Hello I'm Simon Whistler you're watching the
TodayIFoundout youtube channel and in the
video today we've got something very different
for you this is a special bonus episode.
If you're watching this right now that means
we've very recently passed the 1 Million subscriber
mark.
And we just wanted to make this video, you'll
notice it is incredibly lengthy, because we
wanted to do something special for the 1 million
subscriber mark.
I've been working on this video for many days,
I know Daven's been working on this for many
days, so we're quite excited to present to
you, this is how we make our videos.
We've been asked a lot of times how exactly
it works behind the scenes.
So, basically, in this video we lay everything
out for you from, the first half is Daven
talking about the writing and the research
process, and the second half is me talking
about the production process so I really hope
you enjoy all of that.
Kind of before we get into it, I also wanted
to say a huge thank you to everyone who has
subscribed whether you subscribed all the
way back in the beginning or if you just saw
this video and you subscribed right now whatever
the case, I'd love to thank you.
It took us a long time to get here.
It may seem like we grew super fast, but it
was last November, we'd been doing this for
about 18 months, we'd made 500 videos and
we had 40,000 subscribers.
In the last 8 months we've grown from 40,000
subscribers to 1 million and hopefully beyond.
So thank you so much to everyone who has been
there, like I say whether you subscribed right
now or two years ago.
We really appreciate you being here and we
really hope the future is bright for this
channel.
And whatever the next milestone is, I'll look
forward to doing another video like this,
maybe on a different topic then.
Anyway, let's roll right into it, and I'll
hand things over to Daven to kick us off.
Thanks.
So the first thing here in the creation process
is the initial topic idea.
Given how much content we churn out, a lot
of people seem to assume this is one of the
hard parts, but it’s actually one of the
easiest as the process is more than self-sustaining.
For example, when we’re researching a given
topic, we’ll usually come across other interesting
topics, or when reading something, it will
cause us to wonder about something else not
really relevant to what we’re writing about
at the time, but that would be a good topic
in and of itself.
Beyond that, given this is what we do for
a living, even when not working, ideas for
potential interesting topics pop into our
heads all the time where we’ll wonder about
something, and then, for instance, I’ll
just send myself a quick email when I think
of something I think might be interesting.
And as for TodayIFoundOut authors, they can
either email me when they have ideas or come
across something or put them in a shared potential
topics spreadsheet for me to review.
Karl Smallwood particularly submits tons of
great topic ideas all the time, particularly
good at coming up with some of the more zany
ones you’ll see on the channel and website.
Beyond that, TodayIFoundOut fans send us potential
topic ideas from things they’ll come across
or something they’re wondering about all
the time.
This happens in website, youtube, and social
media comments, as well as in direct emails
or in replies to our email newsletter.
These are all collected and put into a spreadsheet
for me to review for approval or not.
Once a topic idea gets approved by me, it
then ends up in this spreadsheet, with me
writing a very brief description on what the
focus should be.
All regular TodayIFoundOut authors have access
to this, and can pick and choose what topics
they want simply by putting their name next
to it, though I do request they only select
a few at a time.
Regular authors are free to pivot a little
here in focusing on a different aspect of
the thing if they discover something more
interesting when researching, but this at
least gives them a general outline to start
with.
The main point of this is to remove as much
administrative overhead as possible and allow
the authors to pick topics they’re interested
in covering, as assigning a topic a given
author isn’t interested in his a great way
to get a sub-par final product in my experience.
That’s not to say I never assign topics,
like if someone has a particular expertise,
like Melissa is a lawyer and Scott is a medical
expert, so if a topic in one of those categories
I think might be a particularly difficult
one to cover, I might send it directly to
them instead of adding it to the general list.
But even then, they’re always free to reject
working on a topic if they just aren’t interested
in it.
Again, I think it’s really key that the
person working on a topic needs to be very
interested in it in order for the final product
to end up being good.
As for the “Do Trees Poop” topic you’ll
be watching us create today, this was originally
a fan question and is actually one of the
rare assigned ones, as a topic like covering
tree poop is right up Karl’s alley and I
particularly wanted to pick the topic for
the behind the scenes video today, as I wanted
to try to find something that would have a
high probability of more or less being a typical
TodayIFoundOut article to give a good representation
of what the normal process is for us.
Obviously given the topics vary wildly, the
work that goes into them can likewise vary
considerably, both in time and what needs
done to do it.
