Why I’m Making a Science Show with Cuss Words

I’m making a podcast (and YouTube show) with my friends where each person tries to amaze the others enough that they will say “Holy Fucking Science.”

We tend to lump educational content into a certain bucket. It’s a big bucket, but there seem to be some boundaries. People are wearing lab coats…or maybe suit coats. Or maybe a disembodied voice is explaining something over an animation. The viewer is there to better themselves. Fun can be had, but that’s not the goal. You’re either here because you want to know something or because you have to know something. One thing’s for sure, you should make sure it’s safe for work, and safe for kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that kind of content. I watch it all the time, and I spend most of my life making it. But about a year ago I was watching some video gaming content that contained around 45 curse words per minute and I was honestly a little jealous. I never curse in my content.

Look, I don’t mean to complain, I know that an episode of Crash Course with a bunch of dirty jokes isn’t going to get shown in high schools, and that’s as it should be. I understand that families with young children watch Vlogbrothers videos together and I love that and would never want to endanger that.

But this is not just because some of my audience is young. Like, go watch any gaming video on YouTube. It’s clear that the target audience is 10 to 17, and yet there is very little of it that isn’t full of fucks and shits.

It strikes me as a little wrong that I would be shocked if someone used this kind of language in a video about neurotransmitters or solar flares. But it’s totally OK to hear 85 fucks in a video if the video is already not intended to be constructive. It seems a little like the logic that leads to me eating a pint of ice cream because I already screwed by diet by eating that whole pizza. “This content is clearly not good for me, so quick, let’s get out all the fun words!”

In the end, though, ‘Holy Fucking Science’ isn’t a science show with a bunch of curse words thrown in. What it really ended up being was an opportunity for adult friends to come together and talk about how fascinating the world is while talking the way we talk when we don’t have to worry about whether there are little kids watching.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we have episodes where the only “fuck” is in the title sequence, but it’s more about setting the precedent. I just wanted there to be a space where I could get excited about this shit without worrying about getting angry emails from parents. So, we put a curse word right there in the name so no one would be confused.

I know that cursing isn’t for everybody, but it is definitely for me. One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it allows us to create lots of different kinds of content for lots of different kinds of people. So I created a thing for people like me…and it turns out it’s even more fun than i thought it would be.

If you’d like to check it out, it’s on iTunes, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Episodes will be released weekly from now until it stops being fun.

Hank Green is a host and creator of SciShow, Crash Course, and Vlogbrothers. Videos on those channels have been viewed a total of more than 2 billion times.