Learning for the love of it: Taha Khan on Answer in Progress and the power of curiosity
Aug 13, 2024 – minute read
Why do you keep buying books you don’t read? Is there any historical context into why you can’t afford “hot girl candles”? These seemingly niche topics and so many others have been covered by Answer in Progress, a YouTube channel that's putting a unique twist on educational content.
The three person team – Sabrina, Melissa, and Taha – behind Answer in Progress first came together during college, where they mutually found that years of testing had sucked the joy out of learning for them. Now, with over 1.5 million subscribers, the channel inspires those in a similar boat to move past the stigma of not knowing and embrace their curiosities, no matter how random.
We caught up with one of the creators behind the channel, Taha Khan, to learn about his unique approach to learning and how he’s able to turn curiosity into captivating content. From embracing his dyslexia to the joy of never-ending exploration, this interview offers a glimpse into one of YouTube’s most unique educational resources.
Rom-com AI experiments. Mechanical keyboard deep dives. How do you and your team decide on such unique video ideas?
It's usually a conversation between the three of us. Sometimes when we’re talking in meetings or on our podcast, questions will come up. Then, a lot of it is just us being nerdy and having the license to be curious enough to search something weird on Google. Often when we do that, a whole world will reveal itself and that becomes the video.
What’s your favorite video you’ve ever worked on?
Probably ‘the entire history of the YouTube algorithm’, which is very fitting for a YouTube blog. I loved that video because it felt like not only a love letter to YouTube but also a love letter to anyone who grew up watching YouTube. It doesn't go too much into the nostalgia element, but it sort of explains the way the YouTube algorithm changes and what content starts to rise as things change. It takes you down memory lane, but from this technical, historic perspective that you generally wouldn’t have been paying attention to at the time.
Have you always been such an active learner?
I think I was an active learner up until the first serious exams that I had in life which for me in the UK was GCSEs in year 10. After that your whole perspective changes because everything that you learn becomes about passing these tests. It felt like learning about something for fun was just wasting my time. Now, I’ve made learning my job and my goal is to have a conversational understanding of everything. I just want to know enough to ask the interesting questions, because half of the struggle is not knowing what to do and what to learn. I don’t want to be an expert about anything really, but I want to be able to hold a conversation with an expert on anything.
You’ve spoken publicly before about having Dyslexia. What does that look like for you?
I was diagnosed with dyslexia in University and that was like a big revelation to me because I just thought things were this hard for everyone. Before University when I would do my exams I was never able to finish in time, because I was a slow reader and I would process things a lot slower. I remember working out how many questions I would have to get right to get an A without finishing and I just adjusted my strategy for exams. When I got formally diagnosed at University, they immediately had better ideas than ‘just don’t do all the test and hope the answers you got to were right’. I learned that I score in the top 5% of verbal processing so that means listening to things is my superpower. Now, I use speech-to-text to write and I end up doing a lot of ad libbing because it’s hard for me to read from a script word for word.
I still love to read though. There's this pervasive stereotype people have with dyslexia, where they think that people with it can’t or don’t read which I just disagree with. I’m a big reader. I read a lot. It’s just slower and that doesn’t mean that I enjoy it any less. Sometimes even though it’s not the most efficient thing to do, I read because it’s still an extremely fun thing that I like doing.
Has it shaped your creative process at all?
I think I’m just way more likely to want to talk to people rather than read when it comes to academic studies and things like that. So, a big part of my creative process became making videos that were interview led. The good thing about that is like sometimes you get these interviews that are way more interesting than if I just read the paper. They tell you everything that was in the paper, but they also can answer the specific questions that I have and give anecdotes. I've been able to define what learning means to me on my own in my own way.
I don’t want to be an expert about anything really, but I want to be able to hold a conversation with an expert on anything.
Taha Khan Answer in ProgressWhat do you do when you hit a roadblock in your research?
A lot of the time explaining things to other people is a great way of clarifying your own thought process and it's also a great way for other people who are also curious to ask you questions that you might have missed. When you’re in a research hole, you now know too much and an element that’s super interesting could be overlooked because it just seems mundane to you. I remember Melissa was working on a video about fragrances and sort of offhand mentioned that there was a coordinated raid at 4 a.m. on a bunch of these fragrance manufacturers offices. She just moved on like it was just another example, but me and Sabrina were like ‘hang on, that’s really cool!’ Talking to people is a really good way to reframe a topic in a way that makes you excited again.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking to learn how to learn?
Getting to define the things you’re interested in is a big joy, but it’s also a bit scary if you don’t know what you’re interested in. I would say, take the approach that no question is silly and give that question the seriousness to actually go and try to find an answer. I don’t know if there’s one right way, but enjoying the process of learning is the only thing that matters to me.