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[Music] foreign
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people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast I'm your host Marquez and I have a
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special guest with me today Cleo Abram is joining me what's up and we got I have so many questions for you I have less talked about here's the intro I'm
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just gonna Jump Right In okay I asked Chad CPT oh no I asked chat GPT uh
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actually Adam was he came up with this idea but we have asked chat TPT for some questions for you for a podcast and said
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give me three questions that I should ask her about Ai and her feelings about being a Creator okay these are the
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actual questions that spit out okay number one can you highlight a recent AI development that excites you and its
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potential effects on society Alpha folds Alpha fold yeah are you guys familiar with this you might have to explain this
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one alpha fold um prefacing all of this with I am not a
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bio engineer I what I've learned about this is from like other people smart people telling me
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um my understanding is uh there's a there has been a enormous problem in
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biomedical science which is how do we predict from the um
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from knowing what amino acids are in a protein what that protein will actually look like three-dimensionally
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and typically what we've done to do that is I don't really totally understand how
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x-ray crystallography works but we that that's totally fine yeah through
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experimentation we spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars at probably Millions on figuring out what proteins
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look like from their amino acid combinations that has been important for us in
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developing all kinds of medications um better understanding disease and how to treat disease
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um it's a really big deal to understand what a protein is going to look like before it actually exists um
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Alpha fold is um is a machine Learning System that took
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the amino acid bases and the three-dimensional proteins that we already know and worked out a way to
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predict three-dimensional structures from amino acid bases way faster than we've ever been able to before and now
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I believe we have predicted with surprising accuracy the three-dimensional structures of every
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protein known to science this is just a astronomical achievement
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based on machine learning in the last couple years this is like we don't know what medicines exactly will come out of
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that but this is like truly enormous in order for our understanding of how it's true
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exactly that's pretty are you working on a video about this is that why you have so much info off the top of your head because that's a lot of things I didn't
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know about I made a video basically trying to understand like okay so if so many smart people are saying this is one
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of the biggest technological achievements Humanity has ever accomplished and a bunch of smart people saying
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this is a risk to humanity like how do I Square both of those things both can be
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true at the same time but like why are why are people fighting about this um in such Extreme Ways and why would
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someone say like this is going to save us and someone else that I trust this is going to kill us yeah so I went down the
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rabbit hole of like okay what are the people that are very concerned about machine learning actually saying might happen and what are the people that are
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super excited about it saying that it can do for us and Alpha whole is like one of the best examples of like okay
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practically why do we want this stuff in the first place it's like well this this could really change a lot
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of people's lives like just imagine the medicine this is speculative but like just imagine the number of people that
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that could help it's a very compelling case for using machine learning especially in medicine yeah there's a
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ton of I I always wonder about this and we'll dive into all the different types of videos that you make and things like that but I just know that you make a lot
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of videos that require a lot of research and so I suppose naturally you learn a lot about the topic as you're looking
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into it as you're trying to figure it out you start it off probably as a relative newcomer to the
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topic as any expert would say and then by the end you know all these things about it and you kind of have to square like how do I explain this to someone
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who is where I started in this how do you keep all that context in mind like how do you decide how to talk to a topic
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about your audience where you're now an expert in something and you realize most people don't have any of the context any
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of the understanding that you've suddenly built up I never really get to expert level is the honest truth
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um and I would never do I mean answering questions about like stuff I've covered is one thing I would never then go on a
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on television and be the expert talking about that topic like I'm nowhere close
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um but I do get to the point where with the help of expert interviews or background interviews I can then create
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visuals that explain something important to others and usually it's some like context that they're missing or
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something that might help them understand what's going on so that the next time they read a headline they're like oh I know how this fits into the
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bigger picture of quantum shooting for example or something like that um I write down the dumb questions that
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I have right at the beginning that's a good idea um and then I go back to them at the end and I'm like okay when I when
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I was dumb about that when I had less context yeah um what did I most want to
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know what were the questions that would have been great to answer in a way that that person would understand yeah yeah yeah some of them are like very simple
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so for example I um might have the opportunity to make a
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video about the Large Hadron Collider I'm getting really interested in atom smashing and why we do that yeah
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um and one of my biggest questions like just this is before I've I'm now exposing like what it's like before I've done any real deep research on this
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um I understand that we are smashing atoms together yep at enormous scales the machine is a massive somewhere in
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Europe still don't fundamentally understand how we get the atoms to hit each other correctly that's totally fair like how
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do they're go they're going so far they're atoms like yeah what how I understand it has to do with magnets
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somehow but like that's one of my biggest questions like I I know that we're smashing atoms like how do we make sure that they actually hit each other
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way over there yeah this is one of the we were just like how do boats work like can we can we just break can we break
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this down like I think I know but I don't really know and maybe we should figure this out together and go down that path totally yeah that's totally
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fair all right so the question I asked every guest we have on that I'd love to hear your answer for what is your
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your elevator pit your elevator speech for like if someone goes hi I'm Marquez
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what do you what do you do like you have maybe 30 seconds to explain in a way
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that actually encapsulates encapsulates everything how do you do that I'm still working on this I would love to have
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this like but um the way I would say this is hi I'm
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Cleo Abram I'm a video journalist I make a show called huge if true which is a very optimistic show about potential
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Futures we could build with new tech so every episode is a deep dive into one
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Innovative idea or technology explaining how it works why the people who are
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working on it want it so badly and why it would matter to people like you and me
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I feel like it's a that's a pretty good elevator pitch I'll just say it's like under 30 seconds
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concise the video the video journalist tag is also one that I think most people
