Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Can You Start a YouTube Channel in 2023? With Cleo Abram

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

This week Marques sits down with Cleo Abram to discuss how she started her new YouTube channel and found success in a saturated market. Links: Cleo's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CleoAbram Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Instagram/Threads/Twitter: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https:https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast i'm your host marquez and i have a 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 a lot to talk about here's the intro i'm just

gonna jump right in okay i asked chad cptT. Oh, no. I asked Chad GPT. Actually, Adam, he came up with this idea, but we have asked Chad GPT for some questions for you for a podcast and said, give me three questions that I should ask her about AI and her feelings about being a creator. Okay. These are the actual questions that spit out. Okay. Number one, can you highlight a recent AI development that excites you and its potential effects on society? Alpha fold. Alpha fold. Yeah. Are you guys familiar

with this? You might have to explain this one. Alpha fold, um, prefacing all of this with, I am not a bioengineer. I, what I've learned about this is from like other people, smart people telling me. My understanding is there has been an enormous problem in biomedical science, which is how do we predict from the, from knowing what amino acids are in a protein, what that protein will actually look like three-dimensionally. And typically what we've done to do that is, I don't really totally understand how x-ray crystallography works, but we... I'll accept. That's totally fine.

Through experimentation, we spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably millions, on figuring out what proteins look like from their amino acid combinations. That has been important for us in developing all kinds of medications, better understanding disease and how to treat disease. It's a really big deal to understand what a protein is going to look like before it actually exists. AlphaFold is a machine learning system that took the amino acid bases and the three-dimensional proteins that we already know and worked out a way to predict three-dimensional structures from amino acid bases way faster than we've ever been able to before. And now, I believe we have predicted with surprising accuracy the three-dimensional structures of every protein known to science this is just a astronomical achievement based on machine learning in the last couple years

this is like we don't know what medicines exactly will come out of that but this is like truly enormous in order for our understanding of how huge if true huge if true 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 know about i made a video basically trying to understand like okay so if so many smart people are saying this is one of the biggest technological achievements humanity has ever accomplished and a bunch of smart people saying this is a risk to humanity like how do I square both of those things? Both can be true at the same time,

but like, why are people fighting about this in such extreme ways? And why would 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 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 super excited about it saying that it can do for us. And alpha whole is like one of the best examples of like, okay,

practically, why do we want this stuff in the first place? It's like, well, this, this could really change a lot of people's lives. Like just imagine the medicine. This is speculative,

but like, just imagine the number of people that that could help. It's a very compelling case for using machine learning, especially in medicine. Yeah. There is a ton of, 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 of videos that require a lot of research. And so I suppose naturally you learn a lot about the topic as you're looking into it,

as you're trying to figure it out. You started off probably as a relative newcomer to the 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 who is where I started in this? How do you keep all of that context in mind? Like, how do you decide how to talk to a topic about your audience where you're now an expert in something and you realize most people don't have any of the context, any of the understanding that you've suddenly built up?

I never really get to expert level is the honest truth. And I would never do, I mean, answering questions about like stuff I've covered is one thing. I would never then go on television and be the expert talking about that topic. Like I'm nowhere close. But I do get to the point where with the help of expert interviews or background interviews, I can then create visuals that explain something important to others. And usually it's some like context that they're missing or 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 bigger picture of quantum computing, for example, or something like that.

I write down the dumb questions that I have right at the beginning. That's a good idea. And then I go back to them at the end. And I'm like, OK, when I was dumb about it, when I had less context, what did I most want to know? What were the questions that would have been great to answer in a way that that person would understand? Yeah. Yeah.

And some of them are like very simple. So for example, I might have the opportunity to make a video about the Large Hadron Collider. I'm getting really interested in atom smashing and why we do that. 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. I understand that we are smashing atoms together at enormous scales. This machine is massive. Somewhere in Europe? I still don't fundamentally understand how we get the atoms to hit each other correctly. That's totally fair. Like how

they're going so far, they're atoms. Like, what? I understand it has to do with magnets 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 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 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 fair i so the question i asked every guest we have on that i'd love to hear your answer for what is your your elevator pit your elevator speech for like if someone goes hi i'm marquez what do you what do you do like you have

maybe 30 seconds to explain in a way that actually encapsulates everything. How do you do that? I'm still working on this. I would love to have this, like, but. The way I would say this is, hi, I'm Cleo Abram. I'm a video journalist. I make a show called Huge If True, which is a very optimistic show about potential futures we could build with new tech. So every episode is a deep dive into one innovative idea or technology explaining how it works, why the people who are working on it want it so badly, and why it would matter to people

like you and me. I feel like it's a, that's a pretty good elevator pitch, I'll just say. Thank you. Under 30 seconds, concise. That's a pretty good elevator pitch, I'll just say. Thank you. It's like under 30 seconds, concise. The video journalist tag is also one that I think most people would immediately appreciate and sort of understand. Because I kind of have to say, like, I could either go along the video maker YouTuber.

I usually don't want to say YouTuber. So I go, like, I make videos. And they're about technology and they're product reviews and they're kind of along those lines. and they're about technology and their product reviews and they're kind of along those lines. But I guess huge if true is a naturally pretty optimistic like perspective on tech. And I wonder when you're picking your topics, do you have to go with something positive

or is there always, or is the possibility of like a negative huge if true, does that exist? A hugely negative if true? Well, I cover lots of important technology that could have terrible impacts. And I don't shy away from that. It's not just like what could, you know, this is inherently good. It's more choosing the technologies that I think are

going to have the biggest impact on people's lives and exploring how we could use them in ways that would improve people's lives, reduce human suffering, continue what has happened over the last hundred years, which is improving hundreds of millions of people's lives through the use of technology, whether that's vaccines or sanitation or clean energy or insert one of the many developments of the last hundred years. And so I get the opportunity in trying to paint the positive future of exploring like,

okay, where would things go wrong if we were trying to get there? And so in our quantum computer episode, for example, there was a section on security and encryption. Because that's what people are really concerned about. And you can't just explain quantum computing by saying, like, here are the many things it could do. You have to explain, like, no, here are the reasons people are concerned about building this tech and building it better.

