All right.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to a Learnathon event.
Hi, everybody.
We're so excited to have everybody with us.
I'm so sorry.
I'm having a small sound issue.
Okay, there we go.
We fixed it.
Hi.
No more technical difficulties.
Okay.
Well, welcome.
We are some of the people who work at Complexly, some of the people who work on SciShow, Kids and SciShow and Study Hall.
We are so excited to have everybody with us for just a little midweek lo-fi hangout, chill out, do some crafting, maybe do a little learning, raise a little money, just have some fun.
Yeah, so we're gonna be doing some SciShow Kids themed crafts today.
And if we have anybody, any crafters, in the chat, anybody who's working on anything with us during the stream, we would love to hear all about that in the chat.
We're gonna take a second here in a minute to go around introduce ourselves, say a little bit about what we are working on today.
But before we dive into that, just wanna say, kind of what we're doing here with the Learnathon.
At Complexly, we don't put a paywall up for any of our content.
We work really hard to make videos that are well-researched and fact-checked and accurate, trying to put out positive things into the world that we want to be accessible to anybody and everybody who wants it.
So we can only do that because of people like you all in our audience.
And we are so grateful for all of the support that we get from you guys all the time, but especially in this last week and a half of the Learnathon, has just been amazing.
So if you want to join the people who are supporting us, you can go check out complexlycom slash learnathon to give us a couple of bucks.
We've got some awesome perks over there.
$15 will get you entrance to a trivia night with Hank tomorrow.
I actually probably shouldn't say trivia night.
I don't know what time it's going to be. on.
But Hank is hosting trivia and you can be a part of it for just $15.
We also have an awesome Learnathon t-shirt that says good information is worth it.
Buzz is showing it off right now.
So if you want that shirt, you can go to complexly.com slash Learnathon.
All right.
And now let's do some introductions.
I'll kick off.
I am Jess Stempert.
I am one of the producers at SciShow.
I specifically produce SciShow kids.
And today I am working on a felt finger puppet of our main character squeaks, who is the, the robot lab rat in our show.
Um, and i'm gonna be.
This is just the base.
I'm gonna be adding some, some bits and parts to him as we are crafting today uh, and i'm gonna toss it over to mckenna.
Hi, i'm mckenna.
I am the associate producer of scishow kids, as well as one of the associate producers of scishow and the scishow tick tock.
I am embroidering our man, Sam the Bat.
So far he's just a drawing, but eventually he will be stitched onto this bandana and then I will wear him on my head.
Sheridan Gibson, Hey, y'all.
I am shared and Gibson.
I do not actually work on fly show or any of its wonderful spin offs, but I am a producer for study hall.
Sheridan Gibson, And I am working on Grady the tardigrade out of crochet.
So I did a lot of work beforehand to go ahead and make his body and I'll be working on his cowboy hat and bandana during the stream.
And so I'm very excited.
Yay!
And I'm Julia Buzz-Bazio.
I am a communications coordinator here at Complexly.
I work on several shows, including SciShow Kids, SciShow Tangents, SciShow Bizarre Beasts and Journey to the Microcosmos.
And I am working on a friendship bracelet inspired by Juniper the Worm.
So these are all of the lovely colors that you can find in Juniper's artwork.
And I am making it in a little wavy fun design because she's an earthquake.
I don't know why, but I thought when you said friendship bracelets it was going to be like the Taylor Swift exchange of bracelets.
What you have right there is so much cooler than what I imagined in my brain.
The extra element of making it like a wavy pattern like juniper is 10 out of 10.
Amazing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My dog is also here and may pop in and out of the stream.
He suddenly needs lots of attention.
Adding to the cozy vibes.
Maximum cozy vibes with pets present.
Yeah, so this stream is over on SciShow Kids, because it kind of just happened that a lot of us at Complexity, Who Are Crafters, are also working on SciShow Kids.
Sheridan is joining us because she is a crafter extraordinaire along with us, which is great.
I want to hear, so Sheridan, you probably have been working on Grady probably the longest.
I think I remember like the day after we planned the stream, you were like great, I'm going, I've found the pattern.
Here's what I'm working on.
I just what like?
How did you, how do you go about creating for your crafting when you're starting a new project um, something like this, where you're having to create um, a tardigrade, which is slightly unusual, as a, as a creature, as a shape like where?
How did you, how did you get your process going with that?
Um, so I initially checked on Ravelry for patterns.
So Ravelry is a sort of social media type site for knit and crochet and a lot of uh of the fiber arts like that.
And just seeing have people made tardigrades before?
Did they exist on people's projects list there?
And if they did, did they have patterns that they linked to?
And from there just followed Etsy to the designer and purchased a pattern from them.
Oh my goodness.
And yeah, I think he took about don't know a couple days to make um.
He's mostly just one long little tube and for a while he just looked like a croissant and then i got all of his legs sewn on.
So yeah, that's so awesome, i know.
So the um grady is one of our characters that uh, we only have in animation, because tardigrades, if you don't know, tardigrades are microorganisms.
They're too small to see.
So we have to animate Grady when we go talk to him.