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would immediately appreciate and sort of understand because I I kind of have to say like I could either go along the
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video maker YouTuber I usually don't want to say YouTuber so I go like I make videos and they're about technology and
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their product reviews and they're kind of along those lines but I guess huge if
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true is a naturally pretty optimistic like perspective on Tech and I wonder
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when you're picking your topics do you have to go with something positive or is there always or is the
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possibility of like a negative huge if true does that exist a hugely negative
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if true well I cover lots of important technology that could have
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terrible impacts and I don't shy away from that it's not just like what could
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you know uh this this is inherently good it's more choosing the technologies that
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I think are going to have the biggest impact on people's lives and exploring how we could use them in ways that would
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improve people's lives reduce human suffering continue what has happened over the last hundred years which is
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improving hundreds of millions of people's lives through the use of Technology whether that's vaccines or
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sanitation or clean energy or insert one of the many developments of the last hundred years
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um and and so I I get the opportunity in trying
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to paint the positive future of exploring like okay where where would things go wrong if we were trying to get
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there um and so in our quantum computer episode for example there was a section on
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security and encryption right because that's what people are really concerned about and you can't just explain Quantum
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Computing by saying like here are the many things it could do you have to explain like no here here are the reasons people are concerned about
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building this Tech and building it better um but my hope is that maybe this is an
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audacious dream for a YouTube show but I really do think that if we explain some of the most important technologies that
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are being developed right now it gives more people an opportunity to be a part of figuring out how we should use those tools
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um and if you don't understand what's being built you can't really be a part of that conversation so it's more like
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here's here's a really important piece of technology that's being created right now here's why people are are building
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it because obviously a lot of these are Financial incentives but I also believe that when you know people wake up in the
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morning and go to work they want to believe that they're working on something that will improve other people's lives and there's a reason why
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people who are working nights and weekends and just extreme extremely hard on these tools are are trying to do that
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like they have a dream in mind and I always want to know what that dream is yeah um so that then other people can see it and frankly like decide if they
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agree that that's the future we should have I I don't I don't necessarily always but yeah I want people to see
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that do you think you're an optimist generally about a lot of the tech that you're looking at yeah I feel like the the I'm trying to think of an example
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like most tech has a positive side like AI for example when you look at things that could possibly change the world that are in the tech realm AI naturally
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has a lot of potential downsides that people are always looking at and that's a part of every conversation about
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moving a tech forward so it's just kind of interesting I wonder if you're picking a video topic do you think about
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controversial topics like okay this one definitely has a lot of downsides a lot of upsides you did one about fracking
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right and that one obviously a lot of these are going to have like potential downsides how do you think about like picking topics and which ones have the
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most positive huge if true potential versus which ones don't yeah it has to
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be the criteria that I look for when I'm making a video are um they're really only two one is is
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this inherently visual does it need to be a video or would it be better as a long form piece of writing and one of
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those things I make and the other I don't so a lot of the time there are great topics that just fall by the wayside because they don't need to be
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explained via video um if you and I are having coffee and
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we're talking about something and there's a moment when I need to pull out a napkin and draw a diagram or I need to
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pull out my phone and like show you a clip and then not just play it but like pause it and be like okay you see how it felt that way that means that like but
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and then like that's the moment where you have to see something in order to understand what we're talking about yeah that's a good video that's a visual okay
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if it doesn't have that and it not even just like one good visual but like a recurring visual that's explaining
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something complicated it's probably not worth making a video about because these take a really long
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time it's just you don't need me to make a video there are many people that are capable of making extraordinary pieces
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of writing that explain complex technology like I don't write long form I make videos so it's all about
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individual as the like threshold thing okay and then now that I make huge specifically that show is all about
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imagining potential positive Futures with tech so if it doesn't what is the huge if true element like in every I
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write pitches uh now with my team but originally when I was doing this it was I was pitching myself and I had this
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like format of like what's the key visual um what are like the titles which helped me pin down the angle of a story and
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then um what is huge if true about this like what is the potential massive what is
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the thing that is true yeah and if it has potential massive negative downside that is that possible as well
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that's good too like I cover lots of controversial Tech um so it's not that it has to be uh only
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positive it's not a it's an optimistic show it's not a positive Essie show
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that's a good distinction yeah you obviously have to look at the positive and the negative but sort of giving credit to both and understanding that
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there could be a positive impact and here's what that may look like if true and encouraging people to be a part of
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the part of the potential positive outcome like explaining why we would want something and what that would look like you mentioned titles are you a
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title before the video person no I wish I was better about this I it's harder to be I don't know what's better or worse
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because like in Tech if I am like reviewing a product for example I cannot come up with a title before I've done
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all my testing and figuring it out then I'll get to the answer then I can maybe have a title before I start writing but
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like I can't start with the title and I feel like it's the same you're researching you're figuring things out you need the title to come later in the
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process a lot of the time my titles are like I mean sometimes this is what they end up like Quantum Computing explained
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yeah or like electric planes explained like a lot of the time that's what's in my head and if it comes out differently
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it's because over time we've up we've like developed more of a thesis about
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the tech and then we can use that in the actual title in them okay and the thumbnail do you do that after
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everything's made is that also yeah yes I want to improve that as well I think
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the more the farther we get into the story the better the thumbnail like crystallizes in my head
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um I do think that one of the things that helps is or I I
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hope will help I'm trying to get better about this is figuring out what the key visual for the thumbnail is as well and
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sometimes those could be the same things like the thumbs that I tend to click on are the ones that have like an error like Tom Scott is amazing at this it's
