The Create Unknown

Mark Douglas’s pioneering work on Barely Political and Key of Awesome is one of YouTube’s most unique stories -- and Mark’s going through every detail with us. He’s been on a break for a few years now, and that’ll probably stop when he commits himself to being in a jam. Mark’s passions have changed a bit over time, but now Kevin’s going to threaten harm to get Mark’s album done. What could go wron...

William Osman, I'm Done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok After too many negative comments, TCU alumnus William Osman has announced that he’s had enough. He’s done despite continued success with his content, and he detailed why in a recent 20-minute video.  Every large channel has some form of this problem, and Kevin is no stranger to mean comments about his appearance, style, and conte...

It seems obvious that someone stealing your content is a bad thing. After all, they’re getting the views, the revenue, and the subscriptions. Most of the time that’s true. But after Kevin had his Vsauce2 YouTube content ripped and re-uploaded on TikTok, it got more complex. Vsauce3 Jake and several of the Baby Gang alerted Kevin to the theft, and… then there was a surge in YouTube views. The other...

Is it possible to have public therapy chats watched by up to 70,000 people that are actually effective? If so, is that even ethical? And if there’s any harm done, does the overall good outweigh it? Is “Twitch therapy” just self-help information, or is it actual therapy? These are the big questions about what Dr. K does on Twitter. His ‘Healthy Gamer’ brand is designed to offer resources and inform...

YouTube Rewind is officially dead after a near-decade run, and it absolutely felt like giving up in Saigon or Afghanistan. It started slow, exploded, and plummeted faster than... anything else we can think of. It's not common to rise to such heights so quickly and then become the #1 most hated thing on the platform, and it's actually quite a feat. Kevin, a veteran of Rewind himself, has serious th...

The softest t-shirts ever: https://www.thecreateunknown.com/store/ It might sound simplistic to say that Norm Macdonald was a guy who *loved* jokes, but that actually has pretty deep meaning. Jokes are some of the most complex, intricate, delicate ways we communicate ideas, and Norm Macdonald was one of the best ever. And as legendary as Norm Macdonald was, some people not only don’t get him, but...

The softest t-shirts ever: https://www.thecreateunknown.com/store/ We’ve talked to a range of creators about their struggles with demonetization, and we’ve always pointed out how nice it is that educational content is safe. Well… not anymore. Kevin’s latest Vsauce2 video about a very public crime in Britain has been smacked down to the point where AdSense doesn’t even begin to cover the cost of ed...

When Dean Lamb auditioned for Archspire, he didn’t feel that he was good enough to play with the band -- it took him weeks of pure practice to get up to match Archspire’s incredible speed that pushes the boundaries of how fast humans can play music. And now Dean is not only an integral part of Archspire’s success, but he’s got a YouTube channel that’s its own standalone enterprise. He knows how to...

When we met The Kino Corner, he was just getting started on YouTube -- and in the years since, he’s become one of the go-to experts on YouTube when it comes to evaluating films. Just... not superhero movies. And there are a few reasons for that, including connected films and a larger ecosystem that affects how individual movies are made. Kino isn’t just a film critic. He’s a filmmaker as well. So...

It’s official: Hans Van Harken is one of our favorite guests ever, and it isn’t even because he met Pebbles via Newgrounds when they were both teenagers. When drought hit California, Hans saw a blank canvas on which he could paint a movie. That’s when Mutt and Chopps became a reality. Oh, and it’s incredible, from the writing to the makeup to the cinematography and score. But one of the most remar...

Kyle Hill has a creative track that’s pretty unique -- from graduate study to hosting Mythbusters: The Search, to running Nerdist’s science content for years, and now working on his own project, The Facility. He started in the skeptic community debunking bad science information, and eventually started playing around with Chernobyl and superheroes. But how do you figure out when it’s time to interv...

Marques Brownlee may very well be the top YouTuber of the last decade -- so of course, Kevin wants to distill his life force into a sippable drink. Between well over 1,000 videos, a new Studio channel, a successful podcast, and a YouTube Original series -- oh, and being a professional athlete -- how does he actually do it all? Seriously, does he sleep? It really is important to take care of yourse...

Slimecicle is here to complete our Chuckle Sandwich trifecta, and we start with a hard-to-answer “would you rather?” and wise words about love. But he and the CS boys are doing quite well with their podcast, which is pretty rare in a world of supergroup e-projects that almost never seem to last. What are they doing right? What makes it toughest is dealing with the ‘reactionary brain’ of the YouTub...

