 Welcome to the Endless Knot. We just got back from Educon and VidCon in LA and Anaheim. And because we'll be travelling more for the next little while, we won't be able to get out another main video very soon. So we took the opportunity while we were at VidCon and Educon to do some interviews with a few of our friends who are also educational YouTube creators. So you can check out their channels and have lots of great videos to watch while you wait for our next video to come out. We had a little fun and I asked each of them to nominate a particular word that was meaningful to them so that I could etymologize it for them. So there are lots of great etymologies in this video as well. Now be aware, these were filmed in a variety of different filming locations with different background noises and so forth. There's a little bit of unevenness here but I think you'll find the interviews quite fun. We put together a playlist of all the videos of theirs that they mention and we'll also put links to individual videos in the comments. So do check those out. Enjoy. Hi, thank you for being here. Hello, thank you for letting me be here. So why don't you introduce your channel and tell us about it. Sure, my channel is called Articulations and I do videos on art, architecture and design. In the art part, a lot of it is about art history or art theory and architecture and design. A lot of it is about architecture and design theory. And I would say a video to start with if you're not familiar with the channel is look for the video, Why Do People Hate Modern Architecture? And I will tell you why. That's probably a good video to start with. So yeah, should head over to that. So, have any interesting little stories or things about your educon so far? We're just beginning but... Yeah, I would say, so I just did a collaboration with my friend Cheryl from the Roving Naturalist and we got to use the space and we... I also did a lighting class and we had a lot of YouTube staff just help us out in setting up cameras and lighting equipment and I managed to get one of their teleprompters so that I could use it and it's just been a really good experience of them just letting us utilize their space. Do you have a word that you'd like to know the history of? I do and actually regarding my collaboration, so it's going to be a video about birds flying into windows. So my word is defenestrate. Defenestrate. This is an odd word because it was invented for one particular occasion, the famous defenestration of Prague in 1621 when three Catholics were thrown at a window by some Protestant radicals and it comes from Latin, made up of Latin elements, day which means from or down from and finestra which means window so it's literally the window and finestra we don't know exactly where it comes from but it might come from the Etruscan language, a sort of extinct language in Italy. Awesome, so if I was throwing someone out of a window I can say I defenestrated this person. Exactly. Perfect. Exactly. So again the channel is Articulations and thank you Betty. Thank you so much. So welcome, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about your channel. Hi, my name is Willie and I run a channel called Canubis. It's like a social studies channel that's just about how the world works in simple short videos. And is there a particular video you think our viewers might like to start with? Well I think just for a typical video of mine like my latest video as of the filming of this my latest video is a video on how the Schengen area works. Recently the video I've made that I've been the most proud of is a little departure from my normal format but it's my video everything you need to know about Hong Kong. Right. Cool. And do you have any interesting stories or things that have happened so far here at VidCon? Well I mean today's the first day but as I was walking into a panel to get ready to see the panel I did get someone come up to me and ask like hey are you Canubis and I said yes and so he asked me to sign his badge so I basically just got to sign my first real autograph today. Cool. That is really cool. So do you have a word you'd like to know more about? I think you know since alliterative is a channel in etymology I think I'd like to know more about the etymology of the word etymology itself. Yeah well it comes from a Greek root that etymos that means truth. And so you know the original sense of etymology was the sort of study of the truth behind words but of course now we use it to mean not the truth necessarily but the origin of words and words of course change meaning over time so it's not necessarily the truth per se but that is the original meaning behind it. So remember that channel is called Canubis check it out. So welcome why don't you tell us a bit about your channel. My channel is called Knowing Better I do history, government and psychology. I typically do topics that people know a little bit about but I kind of deep dive into them so that you can know the backstory or maybe some of the more difficult terms that we've probably run across stuff like that. Cool and is there a particular video you'd recommend our viewers maybe start with on your channel? Yeah I recently did a pair of videos on Dante's Divine Comedy and John Milton's Paradise Lost and how a lot of Christian beliefs actually come from that fan fiction rather than from the Bible and that series took like two months and it was a big deal so that one. So is there anything interesting about your VidCon experience so far that you'd like to mention? Just being able to put faces to names of people that I've been in contact with forever or are an animated channel like finally being able to meet the person. Cool so again Knowing Better is the