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like he's like Tom I know Tom I like Tom I want to watch his videos and then there's something interesting and then there's an arrow and then there's
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something that I'm intrigued by what it's pointing at and I need to click to find Tom explaining it yes that's what I
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want to get to right now uh a lot of the topics that I haven't been able to figure that out for every topic but I'm
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working on it yeah this is so something about me I the explain videos that we make are kind of my favorite videos to
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make like product reviews we've gotten to a Groove and we're really good at those and there's all sorts of other types of things that we're branching out
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into but it's something about explaining something I just did a 30 minute video about my roof like that I had to explain
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with graphics and with like data my past year of an experience with a solar roof
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and that kind of felt like how do I turn a a video about a roof like what kind of
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thumbnail is even appropriate for that is it just a normal the thing about the roof is
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it's roof shingles that don't look like solar panels but they have solar panels in them cool so it just looks like a roof that's the most boring thumbnail of
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all time so I needed to really figure that one out um I guess when you're making these videos
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do you have an idea in the production process before you even start what you think will perform better versus not
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kind of like in Tech I know certain devices are going to perform better certain things people care about
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and then there are certain things that I might care a lot about but hey there's only so many people who will watch a keyboard video like there are
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certain things that I know won't perform as well are you weighing the possible performance of the video also in picking
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Topics by proxy so I think the biggest most important thing is is this a
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technology that to a lot of people like does it have the the what is huge if true about this deck
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does it have the potential to impact a lot of people's lives generally uh those
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so far have been topics of conversation that are kind of already in the Zeitgeist people might generally know
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that something is coming they might be curious about something that hasn't come yet like where are the electric planes like I haven't flown in one like wasn't
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that promised there's sort of a whether or not something that is actually in the news it should be an area of curiosity
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for people sometimes I cover things that are not at all or not part of the Zeitgeist
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popular life that it might be like this sort of Niche Niche big deals
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um so you mentioned the fracking episode that's actually about I mean the it's using fracking technology to improve
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geothermal and says enhanced geothermal basically one of the big problems with geothermal
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is that you're tapping into these massive underground reservoirs and those underground reservoirs just aren't everywhere and so if you can basically
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use the natural heat of the earth to heat up water to make Steam to spin a turbine to generate electricity that
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opens up geothermal in a lot more places um but it it's very controversial because it's using fracking technology
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to crack rock underground and that has very real I mean this has been studied by potential seismic effects if you
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don't do it correctly and fracking because of the particular liquid that they use in in natural gas fracking
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um has some potential pollution impacts as well that's my understanding is that's not so much the case in
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geothermal because they're using water much much closer to normal water um so that's not something that like
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people are generally chatting about at dinner like I haven't you know like that's not the Zeitgeist as much not so
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much yeah but it is something that when you explain like it it it pulls enough
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threads like people have heard of fracking people have heard of geothermal people care a lot about clean energy how
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can I combine those things that people are already interested into something that I would want to watch yeah um I would love to do more of that
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actually I would love to surprise people more often by what we're covering and show them why something might be
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important to them that they didn't already care about interesting yeah and I think a lot of it also it sort of
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depends on how often it will come up again in their future like there are obviously big topics that we know are
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just going to be in the news over and over and over and Ai and and smartphones and social media and stuff but then
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there are things and they're all sort of Evergreen but that will come up more sparsely but probably further into the
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future like longer longer lasting topics and those are interesting too I'm just thinking of this I'm basically using
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this as like a context for like brainstorming Tech videos I'm like how can I sort of do more Evergreen Tech
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videos and explainers that also sort of loop into like the daily conversations people have about tech because my brain
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is in content strategy land and that's what I do what is it that you like about making explainers uh it's it's it's part
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of the visuals for sure and I think there's sort of a joy in um
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transferring the the knowledge that you you've acquired as effectively as possible like there's a little bit of an
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art to the language of someone asking you a simple question and you have thousands of data points and experiences
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and information that you could give them and you need to condense it all into something that actually accurately gives
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them a picture of what you wanted to say and I think the explainers are the the best version of that for me where like I
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just live for a year with this really Niche product and there are a bunch of different ways of thinking about how good or bad it is let me deliver that in
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a way that you'll actually feel what I feel about it yeah that's that's the best feeling for me in video
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um yeah I feel that as well I I also one of the things that I think makes you great at this is
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I learned this through our Quantum Computing trip you have this Focus
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really really carefully on what people are likely to experience in their actual
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lives which sometimes I felt like I can lose sight of like sometimes Technologies are just interesting to me
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but they don't necessarily actually like I'm focused on on the future that they could build on why they matter to people
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um but you have this very I think through the like empathy that you've developed through product reviews you
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understand that people people need to there needs to be an impact on people's daily lives it's the strongest reason to
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care yeah yeah um and and that's something that I've tried to keep in mind sense of like why why would someone who's just going about
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their life care about this why would it change their day-to-day yeah is it five years is it ten years like do they want to
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talk about it at dinner like is it actually going to show up in their phone yeah and that one like do I want to talk
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about it at dinner or like do I see a headline and do I just kind of like wonder about it but then move on with my day that moment I think still does have
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a lot of pull like you can still do a great explainer on something that I just keep seeing this headline what it what
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is a superconductor like I don't even know I keep seeing this thing pop up in the news and to get that explainer and
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now to be able to process all the the further information that comes out about it with much more valid information is
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is great but yeah for me it's always just been like when I do product review it's almost literally like should I buy
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this or not and I need to answer that question in in as many or as few words as I have
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I need to answer that question and so but that you know I can do product reviews all day but we want to do more
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interesting exciting stuff so as I do more interesting and exciting stuff I still in the back of my head always have