Um, so his animated character is very different from like a normal looking tardigrade.
But what, um?
He does have some, some accoutrements and accessories.
So what are you working on to add to your, your Grady puppets?
So Grady would not be Grady without his adorable cowboy hat and red bandana.
So that is what I am hoping to finish in the next hour.
Get those all crocheted up and yeah, we'll see.
I can't wait.
I cannot wait to see the finished product.
I think we had somebody in the chat just say they're working on fixing an old record player, which is yeah natalia, repairing your old record player.
That is extremely cool.
That's like maximum craftiness right there.
Um Okay.
So McKenna, you are doing a cross stitch of.
I'm being disappeared for a second because I have to go get scissors, but I'll be right back.
And then I will love to talk about what I'm doing with Sam.
Amazing.
Amazing.
I'll go to Buzz for a second then.
So Buzz, yours, you're doing something like inspired by the spirit of Juniper the Worm.
Tell me about what is it about Juniper, that just gives you, that brings you inspiration and joy, and how are you channeling into this?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think Juniper is one of the best SciShow Kids characters.
She's definitely my favorite.
We have a lot of the same interests.
She loves gardening and she loves reading books.
And I think of hobbies that you could have.
Those are two of the greatest.
Um and yeah, i also just love that.
She's so fun and inspiring to the team at saisho kids at the fort.
Uh, she's always game to try something new and she's always being really brave, which i appreciate.
Uh, one of my favorite story arcs of juniper the worm is the, the entire fort trying to craft a boat that is perfect for her tiny little body so she can go rafting with all of her friends on the lake, and i um, she's so brave throughout that whole series and i think it's just so awesome.
Um, so i'm really inspired by her and i think she has such fun colors to play with.
Um, that look visually very great together.
You know she's an earthworm, so she's pink, but she also has a fun teal hat with a little yellow flower on it and she's got a red bandana that she wears around her neck and i think just the way that the colors all mesh together looks really, really beautiful.
Yeah, we should give a big shout out to our art director, Amy Roberts, who is the genius behind the designs for our characters.
Yeah, so incredible.
Amy is our art director who designs them, and we have a phenomenal animator, Dakota Johnson, who brings our characters together. sorry wait i got her last name wrong didn't i shepherd dakota johnson's an actress isn't she oh yeah yeah i'm trying to split my focus between embroidering some eyes for squeaks and talking and it's uh slipping up um anyway dakota's amazing her animations are spectacular um Yeah, so we've got more crafters in chat.
I saw somebody crocheting a blanket, someone drawing a comic.
Andrea's doing the blanket.
Amazing.
Yeah, lots of crafting happening in the chat, which is so cool to see.
Okay, McKenna, you're back.
Where did you get your inspiration with Sam the Bat?
Because you're both drawing his design and embroidering on top of it.
So like where...
How are you putting all that together?
Yes.
So I, many moons ago, reached out to our art director Amy, for some inspo pics of Sam the Bat when I was getting a tattoo of him.
And so I had some of those.
And so I made a model of him in Adobe Illustrator, which is on my phone um, and then i traced him onto this and now i'm really trying to cross stitch him but the blick art materials near my house or embroider him they didn't have any embroidery loops, uh and i was like, oh no, so i am holding it like i feel like my.
When i used to watch my grandma uh, embroider things when i was a kid, because she was very anti-employee loop, she was like you have to hold it in your hand, you can't have the thing around it.
That's cheating.
And i was like okay, So today I'm not cheating, I guess.
That's what's true.
Yeah, I also, Sam the Bash is really cute and really funny and very silly.
And so he's an easy little guy to embroider.
Amazing.
Apparently so.
Buzz, we're getting some questions in the chat about your amazing microphone and the rainbow light.
Just tell us about your microphone, your tech setup, here.
Yes, thank you so much for being interested.
This is um, it's a fee, fine microphone.
Um, and that is literally all of the details that i can give you about it.
So, if you are a techie microphone person, i bought it on amazon.
Um, and it is fun and exciting and i everybody loves it.
Everybody's always like buzz.
That mic is so cool and it is.
It is very cool um, if you're a person that gets distracted by shiny lights, you cannot set the lights to be one color.
They will constantly change.
So just a heads up about that.
But um yeah, it's a fee, fine microphone from amazon if you would like to get one yourself also, getting so much joy out of hearing The squeaky toy in the background.
That is Squeaks off camera.
Yes, Squeaks is visiting Buzz.
They're hanging out.
Yes, we are hanging out.
Squeaks says it's a great time to support Complexly via the learn-a-thon at complexlycom.
Slash learn-a-thon and also get your crafts out and tell us more about what you're working on, because we also want to know what y'all are up to.
Yeah.
So Buzz, I kind of want to go back to.
McKenna had a great comment earlier about your friendship bracelet that you're making, that you're using embroidery floss, I think, to make it.
And it's not like a beaded friendship bracelet.
How does that work?
Yeah, what a great question.
It is embroidery floss, and it is just very similar to knitting and crochet and other yarn arts.
It is a very exciting way of just creating a bunch of intricate knots with some strings and making a beautiful image out of it.
So I really am excited about it.
