We’re All Living in Casey Neistat’s World

Summary

Podcast Summary: “We’re All Living in Casey Neistat’s World”

Podcast: Honestly with Bari Weiss (The Free Press)
Episode: We’re All Living in Casey Neistat’s World
Host: Susie Weiss
Guest: Casey Neistat
Date: April 17, 2026

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Overview

This episode marks the launch of Susie Weiss’s new podcast Second Thought, diving into pop culture through interviews with its most influential figures. For her inaugural episode, Susie interviews Casey Neistat—filmmaker, YouTube pioneer, and vlogging innovator—about his influence on digital culture, personal philosophy, the perils of online fame, and the future of tech, creativity, and social media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Casey’s Influence on Digital Culture & YouTube’s Rise

• The Birth of a Format: Casey recounts how, years before YouTube existed, he and his brother Van created influential viral videos like iPod’s Dirty Secret ([02:11]). When YouTube arrived, Casey recognized its democratizing power for everyday creators.
  • “It was clear that technology would enable that for, you know, in short, work for everybody someday...” (Casey, [04:16])
• On YouTube’s Dominance: Susie cites statistics: 2.5 billion active users, 1 billion hours watched daily ([04:00]). Casey says he saw this coming:
  • “Without with zero equivocation... it became really obvious to me really early... when I discovered YouTube, specifically how I turned to YouTube and away from television, it was like, there's no way other people aren't going to jump on this.” ([04:04])
• Bridging Commercial & DIY: Casey describes “evangelizing” YouTube to brands ([06:57]) and how self-promotion for his startup Beam spiraled into a genre-defining daily vlog.

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2. Online Fame, Parasociality, and Honest Storytelling

• The New Nature of Celebrity: Casey reflects on the “parasocial relationships” that vlogging created:
  • “People look at me, they know me... when you make a daily show that's 10 minute songs every day about your life, you can't play a character. That was just me. So they genuinely do know me and I don't know them.” ([09:45])
• Handling Fame: Casey’s approach remains empathetic:
  • “It's flattering. It can fuck you up a little bit... I had the luxury of being a grown adult father, married, very, very settled in who I was as a person...” ([09:58])
  • He worries about younger creators’ ability to process sudden online fame ([11:34]).
• On Authenticity: Susie asks if there’s a real Casey and an “on-camera” Casey. He insists:
  • “I'm more articulate on camera... I think the YouTube Casey is just slightly more articulate, maybe a little bit nicer. But for the most part, that was just me.” ([12:54])

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3. Craft, ‘Interestingness’, and Creative Integrity

• Defining ‘Interestingness’: Early on, interestingness meant spectacle; later, it became about intimacy and honest connection.
  • “I don't think that sensationalism is the only path to interestingness... looking back at the vlog, interestingness stopped being about sort of the sensational things... and much more about sort of the intimacy and the honesty and this relationship that you can develop with the audience.” ([17:18])
• Influences & Sensibility: Casey credits the craft of cinema (Wes Anderson, Tarantino), the camaraderie of Jackass, and DIY YouTubers—then synthesizes them into his own style:
  • “I think I brought a level of... professionalism. Which is like simply, like, thinking about the shot before I click record and having a respect for my audience.” ([21:45])
• Artistic Purity vs. Virality: Contrasts “beastification” (MrBeast) with making art for oneself:
  • “Artistic purity comes from a place where it's like a true form of self expression... I do not think Quentin Tarantino sits down and says, how can I best please my audience right now? How can I maximize retention?” ([19:06])

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4. Creative Community: The Manhattan ‘Movie Dorm’

• Red Bucket Collective: Discusses NYC’s Lower Manhattan scene—including the Safdie brothers, the Schulmans, Lena Dunham, and the collaborative spirit of the “movie dorm” ([26:00]–[29:34]).
  • “We were all incubated in this one physical space... and I look around and it's still like an equal amount of people doing really creative, kick ass work all the time.” ([28:05])
• Working with Family: Reflects on his partnership with his brother Van, creative tensions, and mutual inspiration.
  • “Van has always been sort of the creative North Star for me. He's the reason why I started making movies.” ([30:43])

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5. Refusing the Worst Temptations of Monetization

• Rejecting Exploitation: Casey declined doing NFTs and other ethically dubious cash grabs:
  • “It will be selling 100% of my integrity for this amount of money.” ([33:46])
  • “There is an inherent honesty in reading a commercial for a fucking VPN... If I disagree with this, I can change the channel. But I think that there's something that is very different between that and doing something that I think crosses the line towards exploitation.” ([34:25])
• On Merch: Regrets not doing merchandise earlier—not for cash, but because fans wanted to participate. Contrasts this with NFTs, where nothing of value is offered ([35:25]).
• Integrity Above All:
  • “Integrity is kind of the only thing.” ([38:21])

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6. The Algorithm, Sensationalism & Extremism

• Sensational Content: Discusses algorithmic incentives for extreme or clickbait content—and its impact.
  • “For me, I was really passionate about that... I posted that video and I expected it to do what my daily vlog did. And then it did 60x what my daily vlog did. And it was only afterwards that I was like, oh, that's what? That's sensational.” ([48:53])
• Downsides of Pursuing Sensationalism: Warns this path often leads to downfall or even disaster for creators (e.g., David Dobrik, Vitaly) ([49:39], [50:47], [51:36]).

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7. Personal Sacrifice, Family, and Meaning

• The Cost of Creative Obsession:
  • “My whole life fell apart around me. My wife and I were on the precipice of divorce for the entirety of [the daily vlog].” ([55:14])
  • Finds meaning in family, solitude, and focused creative work—even if it means less money ([42:42]).
  • “Being alone, I think, is the ultimate luxury. And my favorite thing is to be alone in my office working. And that's expensive.” ([42:42])

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8. New Ventures: The Mod Retro Mission

• From Critique to Creation: Casey’s full-time role with Mod Retro reflects his long-standing frustration with planned obsolescence (e.g., iPod batteries) ([57:34]).
  • “The mission of Mod Retro is to literally build the best consumer electronics technology that are built forever.” ([57:53])
• Tech Should Serve Us: Critiques modern tech as extractive and manipulative ([58:33]).
  • “Your TV... has a microphone in it. It has all this fucking bloatware... Instagram is there to understand your viewership behavior so it can better serve you ads... Technology has become this thing that is just meant to extract from you the person.” ([58:33])
• Screen Time, Kids & Values: Endorses tech that encourages real-world, social experience—contrasts Nintendo 64-era gameplay vs. today’s microtransaction-ridden phone games ([63:10]).

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9. Social Media, Antisemitism, and Speaking Out

• After Oct. 7th: Casey explains why he made the “Jew” video in response to the Hamas attack and his long pattern of being vocal about civil rights ([66:06]).
  • “I'm a Jew. Or as the Internet would call me, a fucking Jew, right? ... No, I felt a need to speak up about that. And yeah, I was like eviscerated for that... and it fucking sucks. And I think it's awful that more people don't speak out about it.” ([66:06], [67:00])
• Double Standards & Social Media’s Role: Discusses how criticism of Israel and public Jewishness is uniquely policed and targeted, and social media accelerates hatred ([71:36]).
  • “Social media is an accelerant for that sort of hatred...” ([72:27])

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10. On the American Dream, Resilience, and Attitude

• From Welfare to Success: Describes teenage fatherhood, living in a trailer, working odd jobs—a “21st-century American dream”—but not without caveats ([73:47]).
  • “I do think that, like, having had the luxury of traveling this world a dozen times over, I think that what I was able to do with the effort, I applied to it—I don't know of another place in the world that I would have been able to do that.” ([74:40])
• Advice to Young People: Cautions against a victim mentality ([75:19]).
  • “If you subscribe to [the idea that the world is against you], you're gonna have a really tough time finding your place in this world.” ([75:19])

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11. The Future: AI’s Creative Apocalypse

• Fears about AI: Casey’s pessimistic about AI-generated media overwriting human creativity.
  • “AI is going to figure it out... it's some apocalyptic... black hole tsunami that's going to overwhelm all. I think TikTok is going to, like, with every scroll, it's going to know what you want to see more. And the next video it will create for you will be that.” ([76:51])
  • Expresses hope to be proven wrong, cherishes human imperfection in art.
  • “The more broken it feels, the more I like it.” ([78:42])

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12. Lightning Round: Personality, Regrets, and Daily Life

• On Regrets, Parenting & Personality:
  • Tattoos: “I hate them all equally.” ([79:05])
  • Difficult? “Yes. Extremely difficult.” ([79:29])
  • Parenting: “I value resiliency over any other trait when it comes to parenting.” ([79:36])
  • Latest disappointment: “My own inability to finish what I start.” ([79:49])
  • What he’s doing after the interview: “Going back and trying to finish a video.” ([79:58])
  • Cereal choice: Flip-flops between Cinnamon Toast Crunch and its “churros” variant ([80:08]).