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this thing of like is this good or bad for me like do I care about this or not do I think this
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is good or do I think this is bad that's kind of the boil it all down answer I try to at least give people the
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understanding of her for product stuff
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you started I guess I'd say started but the earliest that I've seen your work
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was when you're at Vox and you're doing videos for them and the explainer stuff and then from the five years there you
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went independent and started making your own videos any regrets how has that gone
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so far tell me what how you feel about that so good like I didn't
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one of the best things actually is that all of a sudden everyone on the internet that I have admired for years is like
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feels like my colleague yeah Team Internet for sure team internet is really a big deal and people really root
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for you and people want to be friends and just like the collaboration when you're out in the
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wild is something that I wasn't it is like one of the best things and I didn't even know that that was a thing so you
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know why I think that is what and this is I I watched another interview that you did something you said about
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um journalists typically get assigned a story and they don't necessarily have as
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much personal investment or interest in that story and I think once you go independent and every single topic is up
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to you it feels like everyone is so connected to their work where like when I watch clio's work I know that she
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picked this and there's an amount of intention and effort that went into this because she cares about this and so everyone when they're interacting with
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each other's work always knows like ah this is something they actually care about and so I feel like you know a lot
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of people do great work for media Publications and that's all great but the second they go independent you figure out what they really care about
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totally so that's that's sort of something I've noticed with like what people choose to cover I think that's true of me I think I mean huge of true
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is a product of what I really wanted to watch like what I what I loved to to
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watch and um understand and I I really I was
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looking for a show like this a show that would explain complex technology to me in a way that would make me um understand the people working on it
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explain what its potential impacts could be and like give me hope for how we could use it in the future
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um I love sci-fi but I grew up watching Star Trek and the Sci-Fi that I love now
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is a very different tone um in like the the vision that it paints
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of the future um oh and yeah you know it's like there's a there's a real dystopian tone
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not it's not just Black Mirror it's not just you know a bunch of these type issues that again I love it's just like
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the the um the aggregate tone of what I was watching was incredibly dystopian
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um and just to the specific point about choosing your own stories like huge if
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true is the show that I just desperately wanted to make and and part of why I
00:24:58
went independent was like I felt pulled to make this show specifically and I wanted to make it exactly how I wanted
00:25:03
to make it um I wanted it to exist like I had it in my head and one of the one of the things that's been
00:25:10
difficult actually I didn't anticipate the extreme positive of having uh colleagues that were all of these people
00:25:16
internet folks that I admired one of the downsides that I didn't anticipate one of the challenges I've I've been working
00:25:22
on is when I was at Vox actually box does let all of its video producers pitch their own stories um so I never
00:25:29
did a story um maybe on some of the like The Daily Show that I made everybody was pitching
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um but when I was making Vox videos for our YouTube channel it was always like I
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came to my boss with a pitch idea it looked very much like the pitches that I make for myself now like there's a
00:25:47
format to these things um and then I would go make it and we there's an expression keeping the head
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and the hands as close together as possible so um the person who had the idea then did all the research then
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interviewed the expert then probably created the actual edit um I am an animator but I would always
00:26:05
have help because my animations weren't beautiful and then you know we could create the final video and
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um publish it that whole process came from ideas that that every video producer at box had had the thing that I
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forgot is that for every video idea that became a video I had pitched like seven others
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and so someone had been helping me the entire time figure out what would actually make a good video and what was just like an idea that I had in the
00:26:31
shower that actually doesn't deserve to be 20 minutes on YouTube yeah okay
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um and that filtering exercise is not only important because only the really good stuff gets made but also you don't
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spend time running down all of the the worst stuff and so early on I was spending weeks
00:26:50
like doing research for things that did not deserve to be videos what do you what do you mean by non-deserve because
00:26:56
I feel like every topic will have some Merit to it and you'll find like it's interesting enough to you to make something so how would you figure out
00:27:02
that it's not worth a video there just has to be enough there there to Merit like at least eight minutes of
00:27:09
Highly produced like animated choreography of like a complex video now
00:27:16
actually I make most of those ideas into shorts yeah I was gonna talk about shorts because there's also I love that yeah there's a there's a weird Okay on
00:27:24
YouTube there is people who do like the same format every video which can feel
00:27:30
comfortable but also possibly get you stuck a little bit and you have
00:27:35
obviously this tremendous long format and then you have the short stuff and I wonder if like you had a four minute idea would you try to cut it down or
00:27:43
would you try to bump it up like where there's I I would be like all right I'm putting out a four minute video I need
00:27:49
this to to be where it lives I would like it to just be if I would like every idea to be the length it deserves so
00:27:54
when I came up with puge and I was thinking about launching it I wanted it to be a show where I could make a three
00:28:01
minute video or a 25 minute video and that would all be huge and and people would expect you know whatever length
00:28:08
and I could have a publishing Cadence that supported that a three minute videos shorter Etc um
00:28:13
turns out that maybe because of the Netflix show which I done which is about 20 minutes Vox videos are generally
00:28:20
anywhere from 5 to 15. um answered was you know five or six
00:28:29
um and glad you asked us was like 20. so those are all of the shows that I had
00:28:35
been a part of before I went independent I just write like 8 to 15 minute scripts like I just I just like I don't know why
00:28:43
that is it's just the length that comes out um I'm not sure if that's because I
00:28:48
choose ideas that feel like they Merit that or because I could work on my well here's the test when you make a short do
00:28:54
you run up against the 59 and a half second limit every single time I'm getting better about it I'm I'm like
00:29:00
coming up with ideas um and I have an associate producer who's wonderful who's helping me with this
00:29:05
um some of them only need to be like 30 seconds so I'm working on on again just like the
00:29:11
idea should be the length that it needs to be yeah that's the principle like huge if true shouldn't in my mind should
00:29:17
not have an episode length that we're shooting for yeah yeah I really I
00:29:22
encourage my Creator friends to not like lock into any one format or a length even though it's really like you you
00:29:29
create this audio audience expectation and it's sometimes really healthy to do that and it creates them coming back for more you do want to keep it mix it up
00:29:36
once in a while and like figure out you know this is a four minute video and I'll make a four minute video yeah but I do want to talk about shorts because
00:29:41
that's the thing you've been prolific with shorts since we last talked about these we were doing um it's only a couple of months ago and I
00:29:47
was like all right you're doing like more shorts and either cutting down video ideas that aren't worth the full
00:29:54
video and deciding okay this can be a short or just coming with ideas that are seems like they're four shorts in the
00:30:00
first place yeah what is your top secret short strategy break it down for the whole podcast we need to know so shorts
00:30:06
are awesome I really really like shorts I um when I was at Vox I was making a lot of
00:30:11
tick tocks a lot of like explanatory work that just sort of belonged in that vertical short format so I really enjoy
00:30:18
that creatively I don't think if I were just making short form content I would feel creatively fulfilled like I think
00:30:23
for me I make a show and for me that means I'm aiming for
00:30:29
like topics that feel like they deserve more time than that um and so the the balance between like
00:30:36
the the creative Outlet of shorts and the sort of final product of the long
00:30:42
form videos feels really creatively important to me um I love that YouTube now has both yeah so shorts
00:30:49
for me they are either um like they fall into a couple categories
