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- [00:00]
Skylar Diggins
What's up y'?
- [00:01]
Casey Neistat
All?
- [00:01]
Skylar Diggins
I'm Skylar Diggins, seven time WNBA All Star, Olympic gold medalist and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and Mom. And this is and Mom, a community for athletes, game changers and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th tap in with us.
- [00:25]
David Pierce
Cheating on your partner is a huge breach of trust.
- [00:29]
Casey Neistat
All of the pain and the guilt and the real reality of what was happening hit me just like a tidal
- [00:37]
Skylar Diggins
wave all at once.
- [00:38]
David Pierce
Why do people cheat? And why does it make us so mad, even when we are not the ones it's happening to? That's this week on Explain It To Me New episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of daily podcasts. I'm your friend David Pierce, and as of today, the Vergecast is in fact a daily podcast on we're going to be in your feeds and on your YouTubes or wherever you find the Vergecast five days a week. I would say in general we have lots of ideas about what we're going to do, but almost no religion about any of it. We have lots of series we're going to try to do inside of the Vergecast, lots of fun bits that make more sense to do in a daily podcast world. The show where Nilai and I yell at each other once a week is basically not going to change. So don't worry if that's the Vergecast you know and love, but in this expanded format where we get to do more stuff and we get to do it on a faster timeline and we get to be more just engaged in your life and with the news every day. I'm very excited about what we're going to get to do here today on the show. We're going to talk about posting with one of the original posters, Casey Neistat, who spent years posting something on the Internet every day. And he has a lot of thoughts about what it takes to do that and also what it looks like to do that now in 2026. So we're going to talk about it. But first, here is a look at everything happening on the verge today. It's 90 seconds on the Verge for Monday, June 1, 2026. Nvidia made a big announcement of a new chip line called the RTX Spark, which it says is the most efficient PC chip ever built. Did it offer any kind of statistics or numbers to back that up? No, it sure didn't. But Nvidia seems to have big plans to take the best of its gaming technology, the best of its AI technology, and the best of many mainstream computing needs and smush it all together into one chip that can do everything. The first devices are coming out this fall. I promise you they're gonna cost a fortune, but this is one to watch out for. This week is also Computex, the big computer trade show. And one of the big themes of the year seems to be everybody from Dell to Acer to, frankly, just about everybody else trying desperately to compete with the MacBook. Neo $600 laptops are about to get a lot better. This week is also Microsoft's Build Developer Conference. And just two things to keep an eye out for at build. One is the Copilot super app that I think we're going to get the combination of all of Microsoft's Copilot assistant stuff, all of the coding stuff, all of it in one place. This is the new trend for AI companies, and Microsoft's on it, too. The other is just a lot of little things designed to make Windows nicer to use because, frankly, that's long overdue. Last bit of news for today. Anthropic has confidentially filed to go public. We don't know a ton of the details yet. They're still mostly under wraps, but we do know that Anthropic just recently raised money at a $965 billion valuation, which actually makes it more valuable than OpenAI, which is also to go public. SpaceX is going public in two weeks. We are about to get a huge referendum on how people feel about AI and where all of this money is really going to land. You can read more about all of that@the verge.com that's it. That's 90 seconds on the Verge for June 1, 2026. All right, let's get to our main topic for today. Casey Neistat, if you don't know, is a hugely successful YouTuber. He has been one of the most influential people in the vlogging community for many, many years. And starting in 2015, he spent over 800 consecutive days posting every single day. He made a video and he published it every single day. And so as we embark on this journey of posting every single day, I figured it would be fun to call Kasey and see if we can get some tips on how to actually do that day in and day out, but also how to just get a sense of how he thinks about posting. Obviously, the Internet is a very different place than it was in 2015 when Kasey started posting every day. But he's also still a hugely successful and influential creator. He spends a lot of time talking to other creators about how to make this stuff work. And in a in a world filled with vertical video and algorithmic timelines and social media feeds that seem to have less and less to do with social and more and more to do with media. I just wanted to get Kasey's read on where we are in the creator landscape right now and to see if he could help me feel any better about the idea of what it means to do this every single day. Because I'm excited and slightly terrified. Let's get into it. Casey Neistat welcome to the Vergecast.
- [05:03]
Casey Neistat
Great to be here, David.