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Notable Quotes

On YouTube’s inevitability:
“It was clear that technology would enable [filmmaking] for everybody someday... it was really obvious to me early.” ([04:16])

On online fame:
“When people look at me, they know me... when you make a daily show ... you can't play a character. That was just me. So they genuinely do know me and I don't know them.” ([09:45])

On creative authenticity:
“Artistic purity comes from a place where it's like a true form of self expression... I do not think Quentin Tarantino sits down and says, how can I best please my audience right now?” ([19:06])

On selling out:
“Integrity is kind of the only thing.” ([38:21])

On sensationalism:
“The more sensational the subject matter, the greater the views... and that leads to sort of an inevitable kind of destruction.” ([49:37])

On technology:
“Technology has become this thing that is just meant to extract from you the person.” ([58:51])

On AI’s threat:
“AI is going to figure it out... it's some apocalyptic... black hole tsunami that's going to overwhelm all.” ([76:51])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Casey’s Role in YouTube & Early Vlogging: [02:11] – [04:43]
• The Parasociality of Online Fame: [09:11] – [14:11]
• Defining Interestingness & Craft in Vlogs: [14:11] – [21:44]
• The Red Bucket Collective & Creative Community: [26:00] – [30:37]
• Ethics, Merch, and NFTs: [32:30] – [38:21]
• Platform Incentives: Sensationalism & Downfalls: [44:01] – [51:36]
• Life After Daily Vlogging, Family & Priorities: [53:17] – [55:54]
• Mod Retro & Planned Obsolescence: [56:00] – [63:10]
• Antisemitism, Social Media & Speaking Out: [66:06] – [73:00]
• American Dream & Attitude: [73:19] – [76:19]
• AI & the Creative Future: [76:19] – [78:59]
• Lightning Round: [78:59] – [80:21]

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Memorable Moments

• Casey’s frank admission on turning down “low tens of millions” for NFT cash grabs to preserve integrity ([33:46]).
• His emotional reaction to rewatching his son in old vlogs: “That broke me... Maybe there'll be a day when I'm really old and I'm able to go back and look at those couple years of my life. I'm definitely not there yet.” ([25:00])
• Hoping AI’s creative apocalypse proves him wrong: “The more broken [art] feels, the more I like it. The less AI, the less CGI. The more I can see the human hand, the more I love it.” ([78:42])

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Overall Tone & Takeaway

Casey’s honesty, humility, and self-deprecation disarm the listener—he’s rigorous about his own values, wary of the creative and ethical pitfalls of digital fame, and deeply reflective about technology’s role in our lives. He champions authenticity, creative independence, and human connection, even as he’s anxious about the future (AI, the state of tech, and the cultural tide on social platforms). For aspiring creators and cultural critics alike, his story is a guidebook for navigating a post-monoculture age with integrity and purpose.

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Transcript

[Interviewer]

Hi everyone.

[Susie Weiss]

Welcome to Second Thought. I'm Susie Weiss. I'm a columnist at the Free Press and a very strong opinion haver. You may have read my takes on Semi Glue, Tides, Dating Lab, Grown Diamonds, Britney Spears Conservatorship, Katy Perry's trip to Space, Melinda Gates. Very disappointing memoir.

[Interviewer]

I could go on and I intend to.

[Susie Weiss]

Today I am launching a new podcast called Second Thought to tackle all things pop culture. And I know what you're thinking, a podcast is exactly what this world needs one more of.

[Interviewer]

But I really think this one might

[Susie Weiss]

be worth your time. We are in a golden age of pop culture. There's never been more movies, television, books, fashion and online drama to dissect. The monoculture has been replaced by a zillion little subcultures and niches. And as fun, as exciting as that can be, it's also overwhelming. What's going on with the Airbnb situation at Coachella? Has Taylor Swift made monogamy cool again? Are we ready to accept that Lena Dunham is the voice of her generation? What is a Labubu and how can I protect my family from them? It can feel like a full time job to keep up with these pressing matters, and I know I've made it one. But I want to break it all down for you. Most weeks you'll find me alongside my co host, the brilliant comedian Dan Adud, giving our takes on the craziest culture stories of the day and bringing in our favorite people to weigh in.

[Interviewer]

But for today, for our first episode, I want to give you a special

[Susie Weiss]

interview with someone who has done more than most to shape this current cultural moment. I'm so excited to share this interview and to be in your headphones every Friday. One more thing. Second Thought shares a name with my weekly column, which you can subscribe to@the FP.com I really hope you enjoy it.

[Interviewer]

Our guest today has a very unique kind of celebrity, and when we announced his interview, half of the office, I won't say whether it was the older or younger half, stood up and cheered. But even if you are old and have not heard the name Casey Neistat, you are already living in the world that he helped to create over the past two decades. Casey not only perfected the art of vlogging, that's video blogging and viral video making. He came to define the category. In 2003, two years before YouTube even existed, he posted his first viral video, which we're going to talk about called Ipods.

[Susie Weiss]

Dirty Secret.

[Interviewer]

Apple was forced to change their battery policy because of it. In 2010, he launched his YouTube channel. But in 2015, he launched his daily vlog, a series that captured scenes from his life and created a whole new genre. He did it for about 800 days. That run catapulted him from 300,000 subscribers to 10 million in 18 months. It also set the blueprint for the one man media brand on the precipice of yet another digital revolution. I wanted to talk to Casey Neistat. Thank you so much for being here.

[Casey Neistat]

That was really flattering. Happy to be here. It's an honor. Thanks for having me. Thanks.

[Interviewer]

Softening you up.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. It worked. I'm blushing.

[Interviewer]

Where in the productivity matrix does doing people's podcasts very kindly doing people's podcasts.

[Casey Neistat]

I think it would probably fall into the. I don't remember my colors anymore, but the one that is things that you should do and benefit you but are not. They don't have an output, maybe.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

I don't know. You know that video, that video? I released that last week.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And there were some people in the comments that were like, I can see you change your clothes and you didn't make this in one day. That video took me nine months to make.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Casey Neistat]

There's an opening shot where I go running, and it's like three quick shots and the trees are green. I started that in September. And the irony that it took me nine months to make a movie about procrastination, I think does service to the narrative behind it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it really, really does. Before we get into that video, I want to zoom out a second, and I'm curious if you saw this fact coming. YouTube has 2.5 billion monthly users. It is the most watched video platform in the world. It's way bigger than Netflix, and it's gaining on television as a category. One billion hours of YouTube are consumed daily, which is one of those stats that just doesn't even. It means nothing to me because it's so big. Did you expect that?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Casey Neistat]

Without with zero equivocation.

[Interviewer]

How'd you know?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes. I'm the oldest millennial in the whole world. I was born in 1981. So I think Gen X.

[Interviewer]

You have some Gen X in you.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. Gen x ended in 81, and millennials began in 81. So my entree into filmmaking was when the first computer ever shipped that you could edit videos on for consumers, the iMac TV. It was like 1998 or something. And that process of discovery for me, which I was arguably of the first people ever to have access to that that process of discovery for me was so eye opening and so overwhelming. And it was clear that technology would enable that for, you know, in short, work for everybody someday. And if it made me feel that way, it was abundantly clear that it would make others feel that way. So it was something that it was. It became really obvious to me really early. The specifics of how were a little bit. A little bit more gray. But then when I discovered YouTube, specifically how I turned to YouTube and away from television, it was like, there's no way other people aren't going to jump on this. And by other people, I don't mean the industry, I mean everyday people. Yeah, like, what's the, what's the Warhol quote? Like everybody. Everybody, Everybody.

[Interviewer]

I guess they're 15 minutes in the.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, everyone should have 15 minutes of fame and everyone will. I don't know if that's the quote. That's definitely not the quote, but like, that's the idea.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And it was so clear that that's where things are headed. There was never a doubt in my mind.

[Interviewer]

So you got the Mac and you were like, this is going to be the most democratizing piece of technology for filmmakers.

[Casey Neistat]

I don't know if I thought about it with that level of sophistication. I think it was just more that, like, literally, like before that it was about reel to reel. Before that, iMac TV that had iMovie 1.0, which is not entirely dissimilar to whatever, you know, cap cut you edit with on your iPhone today. Before that it was reel to reel. So it was something that was completely inaccessible to everyone. And then it was something that was accessible to everyone. And it was clear to me that that was what was going to continue. Because the idea of expression through making videos or editing videos, that was the thing that I felt like, oh, everybody is going to want this. And when everybody has access to this, we're going to see this gigantic transition happen.

[Interviewer]

Did you watch Succession?

[Casey Neistat]

Huge fan of Succession.

[Interviewer]

So good. So good watching your videos. There's a line in the pilot of Succession, Logan Roy, the Rupert Murdoch character, it's about the media dynasty, kind of loosely based on the Murdochs. And he says, in this family dinner, you make your own reality. And once you've done it, apparently everyone's of the opinion. It was also fucking obvious. Do you think that?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, yeah. It also, like, I don't mean to sound prophetic when I say that. It was always clear to me.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

But like, when I look back at their early days of YouTube certainly before I really found a real audience on YouTube and I was getting started on there. I was a commercial director, like a pretty traditional commercial director where you pitch and you have to write treatments and maybe they choose you and you get paid a day rate and you show up and you've got to, you've got the script and you shoot the 30 second commercial. And I wanted to work with companies that would let me make ads on YouTube. So I would have to sort of evangelize YouTube to advertisers. So I fell into this place where I had to sell the story that you just objectively illustrated to me. I would have to sell that story 15, 17 years ago. So it forced me to kind of consider it in a way that I think other people maybe had no. Had less intention of when they looked at what YouTube was or what it could have been. I was confronting that almost every day in my professional life. So I think that was a big part of my own clarifying clarification as to like, what this platform is capable of.

[Interviewer]

Right. Like this is gonna be the thing.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. Because I had to sell that story so the companies would let me make videos on YouTube. I had to sell that story. And eventually you say something enough, you realize that like, oh, no, I actually believe what I'm saying right now. This is where it's going.

[Interviewer]

And then you look around and you're like, YouTube is like where a huge amount of advertising dollars are spent and all the rest of it.

[Casey Neistat]

I mean, if you're not spending money on YouTube or social media right now, like, where are you spending money? You're not going to reach people anywhere else.

[Interviewer]

That's so crazy. I want to give the listener a little bit of background on the vlog and you're going to correct me if anything's wrong. In 2015, you start this daily vlog.

[Casey Neistat]

So far, so good.

[Interviewer]

Okay, cool.

[Casey Neistat]

So far you're correct.

[Interviewer]

And these are like kind of video diary entries in a way, the videos that you make every day. And it was not a diary, a journal. I know men don't keep diaries. And it was ostensibly to promote this startup you were building called Beam.

[Casey Neistat]

Correct.