I think...
I mean almost everyone maybe in my life at least grew up doing this like summer camp style embroidery floss friendship bracelet making and there's just so many fun and cool things you can do with these like just two really basic knots which I can show a close-up view of in a minute. um and so yeah but that's i i love it i think it's it's so fun and interesting how many different shapes you can make with uh just a couple pieces of string there's something kind of beautiful i i teach uh dance in addition to working here and in during summer camp they have like art class breaks because it's a long day of dancing for for the kiddos um they were like all really jazzed about making those embroidery friendship bracelets.
And I was just sort of tickled by like things change, but like they were doing the same, wanting to do the same craft projects that I wanted to do, you know, two decades ago, when I was their age.
And it was just, I was like, okay, I can't cry.
This is very sweet.
Crafting transcends time, transcends time and space.
It's, it's a glorious thing.
That's part of i was so excited when this, when we first had the idea for doing this stream um, and trying to figure out who would be on it, because so many people popped up and were like i do this, i have this hobby, i craft in this way and um, it's just so.
I feel like it's such a um, wonderful way to meet people and bond with people over.
You know, the joy of making something out of nothing, which is a lot of what we do at Complexly is taking an idea and turning it into something.
So it feels like it's a great mesh with crafting as a concept, as a practice.
Sheridan, I'd love to hear a little bit about like, your history with crafting and fiber arts and why crochet for this project in particular.
Um, i would say crochet is just my current hyper fixation.
Um, i've only actually been crocheting since uh, february.
Uh wow, really nuts.
Yeah, that's insane.
Uh, i got a google's kit and they do actually teach you how to crochet and then you can go to the much more affordable route after that.
Um but yeah it's, It is just what I do with all of my free time now is I just get home from work and after a workout or anything like that and just chill on the couch with my cat and we just crochet and watch our shows.
And even some of my friends, who we've been friends for years, i didn't know that they also crocheted, and so that is like a new component of our friendship is we've been doing things called uh weekends that are k-pop and crochet, where our friendship was based on being k-pop fans, and now we just put on a k-pop concert and do our little projects and it's, it's delightful.
Yeah, just crafting is such a fun community and it's such a chill thing to be doing.
That is so awesome.
So crochet is a newer craft for you, but it sounds like you've been doing something crafty for a long time.
Yeah, i was definitely always a crafty, artsy kid.
Um, always in with the crayolas everywhere and my little, my little uh coloring book portfolio that would like fold out and i could stick my little crayons in there, and that is what kept me entertained whenever we went anywhere or did road trips or that kind of thing.
Um But yeah, I used to do a lot of like building, like models of things during school, and that has transcended into like building a lot of the props that we have on our study hall sets.
And so like, set building is actually one of my favorite things because I get to.
It's basically just like complexly paying me for crafting for a couple of weeks and that's great.
I really wanted to ask about that.
That um because uh, our the executive producer of SciShow, Nicole Sweeney um, when we were chatting about uh, about this, she mentioned that um, she was pretty sure that a lot of the props and things that are on the study hall set were stuff that you made yourself.
So yeah, I would yeah, like what, how do you decide when you need something for a set?
You need something for the show.
What's the decision process on your side of, are we going to try and buy this?
Are we going to outsource somebody to make it?
Or I just want to, I've got the skills and the knowledge to do it myself.
Yeah.
A lot of times it is like a budgetary decision.
Like how much would it cost to get someone to like make this for us?
Or how much?
Or like can we find something in the appropriate size that it needs to be, because the study hall set is a pretty set set in terms of these bookshelves that we have, and so the props need to be large enough to read on that bookshelf but also still fit within the shelves.
So a lot of times it's just like we can't find something that is the right size and this is the slow period for the production side of the show.
So I have the time and why not?
I love crafting, so let's do it.
That's so resourceful, That's awesome.
I spend a lot of time developing sets.
It's just wandering craft stores, seeing what I can find at Joanne or Michael's and what inspiration can come from that.
Yeah.
It seems to be kind of a theme for Complexly.
We just have so many people that are self-motivated by that kind of get down into the weeds.
So I think of one of the other producers of SciShow Hiroka, who painted.
Anybody who's been watching SciShow for the last I don't know six months or so, saw when we moved from the green screen set to our new painted set with the cool colored blobs and the new lights and all that.
All of that was painted by Hiroka.
Um, and then also, um, our director of art and design, Sam Schultz helped with a lot of it as well.
Um, yeah.
And I actually.
So I relate a lot to what you just described Sheridan, in terms of like the considerations that go into it.
Um, I'm going to be flying to Missoula this weekend to uh film in the SciShow kids studio for next batch of SciShow kids videos.
And we have one video in particular. that I won't spoil.
You'll see it come out probably in November, but Squeaks needed a bunch of costumes for this particular episode.
And they were all gonna be just like cardboard cutouts of things.
I won't spoil what things, cause that would ruin the episode.
But I was like, I'll just paint these.
I'll just cut these out and paint these myself.
And I'm very, I'm very pleased with how they turned out.
Everybody watching will have to give me reviews when the episode comes out later this year.
