Casey Neistat's Unrelenting Pursuit Of Interestingness

Here today fourth appearance on the podcast—(his last appearance was nearly eight years ago) is the godfather of YouTube, Casey Neistat. One of the biggest and most popular filmmakers on YouTube with over 12.5 million subscribers, Casey rose to fame through a daily vlog he commenced in March of 2015 when he began uploading a new video every single day, elevating the vlog format with next level storytelling & production value that consistently went viral & captured the fascination of millions. In addition to being a friend and occasional running partner, Casey is also an entrepreneur, an angel investor, a husband, a dad, and the director of a new documentary entitled 'Under The Influence', which chronicles the trajectory of a young YouTube creator named David Dobrik from massive popularity to disgrace and the ugly, broader truths of the creator economy that incentivized his demise. Today Casey and I dive deep into what it means to be an artist. We dive into the foundational principles of creativity, filmmaking, and storytelling. We talk about the difference between external versus internal validation and the rewards each brings. If you enjoy our conversation today, check out our earlier exchanges on episodes 73, 144, and 174. Watch: YouTube. Read: Show notes. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  It feels like influence is much, much more valued than creativity, and that sucks. It's easier to follow trends to find success, as long as your metric of success is clicks and views and plays and all of those things, which do have financial attachments to all of them, than it is to just trying to pursue what is creatively, socially meaningful. Social media has shown us that in a more vivid way than any other creative endeavor. The path to success, as it's defined there, money and fame, has never been more vivid. It does make me want to go back and purely focus on the creative and see that if I can

• 1:46Speaker 01

  use my platform, which is still big, to find success, that will be very reassuring. I still see myself as like a filmmaker who just really likes to use YouTube as a means of distribution.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. Today, we're talking creativity, we're talking filmmaking, we're talking storytelling, we're talking about the unhealthy incentives that are driving media, both social media, traditional media, and the creator economy, all of which is headed, I think we can agree, in a perilous direction. What else do we talk about? The difference between external and internal validation, and just tons more. And we're doing it with the godfather of YouTube, the king of vlogging himself, Casey Neistat. Many of you might be surprised to learn that this is actually Casey's fourth appearance on the podcast, but all of our previous conversations were like seven or eight years ago, so lots of catching up to be done.

• 2:56Rich Roll?

  And if you enjoy today, perhaps mine, my early archive for episode 73, 144, and 174. For those un or less familiar with Casey, he's one of the biggest and most popular creators on YouTube with over 12.5 million subscribers. It's a trajectory underscored by this daily vlog that he commenced in March of 2015, when he began uploading a new video every single day for something like 800 days in a row. And while he was at it, really elevating the form with this flair for cinematography and editing that had never before been seen, matched with a really extraordinary skill

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  for storytelling that just captured the fascination of millions of people all over the world. In addition to being a friend and occasional running partner, Casey is also an entrepreneur. He's an angel investor, he's a husband, he's a dad, and he's the director of a new documentary called "Under the Influence," which chronicles the trajectory of a young YouTube creator named David Dobrik, who went from massive popularity to disgrace and the ugly, broader truths of the creator economy that incentivized that demise. I always love sitting down with Casey. I really enjoyed this talk, and it's coming right up. But first...

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  All right. You know what? Nothing else to really say about this, other than, let's do it. This is me and Casey Neistat.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  It's good to see you, man. I'm happy to be doing this. I was reflecting on the first couple of times that we did this. It's been so long. I think the first time we did it was like 2014. You've been on three times, I think, but way back. The last time we did it was before you even started the vlog.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to say, like, I have a very vivid recollection of you with your podcasting suitcase.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  In my office. And I don't know if it was the first or the second time, but I just remember the conversation being so good and so engaging. And much like today, I had some bullshit.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  You were like, we were like 45 minutes in and you're like, I gotta go.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  No, we were 45 minutes in and you stopped it. And I was like, why are you stopping? You're like, Casey, you said you only have 45 minutes. I was like, shit. And I had to go to some other parent-teacher conference or some nonsense then to... But, so it goes.

• 5:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. Check this out. Look what I got here.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I know that pen very well.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  I lose pens like crazy, and for some reason, I cannot lose this pen. Wherever I go, it ends up turning up and I still have it.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  So, this is, this pen is a, um, one of those four-color pens that has the red, yellow, no, I'm sorry, the red, green, blue, black ink options in the back. And do you know what makes that pen special?

• 5:49Rich Roll?

  No.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Okay, this might be fiction, but I've been telling people this for the better part of the last 15 years. So if it is fiction, I'm just gonna continue preaching it as the word of God. But, to the best of my knowledge, that's the last, Bic is a French company, that's the last pen that Bic still makes in France.

• 6:06Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  That is not made in China. If you look on the side of that, it's made in France. And also, the ones you buy in the store that are, are half-blue and half-white, like the plastic case, they have a little ball on the end. And that one has a little, like, loop on the end that I put a piece of string through. Other end, they're rich. Other end, flip it over, bam.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this little lanyard.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that lanyard had to be tied off. So it was always my intern or my assistant's job every year around Christmas time, where I'd ship all my friends and loved ones a new pen, to tie off those lanyards. And the most important part about those lanyards is that the ends be burned. Otherwise, they'll fray. But I entrusted this individual to tie it correctly, which is in an eight knot. That's an eight, right?

• 6:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's burned at the end.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  And then burn it at the end and then package it up with my letter and ship it off. And then like one year I was at some friend's house and they're like, I still have your pen. And it was frayed. And I was fucking devastated. I like what I felt like such a fucking charlatan in that moment. Like I like this person thinks this pen's cool and I'm looking at it and it's such a half ass job.

• 7:14Rich Roll?

  You delegated that task.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I fired the employee immediately.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  Did you?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Well, there's no way that happens on accident. That means I thought I can get away with this because no one's double checking my work. Lesson learned, Rich.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  Hence this maniacal attention to detail and quality that is the hallmark.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  It either is or it isn't.

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  Experience.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  Well, it's funny that we're doing this now because you're about to jettison Los Angeles and head back to New York. I think during the whole time that you've lived here, we've seen each other, I don't know, three times maybe. So I look forward to you returning to New York where I get to see you and spend more time with you.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  It's funny because also like I run into you here on accident one or two times. And in New York City, I've literally ran into you a couple of times in accident.

• 8:06Rich Roll?

  Well, it's easy. Like I come, it's like, I don't need to text you or call you. I'm just gonna go run along the path along the Hudson and I'll see him if I go between eight and 10 AM or whatever. Good chance. And pretty much, you know, with unfailing regularity that would occur.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Look, you got like whatever 10, 12 hours of solid daylight. You know, I'm gonna be on a two hour run. That means you've got to like have anywhere from a 15 to 25% chance of running into me.

• 8:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I'll take those odds.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  Right, so we'll revisit that soon. So you're leaving in like 10 days, yeah?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  No, I'm leaving in like 36 hours.

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the family's leaving after me. So I'm going earlier because I'm driving my truck, which is something that I enjoy immensely. And it's an excuse to like just transport stuff. You know, like fill my truck up with the stuff we couldn't get in the moving trucks. And then the wife and kids are coming, um, yeah, a few days after.

• 9:00Rich Roll?

  What are you looking forward to the most about getting back to the hood?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  I mean, most is, the short answer is work. I really never found my footing when it came to my work in Los Angeles. And I think what I underestimated was how much I depend on New York City for just like, I fucking hate these words, but both like a creative inspiration and then a motivation. There's something contagious about that. There's this great Rich Roll quote that I use all the time. That's the truth. I never use this quote to you, Rich, but you did tell this to me. You said, "When you step outside in New York City, a story hits you in the face." You said that to me when I was about to move here and I did not understand that. And I'm like, "What do you mean? Step out anywhere and you see a story hits you in the face."

• 9:47Speaker 01

  But I didn't realize how specific that was to New York City for me.

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  So there's like a profundity, if that's a word. There's something profound about that in New York and that's the one thing that I'm, I yearn for.

• 10:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I remember telling you that and it's just true. It's something that's endemic and unique to New York City, the energy and the vitality of it. There's stories everywhere and life kind of happens to you when you live in New York. And here, it's very different. You have to seek things out. You have to be much more intentional about what you're doing and it's, it's a different vibe. And I, I had that sense that you were going to be challenged moving here in terms of, you know, how you think about and execute on storytelling.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I think there's, there's, there's something extraordinary to be learned from that. One, it's, it's, and I bring this up to my wife often, like what a wild luxury it is for us to be, you know, a married couple in our 40s with two little kids and one grown kid and just be like, "You know what? Fuck it, we want to do it." And packing up and moving 3,000 miles. And then a couple of years later being like, "You know, this was a good experiment. I'm really glad we did this and the takeaway is this isn't where we belong." This isn't where we're going to find the most happiness for us or our family. So let's do it again and move back.

