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Internet personality and second-generation homeschooler Josh Taylor joins us to chat about fostering creativity in childhood, his home education experience, and how their upbringing equipped him and his brother Jordan to start the popular Christian/homeschool-oriented YouTube channel, BlimeyCow.

In addition to his YouTube channel, Josh also hosts the Curious Kids Everyday podcast, a daily show for ages 3-10 to foster curiosity and conversations between children and their parents.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode.

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again. Welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us somebody that many of you may know. Josh Taylor. Josh, welcome.

Josh Taylor:
Hello. Thank you for having me.

Marlin Detweiler:
Good to have you. Let's before we get into what you do with something named as crazy as BlimeyCow, let's talk about you first. Give us a little background on your family, your education, and your career.

Josh Taylor:
Sure. I'm the oldest of three. I have a younger sister and a younger brother. We were all homeschooled growing up. I'm 37 now, so I was homeschooled mostly in the 90s into the 2000s a little bit. Live in Nashville, Tennessee. Kind of back when home schooling wasn't quite as mainstream as it is now.

Nashville was always a little bit of a hub for homeschooling. So it was it wasn't quite an outlier back then but we were still definitely one of those families that homeschooled when we were growing up.

Marlin Detweiler:
A lot less available in terms of curricular resources, a lot of imagination.

Josh Taylor:
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Now having my own kids it's pretty wild. The amount of resources that are available. This was not how it was when we were kids.

Marlin Detweiler:
Today's challenge is figuring out those things that are good and those that are not as good.

Josh Taylor:
Right. Exactly. Back then it was just, I'll take what's available. But yeah. Age 37, I'm homeschooled my whole life. Ended up going to college. Did mass communication. I've always been interested in doing video work and audio work. So I've always found myself in those areas. Worked at a radio station.

Worked at a television station. My siblings and I started a YouTube channel when we were teenagers. That ended up becoming our full-time gig. Maybe about ten years ago. So I'm always doing some kind of video audio work. I do a lot of that stuff on the side as well. Anything I can do to work from home is my goal. Especially now that I have kids. That that's that's kind of my thing. Don't care how much I'm making or how little I'm making. Just as long as I can work from home and be with the kids a lot.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. That's wonderful. Where'd you go to college?

Josh Taylor:
I went to Tribeca Nazarene University here in Nashville.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay.

Josh Taylor:
So I didn't ever live on campus. I just commuted all four years.

Marlin Detweiler:
For many that's not a bad thing.

Josh Taylor:
Yeah. No, I loved it. I really enjoyed it. And I'll tell you what, I made friends in college, but most of the people I'm still in contact with are the homeschool kids that I knew before then, you know.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. So you were homeschooled the whole way through high school? Tell me as you address the marketplace, I assume that your experience and your work take you beyond the circle of the homeschool community. How would you describe the benefits that you got from your homeschooling?

Josh Taylor:
Oh they were very significant. I mean just the fact that I was able to spend so much time with the camera in my hands. You know much more so than had I gone to a traditional school or a traditional public or private school where I might have been able to take a class. But I just spent so many of my days just with a camera in my hand making videos of my siblings.

Or sitting in front of a computer editing audio. I always made sure to get the other subjects done that needed to get done. What's funny is I never took like a formal video class of any kind back then. Like I'm I'm sure that's available now for homeschooling kids, and you know certainly wasn't back then online.

Marlin Detweiler:
So you're self-taught?

Josh Taylor:
Yeah. And back then, part of it was that back in the 90s and early 2000s, if you wanted to do any kind of video work, every adult I talked to said yeah you got to move out to California. That's what it was back then. So it felt kind of like a hopeless situation because I didn't want to move out to California.

But I loved doing that work so I ended up being very blessed that I happened to just grow up in a time that is now basically where the internet came into prominence as I was growing up.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's interesting. I have a son that actually has a video production business. He actually works on both sides of the camera which is kind of interesting. But he went to California and that lasted two months.

And it was interesting. And he had some example opportunities as a result of that time there. But also as a result of leaving that time there. And it's not the case today that the movie and video and television and media world is only there.

