YouTube's 'The Brain Scoop': A Backstage Pass to Museum Science

On this collection of articles, Reside Science turns the highlight onto a few of YouTube's hottest science channels. Their creators weave collectively graphics, footage, animation and sound design in movies that may be as whimsical as they're informative, using a spread of strategies and types. But all of all of them share a common curiosity and enthusiasm for the surprising and interesting science tales that exist on the earth round us.

YouTube's 'The Mind Scoop': Meet the 'Chief Curiosity Correspondent' for the Discipline Museum

From mounts of huge T. rex skeletons, to dioramas of animals in recreated habitats, to displays describing our evolutionary ancestry and our fashionable microbial partnerships, pure historical past museums current glimpses of Earth's distant previous and explanations of its present ecosystems and inhabitants.

These museums open home windows into distant elements of the world, providing close-up views of what we see day-after-day — and of many issues that we overlook. Museum displays reveal the fragile stability of life and describe the connections between all creatures, dwelling and extinct.

Nevertheless, for all of the wonders displayed in museums, way more stays hidden from public view.

Huge collections of fossils, objects and preserved specimens are housed in storage and studied by groups of scientists, whose work can be largely invisible to the general public. However on YouTube's "The Mind Scoop," host and co-creator Emily Graslie — the "Chief Curiosity Correspondent" on the Discipline Museum of Pure Historical past (FMNH) in Chicago — makes use of video to take viewers behind the scenes at FMNH, bringing its secret treasures and scientific analysis and researchers to mild.

Graslie investigates one thing fishy with Caleb McMahan, Discipline Museum ichthyologist and Assortment Supervisor of Fishes.

Credit score: The Mind Scoop

And that covers lots of floor — each contained in the museum and within the discipline with its specialists. Episodes embody a sit-down with so-called "loss of life rocks," a tour of the FMNH insect assortment, an expedition to search out one of many world's rarest crops, and a take a look at how scientists find out about Earth's environmental historical past from chook vomit.

From artwork intern to volunteer curator

Graslie first gravitated towards pure historical past collections whereas learning for a wonderful arts diploma on the College of Montana. She interned on the college's Phillip L. Wright Zoological Museum throughout her senior 12 months, conducting an unbiased research in scientific illustration. After graduating in 2011, she continued working on the museum as a volunteer.

"I began studying extra about processes and specimens — cataloguing them, doing specimen prep within the lab," Graslie informed Reside Science. "The artwork internship began to blossom right into a volunteer curatorial place."

Graslie additionally started writing and making movies about her work on the museum, sharing them on Tumblr. Collaborations with YouTube creator Hank Inexperienced led to the launch of "The Mind Scoop" in January 2013.

"The college wasn't concerned — I used to be making the movies alone time, for my very own enjoyment and for the pleasure of sharing these things with different individuals," Graslie mentioned. "So there wasn't lots of route. We did not know what we wished to be, however we had the liberty to experiment. That was vastly vital for the expansion of the channel, it allowed us to do lots of artistic issues."

"The Mind Scoop" meets the Discipline Museum

When Graslie visited Chicago a couple of months after "The Mind Scoop" debuted, she was supplied the chance for a brand new collaboration — bringing the present to the FMNH, starting in July 2013.

Graslie explores bat caves in Kenya with Bruce Patterson, the Discipline Museum's Curator of Mammals, in 2014.

Credit score: Greg Mercer/The Discipline Museum

"Abruptly, we had entry to the most effective sources — which had been the collections and the specialists who labored within the collections," Graslie defined.

"That was one thing we did not have in Montana — we had freedom and lots of creativity and lots of lifeless animals, however no context for a way these specimens had been getting used. Coming to the Discipline Museum lent lots of credibility to the present."

Graslie works intently with FMNH scientists to determine science matters and outline story arcs, and researchers rapidly found that "The Mind Scoop" may convey their work to lots of of hundreds of YouTube viewers. Some episodes are deep dives into one story, such because the identification of a weird fossil often called the "Tully Monster," whereas the collection "Pure Information" presents shorter weekly updates on the museum's ongoing scientific research.

For Graslie, making "The Mind Scoop" additionally means studying one thing new and stunning with each episode, she informed Reside Science. One video specifically, about how scientists describe species, offered her with an surprising wake-up name concerning the time period "species" itself, which she found to be far much less clearly outlined than she had thought.

"Charles Darwin titled his e book 'On the Origin of Species,' and inside that e book he did not explicitly outline what a species is! The extra I began trying into this, the extra I noticed that there is not one utterly agreed-upon definition for a species," Graslie mentioned.

"Entomologists will take a look at totally different standards to call a species of beetle or fly than paleontologists will take a look at when attempting to explain a brand new species of dinosaur. There are 36 totally different accepted species ideas in taxonomy — it is probably the most contentious matters within the discipline of biology."

Investigating how researchers outline and arrange species additionally impressed Graslie to discover the query utilizing a extra whimsical method — by asking a gaggle of FMNH scientists to use taxonomic interpretations to sweet.

"I obtained 12 totally different sorts of sweet and 4 scientists who work on totally different sorts of organisms, and had them arrange the sweet primarily based on what they believed to be a logical species idea or standards," Graslie defined. "I did not inform them forward of time what we would be doing, however all of them went together with it and had lots of enjoyable."

One scientist — Margaret Thayer, a curator emeritus of bugs — even carried out an impromptu dissection, whipping out a pocketknife and reducing right into a sweet pattern, which she then tasted to verify the composition of its "guts."

"I do not normally do use this take a look at for specimens," Thayer informed Graslie.

And with the breadth of the FMNH assortment and researchers nonetheless to discover, Graslie does not count on to expire of inspiration — or video topics — anytime quickly.

"As a content material creator, for those who're in a museum and you end up becoming bored, I do not know what to let you know," she informed Reside Science. "The rabbit gap will get deeper, the longer you look into it."

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