But yeah, I'm sure they are fantastic.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean just looking at many squeaks like if that's, if that's where we're starting with, like yeah, I've got, I've got eyes.
I hastily embroidered eyes and starting to glue on the rest of him.
But yeah, it's been.
It was a lot of fun.
It's a lot.
It was very cool to sit here and be like wow I, I have to do arts and crafts for my job.
This, oh no oh, so sad, what a bummer.
Yeah, we have a ping pong table in the Indianapolis office.
That is basically just my crafting table at this point.
Um it's, yeah.
There's usually a month or two of the year when we're prepping for the next round of study hall series that it just gets covered in all of the craft supplies.
Heather M has a great question from the chat.
How many renditions or updates has the Squeaks character had?
Yeah, so Squeaks started out fully animated in the very earliest days of SciShow Kids.
We did all of the, the whole set was just a green screen and all of the backgrounds.
And Squeaks, I think at that point was our only character and it was totally animated.
And then the first version of the Squeaks Puppet was built by.
Sam Schultz was the producer of SciShow Kids at the time, and he and his wife, whose name, I am unfortunately forgetting
Rachel, Rachel.
He and his wife Rachel designed and built the first Squeaks Puppet that you can go back and watch videos from, I wanna say, like 2014 2015, Something like maybe a little later than that.
You'll see the earliest version of the Squeaks puppet.
And then the version that got of Squeaks that was built after that is the one that we still use today.
And he's just delightful.
Every time I go down to the studio and I see Squeaks, I just have to give him a little hug.
He's so sweet and lovable.
McKenna, I want to hear a little bit about your... history with crafting.
Is embroidery something you've done for a long time?
Something like Sheridan with Crochet you picked up recently?
Um, it's definitely, I've been doing the longest.
I am someone who sort of kind of similar to what Sharon was saying.
I hyper fixate on something and I buy a bunch of stuff in order to do it.
And then I go, I don't want to do this anymore.
There's currently so much watercolor stuff sitting in my closet um that I will probably never touch again.
Um, but yeah no, I.
I did mention my grandma earlier, but my grandma joy shout out did want me to be able to sew.
Can I sew?
No.
Can I embroider a little bit?
Yes.
And so definitely that was, my grandparents lived with us when I was a kid.
And so a lot of my early crafting memories are with my grandmother.
I was a very artistic person and so bestowed a lot of that upon me and my brothers.
But I'm not like the artist crafty one in the family.
Well, I do theater, I guess.
I do art in that way.
But my younger brother was like big art guy, got a degree in art and then was like, actually I want to be a personal trainer, but is still like the craft guy.
That's awesome.
So it truly runs in the family.
It does.
Frankly, we spent a lot of time with our grandparents growing up.
So it was like, well, that's what we do.
We read books and we embroider.
We are Juniper the Worm.
And garden, because my grandma also owned a flower shop.
So it was like, read books, embroider, do garden.
So I also, Buzz, I agree.
I do relate to Juniper the Worm.
Yeah, Buzz, what about you?
Your history with crafting, your favorite type of craft to do?
Sure.
You know, growing up, my mom was a school teacher.
And so she was constantly having us test out crafts that she wanted to do in her classroom to see like realistically, how much time does this take a child to do?
And so I just kind of fell in love with like getting to create things in that way.
And then I got big into knitting, I would say.
And that's my main like form of crafting that I tend to do.
When i was a, when i was in eighth grade, we were visiting my dad's family in wisconsin and i'm a, i'm a big city kid, i grew up in big cities and, you know, in places where there's always a lot of stuff to do, uh.
And so we went to wisconsin for like the first time since i was, you know, really like a toddler, and uh, there wasn't a whole lot to do there.
So we ended up, I think, at Goodwill for one of the days that we were out there and they had just a bunch of yarn and knitting needles and practice looms and stuff.
So we picked up a bunch of that stuff and just spent the afternoon crafting.
And that was the first time that I really got any experience with knitting.
And then yeah, I just i really liked making stuff and um, the vibes that you get off of making like a hat or a sweater, and then somebody's like, oh my gosh, i love that and you get to go thanks, i made it.
Um, that is my favorite feeling.
So i i spent a lot of time knitting and recently picked up like sewing my own clothes and um yeah, doing just more really embracing my like how hard can it be?
Gene is really strong.
So um, i do spend a lot of time like i'll see something on on tiktok or uh, instagram reels and i'll be like i bet i could do that and then i will try it out.
That is amazing.
I feel like that's i relate so hard to, to the how hard can it be?
And then he finds out oh, it's actually.
Yeah, you find out sometimes it's really hard and the people that you watch do it made it look easy.
Yeah, yeah, those years of experience hiding behind the, you know, super quick TikTok video.
Yep, amazing.
What about you?
What's your history with crafting?
You gotta answer your own question.
I gotta answer the question?
Yeah, I mean, I...
I mean, I feel like I'm very similar to a lot of what's been said.
I have always been a pretty crafty, like I was a crafty kid.
I've always been a pretty crafty person.
My mom was really the big crafter in my life as a kid.
She did scrapbooking.