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  Right. But it served its purpose. I mean, you, you're, in terms of intentionality, I mean, your intention was to come here and hit the brakes anyway, right? And then COVID happened, which exacerbated that, of course. But I remember you saying like, I'm here to just basically indulge myself, right? Like, I'm gonna do the fitness stuff and I'm gonna have fun and I'm just taking my foot off the gas of all work stuff altogether. And you had the luxury to be able to do that, but you really leaned into that.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  No question about it. I even made a movie to that effect before I left. And like, the basic premise of that short video was that, for me, it was impossible to sort of hit that switch, to turn off. And it was like predicated on this idea of, you know, when I had my son, I was very young and broke, so I didn't have an opportunity to just chill out and make it about family life. I had to work. And if I found myself in that position again, that I would chill out and make it about family. And I needed to break away from New York City in order to do that. So like, the revisionist history of it is like, absolutely, mission accomplished. And I have no doubt that I'll be able to bring some of my chill back to New York.

• 12:20Rich Roll?

  That was my question. Because you've lived on these polarities, but can you blend those and still maintain a modicum of like, work-life balance? Or are you afraid when you return to New York, you're gonna hit the ground running and fall back into that like maniacal pattern?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I, call me naive, and when we do our fifth podcast together, you can literally call me naive if I'm wrong, but I think I can. And the reason why is, I only ever knew one version of not just life in New York City, but life. You know, like, I moved to New York City when I was 19, 20 years old, totally broke. And it was a dead sprint. It was a dead sprint. And I did find success. And I found sort of financial freedom, I, financial security, a family, all those things I was looking for. But it was after, you know, 19 years of fighting. And so then after, you know, 19 years of fighting, I'm still in the city, but I achieved all these things that I had hoped to achieve. I couldn't just stop. I didn't know what to do.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  So by forcing myself out of the city, coming to Los Angeles, I was able to sort of catch my breath, look around and be like, okay, I get it now. And I think that it's a very different version of me. Going back to New York and I'll be able to appreciate the city for different reasons and I'll be able to appreciate family life for different reasons. My life is certainly much more set up now to be about being a dad and taking care of my kids and being a husband than it was three years ago when I left New York. So I do think I'll be able to find that.

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  Your marriage survived the intensity of the vlog period and it also survived the intensity of just basically cohabitating 24/7, right? Like being cooped up. That's a pretty good stress test for...

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Survive is such a generous word. As far as the binary of like, we are not divorced, that is fact.

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  But there is such a, a marriage is such a rubber band and sometimes it's really stretched the edge and sometimes you've got a lot of slack. And I think, yeah, during the vlog period, working seven days a week, it was at its absolute, you know, max you could probably stretch that rubber band and certainly there have been struggles in the last couple of years.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  The kids being home from school is a major...

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  Is there a sense of what the projects are when you return that you're gonna start executing on?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Majorly.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  To give this answer context, but it's like I started my career somewhat in the traditional media space. I was making movies that went to film festivals, I was producing feature films that went to film festivals and played in theaters. I had a TV show on HBO. And then with all of that sort of traction in my career, I ultimately got frustrated because I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do. So I ran to YouTube in like 2010, 2012 and I built this, you know, that's when I really found success. And then I took that success and I moved here to LA and I was like, well, let me make another feature film. And I made it another, a feature-length documentary the last, it took me three years to make. And if there's one takeaway from this movie that premiered at a film festival, very well received,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  it's that I fucking hate it. I hate it. I hate everything about-

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  You hate the traditional mechanisms-

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I hate it. I hate the act of creation. I hate the act of distribution. That's not an act, but I hate the means of distribution. I hate all of it.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  You hate the creation?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Hate the creation of feature films. I don't like that. I don't like that process. I don't like the collaborative process. I don't like working with others. I had, I worked with the most brilliant editors in the world on my dock.

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  And you had Christine Vachon also.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Who's one of my favorite people. And this is an excuse. I hate all of it. And when I say I hate all of it, I'm looking at a binary, and that is like what the process of creating in that world is, which is I had a really great team and all this, or just sitting alone in my studio by myself with a laptop and a camera. That I fucking love. I love it.

• 16:19Rich Roll?

  So what's beneath that? What's behind that? Like, why is it that you're so frustrated by the collaborative aspect of filmmaking? Or, you know, kind of the shenanigans that come along for the ride with making a movie in the traditional way?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  It could be the lack of agency. It could be because I'm able to look at a project that's done collaboratively and be like, wow, if I see weaknesses, I'm able to, you know, say they're somebody else's fault. You know, dismiss aspects of my work that I don't think are 100% as somebody else's responsibility. I don't know the answer. And I can tell you, like, I know a number of fine artists that both work completely alone. They sit in their studios by themselves, no music, and they paint. And then I know a bunch of fine artists that have like, I have one artist friend who's a sculptor in New York City. I think he has like 18 or 20 people working for him. And that is where he thrives.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And when it comes to filmmaking, I'm that guy who wants to sit alone. I wanna like, my favorite is even like, I have, you know, I have a decent sized studio in New York City that requires a second set of hands to help me operate the place and get the lights on and make things work and things like that. When I'm in my studio, that individual, my studio manager, can't physically be in the studio. Typically, I have a separate space for them to sit all day, because that's how much I cherish being alone.

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  I relate to that deeply, but I've had to kind of grow and evolve in order to be able to continue doing this thing that I love, because as you know, it was me in a traveling suitcase. I think Tyler, my stepson, came with me one time to your studio, another time Mathis came, who just graduated high school, by the way, which is crazy.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 18:05Rich Roll?

  But in order, and being a total control freak over like every detail of the production and editing and everything, I would do all of it myself. But it just became untenable. Like, I wanted to be able to continue to do this, and I had to like, figure out how to get comfortable letting go of certain things and empowering other people. Like, you're here in the studio, and you see there's other people here that help me now. And that's challenging at times, because, you know, sometimes it's like, I would do it this way, but, you know, I want them to feel like they're contributing meaningfully in a creative way. And I have like, made peace with that, and it allows me to still maintain this love affair with the most important part of it, which is like, having the conversation, so

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  I can continue to do it. Because it's like, it's 10 years that I've been doing this. So I understand that tension and that conundrum. And I think when you're a personality type like yourself, that's where you get into the problems with burnout, because you can't, it's difficult to scale what you're doing if everything, every decision, you know, you're the bottleneck on every iota of the creative process. But that's what being an artist is, too.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  If I limit it, though, to, I hear you, but I think if you limit it to the creative process, meaning that that absolute agency, that like, working singularly, that lone wolf thing, if you, if you limit it only to the creative process, I think it's a very different equation. So that even that artist who sits alone with no music, painting, you know, by herself, because she doesn't like to work, well, she still has an art dealer. She still has somebody who, you know, makes sure that her cell phone bill is paid every month. She still has people who support and enable her career. I still work with, you know, brilliant people at WME that I've been with forever that help negotiate brand deals and the sorts of things that keep the lights on. I still want to have a studio manager

• 19:57Speaker 01

  to help me keep that studio functional. But when it comes to the creative process, the thing that I love the most, I have no interest in sharing it. I wanted, I want it to just be me.

• 20:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it hearkens to that thing I've heard you say many times, like, managers want to have meetings and creators just want to be left alone to create, right? And on some level, to, you know, create something that scales beyond you, you kind of need both. But, you know, if you're tipping heavily towards the creators just want to create, like, there's no room or tolerance for meetings and phone calls and emails and all that kind of stuff that, that comes, you know, along for the ride when you achieve some level of success.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also think that there's, uniquely, I'm staring at an opportunity that I don't know that I've appreciated in the past. But so much of my reach, or, you know, whatever the quantifiers are for success on YouTube, so much of that was done at an insane pace when I was doing, you know, 365 videos a year for years on end, 800 videos strong, day after day after day, that I only really understood that cadence. And I haven't really made any videos in the last couple of years. I've made a few here and there, but in going back, when I go back, rather, like, I'm definitely not interested or capable or able, ever, to go back to that cadence of seven days a week. I'm not interested in it.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I'm not interested in, in having the videos be so sort of self-centered and really just about me, my creative interests, my, my interest in the sort of themes that I hope to share have expanded a lot. So I, I think that I can be as, I think that I can find a level of success by just making it about quality and just like trying to tell the stories that I want to tell as best as I can possibly tell them. And if some days that's a little bullshit story about nothing, great.

