Hi everyone, welcome to ThoughtCafe Today, and we're here in Missoula, visiting the CrashCourse team, and I am privileged to be here with Nick Jenkins and Stan Muller.

(ThoughtCafe Today intro)

So we actually wanted to bring these two special gents together in one room, because we've had the pleasure of working with them both in different capacities, and we kind of wanted to compare in what ways they're similar, in what ways they're different, what they each do for CrashCourse, so we'll start with you, Stan.

Stan: Usually talk to the writers about the curriculum, set all that up, and then get scripts from each of the writers.  I edit those to put them in John's voice, and then shoot them, and make up a lot of jokes on the set usually, there's a lot of improv in the--in our side of the CrashCourse, I don't know if that's true on your side.

Nick: No.  That is not true on our side.  

Stan:  Then, either I or another editor come together and send it off to these great animators that we work with, Thought Cafe, and get 'em back and finish 'em up.

Suz: Amazing.  Alright, Nick, what about you?

Nick: Uh, the last half is very similar.  I'm less involved on the front end of everything we do at CrashCourse Science because I'm not a scientist.  I do look at the scripts as soon as we get them to make sure that, you know, there's nothing that will be confusing to Hank in terms of what he's gonna be talking about that day, make sure that the grammar is close to okay.  We do the shot list for it, we shoot it, then I edit it, send it to ThoughtCafe who does the animations and has to figure out what, you know, molecules are supposed to look like and all that stuff, and then get it back and make it go live.  And I do a lot of interacting in the comments with, um, usually for the first week, and then after that just sorta check in every once in a while.

Suz: So what would you say is like, your favorite part of doing CrashCourse and your least favorite part of doing CrashCourse?  

Stan: My favorite part is probably the research that goes into finding (?~2:06)