She did basket weaving.
I feel like she also like, had a very can-do crafter's attitude towards cooking growing up.
I feel like there's a lot of that.
That relates to learning how to cook, coming up with your own recipes, pulling what's in your fridge and throwing it together into a good meal.
So really got a lot of that crafting spirit from her.
I didn't really i, so i also my main craft is knitting um, and i didn't find that until a couple years after college, and it was actually this is so funny um, the thing that finally, like got me to commit, like to try out knitting truly and really get hooked on it um, was i think it was the 2017 project for awesome.
The first knitting pattern perk that was ever done for the p4a was a, a cowl that had um, you know, don't forget to be awesome in um, i want to say, in tarsha, in the, in the pattern of the cowl.
Um, and it was way too complicated a project for somebody who, like all i knew, i knew how to do a knit stitch.
That's it.
That was, that was the extent um, so i royally messed it up um, but i frogged the whole thing and did it again and i really just enjoyed that process of like i found, i found it like.
I think the key to picking up a new craft is pick something that you actually want to use or wear or have.
And whatever you have to learn to make that happen, you'll be motivated to learn it because you want to have the thing at the end.
And that was, that was, it was that P4A cowl.
Um, and I've gotten anytime there's been a, uh, a knitting pattern in P4A since, um, Yeah.
Naya Dry's comment about the candles using molds of sculptures.
That's so cool.
Too many steps for me to fully follow through.
Yeah.
Sometimes.
And I mean, like with the cowl, like sometimes you, the craft exceeds your ambition and you just got to.
I think at that point you just got to push through.
Yeah.
Yeah um, i'm the opposite.
I believe in quitting and um, you know, if a craft is too hard for you to do, that's okay.
You should not be afraid to like, scrap it and do something new because yeah, crafting really should be, at the end of the day, about enjoying the thing and being proud of the thing that you made, and um so yeah, i'm totally quitting but um, i want to take a hot second here because we um have a really wonderful message from a SciShow Kids viewer.
His name's Sam from Great Britain.
So fitting.
He's four years old.
And the comment we have is I was playing on my slide and high-fived my dad at the bottom and got a big shock.
I asked what it was, and dad said it was static electricity.
We watched your episode on static electricity and decided to do an experiment to see if I always got a shock and whether we could make the shock bigger or smaller.
Dad said it might be my trousers.
So we tried my cotton ones first and scored the shock each time by sliding down five times.
Wonderful, really involved, experiment way to go, sam.
We then changed to polyester trousers and slid down five more times and the shocks were bigger.
With the polyester trousers he says thank you jesse, mr brown, and squeaks and sam the bat he really likes i show kids.
That's so cool.
I, oh my gosh, We have a whole Slack channel in the company called Nice Notes.
And the number of times people will throw in stuff that people say about SciShow Kids, I get teary.
I just get so emotional every single time.
I just I love that the show is able to provide this and to give that kind of inspiration and fun and interest and like curiosity about the world to kids is that's the whole.
That's the whole thing.
That's the whole reason.
That's the good information.
It's worth it.
Good information is worth it.
And for anybody who joined partway through or is just joining us now, you should go to Complexlycom slash Learnathon to donate, to learn more about the whole project of Learnathon, to learn more about what Complexly does and why we believe good information is worth it and why we really believe and take so much motivation from stories like Sam's.
Speaking of learning about what is Complexly and what Complexly does Sheridan.
People visiting the SciShow Kids stream may not know what Study Hall is.
Can you share a little bit about Study Hall and what you do?
And yeah, just what does that side of Complexly look like?
Yeah, so study hall is kind of on the opposite side of the learning spectrum.
We are making college credit courses.
Uh, study hall is a partnership between complexly, youtube and arizona state university, so we are Heck yeah, heck yeah.
So we're making courses that, or we're making the video component to courses that you could take through Arizona State University for just 25.
And if you like your grade at the end of the course, you can spend just 400 and get a full ASU credit that is transferable to any college or university that accepts ASU credits.
So we're I think in year three of doing this.
So by the end of the season we will have 12 courses that you could take, anything from sustainability to programming, to writing and composition.
You got your college math.
We are running the Gambit.
And yeah, it's really fun.
It's very the course.
The videos themselves are quite similar to Crash Course, but they are integrated through ASU's learning platform if you choose to take the course.
And that's how you get the college credit is just go in, what is it, gostudyhall.com, I think.
Paula will be mad that I don't know that off the top of my head.
I'm sorry.
That's so amazing.
Go study hall.com.
Learn more.
That's so amazing.
I love that, you know, at Complexity, we're not, I feel like we're not intimidated to try to help like any demographic, you know, we're, we're sideshow kids. is aimed at first to third grade.
Crash Course in SciShow, we're hitting everybody from middle school forward.
And then Study Hall.
We're trying to help out specifically college audience because there's so many challenges and struggles with higher education in America.
And I just love the total scope of the resources and i love that it's it.
I feel so privileged to get to work on it and i love hearing about what other teams are working on and it's always so cool to hear like, the similarities and the differences between the approaches, because i feel like the spirit of how we approach education is the same across all those ages, but obviously the applications have to be different.
