11:59
Hey friends, I've got some really exciting news for you, which is that we are launching another channel. This one with the person who taught me how to be a journalist, Max Fischer. Back when I was a lowly animator, finding my way in this world. Max was a reporter. He had been a foreign reporter for a decade. He had a lot to teach me. And I shadowed him. I wasn't really supposed to be writing scripts, but I was writing scripts when I was at Vox. And Max would edit those scripts and we would make videos together. Eventually, we invented the map explainer format together. Iran steps up its influence in you see this now all the time on my channel. It's a mainstay of the channel, but Max was a co-developer of that
format. We then went our separate ways. I started my own channel here and he went off to be a columnist at the New York Times and then to become a podcaster. He wrote this amazing book called The Chaos Machine and I actually read his book and reached out to him and said, "Hey, uh, we should reconnect." So, we reconnected and I floated this idea like what if you came over and started a channel here at New Press where we are building creatorled channels with journalists who care about explaining things and helping audiences understand the crazy news environment we live in. We've been working on that for about a year now and today it's live.
It's called the bigger picture with Max Fischer and it will be your guide to understand the tumultuous news environment that we live in right now. not outrage and opinion and fear-mongering. This is going to be rigorous reporting that helps you understand what is happening in the world. Helps you make sense of it, helps you aggregate all of the things that are happening so that you don't feel so overwhelmed. He's going to publish a lot more than I publish on my channel because he's very prolific and much faster. So, the bigger picture is live right now. You can see the link in the description. And if you like what you see on this channel, you're going to like what's over there. For those who
are still here, the rest of this video is going to be a conversation that I had with Max. We talk about our origin story. We talk about media. We talk about a bunch of things. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Max Fischer, the newest new press journalist. Max Fischer, welcome to our studio. Hey, pal. First, I know. I can't believe it. Seen it like any other viewer. I've seen it so many times and now I'm here. And let me tell you, it's even better than you thought it was. And it's so much tidier. Yeah, I feel like I've shrunk into like a little shoe box. I almost feel like I need to give people a warning before they come. Like, come to the studio. It's not going to It's not what you think.
It feels It's just what you think it's going to be from the videos. Except one ate the size. We actually crammed into a dollhouse, right? We are. And we've taken a weird sense of pride in like continuing to operate this like increasingly large media company. Punishing yourself with this tiny little studio. Yeah. that works. Like it's worked, but then it doesn't work. It's like too small. But like there's something about just jamming everything into this space that also is like really
spot-on for what we make, which is like it is it feels very warm. It feels very lived. It feels like this is all stuff that it feels like I arrived in the middle of a shoot and like eight different videos happening in real life. Yeah. And that is kind of what's happening always. Just stuff. Do you feel like you live inside the channel at this point? Sometimes I do. This morning I was driving my son uh from something. We went rock climbing and he was asking me about the immune system cuz he was feeling a little bit sick and I suddenly was in the middle of an explainer where I me and Chad GBT and
him were all like exploring the deeper understanding of how antibodies work and how the immune system works with a viral infection and all these things and so sometimes I do think that my life is giant explainer because I've I just I'm always doing to the point like one time I was with my friend on the streets of San Francisco waiting to get into a restaurant and I was explaining to him something about like the Horn of Africa and pirates and I was like and I had like my Google maps out and I was like if you zoom in you'll see here and the big boats can go past this thing and I literally was screenshotting it and drawing a line and then like a fan walked up and like they just like walked into like an explainer.