But I figured this one seemed like it was
a good fit to be more typical, which indeed
mostly turned out to be correct, other than
the fact that it was assigned and not selected
out by Karl and there were a couple more hours
than normal thrown in there due to a certain
amount of uncertainty on aspects of the topic
among experts in the field, which required
a little extra digging to sort out.
As for what each author does once they select
an article, this actually varies a bit from
topic to topic and author to author.
For this topic, Karl notes he started by referencing
“a number of textbooks on the basic biology
of plants so I could confidently write about
the processes involved and get a feel for
the language used when addressing a person
maybe unfamiliar with the topic.”
Then, he notes, “Once I feel comfortable
I have a basic understanding of the concept
I will then delve into more dense literature,
usually consulting Google books and scholar…
to gain a deeper understanding of what exactly
is going on and then do more general searches
to follow up on stuff I’ve learned and to
clarify different things…”
“Once I have all the research in place,
I will then "write" the article in my head…
Usually I will take a brief break and do something
mundane like go for a jog, make a cup of tea
or simply listen to some music.
This usually takes about 30 minutes and in
that time I formulate the basic structure
of the article, how it will flow and the main
talking points.
“
“I then write the introduction… [which]
is one of the most time intensive parts of
the entire process.
The introduction will go through anywhere
upwards of a dozen drafts as I try to find
the right voice for the article.
I try to make sure every introduction introduces
the topic at hand, asks a question the reader
will want to know the answer to (to provide
an incentive to keep reading) and usually
contain a joke…”
“The actual writing of the article itself
takes a couple hours.
The first draft takes about an hour, I then
read the entire thing out loud to look for
awkward wordings or sentences...
I then change the font size and put the whole
thing in bold (a technique I read about that
helps with proofreading) to look for mistakes.
I will then go through the whole article again
to see if there are any "dull" paragraphs,
basically any paragraph that doesn't contain
at least a few new pieces of information for
a reader and correct that by further researching
the topic being discussed within it to see
if there are any more things I can mention
that are interesting.”
“I then submit the whole thing to the site's
wordpress (I write everything in Google Docs)
and give it one last look over for mistakes.
“
As Karl notes there, once an author is done
with a piece, it ends up on the site marked
as pending, with currently there being over
670 pending articles waiting for me to my
part on…
You might at this point be wondering why there
are so many…
Mainly because since bringing others onboard
about 4 or 5 years ago, everything has very
much been a collaborative effort, which I’ve
found is the best way to produce the best
content, but doesn’t exactly scale well
with only 1 editor.
But bottom line, when I write the pieces myself
completely or one of TodayIFoundOut’s authors
does, it rarely turns out as good as if multiple
minds were leveled on the subject.
So once something goes up as Pending, I then
at some point will review it… occasionally
even years later… though usually much more
promptly, particularly tending to be biased
towards recently submitted things just from
regularly checking what’s coming in.
As the topic of Why Trees Poop was assigned
for this very video, I reviewed it immediately,
and recorded my process for your viewing pleasure.
My first step here is to simply read the article
to see what, in this case, Karl, dug up and
the narrative he took and all that.
This also functions to familiarize myself
very well with the given topic, as regular
TIFO authors like Karl tend to do a really
good job at explaining things.
Once I’ve done that and usually then have
a very good sense of the subject, I’ll completely
re-research the thing, first using the listed
sources, and then expanding beyond that just
to make sure, as of course the listed sources
are going to reflect what the author wrote
as far as the facts and details and all that.
It’s important to note here that the listed
sources are not actually the complete list
of sources; we typically omit redundant sources
that we use for verification purposes.
The reasons for this are two-fold.
First, from a strictly practical standpoint,
the Google gods require regular sacrifices
upon their alter, one of which being it wouldn’t
be a good idea to put many dozens of links
to random sites on every page on TodayIFoundOut,
and even in YouTube, where we don’t care
so much about that, we occasionally have run
into the issue of having too many sources
even with the way we do it, so the description
ends up being too long and YouTube complains
at us about it and we have to trim things
down.
The second reason is just that the sources
are not just meant to give credit where credit
is due, but also to give readers and viewers
a way to read more on a given topic if they
so choose.
Having dozens of redundant sources ends up
not being as good as simply picking the best
source for a given piece of information that
also hopefully expands on stuff we don’t
cover related to the topic.