channel go check it out. Okay welcome Cypher, why don't you introduce your channel to us? So I'm the cynical historian and I focus on like analytical history sometimes doing movie reviews and kind of just whatever I'm feeling like doing scholastic scholarship wise. Cool and do you think there's a particular video you'd recommend our viewers to start on your channel? Well especially for this channel it has to be something etymologically oriented so and I haven't done one of those in a while. Maybe the Philippines one that was a long time ago though which is basically talking about how like we get the word boondocks and there's a lot of violence in that word. Cool so do you have any interesting stories or things that have happened so far at VidCon? Well we were in a hall just like about an hour ago that had lost air conditioning. Not a good thing to happen at VidCon. Yeah there were like 500 people around just like, it's not 500 it's like 100 but you know still. So what word do you want to know about? Nation. Nation okay well the word nation goes back to a root that means it's the basic way to be born to give birth. So it is also the root of words like pregnant, renaissance and native. Renaissance. Yeah rebirth renaissance. Fascinating because especially considering the way it's continuing to morph. Especially like native has become a politically charged word. Exactly yeah. Yeah cool. Cool so again the channel is the Semical Historian so check that out. So welcome Cheryl why don't you introduce yourself in your channel and tell us a bit about it. Sure thanks. So hi I'm Cheryl the roving naturalist and on my channel I want to answer all the questions you never knew you had about how humans and the environment interact. So it's a lot of biology and environmental science content but seen through the lens of human culture, art, psychology, things like that. And is there a particular video you would recommend our viewers start with? Yeah actually the one that I just published what is an ecosystem is sort of the first video in what will hopefully be a very long playlist where I'm going to be exploring all of the ecosystem. All of the ecosystems on earth and what characteristics sort of define them. Cool. Yeah. So do you have an interesting story or thing that's happened to you at VidCon or at VidCon so far? Oh boy. I don't know that's like an interesting story per se but I just really like being here in the same physical location as all of my internet friends and getting a chance to like hang out and work with people and you know nerd out and brainstorm about things. Like we can have good conversations online but being in person is so much more valuable I think. Yeah I agree. So do you have a word that you would like to know more about? I do. I have always felt a lot of like personal resonance with the word quirky and I'd love to know what the background of that word is. Well the really interesting thing about the word quirky is that it used to have a different meaning. It used to mean shifty. Oh. That's not so good. Not so good. And its etymology is uncertain but it might be connected to the word queer in which case it would go back to a Proto-Indo-European root turquoise which meant to turn. Interesting. So like turning off of the main path. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. So again the channel is called Rubin Naturalist and you should check it out. So welcome. Why don't you introduce yourself and your channel? Yeah. So my name is Corey. I run a channel called 12 Tone. I'm a music theorist so I make videos about music theory and sort of in a hand-drawn animation style. And we look at popular music and also sort of the deeper structures of a lot of different musical models. Cool. And is there a particular video that you think our viewers should start with? So a lot of our most popular videos are the song analyses, the stuff we do where we look at often rock songs sometimes pop songs. One that I might recommend would be our one on Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd or Money by Pink Floyd. Or I don't know whatever song series we've done a lot. But yeah. Cool. And do you have any interesting tidbit from your time so far? Either EdgyCon or VidCon? I mean probably the most interesting thing that's happened. I got to sit down for a while with Sarah Erest Green from the art assignment. And just like during dinner at EdgyCon just like happened to sit next to each other and just had like a long conversation about like art and the art world. And how the art world is different from the music world and how it's the same. And just about like the difference in reception between like different types of theory. And it was like a really deep and interesting conversation with a very, very smart person who works in a related field and knows a lot of this stuff too. So it was a really fun time. Cool. So did you have a word you'd like me to tell you a little more about? Yeah. So there's one thing that I've been interested or curious about for a while is just in music or when we talk about scales, especially the major scale is like different names for each different note in the scale. And there's sort of three primary important ones. There's the tonic which is the root that it's built on top of. And the third note is the mediant and then the fifth is the dominant. And the first two of those, the etymology is fairly obvious. Like tonic is the tonal center, tonal tone tonic. And then mediant is the midpoint between the other two. But I never understood dominant. I don't know why that happened. So dominant goes back to Latin, domus, which means house. And it goes even further back to Proto-Indo-European with that house sense. But it also then gets expanded to word