[Interviewer]

Which later sold to cnn. But then this project, this creative outlet marketing exercise, it gets bigger and bigger and it becomes a sort of self directed Truman Show.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And not too long after you start your vlog, you become extremely famous. And you see it in the videos. You're saying hi to people. Everyone's, oh my God, I'm in the vlog. The mailman, like skateboarders And I think you were maybe one of the first people to have what we now understand to be a parasocial relationship. People know you who you don't know. Our producer saw you running and what is it like to. For that to be true for people to know you and you don't know them, like, in the magnitude of millions.

[Casey Neistat]

It's strange.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

It's flattering. It can fuck you up a little bit. I was very mature before, like, I stumbled into this weird Internet fame thing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

I was in my mid to late 30s and, you know, years prior, 10 years prior, I had a TV show on HBO that, that I also starred in. So I had assumed that I had some understanding of what a degree of notoriety as a filmmaker meant. I had no idea. And I think there's a uniqueness to the kind of fame that that work creates that maybe doesn't exist anywhere else. Like, I'm a huge Brad Pitt fan because I love Tyler Durden in Fight Club totally. Because he was great in F1. But I don't know shit about the guy in real life. I don't know anything about him. Maybe I read something in a tabloid once. So if I were to meet him, I'm looking at the characters that he plays. And when people look at me, they know me. Like, I'm not. You can sort of fake who you are in small pieces, but when you make a daily show that's 10 minute songs every day about your life, you can't play a character. I was unable to play a character. Like, that was just me. So they genuinely do know me and I don't know them. I never know them. And so it's a weird and sort of challenging thing to reconcile. And something that people say to me is like, you're so patient when people say hi to you. And I'm flattered always. And I always think that it's respectful and polite to be patient. But I also just sort of empathize with, like, in order to have the gumption to come up to a stranger and say hi. Like, they feel like they genuinely know me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And that I try to reciprocate that by being nice, but I definitely don't know that. And it's weird. It's a very, very strange thing. And the part about where it can fuck you up is like, I had the luxury of being a grown adult father, married, very, very settled in who I was as a person. But most of the creators, especially the ones within my community, were very young when they experienced something very similar. And I think For a young person who hasn't had the exposure to the world and the sort of social experience that only comes with age, I think it's a very different dynamic for them, and it's something that I've gotten to see up close, and it's a very, very strange thing. And I don't know, I can't think of another time in history where there's another medium like that.

[Interviewer]

I always wonder with people like you if there's, like, Casey and then capital C. Casey, capital N. Neistat. Like, are there two or is it just one? Like, I guess when the camera's off, was there ever a moment where you're like, okay, camera's off. I'm off. Because, like, Casey Neistat, you know, has to drum it up for the camera, and then I need to be off.

[Casey Neistat]

Not really.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Casey Neistat]

I'm more articulate on camera.

[Interviewer]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, even the most casual when I was. Because you get. You do it every day. You get really good at it. And on top of that, I edit all of my own videos. So I say, like, with filmmaking, you learn how to be a good writer by editing. When you're editing something, you're like, fuck. Like, this script didn't make sense. I wish that I had written this, and with my vlogging, it was a similar thing. Like, I wish I had said that more clearly, because now this doesn't really make sense. So the tail starts wagging the dog, you start speaking more clearly. And every time you click record, no matter how casual or how spontaneous it is, there's a little bit of calculation in your mind of, like, how can I say what I'm trying to capture right now?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, I'm here doing a podcast with Susie. Like, how would I say that? And I give it one second of thought, and then I click record and say it. So I think the YouTube Casey is just slightly more articulate, maybe a little bit nicer.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

But for the most part.

[Interviewer]

But there's no, like, diva behind the curtain.

[Casey Neistat]

No. I mean, my wife might disagree. I don't think so.

[Interviewer]

You've said that. Like, when. The early days of the vlog, your job was to pull interestingness from your life. And as you said, you're a new dad, you're settled, you're in New York City. How do you pull interestingness from your life every day?

[Casey Neistat]

Well, like, the origin story of the vlog, you did a great job encapsulating it. But it was, you know, like, in the years we sold our HBO show that my Brother Van and I made in 2007. Yeah, it was a really weird thing because it was bought by Carolyn Strauss, who's the head of HBO programming, maybe for the Sopranos and Sex and the City. She bought our show and then the next day HBO fired her. And the new person that came in our show was this bastard stepchild. So they just sat on it for three years. And it was a really weird three years. We told all of our friends and family that our show was sold on hbo. And then when they aired it, it was like on Friday nights at midnight. Nobody saw it critically, it did really well, but nobody watched it. And then my brother Van and I stopped working together and I spent years as a commercial director. It wasn't a super satisfying thing to do. And then I went to MIT in 2014 and my self assigned goals and I left MIT. I was going to do something completely different to what I was doing prior. And that's when I started my software development company, Beam. And the idea was like, I know that I'm good at making videos. I know that they get views and I should leverage that to talk about what I'm doing at Beam. And I just listened to, I think startup.com, a podcast or that might have been a show or something. And I was like, this. Building a company is the best material for a daily YouTube series. And then really quickly, it was obvious that like five dudes in a windowless office writing code is not compelling.

[Interviewer]

I know people are always like, oh my God, like a startup, a media startup.

[Casey Neistat]

It's like, exactly. It is horrible. And it just started to absorb everything from my life. And it's interesting that you bring up that idea of interestingness because my family and I, for our kids spring break, just went to the beach, went to the Caribbean for this was last week. And we were in the same exact location where the first episode of the first of the vlog was filmed. And I wanted to match some of the shots that were in that first episode. So I rewatched the first episode for the first time in 11 years. And I could see like, I remember filming that and thinking like, this is really interesting because we're on this tropical island and there's all this fascinating stuff. And I leaned into that. It's like me jumping off a cliff and seeing a sea turtle underwater. And then by episode four, I'm back in New York and I say to the camera, I don't know how much longer I can sustain doing this because, like, I'm not.

[Interviewer]

There's no Turtles here.

[Casey Neistat]

Exactly. There's not a single sea turtle in all five boroughs. And that's when, like, the very definition of interestingness started to change. And I think interestingness is always in the eye of the beholder. But I don't think that sensationalism is the only path to interestingness. I mean, you brought up succession, but I think about Game of Thrones.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Like Game of Thrones, the first couple seasons were really about developing those characters. And then that fucking abomination of a final season was every episode, some over the top huge battle of dragons and explosions, and it was like, it just kept getting bigger. And it meant less and less to me as a viewer.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

And then I'm rewatching, I'm doing my fourth lap on the Sopranos. Oh, God, 74 hours of the Sopranos. That show gets smaller and smaller and it got better and better, but it got less about sensationalism and more about developing these characters. And I think, like, in retrospect, looking back at the vlog, interestingness stopped being about sort of the sensational things I was doing and much more about sort of the intimacy and the honesty and this relationship that you can develop with the audience. So the very idea of interestingness, I think, really changed for me over the course of those 800 days.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I mean, I watch your brother's videos too, and like, some of my favorites are like, the story of my pen and like, let me get you into like, the mechanical of the whole thing. I mean, it's amazing.

[Casey Neistat]

No, Van Neistat is my favorite YouTuber in the world.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And I think it's because, like, he is someone who makes videos with a total disregard for his audience.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Casey Neistat]

It's what is interesting to him. And then you as the viewer get to choose if you find that interesting. I always do. But I think that that gets to the very core of, like, what is this idea of interestingness?

[Interviewer]

Do you disregard your audience, would you say?

[Casey Neistat]

I think I'm more slightly more thoughtful of my audience. And this isn't to. This isn't. That's not. Disregard is not meant in the pejorative. It doesn't mean, like, you know, I'm against the audience, nor is Van. But I think, like, artistic purity comes from a place where it's like a true form of self expression. And I think there's this. I call it. This is not meant to be mean, but, like, I call it the beastification of YouTube, which is that I love Jimmy because his goal was always, always to be the biggest YouTuber. His goal was never to be the best storyteller, to be the best filmmaker. He just wanted the biggest audience. But I think that.

[Interviewer]

So he filled a swimming pool with Orbeez.

[Casey Neistat]

Completely. Yeah. He stuck people in a circle and said, last person out gets a million dollars. But I think that that is antithetical to how I, or someone like my brother Van thinks of telling a good story or why we make videos, which is much closer to sort of sharing what we find compelling, telling the stories that we would tell otherwise, even if there was no audience there. So I think that's sort of the disparity between, like, hyper optimized for an audience, what Netflix does with their shitty action movies, and then making the movie you want to make. Think of, like the golden age of cinema, 1970s Harold and Maude, you know, early Wes Anderson, like Tarantino. I do not think Quentin Tarantino sits down and says, how can I best please my audience right now? How can I maximize retention? I think Quentin Tarantino, I think he

[Interviewer]

sometimes is thinking the opposite.

[Casey Neistat]

I agree. I think he sits down and says, what's the story I want to make? What's the movie I want to make? And I think it just has to do with where you put your values and priorities as a creator.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned Wes Anderson, and it's like the thing you're like, I guess, credited with, which you kind of were just flicking at, is bringing craft to this idea of a daily vlog and watching them, there's a very specific sensibility. There's some Jackass. I see some, like urban, kind of playground, skateboarding derivative. Jackass is amazing. There's some Tom Sachs, certainly. I always see some like that Rube Goldberg machine, esque Wes Anderson thing. Am I getting it right? You tell me. What were you looking towards when we built that?

