Fun with physics (and more)
it just became very obvious that ‘Brain Candy’ had to happen,” Mr. Stevens said.
Billed as “a cross between TED Talks and the Blue Man Group,” “Brain Candy Live!” is designed to show audiences just how much fun one can have with science by taking the kinds of demonstrations Mr. Savage and Mr. Stevens do on video to the stage so that audiences can experience them up close. It’s a family show that even very young kids can relate to.
Using several truckloads of science toys, tools and demonstrations, they’ve come up with a formula that promises plenty of interesting reactions.
“That’s the power of having Adam and I together,” Mr. Stevens said. “If you’ve seen my YouTube channel, I’m talking about graduatelevel mathematics. My goal is to show that that stuff can be accessible to people of any age and any background. And Adam helps supercharge that because he knows how to build things. He knows how to entertain audiences who think learning is boring, or think they don’t like science. And yet they love him. And little do they know that it’s all science. He’s really helped underscore my goal, which is to teach people in such a way that they don’t even realize they’ve learned a lot until it’s too late.
“Our goal is for the audience to leave ‘Brain Candy’ with a whole new set of skills that they didn't think they could ever have. We sort of teach first, then demonstrate. There’s these very clear segments that focus on very mundane things people have at home. We keep coming back to these everyday objects and how they can teach us things that will blow your mind.”
Mr. Stevens comes from a theater background, so moving from video to the stage is familiar ground. Aside from getting immediate audience feedback, performing live has other advantages, he said. “When it comes to demonstrations about things like wind and heat and sound, a lot of that doesn’t work through microphones and cameras. You have to be there in person. There are so many things that Adam and I wanted to talk about that we hadn’t been able to do on TV or the internet.”
In January, Mr. Stevens launched a new series — “Mind Field” — on YouTube Red, the video sharing site’s $9.99/month subscription service. These are longer, indepth episodes designed to bring science concepts and findings to life in a lively and engaging way. “We don’t just say that ‘ studies have found.’ We replicate them,” Mr. Stevens said. In “Isolation,” he stayed alone with no outside stimuli in an empty room for three days.
“I’m never going to be exactly the same now that I’ve been alone with myself for that long,” he said of the experience. “But it’s for the better. I think I’m much calmer now. I know how to occupy my mind when I don’t have anything to do.
“What bothered me the most was being separated from time. Every movement had become exactly the same. I was just in this weird limbo. I felt kind of like a bug. A bug doesn’t really think. It’s just an instinctive creature that’s alive until it’s not, and it’s not afraid of death because every moment is the same and there’s no such thing as time. That was what freaked me out.”
Beyond the “Brain Candy” tour and his YouTube channels, Mr. Stevens is devoting his seemingly endless energy to the Curiosity Box — a quarterly subscription plan where kids receive a box of science gear such as gyroscopes and magnets and experiments. He plans to continue to build that effort, along with producing other STEM-related content for kids.