So you're just doing the video all the time. You are just like a caricature. You should anytime you feel like someone is like walking around you and like they're kind of looking like is that Johnny Harris to get recognized? You should just start talking about the horn of Africa just so people think like yeah that is what I do all the time. Yeah. All right let's introduce who you are because you are now uh part of the family as it were. Reunited. This is a very important reuniting because we were in the trenches together almost a decade ago. I know building another new media venture that was
making waves and uh then we went our separate ways and now we're back doing it again. So, Max Fischer is a acclaimed international reporter who has worked at little newspapers such as the Washington Post, the New York Times. Um, I know him from Vox, which is where I got my start in journalism. I walked into Vox as an animator with no understanding of what journalism really was other than it had to do with newspapers, but I had a lot of curiosity. I had some animation skills and I had a degree in international relations and I got into Vox. It was 2014. Vox was brand spanking new. It was like this industrial concrete floors startup millennial vibes everywhere and all these young smart journalists that
like just sort of threw me into the trenches and we start I started to learn how like mass communication worked. and you were the head of the foreign desk at Vox. I'm curious first off how you got started in journalism, but how did you end up at Vox? Like what was the origin story of you getting there? I've I don't actually know the answer to this question. I mean, it's funny to hear you describe Vox as another kind of like independent starter cuz at the time it was and at the time doing like a bunch of people, it was the Washington Post and like a bunch of people leaving the Washington Post like one of the most institutional establishment media brands you could have to start a website owned by another
company felt like the most like independent rebellious thing you could do. And that feels so quaint now. Like now that feels like and in some ways is just like another form of establishment institutional media. You're just like working for a different company. But I like a lot of I'm 40 and like a lot of people my generation like I came up in college during like the Iraq war and like it was an era when I thought of journalism as something that was really important. But I also thought like really had my quibbles with like the mainstream media and thought like the mainstream media instal media has all these biases that like help bring about the Iraq war. But I also that's like the
only game in town. If you want to be a journalist and like you want to help people understand the world because you think the world is fun and fascinating and like interesting and important and it's like a good to help people understand it. you have to go to if not a big newspaper than like a news website that is started by people who worked at a newspaper and it's crazy to look back at that now 10 years later and like the world is so much bigger you know like the things you can do with the media is so much bigger I know that doesn't answer your question but they're like the answer to your question is just that so fast it changed so fast yes the answer to your question is I just like I loved helping people around me
understand what was going on especially at moments when they felt like confused or like it's upsetting or like I don't know like when the news is scary or when things feel like destabilizing. I feel like there's a specific kind of journalism that I think you and I ended up doing like took our different paths to that you could call explainer journalism. Although that always feels like a little pat gimmicky. Yeah. Like the BBC used to have a series called like explainer and it was like explainer what's going on in Lebanon and it was like the most simple like Wikipedia timeline.
It was like a Google result. Yeah. And like that was explainer. It was like a boiled down like computerenerated but like in and it doesn't enlighten you. Yeah. That's I feel like and so what you're describing is an impulse that I have too which is like a desire to explain but like the deeper thing I think is like to give people the full story or at least a deep a bigger version of the story that allows whatever the event is happening right now to make sense in the context and therefore the event right now the headline that you're hearing about actually like makes sense and it sinks in as like a real thing that happened and has a before.
Do you ever read this book Ghost Wars by Steve Call? Yeah, of course. Great book. That is the book that made me want to really made me like understand the kind of work that I wanted to do. Before I read that, I was like, I want to be in media, but I'm not really sure what I'm trying to accomplish with it. Yeah. And for people who don't know, this is a book about like the entirety of the history of Afghanistan leading up to the Taliban, al Qaeda, 9/11, the American invasion of Afghanistan is basically like how did all of these global forces come together for this to happen. And I remember reading that book and it talking about like religious fundamentalists in the Gulf States and political turmoil in Pakistan and the
Cold War and all of these things that came together to like put this little country in the middle of Asia on this path that ended up being the center of the world basically and having this moment of being like I get it now. Like I had been reading about Afghanistan in the news for years just like as a news consumer but I didn't like why is this happening here like what is the deal with this place and having this moment of like the pieces click together and it feels so satis that like aha moment feels so satisfying and it feels so empowering and I loved that moment so much. I was like, I want to do this for other people forever basically. And I think that both because it like it feels really good and it's just I think especially when
people feel like scared or upset about the world. That's like those are the moments when I've really thought the most about like why am I doing this? What is my purpose here? That I feel like that's when it's the most important. Yeah. just because it gives us the tools to understand like what's happening to us and around us so we feel like we can navigate it as an individual. It feels really empowering man. That's cool. That's it's cool to hear that you had that impulse to like create this Steve call empowering enlightenment understanding the feeling of understanding um early on and like you felt it and then you wanted to create it. I feel
like my sort of intuition around this it also comes from that same thing. It comes from like a I wish someone had explained it like this. Totally. So I'm going to construct something in a way that makes sense for me. And it turns out that like a lot of people secretly want to understand the world in that way. And yet, yeah, I always had such a problem with traditional forms of explaining things both in school textbooks and in journalism because it always felt like there was something I didn't know like they say all these words and they just and there's such a presumptuous voice.
