From neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to quantum physics and philosophy, serious ideas become entertaining answers to questions we actually have about life.

A highly visual book featuring Jo’s original illustrations, his signature brain character, and autobiographical comics, bringing the personality of his animated videos onto the page

From the creator of Jisik is Knowledge, the popular YouTube channel with over 630,000 subscribers, a wildly entertaining tour through the ideas that change how we understand ourselves and the world.

Why does time seem to disappear as we get older? Why do our brains keep leading us into the same mistakes? And why can learning something completely unexpected suddenly change the way we see our own lives? Jisik is Knowledge has built an audience of more than 630,000 subscribers by following questions like these wherever they lead. Jo Dong-won reads widely across neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, physics, sociology, and philosophy, then turns what he finds into stories that make even difficult subjects surprisingly easy to follow.

Things That Make Life Make Sense brings the channel’s most loved subjects together around one idea: knowledge becomes much more interesting when it helps explain your own life. Going beyond his original videos, Jo draws on years of reading, research, and personal notes to explore the questions that keep coming up in the way we think, behave, and make sense of the world. His hand-drawn illustrations appear throughout, while the brain character familiar to fans guides readers through the book. The prologue and epilogue also tell Jo’s own story in comic form. It is the kind of book you pick up because something makes you curious, then keep reading because the answer turns out to have something to do with you.

Jo Dong-won is the creator of Jisik is Knowledge, a popular YouTube channel that makes complex ideas easy and entertaining through storytelling and hand-drawn animation. A graduate of Korea University’s Division of International Studies, he first became a civil servant in search of a stable life. Then came the realization that he had
only so many springs left to spend doing work he didn’t love, and he decided to become a full-time creator. A devoted reader, Jo reads around 100 pages a day and works through seven or eight books for a single video. He creates every part of the channel himself, from writing and illustration to animation, narration, and sound.