But my hope is that, maybe this is an audacious dream for a YouTube show, but I really do think that if we explain some of the most important technologies that are being developed right now, it gives more people an opportunity to be a part of figuring out how we should use those tools. 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 here's a really important piece of technology that's being created right now. Here's why people are, are building it, because obviously, a lot of these are financial incentives. But I also believe that when you know, people wake up in the 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 people who are working nights and weekends and just extremely hard on these tools are trying to do that. Like they have a dream in mind and I always want to know what that dream is. So that then other people can see it and frankly, like

decide if they agree that that's the future we should have. I don't necessarily always, but I want people to see 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, I'm trying to think of an example, 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 has a lot of potential downsides that people are always looking at. And that's a part of every conversation about moving the tech forward. So it's just kind of interesting. I wonder if you're picking a video topic,

do you think about controversial topics? Like, okay, this one definitely has a lot of downsides, a lot of upsides. You did one about fracking, 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 most positive, huge, if true potential versus which ones don't? Yeah, it has to be the criteria that I look for when I'm making a video are, they're really only two. One is, is 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 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 explained via video. If you and I are having coffee and 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 pull out my phone and show you a clip and then not just play it but pause it and be like, okay, you see how it fell that way?

That means that like, but, and then that's the moment where you have to see something in order to understand what we're talking about. That's a good video. That's a visual. Okay. If it doesn't have that and it not even just like one good visual, but like a recurring visual that's explaining something complicated, it's probably not worth making a video about because these take a really long time. It's just, you don't need me to make a video.

There are many people that are capable of making extraordinary pieces of writing that explain complex technology like i don't write long form i make videos so it's all about visual as the like threshold thing okay and then now that i make huge specifically that show is all about imagining potential positive futures with tech so if it doesn't what is the huge if true element like in every i i write pitches uh now with my team but originally when i was doing this it was i was pitching myself and i had this like format of like what's the key visual um what are like the titles which help me pin down the angle of the story and then um what is huge if true about this like what is the potential massive what is the thing that is positive if it is true? Yeah. And if it has potential massive negative downside that is possible as well,

that's good too. Like I cover lots of controversial tech. So it's not that it has to be only positive. It's an optimistic show. It's not a positive show. I see. 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 there could be a positive impact. And here's what that may look like if true. And encouraging people to be a 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 title before the video person? No, I wish I was better about this. It's harder to be, I don't know what's better or worse because like in tech, if I am like reviewing a product, for example, I cannot come up with a title before I've done 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 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 process a lot of the time my titles are like I mean sometimes this is what they end up like quantum computing explained 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 it's because over time we've up we've like developed more

of a thesis about the tech and then we can use that in the actual title and them. Okay. And the thumbnail, do you do that after everything's made? Is that also? Yeah. I want to improve that as well. I think the farther we get into the story, the better the thumbnail crystallizes in my head. I do think that one of the things that helps is, or I 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 sometimes those could be the same things. Like the thumbs that I tend to click on are the ones that have like an arrow, like Tom Scott is amazing at this. 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 something that I'm intrigued by what it's pointing at. And I need to click to find Tom explaining it. That's what I want to get to right now. A lot of the topics that I haven't been able to figure that out for every topic, but I'm working on it. Yeah, this is so something about me. I the explain videos that we make are kind of my favorite videos to 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 into, but it's something about explaining something. I just did a 30 minute video about my roof. Like that, I had to explain with graphics and with like data, my past year of an experience with a solar roof.

And that kind of felt like, how do I turn a video about a roof? Like what kind of thumbnail is even appropriate for that? Is it just a normal, the thing about the roof, it's roof shingles that don't look like solar panels, but they have solar panels in them. So it just looks like a roof.

That's the most boring thumbnail of all time. So I needed to really figure that one out. I guess when you're making these videos, do you have an idea in the production process before you even start what you think will perform better versus not? Kind of like in tech, I know certain devices are going to perform better, certain things people care about. 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 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 certain things that i know won't perform as well are you weighing the possible performance of the video also in picking topics by proxy so i think the biggest most important thing is is this a technology that is going to matter to a lot of

people like does it have the the what is huge if true about this tech? Does it have the potential to impact a lot of people's lives? Generally, those so far have been topics of conversation that are kind of already in the zeitgeist. People might generally know 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 that promised? There's sort of a, whether or something that is actually in the news it should be an area of curiosity for people sometimes i cover things that are not at all or not part of the zeitgeist popularly that it might be like this sort of niche niche big deals um so you mentioned the fracking episode that's actually about i mean the it mentioned the fracking episode. That's actually about, I mean,

it's using fracking technology to improve geothermal. It's this enhanced geothermal, basically. One of the big problems with geothermal is that you're tapping into these massive underground reservoirs, and those underground reservoirs just aren't everywhere. And so if you can basically use the natural heat of the earth to heat up water to make steam to spin a turbine to generate electricity, that opens up geothermal in a lot more places. But it's very controversial because it's using fracking technology to crack rock underground. And that has very real, I mean, this has been studied, like potential seismic effects if you don't do it correctly. And fracking because of the particular liquid that they use in natural gas fracking has some potential pollution impacts as well.

My understanding is that's not so much the case in geothermal because they're using water much closer to normal water. So that's not something that people are generally chatting about at dinner. Like I haven't, you know, like that's not... Not in the zeitgeist as much. Not so much. Yeah. But it is something that when you explain,

like it pulls enough threads. Like people have heard of fracking. People have heard of geothermal. People care a lot about clean energy. How can I combine those things that people are already interested in into something that I would want to watch? Yeah.