like dominus, which means lord and dominare to command, to rule over or whatever. So it's that sense that dominant came into English first, just in a general sort of, you know, to be dominant, to rule over, to command. It doesn't get used in the musical sense until as late as 1816, which is in some ways, I suppose, a bit surprising. But on the other hand, if you think about how music theory is being developed. A lot of stuff developed around that later. But what I find really interesting is that unsurprisingly, tonic in the musical sense goes back to the earlier, to the 18th century, but subdominant is recorded in English anyways before dominant in 1803 and a lot before, but a little bit before. Now, both words are probably being used in other languages than English in the musical sense before that. So I'm guessing it actually probably comes from French, from French theorists first, but it could be Italian. I'm not thinking French. A lot of it is Italian. A lot of it is Italian. So it's going to be one or the other. Cool. Interesting. So again, the channel is 12 tone. You should check it out. So welcome. Why don't you introduce yourself and your channel? My channel is Mr. Beat and my name is Mr. Beat. Social Studies channel. Cool. And is there a particular video you would recommend our viewers to start with on your channel? Well, my latest video that is educational is South Dakota, North Dakota Compaired. It's a geography and history series where I compare two places and sometimes get people all riled up and fucking trash against each other. Which is better. Cool. And do you have any interesting thing about VidCon or EduCon that's happened so far? Anything to comment on you'd like to mention? I think just when I didn't think it was possible to meet more educational YouTubers, I met like twice as many as I expected. Like I thought I knew what this world, you know, we all kind of know each other, but today there's at least probably 25, 30 new educational YouTubers that I met. I was like, holy crap, where have you been? So yeah, the world is bigger than we initially realized. Cool. So you have a word or really a phrase you'd like to hear more about. What's that? Yeah, I've always been fascinated by Pull One Self Up by their bootstraps because I know it originally had a different kind of meaning. But now it's like people seem to think that, yeah, like if you want to make it in the United States, especially always gets associated with this, but you know, you got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go get it. Yeah. Yeah, that sort of self-made man kind of thing. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's right. It did have a different meaning. Originally it referred to doing the sort of seemingly impossible. And it seems to possibly come from, or at least the inspiration for the phrase might have come from, one of the adventure stories of Baron von Munchausen, in which he doesn't pull himself up by his bootstraps, but he pulls himself and his horse out of a mire by pulling on his own ponytail. So to do the sort of seemingly impossible thing. Yeah. And it was used in sort of kind of physics questions as a thing. Why doesn't this work sort of thing originally? And then it moved into the sort of self-made man. Yeah, why don't you just go out there and do what's literally impossible? That's right. Okay, so that's kind of the opposite today. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'm glad I chose that one. Cool. So remember the channel is Mr. Beat. Check it out. Thanks. So welcome, Tristan. Why don't you introduce yourself in your channel? Sure. I'm Tristan from Step Back History, found at stepbackhistory.com. I do video videos about history, specifically trying to get away from stories of kings, generals, conquerors, and rulers and such like that. Do you have a particular video you suggest our viewers start with on your channel? I think a literary fans would probably get a kick out of one I did a very long time ago, which was about a delve through an old medical textbook called Bald's Leech Book, which resulted in a sty remedy for eye infections, which then, when tested, turned out to actually be an effective antibiotic against bacteria that we don't have antibiotics for. That's very cool. So do you have any interesting thing to tell us about your VidCon experience? I've had a lot of fun times here at VidCon. I think the best thing I've seen so far is the kid who dressed up like they were in an apology video, putting their head through this thing with lots and lots of ad breaks at the bottom with a bunch of tissues. I think that's probably been the highlight of the visual sights of this place. Cool. So you have a word you want to know more about? Yes. I am much to the chagrin of many of my subscribers a pacifist, and I would like to know more about the roots of such a word. Certainly. Well, the word pacifist comes from Latin Pax, meaning peace, and ultimately that goes back to Proto-Indo-European root, Pag, that means to fasten. So it's the idea of fixing a truce in a sort of pact. In fact, the word pact comes from that same root. It's also related to the word pagan because of the idea of boundary markers, because pagan originally referred to people in the countryside. Okay. So it's about making a pact with the outsiders. Yeah. And I guess you just add, it's to the end, where you take it to its logical extreme. Yes. Okay. It makes sense. There you go. So again, check out the channel. It's called Step Back, and you'll find all the links. Also, like and subscribe to more of these. So check all those videos out. Check out the playlist, and the links to individual videos are in the description. And we'll be back with a new video in a little while.