[Casey Neistat]

That's what you saw. I could never tell you. You're getting it wrong. But I think that, like, well, stylistically there were creators. There's like a really wonderful guy named Louis Cole. His channel is called Fun for Louis. Ben Brown is another creator. And in the early 2010s, they had daily vlogs. And what it was is a very literal holding a tiny point and shoot camera at the end of their arm, just sort of walking you through their day. And these guys were really charming and interesting and they did cool shit. So it was fun as a journal to get to spend a little bit of your time with them. And I saw that and I found it engaging. And I thought to myself, like, what would happen if you were to Combine some elements of filmmaking. Because by, you know, that time, I'd been a professional filmmaker for 15 years with what they're doing, which is sharing their lives.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

So I think I brought a level of. And I use this word very,

[Interviewer]

very

[Casey Neistat]

generously, but, like a level of professionalism.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Which is like simply, like, thinking about the shot before I click record and having a respect for my audience. I know we were just talking about that, but having respect for my audience and how it's captured. I mean, it's not just me holding a camera, yapping into it, but, like, some consideration of, like, what is the scene right now? How do I capture this? How do I show this? What lens would be right for this? All with the effort of sort of promoting the narrative and with that. Yes. Certainly my biggest influences were like, Rushmore, to me, is it. Is it for me, I don't know of another movie that maybe had as big of an impact on my life as Rushmore. I don't know that it's my favorite movie, although it's definitely top three. But Rushmore, it threaded that needle, which was like, I love Tarantino movies, but I watched Pulp Fiction when I was a kid. It. And it blew me away. But there was no part of it that said, I want to do that. Cause I don't know, I couldn't do that. I can't look at Guernica and be like, I want to be a painter. But I looked at Rushmore and I was like, I think I can do that. And I could never do what Wes Anderson does. But, like, that was what. That was a different kind of inspiration. So there's certainly a kind of. There's a lot that really motivated me as a cinematographer from Wes Anderson and then Jackass. Like, what I love about Jackass and what I hope you're referring to is not like the over the top stunts or the hurting themselves or any of that goofiness, but, like, the magic of Jackass was. It was never the stunts. It was them laughing afterwards. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It was the camaraderie. Jackass was the friends we made along the way.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, completely. And, like, that is something I love, and that is my life. Like, that's my real life. Like, I work out of an office in downtown Manhattan, and every floor of the building are my friends. It's like living in a college dorm room and we're all adults.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And, like, that's my life. And like Marlon, my UPS delivery driver, is one of my closest friends.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, three days a week, he has lunch in My office, and we talk about marriage and raising kids. He's one of my closest friends. He's also one of the most likable human beings on the planet.

[Interviewer]

Has he given you good advice about marriage?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, you know, he's like 15 years older than me, so he's like, he's one lap ahead of me. Like, his kids are all going to college now. My kids are all, like, in, you know, grade school. And he's, you know, he's very wise and just thoughtful, but he's a special person. So that, you know, the hurricane that was a daily show sort of absorbed all of these. These people. And I think that definitely lent itself to a kind of camaraderie. Maybe a jackass, like, camaraderie. Although I don't. I don't know that I would choose that as a descriptor for.

[Interviewer]

Well, it's like watching someone else's home videos. And like, you've said, nostalgia is my favorite emotion. And like, I think there's nothing more. I can't even watch home videos of my own family. It's too intense. Do you feel that way when you watch, like when you were watching the Caribbean, the first vlog, just sobbing like,

[Casey Neistat]

it's the first time I've watched it in 11 years. I do not watch any of my videos. There's like five of my videos that I've seen a bunch of times. Because when I do, like when I give lectures on the TEDx, I've seen those. Yeah, I don't watch any of my old videos.

[Interviewer]

Why?

[Casey Neistat]

I don't know. I. It's a weird. I don't have an answer.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Casey Neistat]

I think fear of nostalgia is a big part of why I haven't watched any of the vlogs. And like, I'm like a mean dad. Because now my kids start watching my vlogs and, like, they're not allowed to watch it in the house. And like, I'll come in and if I hear it, I'm like, you're not allowed to watch that. As if I'm catching.

[Interviewer]

As if it's like, R rated.

[Casey Neistat]

And it's just because, like, you've been told not to watch that when. When I'm home. And I don't know what it is, but I definitely think, like, fear and nostalgia. Like, when I watched the first episode of the vlog, there's a moment in it where the plane comes low to land and we're standing under it and it goes over our heads. And my son, who's now, he'll be 28 next week he goes to Step up on the Rock and he kind of falls and he grabs my arm. And he was like 16 then and he was still a kid. And now he's this grown ass man. And that broke me. And I think that's a big part of it. Maybe there'll be a day when I'm really old and I'm able to go back and look at those couple years of my life. I'm definitely not there yet.

[Interviewer]

I really don't blame you. You mentioned this building where you and your friends all work, and Lena Dunham, the great ld, has an article about exactly this. So it's called How I Became a Filmmaker. She called it a movie dorm. And this quote, odd little utopia of movie nerds working out of an office on lower Broadway, which you were a part of. We're going to get into like the How Brothers is sort of like this big theme, but like, it's you, it's the softies, it's the Schulmans. It's like all of these Jewish brothers hanging out in this. In this big building in lower Manhattan near Chinatown. And she wrote, never in my life had I felt like I knew what was happening, much less where. But our commune on Broadway reminded me of the way my mother spoke about Soho in, in the early 1970s, when someone Fascinating was always doing something fascinating and all you had to do to find it was get out of bed.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, I mean, she's.

[Interviewer]

That it.

[Casey Neistat]

She's a great writer.

[Interviewer]

Oh.

[Casey Neistat]

I mean, it was. Yeah, it was, you know, Ben and Josh Safdie, Ariel, Yaniv Shulman, Henry Joost, who's an incredible filmmaker, who's his brother. He works with Ariel very closely. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Casey Neistat]

They're co directors on a bunch of Greta Gerwig.

[Interviewer]

Yep. That's a big part of the essay.

[Casey Neistat]

And you know, like Oscar Boysen, who just has a new movie out right now called Balthazar. It's an incredible movie. Incredible movie. But he built the shelves in Lena Dunham's studio. Yeah, like that was his job then, was to build Lena's shelves. And you know, his, his movie right now is, is in theaters like right now. Our hero, Balthazar, definitely go see. It's a great movie, but it's just fascinating that, like, we were all incubated in this one physical space. And I just ran into someone last this weekend who's a super successful media guy, and he was talking to me about this article.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And I mentioned to him that, like, the, the crazy thing is that, you know what that era Lena's referring to is now almost 20 years ago. That was like 18 years ago. I'm the only one who hasn't left the building. Like Josh and Benny's studio on the fifth floor. Like, someone else has it now. And I think I'm two generations of entirely new people that have cycled through the space. And now I'm in that building and I look around and it's still like an equal amount of people doing really creative, kick ass work all the time. And like my neighbor above me, this kid named Jordan Studdard, he's a fantastic artist and filmmaker. And, like, I'll see him like twice a day, three times a day. We have a dedicated landline between my office and his office.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And he just like bangs on the door and like, he's like, hey, man, you used up all my printer paper. And I'm like, oh, I bought you more. And I give him the printer paper back. Or, like, I'll come up, I'll go upstairs and grab him. I'll be like, I just need you to hold the camera. And he's like, okay, I'm good, man. You know, like, and that is such a special. Like, I know you tried living outside of New York City. I tried living outside of New York City and failed miserably. And I think that was the one thing that no matter what I did, no matter where I went, I couldn't find that energy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And, you know, my office on Broadway might be the center of that for me, but I think this whole city is evocative of that kind of energy.

[Interviewer]

And she called it the Red Bucket Collective. I had never heard that. Is that what it was?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. So in 2002, like, way pre YouTube van and I had on our website nicestatbrothers.com, which I got. I hope I still own that URL. If somebody buys it before I do, just email it to me, please. We had a bunch of videos and we had a contact page and we got an email from, like, filmsedbucketfilms.com and it was these teenagers, but it was Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Ariel Shulman, Nev Shulman, Alex Kalman. Like, all these guys that have gone on to build incredible careers. And they were just a group of kids that made movies together. And. Yeah, so they're the Red Bucket Studios. The Red Bucket film studio was on the fifth floor.

[Interviewer]

Do you think there was something special about brothers doing it or families doing it together?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just like, Collaboration in general, especially creative collaboration, like, it requires such a synergy that I think it lends itself to siblings. Maybe there's something unique about brothers. I don't know. But for sure.

[Interviewer]

And of course, you made the HBO series and a lot of your early videos with your brother Van.

[Casey Neistat]

The first decade of my entire career was there was no Casey Neistat and no Van Neistat. It was the Neistat brothers.

[Interviewer]

What was that like?

[Casey Neistat]

Incredible. Like, it was incredible. You know, Van is. He's the coolest person I know, and he's also, like, the greatest artist I know. Um, Van was always the leader when it came to the creativity between the two of us. He still is.

[Interviewer]

He's a big brother. Bigger brother, yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

But I would also say, like, objectively, he's a better creative than I am. Like, he just has this sort of immovable creativity that cannot be. That cannot be changed, it cannot be altered. It cannot be molested in any ways. It's so pure. And I think I'm much more like, you know, more of a pragmatist to a fault. Like, I remember when he and I were working together, we found some success. We, like, got into a fight once. Cause we couldn't afford rent. So I got us, like, a Starbucks commercial to direct. And he was like, I don't direct a fucking Starbucks commercial. And he was right creatively, sure. But I was maybe right pragmatically. And I think that's indicative of what the relationship was like. But Van has always been sort of the creative North Star for me. He's the reason why I started making movies. I bought a video camera. This is before I moved to New York city. I was 17. I bought a video camera and he had the computer. So he had a computer that could edit video, but no camera. And I had a camera without a computer.

[Interviewer]

It was mutually assured destruction.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

[Interviewer]

Mutually assured creativity. You're still close.

[Casey Neistat]

Super close. Yeah. His son's named X. X, the letter X. And his son was born before Elon's kid was born. So just to be clear, I respect it.

[Interviewer]

On the scheme of purity to whoring.

[Casey Neistat]

Okay. Can't wait to see where this is going.

[Interviewer]

I think people would be surprised to know that a man who has been online as long as you have doesn't

[Casey Neistat]

have an OnlyFans page yet.

[Interviewer]

No, OnlyFans yet has never read an ad for athletic greens or meundies that I know of.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, but you can't go too far down that road. I've done Some.

[Interviewer]

Okay. You've done some. No, I'm saying there's a spectrum here. Okay. There is no neistat coin.

