From biology lectures to YouTube fame
Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown are impossibly down to earth, considering they’re the content creators behind a YouTube channel with about six million subscribers. Launched in 2012, AsapSCIENCE rose to international success and it’s now one of the most prominent science education channels on YouTube.
The pair was invited by the the College of Biological Science Student Council to return to their alma mater on Nov. 15 for a talk about their rise to fame.
Like any good story, this one starts with humble beginnings. Brown and Moffit both majored in biological sciences at the University of Guelph. Brown, the main illustrator for AsapSCIENCE’s videos, believes that the channel may not have happened if it weren’t for his ability to minor in studio art during his undergrad.
“I’m completely indebted to Guelph,” said Brown. “You couldn’t do both [art and science] at other schools, and now we literally draw our science videos.”
“We always preach that it’s so important to be well-rounded and to not feel like you can only study one thing,” Moffit added. “On top of that, there’s the amazing social aspects at Guelph. You come to university to learn, and to learn how to interact with people and grow as a person. […] I think that our experience here has defined everything that we do in our job now.”
After graduating, Brown attended teacher’s college. There, he noticed that the internet was becoming a widely-used educational tool.
“I realized people are learning so differently now. They all watch YouTube. If they’re interested in something, they’ll look it up on the internet. As a teacher, your job shifts. [Kids] are watching educational content and we started to become aware of that.”
Moffit added, “From there we stumbled across a few other science or educational channels who had followings and we were like, ‘What if we did something like that?’ Greg had the art background, I’ve always been interested in video editing [and] visuals. We wanted to keep up with science, [but] once we left school it became a huge challenge for us to keep up with the science world. We gave ourselves a year, where we posted once a week or once every few weeks. We committed to it and slowly but surely it just blew up and became what we do on a regular basis.”
Moffit and Brown also confessed that some of their earliest videos were inspired by lectures while taking science classes at Guelph.Some of those lectures took place in War Memorial Hall, where the pair gave their talk last week.
“I remember sleeping right there,” Brown admitted to the crowd, gesturing to a seat on the right side of the hall.
After certain lectures, Moffit and Brown would feel an overwhelming desire to share what they learned about science with people around them. They understood that relatable topics, such as food, sleep, alcohol, coffee, and sunshine could get people excited about science. They also felt that creating a video with a title such as “The Health Benefits of Vitamin D” wouldn’t generate much interest amongst the many stimulating videos available on the internet.
To make science entertaining without sensationalizing it, they decided they’d have to take things one step further. Their video on vitamin D was christened, “What If You Stopped Going Outside?” It has amassed over six million views at the time of this article.
They began to realize they were naturally stepping into the role of “science communicators,” the increasingly essential bridge between academia and the general public. As science communicators, the ability to encourage people of varying interests and backgrounds to learn ultimately makes science more accessible.
Brown explained their mission at AsapSCIENCE: “What we’re doing is kind of hiding the fact that they’ll be learning science and get them interested with a question or entertain them. At the end of it, they don’t necessarily realize they’ve just learned some very fascinating, complex things. We love the fact that people who love science love our content, but ultimately, we want to reach people who don’t like science. […] Maybe they had a bad high school teacher. Or like they think, ‘I hate science, it’s too hard.’ We want to propose stuff to them that doesn’t feel like science; it’s so interesting that they don’t realize they’re learning.”
Their hard work as AsapSCIENCE has paid off. Their favourite aspect of running their channel is being able to meet and learn from people. They’ve collaborated with major YouTube channels like Vsauce and ||Superwoman||, news outlets like CBC News, and popular science giants Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.
“We kind of made a joke at the beginning that, if we meet Bill Nye and get him in a video, then that’s the end, that’s all we ever need to do—and we did it. It was an amazing experience and just crazy how those kinds of things have come out of this little thing we started in our basement, making these little videos. Its turned into something that has connected us to people that we look up to,” said Brown.
“I think also another amazing part of it is that every week we have to learn something new, which is truly amazing,” Moffit continued. “When you leave school, no one’s telling you that you have to learn. I think that’s why we’re really lucky, we always have to learn new things and be challenged every week.”
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“I still think that the biggest challenge is that we’re making videos every week and we’re trying to get people as interested as possible in science and that there’s no right answer,” Brown explained. “Things are always evolving. So I think the biggest challenges for us are the same ones we had at the beginning. I still feel stressed. We’re our own bosses, so we have to be self-motivated. If we don’t post a video this week we’re not going to get in trouble, but we want to keep that moving. That makes it hard but also exciting. We get to have freedom, but sometimes, if you have too much choice, it disables you from being able to do things as easily.”
When a member of the audience asked how they deal with the negativity and criticism they face as online personalities, Brown and Moffit attributed their ability to withstand animosity to their unfailing positivity being an openly gay couple for nearly a decade. The difficulties they faced led them to develop thick skins, and they now ensure they work with people of different sexual orientations, genders, and backgrounds.
Brown and Moffit have succeeded in making science accessible, relatable, and interesting. They themselves are also unfailingly relatable and unapologetically human. They spoke of making lots of Kraft Dinner (with extra cheese), being inspired by A$AP Rocky when coming up with a name for their channel, and making their logo at home like a crafts project. They also acknowledged the failures and embarrassments from their early attempts, but they decided to use them as a means to grow into the AsapSCIENCE millions know today.