00:30:55
shorts can be uh ideas about things in the world that I
00:31:00
think are very interesting and important to explain I feel like they fit within the huge of true optimistic future uh
00:31:07
category of stories that I do but don't deserve anything longer than 60 seconds like if I can explain one simple little
00:31:14
idea One update one and whatever in 60 seconds that again to our point that
00:31:19
should be the length that it is I would make an independent short and never make anything else about that topic or I
00:31:25
don't need to right um another thing is and these are all kind of like Venn diagrams Blended but
00:31:31
um another category is is this an idea that could become a longer form video
00:31:37
so I made an episode a short form video about um the tracking technology in World Cup
00:31:45
balls last year okay and uh I was kind of interested in it I hadn't covered
00:31:51
much like sports automation uh stories Sports tracking Tech and um I wanted to
00:31:57
sort of feel out how people would respond to a story like that it did incredibly well and I was shocked
00:32:04
to discover that one of the main debates within that the comment section of that video was whether or not people want
00:32:11
tracking Tech at all to that degree in their sports right or another human element versus the AI out
00:32:19
of bounds call right right and that to me like as a a person who's really into technology who you know like I have a
00:32:26
sort of sentiment about this it did not occur to me that someone wouldn't want a Tracker in their their soccer ball to
00:32:32
understand if it like went offsides or when like it was like a fish officially right
00:32:37
um people really some people really hated it and I found that fascinating I love
00:32:42
that I think that's totally right for a worthwhile discussion I wanted to understand that better
00:32:47
um and so that's becoming a long-form video that's coming out later this month I love that
00:32:52
um and then the other category is work related to an existing long-form video
00:32:58
that feels like it should be a sort of pull out 60 seconds or something that
00:33:04
adds on to the story that I'm making the way that I actually think about making this show is like
00:33:09
imagine you're building a brick wall and your job is to go out and like find the bricks and lay all the bricks
00:33:14
together and most 99 of the work that I do is collecting all the bricks in the
00:33:20
first place like I'm reading the books I'm talking to the experts I'm like doing these background interviews I'm like cutting out Snippets
00:33:28
um and like put like all of those are like my bricks and I'm like sitting there with this big pile and then I'm
00:33:34
the the journalism like some of the pieces Naturally Fit together you like start to build a wall and some of those
00:33:39
little piles naturally become like how do you put the bricks together to make a
00:33:44
beautiful thoughtful satisfying long-form video
00:33:50
how do you put them together in like littler piles to make um you know one 60 second video here and
00:33:56
another there and like what are the bricks that you would maybe you were like repurposing bits of the original
00:34:02
stack into the others or you might have too many of a certain type of brick so you put some of them into the wall but you have some X some left over that you
00:34:08
can make a little castle out of later that could be a short form thing exactly and for me the important thing is I know
00:34:14
that some people do this successfully and I do think that you can cut down videos in ways where you like change a
00:34:20
little bit and then like podcasts I think can be cut down pretty well into little Snippets that become good shorts
00:34:25
for sure but my videos like my long form videos are is that like a they're like writing a Rubik's Cube it
00:34:32
doesn't you can't just I was gonna say there's like it's like knitting a sweater where like if you just took a chunk out of it there's color now you're
00:34:37
chasing threads from other parts of it like the sleeve is connected and you would you'd be missing too much of it cutting little Snippets doesn't work and
00:34:43
I think more people are in that category than they realize I think more people try and the way that I think about this
00:34:48
is more people are repurposing the content capital c the the like asset that they created as
00:34:54
opposed to the content the like the work inside the work the bricks so that's what I try and think about when I'm in
00:35:01
that third category of shorts when I'm trying to figure out how to make short form videos based on a topic that I'm
00:35:07
already covering in long form it's not about cutting down the long form it's about like what what Within These what
00:35:12
are the bricks that Merit short from videos super good analogy I love that one and also I've done the same thing where like I've made a short and had
00:35:19
enough feedback that I go yeah there's many more bricks here to build a wall and we can make a full that's what we're
00:35:24
doing with the tablet right now and that's happened and that's going to continue to happen but I also wonder about the other way around where I don't
00:35:32
want to cut out like a section of my video because that feels like I'm missing you know how like you'll see a
00:35:37
wall where like the bricks overlap so you can't like cut a neat rectangle out and kind of you're like well you're
00:35:42
messing with some of these yeah like that's that's happens a lot so I feel like I need to create a new piece specifically for the format that has a
00:35:49
lot of the things from the main yeah and I think think about that a lot in the actual delivery of the content as well I
00:35:57
deliberately in my short form videos record on my phone as though I'm FaceTiming someone and like they're
00:36:02
weirdly all from the same angle because I just hold my phone in my right hand and I'm like talking to the like phone as though it's my my friend
00:36:08
um and for me I I that feels better as a short form video compared to like the 4K
00:36:14
static shot that I use for hosting my long form YouTube videos yeah that is
00:36:19
fascinating the production quality thing also we could I I was gonna ask like you're making videos you'd want to watch and you're you're creating the show that
00:36:26
you wish existed um for the shorts it's almost not to me
00:36:31
it is to me it doesn't feel like a show as much it just feels like I was scrolling and I got this nice like piece
00:36:37
of content and it was it was just a nice little burst of information for me how do you think about like what stuff like
00:36:44
when you're creating a new idea for a short are you thinking I'm just amazed that you make these in
00:36:49
under 60 seconds like how do you condense all of the relevant information to be in the short versus something that
00:36:56
you you collect and it turns out is relevant but doesn't fit in the 60 seconds like I don't I don't know how
00:37:01
you made the entire soccer ball video under 60 seconds mostly it's in the idea
00:37:07
Choice okay it you know for example the soccer ball was about the ball specific
00:37:12
as opposed to the longer video that I'm making right now is about like the way that Hawkeye was invented in tennis and
00:37:18
then bled into all kinds of other Automation and then you know here's soccer and here's what we're doing it's like so tempting to put in the shirt too
00:37:24
yeah it's mostly just the one idea it's like if I if I called you and I had 60 seconds to tell you something I wouldn't
00:37:30
like start with like well you know in the early 2000s right I can't wait for that video the
00:37:38
sports one yeah that's gonna be coming out soon I'm gonna try and put it out um right when the US Open starts oh nice
00:37:45
because it's so much of it came from tennis also football right there's some in football I don't cover football as
00:37:50
much or soccer yeah I was gonna say which one do you mean I don't I don't follow any sports but
00:37:56
whenever I see a clip of football and I just see like the the crazy tracking and
00:38:01
the like yeah they do it under the players even though they're people on the and I just I'm like when did this
00:38:06
get so Advanced but I watched this as a kid they didn't have any of this stuff like there's a lot of stuff like that
00:38:12
crazy like they try and they try to go a little too far sometimes like in basketball they had like the three-point line light up for like half the season
00:38:17
yeah and it was like can you stop that's a little too much I'm very into the automated ref call Tech specifically
00:38:25
yeah like not just making the the viewer experience better but actually changing the calls of the game that feels to me
00:38:32
like the most controversial area and I I do really like to your question about
00:38:37
like controversial topics earlier yeah I do really like to deliberately choose the controversial topic and then imagine
00:38:43
like if it's controversial it's because people disagree about what the potential generally the potential outcome of
00:38:49
something could be like some people are worried about it and some people are excited about it so it's like okay what are the people who are excited have in mind what are the reasonable concerns
00:38:56
from the people who are worried like that's probably a good huge of true episode actually and sports fans
00:39:02
disagree disagree I just got into soccer like last season and I remember when my
00:39:07
friend was explaining to me the whole VAR thing and I was like oh that's a great idea and he's like no and I was
00:39:14
like what are you talking about that because in my head I'm like I'm like why wouldn't you have cameras from every
00:39:19
angle where you can literally know for sure yeah but then I'm sure there's a lot of sports fans that are like it's
00:39:25
taken away from the game every sport has every sport has a different uh amount of
00:39:30
uh computer intervention to get the call right like the tennis one is obviously the I think that's the most black and
00:39:37
white one oh the ref made a call I don't think it's right let's go to the AI who's gonna they're automating a real
00:39:43
answer in the US Open I believe it's the automated system that makes the call First now okay so you wouldn't even get
00:39:49
the replay anymore uh it doesn't have to be so some sports use a challenge system which is what you just described and
00:39:55
some sports use the automated call okay first which is very controversial right um but I I struggle with this because on
00:40:02
the one hand and this is like the place I try and get to with every episode so I feel like this is a good example but it's like on the one hand I really
00:40:09
believe that we have asked athletes to spend their entire lives perfecting their ability to to play this sport by
00:40:15
these rules and it's up to it's it's our responsibility to then enforce those rules precisely and accurately so that
00:40:22
those people who have worked so freaking hard do that okay are judged fairly I don't think I could possibly look at an
00:40:28
athlete that I admire and say like no we know I know we set up these rules
00:40:34
and I know that we have a tool that would judge you more fairly but we're not going to use it because the uncertainty is enjoyable for me okay
00:40:44