[Casey Neistat]

No, that one. I resisted.

[Interviewer]

There was never a Casey Khan.

[Casey Neistat]

No.

[Interviewer]

There was no NFT drop.

[Casey Neistat]

Nope.

[Interviewer]

Why not? I assume the, like, the tentacles were like.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. Very strong.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Especially because during the heyday of NFTs, there was definitely an opportunity to like, I can do this. And I was approached formally by people that would organize the whole thing and it was like unequivocal ftx. It was equally problematic though. But it was unequivocal. And that if we do this, the amount of money you'll walk with will be a set for life. Amount of money.

[Interviewer]

Right. Generational wealth. Except for life. Okay, fine. We don't have to. I mean, unless you want to talk numbers.

[Casey Neistat]

Tens of millions. Low tens of millions. Oh, wow. Yes. And like guaranteed. And how I looked at it and I think I even talked to my wife about it was like, it will be selling 100% of my integrity for this amount of money. And there were definitely voices that were like, dude, you should just fucking do it. And then there were voices that were the most delusional, which is like, this isn't selling your integrity. These things are going to go up in value. Look at bored apes. And I just was like, I think there's an inherent honesty in reading a commercial for a fucking vpn.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Which is like, it's. I don't wanna do it, but like, I got bills and I got kids that are gonna go to college someday and like, fuck you, I have to be paid. But like, you, the viewer know.

[Interviewer]

Okay, what this is.

[Casey Neistat]

Yes. I'm gonna sit through this for a 60 second read because this man is. This is how he makes money. If I disagree with this, I can change the channel. But I think that there's something that is very different between that and doing something that I think crosses the line towards exploitation. Like maybe a more acute example is. This is one of my regrets. This was a mistake. I never did merch because I thought it was exploitive and I thought it was stupid. And like all these people who show up to watch my videos every day and have enabled all this, this greatness that I got to experience. I'm gonna like sell them a sweatshirt for 50 bucks. Like, no, I'm not doing that. And then after I ended the vlog, like later, like I had a conversation with somebody smart about it and they were like, don't you remember, like, how bad you wanted that Red Hot Chili?

[Interviewer]

A concert T shirt. Yeah, of course.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, fuck, they're right. And like, this is a way for your audience to sort of be a part of what you're doing. I'm like, you're right. And I did one sweatshirt.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And it was like super. It was great. It was successful. But like, I really wish I had put more effort into that because again, like an nft, you're selling fiction for real money. But like a merch, I think is a really great thing.

[Interviewer]

You will get the sweatshirt. Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Like you're giving someone something. There's a really fair exchange of value. It's like my. I love what my wife does. Like her company Billi. Like, she makes products that she obsesses over for years. And then if you choose that to participate in that, like, you give her the money, you get this thing. And that I think is a really great example of, I think, a positive way to engage with your audience. I buy MrBeast Feastables. I really like their peanut butter cups. Totally fair. I got no hate towards Jimmy, but to sell an NFT that I knew when I was at MIT was when Ethereum first was announced. I have some understanding of cryptocurrencies and the entire nature of the blockchain industry. There was no doubt in my mind that all every NFT sold is going to go to zero.

[Interviewer]

Oh, really?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes. Like every stocks.

[Interviewer]

You see the future.

[Casey Neistat]

No.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Casey Neistat]

And just so you know, I'm not good at any of that. Like my wife says, my how I buy real estate is buy high, sell low because I've lost money. I rent right now because I've lost money in every time I tried to buy a house. No, I'm not good at that. But like NFTs, I was like inherently like, this is not going to. This isn't going to work. And I knew that this would be like extracting money from an audience because they trusted me and giving them nothing in return.

[Interviewer]

Right. It becomes a little snake oily where it's like, I'm gonna sell you this new world and you're getting in early and it's irresponsible.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. I think that there was some part of me that was like, if this is still a thing in five years, I'll do it.

[Interviewer]

Okay, interesting.

[Casey Neistat]

But I don't believe that this is, it's too new.

[Interviewer]

And do you feel like other creators, YouTubers are a little too quick to cash in?

[Casey Neistat]

I mean, sometimes Logan got in a lot of trouble for his NFT project. And I know Logan. I love Logan Paul. I love Logan and Jake, I think they're great guys and I love the careers that they've built. And I don't. I don't know. I can't speak for Logan, but I don't think he sat down and said, let me exploit the shit out of my audience.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

But at the end of the day, like, he was left in a place where there was a really disproportionate. My understanding is that he sort of won his audience sort of lost there, and he has to deal with that. And that's a shitty thing. It's a shitty thing for his audience. It's a shitty thing for him and his brand. And this is not to apologize for anything that he's done. But, like, I would. There's no. I have no interest in being in that situation.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

And when I see my peers doing that, even if they win, it's like, no. Integrity is, like, it's expensive, but integrity is kind of the only thing.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

And if it didn't feel true to me, it's.

[Interviewer]

Do you have any ads that you're like, I shouldn't have done? Like, you wish you did merch, but do you have anything you wish you didn't do?

[Casey Neistat]

Nothing. You know, like, I definitely got in some trouble for some ads. Some that I think the audience was right and some that I totally disagree with. Like, I did a Samsung commercial that was. I thought it was great, but we didn't say it was shot. It was a Samsung commercial till the end. And people flipped out because of that.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Casey Neistat]

I don't know. I won't apologize for that. No, I don't. I don't agree. But, you know, like, I did a deal. I don't want to out anybody because it was a great company, but it was with a VPN company and it was one of the biggest dollar deals I've ever done. And I think it was supposed to be five engagements, and I think I did two of them. And I called my agent and I

[Interviewer]

was like, get me out.

[Casey Neistat]

And that was a really expensive decision.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And it was just because, like, I. It's a good product. I use that VPN service right now. I pay for it every month. But I just didn't feel like I was working it in. In any way that brought value to my audience. Like, Samsung working with Samsung was one of the greatest partnerships I ever got to do. They gave me, like, really great budgets. Like, we took over a shopping mall that's really fun. And we turned the shopping mall into a Willy Wonka level Christmas Sort of holiday themed wonder park where we had professional snowboards going down the escalators doing back flips over the fountain. And then we brought in a bunch of kids from like the Milwaukee Boys and Girls Club and gave them Samsung presents and then they got to play. This is beastish for sure.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

This is pre beast.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

But we did this like, we did this as like there was a real undercurrent of benevolence. Like I gave a significant, I think most of my fee for that I donated to the Boys and Girls Club, but Samsung had to pay for that whole thing. It was millions of dollars like that. I am so psyched that I got the opportunity to do that.

[Interviewer]

Totally.

[Casey Neistat]

So a lot of the brand work that I got to do I thought was really awesome. And I think that's a good example of like, I couldn't have done it without a brand's money. But I think it brought, I think the viewers that watched that video liked it. So there's a very equitable exchange of value there. I think that's something Mr. Beast does really well.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Every video he makes is sponsored sometimes by multiple sponsors. But when you see the video and how over the top it is and how well integrated, you know, like the dude that's stranded on a floating island and he gets a Starbucks shows up, then he gets Starbucks for life. Like, okay, like, that's cool. Like I, like that was fine by me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And if that's how you have to pay for your video, like, no hate from me for stuff like that.

[Interviewer]

When you, when you were approached, just going back to like, you know, you were offered something where you could have walked away within the low tens of millions of dollars. What was like the ultimate thing of like. No, like, what did your wife say? Actually, I'm curious about that.

[Casey Neistat]

I don't remember specifically, and I wish I could remember which one of my smart friends told me to just do it because he had the most compelling argument. I don't know that I had a serious conversation with her about it, but because I never considered it.

[Interviewer]

Okay. You were never gonna really do it.

[Casey Neistat]

No. But I still think about that money. Like I've done really well in life, but I'm not, I'm like, I stress out about how to pay for my kids college. Like we rent an apartment right now and I'm like, candace, we're not renewing this lease. Like we're moving to a cheaper apartment next year. You know, like, I'm not, I'm not in that, that, that level. I Haven't reached.

[Interviewer]

You're not optimizing for. You are a hard man to get in touch with. First of all, there's no assistant.

[Casey Neistat]

I have no assistant.

[Interviewer]

There's no. You go to the website and it's like, contact page. And then it's essentially in a much nicer way.

[Casey Neistat]

No, literally, there's no way to contact me on the contact page.

[Interviewer]

And it's like. And you've said, like, by living this way, you are foregoing gobs of cash.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. It really hurts my career.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

But, like, my whole studio right now. I rebuild my studio every three years. My whole studio right now is hostile architecture. It's designed to make sure there's nowhere for anyone to sit but me. So even if it's my wife, like, can I work out of your office today? There's nowhere for you to work.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Being alone, I think, is the ultimate luxury. And my favorite thing is to be alone in my office working. And that's expensive. So I lose a lot of opportunities because of that. But for me, that's sort of the ultimate thing. And I'm at that weird place in maturity and adult life which is like, what do I want? And it's definitely not a Lambo or a Porsche. I think it's like, what brings me meaning and purpose in life and being with my family. And then when I'm able to sit and focus and be alone, that is the most valuable thing. But, yeah, it hurts. The old pocketbook.

[Mike Pesca]

We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the longstanding advice show and Ambie Award nominated best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host.

[Casey Neistat]

Who?

[Mike Pesca]

Me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from a world class expert. You know, someone who actually very much knows what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the co pay or awkward silences. You've got questions. We'll find the experts and the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca wherever you get podcasts.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Speaking of Lambos and Porsches, we talked. We hit a little bit about this. About sensationalism.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And how the algorithm sort of rewards, as I see it, like many things. But two things, I think, especially if you're like a man who commands attention. One is sensationalism. I got my assistant a Tesla. I paid these bums to fight. It's sort of like carnival stuff. At a certain point, I bought an elephant, I filled a pool of shaving cream. And that's kind of your clickbait world. But if you deliver on it, I think it can be totally legit because people are choosing to watch it. And the other thing that I think it rewards is extremism. And I'm talking here about figures like clavicular, the looks maxer, maybe Andrew Tate. And there's like a really wide spectrum. Some I think are sort of righteous, others not so much of people who go really hardcore into politics, conspiracies, alternative health. Did that. Was that ever tempting to you? How did you avoid that part of it?