• 21:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  In some days it's about, you know, bigger, more existential topics that I lay in bed thinking about every day, that's also fantastic.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  And is that still in the context of identifying yourself as a YouTuber, like this identity, or have you kind of grown beyond that?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Well, I, what's funny is I think that that identity has evolved so much in the last couple of years. Like, YouTuber is not really as much of a thing anymore. Like, I think YouTube has really abandoned... Defining that, YouTube as a company has given up on trying to define that, I think necessarily so. I think that this awful title of influencer has sort of swept up everything. And I think that now to be successful in social media, it's predicated on dominating all the platforms. I don't see myself as falling into that category. In fact, I think, and this sounds so self-righteous and obnoxious, but I'll say it gently. I still see myself as a filmmaker, who just really likes to use YouTube as a means of distribution.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  You know, my wife and I were invited to the Cannes Film Festival, like three weeks ago. And I've been there a couple of times before with movies that I've produced. Like my friends Josh and Benny Safdie are big movie directors now. We were all kids in our early twenties, like we made these feature films together. Their movies, but I helped them figure out how to get them made, which made me the producer. And we premiered movies there, but I was there as sort of this broke adolescent. Adolescence is not fair, young adult, and it was quite the experience. And I went back this time as a guest. My wife and I were invited guests of one of the title sponsors. So we were there as VIPs. We got limo rides to the red carpet, we got hair and makeup and shit like that.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  And we saw a big movie premiere in the gigantic thing, like gigantic theater. And when it was over, we were like doing the standing ovation, which is required. You always hear about the standing ovations from Cannes. It's not a fucking option. You can't be like, I didn't like it, I'm gonna sit this one out. No, no, no, you fucking stand and you applaud till your hands go numb. That's what you do. Welcome to France.

• 24:00Rich Roll?

  Was it the Elvis movie? Which movie?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  I saw, we saw a bunch.

• 24:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I heard the Elvis movie got like a 12 minute.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, pick a number. How about 18 minute? Fuck it, call it a two hour standing ovation, whatever works for marketing. But as we were participating in that required standing ovation, I turned to Candace and I was like, This is why a lot of people do it. And she's like, what do you mean? And I was like, this is what's important to, to some people in the creative space. Like, when they think of what success is in this creative world, in the world of Hollywood, it's this. It's like wearing a tuxedo and a gown, surrounded by your peers, being applauded, sharing a movie in a theater like this, walking down a red carpet like this, literally, physically being celebrated. And I say that in a condescending way, and I don't mean for that to be condescending.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I respect that pursuit, I think. But I also know that pursuit is not mine. I fucking hate that. Like, I premiered my movie at South by Southwest. Wonderful. Such a supportive crowd, such... I fucking hated it. I do not... What I like to do is click Upload, close my laptop...

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  Then go running.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Go home, go for a run. If I check the numbers the next day and they're good, great. If I forget to check the numbers, that's also fine. I don't know that I've ever watched my movies, unless I catch my older daughter watching them after I've clicked Upload. I like to make and move on, and that just feels good to me. Like, it's purely about the act of creation. And being at Cannes, being at that prestigious film festival, was such a moment of validation. I was like, this is so... It makes us... It made it so vivid, what I want to do, in a world where like, you know, I think as someone who puts videos on the internet, it does... You feel smaller there. You feel like you don't matter as much there. I always have to be like, oh, I also used to make feature films, and I had a show on HBO. It's like, no, fuck that. I put my movies on YouTube.

• 25:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  It's just quick play.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  But that's a healthier... That's a healthier sensibility. It is the internal validation of leveraging your creativity to like, make something and share it with the world, and that in and of itself is its own reward. Anything beyond that is just fluff, right? It's not the thing. The externalities are not the motivator, right? And if you're chasing validation externally, it's not a great path.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, or it is, I don't know. But I, I just know. That certainly when I was younger, like I'm not gonna sit here. When I was a kid and had no validation was just saw myself as sort of a loser. That external validation was everything. But I'm like old, like I've got kids now. They're like great. Like I don't, I don't need praise. Like I wish my wife would smile at me more, but besides that, like I don't need.

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  That's good, cuz you're not gonna get it from your kids or your wife, so.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  My kid, my little one tells me I do a good job sometimes when she catches me coming home from my runs. But, "Good job daddy." But no, that.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  That'll change.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  That, that external validation is just, it's not interesting to me. So much so that like I wanna be really careful that that's not why I do it. Like I genuinely, there's something about, you know, Candace, my wife, used to say to me, "If I wanna know how you're feeling, I have to watch your fucking videos." Because I'm so inept at sharing emotions in the real world. But I, but she, she found that I was good at that in the video. Like there's something I take from making videos that is so satisfying. Whether I just, last video I made literally was a video. My friend invited me to like go surfing with him and his family. And I made him like a special video for like his nine-year-old kid.

• 27:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And I sent him a private link. And I've, to the, today, to date, it's been seen by four different ISP addresses. So I think his kids watched it 20 times, but from one address, only four different people have seen this. I'm so psyched about that. I'm so proud of that video. I take such immense like self-satisfac, like I did it. There's a sense of victory in making that video. Took me a couple of days to edit it. And like, you know, four people watched it.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's sweet though.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Sure, but it, that is as satisfying for me. So in going back to New York City to bring this full circle, it's like, I don't know that I was ever so self-aware when it came to my career.

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  And I'm excited to really lean into that.

• 28:28Rich Roll?

  What is the kind of broader perspective that you've gleaned now that you've put distance between like the crazy period when you were vlogging every day? Like, when you reflect back on that period of time, does it have a different meaning for you now than it did when you were in the midst of it?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's always impossible to grasp when you're there. One, it feels so permanent. It always feels like you're gonna be, you know, going a thousand miles an hour. But looking back at it, I recognize how extraordinary it was. And I also recognize that you really, you kind of get that once, and that's it. You'll never duplicate that. You'll never be new again. Like, to be the new thing, you only get to do that once.

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  Right. And it was at, I mean, the timing also was at a period in the evolution of YouTube where, you know, you were kind of the right guy at the right place who was elevating that medium beyond anything it had ever seen before. And it just captured the fascination of so many millions of people. I mean, it was a crazy thing. And just for people who are listening or watching, who don't really know what we're talking about, like, Casey made a vlog, a daily 10-minute video every single day, like 800 days in a row, some crazy amount of time, right?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  Never missed a day. And each one of these videos was its own kind of work of art, like this beautifully rendered story with a three-act structure, with incredible cinematography and editing, and you speaking to camera, always imparting some kind of, you know, pearl of wisdom, or sharing some experience that you had that kind of had meaning that transcended your own specific personal life, that just struck a chord with so many people. And as somebody who kind of tried to dabble in that, like, I just, I can't imagine how you were able to do that every single day. I mean, it had to commandeer every facet of your life, from the moment you woke up in the morning until, you know, you went to bed, if you went to bed at all.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was every neuron was firing in service of that show. And it was, uh, yeah, I think like a pivotal part, no one was helping me. I had no writers, no editors, no cameramen, like no one helped me on any episode. And when I tried, I brought in my most talented friend, who's a much better filmmaker than I am, much better editor than I am, and he's brilliant and his sensibility is just like mine. And I was like, this is gonna make things so, it made it twice as hard.

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  Are you talking about Dan Mace?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I brought in Dan Mace, phenomenal creator, phenomenal filmmaker, like wildly celebrated, hugely successful filmmaker. And he came in and gave it everything he had and it made things go exactly half the speed. It was twice as much work to have somebody help me. But yeah, it was all consuming. It was, I think that maybe the easiest way to encapsulate it was, your eyes are really wide and you're always looking around. So it's like, I'm here with you right now in real life, Rich, but it's, if I was making my video for the day, I'd be like, what is this? Like, why am I here? What about this moment is meaningful to me? And how do I share that inside of 20 seconds? How can I make sense of this moment to my audience in my video?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  That goes beyond just saying, I went and recorded a podcast with my friend Rich. And I would have to answer that question. I would have to come up with something that was compelling, that did that. And once I did that, then this could be a segment.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  Right, but if you couldn't, then you wouldn't participate, right?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Probably wouldn't include.

