Michael Stevens

Stevens holds a bachelor’s degree in neuropsychology from the University of Chicago, as well as a bachelor’s degree in English literature.⁠[1]

In 2010, after a stint in the University of Chicago’s neuropsychology department, he launched the YouTube channel Vsauce; it began as a gaming channel and gradually shifted to popular science.⁠[2]

He recalls that Vsauce began as a video-game “comedy channel” for which he had to post three videos a week, which taught him how to talk to an audience; wanting to combine his theater experience with science, he made his first such video about how deep the deepest hole on Earth is. He describes his background as spanning neuroscience, literature and psychology.⁠[3]

The name Vsauce came from a random name generator; he researches, performs, shoots and edits his videos himself.⁠[1]

In 2014 the research honor society Sigma Xi made him an Honorary Member; as of March that year Vsauce had nearly 7 million subscribers and over 576 million views.⁠[1]

On June 17, 2014, he appeared on ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s Jimmy Kimmel LiveJimmy Kimmel LiveJimmy Kimmel Live! is a late-night talk show aired by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), hosted and executive produced by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, which premiered in 2003. In September 2025, after a monologue Kimmel delivered on the show about the killing of Charlie Kirk drew controversy, ABC suspended the show, resuming it six days later.Open the full entry, sharing unusual facts such as the deepest hole on Earth. His channel then had 7.3 million subscribers, the 37th-most-subscribed on YouTube, and the Vsauce network formed by his channel and those of colleagues Kevin Lieber and Jake Roper had passed a billion views.⁠[4]

The same year Stevens, Kevin Lieber and Jake Roper launched the Curiosity Box, a quarterly subscription science box of 6 to 9 items worth at least $85 in total; part of the revenue goes to Alzheimer’s research, and Roper said in December 2016 that by the end of that quarter the total raised would exceed $62,000.⁠[5]

Adam Savage said that as a fan of Vsauce he invited Stevens to work on a stage show, and the two worked together for about eight to ten months before first touring Brain Candy Live! in spring 2017. Stevens said he had only been on YouTube and loved performing live but rarely had the chance.⁠[6]

Brain Candy Live! was created by Savage, Stevens and director Michael Weber and produced by MagicSpace Entertainment, a roughly two-hour interactive theatrical show of science demonstrations.⁠[7]

An August 2017 show announcement said the Vsauce channels had a combined 17 million subscribers and more than 2 billion views and had received the Webby for Best Science and Education Network.⁠[8]

On January 18, 2017, Mind Field, starring Stevens, premiered on YouTube Red; each episode recreates and documents famous psychology experiments, and it was The Intellectual Property Corporation’s first full series for a digital platform.⁠[9]

The show used Stevens himself and celebrity guests such as Dominic Monaghan as subjects, exploring why people cannot handle long isolation, why humans love to destroy things, and whether subjects would claim to feel a placebo’s effects out of conformity.⁠[2]

Mind Field’s first season had eight episodes. The second season launched on YouTube Red on December 6, 2017, covering mind control, the power of suggestion and technology’s effects on the hippocampus and spatial memory; one episode staged a real-life version of the trolley problem, and psychologist Philip Zimbardo appeared.⁠[10]

Backyard Brains co-founder Tim Marzullo traveled to the YouTube production studio in Los Angeles to film a Mind Field episode with Stevens and science TV personality Alie Ward; he said the crew numbered about 20 and spent a full day filming just two experiments.⁠[11]

In 2018 Mind Field received a Daytime Emmy nomination.⁠[12]

After three seasons of Mind Field, the special “What Is The Scariest Thing?” began airing on YouTube Learning and the Vsauce channel on October 24, 2019, exploring where fear comes from. The series is executive produced by Stevens, Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman; Vsauce then had 14.8 million subscribers and 1.6 billion views.⁠[13]

On December 17, 2019, he appeared as the guest of episode #58 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, which described Vsauce as one of the most popular educational YouTube channels in the world; topics included psychology, consciousness, free will, perception versus reality, simulation, flat Earth, artificial intelligence, existential threats, the YouTube algorithm, and mortality and the meaning of life.⁠[14]

In May 2020 the Mind Field special “What Is the Scariest Thing?” was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in the category “Outstanding Writing For A Special Class Special.”⁠[12]

In July 2025, after about two years of posting only short videos, he released the roughly 22-minute long-form video “All The Ghosts You Will Be,” which opens with the size of a single grain of flour dust and asks what remains of us when we are gone, drawing on cosmology, archaeology, the history of technology and psychology.⁠[15]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/Vsauce (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

X: Public account: https://x.com/tweetsauce (opens in a new window)⁠[14]