I would love to do more of that, actually. I would love to surprise people more often by what we're covering and show them why something might be important to them that they didn't already care about. Interesting. Yeah, and I think a lot of it also, it sort of depends on how often

it will come up again in their future. Like there are obviously big topics that we know are just going to be in the news over and over and over and AI and smartphones and social media and stuff. But then there are things, and they're all sort of evergreen, but that will come up more sparsely, but probably further into the future, like longer, longer lasting topics. And those are interesting, too. I'm just thinking of this. I'm basically using this as like a context for like

brainstorming tech videos. I'm like, how can I sort of do more evergreen tech videos and explainers that also sort of loop into like the daily conversations people have about tech because my brain is in content strategy land and that's what I do. What is it that you like about making explainers? It's, it's, it's part of the visuals for sure. And I think there's sort of a joy in transferring the, the knowledge that you, you've acquired as effectively as possible. Like there's a little bit of an art to the language of someone asking you a simple question and you have thousands of data points and experiences and information that you could give them and you need to condense it all into something that actually accurately gives

them a picture of what you wanted to say. And I think the explainers are the best version of that for me. We're like, I just lived 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 a way that you'll actually feel what I feel about it. Yeah, that's, that's the best feeling for me in video. Yeah, I feel that as well. I also one of the things that i think makes you great at this is i learned this through our quantum computing trip you have this focus really really carefully on what people are likely to experience in their actual lives yeah which sometimes i felt like i can lose sight of like sometimes technologies are just interesting to me,

but they don't necessarily actually, like I'm focused on the future that they could build on why they matter to people. But you have this very, I think through the like empathy that you've developed through product reviews, you understand that people need to, there needs to be an impact on people's daily lives.

People are busy, people got stuff to do. People have stuff to do. Yeah. Yeah. And lives. It's the strongest reason to care. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that I've tried to keep in mind since of like, why, why would someone who's just going about their life care about this? Why would it change their day to day?

Yeah. Is it five years? Is it 10 years? Like, do they want to 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 about it at dinner or like, do I see 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 a lot of pull, like you can still do a great explainer on something that I just keep seeing this headline, what is what 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 now to be able to process all the further information that comes out about it with much more valid information 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 this or not? And I need to answer that question in as many or as few words as I have, I need to answer that question. And so, but that, you know, I can do product reviews all day, but we wanna do more interesting, exciting stuff.

So as I do more interesting, exciting stuff, I still in the back of my head always have this thing of like, is this good or bad for me? Like, do I care about this or not? Do I think this 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 understanding of

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You started, I guess I'd say started, but the earliest that I've seen your work was when you were at Vox. And you're doing videos for them and the explainer stuff. And then from the five years there, you went independent and started making your own videos. Any regrets? How has that gone so far? Tell me what, how you feel about that? It's been the best. It's been so good. Like I didn't, one of the best things actually is that all of a sudden everyone on the internet that I have admired for years feels like my colleague. Yeah, team internet for sure. Team internet is a really big deal and people really root for you and people want to be friends.

And just like the collaboration when you're out in the wild is something that I wasn't – is like one of the best things. And I didn't even know that that was a thing so you know why i think that is why and this is i i watched another interview that you did something you said about um journalists typically get assigned a story and they don't necessarily have as much personal investment or interest in that story and i think once you go independent and every single topic is up to you it feels like everyone is so connected to their work where like when i watched cleo's work i know that she 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 each other's work always knows like ah this is something they actually care about and so i feel like you know a lot 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. Totally. And 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 is a product of what I really wanted to watch, like what I what I love to watch and understand. And I really, I was looking for a show like this, a show that would explain complex technology to me in a way that would make me understand the people working on it,

explain what its potential impacts could be and give me hope for how we could use it in the future. I love sci-fi, but I grew up watching Star Trek and the sci-fi that I love now is a very different tone um in like the the vision that it paints of the future um oh and you know it's like there's a there's a real dystopian tone not it's not just black mirror it's not just you know a bunch of these sci-fi shows that again i love it's just like the the um the aggregate tone of what i was watching was incredibly dystopian um and just to the specific point about choosing your own story is like huge if true is the show

that i just desperately wanted to make and and part of why i went independent was like i felt pulled to make this show specifically and i wanted to make it exactly how I wanted to make it. I wanted it to exist like I had it in my head. And one of the things that's been difficult, actually, I didn't anticipate the extreme positive of having colleagues that were all of these people, internet folks that I've admired. One of the downsides that I didn't anticipate, one of the challenges I've been working on is when I was at Vox, actually Vox does let all of its video producers pitch their own stories. So I never did a story, maybe on some of the daily show that I made, everybody was pitching. But when I was making Vox videos for our YouTube channel, it was always like I 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 format to these things. And then I would go make it and we there's an expression, keeping the head and the hands as close together as possible. So the person who had the idea, then did all the research, then interviewed the expert, then probably created the actual edit. I am an animator but i would always have help because my animations weren't beautiful and then you know we could create the final video and um publish it that whole process came from ideas that that every video producer at box had had the thing that i forgot is that for every video idea that became a video, I had pitched like seven others. 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 shower that actually doesn't deserve to be 20 minutes on YouTube. Yeah, it's on filtering. Yeah. Okay. And that filtering exercise is not only important because only the really good stuff gets made,

but also you don't spend time running down all of the worst stuff. And so early on, I was spending weeks like doing research for things that did not deserve to be videos. What do you what do you mean by not deserve? Because 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 that it's not worth a video there just has to be enough there there to merit like at least eight minutes of highly produced like animated choreography of like a complex video now actually i make most of those ideas into shorts i was going to talk about shorts because there's also like i love that yeah there's there's a weird, okay. On YouTube, there is people who do like the same format every video, which can feel

comfortable, but also possibly get you stuck a little bit. And you have obviously this tremendous long form 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 would you try to bump it up? Like where there's, I would be like, all right, I'm putting out a four minute video, I need this to be where it lives. I would like it to just be if I would like every idea to be the length that deserves. When I came up with huge, and I was thinking about launching it, I wanted it to be a show where I could make a three-minute video or a 25-minute video, and that would all be huge. And people would expect whatever length, and I could have a publishing cadence that supported that, a three-minute video is shorter, et cetera.