Of course, sometimes a given source might
just talk about some snippet of information
we include in the article, but they’re the
best one who mentions that snippet, so even
though that one doesn’t include extra information,
it will get included.
But when looking at many sources saying the
same thing, we’ll usually try to pick the
one that also says other interesting stuff
we don’t mention to attempt to make the
references section somewhat useful to people.
In any event, while re-researching the topic,
if I come across any other potentially interesting
topics that would make a good full article,
I’ll note those, usually just in notepad
at first and later processing them for the
main topics file later.
Or if the thing is just an interesting snippet
that may fit in the article and hasn’t already
been included by the author, noting it to
see if it can be worked in naturally, or if
not used as a Bonus Fact.
My main strategy, however, is not just to
try to find stuff a given author might have
missed or just decided not to include; usually
TodayIFoundOut’s authors are really good
at picking out interesting tidbits.
What I’m really looking to do here is to
attempt to ensure extreme accuracy, which
is harder than a lot of people seem to think.
No matter how good one is at researching,
separating fact from fiction, and spotting
inconsistencies from otherwise reputable sources,
everyone is going to get stuff wrong some
times.
So it’s not just looking something up in
the Oxford English Dictionary or Encyclopedia
Britannica, or reading something some expert
in the field is saying and then parroting
that.
Again, everybody gets details wrong quite
often, even the most accurate of sources.
For instance a study published in Nature in
2005 demonstrated Britannica had 2.92 errors
per science article at that point.
Most of these were minor, but mistakes none
the less.
(For reference, they found Wikipedia at that
time almost matched that at 3.86 errors per
science article.
This provides the dual lesson of never trusting
any single source, no matter how prestigious,
and not committing the popular mistake of
thinking Wikipedia is not, at least, a reasonably
good source, though again double checking
always needs done.)
In any event, I’ve personally found many
errors in the OED over the last near decade
I’ve been doing this, arguably one of the
most accurate etymological sources in the
history of humanity.
Again, nobody bats a thousand.
It’s simply impossible to be perfectly accurate
in every little detail no matter how hard
you try.
But by completely re-researching the topics,
I can at least up the accuracy a little beyond
what the already very accurate Today I Found
Out authors have done.
And as for my strategy of ensuring what I’m
coming up with is accurate, similar to what
the authors do, beyond a healthy level of
skepticism in everything we read, I’m mainly
looking to consult a ton of good sources on
a subject, noting discrepancies between them
(and potentially any discrepancy with what
a given source is saying vs. what the TodayIFoundOut
author wrote) and of course looking at where
they all agree, then trying to track down
the truth between the discrepancies, if possible,
or if not probably then mentioning the conflict
explicitly in the article.
On that, I might emphasize one idea that seems
the most plausible given all the data at hand
and only briefly mention the alternates, or
if it’s not clear at all which is right,
give them equal coverage.
Or if one is very clearly correct, but nonetheless
something else is often touted as correct
by otherwise reputable sources, we want to
be sure and debunk that and thoroughly explain
why this other thing is actually correct and
not something else you might have otherwise
heard.
Occasionally we’ll also come across something
where everybody is saying the same thing,
but it just doesn’t seem right, which is
where the skepticism element comes in to play
as a useful tool in one’s accuracy toolbox.
For example, a few months back we did an article
on Pelorus Jack, the dolphin who supposedly
used to guide ships through parts of the sometimes
dangerous Cook Strait in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
Every single modern source we could find discussing
the dolphin stated this, even occasionally
citing early 20th century news stories stating
the dolphin did this.
It all seemed very credible given the sources…
but it had all the earmarks of something that’s
been exaggerated over time.
I was particularly thinking what ship captain
is actually going to trust that some random
dolphin understands his ship’s capabilities
and going to trust it to guide said ship through
dangerous seas.
On top of that, this was at the time supposedly
a highly trafficked area- with just one dolphin
to guide ships, that’s going to result in
quite the traffic jam.
And dolphins love to play in the wake of boats
and ships, so might that just have been what
was happening and it’s just been exaggerated
in the century since and originally by news
reports which are prone to sensationalize
things as long as there have been news reports?
I mean, there must have been some reason this
dolphin was once so newsworthy, but the whole
thing just seemed fishy.
So despite the many, many reputable sources
saying this, I didn’t really feel comfortable
publishing it without a first hand account
of a ship captain or sailor or the like who’d
actually seen the dolphin in action and corroborated
the story.
No modern source I read had this.