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  Like, every experience that you were having or could potentially have was calibrated only in the context of how it would contribute to that day's video.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that meant friendships.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  That's like crazy making to live your life that way.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Completely. Friendships, relationships, lunches, like no meetings. I'm not taking a meeting unless it was, I could make it into a scene in the, in the movies, which was really hard to do. Meetings are not interesting, so most meetings I would just say no. I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to meet once and I called my, my agent called me. He's like, Katzenberg wants to meet with you. And I was like, whoa. I was like, that guy's a huge deal. I was like, you think I can film it? And he's like, no, you can't film it. And I was like.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Tell him I'm busy, I can't do it. And he's like, Casey, you don't. And I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. And I remember that like fucked up my day.

• 32:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  It was like an hour and 20 minutes at lunch where I'm like drumming my fingers because I'm thinking to myself, this is really going to step back today's production. Um, but it was always, it was a pursuit of interestingness that was just unrelenting. And I don't think I could do that anywhere outside of New York City.

• 33:06Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I think having a highly controlled environment made that very easy to do. Having a revolving cast of characters that I knew I could call on made that doable. And it was myriad other factors, but I think we started this off by you were asking me, what is it like when I think about that now versus?

• 33:23Rich Roll?

  Right. Like your perspective on, you know, what it means to you and kind of how it set you up for the career that you want to have or maybe don't want to have.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I, I, I think that the biggest difference was everything was fair game then. And when I say that, I mean, like the depths of my psyche were fair game. Like nothing was off limits. I say that, obviously, my family was off limits. Like I, I, when my children turned, when my oldest daughter turned one, I stopped putting my kids in altogether. Cause she stopped looking like a baby and started to look a little bit distinguishable. So I cut my kids out, which made it challenging. But I mean, like as far as me, there was nothing I would omit. There was no version of myself that I wouldn't externalize. And that fucks you up. Like I, I did that as I was, you know, 37, 38 year old, fairly well adjusted adult man.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And I had completely exhausted who I am. It was like the orange that was my brain. I squeezed every ounce of juice out of it. And that was really destructive in the long. You start to really get fucked up. And I highlight that I was a well adjusted man when I did it because you hear so much about creator burnout and, and YouTubers struggling with mental health and all of those issues. Because I couldn't imagine being an 18, 19 year old, you know, girl who found a similar level of success and she felt that obligation.

• 34:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I have friends of mine who are that age, 24 year old dude who just like put everything he had into his videos. And then a year later, he's just toast. Um, so that was really challenging and it made me really vulnerable in a way that I never want to do that again.

• 34:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I just can't imagine the toil and the toll that that would have taken. But what is interesting to me in reflecting back on it is, you know, at that moment in time, certainly vlogging wasn't new. There were plenty of people vlogging, but those vlogs were generally like, we go get coffee, now we're, you know, walking and we're gonna go have lunch. They were kind of plodding and very kind of episodic in a not great way. And I think, you know, what a lot of people talk about when they talk about your vlogs is the, you know, the music and the cinematography and the editing and the kind of kinetic energy of these things. But really, what I think people miss or don't fully

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  appreciate is the storytelling. Like, every story did have this three act structure, a very traditional structure. And even if that story was very small, like, I need to retrieve my drone or something like that, like, you would make it interesting through specificity and like, this economy that you apply to storytelling, to just showing what is meaningful to propel the story forward. And I think that's what people connected with, even if they weren't aware of it. Like, they think it's because you have these fancy drone shots and stuff like that, but really, the engine behind the whole thing was the storytelling.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think also, Pete, thank you for saying that. I think that what you just articulated is a much harder thing to define. It's really easy to be like, oh, I love the way you shoot it and your music's so cool. The irony is, like, you just type Casey Music into YouTube, you can just download all the same shit that I use. That's really easy to define. It's really hard to define what you just said, but I think you, that was certainly my pursuit. Like, I remember, for example, like, I had this awesome jacket that I bought that got all fucked up, so I went to a friend of mine and I was like, can I remake this jacket? And he was like, yeah, I'll help you. And he brought me to Midtown, these like leather smiths that exist in New York City. And there's a really easy superficial story there, which is like, oh, I wanted to make

• 37:00Speaker 01

  a new jacket. So my friend brought me to this place and now we're making a new jacket. And like you just scratch at the surface and I stopped there and I'm looking at like, what's interesting about this? And it's like, well, I didn't know this even existed. And it's like, well, I've lived in New York City for 15 years at this point. I didn't know this existed. I bet you no one knows this existed. So let's start with that. Let's predicate this story on that. The fact that no one knows that in New York City, behind these closed doors on the fourth floor of this fucked up office building on 38th Street, that there's this like 80 year old guy who manages 20 seamstresses and all they do is make handcrafted leather goods in New York City. And let me tell that story. And

• 37:40Speaker 01

  to me, that was fascinating. And my bet always was that if it was genuinely interesting to me, there's probably an audience that would also be interested in it in the same way.

• 37:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But how often would you have to manufacture some story? Or did you, like in the practical kind of logistics of all of this, did you map it out? Like, okay, Thursday, I know I'm gonna go see this person. Saturday, this is gonna do it. You know, I'm gonna do this. Or you're just reacting to the world as it kind of unfolds in front of you?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  The second I would click upload and that video was live, then and only then could I start to think about the next video. And when you're only seven days a week, there's not a lot of fact.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  So there must have been some days where you're like, shit, I don't have anything.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Well, that's when I stopped. It's like, people always say how much, how painful it is reading the comments. It's not comments that are painful, even ones that like make fun of you or tell you your videos suck. None of those hurt. The only comments that hurt are the ones that tell the truth. And I remember towards the end, like videos being like, feels like Casey's just making videos about anything now. And it was like, it was so the truth. Because I had really exhausted. And I don't know if I was exhausted or if I had exhausted. But I was struggling to find those sorts of genuine moments of interestingness. And I was starting to

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Fake 'em is not fair, but just make things about, make videos about things that are much more superficial, but then apply my formula to it. So, you know, it looked the same, it felt the same, but they didn't feel the same. And I knew I was doing that. I think maybe I lied to myself for a little bit, but I knew I was doing that.

• 39:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And that's when I knew it was time to take a break.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it was an intrinsically unsustainable affair to begin with.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 39:27Rich Roll?

  Which kind of beggars the larger question about like the creator economy and the kind of incentives that are built into that, that, you know, drive people to, you know, kind of do things maybe they shouldn't, make bad decisions, or burn out and have all of these mental health problems. And, you know, we're seeing that. You've made a documentary on this subject. So, you know, where do you see, like, what is the state of the union when it comes to like the fucking, I hate this, the creator economy or the influ-, you know, like, as sort of the grandfather of, or somebody who, you know, holds some responsibility for birthing this new, you know, generation of creators, like, how do you see that? Because you usually, you have pretty, you know, keen observational skills about what's going on,

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  what's going wrong, and, you know, how to make it better.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, I don't know about the latter, about how to make it better, but I can tell you, from afar, not even from afar, I think I pay pretty close attention, it feels like, and this is a bleak, this is a bleak response, but it feels like influence is much, much more valued than creativity. And that sucks. And I hope that people take issue with me saying that. I hope that's just me being cynical. But, you know, TikTok, I think, is the most amazing, horrifying, both delivery mechanism and creation mechanism I've ever seen. Brilliant, because I've never, ever experienced an interface that is just so

• 40:59Speaker 01

  easy to find new things. It's, you don't, there's no- Sort of cognitive burden. There's no like spending 20 minutes figuring out what Netflix you want to watch or scrolling through YouTube to see which thumbnail is the most attractive.

• 41:12Rich Roll?

  No decisions to be made.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  There's no decisions to be made. If you're not interested, you just flip it and you're on to the next. And it's a, that's fucking incredible slash terrifying. And then from a creation perspective, it's fascinating that they've removed all those barriers. They give you special effects that you can do in camera. They give you the camera, which is your phone. They give you amazing soundtracks, which is that I watched this video and I liked it, so I'm just gonna use that audio. And it's like, they've overcome all of those creative barriers. But at the end of the day, I don't know that that has bolstered creativity. I think what it has done is it has made the top of the funnel so much wider than it's ever been. Like, if the top of that funnel was super narrow when, you know, you and I were really

• 41:54Speaker 01

  young, when we were in the 90s, when to be a filmmaker, man, being indie filmmaker and getting into a film, that was fucking impossible to do. And then it got a little bit wider, a little bit wider, and then YouTube, and anybody could now share with the world, but you still had to figure out how to create and make and all that shit. TikTok's gotten rid of everything. And now the top of the funnel is wider than it's ever been. But it still feels like the bottom of the funnel, like really amazing stuff that you watch and it means something to you, is as small as it's ever been.