There's a big hole in the middle of the story. Yeah. And it's like is no one acknowledging it? It must be a me problem is what I thought for a lot of years. It's like, oh, everyone knows what Sunni and Shia are in terms of like why there's the conflict there. It's like, I forgot to read that article that explained that everyone knows though because they're saying it so nonchalantly that like everyone must know. And the truth is they don't know. It's so funny that you mentioned Sunni and Chia specifically. That was actually the moment like the radicalizing moment for me. I was at the Washington Post.
Syrian civil war was happening and I was reading all of these stories about like quoteunquote why it broke out or like why there are these like fighting between Sunni and Shia or these different groups or like why is the country fissuring along certain lines and I like would talk to the reporters too because they were my colleagues who' be like hey I'm going to write something about this like it didn't really seem like you had space to address this or like what's going on with this religious conflict and I would realize that they were incredibly skilled and talented at this very important work of gathering facts and like telling me what was going on in that moment. But that is a different set of skills from understanding deeply
why are things happening the way that they are like what is the hole in the middle of the story of like and often didn't even think to ask that question and like wanting to go out and be like well like let me actually try to understand in like a deep way like why did this country out of all countries break out into this war out of all wars and it turns out that there's a good reason that people don't answer the question right there's a real explanation also a good reason people don't answer It's hard to figure that out. And then it's hard like once you gain to then communicate that to people in a format that is short and clear and that a million people can engage with. That's the then the next difficult thing which
is why I love visuals and why I love animation because animation is this like fourth dimension of understanding where you can use a grid you can use colors you can use motion you can use sound and music to teach. Was there a moment that you felt like you saw that power that visuals had in storytelling and like explanatory power? For me, it started actually when I was like an elementary school student really because I'm super dyslexic. Okay. And so reading was always so difficult for me. Oh. And so I would go through sort of the traditional linear forms of learning which were always based on you know memorizing names and dates and regions and kind of like it's a it's a very sort of taxonomy like
labels are the important thing. If you can remember the labels and you can repeat the string of words, then that's smart. I was always so bad at that. I needed to understand it like in my belly or I wouldn't understand it at all. And the only way for me to do that was to visualize it. And so starting really young, I would ask to do like video projects to like Oh, that's cool. reenact something or to make a video about it. that the act of making something so that I knew someone would have to watch and understand was like that was my the beginning of my training. I didn't even know it. And that continued into college. I was studying
IR and a ton of econ like it was basically an econ major. And so I do all these graphs and all these graphs and I started to just design the graphs like I learned I taught myself like um Adobe Illustrator and started to redesign all the graphs and try to understand like why does it slope down like this and like making it beautiful and like just expressing it visually was a tool for me not for anyone else's consumption other than like my own or a teacher. So that was sort of the basis of it and so it wasn't even just that you were a visual learner. was that in order to get the things that you had in your head that you knew, you understood for yourself to convey them to other people.