[Casey Neistat]

No, I don't. I understood sensationalism as something slightly different, and I think you're correct in your characterization. But for me, it was like, you know, like a video I made last week is something about. I think it's a really fun video. My kids like it, but it's fairly intellectual. It's about, like, procrastination and how I'm guilty of, like, doing these things to procrastinate, doing the work I should be doing. And there's definitely a take on that that could have had a sensational title. But that's a movie I'm really proud of. It took me forever to make, and I knew when I posted that, like, this isn't gonna make a lot of views, relatively. And the video I made before that was about the big blizzard we had here in New York City. And, you know, the Thumbnail is like 24 hours, hour by hour, of the snowstorm with a really good thumb. And I'm like, this needed a shitload of views.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it was a banger.

[Casey Neistat]

I think it's a good video. I don't think it's a great video. I don't think that's a video that. If I didn't. If I hadn't made it, if I were to watch that, I would watch that and be like, oh, that's a great video. It wouldn't make me think. It wouldn't be my rush more. You know, it would be like. You know, It'd be like two enjoyable hours. It's like 10 fun minutes. But for me, it's like, that video is such a gimme. Like, it doesn't mean anything to me as a filmmaker. I had fun making it. I love doing that shit. But there was no. There was no real depth to that. It felt more like one of my daily vlogs. It was just sort of a little experiential video. And then the more intellectual video, infinitely more work, way harder for me to make. I know.

[Interviewer]

Reward.

[Casey Neistat]

Super low reward.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And so how. Where and how sensationalism fits in there for me. I think it's something I'm. I'm aware of, but I'm less conscious of when I'm making videos. Like when I did my most watched video, which I think is 80 or 100 million views or something like that, which was about a first class airline seat.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

You know, like that. The origin stories of that video is like, flying first class was always an obsession of mine. Like, I never got to do it. And it was such a breakthrough. And the truth of that was when I was daily vlogging and YouTube asked me to go speak at VidCon Australia, and I was like, I can't spend 23 hours on a plane because I have to make a video. And they're like, what if we fly you business class? And I'm like, oh, hell yeah. So if you go look three days before I posted the video that got 100 million views. It's a video of me traveling, and it is a daily vlog, but 80% of it is me sitting in business class and how excited I am about it. And I show off that, like, Emirates has a little bar. And, like, it was cool. Emirates saw that video. And while I was in Australia, they figured out who I was and all this, and they intercepted me in Dubai. And, like, we've upgraded you to first class. And I was like, this is it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

I've been waiting my whole life for this. And no one had made a first class review video. Like, there were like the points guy type people that would have sort of GoPro, this is what the seat looks like. And I was like, I'm shooting sort of practical. Yeah, I'm gonna shoot this like a feature fucking film. And like, it was lit perfectly. If you look at most of the shots are on tripod with, like an SLR with a 12 millimeter super wide lens.

[Interviewer]

This is the video that did the most video.

[Susie Weiss]

Okay.

[Casey Neistat]

So, like, for me, I was really passionate about that and, like, brought waterproof cameras into the shower. Like, everything was so specific. But, like, that was something I was just genuinely interested in. I posted that video and I expected it to do what my daily vlog did. And then it did 60x what my daily vlog did. And I looked at it and I was like, good God. And it was only afterwards that I was like, oh, that's what? That's sensational. Like, the title $30,000 airplane seat. That's sensational. And I thought it might do a little bit better. I didn't expect it to do that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And it's funny, because Emirates invited me back, like, a year or two later to review one of their newer planes. And I made a video I'm super proud of. But I called Mr. Beast, and I was like, hey, how do I beastify the title and the thumbnail? And he's like, just let me do it. And his team did the title. He used the thumbnail team and the thumbnail. And it was like literally applying his sensational veneer over a video without changing the video in any capacity. So in any event, that's my very myopic, very narrow, very vanilla take on Sensational. For me, what I see more often among my peers are this really intrinsic, unbreakable connection between the more sensational the subject matter, the greater the views.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

And that leads to sort of an inevitable kind of destruction. And I think when you look at creators that were really, really popular, that had a falling, that were canceled, that did something really fucked up, that something bad happened, that someone was hurt, it's always. It's invariably in pursuit of that sensationalism. And I think now that's manifested into what we see with, like, some of these male influencers. There's a guy named Vitaly who just spent eight months in jail in the Philippines because he was doing something sensational over there. And they were like, no. And they arrested him and locked him up for almost a year. But I think that is. There's an undercurrent that. That is by intent, like, what they're signing up for and their recipe for building a successful career in the little sort of area of the media landscape that they live in. I don't have much relationship with it. I don't have that much of an understanding of it. I just watched Louis Theroux's video. So anything that I can share with you will be based on what I learned from him and through his journalism. But it means nothing to me, and I pay next to no attention to it.

[Interviewer]

Is what you're describing, do you think? Is that what happened to David Doverik?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, I think David's a unique character. And it's funny. Cause in the film I made about him, the opening scene is the line for me behind the camera is, David. I asked you three years ago or three years ago, I said to you that the pursuit of sensationalism invariably ends with something bad happening. And here we are three years later. Does it mean Anything different to you now? And then, like, it cuts and the opening title sequence starts. That was the narrative of that movie because that's exactly what happened to him. And like it. David, I think, is one of the greatest YouTubers in history. Like, the show that he created was extraordinary. It was amazing. That was the ultimate Jackass.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I was about to say that was the spiritual heir to Jackass at its peak.

[Casey Neistat]

Because it wasn't about, you know, people getting hurt. It was just like this friend group. And the characters were so well defined. And I know all those guys, they really are those characters. They're amazing on camera. And David as the ringleader was like, so. And then seeing him edit, how obsessive he was. Like, when I was making that documentary, I watched him once spend eight hours to get a scene and then I watched him in three seconds delete the entire scene. He was like, it doesn't make the cut. Throw it away.

[Interviewer]

Oh, he can kill his darlings.

[Casey Neistat]

He didn't care. It had to be 4 minutes and 20 seconds of perfection. And like, the lengths he would go through to get that. But then, like, you know, again, after years and years of pursuing that and pursuing ideas, something horrific happened. And there were multiple victims there. And it's, you know, I think it's tragic. It's tragic for the victims. It's sad that his career was torpedoed because of that. But I think that, you know, you were asking me earlier about YouTube fame and what that means. Like, David went from a high school kid in Chicago to being like, at that time, I think he was probably the most popular YouTuber on planet Earth.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Inside of like three years. And so when I said, it's interesting when I see peers of mine go through that experience, I think of him

[Interviewer]

when that video that got, you know, the 100 million views. Is there a rush there or are you like, oh, I need another hit of this?

[Casey Neistat]

Well, the, the video of the. The first Class air. I was still doing my daily vlog.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Casey Neistat]

So like, so you were like, I posted that and then immediately went back to work. And it's like making the next day's video. And the next day's video. The more of the rush was like the snowboarding in New York City video.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Casey Neistat]

Because that was at the peak of the daily vlog. And I knew the video I wanted to make because I'd been trying to make that video for a decade. I had kept a Jeep, like a four wheel drive vehicle in a garage in New York City on standby for five years to make that video. And finally we got a snowstorm that shut down the city. And the intent was there. I had my whole crew ready. I had a professional stunt driver. Like, I had everything set up. So, like, that video, I was. That video was published before it stopped snowing.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, that was a video. That was a rush. An interesting footnote to that is the minute that video was published, I then sat back down and edited the vlog. So that day, I put out two videos, like the snowboard video and then the daily vlog of that day, which was making the snowboard video. Yeah. Those were crazy times.

[Interviewer]

That's really. That's too much.

[Casey Neistat]

I struggled to put a video. I mean, I have a full time job now. That's not making videos.

[Interviewer]

What is that?

[Casey Neistat]

And I struggle to get a video out once a month now. And when I try to think of making 31 videos a month, I don't know how I got into that place. But, like, my biggest conflict now is trying to figure out how to. I mean, I'm very distracted with work, which we can talk about with work. And I struggled to make a video. But then it was like that level of cadence was something like. I look back at that, I'm like, how the fuck did I do? He said, it's hard to get in touch with you now. My agent called me when I was doing the daily vlog, and he's like, hey, Jeffrey Katzenberg wants to meet with you. And I was like, I can't doing my vlog. And he was like, you should take this meeting. I'm like, I'm not taking any meetings. And he's like, casey, please take this fucking meeting.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, like, come on.

[Casey Neistat]

But that was. I didn't do phone calls then. It was a very, very heads down tunnel vision. Get the video done every day.

[Interviewer]

Wow. It's almost like a meditation. It's like no distraction. Like, this is what I do. Like the little grains of sand and like the mandala on the beach. Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And look, my whole life fell apart around me. My wife and I were on the precipice of divorce for the entirety of that. But when I talk to my friends who are, like, having kids, and I always say that, like, the beauty of having kids in the house, something you know, well, is that, like, you know exactly what you're supposed to do every day when you wake up. And, like, the beauty of my daily vlog was like, every day I knew exactly what to do.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And like, right now with work, like, we're building a big company and it's like daily, it's like six Zoom calls and 10 phone calls and 100 emails and there's. At the end of the day, there's like not even an episode of the vlog. You know, it's like, what are we doing here, guys?

[Interviewer]

What is your full time job?