• 42:25Rich Roll?

  Everything is ephemera.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:28Rich Roll?

  And on TikTok, it's not even about following people that intrigue you, it's just about reacting to whatever the algorithm decides you might want to look at.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Sure. So if, you know, in the course of a year, I'm making numbers up, but if in the course of the year, you see 100 things, you know, paintings, or hear songs, or watch movies, or YouTube videos, or see a picture, or watch a TikTok that affect you, that you don't stop thinking about. We're now seeing a million, but that number of how many affect you, like, that hasn't moved for me. I don't see more brilliant stuff, I just see more stuff. And what concerns me is that that's what's sort of being celebrated is like now it's purely about the metrics and not about how you achieve those metrics and that sucks. I don't know where that goes. I don't know where that goes from here. And I don't know what that means.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Like I had a very, I think eloquent sort of monologue about how the egalitarianization of filmmaking is gonna mean it finally is an art form that everybody has access to and we're not going to get to see new perspectives and ideas shared in ways we'd never seen before because you don't have to go to NYU Film School to make something. And I think that probably is still true, but we're watching it manifest and it's not, I'm not seeing new brilliant shit that's like, wow, I didn't see that coming. And that kind of sucks. It does make me want to go back and purely focus on the creative and see that if I can use my platform, which is still big, to find success.

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  That that will be very reassuring. But if I, you know, if I make stuff that I still feel like is good and I'm really proud of and nobody watches it, I don't know what that would be. I'd still be psyched.

• 44:14Rich Roll?

  You still have the satisfaction of.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I'll still be psyched about it. As long as I think I'll still be psyched about it.

• 44:19Rich Roll?

  But it is, yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  But it would be telling of the of where we are right now.

• 44:22Rich Roll?

  You know, is somebody more likely to try to follow in your footsteps or are they going to pivot to TikTok where it's just easier to audience capture and create these short little things?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  And jump on trends?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  To be really cynical, it's like.

• 44:36Rich Roll?

  Are you gonna be like the guys that made Everything Everywhere All at Once? You know, there is like some incredible filmmaking going on.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Dude, have you seen Top Gun?

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable. I haven't stopped. Like, I'm trying to time it so I can sneak into theaters just to see that third act over and over and over. There's still good shit being made and I'm really excited about that. But there's just not more good shit.

• 45:01Rich Roll?

  It feels like it's more on the margins and everybody's attention is focused on. Do you think so?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah. I think so. I mean, look, we've had those amazing years where there's been 20 brilliant movies made, but I think for the most part, there's always been so much garbage and noise. I think the difference now, and I can use journalism as an example of this, and I say this very gently as to not broach into the like fake news discussion, but I think now we're able to see like.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  All news outlets are able to quantify click-throughs and how much time people are spending in every given article and like if you're running a business, if you own a newspaper, like you need those clicks to pay the bills. Like it's fact, it's fact. So there's going to be this attraction to like publishing more of what gets clicks. And that kinda sucks.

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not good for a cohesive, healthy society.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  It's not. And so like apply that to creativity as well. It's like, it's not the super well-made, with the exception of Top Gun, which is crushing in the, in the box office. Like, it's not always. You know, like their, name a year when the highest grossing box office hit was also one best picture.

• 46:12Rich Roll?

  Never, never happens.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  I would venture never, in the history of ever. And now we're sort of seeing that.

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  Maybe Gone with the Wind.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Perhaps, but it's really pushing it, pushing it way back. But now we're able to see that in such a rapid fire, such, with such vivid quantification, with such vivid metrics behind it. If you make some shitty prank video that has like a, has boobs in the thumbnail and some racy title, and it gets clicks, like that's where the rewards are and that's what's going to be pursued. That's a little bit antiquated because I don't think people are making content like that anymore. I think it's more sophisticated now. But I think it's, to be super reductive, it's, it's easier to follow trends to find success, as long as your metric of success is clicks and views and plays and all of those things, which do have financial attachments to all of them, than it is to just trying

• 47:03Speaker 01

  to pursue what is creatively, socially meaningful.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Right. And as somebody who's squarely in the Gen X category, I grew up in a time when, you know, if you were to kind of leverage, you know, commerce, you were considered a sellout and like just you would get trampled, right? And now that's completely flipped on its head where people are celebrated for that very thing that, that, you know, my generation would malign.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Sure, and now that's the pursuit, rather than like,

• 47:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Like, that's the goal.

• 47:36Rich Roll?

  How can I get to that point where I can like, take advantage of all these fucked up incentives?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, forget about the means. Like, the focus isn't on the means. The focus isn't on making the best music so you can become, you know, rich and famous. The focus is just on how do I become rich and famous? And that's a... We do sound like two old men yelling at the clouds right now, saying that. But I think that social media has shown us that in a more vivid way than any other sort of artistic endeavor, creative endeavor. The path to success as it's defined there, money and fame, has never been more vivid.

• 48:11Rich Roll?

  You've, uh, you've taken efforts to, you know, create boundaries between yourself and, and the internet. Like, didn't you get like a flip phone or something like that? Like, I've noticed you've dropped off in terms of like, posting on Twitter and stuff like that.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  I have a new rule with just, with Twitter, which is, every time I think of, um, something clever, interesting, funny, insightful to tweet, instead of tweeting it, I just don't.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  That's my rule. Anytime I go to tweet, I have a new rule, I just, just don't.

• 48:40Rich Roll?

  And happier as a result.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, look, I have this very idealistic vision, which is like, is there a world where I can just make great work, but divorce myself from the... Fame is not the right word, but the fame part, you know, like, Quentin Tarantino, maybe, you know, one of the, one of the best living filmmakers right now, like, what does he take, like, eight years to make a movie? So for like, seven years, you don't hear his name. He's not posting on Twitter, he's not like, sharing his, he's not making IG stories to show you where he got lunch today. He's just fucking living his life, man, with no desire to share that. And his movies are great. You know, Spike Jonze, who is one of my favorite creative brains in the universe.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  He's not out there trying to get clicks or likes and, you know, share cute, funny little things on Twitter so he can, for some external validation, remind the world that he exists. He's just living his life and then making these brilliant, creative things, whether they're short movies, or Jackass 4, or like amazing Apple commercials, or feature films, or whatever it is that Spike Jonze is up to. And I think that there's a lot of brilliant actors that are similar. You know, like I've sat behind Tom Hanks, who's like the greatest ever, at the Cannes Film Festival. So cool seeing him in real life. That motherfucker doesn't have Twitter, does he? There's no way.

• 50:03Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, no, he does.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Does he tweet?

• 50:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and he signs his tweets, Hanks, with an X.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  I don't know how often he tweets.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  I do follow him, but he mostly posts pictures of his typewriter.

• 50:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  But he's not out there. He doesn't, he's not fighting to share his life. Brad Pitt doesn't work every day, so people will like, give him as many hearts as possible on Instagram. And I think that, at least what I take from that, and call me naive, and you're probably right, but I think that it's a demonstration of where these brilliant creatives, where their focus is. And their focus is on what they do great, and their craft. And I think that in social media, there's sort of this weird perversion where it's less about your craft, and it's more about marketing yourself, branding yourself. It's a stupid fucking buzzword, but like, that's what it's about. And I had, I had to do that. I don't think I could have

• 50:54Speaker 01

  succeeded. I mean, maybe I'm making excuses, but I don't think I could have had the success I had if I hadn't done that. But I'm, like, I'm older now, and I'm much more confident now. And is there a world where I can both be successful in this, in this creative space, which is social media, without being that? Because that's never been exciting to me, and it's scarier to me now than it's ever been.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Well, certainly, you can't create anything timeless unless you have the facility or the skill to meet out distractions. And you have to be much more deliberate and intentional about making sure that you have the time to invest in your creativity without getting, without having to like just be scrolling all the time. Like, it used to be like, we were bored. Now boredom is optional, and most people opt for mindless scrolling. And it's so addictive that you have to like, you know, like you had to go and get a different phone in order to like protect yourself, right? Like, it's crazy that that's the society that we live in.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Our weak, feeble monkey brains just cannot compete with those algorithms. It is so interesting. I try to read a book. You can't read a book. Read a book or look at TikTok, it's like, there's no, there's no competition there. It's like having a bowl of kale, or like having a dozen donuts. Like, if, there's no, your brain wants one thing, and that's a very hard thing to compete with. And it's funny, because you're bringing this up sort of as a, from a consumption perspective, and before I was sharing purely as a sharing perspective. But the consumption stuff is really scary to me. Like, I've quit, I no longer use my flip phone, because it's so extraordinarily burdensome.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Like, there's something satisfying about it, which is like, I saw like, a major, super movie star, whose kids go to school at the same preschool. My kid went to school last year, he carried it, and he's like one of the most famous people alive, and it's like, you have to be so confident in your own success, that you're willing to just say fuck you to everyone, to carry a flip phone. Because I couldn't respond to texts.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Most texts I never got. Like, send me an iMessage while I'm on my flip phone, it's just go. And like, even like responding to my wife, I couldn't text back. You don't text back. You have to like wait till you can call him, then call him back. And I hope to get to a place in my life, a place of both confidence and success, I'm not there yet, where I can just literally... Kind of say fuck off to the whole world, except for like the four people that have my cellphone. And embrace that, but I'm like, I'm not there yet. Like I blew my dad off one too many times where he's like, didn't you get the picture I sent you, buddy?