Turns out that maybe because of the Netflix show, which I'd done, which is about 20 minutes, Vox videos are generally anywhere from five to 15. Answered was five or six. And Glad You Asked Us was like 20. So those are all of the shows that I had been a part of before I went independent. I just write like eight to 15 minute scripts. I know. Like, I just like, I don't know why that is. It's just the length that comes out. I'm not sure if that's because I 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 you run up against the 59 and a half second limit every single time? I'm getting better about it. I'm like coming up with ideas. And I have an associate producer who's

wonderful who's helping me with this um some of them only need to be like 30 seconds so i'm working on on again just like the 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 not have an an episode length that we're shooting for yeah yeah i, I encourage my creator friends to not like lock into any one format or length, even though it's really like, you create this 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 once in a while and like figure out, you know, this is a four minute video and I'll make a four minute video. But I do want to talk about shorts because that's the thing, you've been prolific with shorts.

Since we last talked about these, we were doing, it was only a couple of months ago, and I was like, all right, you're doing more shorts, and either cutting down video ideas that aren't worth a full video, and deciding, okay, this can be a short, or just coming with ideas that are, seems like they're for shorts in the first place.

What is your top secret short strategy? Break it down for the whole podcast. We need to know. So shorts are awesome. I really, really like shorts. I when I was at Vox, I was making a lot of tick tocks, a lot of like explanatory work that just sort of belonged in that vertical short format. So I really enjoy that creatively. I don't think if I were just making short form content, I would feel creatively fulfilled. Like I think for me, I make a show. And for me, that means I'm aiming for like topics that feel like they deserve more time than that. And so the balance between like the creative outlet of shorts and the sort of final product of the long-form videos feels really creatively important to me. I love that YouTube now has both. So shorts, for me, they are either...

They fall into a couple categories. Shorts can be ideas about things in the world that I think are very interesting and important to explain, feel like they fit within the huge if true optimistic future category of stories that I do, but don't deserve anything longer than 60 seconds. Like if I can explain one simple little idea, one update, one whatever in 60 seconds, that again, to our point, that should be the length that it is. I would make an independent short and never make anything else about that topic. Or I don't need to. Another thing is, and these are all kind of like Venn diagrams blended, but another category is, is this an idea that could become a longer form video?

So I made an episode, a short form video about the the tracking technology in world cup balls last year okay and uh i was kind of interested in it i hadn't covered much like sports automation uh stories sports tracking tech and um i wanted to sort of feel out how people would respond to a story like that it It did incredibly well. And I was shocked to discover that one of the main debates within that, the comment section of that video was whether or not people want tracking tech at all to that degree in their sports. Right. They want the human element versus the AI out of bounds call.

Right. Right. And that to me, like as a person who's really into technology who you know like i have a sort of sentiment about this it did not occur to me that someone wouldn't want a tracker in their their soccer ball to understand if it like went off sides or went like like officially right um people really some people really hated it and i found that fascinating i love that i think that's totally right for a worthwhile discussion. I wanted to understand that better.

And so that's becoming a long form video that's coming out later this month. I love that. And then the other category is work related to an existing long form video that feels like it should be a sort of pull out 60 seconds or something that adds on to the story that I'm making. The way that I actually think about making this show is like imagine you're building a brick wall and your job is to go out and like find the bricks and lay all the bricks together.

And most 99% of the work that I do is collecting all the bricks in the 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 in the 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 the snippets. I love analogies, this is perfect, okay. You would. I'm like, all of those are like my bricks

and I'm like sitting there with this big pile. And then the journalism, like some of the pieces naturally fit together, you like start to build a wall. And some of those little piles naturally become, like how do you put the bricks together to make a beautiful thoughtful satisfying long form video how do you put them together in like littler piles to make um you know one 60 second video here and another there and like what are the bricks that

you would maybe you were like repurposing bits of the original 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 some leftover that you 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 that some people do this successfully. And I do think that you can cut down videos in ways where you like change a little bit. And then like podcasts, I think, can be cut down pretty well into little snippets that become good shorts for sure but my videos like my long form videos are they're like they're like writing a rubik's cube like it 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

missing 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 I think more people are in that category than they realize. I think more people try and, the way that I think about this is more people are repurposing the content, capital C, the asset that they created, as opposed to the content,

the work inside the work, the bricks. So that's what I try and think about when I'm in 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 already covering in long-form. It's not about cutting down the long-form, it's about what are the bricks that merit short-form videos.

Super good analogy, I love that one. And also, I've done the same thing where I've made a short and had 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 doing with the tablet right now. And that's happened and that's gonna continue to happen. But I also wonder about the other way around

where I don't wanna cut out like a section of my video because that feels like I'm missing, you know how like you'll see a wall where like the bricks overlap so you can't like cut a neat rectangle out. You kind of, you're like, well, you're missing some of these. Yeah, like that happens a lot.