I want to ask you, how would you describe what you learned by being self-taught compared to what you might have learned in a more instructive environment? What? It's an interesting thing. Being in the education business, we see different types of learners and some benefit from one of those categories over the other.

What was true of you?

Josh Taylor:
There were definitely a lot of fundamentals that I did not learn until way later.

Marlin Detweiler:
The problem with being self-taught is you don't know what you don't know.

Josh Taylor:
Right exactly. And well, I'll say this. I didn't know what I didn't know but there were also a lot of things that I knew I didn't know as well. Things like things like to this day I still struggle with things like how to set up a set for lighting, little things like that.

Marlin Detweiler:
It is a science that requires a bit of study, right?

Josh Taylor:
Yeah. That's exactly right. Things like that. But the self-taught part of it that really benefited me was that I just spent a lot of time writing. Because I love storytelling. Anything that involves character and an arc of any kind. I love that stuff.

I got to hone that in a lot of ways. Which was the benefit and but the con of not having maybe that structure were basics, maybe things like I don't know lighting is the best one that I can think of but there would be other ones too. color correction just lots of little random things like that.

Things that if I had gone out to California would have been like day one like hey you need to get these things figured out you're not going to have a home here. So in that way I think that the kids now are in a much better spot because I'm sure there's tons of stuff.

And if my kids are interested in video as they get older, I know I'll be able to find resources for them. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah it is an interesting thing. I think one of the ways that I would encourage parents to guide their children in various vertical environments like film and and production for that kind of production is to do a little bit of research to know what the the the sciences are behind it and provide opportunity for kids that are inclined to be self-starters to do their own learning but then also supplement with classes that might fill in those those missing pieces.

It's really possible to have the best of both worlds because there's a lot to be said for the self-learning that you did, and what that does, because many times formal education can actually be counterproductive to the creativity of learning on your own.

Josh Taylor:
Yeah especially with any kind of video and audio work. So much of it is just doing it over and over. There's no it's not like somebody is could ever be good at it the first time they try it. You just have to do it over and over until the vision you see in your head kind of actually matches what you end up with.

And I feel like people that are going to be good at that stuff. It's easy for them to recognize oh what I'm making is not good. It's like, well the fact that you know it's not good means you're going to be good at it. You just have to.

Marlin Detweiler:
Practice in practice and find the missing ingredients. Very good. Well the your work in this area caused you and your brother to create something called BlimeyCow.

Josh Taylor:
Yes sir.

Marlin Detweiler:
Let's start with what in the world does that name mean?

Josh Taylor:
We were kids when we started it, I don't know. We had friends who would use those words and we just kind of combined them and said this will be the name, and nobody will ever have this name. It will always be distinct to us.

Marlin Detweiler:
Do you have an English background? Meaning England. English.

Josh Taylor:
No no no no no no no no.

Marlin Detweiler:
The term blimey tends to be something out of an Englishman's vocabulary.

Josh Taylor:
Right? Yeah. We just had friends who would say silly things. And that was one of the words they used. We just thought it was funny. So we can. We just combined things. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
So it wasn't the name of a cow. It wasn't the description of a cow.

Josh Taylor:
Literally just two random words we thought sounded funny together. And it worked out. I think it worked out.

Marlin Detweiler:
How did it happen? How did BlimeyCow happen? The name notwithstanding. How did what you're doing happen?

Josh Taylor:
We basically started a YouTube channel as soon as we found out that YouTube was a thing. And we even posted videos a little bit earlier than that before we found out about YouTube. I think YouTube existed but it was so new that when you went and did a Yahoo search it wasn't popping up.

So at the time Google had a video service and so we would upload there and then YouTube came along and we started uploading there 2005, 2006. And we were just in high school. Jordan might not have even been in high school at the time. My brother and we just made stuff that we thought was funny at the time the office had just started on TV and we thought that mockumentary style was clever and we loved doing that.

Marlin Detweiler:
So are you The Office for kids?

Josh Taylor:
That might have been a way to describe it at one point I suppose. Yeah we would just tell stories about our. We would just make up stories about our lives. But we would do it in that mockumentary style where we would like do an aside where we were interviewing each other and stuff. And we did that for several years and kind of just on and off just for fun. Again, this was back in a very different time where it wasn't like you can make a living doing this stuff.