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Or like my kid called me and like I didn't.

• 53:39Rich Roll?

  It's just incompatible with like the way society works. But you could be like, like I'm thinking of Paul Sorvino and Goodfellas, like where he wouldn't even get on the phone. Other people would knock on his door and tell him what that somebody called, you know, and tell him what they said.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  There's this amazing book written in like 1980 by Paul Fussell called Class. And it's about social classes, socioeconomic classes, and the highest class is called the X class, which is a class like above and beyond. I might be butchering this. And what they have in common with the lowest class, which are the destitute, is that like the richest people in the world never handle money? And don't have to deal with phones or anything like that. And then the destitute have no money to handle. And they don't deal with phones or other people or anything like that. So like there is this, the polar ends of the spectrum, you get to that place where you no longer have to be burdened with this stuff. But I'm somewhere right in the middle.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And yeah, and it sucked. And it's like, why don't you just delete TikTok? I don't have that level of restraint. I don't have that in me.

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  It's hard. I have the luxury of being older and so TikTok is less alluring to me. Cause I'm just, I'm sort of aged out of that a little bit.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Have you ever spent a day on it and had its, had its algorithm figure you out? Don't. Don't. It'll be like, oh, we got ourselves a slightly older guy here. We got a Gen Xer. Okay, let's see what he's into.

• 55:00Rich Roll?

  We know exactly what to show this guy.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Let me show you exactly what to show you. Mine's like all news clips and like weird shit and smart stuff. It's amazing and terrifying.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  Hmm. As somebody with a tenuous relationship with, with kind of the fame that you have, it'll be interesting to see what happens when you return to New York where you're so highly recognizable. I mean, you're so of a piece with New York City, the city that's your muse, like everybody will celebrate the fact that you've returned there. And I would imagine in Los Angeles, you can kind of navigate things without too much hassle. But that's going to kind of go out the window when you go back to New York.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yes. Um, but it's weird. It's like.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  I don't know, I was talking in my older brother's van and I was frustrated because we were somewhere and there was like too many people near me or something. And I was like, I fucking just can't handle being around people. I was like, I've gotta get back to New York City. And he was like, Casey, it's the biggest city, it's the most densely populated city in the country. And I was like, yeah, but in New York City, you're always surrounded by people, but you're also completely alone all the time. And

• 56:12Rich Roll?

  And you're on the move. Like in New York, someone will honk at you or wave at you. But I've been running with you in New York and in LA and observed like what happens when people notice you and want a piece of you.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:25Rich Roll?

  It's different. In New York, it's, it's pretty casual. In LA, they wanna just stop you and it turns into like a whole thing that you gotta extricate yourself.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny though, like my favorite thing in the world is New York City, like if someone recognizes you there, somebody recognizes me there, they just act like they know me. It's okay, see what's up. And it's like, and like, that's it. And if it's

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  That's what I mean.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  If it's a tourist or someone else, it's like, they have all these requests, like beholding my daughter, feeding her lunch, like, Yo, come over here, Tim, come take a picture of my family. And it's like, dude, boundaries. So there's that, but also, you know, I don't, New York's just such a different beast. It's such a, like a, there's such an insane level of kind of social Darwinism there where it's like, life in New York City is fucking miserable. It smells like trash. It's so expensive. It's crowded. It's cold. It's concrete. Like, life there is not nice. And because of that, it makes it hard to have like a chill life there. So if you're willing to deal with all the bullshit that is living in such a harsh place, it means you're one kind of person.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  And it weeds out sort of the kinds of like normal sane humans that don't wanna deal with that level of, of difficulty every day. And that kind of person that you're left with are sort of People that I identify with more so than, you know, that kind of chill lifestyle, that laid back lifestyle, that yo, let me get a selfie lifestyle.

• 57:52Rich Roll?

  Right. But, you know, you enjoy your surfing.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  I have this, I have this vision that will probably fall apart quickly, but I'm going to surf in New York City.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Dude, New Jersey has like some of the best waves in the world.

• 58:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  It's just a shorter season.

• 58:07Rich Roll?

  Are you bringing your truck?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  I'm keeping my truck.

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're driving your truck, right?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I'm keeping my truck in New York. I'm keeping all my surfboards. And like, so I know some great East Coast surfers. This is part of like, bringing a little bit of like, what I learned here in Southern California about like, loving and embracing the things in life that you just do for the love of the game. Bringing those with me back to New York City. And I think I can.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  Right. No surf ranch, though.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Well, I just, you know, you gotta get on a plane to get there from here. So it's just a little bit longer of a flight.

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  Talk a little bit about the documentary. I was hoping to be able to watch it before we talked, but I guess it's tied up with sales agents or something like that right now. So I haven't seen it yet.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  I appreciate you saying that. Because there's this interview that's online from South by Southwest where it's Christine Machon and I speaking to a journalist. I'm just gonna fucking out right now. It's a terrible interview. And the reason why is about one minute into the interview, it was so vivid that the interviewer had not seen the movie, but was pretending he had, which is such a dangerous place to be. And I regret not calling him out. And I remember in that moment, I should call him out right now, but it would have required sort of humiliating him. Even if I did it in the most gentle way, it would have required humiliating him. And I didn't want to do that because he was interviewing me on behalf of the festival. But I regret it now because now it's this video that's like permanently on the internet

• 59:42Speaker 01

  with this guy who hasn't seen the fucking movie. And he's asking me very misguided questions and I'm trying my best to keep him on the rails, but...

• 59:49Rich Roll?

  But there's our IndieWire, Rolling Stone.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's been a number of reviews from the festival. Yeah, there's a lot of information out there about it. But the gist of the movie is, it's sort of the, the story of David Dobrik, who is a wildly successful YouTuber. And we talked about my... Sort of success in the platform earlier. David eclipsed anything I did as far as viewership, as far as influence, as far as engagement, as far as like, really like defining a generation. He did that in a way that was so extraordinary. And I followed him around for two and a half years, capturing his story and capturing what it meant to be a YouTuber really from an insider's perspective. And in the end, things got really fucked up.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  It's, this is both in the movie and literally what happened, but David called me and he's like, "Are you ready for the ending of your movie?" And he was referencing a story that was coming out, was being published about a girl who was raped by one of the people that was in his videos, that he had since cut off and excommunicated himself from. But it was a very, very shitty story. And the role that his videos played in enabling that to happen. Just to be abundantly clear, you know, David's wrongdoing certainly is like, bad judgment and a bunch of bad decisions, but the actual physical acts that took place to victimize

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  this young woman were done just by some asshole who, you know, David had a proximity to. But because he was the one with the influence, ultimately like, he was held to account for what had transpired by this asshole that he kind of platformed. So it's a nuanced, the controversy itself was nuanced. And I think within there, he was, he was, he took the, I think necessarily so, but he took the brunt of it. And it was a downfall in social media, downfall on YouTube that was extraordinary. And to this day, I can't think of a faster, more aggressive fall from grace than the downfall

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  he faced in light of this story coming out.