So I feel like I need to create a new piece specifically for the format that has a lot of the things from the main. Yeah, and I think about that a lot in the actual delivery of the content as well. I deliberately in my short form videos record on my phone as though I'm FaceTiming someone. And like, they're weirdly all from the same angle

because I just hold my phone in my right hand and I'm like talking to the phone as though I'm facetiming someone. And like, they're 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. And, and for me, I, I that feels better as a short form video compared to like the 4k static shot that I use for hosting my long form YouTube videos. Yeah, that is fascinating that the production quality thing also we could I was going to ask, like you're making videos you'd want to watch, and you're creating the show that you wish existed. For the shorts, it's almost not to me it is to me it doesn't feel like a show as much as just feels like I was scrolling and I got this nice like piece of content and it was it was just a nice little burst of information for me. just a nice little burst of information for me. How do you think about like what stuff,

like when you're creating a new idea for a short, are you thinking, I'm just amazed that you make these under 60 seconds. Like how do you condense all of the relevant information to be in the short versus something that you'd, you collect and it turns out as relevant, but doesn't fit in the 60 seconds. Like, I don't, I don't know how you made the entire soccer ball video

under 60 seconds. Mostly it's in the 60 seconds. Like I don't know how you made the entire soccer ball video under 60 seconds. Mostly it's in the idea choice. Okay. It, you know, for example, the soccer ball was about the ball specifically. Right. As opposed to the longer video that I'm making right now

is about like the way that Hawkeye was invented in tennis and then bled into all kinds of other automation. And then, you know, here's soccer and here's what we're doing in basketball. Which is like so tempting to put in the short too 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 like start with like well you know in the early 2000s right i can't wait for that video the sports one yeah that's gonna be coming out soon i'm gonna try and put it out um right when the u.s

open starts oh nice because it's so much of it came from tennis also football right there's some in football i don't cover football as much or soccer yeah i was gonna say which one i don't follow any sports but whenever i see a clip of football and i just see like the the crazy tracking and the like yeah they do it under the players, even though there are people on the, and I'm like, when did this get so advanced? When I watched this as a kid, they didn't have any of this stuff.

There's a lot of stuff like that. It's crazy. And they try to go a little too far sometimes. In basketball, they had the three-point line light up for half a season and it lit up. And I was like, can you stop? That's a little too much. I'm very into the automated ref call tech specifically.

Like not just making the viewer experience better, but actually changing the calls of the game. That feels to me like the most controversial area. And I do really like, to your question about like controversial topics earlier, I do really like to deliberately choose the controversial topic and then imagine like, if it's's controversial it's because people disagree about what the potential, generally, the potential outcome of something could be.

Like some people are worried about it and some people are excited about it. So it's like, okay, what do the people who are excited have in mind? What are the reasonable concerns from the people who are worried? Like that's probably a good Huge If True episode actually. And sports fans disagree. Disagree. Disagree about. I just got into soccer like last season and i remember when my friend was explaining to me the whole var thing and i was like oh that's

a great idea and he's like no it's not and i was like what are you talking about that's in my head i'm like i'm like why wouldn't you have cameras from every 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 taken away from the game. Every sport has a different amount of computer intervention to get the call right. The tennis one is obviously, I think that's the most black and white one. Oh, the ref made a call. I don't think it's right. Let's go to the AI who's going to tell us the real answer

in the u.s open i believe it's the automated system that makes the call first now okay so you wouldn't even get the replay anymore uh it doesn't have to be so some sports use a challenge system which is what you just described and some sports use the automated call okay first which is very controversial right um but i i struggle with this because on 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 believe that we have asked athletes to spend their entire lives perfecting their ability to play this sport by these rules. And it's up to it's our responsibility to then enforce those rules precisely and accurately so that those people who have worked so freaking hard to do that are judged fairly. I don't think I could possibly look at an

athlete that I admire and say like, no, we know, I know we set up these rules 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. Do people just love screaming and so so that's that's one thing people love fighting however i once i dug into this that was 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 um but when you really get into it, it's actually less that than people naturally object to the precise enforcement of the rules, which I kind of agree with. So, for example, like there's this famous case that I use in the video where this guy, he's offsides. There's a lot of automated tech to detect offsides in soccer. And he's offsides by like, you can see it in the replay.

It's like the tiniest tiniest little amount and he was clear like the player clearly believed that he was on sides and any reasonable ref i mean i think would have would have said like that player is like basically in line with the final defender like this is on sides but in a very very precise system you don't have that level of like natural buffer because you are enforcing the rules even more precisely and accurately and you could that like and then that's 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 real values like you could say

we want to build in a buffer into this system you You could do that technologically. That's fine. You just have to admit that you want it first, which is a very interesting thing. And I think that's 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 conversation to me that technology revealed.

Who won that case? The toe was offsides and they're like i forget what it was um i remember it was like leverkusen versus club bruga i think i forget who won but like the the the uh automated tech automated made a big difference that's wow yeah so i was thinking about basketball in like there are different eras of the game based on how it was refereed. And the refereeing would dictate the play style. So there is now there's like the 20 year era of like the 80s and 90s, which are more physical. And the rules are also slightly different, but they were enforced in a way that would allow certain levels of contact where now referees would call that same contact differently despite the same rules. So the refereeing changes the game,

the way the league wants it to move changes the game, all these things. It feels like once we take that out of referees, maybe sports fans object to the human element being taken out of it so that I can simplify with that. I can sympathize with that. But it is fascinating that you object to the precise cause of everything. It's really cool.

Also, there's like golf where it's like rules are really nebulous sometimes. Like the ball is buried in the face of a bunker, but there's some grass underneath it. So is it technically man-made because the bunker has a layer of like styrofoam 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 it's like, just some guy's just gonna tell you what he thinks of the rules and you can kinda go by that. You hit it at the Masters, right? Did I say that right?