That wasn't even like a thought you know? But then by the time I finished college YouTube was a little bit more prominent. And it was like well I've had some friends that have made a go at this. Maybe we can make it go at this. And so we committed to making a video every week. And that started towards the end of 2011, and within I think five months or so we had a couple of videos do well and then by January of 2012 we made a video called Seven Lies About Homeschoolers.

And that was really the first time we had addressed that we were homeschoolers on the channel or had been homeschoolers. And it blew up like it back before the days of algorithms when things only really went viral if they were getting shared on Facebook it blew up on Facebook.

Marlin Detweiler:
And hundreds of thousands of years or more millions.

Josh Taylor:
It got over a million views and we were getting tens of thousands of subscribers. And we rode that wave for many, many years. And it was crazy. It was a lot of fun. And we just kept making videos every week. And we built like just a really cool community of kids that were kind of in the same boat as us; our content was very like hey we're former homeschoolers who kind of see a lot of the we can make fun of ourselves basically like we appreciate our upbringing and are so grateful for it. And I think there was really not much at that time that exists now, that style of content exists now all over the place. But back then, it didn't, it really didn't.

Marlin Detweiler:
Were you a pioneer?

Josh Taylor:
And yeah, we were.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well that's you basically.

Josh Taylor:
Yeah. Yeah. That's basically what it was. And it was really cool. And so it was like there was just kind of a generation of kids who finally sort of had a piece of content online that sort of reflected their experience. And so we had a really and still do to this day have a really cool community of folks that were just kind of grew up in the same boat as we did.

And so there's just that a shared brotherhood sisterhood that exists. And that community is great. We've had so many marriages and now kids that have come out of that community, it's been pretty wild over the years.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well that it kind of explains about how it came about. And you've addressed this a little bit, but I want you to go into a why did it come about? What need were you trying to fill?

Josh Taylor:
Oh well I mean I just loved making video. I loved doing any kind of storytelling content.

Marlin Detweiler:
But storytelling In and of itself is done for a reason. And that's what I'm after.

Josh Taylor:
I don't know, I really don't know. I just have always had a longing in my soul just to tell stories. I've just always loved that you just it just feels like part of me. I don't know what better way to put it.

Marlin Detweiler:
Let me try it this way. The Babylon Bee is getting serious traction in recent years. With both its sarcasm, and it's not the bee mindset that is a bit more newsy and interesting, but the sarcasm bit from behind from the Babylon Bee is to kind of really point out some truths in us.

Josh Taylor:
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
See, sometimes through direct means, is there any of that in what you're doing?

Josh Taylor:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, definitely going back to the idea of creating content in a way that people could resonate with that maybe didn't exist at the time. If the channel was very much and still is very much kind of outside-the-box thinking or this idea of thinking for yourself, which works out, great with the homeschooling mindset too.

It's like, hey, look, just because things are a certain way doesn't mean that's the way they should be. Yeah. So let's, let's think critically about things. Let's question things. And that's been fun. especially, over the years as we've grown up, we started the channel. My brother was still a teenager and I was in my early 20s.

And now I'm getting closer to 40 now. So it's fun, covering topics and saying like, you know what? We were thinking critically about this when we were younger, and now we're thinking critically about it again. And we actually maybe think about it differently now in a way that we would have criticized when we were younger. So it's yeah, it's been interesting.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. I would think there's also just the pure entertainment value is something that you've garnered a lot of trust from people who are very leery about what they can trust because of what is available and sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtly available to their kids. But you've become a trusted source of fun and entertainment. For entertainment sake, I would assume. Is that true?

Josh Taylor:
Yeah. We definitely. I mean, we definitely are careful with the kinds of things we put in our videos, and we've always been careful about that. Because we are aware that families watch together. But also, as you know, we've gotten older, too. So our audience has gotten older. So the kinds of things we can talk about on the channel, I feel like are a little bit different than the world has changed too.