Many hours of trolling through old newspaper
archives from the region and time period in
question and I finally came across some first
hand accounts of the dolphin in action.
And, indeed, given these accounts, this was
just a dolphin that liked to play in the ship’s
wakes in the area.
As to why he was newsworthy at the time, this
was to do with his consistency in appearing,
usually briefly, in the wake of most ships
traveling through a section of the strait,
before switching to a different ship, day
or night.
He achieved this as, while dolphins do need
approximately eight hours a sleep per 24 hour
cycle, dolphins don’t actually ever go into
a full sleep state, in terms of becoming completely
unconscious.
They can’t do this, in fact, because they
don’t breathe automatically, meaning to
become fully unconscious under water would
mean their death.
How dolphins handle this is to essentially
put one hemisphere of their brain to sleep
at a time, while the other is still functioning
as it would when conscious.
They then alternate which side of their brain
is sleeping periodically.
Doing this for about eight hours per day,
usually sporadically, rather than eight straight
hours like a human, allows them to be conscious
enough to remain aware of their environment
and periodically swim to the surface for air,
while still getting sleep.
Thus, Jack's widely reported consistency in
making an appearance alongside just about
every ship that passed through the section
of the strait he called home, at least for
a few minutes at a time, may well have been
helped by the fact that he was always aware
when ships were around, and could wake up
and go hop around in their bow waves for a
bit, if he chose.
As for why he did it, it’s thought he was
the only Risso dolphin in the region for the
two to three decades he swam the strait, so
was probably just lonely and bored, Risso
dolphins normally being very social animals
traveling in large groups.
He became something of a tourist attraction,
with even the likes of Mark Twain traveling
to see him firsthand.
As far as I could find, the idea of him not
just appearing in the wakes of ships, but
guiding them goes all to 1917, only a few
years after the dolphin disappeared, so perhaps
why so many otherwise reputable sources today
say the Pelorus Jack used to guide ships,
even though this is unequivocally false.
Despite at that point having spent a few days
on this topic, normally I’d not publish
it at all as a topic like “Did a Dolphin
Really Guide All Ships Through Cook Strait
in the Early 20th Century” and the answer
ending up being 3,412 words that essentially
just sum up to “No” isn’t on the surface
terribly interesting.
Although, I actually think that one ended
up being moderately interesting even so, peppered
with some good dolphin facts and an interesting
section on one of the deadliest maritime disasters
in New Zealand history, the demise of the
SS Penguin, a ship Pelorus Jack purportedly
avoided after an incident in 1904, giving
rise to the legend that it only sunk because
Pelorus Jack wouldn’t guide it through the
strait as he did other ships.
But overall, the piece was not really up to
par with our normal work on “interesting”
front.
I only ended up publishing it all because
everyone else was saying one thing, and we,
at least at that point, were the only modern
source that had the real, full story.
So not so much published for the general fan
of the site, but more just to put it out there
as a reference for others covering the dolphin.
So you see the point in all of this being
that it’s not just ridiculously hard to
be perfectly accurate given the current state
of human knowledge on a subject, but very
much impossible no matter how hard one tries.
That’s not to mention that the current state
of human knowledge on a subject can sometimes
change over time, further throwing a wrench
in things.
:-) So everybody gets stuff wrong sometimes;
there are no exceptions to this.
My job in all of this is to give it my best
college try to ensure none of TIFO’s authors,
who are an extremely skilled bunch, got something
wrong.
This sort of collaborative researching and
writing helps facilitate this better than
if, say, I just continued to write and research
things myself as I used to do (with nobody
double checking me), or just published what
my authors came up with without doing my part.
Even then, it’s still impossible to catch
everything of course, but the effort’s there.
;-)
Beyond slightly better accuracy, one major
bonus in at least making the attempt to be
perfectly accurate is that both the original
author and myself in doing a deeper dive than
most, not once, but twice, will inevitably
find interesting details and tidbits others
covering the same topic probably didn’t
find.
So back to article creation- after I take
notes, which I always place in notepad on
my right screen, I read through the article
again and begin to add any additional tidbits
I think should be included, from memory, putting
XYZ where I can’t remember the specific
details or the like, as a sort of placeholder.
If re-arranging stuff or removing something
the original author wrote for some reason,
I’ll copy that to a notepad file on the
left screen.
This keeps it as something I can refer back
to if the reason I removed it is I want to
do a wholesale re-wording to perhaps integrate
some other related interesting bit of information.