Yeah, definitely.
Okay um, progress check-in how's?
How's everybody doing?
I have like half sam's body.
Where is he half of his body done?
So right now he just sort of looks like a blob.
Um, but he's, he's.
He is like halfway outlined.
It's happening.
Oh my gosh wait, i want to see that cowboy hat again.
Sheridan, it's a little mini cowboy hat.
It's so cute.
It just goes right on his little head.
Look!
I want to reach through the screen and boop that snoot.
I'm nearly done.
You're nearly done?
Buzz!
Look at this.
Holy smokes.
Well, okay, I'm doing a craft that is much easier to complete in one hour than... Whoa!
Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful, Buzz.
I love how the colors look.
Yeah, I think it's fantastic.
It's got such a cute retro vibe.
Love it.
Love it.
All right.
And then let me, I got to try on Squeaks here.
I might have made the finger puppet a little bit too small.
We'll find out.
But here's Squeaks so far.
Perfect.
Perfect, you guys, I gotta make, I gotta embroider his little nose.
We got a little pink, pink schnoz.
Jess, do you have your, your juniper, that you, you crocheted nearby?
I do, I do have I, this was, this was.
I just made her because listen, don't let squeaks hear me say this juniper is also my favorite.
She's just, she's a whole vibe.
And so shortly after I joined the team, I did crochet a little Juniper the worm.
Adorable.
Her hat's a little flop.
I want to find out, are you using a pattern, Sheridan, for the hat for Grady?
For the hat, I just free-handed it.
See, I also just free-handed it, but I cut the brim.
It was such a struggle, and the brim on yours, it turned out so good.
I'm so impressed.
I'm amazed by you, Sheridan.
You started crocheting in February.
You said, and you just free-handed something amazing just just the hat, just the hat.
And I did test it before I got on stream, so I do technically have two hats.
Well, every cowboy needs a hat, so something else can have a hat too.
That's so awesome.
I'm so impressed by all of you um, let's see, thinking of other other crafty questions to ask what, what's the biggest thing you guys have ever made?
I, i guess sort of similar to the the set building comment.
I went to a pretty small college and i um love just to do stuff in the theater department.
And so someone asked me if I did set design and I went, sure.
I didn't, that was a lie.
But I like built a whole set that was like the interior of a living room and a kitchen with a fireplace.
And yeah, that was a silly thing I did.
And I have literally not, I don't think I've built a set since, oh, we also, my roommate and I did a play called, she was a playwright and we did a play that she wrote called American Girl Doll Horror Play.
And we built a ginormous American girl doll box.
It was like, I don't know, eight feet tall.
It was like a big smart board box.
So yeah, I think a lot of mine have been like big theaters that piece, but that American girl doll box was pretty cool.
And we did leave it in a dumpster in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The show was done because it does not, it could not stay in this apartment.
Yeah.
You didn't want to live with an eight foot tall American Girl doll box in your New York City apartment.
I wanted to cover it with a sheet because it was staring at Jasmine, my roommate, while she was sleeping.
And we also.
We live in uptown Manhattan, so we also brought our giant box from like almost the tippy top of Manhattan all the way to Brooklyn, which for people who don't live in New York, that takes like 45 minutes and multiple train transfers.
Please tell me you were on the train because that's incredible.
We were on the train and we got a lot of weird looks and we were like, well.
New York City, baby.
You were just Everybody on that train.
You were the amazing story that they got to tell at dinner that night.
Guess what I saw on the train?
Did you never believe?
Yeah.
But was there an American girl inside of the American girl box?
The whole thing was that...
Jasmine was in the box and she was like a surprise character in the show.
And so this whole play would go on and she would be in the box for like the first 10 minutes of the play.
And then at some point she would pop out of the box.
So the box had to be big enough for her to fit inside.
So yes, there was a person playing a doll in the box.
Wow, amazing wow.
I've never done anything quite that cool or large but um, i did make a knitted fisherman sweater for my dad for his birthday and it was um, very intricate and it did take me, i think, about about six months to knit the whole thing.
Holy smokes yeah like, does your dad know how much you love him?
Because he should now yes yeah, he wears that sweater all the time.
He's so braggy, he's like he put it.
My sister got married a couple months ago in May, and my dad has a big Irish family and they all came out for the wedding and and he put it on in the middle of May, put on this wool fisherman sweater and was like my daughter made this for me, so Very funny.
Yeah, that's probably the thing that took me the most amount of time.
And then I think, like biggest size wise, every single one of my friends that's had a baby has gotten a hand knit baby blanket from me.
And so yeah, that was like I think the biggest size things that I've done probably is a baby blanket.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I'm working on my first blanket.
But it is just one giant granny square.
So it is just growing and growing.
I think it's over 36 inches now.
But it's basically until I run out of yarn, and then it will be finished.
But I love projects like that where you don't have to worry about yarn chicken or anything.
It's just go until there's nothing left.
It is very mindless, which I enjoy because I started with Amigurumi, which is like the little plush toys.
And those are really fun, but there is a lot of counting involved.
Whereas this granny square blanket, there is zero counting.