I went to, yeah, the Open at Royal Liverpool, yeah. Cool, that's awesome. It was incredible, yeah. But watch the video when it comes out. That's the thing that matters, yeah. I don't know, shorts are hard for me because I kinda write like you, which is is i imagine you have a whole bunch of backstory and context to help you better understand something and by the time i crunch it all down into a short

oops it's three minutes long i can't really make a short out of this uh and it's a challenge to try to cut it down um for tech i think about them like little experiments like i'm just like shooting a text off to a friend here's here's an update kind of thing um and also i have an associate producer who's helping me do you have like a criteria for what uh what type of video you'll make versus what now you decide not to make a video about um i mean i think the way that people generally like the the sort of jargon speak version of this would be you think about your brand. I think about the way that I want people to,

the way that I wanna show up in people's lives. I want every time they see something from me for them to understand that they're gonna get a little taste of something really interesting, a little taste of the future. I want them to have a specific feeling, which is we can make the future better. And if I'm not really gonna be able to do that, then I, maybe if it's super important,

but it would be an exception. Yeah, okay, so the other question I have, since you were 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 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 how far out do you know what you're going to be making already? I know for sure the next 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 sure. Like in production, in research, like planning those shoots. And then I have maybe like six-ish other episodes that feel really good. I never want to get to the end of something and only have like one episode out because the the research process and the especially if there's a field shoot that the the scheduling process takes so long that if i'm not starting a couple months out then i'm 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 that have been greenlit maybe maybe at least six months past that so the the longest version that i could pretend to say is like nine months that's not really true it's really three

months you have three and i have ideas that could exist beyond that yeah but so i i love that because you can you can kind of decide like when these will come out based on possible either events that they're going to line up with or something like that i don't really have that other than like we know certain products get announced every year so we know what we're going to be doing roughly at that time of year like oh, oh, it's about to be September and October. What happens every September and October? We get a new iPhone and a new Pixel phone. So we know that that's happening. But if you ask me what we're doing in three months, I have literally 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 products upon launch. And sometimes those launches are themselves like massive holidays, basically like the Apple Vision Pro. How did that video come to review their products upon launch. And sometimes those launches are themselves like massive holidays, basically. Like the Apple Vision Pro, how did that video come to exist? Because that was like immediate when they released and you'd clearly like tried it, set it up, planned it to be released right then. So something that happens with those types of events

is these companies are very secretive. So we don't typically actually know exactly 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 a week beforehand. And so you'll have an idea of what they're about to say on stage and then they'll say it. Apple notoriously does not pre-brief anyone. So when they announced the Vision Pro on stage, that was the first time that day that anyone outside of Apple was actually getting that real information. And then we got to go down to this 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 product demo. And basically, I don't know, probably 100 people got that demo. And it was all of our jobs in that moment to decide what is our content strategy around this 30 minute off camera demo that we just received. And for me, the idea was, I'm going to go back to this hotel room, set up my camera 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 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 or not other people had different

ideas they were kind of trying to compare it to other things other people kind of did the same thing just describe the experience but it was basically that it was go back to the hotel room talk about 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 think there's a lot of other versions of that where like a device gets announced on the spot and everyone, actually, I'm giving myself too much credit. I think I on the spot decide my content 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 things. And I like to leave a little bit of room for, eh, this wasn't worth a video. Eh, this update wasn't really big enough to warrant a whole video, maybe it's just a short. But I kinda try to be flexible. I would love to develop that kind of,

even just being one of those hundred people to get access to actually try it. And film, I mean, you got to film trying it right like no no you didn't you try it and you describe their experience sometimes you do this is one of those weird top secret things can't even point a camera at it yeah so i mean i think and also getting sent stuff to try beforehand like i think for me um if i wanted to explain something complex that a company is working on i would love to know about it before they tell other people. And as long as they're okay, journalistically with me, like not

showing them the video beforehand, if they are basically saying like, we know the premise of your show. And we know that you're going to explore this rigorously, but optimistically, like contextualize our tech within the future 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 like time our video on quantum computing happened to come out when a lot of people were talking about quantum computing that was an accident i had no idea that was gonna happen that was on purpose it was totally on purpose i knew that there was gonna be a 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 we're working on a video today that will come out tonight and like our timeline we've we've sort of optimized in a way where we that's kind of like the the standard is like uh if you asked me to review if you handed me a brand new phone that i'd never seen before right now at this table, within a week, I could upload the review of the phone. It would be like three or four days of like really using it and poking around and taking notes and all that stuff. And then by the time 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 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 I just don't have any other like the longest timeline of an edit will work on is like two weeks, which is 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 finally out. I'm like, yeah, there it is. But yeah, that's a that's a big difference. But I do think you could do like a sort of a look into technologies that have a lot of potential. It's just so many of them are so short term

that they wouldn't maybe feel like they're in line with the huge of true thing. But there are a lot of them out there that I think would do it. Big swings. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking. Here's an RBC student offer that turns a feel-good moment into a feel-great moment.

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So you also, in moving from working 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 about this because we have a team here at the studio. And every piece of what everyone does is something that at some point I was doing. What is the pie chart for how you spend your time as a creator look like? And what are the pieces of the pie? What is it made of this is something that i am thinking about a lot and kind of like building the plane as it flies but is the vibe right now i can relate um so to rewind a little bit when i was at vox um vox is amazing internally because it basically is set up to be or at least it was at the time um dozens of independent creators within Vox. And then there's support in terms of story editing,

and for me, animation, and a lot of infrastructure. But people generally are making their own videos much in the same way that people do when they have full channels. So this is like, Johnny Harris was doing this, like Sam Ellis, who recently started a channel with Johnny and Is, me, like the team at Vox now. And so that was enormously helpful because in order to become, I don't know how much backstory you want, but in order to become a video journalist at Vox,

I was actually already working at Vox on the business development side. And I went to night classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which I highly recommend to learn how to edit and animate, right, so that I could make videos for Vox, like nights and weekends, like, just trying to get better at this skill, eventually started making videos for their YouTube channel. But that requirement, basically, that I be able to do everything in order to do the video production in the first place has become really important now because I know what I'm looking for and I know how to do it. Asterisk, not nearly as well as the people on my team now know how to do it.

Well, that helps because you at least can give direction based on what you know is possible and what you've tried to visualize, things like that. Like 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 is way more talented and just has a sense of style and is also just technically proficient in a way that like it would take me so long to get anywhere close. But that's the great privilege that I have of being independent, like to be able to go out and hire those people and make them a part of the team and make the show together and have them add something that I never could add.