Yes. It had I had to process it through the nonlinear process of visualizing things and so in college I was I wanted to be in the foreign service. I wanted to be a diplomat. Like I was very into like international things, but I was like always leaning on video both as like an artistic passion. I liked the aesthetic of like being able to make pictures move and photograph things. But then when I learned about animation and graphic design, that helped me unlock curiosity. And then maps, that's why maps are such a huge part of my life is because they are the ultimate like if you want to understand something visually like a map's a fantastic way where you actually have people and politics and space that you can then like draw things on. I feel
like you really unlocked map guy gender inclusive as an identity for people. Like people were out there and knew that they loved maps, but I feel like now people know that like no, you can be a map guy gender inclusive as like who you are in your heart. And like I didn't realize that about myself until you and I were working together. Are you a map guy? I am now thanks to you. I love maps. So that brings us to Vox 2015 Syrian Civil War once again. Yeah. Um, I was learning how to be a journalist and kind of being torn apart.
Like to be honest, like I was hired as an animator. Everyone was whipsmart. I'd never published anything to anyone other than just like small little things for think tanks. And I'm like, I want to write scripts and like report on things. And you all were like, these scripts are really thin. And you like taught me how to like actually beef up scripts. And I was always good at explaining and storytelling, right? But I didn't have the like really make this thing rigorously reported. So I got a lot of training for you and one of the big moments like a real life-changing moment for me was you and I were both feeling the same impulse that now I understand was like a thing that you had felt for many years. Syrian
civil war. What's going on? Everyone's asking this question now cuz it was 2014 2015. It's like a really coming to a head in a big way. the news and I can't even think of something that's happened since then where it was like everybody was paying attention to it and everybody was like confused. Yeah. We really wanted to understand it and we were and I think we sent around on Slack like a New York Times uh article called like Syrian civil war colon who is fighting whom and there was a whom and we just like totally like leaned in to just on the times for um and we're like this explainer doesn't do it like let's totally do what they tried to do.
It's a list of facts which is not an explanation. And it's like trying to break it down with like bullet points and it's like let's actually tell this story in 6 minutes. And so that is when I turned to the map and started thinking about like these icons and you started writing an explanation. And then we like came together and we developed this notion of like what if we could give every one of the players or the groups their own icon and we can load them up with motivation and with stakes and put them in territory and we can summarize what they want and where they are and the evolution of this thing in a single take. just a map the entire time and everyone's moving around on the board
and that we worked on that. It was probably, you know, 2 3 weeks. You voiced it which felt like so long. Yeah, it felt like we like 2 3 weeks and it was 6 minutes long back then. That was like our longest video. Like no one's going to watch this. We had to get permission to make it 6 minutes. Yeah. Because we were doing like two-minute explainers back then. You voiced it like under a blanket or something cuz we didn't have a VO booth. So you were just like under a blanket. You voiced it. I animated it in like a few days and we put it out and like it went bananas. 100 million views on Facebook back when that was the, you know, pivot to video.
I was just actually thinking about that moment because, you know, I knew we were going to have this conversation. I knew we were going to talk about like, oh, like how did the arc of my career like bring us back together again? And I was thinking about the fact that 10 years ago when we made that I despite my like skepticism of the establishment media had become like you know had spent years in it and become like kind of a creature of it. So in my mind my job as a journalist and the pinnacle of journalism was writing articles writing like thousandword articles that people would read on the internet. And there I was at Vox writing articles about the Syrian civil war that would do like by
our standards really well and get like a hundred thousand reads or maybe even 200,000 reach which was like we couldn't believe we were reaching that many people. And then I worked with you and we made a 6-minute video that reached tens of millions of people. And I was like, well, that was a fun experiment, but I'm going to go back to my real job now of writing articles, which is obviously like the pinnacle of the form. And did that for another like five or six years before I was like, huh, that's interesting that I did one version that reached this many people and another version that reached a trillion people more and also it's more fun to watch and it's more interesting.