It's great.
Yeah.
Yeah no, I have often said that if I had known how much math would be required of being a fiber artist before I got really into being a fiber artist, I might not have started.
Might not have been the thing for me.
Look at that.
Oh, beautiful.
It's so pretty.
It turned out so good.
I love it.
It's so cool, Buzz.
I love it so much.
You made it so fast.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I can feel the juniper vibes.
Jen, it is Game Changer-esque.
It is Game Changer-esque.
That was totally an accident, but...
It would be the best right now if we had Sam Reich on stream.
And then he came on and was like, and I've been here the whole time.
Surprise!
Surprise!
Anyway, Sam Reich, if you're listening, I'll mail it to you.
Sam Reich, if you're listening, come on SciShow Tangents.
We're best friends forever.
And if you are a Game Changer fan, Study Hall just had an interview where Hank interviews Brennan Lee Mulligan all about his college journey.
So you should go over to Study Hall and check that out if you haven't.
100%.
It's amazing.
I was so invested.
I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.
I love just the, the relationship between hank and brendan and the interplay, and it's just so fantastic to listen to them talk.
I could listen to them talk about anything but um, the fact that also is such a relatable story about, you know, transitioning to college and uh, and what that's like being a young adult living and trying to go to college, is like very real.
Yes, Speaking of which, do you want to talk a little bit about Tangents?
Is that the other thing that you produce?
That is the other thing that I produce.
Yeah.
So it's for anybody who doesn't know, SciShow Tangents is our podcast, the SciShow podcast.
Hank is one of the hosts, as well as Sam Schultz, who you've heard mentioned a couple of times, and also Sari Riley, who is is a long time friend of Complexly and um a 30 under 30 education luminary Forbes list education luminary.
Love it.
Um, yeah.
And it is a lightly competitive science knowledge showcase, uh, Sari and Sam.
And when we have guests, we have often have a lot of amazing guests.
Um, will bring science facts on.
We pick a topic for every episode and basically you want to, you want to bring knowledge about that topic that is surprising or funny or exciting or just really off the wall.
Um uh, and the show.
The show is called tangents for a reason.
It is impossible to stay on topic.
It's absolutely it's like wrangling cats, But everything that we talk about is always.
I've learned so much just getting to sit in on that show and hear what people, what they talk about and the guests that we have on.
And it's fantastic.
I secretly believe that I work on the two best things that Sessho makes.
Don't tell the rest of the team or my boss that I said that.
Secret time.
Secret.
Everyone, no one else.
You'll you're, you're all everyone, everyone in chat.
You're all it's the crafters code, right?
We're all crafters, everybody in the chat, everybody here. someone who also works on sci-show tangents i feel like i do learn a lot of information that i'm very excited about um to tell because they're just such good little tidbits of did you know facts that come out of that show and especially like i even learn things when i am researching on my own to try and come up with something clever or funny to talk about on social media around a topic um so my favorite is that uh we did an episode on shells on seashells and through that I learned that um Edgar Allan Poe wrote a textbook about seashells and while he was alive that was his best-selling book oh my gosh whoa yeah that is a cool fact okay now wild now I want to hear as we're talking about good information being worth it, complexly.com slash learnathon.
Go check it out if you want to support the amazing fun.
We have fun with the stuff that we learn at Complexly, like what we do on Size Your Tangents.
It's not just facts.
It's also fun.
I want to hear what everybody's favorite piece of knowledge that you have learned while working for Complexly is.
And while everyone's thinking Buzz, is there a name for the?
Andrea wants to know if there's a name for the bracelet pattern.
Yes.
For everybody who maybe has not seen yet, this is the bracelet pattern.
I believe it's called the Peruvian wave bracelet.
And there are some super easy tutorials out there on how to do it, but it is just a very quick, If you know, friendship bracelet, making the rule of fours, you do two from the right side.
Two, four, like... regular fours on uh with each string and then you go back the other way and do the backwards fours on each string and then you push the like knots up so they make the they create the little wave shape by pushing the knots up on the bracelet string but it is called the peruvian wave that is so cool if you make if anybody in the chat who is here today goes and makes a peruvian wave bracelet it on social media and tag us tag complexly we want to see yes i'll see it for sure i'll be so proud of you that's so awesome okay who's got their favorite fact that they've learned since working at complexly i i have one i i because i learned on scishow kids it's uh we we're doing an arc about bugs last year um we're doing bug arc and There is a caterpillar that it's like camouflage technique is it makes its butt look like a snake.
And I read that in the script and I went, okay.
And then we found this guy who had a video of it and it looks like a straight up snake head.
And it is one of the most astonishing animal things I've ever seen.
So if you would like to see that, the caterpillar episode of SciShow Kids from this year?
This year, last year?
Yeah, this year.
It has this, the coolest bug I've ever seen in it is this caterpillar.
It is really remarkable.
Wow.
So this is reaching way back.
I have been at Complexly for 10 years.
And when I was hired, I was a video editor for Mental Floss.
And this was a show that Complexly used to produce called The Mental Flossless Show, which was basically just a trivia show.
And so it was constantly learning just the weirdest things.
