My Awesome Australia Adventure! - Smarter Every Day 99

Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I apologize up front. My left eardrum has exploded. I have no idea how loud I'm talking. My feedback loop is broken. Anyway, the purpose of this video is to inform you what I did in Australia for two and a half weeks. It was awesome; I did all kinds of crazy stuff, but there's really no linearity to it, and I figure the best way is just blergh... show you everything. So, here's the deal. We're just gonna go on the trip as it went down; you're gonna know what to expect coming up on Smarter Every Day, and at the end, I hope you're excited and happy because you saw a wombat, me rubbing on a kangaroo, and me diving. That's the kind of stuff that's about to happen. Anyway, let's go. Australia.

[music] This is Chris Cassella. He runs a Facebook page in Australia called Science Alert. He came to Alabama to visit me back in the winter. I didn't really know why he was visiting, but we had a good time. Turns out, I think he was just checking me out to see if I was the real deal and a good fit because Chris was planning a huge event for National Science Week in Australia. That's how I got to go on this trip. Science Alert flew me to Australia for National Science Week, and my wife, pretty big deal.

So first things first. On the way to Australia, I stopped off and hung out with a buddy named Mark Rober in VidCon. Now, Mark let me crash at his house, and we went, and we did this crazy experiment back behind the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA. There's this old riverbed that runs behind it, so Mark had just kind of like snuck in there and set up this huge experiment involving fire and mirrors and motors and all kinds of crazy stuff.

[pop] [cheer] [laugh] Yeah, you've got my hat. Anyway, at VidCon, it was pretty awesome. The first thing we did is I did a panel with Gavin from the Slow Mo Guys. It was called the art and science of slow motion video. Hey Gavin, my name's Destin. You wanna come play in Alabama? - Yeah, but you've got a million subs. - Shut up. [Audience laughs] So he comes over and he's like what are we gonna do, and we're like alright, we got a propane tank. We literally took it off my grill. We had a propane tank. And my dad's pond had just drained out for some reason. We don't know why. We're gonna throw the propane tank in the bottom of the pond, and we're gonna go get guns, and we're just gonna like shoot the propane tank.

That's the beautiful thing about Gavin's channel, is it is completely unapologetic. It's like we don't know what the crap's gonna happen but we're just gonna do it. Whereas on Smarter Every Day, I'm like, OK now we'll talk about the velocity of the banana as it was sliced... [crowd laughs] We shoot it, and it just goes. pshhhh! - Yeah, it was just a big white cloud that just flew out of it and fogged the entire pond. There was no explosion whatsoever. - And so the pond is full of propane, and it's not going anywhere; it's heavier than air; it's just sitting there, and we're like we need fire in that now. [audience laughs]

And so one of us said dragon's breath, dragon's breath! So we run over, we get the 12 gauge, and we're like loading the dragon's breath, and like who's shooting? Dan's like I'm shooting! [unintelligible] GO!... shot... nothing. [laugh] We just kind of looked at each other, and we're like... That was gonna be a three million view video. [laughs] - It just puffed away. But watching Dan so violently attack a cloud was pretty interesting. - Now Dan from the Slow Mo Guys was not there because he's fighting a war right now. Remember that people are still doing that.

So another cool thing I did is I just set up a slow motion camera edit booth, and I just let people come up and play at what I call the slow motion touch table. They had a lot of fun, and there were a lot of really creative people, but I really kind of tricked people into hurting themselves so that I could get it on slow-mo, and they did it like all day long. It was really fun.

[slap] (Crowd) Ooh ow! - Awesome. Looks great! [auditorium crowd noise] [snap] Oh! [laughter] [slap] So after that I did a really cool EDU panel with Derek from Veritasium, Emily from Brain Scoop, and the great John Green from Crash Course. And the cool thing about that is halfway through our panel, this little girl named Presley stands up, she's homeschooled, and she decides to give a monologue about how she feels about educational video on YouTube.