So, there there are certain certain things that are just so prevalent in society, something like, like pornography or something where maybe earlier on we wouldn't have addressed that head-on. But now it's just so prevalent. And it's a thing that kids deal with that you just kind of gotta talk about it and just assume like, well, you know what? Hopefully, if a younger kid is watching this video, their parent is screening it for him. But like, this is something we got to talk about. So yeah. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
But talking about something is a whole lot different than alluding to it in a positive way.

Josh Taylor:
Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of always that's kind of always been maybe maybe. Going back to your question earlier, that has sort of been the idea is I've always been attracted to the idea of you almost don't even have to say like make a point to say, hey, this is the right thing. You can just make content that assumes it's true.

You know what I mean? Because I feel like that's what a lot of movies and television is, it just makes it some options about how the world works, you know what I mean? And a lot of times those assumptions aren't correct. And so that's kind of what that's the kind of content that I'm always attracted to, is to just to say like, hey, I'm just going to make content assuming that this is true.

Yeah. And you might disagree with that or you might agree with that. But I think it's beneficial for that kind of thing to exist rather than trying to prove to somebody that something is true. Just do a just make something that assumes it's true. I feel like there's like a there's a piece to that.

Marlin Detweiler:
Where would you be? You're 37, your brother's a little younger. The two of you are really driving this channel called BlimeyCow. Where is it headed?

Josh Taylor:

The heyday of YouTube is a little bit behind us. I would say just in terms of YouTube in general like so much of it now is driven through the algorithm. Yeah. And it just kind of makes it tough because you kind of are forced into a situation where you're basically just if you want it to get seen, you're just making algorithm bait to some degree.

Marlin Detweiler:
I’m not sure what that means. I'm not sure the audience.

Josh Taylor:
Oh sure.

Marlin Detweiler:
I'm sure that I fully appreciate what it means to talk about the algorithm as if it's it some it's more than some ethereal thing. It affects how things are put in front of people, how they're viewed.

Josh Taylor:
Sure.

Josh Taylor:
I don't fully understand.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, you understand better than we do. Yeah.

Josh Taylor:
Okay.

Marlin Detweiler:
Fair enough. Understand? Yeah.

Josh Taylor:
I mean, things are not discovered organically anymore. There's so. And I understand from their perspective there's so much content being placed on YouTube. They have to create a system so that people can find things that they would be interested in.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay.

Josh Taylor:
Okay. So when our videos were first going viral in 2012, there was a lot of content on YouTube, obviously, but it was not like it is now. You could go on there and you could search for something and there might only be a few things related to your search. That's not the case anymore. There's 100,000 things and now there's, slop out there to that they have to kind of, not to defend YouTube too much, but I understand the predicament there.

And so YouTube is basically having to create a system. They want to create a system that keeps you watching forever. They don't want you to stop watching YouTube. And so they're going to keep putting things in front of you. And they've created models that test and say, hey, this didn't do well with this audience. Maybe this does well with this audience, but it's bouncing or it's bouncing around.

So when I say that you have to create content that feeds an algorithm, what I mean is you kind of have to understand like, okay, what's YouTube promoting this month? What kind of content are they seeing that is trending out there. And then you kind of have to base it around that. So maybe it's okay. We do shows that reference current jokes that are going around or current memes that are going around, you know what I mean?

And you want to. Yeah. So that the game of it is to find things that you enjoy doing, that you find value in doing, that are fun, that also are not just going to get lost out in nowhere land, you know what I mean? Because if a video doesn't do well when it starts, it's just gone.

It's not like the old days where videos would exist on your channel and people might go back and watch them. Videos have a short life, and that's it. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. There's a, it sounds to me like if you go to say Amazon, you might bring up a book and at the bottom or near or scrolling down a bit, you'll see people that looked at this also looked at this. Yes, yes. In the case of video, I would assume that they have some sense if somebody is looking at a video on how to shoot free throws, right, that there may be something in that that they would lead to.

That would be a next step that they know about. People that looked at free throw videos also are interested in something else. And so they get said automatically. The whole category of big data has done a wonderful job of predictive analytics. And I assume that that's part of what you're dealing with. Well, it's getting a little technical, but there's something else that I think our audience would enjoy hearing about.