We’ve never had an episode quite like this one -- Mutahar’s got a lot to talk about, and there’s nothing ordinary about him. Chris-Chan? Blizzard’s “Bill Cosby Suite?” His desperate wish to go to a furry convention’s “after party” before he dies? Yeah, for better or worse, it’s all here. We start by speculating on what’s going to get Muta cancelled in 7 years and what on earth is going on with eve...

Judner’s UrAvgConsumer channel is one of the leading tech channels on YouTube, and it all started because he didn’t want to stand out. That mentality of delivering valuable information to normal people -- not just the tech-obsessed -- has driven millions of subscribers and an enduring fan base. So what’s the deal with tech YouTubers and not having phone cases?!? Tech isn’t necessarily mind-blowing...

A lot can happen in a year and a half, like… winning an Emmy for a YouTube Original and filming its second season. And this time we not only talk to Vsauce3’s Jake Roper, but also to Eric Langlay, the VFX and cinematography wizard behind Could You Survive the Movies? and about a decade of Vsauce videos. So what’s the one movie CYSTM will never be able to do? The answer is kind of surprising, and i...

3 years ago we started with a couple short, 40-minute episodes per month. Now we’re 2 hours every week and putting our 100th show into the books -- and we couldn’t have done it without the support of PsychicPebbles *and* all of you. So, now it’s time to smile with us, Friends. It’s the Return of the King, and naturally we want to know as much as we can about the upcoming season of Smiling Friends....

No one we’ve talked to has risen so high and so fast as Jack Manifold has in the world of Minecraft streaming. In just a year, he’s gone from a tiny audience to being in the elite tier of Minecraft on Twitch -- and that’s a lot to process for someone so young. And it all started from a hashtag campaign. One of the challenges is a sort of content vs. life balance, and Jack’s got an excellent handle...

We’ve gearing up for Jack Manifold TONIGHT at 6pm ET, so we wanted to spend a little time talking Google, YouTube, and TikTok with the TCU Community. VidCon featured creator announcements have rubbed some people the wrong way because they simply don’t recognize anyone on the list -- and that’s in large part due to TikTok’s dominance and sponsorship of VidCon itself. Something is changing here, and...

PhysicsGirl Dianna Cowern is your average Forbes 30 Under 30, award-winning YouTube legend who got her start in a tiny Hawaiian school -- which is to suggest that nothing about Dianna’s impressive career path is any sort of accident. With 2 million subscribers and over 150 million views, Dianna has become one of Science YouTube’s most prolific figures, and she’s inspired a generation of girls to g...

Sven Johnson can make anything funny, whether it’s a hot dog or being a moth. We start off by establishing that most people eat an average of 43,000 hot dogs in their lifetime, which seems accurate. So why is a hot dog always funny? The answer shows how unique Sven’s attitude really is, and why his short, quirky jokes work so well. Then a historical sanitation engineering discussion gets heated su...

Nobody on YouTube lives out Arthur C. Clarke’s rule that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” quite like Allen Pan. From flame-throwing gloves to recreating some of the most incredible weapons and gadgets in films, Allen can create just about anything. Except a Gundam, which he desperately wants the money to make.  Kevin’s not sure if dinosaurs are real, but Alle...

There’s no more thorough expert at debunking all things visual than Captain Disillusion, and it’s the culmination of his journey from a Cold War-era circus family to the gold standard of YouTube VFX analysis.  Alan details his process for debunking and how it fits within the context of internet cynicism and the audience’s need for a story. Should we aspire to be Forrest Gump, or do we really want...

Dr. Joe Hanson has made a case to be included on Science YouTube’s Mount Rushmore. It’s partly because he’s engaging and entertaining, but it also might have something to do with that doctorate in cell and molecular biology from UT-Austin. Every day, he’s proving that It’s Okay to Be Smart. Joe went from being a “pipette monkey” in a lab to having a solid presence on Tumblr, of all places. And his...

There is NO ONE on YouTube like Ben of the Urban Rescue Ranch. He’s got a kangaroo, a possum, a pair of rheas (including the frequently-violent Kevin)... so there’s a lot to talk about with his mini-farm and translating it to TikTok and YouTube. How’d he learn to be King of the Urban Rescue Jungle? From YouTube, naturally. Ben’s formal education wasn’t in animal wrangling, or even biology, but he’...