• I am a homeschooled child, and I started learning about history and science and such from just reading some books that we got from the library, but once I found all of you guys, I just started I learned more about history and science and biology and a lot of things, so I think it's umm really cool that people make history videos on YouTube, and you are my favorite teachers. [applause] - I like kids, and I like it when kids learn. So yeah, she reduced us all to blubbering idiots, and we were very happy, but at the same time, we felt very touched. That was pretty awesome. So that was a good way to round off my VidCon experience.

Anyway, after that, my wife flew into town, and we just spent a day chilling out at the Getty Centre, which is an awesome place you can go and check out amazing architecture, art, all kinds of old manuscripts and books, and landscapes; it's amazing. Anyway, that's what we decided to do to get ready to go to Australia together for our ten-year anniversary trip.

So we fly across the Pacific Ocean, and we go straight into Sydney, and from Sydney, we go to Canberra, which is the capital of Australia. I knew things were gonna be good because when I got off the plane, I met George and Evan, and they actually recognized me from Smarter Every Day, so George, Evan, wassup? Construction on Canberra started in 1913 because Melbourne and Sydney couldn't agree on which city was the coolest and should be the capital. Kinda lame, I know, but that's the way how history works sometimes. Anyway, Canberra means meeting place in the local language, and boom, that's where Chris lives.

So what is that? - That's parliament house. - That's the capital of Australia, that spot. - Yeah, right there. - So in Canberra, we chilled out for a day, got rid of the jet lag, and then the next morning we went to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve with Chris. The whole point was to get slow motion video of kangaroos and to let Destin interact with kangaroos. Seriously, I'm gonna put my hand down here where your pouch is, and we're just gonna see how this goes. Don't bite me. Just don't bite me. Just don't do that. I cannot feel a pouch.

So NASA's based in America, right? Have you ever thought about how they communicate with Mars when it's on the other side of the world? Well, the answer is NASA's deep space network located in Canberra. We were there a few minutes ago, now we're in Canberra. It's awesome. We went and visited there, and I got to learn all kinds of cool stuff. There'll be a video coming out about that.

OK, this is where Chris came through as like a serious bro. He knew it was my ten-year anniversary trip, and he knew my wife was going to be like involved in all this science stuff I had to do for the rest of the trip. So he rented a car for us and he sent us up to this place called The Heavens located in Kangaroo Valley. On the way there, we just like get to experience all this crazy wildlife. We kept seeing these really weird things.

What is it? (Wife) Goodness. (Destin) It's stiff as a board. What's it called, the thing we've been seeing dead? - A wombat. [laugh] That is what it is. - Here wombat, wombat, wombat. Where's he going? We had shrimp on the barbie, which nobody says in Australia because they call them prawns. We got to see a place called Fitzroy Falls. It's a really high waterfall. - Oh you're recording it! [laugh] - You know I'm gonna do this at some point. Basically, I drove up to a random guy's house, I knock on the door and I was like hey, I want to meet a real Australian, can we talk for a little while? I didn't think I would ever see a gun in Australia. I was wrong. I'm extremely impressed. All these things have been modified.

After we arrived back in town, that was our first panel. This happened in Australian National University. I sat next to Phil Plait The Bad Astronomer, Mitchell, and Greg from ASAP Science, Henry from Minute Physics, Elise Andrews from IFLS; we had a really good time. After we got done at the panel at ANU, we got in Chris's van and we drove up to Sydney where we had a meetup with a bunch of random people that came out when we tweeted about it. We're in Sydney, OK we did a meetup. This is Eric. Eric's been watching since the chicken head tracking video. Henry, - Same here. - No you haven't. - Yeah I have. - That's a long time, man! - 1..2..3..

So the next morning we got up and Tara and I went to church out in Sydney. We visited a guy named John North who had preached in Alabama before. We wanted to say hey to him, so we took a taxi out to his church, and then afterwards came back for a Sydney Harbour cruise, which was a big deal because we went swimming in Sydney Harbour in the middle of winter, which was crazy.