[Casey Neistat]

So I made a video a couple years ago about a company called Mod Retro.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yes.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, the Palmer Lucky Game Boy Company. And you know, I say this in the video, but like I was very skeptical about this idea of like building a $200 Game Boy. It didn't make sense to me. And then I met with him and I was like, oh shit, this is. I saw the vision and I was like, I'm in. And I joined as an advisor and I advise a number of companies. It's one of the great luxuries of being a bit of a technologist and having a whole shitload of C level YouTube fame. You get to be a part of these. But about seven months ago, I joined the company full time. The company Mod Retro. Mod Retro. The company expanded from the vision of the company and what we're doing. They just closed a big round of fundraising. The entire agenda of what this company is and what this company is trying to be so aligns with everything that I am that I was like, yeah. And it's weird. I'm 45. I've never, I've never in my life had a job where the company wasn't mine.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

Like, I've never. The way I talked to Torren the CEO is I'm like, I've never sailed on someone else's ship before. I've only ever been the captain. And it's like, it's a. I mean, very senior. I don't ever feel like I'm answering to someone, but it's like it is a, it's a learning curve. And like spending three hours a day on slack managing is like, it's necessary.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

You know, we're only whatever, 45 people right now. Like I need to do that right now. But it's, it's, it's super exciting and I love it. But it's, it's, it's demanding and it's in direct conflict with, I feel like

[Interviewer]

your personality a little.

[Casey Neistat]

No, because the, the mission for the company.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Is. Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

You know, like Ipod's dirty secret. That movie which launched my career 23 years ago was about my frustration that Apple was shipping this $500 magical device that was designed to die in two years.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Casey Neistat]

The mission of Mod Retro is to literally build the best consumer electronics technology that are built forever. These are like products that will exist for all of time. The last and best things ever made of this generation. And then when I look around at where technology is today, my wife and I are trying to decide how much screen time is too much for our kids. And when I realize when I look at my own screen time, or when I delete Twitter off my phone for the 50th time this month, when I realize how angry social media is making me, I think technology is headed in this direction where it's like technology has stopped serving us and we now serve technology.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Casey Neistat]

Your TV that you buy, it's like it has a microphone in it. It has all this fucking bloatware, so it knows exactly what your viewership habits are. It's shoving ads down your throat. Instagram is not there for you to look at pictures of your friends anymore. Instagram is there to understand your viewership behavior so it can better serve you ads.

[Interviewer]

So I buy things?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes. Technology has become this thing that is just meant to extract from you the person. And if you look at the entire hardware landscape globally, on planet Earth, there is not a company that has, like a stake in the ground the way Mod Retro does, that says, okay, we're going in the opposite direction. We're identifying products that, like, people loved. We're building the best ever versions of them, and they're entirely antithetical to that. There are no fucking microtransactions on the, like, new Nintendo 64 that we're shipping. It's called an M64M for Mod Retro. It's clever, right?

[Interviewer]

Can you buy a new battery for it or do you have to rebuy

[Casey Neistat]

the whole thing of batteries? The chromatic. The Game Boy takes double A. Double A. And when I asked Palmer, I was like, why does this.

[Interviewer]

I've heard of them.

[Casey Neistat]

I was like, why does this take double A and not lithium ion? And he said, my guess is that in 100 years, lithium ion won't be around, but AA will be. And I was like, that's when I was like, I'm in. I'm like, fuck, yes, I'm in.

[Interviewer]

He's like, talking dirty to you.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like, this is talking ipod's dirty secret. Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

And I think, look for me as like a founder. Like, I love being an entrepreneur. I love building companies. And when I look at hardware, it's always been an obsession of mine, but it's also something that, like, be cognizant of your limitations. I'm not an engineer. I don't think I have the capacity to do that. And then you meet one of the world's greatest prodigies who has demonstrated his ability to do that over and over and over, and that's what he's doing. Like, the opportunity to be a part of that was maybe one of the most exciting opportunities I've ever had.

[Interviewer]

The thing you're describing with the ipod being unable to replace the battery we now understand is planned obsolescence. You're still hammering it 20 years after that video came out. Why does it matter if someone can replace their own ipod battery? They're offering you such an amazing convenience of gigabytes of storage. Why can't you just buy new one?

[Casey Neistat]

I think if you take that narrow purview, it's. Fuck it, it's not a big deal. But in 2003, I made 800 bucks a week, which was a lot for me then, but I lived in New York city. I made 800 bucks a week. That $500 iPod took me like, six months to save up for. And it was my whole world. And the fact that it was designed to be dead in two years, it was a huge fucking deal for me then. And I think we've grown accustomed to that now. But I think what it is emblematic of is sort of the shitification of all products. Everything we touch in this world. Like my wife's car, we bought like, a used Mercedes minivan, SUV thing because it was really cheap, off lease. We got it for like 38 grand and knew it was like 90. And we're like, great deal, we'll take it. It's only 50 fucking screens in it. You have to tap a screen 25 times to make the temperature go from 58 to 83. How is that better? Why is there not just that knob that's blue on one side and red on the other? How is that fucking better? And I think that planned obsolescence is part of this much bigger issue with technology, which technology is most of what consumers are spending money on. Because now technology is cars. Technology is everything we interact with. And technology is getting shittier. It's not about better serving the consumer. It's about serving something else. And it's not getting better. It's just about. It's about extracting shit from us. And I hate it. I hate all of it. And it's a constant frustration point. So I think that planned obsolescence is part of that frustration that I live in with what Technology has become. But I don't think it's the whole thing. I think the whole thing is something much more kind of dark and nefarious and ugly.

[Interviewer]

And it's like, we can't change our own batteries anymore. Like, we're the ipod. And I have to outsource. Sorry, I'm mixing, like, a hundred metaphors here. Getting food, communicating with people. I love finding someone to date to corporations in exchange for convenience.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah. Or what about, like. Did you read John Height's book?

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, he's a columnist here.

[Casey Neistat]

Okay. If you want a book that will fuck you up, especially as a parent, you know, the Anxious Generation, you know, that is what, like. And I know that he's spoken about since he published that book, that he didn't go hard enough in that book. That whole book is about how, you know, technology, algorithms, phones, screens, are destroying an entire generation. And, you know, it's like, why is that the case? And there's a very obvious answer to that. There's a pragmatic answer to that, but it's not a positive one. It's not a positive outlook. So, like, why do I, in my mid-40s, when I've got some degree of financial independence and certainly a lot of options, join a company like Mod Retro? It's because their entire thesis is the opposite of that, Right? Like, literally, shipping a product comes out, like, next month. We haven't shipped it yet. Shipping a product that is a video game system from the 90s. Because when I played that, it was me and my three friends in front of a tv, socially engaging and hanging out. There's no microtransactions, there's no bullshit. And when I look at my daughters, they're not allowed to play Roblox, but there was a moment when they downloaded it, and you see a child playing Roblox. It is the exact opposite of that. It is shutting out the entire world around them so they can be alone on this machine that's trying to constantly sell them shit. Versus, like, my parents buying us a Nintendo 64 so me and Joe and Kyle can sit there and play Smash Brothers and, like, socialize and be together. Like, that's technology making things better, and this is technology making things worse.

[Interviewer]

I mean, Roblox is also. I know I'm going to sound crazy, like, turning people into, like, terrorists. There's, like, a whole thing with, like, the Roblox, like, gangs.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, yeah. Protests.

[Interviewer]

What?

[Casey Neistat]

Roblox protest. Well, yeah, it's crazy what happens on there. And, like, people just let their kids Go on there. Unsupervised Roblox, and then they just lose some huge lawsuit.

[Interviewer]

I don't know. I know about the Facebook lawsuit. I don't know about the Roblox lawsuit.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, there's, like. There isn't. I think it's a class action suit against Roblox because of child safety issues.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah. Well, it's crazy. And, like, there's sextortion and just like, horrible, horrible stuff.

[Casey Neistat]

There's none of that. On the mod retro.

[Interviewer]

On the mod retro.

[Casey Neistat]

I promise you.

[Interviewer]

In addition to not falling for the NFTs and the cryptocurrencies, you've also avoided many things that happen to people online. You were not mewtwo'd. There were no bizarre tweets or recordings of you that came out. But you have been publicly shamed, which is maybe a feature of being online professionally, but it wasn't for a mistake you made. And I think a lot of people are like, oh, I've been canceled. And a horrible video of me saying a horrible thing came out. And it's like, well, that's different than, you know, getting backlash for a thing you believe or perhaps the person that you are, which I think is an important difference. But two years ago, you published a video and you called it Jew. Yeah, really subtle. And it was four days after the October 7th attack. Why did you make a video called Jewelry?

[Casey Neistat]

You know, I've always been vocal. I've always been vocal. You know, three years before, two years before I published that video, I published a video at the peak of sort of the George Floyd. And it was just standing up for how I interpreted the entire BLM movement. And I know it's like it's been incredibly obfuscated and has different definitions. For me, what the Black Lives Movement Matters movement was was that African Americans, like my peers, there was a. There was an ethos of lesser than. Because of these publicized events, like George Floyd. And that's something I. That was. That was something that I felt I had an obligation to be true with my audience about how I felt about that and how I felt about that is that. That's fucked up. Like, no, I don't subscribe to that. Like, I'm here to support my peers, my black peers. And I want my audience to know this is something that's important to me. You know, like, when Barack Obama legalized gay marriage nationally, like, my wife and I were outside of the Stonewall Inn with, like, our gay flag headbands on. I made content about that. I've always been Extremely vocal about gay rights. And these are the things that are important to me. And you know, like speaking up for, against anti Semitism, educating people as to what anti Semitism is. Like, it's something that's important to me especially it's important to me because it's consistent with just who I am. It's so important to me. I'm a Jew. Or as the Internet would call me, a fucking Jew, right? And so no, I felt a need to speak up about that. And yeah, I was like eviscerated for that. And I think that it was evocative of what was to come. Like, I saw a guy on Instagram yesterday and he showed a picture and it was a woman posted a picture from her daughter's wedding. And in the picture her husband, her new son in law had on a keepah and they were standing under a chuppah. She said, congratulations to my. And every comment was like something horrifically anti Semitic. And like I, there was no doubt in my mind that like, oh, we're going to get there quick and we're there and it fucking sucks. And I think it's awful. And I think it's awful that more people don't speak out about it. You can disagree with what's going on in the Middle east. Like you can how I like to look at it. I know this doesn't mean anything to fucking irrational Jew haters, but it's like, I am an American. I fucking love this country. My blood runs red, white and blue. My kid brother isn't a retired Air Force captain. Like, I love this country. Like, I spent my first few years as an adult on welfare. And since then I paid that back in taxes 100,000 times over. Like, this country gave me everything. Like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It didn't give me happiness, it gave me the opportunity to pursue it and I did it and the country delivered on it. Like, I fucking love this country. But it doesn't mean I love what I see going on in politics. It doesn't mean that I love everything this country's done. It doesn't mean when you read a history book and understand what Vietnam was about, or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the million Iraqis that are dead because of that's a deeply shameful, horrific thing this country did. Vietnam is one of the worst things this country ever did. And two things can be true. The leadership and the politics of this country have done some fucked up shit. And this is still a great country. And I think you should be able to disagree with what Israel is doing, you should be able to disagree with that without having to completely disparage what that country is. And I fucking love Israel. I've only had the opportunity to go there a couple times in my life, but I have a number of Israeli friends. And when you go there, you meet some of the richest, most vibrant, intelligent, like optimistic human beings. This sense of community, you know, like one super close friend of mine is an Israeli, but he's also Muslim. And he's incredible. He's an entrepreneur. Like he came from very low income household. He went to Harvard.