and so so that's that's one thing people love fighting however I once I dug into this that was
00:40:51
like my initial Instinct I was like people just love getting mad that's part of the sport I get it like I love getting mad at the TV like for sure
00:40:58
um but when you really get into it it's actually less that than people
00:41:03
um naturally object to the precise enforcement of the rules which I kind of
00:41:09
agree with so for example like there's this famous uh case that I use in the video where this guy he's he's offsides
00:41:15
this is a there's a lot of automated Tech to detect offsides and soccer and
00:41:21
he's offsides by like you can see it in the replay it's like the tiniest tiniest little amount
00:41:26
and he was clear like the player clearly believed that he was on sides and any reasonable
00:41:32
ref I mean I think would have would have said like that player is like basically in line with the final Defender like
00:41:38
this is on size but in a very very precise system you don't have that level of like natural
00:41:43
buffer because you are enforcing the rules even more precisely and accurately and you could that like and then that's
00:41:50
so interesting to me because you could play out the use of that technology in line with people's values you just have to decide that those actually are your
00:41:56
real values like you could say we want to build in a buffer into this system you could do that technologically that's
00:42:03
fine you just have to admit that you want it first right which is a very interesting thing and I think that's
00:42:08
what people are actually fighting about is like what rules do we actually care about and how do we want them enforced and that's a much much more like Rich
00:42:15
conversation to me that technology revealed who won that case uh the the
00:42:21
toe was offsides and they're like I forget what it was um I remember it was like Leverkusen versus
00:42:28
Club Burger I think I forget who won but like the the the uh automated attack
00:42:33
automatically made a big difference yeah so I was thinking about basketball and like there are different eras of the
00:42:41
game based on how it was refereed and the refereeing would dictate the play style so there is now there's like the
00:42:48
the 20-year era of like the 80s and 90s which were more physical and the rules are also slightly different but they
00:42:53
were enforced in a way that would allow certain levels of contact where now referees would call that same contact
00:43:00
differently despite the same rules so the refereeing changes the game the way
00:43:05
the league wants it to move changes the game all these things it feels like once we take that out of referees maybe
00:43:11
sports fans object to the the human element being taken out of it so that that I I can simplify I can simplify
00:43:17
with that I can I can sympathize with that but it is fascinating that you
00:43:24
object to the precise calls of everything it's really cool also there's like golf where it's like
00:43:29
rules are really nebulous sometimes like the ball is buried in the face of a bunker but there's some grass underneath
00:43:35
it so is it technically man-made because the bunker has a layer of like Styrofoam
00:43:40
holding the lip up or is it because of the grass that's touching the ball that it's not man-made so you get relief backwards and that's like it's just some
00:43:46
guy's just going to tell you what he thinks of the rules and like you can kind of go by that you hit at the Masters right did I say that um I went
00:43:52
to yeah the open at um Royal Liverpool yeah cool it was that's awesome it was incredible yeah but watch the video when
00:43:58
it comes out yeah that's the thing that matters yeah I don't know shorts are hard for me because I I kind of write like you which
00:44:04
is I imagine you have a whole bunch of backstory and context to help you better understand something and by the time I
00:44:10
crunch it all down into a short oops it's three minutes long I can't really make a shirt out of this uh and it's a
00:44:16
challenge to try to cut it down um for Tech I think about them like little experiments like I'm just like
00:44:23
shooting a text off to a friend here's here's an update kind of thing um and also I have an associate producer
00:44:30
who's helping me do you have like a criteria for what uh what type of video
00:44:35
you'll make versus what now you decide not to make a video about um I mean I think the way that people
00:44:41
generally like the the sort of jargon speak version of this would be
00:44:47
you think about your brand I think about the way that I want people to
00:44:53
the way that I want to show up in people's lives I I want every time they see something from me for them to
00:44:59
understand that they're gonna get a little taste of something really
00:45:05
interesting a little taste of the future uh I want them to have a specific feeling which is we can make the future
00:45:12
better and if I'm not really going to be able to do that then I I
00:45:19
maybe if it's super important but they would be an exception yeah okay so the other question I have since you were
00:45:25
talking about a video you're working on that's later in the month and I'm I'm jealous every time I ask a creator of
00:45:31
this question and I get an answer I hate that I can't relate but how far out do you know your content calendar goes like
00:45:38
how far out do you know what you're going to be making already I know for sure the next
00:45:44
three videos and I only do one long form video a month right now so you know three months so I know three months for
00:45:50
sure like in production in research like planning those shoots and then I have maybe like
00:45:57
six ish other episodes that feel really good feel like I never want to to get to
00:46:04
the end of something and only have like one episode out because the the research process and the especially if there's a
00:46:11
field shoot that the the scheduling process takes so long that if I'm not starting a couple months out then I'm
00:46:18
I'm probably going to be delaying a video which I wouldn't want to do right so I have ideas that are good pitches
00:46:23
that have been green lit Maybe
00:46:29
maybe at least six months past that so the the longest version that I could
00:46:34
pretend to say is like nine months that's not really true it's really three months but you have three and then I
00:46:39
have ideas that could exist beyond that yeah but so I I love that because you can you can kind of decide like when
00:46:46
these will come out based on possible either events that they're gonna line up
00:46:51
with or something like that I don't really have that other than like we know
00:46:56
certain products get announced every year so we know what we're going to be doing roughly at that time of year like
00:47:03
oh it's about to be September and October what happens every September and October we get a new iPhone and a new
00:47:08
pixel phone so we know that that's happening but if you ask me what we're doing in three months I have literally
00:47:13
no idea what we're doing in three months yeah but the thing that you've done is that you've set up relationships with companies that want you to review their
00:47:20
products upon launch and sometimes those launches are themselves like massive holidays basically like the Apple Vision
00:47:25
Pro how did that video come to exist because that was like immediate when they released and you'd clearly like
00:47:32
tried it yeah set it up planned it to be released right then so something that happens with those types of events is
00:47:37
these companies are very secretive so we don't typically actually know exactly
00:47:42
what's happening until it's being revealed or if you're fortunate enough you'll get briefed on it a day or two or
00:47:48
a week beforehand and still you have an idea of what they're about to say on stage and then they'll say it uh Apple notoriously does not pre-brief anyone so
00:47:56
when they announce the Vision Pro on stage that was the first time that day that anyone outside of Apple was
00:48:03
actually getting that real information um and then we got to go down to this
00:48:09
sweet building that they built on their campus and like try it and get it fit for us and there was like a 30 minute
00:48:15
product demo and basically I don't know probably a hundred people got that demo
00:48:20
and it was all of our jobs in that moment to decide what is our content strategy around this 30 minute off
00:48:26
camera demo that we just received and for me the idea was I'm gonna go back to this hotel room set up my camera
00:48:32
on a tripod and just talk about what I just experienced and the idea was like okay you're not gonna be able to buy
00:48:38
this thing yet but let me just tell you what I experienced and what I think of it because this will give you a good idea of if you might be interested in it
00:48:44
or not other people had different ideas they were kind of trying to compare it to other things other people kind of did
00:48:49
the same thing just describe the experience but it was basically that it was go back to the hotel room talk about
00:48:55
it chop it up and upload it on Hotel Wi-Fi and cross your fingers wow so that's how that one comes together I
00:49:02
think there's a lot of other versions of that where like a device gets announced on the spot and everyone
00:49:08
actually I'm giving myself too much credit I I think I on the spot decide my content
00:49:14
strategy but I think a lot of people go into it already knowing we're making this video this video and this short and when we show up we're gonna make these
00:49:20
things and I like to leave a little bit of room for and this wasn't worth a video I know this wasn't this update
00:49:25
wasn't really big enough to Warrant a whole video maybe it's just a short but I kind of try to be flexible I would
00:49:31
love to develop that kind of like even just being one of those
00:49:36
hundred people to get access to actually try it like and film I mean you got to film trying
00:49:43
it right like no no you didn't you tried it and you described there sometimes you do this is one of those weird top secret
00:49:49
things can't even put a camera at it yeah so I mean I think and also getting sent stuff to try
00:49:56
beforehand like I think for me um if I wanted to explain something complex that a company is working on I
00:50:04
would love to know about it before they tell other people and as long as they're okay journalistically with me like not
00:50:10
showing them the video beforehand if they are basically saying like we know the premise of your show and we know
00:50:17
that you're gonna explore this rigorously but optimistically like contextualize our Tech within the future
00:50:23
of what this category could be I would love to be able to do that like that for me would be much better than trying to
00:50:30
like time our video on Quantum Computing happen to come out when a lot of people were talking about Quantum Computing
00:50:36
that was an accident I had no idea that was gonna happen that was on purpose I knew that there was going to be a
00:50:42
massive development in Quantum Computing yeah no that's that's funny because I think you could do a lot of these types of videos and we were talking about like
00:50:49