I wonder if there's something to that. Wow. I love that. Yeah, you always had the sensibility around visuals which I've recently learned it's because you are a cinema like I so I have no as people will learn quickly I have no technical skills whatsoever but I do love visual storytelling and movies especially because it just uses all the senses. It engages all of I've never had an art form before that uses every other art form in one. It's so cool. It's so cool and there's so much power in it if you choose to use it. And I think that's the big thing that I learned at Vox was most people cuz it was there was a revolution happening at that time that I was able to like sort of catch the wave on which was everyone was like oh digital
video journalism needs to be reinvented and most outlets were pouring lots of money on it but they were just basically saying like let's make pretty articles like let's make let's like write articles and then like pretty bold and we were like well what if we engage all the senses and make sure that the voice talks to the motion in the animation which talks to the B-roll which sets up the evidence for that and like we actually make it a choreographed experience and that was truly like the secret to this and that was a Jos Fong like Jos Fong who was one of the founders of the box video team and my editor there that was her whole thing was like make the voice and the visuals dance
together that's the most effective version and we that's what we've built this whole thing off of is making explainers that really tightly like leverage the power of visuals. Well, and we're at I think a really exciting moment for that because for the last hundred years, anything that like looks good in a movie has been incredibly expensive to make. Like it would cost tens of millions of dollars to make like a good-looking frame that had interesting effects in it and that like lighting that looked good. And the fact that you were able to reproduce something that would have, you know, previously required like years of
fundraising to get the money for that you could do in like a few weeks. Like obviously a huge amount of that is the skill that you and the team bring to it, which is like not something you reproduce. But we're also in a moment where it's possible for someone like our size to do something that looks as good as a lot of movies look and has this special thing which I think New Press is really built off of which is it's it is relatable and human and even though it's it's produced you still sense that like human flavor. It's like small enough that is the ethic of the internet.
Like that is the reprieve that people once they could express themselves and consume really conversational relatable things. We learned that everyone secretly wanted it. But because of the choke point, the bottlenecks of corporate like gatekeepers like no one could actually have access to that. And so I really believe that like this next era needs to continue to push the form and especially with AI like the amount of like visual craziness that we'll be able to do is just going to explode even more. But how do we do that while also maintaining this beautiful thing that like someone watches and says like, "Oh, that's a real person with real questions. they're earnest and I can relate to them and therefore like I trust them and
I want to be a part of their inquiry. That's a really important ingredient for me and it's something that I mean it obviously has its roots in kind of like 2000's era blogging and 2010s era blogging where you feel like and I think that also is it's been forgotten because it was so long ago now. But I think a lot of that too is like a reaction to the Iraq war and the financial crisis and a sense of like these big institutional outlets like I'm not sure I can trust them happening at the same time as the internet. Now I can access someone who is, you know, even if it's just whoever, just a blogger on their site, feels like a real person who's like, they might not be perfect, but
they're walking me through what they're thinking. They're being transparent about it. They're not doing this institutional authority voice from nowhere, view from nowhere kind of thing. And I mean, I think when I think about like the first vloggers to really capture that, like Hank Green, you know, it's someone who you just you feel like you trust them immediately because they're bringing you along on this journey. It's like they don't necessarily have the same resource as a huge institution. I do feel like we're at a point where that kind of like the vlogger voice and the independent voice is something that it's part of the ecosystem now, right?