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  And that was compounded by the other story that came out about his buddy, what's his name? Jeff Whitick? Who suffered a brain injury as a result of participating in this stunt where David was operating a crane in a shallow lake and swinging him around and he hit his head.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think the opening line of the movie is me asking, or me reminding David about this question that I had asked him years earlier in filming, which is that... You know, I've identified this pursuit because I myself felt it when I was doing my daily videos, but I've watched it happen over and over and over with a lot of top creators, which is that like sensationalism equals views and that endless pursuit, like you get the views, sensationalism gives you views, so more sensationalism, more views, and you just keep chasing that tail until something extraordinary happens that's not good. And you think about Logan Paul and what happened to him early in his career,

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  which was just completely torpedoed by his own shitty judgment, and it forced him to completely reinvent who he was. And there's, you know, a dozen other creators that have reached that sort of global superstardom level that had then sidelined their own careers because they're chasing after something that is dangerous, exploitive, stupid, harmful, and something atrocious comes from it, and it ends their career. And that's exactly what happened to him. And I think it's whether, or talking about, you know, one of his closest friends being horribly injured, almost killed, in pursuit of a stunt, or a young woman being victimized in pursuit of a funny scene. It's all part of a much bigger discussion, which

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  is like, where does accountability lie? Certainly, it lies with the creator. And I think David does, I think he does a pretty fair job in the movie of kind of owning that and, you know, addressing that.

• 1:04:02Rich Roll?

  Does he own that? Because my sense was that there is a sort of lack of self-awareness, inability to really grok the severity of the situation.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  I think absolutely there is, absolutely there is. And I think that those sorts of things take time. Without defending him, I think that those sorts of things, say, take time. But I do know him and I know his character. He's not an apathetic person, but I think you race to a place of wanting to defend yourself when things like this happen, and that can come across as a lack of self-awareness or understanding. But, you know, there's a back and forth he and I have on, in the movie, where, you know, I say like,

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Understanding you didn't know what had transpired that night that this young one was assaulted, but looking back at it now, you still like let this guy who had a history of abuse, leverage of fame and an influence that you had created to attract these young girls, to try to connect with them in a, in a, in a way that was obviously predicated on, on something sexual. And I was like, you know, don't you see that that's grossly inappropriate? And he says very honestly, like, I didn't see it then, but of course I see it now. It's fucking disgusting.

• 1:05:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't have to be intentional, but it's so severely kind of nonchalant about the whole thing.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  And you have these powerful incentives that are driving you towards that place of more, more, more, crazier, crazier, crazier. And his, his whole thing was like each stunt would be more outrageous than the one prior. I mean, it is qualitatively different in some sense from what you were doing, which is kind of these mini stories every day. It wasn't about doing extreme things like that, that would kind of create a situation where...

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  The only thing that he and I had in common was that we both put videos on YouTube. But at the end of it all, and I say this without absolving him or any other creative of their wrong, who's had a downfall like he had of their wrongdoing. But, you know, he is obviously the story, but I presented him more as a case study. And I think a lot of the more established traditional media reviews of the movie that came out of its premiere in South by Southwest got that very much so, which is that like...

• 1:06:13Rich Roll?

  There will be another, this will happen again and again.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Sure, but also before he was, you know, before he was canceled, before he had every contract that he had with every brand canceled and before YouTube cut him off and before he faced all these very severe consequences. Before that, he had seven billion views. Seven billion. That's more views than every Super Bowl since the inception of the Super Bowl until this year combined.

• 1:06:38Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Seven billion views. So seven billion views saying to him, "Good job, man. Here's some money. Keep going. We want to see more. Here's a thumbs up. We love you."

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  And the money's crazy.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  And the money's crazy.

• 1:06:50Rich Roll?

  And these are young people.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  They're young people.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  There's zero oversight or regulation. I know you're friends with Steve-O. Um, you know, the obvious, you know, analogy is to something like Jackass, but...

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  I mean, I think Jackass...

• 1:07:03Rich Roll?

  Jackass is like highly, like, they go into those stunts. You know this. Like, they've, they've figured it all out. They have safety protocols and measures in place. Like, it's a very different beast.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  I think Jackass is a very, very good example of how you're supposed to do that, which is Jackass is, every member of Jackass that's on camera is there under entirely, contractually consensual terms. Everyone there knows exactly what they have to gain and what the price is for that. Like, this, it is, it is well-defined on Jackass. The lack of power dynamic. There is no power dynamic on Jackass. It is, is, this is what we're doing. Are you part of this or are you not? And if you're part of this, you know what you're signing up for. And I think in the creator space, it's, it's an antithetical to that. No one knows. You're just a kid walking around the video camera trying to capture moments of sensationalism

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  or create moments of sensationalism. And if you're on the other side of that and you're like, "Shit, I'll do anything for fame", well, what does that mean? And where can that lead? And that can lead to really devastating places. And I, I think that this is a, a very challenging discussion to have because it's so nuanced. I think what is very easy is to point to, uh, specific outcomes and specific happenstance and say, "Well, that was fucked up." He's stupid. He should have never done that. You know, Logan should have never walked into that forest in Japan. And it's like, sure, but what about the day before he did that? When he was celebrated for doing very similar shit for years?

• 1:08:37Rich Roll?

  Right, so it's less about pointing fingers at individuals and more about illuminating, you know, these problematic aspects of the ecosystem.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  With a big asterisk, which is again, I-

• 1:08:46Rich Roll?

  As somebody who's benefited tremendously from-

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  No, that's not the asterisk. The asterisk is that like, I don't want to defend

• 1:08:52Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  these individuals that have done fucked up shit on these platforms. Like, the ownership is theirs. They need to own that and whatever consequences they might face. And that's certainly the case in my documentary is I don't absolve him of any of his wrongdoing or any of his poor judgment. But I think you can have both of these discussions. I think that it's very necessary to examine what happened in this one person's career that led to such turmoil.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  But also asking, why did that happen? Like, in what world has that been enabled? I think is a very fair, much harder question. And I hope that my documentary is able to sort of elevate that.

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's interesting, and I say this as somebody who hasn't seen the movie, but my sense is that you got involved in it because you followed him around, you followed David around for a couple of years, right?

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  So when you first began that journey, it was more about like, this is the next generation of creators and I want to kind of tell the story of what the, behind the scenes of this is really like. Like, how does this actually function? And then it became something else entirely.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Even more specifically, like, I loved David. Like, I still have a tremendous fondness for him, even though this movie is very critical of his actions. So much so that it's, you know, he and I no longer have a friendship because of this movie. But I had a tremendous fondness for him, both personally and professionally. His videos were really funny. And I was part of that audience that was able to sort of turn a blind eye to the more questionable moments in the video because you assume what you're seeing is entirely consensual. And I saw in him a superstar. When he, before he was successful, I said, this kid's going to fucking explode. And he did. And that was the story that I wanted to tell. My own experience on YouTube was so unbelievably unexpected and overwhelming that I wanted to tell that story.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  But I needed somebody else to tell it through that was more interesting and better looking than me. And David was that character. And yeah, like I'd be like, I spent two hours interviewing his high school teachers. And I went back to his high school in Chicago and met with his tennis coach. And I interviewed his parents and I hired a Hungarian translator so I could interview his grandmother in Slovakia. And none of that's in the movie. That's not the movie at all. The movie is about this one night. And what that means, because I think that if I, I was sort of forced to confront an intellectual honesty, which is what is this movie? And can you tell the story about what his high school years were like without it feeling like you're trying to make him a more empathetic character? When really like this was about this one night?

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And there were a lot of those very challenging narrative considerations that I had to make as a filmmaker before I could make them as a, as a friend. I think that the latter was irrelevant. The fact that he was my friend became irrelevant if I was gonna have any integrity behind the movie.

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  And the integrity of the movie ultimately required a fracture in the relationship, right? Like he hasn't spoken to you.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  I, I mean, I don't.

• 1:11:53Rich Roll?

  Has he seen the movie?

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. He hates it. But I don't think that, at the end of the day, I have to live with myself. And, um, you know, like integrity is an interesting word because it's like, well, what about your integrity as a friend to David? And I think that's really hard thing for me to confront. But, you know, I come back to this place of like, this was not what I signed up for. He said those words to me and I think it's very fair for me to say those words back. Like this is not what I signed up for.

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  Meaning when he agreed to be filmed by you.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  And when I agreed, when I decided to make a movie about him, you know, he's so psyched to make a movie when it's about his tennis coach in Chicago and, and, you know, him selling out huge spaces to give talks to high school kids and college kids. Like that's really fun and exciting. But then it came about something much darker. And at the end of the day, I thought all I could do both for my own. Sense of responsibility and humanity was do everything I could to let him speak for himself. And speak truth to what happened. And I think I gave him every opportunity in the world to do that. And I did my very best to make that abundantly clear in the movie. I'm not in the movie at all. It's a very traditional documentary.

