunch of other ideas from the team were incorporated into the coin. And we ended up with something that's really beautiful. And it was hand engraved by the master engraver at Shire Post Mint, which is the mint that we are using in Arkansas.

They hand stamp each one of these coins. And I got one. I'm not afraid to say it. I purchased one. You know who got the first one? Who? Our mom. Oh man, our mom is, she's always ready to support anything that we do.

She's always first in line. I think she, I think she and dad bought the first two tickets to Vidcon. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, uh, that is, that is possible. We're very lucky. We're very lucky to have support from our parents. So the Crash Course coin is available at Crash Course coin.com but only for a few more days, that's why we're making this.

Yeah. Now, it's only available for a few more days. We really hope that you'll at least take a look and see how beautiful the coins are, even if you can't afford to support Crash Course at that level. And just enjoy how pretty the coins are, even if you can't afford to support Crash Course at that level. And just enjoy how pretty the coins are if you want to. And then if you're able to get one and support Crash Course, that would mean a lot to us. And of course, an ongoing and profound thank you

to everybody who supports Dear Hank and John on Patreon or Crash Course on Patreon, because that is what allows us to continue making this free educational content that means so much to us that really is the center of our professional lives in a lot of ways. So, we feel a deep responsibility to the team of people who make crash course. So good. But we also feel a deep responsibility to the 70 million people who use it to learn every

year. And we'd like to see that number grow. I mean, that's a huge number. It's hard to even get your head around the size of Crash Course's viewership. But we still know that there's a lot of room to grow because we know there are a lot of people who want opportunities to learn and aren't getting them in the ways that they need or aren't getting the kinds of information

that's transmitted in a fun and comprehensible way. And so we see that as our mission. And the great thing about a mission like that is that you are never done. That's absolutely. And I do want to finish out by saying that, of course, the whole point of this is that Crash Course isn't supposed to cost money for people who cannot afford it.

So for the people who can pay, you're making it available to those who can't. And do make sound financial decisions. This is not like a requirement. And I really deeply appreciate everybody who interfaces with Crash Course's content in any way, whether you're, and also all of those thank yous that I get, whether I'm like walking down the street and somebody stops to tell me that I help them get their nursing degree, or in the Dear Hank and John inbox, all of those are so appreciated and also extremely valuable and we are always very happy to be able to pass those along to the Crash Course team so that they know how appreciated their work is. So yeah, thank you, regardless of whether you can donate.

Thank you for using Crash Course. And please know that even if you can't donate, you are a very deeply valued member of the Crash Course community because everybody who, I mean, this, you know, ultimately learning only works when we learn together. And so let's, let's learn together. And if you're in a position to help other people with that financially, then please do. And if you're not, that's completely okay. Let's keep learning together. Let's keep learning together. Knowledge way is nothing. Carry all you can.

We'll see you next week for a proper episode. Crash Course Go.com. Crash Course Coin.com.