Like we all kind of get it. We all know what it is. It's part of all of our media diets. But I think we are also all feeling some kind of a need for not the institutional weight of a big media brand but the sense that like I can really trust what this person outlet newspaper whatever it is saying because it feels really high stakes right now and it feels really important in a way that maybe it didn't you know 10 years ago and I think there is a an industry of professional artificial um authenticity that has been created like the influencer economy has developed so well where now people can if authenticity was a currency of trust with the early vloggers and bloggers um then it became effectively kind of like easy to fake
and now people can't trust authenticity is now authenticity so and yet I believe especially in a world of AI that like the humanity of journalism or the of curiosity should always will always should always shine through and so there needs to be a balance of institutional credibility and human authenticity and that I think new press like new press is create it's like two sides of it's it is creator driven meaning the reason why we have Sam's channel Kristoff's channel and the channel that you're launching is creator driven because we do believe that like the journalism will be better if it's driven by your curiosity and people will relate to it. But then we the reason we're tied
together under this umbrella called new press is because we want that to also signal trust and say like hey we are very transparent about the fact that we're trying to do something really rigorous here. You can trust us and we'll earn that trust. We'll earn it. But then if you trust new press because you've spent a lot of time with me or with Sam, people will hopefully do like that's what brands are good for is reducing uncertainty. So they'll look at your channel and they'll be like, "Okay, if he's the fourth channel in this thing and I've trusted the other three, my uncertainties, you don't have to spend a year like sort of producing that trust." And I think that is the power and
the thing that people want is like to be able to offload some of that uncertainty to a brand. But the brands that have that are kind of like or had that traditionally are now like they aren't trusted. And so like we have to build that up again. You know what excites me about this moment in media amid all of the, you know, economic and industry trends that are scary, is that I feel like it's a moment where audiences really want to come along for the human element of it. And they want to come along for exploring the news, for what it means on a human level. They want the authenticity of a relationship with the creator, with the person that they're following. But they also really want to come along with the rigor of h
how do we know what we know and why do we think this? Yeah. You know, what led us to believe this piece of information? And there's a sense of, you know, maybe it's it's years of, I think, being on social media and seeing the way that like the Arab Spring unfolded and seeing that you can follow along a story in real time in the internet to understand what's happening, but also knowing that social media as a decentralized mass really can't always be trusted and the algorithms will lead you in weird directions and who knows what that thing was that went viral that I saw. And I think there's a trust, who I have a human relationship, who will walk me through what's happening, and I want to come along on that journey, and I want to be engaged
in it. And I think that is a really unique moment, honestly, in people's relationship to media. Yeah, it's it's exciting, and we're going to figure out if it works for the next few years. Like, we'll see. So, let's get to your show cuz I do want to hear about like how that fits into like our bundle of different shows at New Press and like how you're thinking about it in the context of this conversation. Um, you went from Vox to the New York Times. I remember we went to some restaurant and you told me you're going to the New York Times and you were like, I'm leaving. And I was like, oh Um, and then you wrote a book, The Chaos Machine, which is an amazing deep dive into the rise of algorithms.
I loved that book. Um, you have been at Crooked doing a couple of podcast shows and now you're here. You were launching a show. The show is called The Bigger Picture with Max Fischer and it is conceived by you as like the new press ethos is like it's a creator-driven thing. I want to hear now that I understand a little bit about like your heritage in the curiosity and explainer stuff, why this show and what like what is this going to be in terms of your expression of like all of your experience now and what you want to see in media right now? I mean, look, the truth is it's a scary time. It is a scary time in our world. I don't think that's a partisan statement. And I think that if you look at like opinion polls, that's an opinion
that people hold truly across the spectrum. I find reading the news distressing. I also feel like I have to read the news because you have to know what's going on. You have to understand what's happening. And I hate feeling caught in that. I hate feeling like I have to keep up with what's happening because maybe it's going to burst through the door tomorrow. But it's also, you know, it upsets me. It confuses me. I don't understand where our world is going, where this country is going. And partly his response to that and feeling like, you know, I spent the last few years because I kind of I got disaffected being the mainstream media.
