STEFAN MILO RETURNS
Just kidding.
This is his first appearance on my solo show, but Stefan has been on A Life in Ruins over 5 times. If you don’t already know, Stefan is a YouTuber, author, and overall awesome bloke. He has a YouTube page dedicated to making well-researched and really well-produced archaeology and anthropology videos.
I met Stefan almost 5 years ago now through our artist, Ettore Mazza, and we’ve been friends ever since. We eventually shoot the breeze about the Bronze Age, Homo erectus, and get into modern genetic science. But mainly, I ask Stefan about his current success where he started. We talk about his childhood in the UK, his undergrad at Sheffield, and then his time abroad in Europe.
We then discuss how he came to the US, Portland, and his time working IT at a credit union and how that led to YouTube.
We talk about a lot more, but if you’re a fan of Stefan, I recommend listening to the whole episode because we cover a lot!
Timecodes 00:00 Intro 00:42 New Bronze Age Video 02:56 What’s your favorite thing about your work? 04:05 Speaking to students 06:52 Stefan on A Life in Ruins 07:32 Homo erectus 12:22 Stefan shows the skulls 13:05 Homo erectus and fire 15:50 Genetics 17:41 Life in the UK 19:33 University experience / study abroad 22:32 Wife and moving to the States 25:00 Getting into YouTube 26:50: How we met through Ettore Mazza 27:40: Going full time YouTube 29:00: Viruses/ diseases and migration 33:59: Stefan’s book 37:00 Genetics again 42:19 Why did you study archaeology? 44:09 Careers in arch 46:08 How to make a Stefan video 50:35 David’s Mammoth Video / Stefan’s advice 59:49 Fear of posting / bad video 01:00:45 The dog video we did together 01:02:00 David’s next videos 01:04:16 Spitballing new videos 01:06:38 Other archaeology creators 01:13:21 What’s your YT community like? 01:16:38 Shorts 01:19:30 Stefan’s favorite videos 01:21:50 Talking to researchers 01:24:13 What do you tell your kids you do? 01:27:25 When do we call ourselves archaeologist? 01:28:54 Chinese archaeology 01:35:16 69,4200 01:37:03 Video you’re most proud of? 01:43:45 Most rewarding thing? / Charity 01:52:11 Biggest mystery / East Africa. 01:57:28 What does it mean to be human? 02:01:41 Wrapping up