I may also later simply copy it back into
the main article somewhere else.
By always keeping it on the left screen and
the notes always on the right screen, it ensures
I don’t mix that text up with the notes
file contents, as obviously that would be
amazingly bad if I accidentally copied and
pasted something a non-TIFO author wrote into
the article.
After I’ve done all that, I’ll start to
process the notes file, reading over every
note taken and filling out the details in
the article from them or just deleting them
if the note was just for verification purposes
or not something I end up wanting to include,
as it’s not interesting or too much of a
tangent or whatever upon further review.
(Although, as previously mentioned, if the
tangent is super interesting and I can’t
work it into the main article in a natural
way, I’ll put it in the Bonus Facts or even
potentially make it into an article of its
own if it’s sufficiently worthy of such.)
During this whole process I’m looking to
craft the final narrative or flow of the article,
which is usually roughly what the original
author came up with, if not exactly what they
came up with if they’ve been writing for
TIFO for long enough and get the style I’m
wanting here, like someone like Karl whose
been writing for TodayIFoundOut for about
four years now.
But mainly here I’m looking to ensure the
final product is fairly consistent with TIFO’s
normal voice and style, including being very
densely information packed, giving you more
than you expected just from the title.
Like in an article about the origin of the
expression “piss like a racehorse” you’re
not just going to learn the origin of the
expression, you’re going to learn some interesting
things about horse racing or in one about
why Yankee Doodle called the feather in his
hat macaroni, you’re going to learn about
some interesting related stuff, like the interesting
origin of the expression “dude”.
On that note, I’m also looking to weed out
uninteresting bits, which is quite subjective
on the latter, but as I’m the creator of
the site and a big fan of this type of content,
I just kind of go with what I think is interesting-
which as I’ve learned is a great way to
ensure a steady stream of complaint emails
about how boring TIFO’s contents is….
:-)
On that note, in all topics we’re trying
to balance entertaining you while simultaneously
teaching you or broadening your knowledge
on something, to really hit that edutainment
mark well, though generally trying to err
slightly more on the side of educating than
many in the genre do.
It’s a fine line between something being
entertaining vs. seemingly like being in school,
and I will never claim that we manage to hit
the mark perfectly on every piece created.
But, again, at least the effort’s there.
:-)
The point of all this is to really make a
given topic our own, so to speak.
Everything has been covered by somebody somewhere,
so what we’re really trying to do here is
make sure TIFO’s version is unique in some
way.
To accomplish this, as previously alluded
to, we’re first looking to make it ultra-accurate
down to the tiniest details, which right there
separates it from many in the genre.
This is super important, not just because
it (figuratively) kills me every time we get
some tidbit wrong, but because that is a huge
part of why TIFO was created in the first
place- along with being a byproduct of my
productive procrastination philosophy, which,
in a nutshell is the idea that if you find
yourself procrastinating a lot doing something,
try to make that something productive in some
way- in this case it’s productive both in
learning new things, which is always good,
as well as attempting to make a living out
of doing just that.
In any event, at the time in 2009 when I created
the site, there really weren’t a lot of
good interesting fact sites our channels out
there.
This was before CGP Grey, Vsauce, MinutePhysics,
Sci-Show, CrashCourse, Numberphile, etc.
Technically Destin of SmarterEveryDay had
started posting occasional awesome educational
videos going back to 2008, but it didn’t
become the focus of his channel until 2011.
Reddit’s TIL, which of course is more of
an aggregate of other people’s work rather
than creating something somewhat unique as
these other people do, tended to be sensationalized
for effect with a lot of subtle inaccuracies
or outright incorrect stuff as a result.
That’s not to say there weren’t a few
good ones out there, like Mental_Floss, Snopes,
World Wise Words, or sort of The Godfather,
the mysterious individual or individuals known
only as Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope which
was being published all the way back in 1973,
just it was rare.
So what I was really looking to do was create
an ultra-accurate source of interesting facts.
And I thought that as an OK writer fresh out
of a master’s level course on how to properly
research stuff, combined with my inherent
nature of just naturally being super anal
about being accurate on things, this was something
I could do.
Of course, in reality looking back I wasn’t
actually good at this sort of research, was
an absolute horrible interesting fact article
writer in so, so many ways, and just generally
sucked at this whole thing for quite some
time.
