Educational YouTuber Steven Heimler spoke to a large crowd of students March 27 in Reynolds Industries Theater. The wide-ranging discussion, moderated by senior lecturing fellow Aaron Dinin, Trinity ‘05, covered everything from Heimler’s thoughts on education to his reasons for starting a YouTube channel to book recommendations.
Heimler is best known for Heimler’s History — a YouTube channel with around 900,000 subscribers that covers several Advanced Placement (AP) history classes — and his Heimler review guides, which cover various AP history subjects. Before being a YouTuber, he taught at a small private high school in Georgia.
Heimler never thought he would be a teacher. As a child growing up in Dinin’s hometown, where he was friends with Dinin’s brother (a fact neither realized until shortly before the show), he was a C-level student who disliked learning. His love of education didn’t develop until college. Heimler described traditional education as “a pile of answers to questions students weren’t even asking” that fed students information they often didn’t want. It wasn’t until he learned how to ask and investigate his own questions that he began to love to learn.
After college, Heimler attended Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, hoping to join the ministry. While studying Christian scripture, particularly the New and Old Testaments, he developed a passion for history. Heimler came to view scripture as a form of socio-rhetorical commentary where both words and culture must be translated. Seeing the role history played in this process “blew [his] mind.”
This realization inspired him to go into teaching. After a few years, he learned from a friend about homeschool families’ need for AP course resources and decided to create content for them. Due to limited laptop storage capacity, he decided to upload the videos on YouTube in 2017. Seeing viewers engaging with them encouraged Heimler to continue making content, enabling him to merge his lifetime love of making videos — a hobby since childhood — with his passion for theater.
It was a series of unexpected twists and turns from there. Initially believing his channel would stay small, Heimler celebrated reaching 400 subscribers, thinking it would be his peak. Hitting 1,000 subscribers validated his decision to invest time into video-making and revealed his channel’s potential. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the College Board announced that its AP exams would be online and writing-only, Heimler released writing-focused videos based on his half-decade of AP exam grading experience; his channel rapidly gained popularity.
Reflecting on this rapid growth, Heimler emphasized that this luck was only possible because he spent three years putting in consistent effort — “you have to work hard to get lucky.” His channel eventually grew enough for him to retire from teaching and focus on content creation full-time.
Heimler also discussed the celebrity that has come with his growth. He finds himself constantly recognized by teenagers and young adults almost everywhere he goes. He remains amazed when fans quote his catchphrases like “get your brain cows milked.”
During the Q&A sessions (Heimler and Dinin twice took audience questions), a common line of questioning was about Heimler’s future plans. Heimler mentioned how much he has enjoyed his forays into teaching history not covered by the AP curriculum, comparing the structured AP format to a sonnet that limits creativity within prescribed bounds. He plans to keep centering YouTube in his content production and named AP Macroeconomics as his favorite subject to teach because of its ongoing relevance.
Discussing his approach to teaching, Heimler explained that he likes to study the required content and then start writing to organize his own thoughts, before editing and recording what he writes. He prioritizes his virtual students and tries to be authentic while teaching. Heimler also encouraged aspiring educational content creators to be themselves, as the “world has enough of” him.
When asked about his favorite books and time periods, Heimler cited industrialization as the “root of modernity” with tremendous explanatory power, and expressed fascination with eras of widespread literary and intellectual creation. He also recommended a wide array of books — from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy to “A River Runs Through It.” He praised poetry, likening poets to modern prophets who provide language for articulating previously inexpressible feelings and ideas, and noted his preference for historiography over conventional history books.
Overall, Heimler offered an engaging look into his career as a YouTube history educator, weaving together educational philosophy with personal insights from his journey. The strong attendance at Heimler’s talk demonstrated Duke students’ interest in the humanities is not dead. Rather, their interest has shifted to non-traditional ways of learning them.
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Zev van Zanten is a Trinity junior and recess editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.