It's also was just like again it's distressing to read the newspaper all the time. I thought I want to have more of a relationship with my readers, listeners, viewers, whatever. And that was why I turned to podcasting because it's more human relationship was during the pandemic. It was a time we were all feeling isolated. does feel like it's a time when just in order to like get through the day, we need to understand what's going on in the world around us. So, that was a lot of what made it feel appealing and kind of important to me to have a show that would the idea is we'll ask a question with every episode, something that feels urgent that's, you know, happening in the world. Why is it so
hard to get a job right now? Why do people in ICE wear masks? Why is housing so expensive? Why is my electricity bill going up? Not all of it's going to be bad. It's also going to be where I want to do one on um why does dating feel so weird now or like why do I hate dating all of a sudden? Um and then try to answer those questions in a way that will take people on a journey and feel surprising. And the idea in the name of the show, the bigger picture is that we'll start with some question that will be about something discreet. Why are people in ice wearing masks? And then following that journey, we will start to see how it connects to all of these different things that maybe we're
also curious about or maybe we haven't even thought about how the law is changing, about what's going on with immigration, about, you know, what is Donald Trump up to. And the idea is that it will be a journey that is visually interesting, that is fun to go along on or at least engage to go along on um that will have twists and turns and that at the end of it, you will feel a better sense of like I get it. I have a sense of agency over what's happening. I feel a better sense of like being able to navigate this world because I have like a sense for what's going on and why. Also, a lot of it was just like you were saying, I'm a big movie guy. I love visual storytelling. I never thought
that I would have the opportunity to do primarily visual storytelling because I don't have those technical skills. So, it felt like absolute serendipity when you reached out to me. I don't know, it was a year ago at this point, something like that. and we're like, "We're doing this thing. We'd love to have you come along." Like, I never even would have entertained the possibility, but getting to plug in to your team, which does such like incredible work, is really exciting. And the idea of getting to find ways to tell these stories that will feel like surprising and interesting to people.
Cool. I love that. That was that's really fun to hear. And I can't wait to see the show take off. It's a cool thing to be at the company like to lead the company that is producing this show. But because it's led by you, it is your thing. Like your cinematic inspirations are making it into the art direction. I love being also an audience member. Like I love like witnessing it come to life and also helping it and like supporting it where I can. But like that's what I feel about Kristoff's show, Sam's show. Like it is fun to be surrounded by other people who are doing this work. And what I find is that each of us have our own way of answering questions. And the answer to the question is cool.
Mhm. But it's actually the journey the like everyone has their curious little like way of processing information that actually is the juicier. Like Sam's diagrammatic approach to geopolitics and to like sports is a way that I don't think like that and his curiosity expresses differently than Kristoff's which is expresses differently than yours. And so I think that journey thing as a viewer, as like a consumer, I deeply value being able to like see how your brain paths process things and doing that out loud. It imbuss trust, but it also makes me process questions differently. Yeah. And that's what I'm excited about with this show is like seeing you do that out loud.
Can I tease one of the episodes to speak to that? So, I'm not going to give away what the episode is about, but just the way that it is going to start is actually a reflection of something that would like actually happen to me cuz I wanted to reproduce part of the experience of be discovering this thing. I was looking at pictures of the skylines of different cities. these skylines of these like Asian mega cities, you know, Beijing, Shanghai, Koala Lumpur. I was looking at how new they looked. And then I looked at a bunch of different skylines over time, like photos of like Ryu de Janeiro or Mexico City going back like 50 years. And if you look at it, like every 10 years, the skyline looks different. Like you see it
growing, you see it getting taller, the buildings look new, it expands outward. And then I looked at the skylines of American cities and they did the same thing up until like 1960 and then they just stopped. It's completely frozen place. And it's crazy because you can see that there was a time when they were like growing really quickly. And it's not like these are like some forgotten oldw world cities. Like these are like New York, Chicago. These are really vibrant growing cities. But the and if you look at the sky now, you'll be like, "Oh wait, all of these buildings are like from the 1890s. that's frozen in time. And that was and I won't give away what the video is about. But that was something that like
unlocked for me a question that I had been like kind of it's like one of the 20, you know, how you're always like researching 20 different things and like maybe it yields something or maybe it doesn't. That's when I was like this is the answer to a question I have been asking for myself for a while. And I'm really excited to show people me going on that journey and like not just see the different skylines, but like how that led me to a fun or like an interesting realization about things that affect all of us. And you can do that because the channel is your the canvas of your own curiosity. And like our whole theory with this different media model is that like instead of the brand being number one and all of the voices under the brand
having to conform with the brand's guidelines like a normal sort of assignment based model, we're flipping that into a place where the creator's voice is the number one thing and that the brand guidelines are there and they're present and there's standards, but they are not they don't impose stylistic structures and so that you can have your skyline moment and I can have my like whatever going looking for bunkers in the Swiss Alps like with Doritos and chopsticks to eat my Doritos because you know I can't get that dust on my fingers. So it's just like our quirky minds do much better work when I believe when they can explore at least they do work of the kind that you mentioned which is the explanatory trying to process information. I think the factbased going
out gathering the facts that is something that the traditional institutions do they have bureaus all over the world they can do that it's so valuable I never want to like undermine that our work is made possible because of that but for the work that I think the world needs a lot more of curiosity and understanding I believe that it's best done in a world where you can nerd out about skylines let me ask you something you are very much the person you present yourself to be in your videos like you Are the Johnny Harris? YouTube is like also the real Johnny Harris. Is that something you have to make an effort to do? Do you know what I mean?