So there's this artist called M C Escher, and he used to make drawings of mathematically impossible awesome architecture that's like inspired by math. Check this out. I feel like I'm staying in one of his buildings. I'm on the 9th floor, and it's this infinite reality; like you can see there's these walkways all over the place, and you can see down several floors. It's like this whole building was designed by M C Escher. You can look up, and you can see all these crazy boardwalks. Look at this.

So after we left Sydney, we went to Townsville, that's where James Cook University is. It's the place to go for marine biology. After the professors gave us a rundown on all the research they were working on, we went and did another panel, and all these cool people came out and hung out with us.

So I need to make a video about touring Australia and put you guys in it. What if I put you at the very end so nobody sees you? After the panel, we went and hung out at John Chandler's house. He lives in the most amazing treehouse in the middle of the woods in Townsville. It was awesome.

So immediately after we left Townsville, everybody else went to Orpheus Island, but Tara and I went straight up to Cairns to JCU's research lab. In Cairns, we met two very special people. The first one was Richard Fitzpatrick.

Is this what I think it is? That's an Emmy? - Yep. - That's an Emmy? - That's an Emmy. - Just sitting on your desk. - Well, it's better than it being in a bar. [laugh] - So what did you win it for? - Umm.. Worst Australian accent in a documentary [laugh] - Just some filming I did for National Geographic a few years ago. - No big deal. I also met Dr. Jamie Seymour who is a world-renowned venom expert.

So I'm Destin. - Jamie. - Jamie so you're on staff here, right? - Yeah, I'm a full-time staff member at JCU. Been here for 25-odd years. - OK, so you're what, you're a professor that teaches what? - A variety of things but mainly venomous animals, so I'm interested in why animals have venom. - OK, so you don't know it but me and you just became best friends. - Excellent! That was easy; I haven't even done anything. [laugh] - Are you willing to teach me all about venomous animals? - Absolutely - Like you wouldn't happen to know the most venomous jellyfish in the world by chance, would you? - Yeah, of course. You want to see one? Right there. The most venomous animal in the world. Not just the most venomous jellyfish.

These two guys are the core of what we're gonna learn in Smarter Every Day in Australia. We spent time on the reef with them, we spent time in the lab with them, and we learned all kinds of stuff from these two guys. And they're just fun to hang out with.

Anyway, I guess that's about it. One more note from my wife, and I think we'll be done here. So I hope you enjoyed the Australia trip. I know I did, and my wife did, and you're very thankful to who for sending you? - To Science Alert and to Audible. - Audible.com/smarter. They're our sponsor, and you get a free audiobook. I'll leave a link in the video description. You actually signed us up for Audible, didn't you? - I did. - Like, before they approached us, right? - Yes, pre... you doing sponsorships for them. -

Also, what book do you recommend? - I recommend 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman which has helped me significantly over the past ten years. - Come on. Everybody knows we have a perfect marriage; we never fight. - Never. [laugh] - What you're saying is, because you love me so much, you want people to download this free audiobook at audible.com/smarter and go learn about love languages.

What's my love language? - Probably physical touch and words of affirmation. - What's your love language? Cause I know it. It's... acts of service. - And? - Acts of service. [laughs] What is it? - And quality time. - Quality time. So if you want to help me spend more quality time with my wife, then please consider going to audible.com/smarter and downloading your free audiobook, or click the first link in the video description. Happy wife, happy life, right? - Absolutely. [laugh] - I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one.

• Sometimes people communicate two different ways when they are... - We just had a video about how great our marriage is... - We did. - Are you ready to go to mommy? You gonna go to mommy? Bye. Bye. You guys ready to get rid of daddy? (Kids) No sir. - Why not? - Because I love you. - I love you too.

So I told the Science Alert guy that I would only come to Australia if I could bring my wife for my ten-year anniversary, and this is where he put us up, at least one night, so he delivered.

[Captions by Andrew Jackson] captionsbyandrew.wordpress.com Captioning in different languages welcome. Please contact Destin if you can help.