Q: Hey, it's me, person watching your videos everyday. So, I'm wondering, why did you bring up the sultan of Oman living in Zanzibar? It's pretty funny but seems unrelated to everything else. One of my favourite things about the video is how you make history into an interrelated narrative in which everything mentioned is important. But the Sultan thing seems super random. Thanks!
A: there are hundreds, thousands of things that happened in world history, so needless to say it was an insane challenge to figure out what to include and what to cut, and a never ending impossible balancing act. to help stay upbeat and sane in this project, i found it important early on to keep a very light and free attitude about the whole thing. people are surely going to get on my case for 'not mentioning this' and 'not mentioning that,' you can't mention everything that ever happened in one video. so the only way to really keep my shit together was just remember that this is a crazy thing to attempt, so just keep it fun, and don't be afraid to include weird things on purpose, just as a reminder that this is supposed to be fun, to hopefully distract from the fact that it is impossible to actually mention everything. the oman jingle was written in an early draft, and then got cut along with a million other things, but i liked the jingle so much i brought it back. trying to keep the whole thing perfectly balanced with an equal amount of details everywhere is kind of like drawing a straight line in a hurricane. at some point you have to just accept that certain random things are going to have extra details. also once a bit is written and turns out good, it can be hard to let go of. other examples would include the chandragupta/seleucis elephant deal, the robespierre stuff, etc. i had a hundred years war bit that i liked so much i was so sad to cut it, but there was surely already way too much britain/france in the video, and the first thing people usually complain about in history videos is that there's too much europe. so i had to cut it