• 1:13:12Rich Roll?

  But he seems like, like he's still doing his thing, right? Like, what is the state of the union with like his?

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  I cannot speak to that. I can't speak to that. I wish him the best. I hope he finds, you know, a sense of fulfillment. He's young and I think he has a long way to go. And I, I hope he finds a, I hope he finds what it is that he's looking for.

• 1:13:33Rich Roll?

  Right. And what is the deal with the movie? Like, I know that you premiered it at South by Southwest. Are you trying to get a distributor right now?

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  We premiered it very successfully at South by Southwest. We had amazing reviews and I thought the reviews were going to be much darker because typically Hollywood hates all things YouTube. And I don't blame them. But the reviews, including from some very, very traditional film reviewers were really, I thought, very, uh, very, certainly positive, but I think very insightful and smart. And a lot of people got what I was going for. Um, and I don't say that in a dismissive way. I just mean that like, I think it's really easy to watch the movie and sort of be just drawn into David's story and forget that there's a bigger, there's a bigger underlying narrative. So very positive response. But yeah, we're still like trying to figure out distribution and where do you put a movie like this?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  And obviously I'm sitting on an unbelievably powerful distribution opportunity, which is my own YouTube channel. But I think I'd rather let the movie die and nobody ever sees it than put it on my YouTube channel. It just does not feel like an appropriate place for an hour and 40 minute documentary for myriad reasons. And I think that probably paramount to those reasons is. I think it would really dominate my own identity on YouTube and I don't, I don't.

• 1:14:50Rich Roll?

  You want a little bit of distance between you and that work?

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and look, if it's on, if it's on like a Hulu, then I have that distance. And I think people will be able to watch it with clear eyes. And if it's, you know, if it's anywhere, people sit down in a theater at a film festival, they're able to watch it with sort of clear eyes. But if you go to my YouTube channel, where my audience is built on this backdrop of videos that are all thematically similar, and then one of those videos is an hour and 40 minute documentary about a sexual assault, I don't know that that's the context that I'm willing to share this movie with.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So TBD, basically.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like, you know, sorry.

• 1:15:33Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Nobody's gonna see it. If you see me in the street, ask me, I'll let you watch it on my phone.

• 1:15:36Rich Roll?

  All right. You would let me watch it on the phone.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Like, I have to go through my distributor, distributors, like get them to send you a private link. I mean, I'll just upload it to Vimeo and send you a link.

• 1:15:46Rich Roll?

  I know, it's really hard on the flip phone.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a text. What do you want from me?

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  Um, one thing I always wanted to ask you, as somebody who's, who's really, you know, insightful and has a very incisive perspective on branding and marketing and kind of how brands hold themselves out to the world and how creators kind of navigate the creative space, I'm interested in, in, in what you think about like where I could improve, like what we're doing here, like where, what are we missing, to the extent that you have any familiarity of what goes on here? Like, where is an area that maybe I, I, I don't see where I should be putting more focus and time and attention?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Short answer is I have no fucking clue. I mean that. Longer answer is that Ryan Holiday, who's a tremendous human and brilliant author.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  He and I have this conversation a lot and it's a much, I'm telling you the advice that I gave him. And I don't want to own any of what he's done, but this is a discussion he and I have been having for five years. And maybe some of it's applicable here, which is that I think Ryan with his stoicism and like the unique focus that has been his career, whether he's doing public speaking or he's publishing one of, you know, a dozen books, a half dozen books that he's written now. They all follow similar themes. And what I said to him, because I've, I've seen him speak publicly and it's so amazing is that this theme can be shared across other mediums.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  And like, I'll buy your physical book to access those themes that you're able to communicate so well. And I'll, I'll listen to your book on Audible because you communicate those themes so well. I'll listen to you on podcasts, you communicate those themes so well and I'll certainly pay to watch you speak in real life. And it's like, what can you do on these other social media platforms to further that? And what he has done, which is really amazing and he's finding wild success with it is he does these YouTube videos where he talks to camera. And it's not like, "Hey guys, today here's my morning routine and my hair care products." It's Ryan being like, Epic Tetus once said, you know? Yeah, or talking about Marcus Aurelius and like how you apply that to life. And it's like, these are sort of the ponderings, is that a word?

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  The things that I pull from his books that I underline that mean so much to me. And now he's delivering them to me in a medium that actually works better, which is these little clips. Still read his books. I just mean it's better than underlining a chapter and trying to find that dog-eared page. And it's been really brilliant. And I think, you know, Rich, between like your focus on health and these deeper conversations and so many other facets of this world that you uniquely represent so well, that you could look at those themes and, and ask yourself, like, are there other places where I could express these in different ways while still keeping that message the same? And I don't know what that would be. Right. No, I think that's, that's-

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Even your cookbooks, literally your cookbooks, have an absolute parallel to your podcasts. They are the same thing. Like so many of your podcasts are about health and veganism and how you're able to do it and drawing energy from what you eat and shit like that. So a cookbook is a very natural extension of that. So thinking in those terms, like, what else could you spin out of this amazing thing that you built over the last decade?

• 1:19:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's definitely worth thinking about. I've noticed that in Ryan, too, and there's a, there's a huge uptick in the frequency with which he's posting these clips and these videos. And, and part of my own, like, this is just confessional, like, he's so good at talking to camera. Or like, and I'm like, I can't, I, I hate talking to camera. Like, the worst part of this podcast is when I have to do the intros and look to camera. And I like, write out these little scripts and then I make, I put, I have like a teleprompter thing. And I always feel like, oh, it's so, like, rigid and like, I just want to be able to relax and just talk. But every time I try to do that, it's like a disaster.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  No, I get it. He's, he's found something. And again, it might not be right for you. Like, that might not be it. But if you draw a line to where you were, as far as your audience size and your revenue from this podcast 10 years ago, and you draw that line to where it is now, I know you know, it goes up and to the right. And it doesn't always have to, you know, grow kind of exponentially, meaning that like, you do something really fucking well. And the best way to find success is like, apply patience and consistency to that. And it's giving you everything you've got now. This is my old man advice. Because all I want to do when I move back to New York, is make really good YouTube videos. I don't want to do any of the other bullshit. And to see if I can just find success doing

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  the one thing that I know I'm really good at, instead of the other bullshit, which is just both distractions, but feels necessary. Maybe it's not. I gotta go.

• 1:20:40Rich Roll?

  I know. Can I leave? Can we do one more question? What time is it? 1:40? Last thing. Just to put a button on it. Just real quick. For the creators or the creative people that are watching or listening to this, just leave us with a few words of kind of creative inspiration. I mean, you're known for these aphorisms around like, you know, you're tattooed with like, do more and work harder and kind of this hustle porn sort of thing. You've matured a little bit beyond that, but you always have such good counsel when it comes to learning how to harness your creative voice and share it with the world.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Sure. I think the thing that I've come to appreciate more than ever is, is the importance in having patience. I think that

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  There's such a tendency, especially in a world where you're able to count your views in real time, that if it doesn't work today, it's never going to work. And, you know, like, I talked to Jimmy, Mr. Beast, about this a lot, and that guy spent, whatever, seven years making videos before he had one that broke a thousand views, or something extraordinary like that, and now he's doing a billion views a month. Or my brother Van, who's the most brilliant mind on all of YouTube, and, you know, Van had this initial explosion of interest because he and I worked so hard to promote his first, you know, his first videos, and then I explained to him, I was like, "Look, it's all gonna go away, you're gonna find your baseline, then you're gonna build from there." And he's been consistently uploading for a year, making the best work he can make, and

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  now he's really building out what is gonna be a successful, long-term career, making videos and putting them on the internet.

• 1:22:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's been really cool to watch that.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  And I think that it's extremely unsexy, it's extremely uninteresting, and no one wants to hear that it takes time, but it takes time. And I think if, it's something that, especially if you're young and just getting into this, you don't want to invest, but patience is really the most undervalued aspect of succeeding in the world of media today. You have all the agency in the world, you don't need anything from anyone, but if you're not willing to commit the time to it, you're never gonna find that success.

• 1:22:46Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent. We did it. And I achieved my goal of getting you to say, "I gotta go."

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  I gotta go.

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  Which I think you've said in every podcast.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  I like, Lance and I watched like, ten times. I was gonna say it before, I was like, "I'm not gonna say it, I'm not gonna say it."

• 1:22:57Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:23:02Rich Roll?

  That's it for today, thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 1:23:33Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering

• 1:24:15Rich Roll?

  by Casey Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiate. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.