We answer your questions! (Patreon)

The Crash Course team had a great time discussing a few of your questions this month! Be sure to look out for the google form in a few weeks to submit more questions for October. We can't get to them all, but love looking through them! 

Clare G asked: What are your thoughts about learning in virtual spaces either through a VR or AR space or ‘in-game’ as some video games like Fortnite have been doing? Is that a space CC could move into?

Brandon Brungard, Producer: Oh boy. I have sooo many thoughts on this! I'm not super familiar with what Fornite is doing specifically in education, but I imagine it's using their Creative framework? If so, I imagine it's pretty similar to what Minecraft has been doing. I think education in an AR/VR space makes a lot of sense but is really tough to pursue when (at least currently) those technologies create a barrier to access. Also, any investments we would make towards that kind of content always feel like an opportunity cost since we could just be making more series on our regular channel. And as Stan always says, there is no cap on knowledge! It's also tricky because we'd want to make sure that our audience wants us to make that kind of thing more than just like... Geology. Seriously, rocks are like so cool. 

That said, we did do a VR solar system video for CC Astronomy that we were really proud of! And I might be, maybe, possibly prototyping some games designs that could theoretically supplement our regular curriculum. If you’re interested in what an AR experience of just regular CC would look like, ya'll should check out what Thought Café is doing with "Trek Education". It's pretty amazing (though not necessarily a game).

Madeline Doering, Managing Editor: With the graphics TC has already made, I've always thought CC was well-positioned to move into a game space. We'd just be asking consultants to develop more questions or problems that we then turn into puzzles other game moments rather than a narrative in a script.

Michael Rpdx asked: What is your, or a, favorite joke or reference in a video?

Stan Muller, Producer: Nine years later, the description of the Cold War video from World History 1 still cracks me up.

Brandon Brungard, Producer: That description is peak Stan. My absolute favorite gag on Crash Crash was filming the supervised learning training session with Jabril is CC AI #2. During the 2nd timelapse around the 11:30 mark Jabril (pretends) to document John Green Bot's responses as he handles like 80 glazed donuts (ps it was only like 8 donuts we recycled them through movie magic). ANYWAY, you can't really parse the audio since it's a timelapse, but Jabril had this entire conversation with John Green Bot about his opinions on JGB's responses. There was a whole rollercoaster of emotion on display as JGB had a good run of identifications and then started missing a bunch. BUT after a few minutes of this, Jabril's hands started to get so sticky that he was having trouble keeping composure so he started narrating the increasingly horrifying state of his hands (and the pen he was trying to write with) as the script supervisor and I laughed in the background. By the time we finally cut we were all in tears.

Madeline Doering, Managing Editor: It hasn't happened yet that I know of, but people were so outraged about the size of the bowl we put a goldfish in as an example in Geo that we thought we should just have it in background of future episodes progressively escaping to bigger and bigger bowls until eventually it breaks free to the ocean or a pond in a grand heist.

Hannah Bodenhausen, Associate Producer: The Orgo team is constantly adding fun nerdy references to all the videos which I love (even if I don't understand most of them until I read the comments) but my favorite so far has been the Scarlet Witch/Real Housewives intro from episode 29. We also have a super fun MCU/Wandavision themed episode coming up in the next few months that I'm so excited for!

Ron Kubiak asks: Will there be any more short courses this year? Zoology was great!

Stan Muller, Producer: Crash Course Outbreak Science is uploading on Tuesdays! Watch it here.