It makes the show so much better than I ever imagined it could be and that it was, you know, right when I was starting out. I did work with an animator and an editor, different animators and editors from kind of the get-go. I've never been a great animator. Like I'm proficient but not excellent in animation. I took one class in motion graphics in college and I can barely move things around the screen in After Effects,

so I'm impressed. It's not gorgeous. It's functional. It's functional. But learning what the style of the show was and who could do it has been informed by the fact that I was, for a long time, I was doing all parts of this myself including the actual journalism itself the the third member of my team is an associate producer who works on mostly the research side and helping write shorts and like making the videos um much more rigorous uh than

they could be if I was just one person like having that additional person she also um Nicole you met her yeah um she- Quantum physics background. Exactly. And so she has a technical proficiency on the research side that I don't have. That combination of all of these people that are so much better at their thing than I am helps make obviously the work better, but also the fact that I can do some amount of what they can do is a big deal. So to answer your question about how I actually spend my time now, I would say it's mostly research, writing, prepping for interviews. The sort of traditional production side that I've always done, the journalism itself is still most of it. I also run the business myself I like do most of my negotiations like the bookkeeping too all

the I have an accountant yeah but like I it has felt very important to me to like have my hands firmly on the wheel at least in the first couple years and not outsource a lot of those things like a lot of managers reach out to you and they they like want to run your business and like give me the reins I see yeah um and I probably spend more time than I will be able to long term doing that um but that's that's how I would say I spend like 20% of my time doing the business stuff 80% of my time doing the business stuff, 80% of my time doing production. And that production part includes reading the books, writing the scripts, and then like giving notes, and then 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 people's permission to actually

make the thing. And it's important to have things that you can already create, so that you're constantly waiting on other people's permission to actually make the thing. And it's important to have things that you can already create so that you're not stressed. But that's a big chunk of it too, is like traveling to different shoots, actually doing that production. I feel like the natural, like I've probably told you about my octopus analogy with like a creator. So it feels like you've already,

like you've cut off some of the arms of like the super talented editing animation and things like that. Are there things that you're also eventually going to like what is ideally what does the pie look like in three or four years when you're you're in the dream workflow and you've you've optimized your everything i think the general principle is that focus is your friend that the the biggest mistake that i could make right now is getting too spread, launching too many things. You know, 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. I don't do anything except create this channel. That might be a mistake. But that level of focus has really helped me. That's what I was. Yeah.

And and so I think increasing, not decreasing that is the task ahead. So I am trying to figure out ways to, you know, reduce the amount of time that I spend, like miscellaneous time traveling or, you know, honestly, like I don't say yes to that many events because that's just not like being the public figure is helpful on the show. Going around to a lot of events is not actually part of my job the way that I see it. I do think that I probably could, if I'm imagining the octopus and thinking about the arms that I could cut off, some amount of business support I do think would be worthwhile. I have an agent who does agents who do a lot of sourcing and helping negotiate. But I also think that I could probably use some more support in running the business of huge. That seems like a longer term thing to cut off.

That seems like a longer term thing to cut off. Like again, I'm really excited about fully understanding all of the mechanisms and all of the business and all of the finances of this, running a production company is what we're doing. Yeah, I feel like 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 outs of this

and it can probably- But you said you edit 75% of your work. How did you make that decision well i mean i was editing 100 so it's like oh well we'll find someone who's incredibly talented at editing and and slowly give them sort of reign to like not just not just emulate but improve a lot of the videos that we're doing but based on editing but yeah like literally everything that we do here at the studio was at some point something i was doing this is the year 13 or whatever it is of of making videos and the first seven or eight of those years was just the videos and at this point

i'll go to like a youtube creator summit and someone will be like oh yeah i'll put my you know chief of merchant and touch put my chief of merchant in touch with your chief of merchant. I'm like, how do you guys have all these people doing all these things? All these things I never even thought about. So I feel like the focus part is actually, I relate a lot to that.

You do want to make sure your primary function is as clearly defined as possible and then as optimized as possible. It also, we had this conversation a little bit in the car on the way to the quantum shoot. Um, and when you told me the number of people on your team, I, it really changed 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 huge and you have multiple channels and you're like making so many different kinds of work and to know basically basically what

I remember you saying is like we have a small number of full-time people that are really excited about the things that they're working on and that I think is pretty different than the way that a lot of people grow which is you know we need a person to do this is pretty different than the way that a lot of people grow, which is, we need a person to do this, we're gonna like, there's a lot of contracting, there's a lot of part-time work, there's a lot of sort of growth to do new things. That results in a wide, many person operation

at a part-time level. That can work great, but it requires people to manage that, which is another body of work, which is either you or is more people. And for me personally, like what I was most excited about and what talking to you almost gave me like, like, oh, that works like permission to do is to hire a very small number of people who are really excited about the show or really committed to huge are better than me at their thing. And therefore, like our conversations are management sometimes like, you know, we, you know, how much people get paid, like progression, career progression.

But most of the time it is like they are pushing me and inspiring me and they are running their their part of the operation. pushing me and inspiring me and they are running their their part of the operation and and that has just felt creatively like we're we're building something together that feels really exciting I'm not spending when I when I talked about my time distribution I very little of it is in people management which is I think important to preserve yeah I was I think one of the things I generally I think this is probably true true about any job where you're making stuff, but if you try to make more stuff,

the quality typically has to go down. And if you try to make better stuff, the quantity typically has to go down. And so, you know, you're doing well when you're able to like cut off the arm, one or two of the arms and those people's 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 better at the same time then you know you're hitting something like well and it's working so totally i like i think 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 is like how to improve either quantity or both at the same time. I got this comment recently that was like, your videos are so highly produced. Why don't you make more of them? You answered the question yourself. You've literally answered your question.