:-) But with many thousands of hours of practice,
one improves a little, and that process continues
many years later.
Beyond improving my own work over time, when
I was able to start bringing other team members
onboard after a few years, things improved
dramatically on all fronts thanks to the sort
of collaborative researching and writing process
that has been honed since.
But in any event, the main point here is that
while it’s still impossible to be perfectly
accurate all the time, in making the attempt
in both deep and broad research, we simultaneously
separate our content somewhat from certain
others in the genre, while also finding bits
of information others aren’t including in
their coverage of the topic, more or less
all putting our stamp on the thing.
Alright, back to the editing- as I’m going
through the notes and polishing up the article,
I sometimes wonder about something or am unsure
about some little tidbit, and so will usually
still have a little bit of researching to
do, similar to what Karl was mentioning.
Essentially, I’m looking to make sure that
I understand fully everything being said and
every word being used, which is another key
part in ensuring accuracy and catching little
mistakes from otherwise reputable sources.
After rinsing and repeating on all this, I’ll
ultimately get through all the notes and at
this point the article is mostly done.
From here I’ll just read through it over
and over again, polishing up the writing given
any changes I’ve made to the original piece,
particularly including making sure anything
I’ve added hasn’t screwed with the original
text from the author.
This is also the final check in removing parts
I think that aren’t interesting enough,
or move them to Bonus Facts if they are interesting
but don’t quite fit, or do some final re-arranging,
or the like, similar to what’s been going
on the whole time.
At this stage it’s all about strictly editing
and not adding anything new.
As I progressively get closer to the end,
I also start trying to focus more and more
on trying to see the thing from the end consumer’s
perspective, whose just coming across the
topic for the first time, trying to make sure
everything is crystal clear, which is actually
a surprisingly hard part of all this just
owing to how much outside information on the
topic we’ve read and how many times we read
through the article itself.
This is one of the reasons it’s important
on the final read through not to make much
in the way of any change, as once one starts
getting sidetracked on modifying some bit
too heavily, the rest of the article and narrative
to a certain extent kind of go out of your
head a bit and you really need to start over
from the beginning to again try to see the
whole thing from the perspective of someone
who knows nothing about the topic and make
sure everything relevant is included to make
things clear.
Once I do get through the whole thing with
only making minimal modifications, maybe tweaking
a bit of grammar here or there or changing
the wording of something very slightly, I’ll
give it one last read-through and then it’s
finally done.
As for how many full read-throughs it takes
to achieve all this, this varies considerably
from topic to topic and I’ve never really
bothered to keep track of this to really know
a definitive average, though I’d imagine
it probably ranges from about a minimum of
maybe around 5 times through the article and
a maximum of maybe a couple dozen times or
so for me, and then however many times the
original author goes through it before I even
see it.
That’s not to mention the many times an
individual section of the whole must be read
through in the process of all that.
:-)
For reference on this Tree Poop article, I
counted 10 times for myself reading through
the article from start to finish, with many
more times read-through on the individual
paragraphs and sections.
Alright, so now the article’s done and we
now definitively know the answer to the question
of whether trees pee and poop.
What happens from here?
This depends, *usually*, but not always, it
will get published on the website first and
if it’s particularly good, sent out to TIFO’s
email newsletter.
This is another key way to ensure accuracy
before something gets to YouTube outside of
all our other efforts.
As Cunningham’s Law notes, “The best way
to get the right answer on the Internet is
not to ask a question, but to post the wrong
answer.”
Between the website and the newsletter, on
average about 20K-30K people will have read
the thing within the first week.
Helpfully, at least according to the various
analytics I have available, TIFO’s core
crowed tends to be a pretty highly educated
bunch.
That’s not to mention potentially hundreds
of thousands of people read a given article
over the coming years.
(At present there are about 2,700 full articles
on TIFO, and said content has been read about
200 million times, so an average of 74,000
times per article, though of course there
are outliers on each side of that.)
So if we get some detail wrong, we’ll probably
hear about it.
This doesn’t happen very often, usually
just things like maybe we typoed a date, like
writing 1982 when we meant 1882 or something,
which as an aside that particular swapping
of the 19th century for the 20th in writing
a year is something every single author, including
myself, that writes for TIFO does occasionally
and as I’m no exception to this rule even
in editing things, I don’t always catch
it.
Funny enough, even Simon does this every now
and then when reading a script, so not just
a problem in writing and editing.