we're working on a video today that will come out tonight and like our timeline we've sort of is in a way where we
00:50:56
that's kind of like the the standard it's like uh if you ask me to review if you handed me a brand new phone that I'd
00:51:02
never seen before right now at this table within a week I could upload the review of the phone it would be like
00:51:08
three or four days of like really using it and poking around and taking notes and all that stuff and then by the time
00:51:14
I get to like day three day four day five I'm like I think I know this thing pretty well and I can form opinions
00:51:19
based on what I know about the smartphone landscape and that's a day of production and a day of editing and then it's up and
00:51:26
I just don't have any other like the longest timeline of an edit we'll work on is like two weeks which is an
00:51:34
incredibly long time for me because I feel like the need to get the video out for the entire two weeks and then it's
00:51:39
finally out I'm like yeah there it is but yeah that's uh that's a big difference that but I do think you could
00:51:44
do like a sort of a look into technologies that have a lot of
00:51:49
potential it's just so many of them are so short term that they wouldn't they maybe feel like they're they're in line
00:51:56
with the huge if true thing but they they are there are a lot of them out there that I think would do it big swings yeah
00:52:02
[Music]
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to the next level today shopify.com waveform oh so you also in moving from working
00:53:13
with Vox to going independent have had to sort of build a team around a lot of the things that you do and we're talking
00:53:20
about this because I we have a team here at the studio and every piece of what everyone does is something that at some
00:53:26
point I was doing what is the pie chart for how you spend your time as a Creator look like and what are the what are the
00:53:32
pieces of the pie what is it made of this is something that I am thinking
00:53:37
about a lot and kind of like building the plane as it flies but is the vibe right now
00:53:43
um so to rewind a little bit when I was at Vox um Vox is amazing internally because it
00:53:49
basically is set up to be or at least it was at the time um dozens of independent creators within
00:53:55
box and then there's support in terms of story editing and for me animation
00:54:01
um and you know a lot of infrastructure but people generally are are making their own videos much in the same way
00:54:07
that people do when they have full channels um so this is like Johnny Harris was doing this like Sam Ellis who
00:54:13
recently started a Channel with Johnny and is um me like the the team at Fox Now
00:54:22
um and so that was enormously helpful because in order to become uh I don't
00:54:28
know I don't know how much backstory you want but in order to become a video journalist at Vox I was actually already
00:54:33
working at box on the business development side and I went to night classes at the School of Visual Arts in
00:54:39
New York which I highly recommend to learn how to edit and animate right so that I could make videos for Vox like
00:54:45
nights and weekends like just trying to get better at this skill eventually started making videos for their YouTube
00:54:51
channel but that that requirement basically that I'd be able to do everything in order to do the video
00:54:58
production in the first place it has become really important now because I know what I'm looking for and I know how
00:55:04
to do it yeah asterisk not nearly as well as the people on my team now know how to well that helps because you at
00:55:10
least can give direction based on what you know is possible and what you've tried to visualize things like that like
00:55:15
the editor that I work with right now is way better and way faster than I ever could be the animator that I work with
00:55:22
is way more talented and it just has a sense of style and is also just technically proficient in a way that
00:55:28
like it would take me so long to get anywhere close but that's the great privilege that I have of being
00:55:34
independent like to be able to go out and hire those people and make them a part of the team and make the show
00:55:39
together because and and have them add something that I never could add um it it makes the show so much better
00:55:46
than I ever imagined it could be and that it that it was than it was um you know right when I was starting
00:55:52
out um I did work with an animator and an editor um different animators and editors from
00:55:59
kind of the get-go I've never been a great anime like I'm I'm proficient but
00:56:04
not excellent in animation um and so I took one class in Motion Graphics in college and I I can barely move things
00:56:10
around the screen in After Effects so yeah I'm impressed it's it's um it's not it's not gorgeous uh it's
00:56:16
functional it's functional yeah and um but learning what the style of the show
00:56:23
was um and who could do it has been informed by the fact that like
00:56:28
I was for a long time I was I was doing all parts of this myself including the
00:56:34
actual journalism itself the the third member of my team is an associate producer who works on mostly the
00:56:40
research side and helping write shorts and like making the videos um much more rigorous than they could be
00:56:46
if I was just one person like having that additional person she also um Nicole you met her yeah um she uh
00:56:53
physics background exactly yeah yeah um and so she has a technical proficiency on the research side that I don't have
00:57:00
um that combination of all these people that are so much better at their thing than I am helps make obviously the work
00:57:07
better but also um the fact that I can do some amount of what they can do is a big deal so to
00:57:12
answer your question about how I actually spend my time now um I would say it's
00:57:18
mostly uh research writing
00:57:25
um prepping for interviews the sort of traditional production side that I've always done like journalism itself is
00:57:32
still most of it um I also run the business myself I like do most of my
00:57:38
negotiation the bookkeeping too all the I have an accountant yeah but like I it
00:57:44
has felt very important to me to like have my hands firmly on the wheel at least in the first couple years and not
00:57:50
Outsource a lot of those things like a lot of managers reach out to and they're like want to run your business and like give me the the Rams I see yeah
00:57:58
um and I probably spend more time than I will be able to long term
00:58:04
doing that um but that's that's how I would say I spend like 20 of my time doing the
00:58:10
business stuff 80 of my time doing production um and that production part includes
00:58:17
reading the books writing the scripts um and then like giving notes and then
00:58:23
traveling to various shoots and things I'm trying to reduce the number of field shoots that I do because it just means that you're constantly waiting on other
00:58:29
people's permission to actually make the thing and it's important to have things that you can already create like so that
00:58:35
you're not stressed um but that's that's a big chunk of it too it's like traveling to different shoots
00:58:41
actually doing that production I feel like the natural like I I've probably told you about my octopus analogy with
00:58:47
like a Creator so it feels like you've already like you've cut off some of the arms of like the the super talented
00:58:52
editing animation and things like that are there things that you're also eventually going to like what is ideally
00:58:58
what does the pie look like in three or four years when you're you're in the
00:59:04
dream workflow and you've you've optimized your everything I the general principle is that focus is
00:59:10
your friend the the biggest mistake that I could make right now is getting two spread launching too many things you
00:59:17
know I I have not it's been a year and a half we've hit a million I don't have any merch I don't have any like patreon
00:59:24
I don't do anything except create this channel that might be a mistake but that level of focus has really helped me
00:59:29
that's what I was um yeah and and so I think
00:59:34
increasing not decreasing that is the task ahead so I am trying to figure out ways to
00:59:40
um you know reduce the amount of time that I spend like miscellaneous time
00:59:46
traveling or you know honestly like I don't I don't say yes to that many
00:59:52
events because that's just not like uh being the the public figure is helpful
00:59:58
on the show going around to a lot of events is like not actually part of my job the way that
01:00:04
I see it um I do think that I probably could like if I'm imagining the octopus and thinking
01:00:11
about the arms that I could cut off uh some amount of business support I do think would be worthwhile I have an
01:00:17
agent who does uh agents who do um a lot of sourcing and helping negotiate
01:00:24
um but I also think that I could probably use some more support in in running the business of huge that seems
01:00:29
like a longer term thing to cut off like again I'm really excited about fully understanding all of
01:00:36
the mechanisms and all of the business and all the finances of this I'm running a production company is what we're doing
01:00:42
yeah I feel like the the question that you'll start to get is like you still do that and that's when you know like okay I think I've learned all the ins and
01:00:48
outs of this and you can probably you still you said you edit 75 of your work how did you make that decision well I
01:00:54
mean I was editing 100 so I was like oh well we'll find someone who's incredibly
01:01:00
talented at editing and then slowly give them sort of rain to like not just not
01:01:06
just emulate but improve a lot of the the videos that we're doing but based on editing but yeah like literally
01:01:12
everything that we do here at the studio was at some point something I was doing this is the year of 13 or whatever it is
01:01:18
of of making videos and the first seven or eight of those years was just the
01:01:23
videos and at this point I'll go to like a YouTube Creator Summit and someone would
01:01:30
be like oh yeah I'll put my you know chief of merch and and touch with your
01:01:35
chief of merch I'm like I don't have what is how do you guys have all these people doing all these things like this all these things I never even thought
01:01:41
about so I feel like the focus part is actually I relate a lot to that it's like you you do want to make sure your
01:01:47
your primary function is as clearly defined as possible and then as
01:01:53
optimized as possible it also we had this conversation a little bit in the car on the way to the quantum shoot
01:02:00
um and when you told me the number of people on your team I it really changed
01:02:06
a lot of the way that I think about the strategy of how I run my operation because from the outside like your audience is
01:02:13
huge and you have multiple channels and you're like making so many different kinds of work and to know basically
01:02:21
basically what I remember you saying is like we have a small number of full-time people that are really excited about the
01:02:28
things that they're working on and that I think is pretty different than the way that a lot of people grow which is
01:02:34