Yeah, I feel that a lot. So what's next for Cleo? What is the, is it, obviously you do want to make better. You do want to make more. You do want to make more. You do want to give up the reins a little bit of some of the stuff, but do you picture more topics? Is it another channel or is it just, do you have a grail video that you want to make that you've been thinking

about for a long time? Let me come back to that because I would love to have an answer to say and just like see if there's someone in the world who can make a video possible. Let me come back to that because I would love to have an answer to say and just like see if there's someone in the world who can make a video possible. Let me come back to that one. 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 that basically sounded something like, well, I'm going to do this for a little while. And then I'm going to, you know, that will give me the opportunity to go do this. And then it sort of was like tacking against the wind, which I think is very often the way that careers naturally progress i think that's great um but now it's just this amazing feeling i don't know do you have this like i i just want to do this i want to do this for

years and i want to make this so much better like i think the huge as a channel is just getting started. And the idea of this show, this genuinely optimistic, journalistically rigorous show about tech, for me feels like it could, it just has so much room to grow. Like, this is, we've hit a million in about a year and a half. We hit a million, like, maybe two weeks ago. We're at, like like 1.2 something now it just like feels like it's just it's um it feels like it's just getting started and we're building this momentum and so again like i i don't have the second channel idea yet i don't have

whatever you know i would love to figure outterm, like what the sort of products are that I might want to get involved with. I love the two, five ones. I think that that's super inspiring for what someone can grow into. But for now, like just this, I just want to do this. And that freedom within constraints is, it feels incredible creatively.

I think what happens is you start making the thing you were always hoping to make. And your taste for what you're hoping to make is just a little bit above what you're making. And you sort of develop your skills. Like I also took college classes in 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 able to try new things. And then your skill catches up to your taste. But your taste the entire time was also advancing because you saw what other people were doing and you got other ideas and you had future ideas.

So now your taste is ahead. And that goalpost keeps moving forward and keeps you improving over time. And I think as long as you you're looking forward at your taste 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 have ideas that I can 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 that then I think everything's in the right place which is how I've hoped to keep it for like the last 10 years and hopefully another 10. That's my biggest question for you actually is like for someone who is not just pursuing success creatively on YouTube, but is also pursuing longevity.

What advice would you give? Um, the, the thing we mentioned earlier about focus being key is is huge. And then I would also stress to not externally set any like criteria, especially when it's like a schedule or a format or anything like that. Because 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 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 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 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 out every week, so it's great.

But I think keeping it flexible and finding little ways to not reinvent everything, but reinvent parts of the show and reinvent parts of what you're making over time, that never gets old. Like that's fun no matter what part of the show you're tweaking. You'll get to like year five 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 something new and that taste keeps going forward. And I think that's the best advice I could give is to just 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? Let's go. Are you ready for this? Let's go.

We have a typing test. Okay. As you may have heard on the Waveform podcast, every guest gets a choice of keyboard and you just got to type A through Z as fast as you can. What is the fastest time anyone has ever had? 1.348 seconds. Wait, what? No.

No, ever, ever, ever? Oh, no. On this show. On the podcast. On the podcast. I'm sorry. Do you want to know who or the number? Both.

Really? Yeah. Okay, going right for the top. I mean, I'm... What if I told you the average? Would that... Yeah, that'd help. I want to know all the data.

Okay, our first place is Tom Scott by a lot. Oh, my God. What? Tom Scott was almost a full second ahead of our second place at 3.555 seconds. Okay. Which is absurd. No one should type the alphabet that fast. But I think our average is closer to about 5.5, 6.5 seconds seconds which again sounds crazy but when you type a through z you'd be surprised sometimes

we have a macbook keyboard 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 up here you've elected to use I'm just going to show the show the audience Cleo's gone with the the macbook pro keyboard but also also the desktop one. So it's external. Magic keyboard, there you go. We give everyone three tries and you asked for the course record right off the bat, so I'm just going to announce

that Tom Scott got it in 3.55 seconds, which is insane. But lots of people all over the leaderboard. Three full tries whenever you're ready. I'm pointing my mic at your keyboard you got to z all right wow I can do better okay what was it first try first try was first try was 5.3 seconds. What?

Better than me. 5.3? I can do better. Okay. Two more tries. Two more reps. Ready, set, go. Wow.

Jesus, that seemed fast. All right. We're up to number two. 4.2 seconds. Guaranteed a spot on the leaderboard. I am off the leaderboard already. That's already second place. Finally, Marquez is already kicking me off the leaderboard.

If you want to do better, you've got one more round. I have one more chance to beat Scott. Coming for Tom Scott. Tom. Yep. Okay. A little more caffeine. Here we go.

I'm like shaking. Okay. Listen. I'm like shaking. Okay. Listen. I got like a 20th place. It's more fun to take stuff seriously. It is. I agree. Yeah, I agree.

It's like people get mad at me about trivia. Okay. Ready? Hit the Z. There it is. So I think the second time was the fastest, right? It was. Which was like 4.2.

We'll get the official number. It has my top. Okay, there you go. 4.266 is the best time. Yeah, second place. Second place on the leaderboard. Kicks me off. I no longer have a podium position. Thank God. place on the leaderboard. Kicks me off.

I no longer have a podium position. Thank God. I wouldn't want anyone else 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 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 that already, but it's on YouTube. You can search Cleo's name or Huge If True and we'll leave the link to the quantum computing video that we did in the episode and didn't do that already, but it's on YouTube. You can search Cleo's name or Huge If True, and we'll leave the link 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 a streaming. It's nominated for a streaming, and we'll find out

shortly after this goes live if it won or not. That's good. That's pretty cool. We're competing against Mr. Beast collaborating with The Rock. So, there is that. Which, hey, we got nominated, so that's pretty cool we're competing against mr beast collaborating with the rock which easy hey we got nominated so that's pretty sick right that's pretty cool uh thanks for watching and catch you guys next week see you later Thank you.