And that is this is your livelihood. And we've not talked at all about any source of revenue yet. It's a mystery to most of us. How is the a YouTube channel and the work that you do monetized.

Josh Taylor:
A few different ways. You can get direct monetization through Google AdSense. And those are the annoying pre-roll ads or whatever ads in the middle of your video. You get paid for those. There's also YouTube sponsorships where you get in touch with the company directly and see if they want to have like a 30 to 90 second little ad read within your video.

And then you can also be doing ad reads. Yeah. We've done yeah, we've done that for a long time. And then the other revenue stream is like a subscription model of sorts or a community model. I've referenced our community, and you can that was hosted on Patreon for a long time. Okay. And we've moved over to our own platform.

We still have the Patreon, but it's mostly on another platform now, where we have basically our we basically create our own little like Facebook essentially just for people who support our spot.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's an environment that people pay to subscribe to through us.

Josh Taylor:
Exactly.

Marlin Detweiler:
Relatively nominal. But it adds up for you and it becomes an opportunity to build a community around your work again because of who you are and what you do, a safe community, right? So kids and young adults to be a part of.

Josh Taylor:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, we have different perks like, we have a show where we react to Christian memes online, and you can submit memes for the show if you're in our community, things like that. We do extra videos and that kind of thing. We do. Well, we've kind of open this up to everybody now, but for many years, our meetups, our yearly meetups were just for people that were in our community.

So those are the three main things you can do. And you can do merch as well. But that's really more viable once you're like a huge yeah channel. Like we do merch, but it's mostly because people ask us to make t-shirts sometimes and, so we just we just we basically just charge what it costs us to print them and just say, hey, these are just for the people in our community.

So, you pay a fee to get to the shop and then the shirts are like ten bucks or whatever.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's step back a little bit. You've lived in the world of creativity for a good bit of your life. Maybe it's fair to say all of it. Talk to us about the whole category of encouraging creativity. What is the value of story in communicating ideas? What's the value of playing imagination in the lives of Christian people?

Josh Taylor:
It's such a good question. I mean, the whole thing is a story. The whole faith is a story. It's all just a big story. And there's a reason for that, that there's something, going back to what I was saying earlier, there's just like a yearning in my soul to tell stories. I think that for people who like to tell stories, it's just true.

Because I think that even if you're not a storyteller yourself, you love to hear stories. , even if somebody is just like telling you a gossipy thing that happened, like there's a structure to it. And then she said this, what I mean? It's like, oh, like it follows an act one, act two, act three, and you're waiting for the conclusion.

And then what did he say when she said that? , so that's I mean, it's been super fun, raising my kids now and even at just like such a young age, we'll watch we'll watch. They like the movie Wall-E. And so, we'll sit there, and I'd be like, now tell me like, where does act two of this story start? But then all of a sudden, like, what's the part of the story where something changes?

Marlin Detweiler:
It takes on a life of its own?

Josh Taylor:
Wall-E is the movie where humanity has trashed Earth and Wall-E is the robot who is trying to clean it up and return the people to Earth. Okay, best Pixar movie by a mile. It's so good. And so anyways. But it's just been fun. Like XSplit. I learned that stuff on my own when I got older.

I think I was in college the first time I came into contact with the idea of the hero's journey and like mythic structure and things like that. So it's fun kind of teaching the kids now, even just as they're six and four years old, just to register like, oh, okay. The first 20 to 30 minutes of this movie are the normal world.

And then something happens that takes the character out of the normal world, and the whole movie is about them returning back to the normal world changed, and they've learned something. There's just there's something there is something spiritual about that. Like they're like that's not something people made up. People tell stories because it's true. And that's the best way I could think to describe it. I'm sure somebody could explain that a lot better than I just did. But that is true.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, it has been wonderful just to have you on Vox. Great to hear your story. And I want to encourage our listeners to enjoy your YouTube channel. The whole idea of BlimeyCow sounds like a lot of fun. It is something that a lot of people have really enjoyed and benefited from. Thanks for your work.

Josh Taylor:
Thank you sir, I appreciate it.

Marlin Detweiler:
All right. And folks, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of Classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Taylor:
Thank you sir. That was great. That was a lot of fun.