[Interviewer]

Nas?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, Texted with him this morning. Fucking love the guy. And like the idea that a country is simply reduced to what its leadership is doing at any given time and that's an excuse to shit on the whole country. That's not a standard we hold to any other country in the world to. And I think, much like you would the United States, you should be able to criticize some of the things this country does and still love this country. And that's how I feel about Israel. And that's not to say I criticize everything they do. I don't fucking understand Israeli politics. I don't pay attention to that shit. All I know is it's like it's a country filled with great people that has an incredible history, and that's how I feel. And I don't apologize for feeling that way, and I'll be shamed for that. But as we've learned in 2026, there's nothing a Jew can do that they won't be shamed for. Including posting a picture celebrating your nuptials. You will be shamed for that. You'll be ashamed for existing as a Jew in 2026. And that's a horrific thing. But if I'm to be shamed anyways, at least I could be honest with myself and honest with my audience.

[Interviewer]

Do you put any of the blame for the fact that that is true at the feet of social media?

[Casey Neistat]

Most of it I put at the feet of social media. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that antisemitism is sort of a scourge that's existed for 3,000 years now. And you can read into the history of the ideas around why I think a lot of them still prove true thousands or hundreds of years later. I think that it's similar with this country with racism towards people of color, whatever it might be. I think these things just exist and they're shitty and they're horrific. And I think me getting to grow up in the 90s, it was sort of the heyday where anti Semitism wasn't really a thing.

[Interviewer]

The holiday from history.

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, it was like Seinfeld's the greatest show. It wasn't. Cause he was a Jewish guy, he was just the fucking greatest show. And. And you hear the stories from your grandparents about like, watch out, like Nana, what the fuck are you talking about?

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Casey Neistat]

And then this happens and it's like, I think it gives people permission to sort of vent their hatred. And I think social media is an accelerant for that sort of hatred. And we've seen that manifest. It's manifesting with anti Semitism now, but we've seen it manifest with myriad other things in the past. Whether it's conspiracies, whether it's about politics, you can find it everywhere. But I think that social media becomes an accelerant for these sorts of social issues.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel like potentially unsafe as a Jew in America? Would you ever leave?

[Casey Neistat]

I mean, it would take a lot. Yeah, it would take a lot. Like, I fucking love this country. I believe in this country. I am a die hard patriot. Like I fucking. I have an American flag sticker on the back of my truck. Like, I love this country.

[Interviewer]

I love. I mean, I want to touch on this because it's like you said this, but you know, people hear Jewish boy from Connecticut, they might think certain things, they might not know that you're a teen runaway. We could have spent the whole thing on this. But you're a teen dad. Your son is born two weeks after your 17th birthday. You have a job washing dishes. Like you said, you're on welfare, you live in a trailer park. You have nothing and you have no prospects. Are you the American dream? Are you the 21st century American dream?

[Casey Neistat]

No. I left home when I was 15 with, with nothing and never took money from my parents thereafter. Never have never went back. Never. 10th grade was the last year of formal schooling that I ever completed. Yeah, but the American dream, I think that the American dream, it is getting harder and harder to achieve. When I look at my grandmother, the Greatest Generation, she passed away a few years ago. I think that the American dream was really alive and well after World War II and it's been fading since then. And I definitely think it's harder for a 15 year old today than it was for me as a 15 year old 30 years ago. But I do think that, like having had the luxury of traveling this world a dozen times over, I think that what I was able to do with the effort, I applied to it. I don't know of another place in the world that I would have been able to do that. So I attribute that to the American system. And I had all kinds of benefits and privileges and, like, you know, born healthy and born with a brain that works. And I was like, you know, parents that tried their best and I had privilege, don't get me wrong. But I definitely think that, like, the ambition combined with what this country enabled is what has provided the life that I have now and I'm able to give to my children.

[Interviewer]

I love that. I mean, do you get frustrated when people today complain? Oh, yes. With, like, how unfair everything is?

[Casey Neistat]

Yeah, I think that it's harder today, but I think there's more opportunity today than there's ever been. And I think that, you know, there's this great Dana White quote. I love quoting Dana White, where he's like. But I just love how unapologetic he is, which is. He's like, if you have any savage in you, I don't know what the word was. I love that. Something like savage. He's like, if you have any of that in you, you will fucking crush today. Because everybody is so wimpy and weak. Or some Dana White version of that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that that's true. I think that, like, teaching people that the world is against them, I think you start to believe that. And if you subscribe to that, you're gonna have a really tough time finding your place in this world. And if you're sort of. If you have an optimistic outlook, I think you have a much greater opportunity of finding. Finding your place. And when I see so many young, especially privileged kids that spend a lot of time complaining, like, if they were to sublimate that energy, I think that they'd have an easier time getting where they're trying to go.

[Interviewer]

I am curious because you kind of came up in this new tidal wave of digital media we're on. There's another tidal wave coming called AI. If there was an old legacy world and YouTube, the thing that you rode killed it and video killed the radio star, is AI going to kill you?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Casey Neistat]

I hope I'm wrong. And, like, Ben Affleck gave a really strong talk. He was being interviewed somewhere about how it was Rogan.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

Was it Rogan?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Casey Neistat]

It was anti AI. And I'm like, fuck Ben Affleck. Please be right. But I have a very nihilistic outlook on what AI is going to do. I just think that, like, most people don't value quality, like real filmmaking, real storytelling enough. And that's indicative of like, what the most popular movies are. It's indicative of what Netflix is putting out. Like, watch any one of Netflix shitty action movies and ask yourself, like, could AI do this better? The answer is yes, it could. And we're like this far away from the technology being there. And I think when that happens, like when you're not looking at like, you know, the 300 movies that were released last year, and 10 of them are AI. But it'll be 300 movies being released made by people, and then 5 million being released made by AI and then the next year it's 50 million being made by AI. AI is going to figure it out. And I don't think it's a tidal. I think it's like some apocalyptic. It's a black hole tsunami that's going to overwhelm all. I think TikTok is going to like, with every scroll, it's going to know what you want to see more. And the next video it will create for you will be that. That said, I don't know where this nihilism comes from. I pray that I'm wrong, because I love shit that people make. The more broken it feels, the more I like it. The less AI, less cgi, the less. The more I can see the human hand. Lilo and Stitch was one of my favorite movies of last year. Did you see it? The live action? It was so good. It was all shot on location. It was a little girl running around Hawaii. I've got two daughters. We saw it in the theaters three times, but it was a little girl three times. And then we bought it before it came. It was a little girl running around a Hawaiian island trying to figure it out. Nobody liked her and she lived with her sister. Lilo and Stitch story, but it was like a really human story. When Disney's almost only put out these very over the top Moana fantasy movies. This one felt like it was a story about a kid and it meant so much to my kids. It was the total opposite of AI. That's the future I hope for. I just need to be wrong in order for that to happen.

[Interviewer]

Casey Neistat. Can I do a quick lightning round? Uh oh, favorite tattoo.

[Casey Neistat]

Oh, I hate them all equally.

[Interviewer]

You hate them all? Do you regret getting.

[Casey Neistat]

This is a lightning round.

[Interviewer]

I know, but come on.

[Casey Neistat]

No, I. I don't. I like. My tattoos are just so I can remember stuff it's not meant to like. I don't like. I don't this. This just goes on to the next question.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Are you difficult?

[Casey Neistat]

Yes. Extremely difficult.

[Interviewer]

Are you religious?

[Casey Neistat]

Not really.

[Interviewer]

What kind of parent are you?

[Casey Neistat]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. I value resiliency over any other trait when it comes to parenting.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I love that. What's your latest disappointment? That's tough.

[Casey Neistat]

My own inability to finish what I start.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever talked one on one to Seth Rogen?

[Casey Neistat]

I think so.

[Interviewer]

What are you doing the rest of the day?

[Casey Neistat]

Going back and trying to finish a video.

[Interviewer]

Something you've changed your mind about recently?

[Casey Neistat]

God, that feels like a trap.

[Interviewer]

No, it's not.

[Casey Neistat]

I think that Cinnamon Toast Crunch churros are actually better than Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The traditional ones. And then I switch back and I honestly think the original is better than the churros one.

[Interviewer]

Casey Neistat, thank you for being here.

[Casey Neistat]

Thanks for having me.

[Susie Weiss]

Thank you so much for listening to the inaugural episode of Second Thought. If you loved it, please consider leaving us a review here or sharing it with a friend. And for more amazing culture stories, including my own weekly culture column, check out the free [e-mail] we'll see you next time.