you know we need a person to do this we're gonna like like there's a lot of Contracting there's a lot of like part-time work there's a lot of like
01:02:41
sort of uh growth to do new things yes that results in like a
01:02:48
wide uh many person operation at a part-time level right
01:02:54
that makes that that can work great but it requires people to manage that which
01:02:59
is another body of work which is either you or is more people and for me personally like what I was most excited about
01:03:05
um and what talking to you almost gave me like like oh that works like permission to do is to hire a very small
01:03:11
number of people who are really excited about the show or really committed to huge are better than me at their thing
01:03:17
and therefore like our conversations are management sometimes like you know we you know how much people get paid like a
01:03:24
progressive career progression but most of the time it is like they are pushing me and inspiring me and they are running
01:03:31
they're they're part of the operation um and that has just felt creatively
01:03:36
like we're we're building something together that feels really exciting I'm not spending when I when I talked about
01:03:42
my time distribution I very little of it is in People management which is I think important to preserve yeah I was I think
01:03:49
uh one of the things I generally I think this is probably true about any job while you're making stuff
01:03:54
but if you try to make more stuff the quality typically has to go down and if
01:04:00
you try to make better stuff the quantity typically has to go down and so you know you're doing well when you're
01:04:06
able to like cut off the arm one or two of the arms and those people's
01:04:12
functions are growing Way Beyond what they would ever do if it was just you trying to do eight things at once and then you're able to actually do more and
01:04:19
better at the same time then you know you're hitting something like well and it's working so totally I like I think
01:04:26
the the philosophy is there and the strategy is there so I like I like all of it I think it's going really well I got this comment that is the challenge
01:04:32
is like how to improve either quantity or both at the same time I got this comment recently that was like your
01:04:38
videos are so highly produced why don't you make more of them and I was like you you answer the question yourself you've
01:04:45
literally answered your question yeah I feel that a lot so what's next for CLIA what is the is it obviously you do want
01:04:52
to make better you do want to make more you do want to give up the reins a little bit of some of the stuff but do
01:04:58
you picture more topics is it another Channel or is it just do you have a Grail video that
01:05:04
you want to make that you've been thinking about for a long time let me come back to that because I would
01:05:10
love to have an answer to say and just like see if there's someone in the world let me come back to that one yeah
01:05:17
um in terms of what's next you know if you'd asked me just two years ago when I was at Vox I would have had an answer
01:05:23
that basically sounded something like well I'm gonna do this for a little while and then I'm gonna you know that will give me the opportunity to go do
01:05:29
this and then it sort of was like attacking Against the Wind um which I think is very often the way
01:05:34
that careers naturally progress I think that's great um but now it's just this amazing
01:05:40
feeling I don't know do you have this like I I just want to do this I want to do this
01:05:46
for years and I want to make this so much better like I think the huge as a channel is just getting started and
01:05:54
the idea of this show this this genuinely optimistic journalistically rigorous show about tech for me it feels
01:06:01
like it could it just has so much room to grow like this is we've hit a million in uh
01:06:09
about a year and a half we had a million like maybe two weeks ago we're at like 1.2 something now it
01:06:16
just like feels like it's just it's [Music] um it feels like it's just getting
01:06:22
started and we're building this momentum and so again like I I I don't have the
01:06:27
second Channel idea yet I don't have whatever you know I would love to figure out long term like what the sort of
01:06:33
products are that I might want to get involved with I love the two five ones I think that that's super inspiring for
01:06:39
what someone can grow into but for now like just this I just want to do this and that freedom within constraints is
01:06:46
feels incredible creatively I think what happens is you start making the thing
01:06:53
you were always hoping to make and your taste for what you're hoping to
01:06:59
make is just a little bit above what you're making and you sort of develop your skills like
01:07:06
I also took college classes and editing but I didn't learn a ton from it so you get all this real world experience and you get better and better and you're
01:07:11
able to try new things and then your skill catches up to your taste but your
01:07:17
taste the entire time was also advancing because you saw what other people were doing and you got other ideas and you
01:07:22
had future ideas so now your taste is ahead and that goal post keeps moving forward and keeps you improving over
01:07:28
time and I think as long as you you're looking forward at your taste
01:07:34
of what I think this can keep growing this can keep getting better and I want to make a video that's kind of like this someday and I have ideas that I can
01:07:41
execute on someday in the future as soon as I get this figured out I can do this as long as you're moving forward like
01:07:46
that then I think everything's in the right place which is how I've hoped to keep it
01:07:51
for like the last 10 years and hopefully another 10. that's my biggest question for you actually is like for someone who
01:07:59
is not just pursuing success creatively on YouTube
01:08:04
but is also pursuing longevity what advice would you give um
01:08:10
the the thing we mentioned earlier about Focus being key is is huge
01:08:17
and then I would also stress to not externally set any like criteria
01:08:23
especially when it's like a schedule or a format or anything like that because I
01:08:29
I do see that as a way to optimize I think what a lot of people end up trying to do is like oh we want to optimize and
01:08:36
like figure out what the algorithm is doing and like start making more stuff so we can feed into the recommendation system and I think the second you start
01:08:42
to get on that treadmill and the treadmill speed gets turned up that like opens the door for like eventually burning out and I think if I've never
01:08:49
had a schedule for anything other than this podcast for as long as I've been making content and the podcast is like we can just sit down and chat and it's
01:08:56
out every week so it's great but I think keeping it flexible and finding little
01:09:02
ways to not reinvent everything but reinvent parts of the show and reinvent parts of what you're making over time uh
01:09:10
that never gets old like that's fun no matter what what part of the show you're tweaking you'll get to like year five
01:09:16
and you're like you know what I should have tried differently and what we can totally revamp right now and you'll just think of something and you'll see
01:09:22
something new and that taste keeps going forward and I think that's that's the best like advice I could give is to just
01:09:28
keep the taste a little bit ahead of what you're doing yeah I have one last question okay how fast can you type the alphabet
01:09:36
let's go are you ready for this let's go we have a typing test okay as you may
01:09:41
have heard on the waveform podcast every guest gets a choice of keyboard
01:09:47
and you just gotta type A through Z as as fast as you can what is a keyboard what is the fastest time anyone has ever
01:09:54
had that is it for eight seconds but what no no ever ever No No on this
01:10:00
on the podcast on the podcast I'm sorry do you want to know who or the number or both really yeah okay going right for
01:10:07
the top I mean what if I told you the average would that you just wanted to help them but I want to know all the
01:10:12
data okay our first place is Tom Scott buy a lot oh my God what Tom Scott was
01:10:20
almost a full second ahead of our second place at 3.55 seconds okay okay which is absurd I
01:10:27
no one should type the alphabet that fast but I think our average is closer to about five and a half six and a half seconds
01:10:33
which again sounds crazy but when you type A through Z you'd be surprised sometimes we have a MacBook keyboard
01:10:38
here we also have a USB keyboard over there if you want to try that or a mechanical keyboard whichever one you want yeah so we've got your keyboard set
01:10:45
up here you've elected to use I'm just going to show the show the audience clio's gone with the the MacBook Pro
01:10:52
keyboard but also the the desktop one magic so it's external magic keyboard there you go uh we give everyone three
01:10:58
tries and you asked for the course record right off the bat so I'm just going to announce that Tom Scott got in 3.55
01:11:04
seconds which is insane but uh lots of people all over the leaderboard
01:11:09
three full tries whenever you're ready I'm pointing my mic at your keyboard
01:11:22
you get to Z all right wow I can do better okay what was it
01:11:28
first try first try was first try was 5.3 seconds what three I
01:11:36
can do better okay two more tries two more reps
01:11:46
is that same place all right for number two 4.2 seconds
01:11:53
guaranteed a spot on the leaderboard I am off the leaderboard already second place finally Marquez is
01:12:01
if you want to do better you've got one more round I have one more chance to beat Scott yep
01:12:08
we're gonna more caffeine here we go I'm like shaking okay
01:12:14
listen I got like 20th Place it's more fun to take stuff seriously so you know
01:12:20
like yeah [Laughter]
01:12:28
ready [Music]
01:12:36
get the Z there it is for so I think the second time was the fastest right which was
01:12:41
like 4.2 we'll get the official number it has my top okay there you go
01:12:47
4.266 damn is the best time yeah second place second place on the leaderboard
01:12:52
kicks me off I no longer have a Podium position God I wouldn't want anyone else
01:12:57
to kick me off the podium Cleo thank you for joining us this was really fun that was super fun if you guys haven't
01:13:03
already subscribed to huge if true on YouTube do it I don't know how you got this far in the episode and didn't do
01:13:09
that already but it's all it's on YouTube you can search clio's name or huge if true and uh we'll leave the link
01:13:15
to the quantum Computing video that we did in the show notes because I think that's a pretty good place to start it's nominated for streaming it's nominated
01:13:21
for a streamy and we'll find out shortly after this goes live if it won or not so
01:13:26
good that's pretty cool yeah that's pretty cool we're competing against Mr Beast collaborating with the rock
01:13:33
[Laughter] hey we got nominated pretty sick right
01:13:39
that's pretty cool uh thanks for watching and catch you guys next week see you later
01:13:45
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01:13:58
foreign [Music]