And I don't even know exactly what the topic of this episode was, but it is still one of my favorite stories.
And it is about how, in order to sell their product, the CEO of LifeLock, which is an identity theft company, decided to put his social security number his actual social security number on a billboard to show how good of a product LifeLuck is.
That he could put this out there and he would be okay.
But his identity has been stolen, I think, like 10 or 12 times at this point.
So it was just a very bizarre marketing strategy that did not pan out at all.
Oh, no.
But yeah, like I would constantly, when I was editing that show, go down rabbit holes reading Wikipedia pages because you know we'd only say like two things.
Two sentences.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
Is it me?
No.
It's not.
Wait.
Sharon, are you back?
Yes, I'm back.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know where it cut out, but I would go down rabbit holes reading Wikipedia pages about these facts, because we would only say a couple of sentences about something.
And then I was just like, I want to know the whole story.
I also learned about the goat burning in Sweden, that they have the goat that is not supposed to be burned, but it has become a tradition basically, where they burn it every Christmas.
And just finding out the fate of the goat is now also one of my favorite things.
So learn lots of weird things.
No, not a real goat.
Thank goodness.
It is a goat made out of sticks and straw, but it's gigantic.
It's a couple of stories tall, I believe.
The arson goat.
Yes, I will see if I can find it and I'll drop it in the chat.
I saw a comment.
Naya.
Yeah.
Naya Dryad's comment.
I'll go with tree is not a taxonomic group.
It's an evolutionary strategy, which is a fantastic line.
I don't think I know where that one's from, but it relates.
It is from our recent SciShow video.
Is it good?
The six weirdest trees.
I know because I worked on that episode.
I was going to shout that out that if you want to.
But if you like weird trees, go check out our recent six weirdest trees episode on SciShow Prime, which we all, McKenna and I and Buzz also do work on Prime in addition to SciShow Kids.
And it's related to.
So my favorite thing, and this is a SciShow Tangents fact, and I would not be able to tell you what episode it was on again because the show's called SciShow Tangents.
We talk about stuff that is all over the map and not related to the main topic all the time.
But that's SciShow.
Tangents is where I first learned about Pando, which is one Aspen tree that has thousands of like stocks there.
It is one tree, but it looks like an entire forest of Aspens that are all connected under the ground.
They are all one organism.
And the organism is called Pando.
And Pando is, I believe, Latin for eye spread.
And so it is both deeply beautiful and deeply terrifying.
And it's one of the strangest, most wonderful things that I ever learned.
And we got it on Tangents.
Not to do spoilers but A you could go track down what Tangents episode that's from and let us know.
But we'll also be talking about Pando in an upcoming SciShow video about what the five largest living things are, and Pando is on that list.
That is sneak peek.
Yeah, Buzz's dog is the goat.
Would you like to say hi to the people?
Yeah, say hi.
Hi, buddy.
Say hi.
Okay.
Decided to be shy all of a sudden.
We are nearing the end of our allotted stream time.
So, Buzz, can you... Oh, we got Kitty!
We got Kitty saying hi right at the end of the stream.
Buzz, like, 30 seconds.
What's your favorite fact?
Oh, gosh.
I've learned so many facts from this job.
I think my favorite fact that I've learned from let's see, let's see, i will do, i'll do bizarre beasts, which is one of my favorite shows that i get to work on um, and one of my favorite facts that i've learned from bizarre beasts is that um, orcas for fun, um like to um, play around and set trends with each other.
So they are very, very social people and uh, we joked about on during filming that episode that, like orcas, have influencers too.
So you know, we also have a SciShow episode about this.
But orcas one orca in the Puget Sound wore a salmon on her head as, like a fashion trend, a little hat, and all the other orcas started to do the same.
They also mimic each other's songs sometimes and yeah, just do lots of fun like playful activities um, so i highly recommend watching those episodes.
If you have some time today, let's see.
Yes, orca bucket hat orca bucket hat with the salmon on the orca.
This is the right finger, the sama, the salmon with the orca.
But yeah, i don't know selling these, but we were selling these, these very stylish.
Oh, This is the problem when I'm mirrored is I don't know what I'm doing.
Bucket hats.
Yes.
Okay.
Friends, everyone hold up your, your projects here at the end of our stream time.
I got his body.
Yay.
Look at that.
And I got, I got, Oh my goodness.
Brady looks so good.
He's so cute.
And here's Squeaks.
Squeaks.
Squeaks.
So cute.
All right.
Well, that's the end of our time.
I hope everybody enjoyed having a little mid-week crafting break.
Thank you everyone for coming to hang out and spend time with us.
This was such a delight and just such a joyful time.
Go check out complexly.com slash learnathon.
We got one more learnathon event.
It's trivia with Hank.
And if you want to go watch it, you can, but you can also go contribute $15 and go play the trivia.
You can play the trivia with Hank for just $15.
And today is the last day to do it.
So go complexly.com slash learnathon.
Spend $15, play trivia with Hank.
It's going to be a great time.
Thank you for being here.
And yeah, happy Learnathon.
Bye, everybody.
Bye.
Bye.