Are you thinking about like how do I communicate who I am? No. Through this or it just happens. No, no, no. It's it the moment even at Vox I was able to be kind of my weird wild self like they let me and that's the reason I was able to thrive um there because they let me. It's why when the New York Times tried to hire me after that Civil War video, I was like, "No, like I it's the New York Times, but I would be stifled. Like, I wouldn't be able to do my thing because it for me, I don't know how to do it any other way." And I tried to pull for that and tried to like help push along cuz I thought it would have been so exciting to work together again, but man, you made the right choice.
Yeah. And for me, it was not even it wasn't even an option because I've always needed to be able to process in kind of a nonlinear chaotic way. Yeah. that was really it was really hard to conform to anything else. So yeah, this is me. Um I'm obviously like a you know like a version of myself on camera that is not the full me, but it is a big part of who I am in terms of a kind of chaotic and very curious person who doesn't like to do the same thing twice or in the same way. I like to do it differently every time. And the fact that YouTube exists to allow me to do that and to like then matchmake make me to people who want to watch that like that's a beautiful thing. It's like the theory of why I'm able to do this work at all.
Otherwise like I this is this would not be my job. I wouldn't be able to do this job if I was born in like the 60s or something. I It's true. Yeah. I would never I had serpidations about going onto YouTube. It's like you know I've written on reported on the company and people can see what I have said about it. Um the fact that you are able to do what you're doing on it I think is the thing that like gives me faith that like okay it's like you've got the algorithm and that's you know there's always a boss you know when I was working for a newspaper there were bosses of the newspaper and it's like
now the boss is the algorithm and that's always a set of constraints that you have to work in right like that's not a conspiracy theory um but the fact that you were able to do it and it's like can see it's rigor it's real journalism it's rigorous journalism people want And when we do videos, people show up. Like there is a lot of people who want this and the algorithm is effectively a reflection of human psychology like for better or worse. But like it does give people what they want to see. And if people want there are a lot of people it turns out who want rigorous deep explanations of what is happening in the world and that gives me a lot of hope. It gives me a lot of hope and it gives me a lot of hope that this platform that's
that's off the algorithm track can be a space where we can bring like the people who want to do that in a big way over to have even more intimate and like beautiful learning experiences because they're out there and they're thirsty for this and that gives me a lot of hope even in spite of all of the polarizing realities of people are sick of it. people are sick of I mean there you know there will always be like intense partisans whatever but I really think that as much as these so many of these huge platforms are priming people for like ultraartisanship and tribalism and conspiracy theories distrust like I nobody likes that you know we're get tired of like the outrage button always being pressed
absolutely yeah and I think that like and look I'm susceptible to it too I'm not going to claim that I'm immune to it but like nobody feels good after that and like you feel good and nourished after something that feels like enriching and informative. Yeah, totally. Max Fisher is launching the bigger picture now. I'm very excited to have you in the family and back together and we're going to build this thing together and um I'm I'm rooting for your channel and here to support it. I am absolutely terrified. This is a big a big jump but um I'm really excited. Cool. and I'm very grateful to be here. And thank you everyone watching as supporters of New Press. Um, let us know what you want more of, like to hear
about, what questions you have. Uh, we deeply appreciate your support and we will see you in the next one. That's a wrap. Great. Sign up.