Kind of an interesting phenomenon that doesn’t
occur when, say writing 1682.
Something about the muscle memory of writing
19XY seems to kick in when attempting to reach
for that eight on the keyboard.
It will be interesting if that phenomenon
disappears once TIFO authors start to be born
in the 21st century or at least late 20th
century and thus having never probably developed
the muscle memory of writing 19XY all the
time.
In any event, even though these sorts of mistakes
are quite rare and even then, typically just
something little like that- I don’t think
we’ve ever gotten a main point wrong given
the current state of human knowledge at the
time of the writing (though we have a handful
of times had to modify something when the
current state of human knowledge changed in
the interim from the writing to the present),
I still prefer to publish things in this order
very much because once something goes up on
YouTube, any mistakes can’t really be edited,
unlike on the website.
And beyond potential mistakes, another advantage
is that readers give feedback on some part
of the article that maybe wasn’t really
clear or something, like they might comment
that they’re confused about XYZ, which again
allows me to fix it before it gets published
in a somewhat permanent form on an expensive
to produce video.
This used to happen more in the early days
of TIFO, but still every now and then occurs.
But even if rare, it’s a nice little way
to help improve the content that little bit
more when needed.
This is also a method that’s not available
to a lot of creators on YouTube, giving us
a tiny advantage there.
Alright, so now the article’s potentially
published to a decent sized audience for at
least a short time, if not occasionally years.
So how does it end up on YouTube and how do
we decide what goes there?
To begin with, it’s got to be super interesting,
at least in Simon and my opinion- obviously
not everybody’s going to be interested in
everything we put up given the extremely diverse
topics we cover.
But even with that caveat, not all TIFO content
is worthy of spending the time and money to
put it in video form and we’re very cognoscente
of the fact that subscribers don’t stay
such if not given a steady stream of great
content.
And as subscribers are the lifeblood of a
channel, in this case we do definitively go
outside of my normal “Well, I find it interesting,
so other people like me probably will too”
strategy on the website, and try to use metrics
of what sort of things end up being liked
the most by our subscribers and that sort
of thing, to ensure we’re delivering what
people want, and not just what I think is
interesting.
So, once a piece of content’s been identified,
whether by Simon trolling through the archives,
perhaps looking for something relevant to
something coming up or to find something that’s
similar to other stuff you guys all seemed
to really like based on our various metrics,
or me just coming across something in the
archives over the course of my normal duties
or publishing something I think is particularly
good so want to get up on YouTube quickly,
I’ll take look over the article yet again
to process for youtube form.
In the case of a piece of content that’s
quite old, this might mean re-editing it,
and even sometimes re-researching it to get
it up to the present quality of content on
TIFO or make sure everything’s still true
given the current state of human knowledge.
And in any case, at the least making sure
everything in what becomes the script is relevant
to YouTube, like changing words like “reader”
to “viewer” or if some author wrote “as
noted above” changing it to “as noted
previously” or maybe if the article said
something like “vice president of research
XYZ” perhaps needing to change that to “former
vice president of research XYZ” if the person
is no longer in that position, or a bunch
of little things like that.
I’ll also sometimes trim out bits that I
think, while interesting in text, might drag
down a video a bit or be too much of a tangent
or whatever - again being cognoscente of the
fact that YouTube subscribers very definitively
have slightly different tastes than TodayIFoundOut
website and newsletter subscribers.
In the end, every minute of video production
costs that much more, and subscribers getting
bored mean subscribers who cease to be so
and don’t watch the videos all the way through.
So I’m really trying to tighten up the content
a titch where I think needed for video form.
Once I’ve done that, I then place it in
a shared scripts folder Simon and I use.
In order to make sure we don’t slip up and
cover the same thing, once we’re going to
cover something, we take it out of the general
folder and place it into the Simon or Daven
folders.
As I’m putting the scripts in the general
folder in the first place, I’ll usually
just take the ones I want right then, which
is a perk of my half of running this channel.
:-) However, as Simon’s the much stronger
presenter, I try to only take the ones I think
are simultaneously most interesting, but that
have little chance of being popular on YouTube
outside of our own subscribers.
Once the script’s then in the shared folder,
the video production side is Simon’s domain,
along with running the administrative side
of things for the channel, which in and of
itself is shockingly time consuming, filled
with tedious, mostly thankless work.
:-)
So that’s more or less where my work on
the videos end in most cases.
For 
the rest, here’s Simon.