- [05:05]
David Pierce
I am very excited to have you here. We've been sort of like loosely talking past each other about doing this for a very long time. I'm happy to have you here available
- [05:11]
Casey Neistat
anytime I got nothing else going on, just call me. I'm here.
- [05:16]
David Pierce
So I've brought you here for a very special occasion, which is that we're running this episode on the first day of the Vergecast being a daily show and I both want to talk to you about kind of the state of posting and making things online. As somebody who's been doing it for a very long time and was very early to a lot of the things people are doing now, I also need some therapy about how this is all going to go for me and how to do it without dying. But I want to start with sort of the state of things because we've spent a lot of time talking on this show about the clip economy and kind of the race for everybody's attention and the ability to just chop everything you make into a thousand little pieces and put it everywhere in front of people and sort of win the attention game that way. You were thinking about how to post a lot way before most people were thinking about how to post a lot. And you were like in 2015 you were like, I'm going to start making stuff every single day and I'm just going to put myself in front of people. What. What was the impetus behind that all those years ago?
- [06:12]
Casey Neistat
Well, it's, it's a much more compelling story in retrospect because it's seems so smart and considered and calculated. But the reality was I found myself in a situation where because I was just about to launch my own like venture backed startup that I had never been further from making movies because I was so kind of distracted. So the idea was like let me create a. Let me upload every day and I'll make, like, a video every day about my startup, and it would promote the startup. And I had endless material. And then it turns out, like, five dudes in a room writing code is really uninteresting subject matter. And it eventually sort of consumed every aspect of my life in, like, this perpetual search for interestingness to make the videos. But it wasn't much more considered than that.
- [07:03]
David Pierce
Yeah, but I still think there's something in that insight of, like, not just, I'm going to make a bunch of videos and promote my startup, which I think is a relatively normal insight to have had in 2015, but there's something about just the sheer volume play of it that it seems like even existed in your head. Then you're just like, I'm going to do this. And then again and then again and then again, and I'm going to keep doing this. There must have been some kind of idea about, like, this must add up to something.
- [07:29]
Casey Neistat
No, in fact, it was the. No, it was the opposite. Because, David, I treated my YouTube channel as this precious thing, I think, misguidedly, early in my career where, like, I never monetized any of my videos. It was, for me, I thought of it as, like a forum where I just put, like, really great videos that I was proud of. And I remember, like, posting, you know, daily vlogging back in the day was just like kids holding their camera up, being like, now I'm going to get coffee. This coffee's good. Now I'm going to get in my car. I'm in my car now. And it was this diary sort of thing. But it was not. It was not considered, like, real content creation or creative expression. And I remember, like, day three or four of uploading my daily videos, somebody was like, I saw a comment. I was like, casey's a great video creator. This is so beneath him. What's he doing? And I was like, shit, I'm so busted. Because there was a little part of me that felt like that, like, I felt like I was diminishing my work. So all of the learnings of the power of daily, like I said, really came in retrospect. Like, my foresight in getting into it was much more skeptical, which is a generous way of framing it, I would say. It was much more, like, deeply insecure and uncomfortable with. With what it was. But what I learned from it is something much, much more powerful, which is like. And I think this is the opportunity you have in going daily, which is when you have a daily conversation with an audience, podcast, video, radio, show, whatever it might Be. A relationship develops that reduces the necessity for the subject matter to always be something overwhelming. And what I mean by that specifically is, like, go look at the 100 videos I made before I started Daily Videos. They all had, like, really meaningful subject matter. It was meaningful for me. Or even if you look at the videos I've made in the last, like, you know, seven years since I stopped doing daily, every one has a very specific narrative to it. And, like, in the last couple weeks, I was kind of like, you know, screw it. And I started making, like, using my daily video format. But I only do it a couple times a week. But it really is like, I just finished it today. A video today. It's about nothing. Like, I hang out with my friend. I, like, run into somebody in the street, and then it's me hanging out with my UPS delivery driver. That's the whole video. Because what I found is, like, when you do it daily, people aren't just signing up for whatever it is that you're going to be sharing via the Vergecast. They're signing up because they like you. They want to hear about you. They want to keep up with you. So there's this sort of equanimity that happens with the subject matter, and then who's presenting the subject matter. It makes me think back to, like, early, early days when I first moved to New York and I used to listen to Howard Stern every day. Like, I listened because I liked his celebrity guests or whatever silly goof they were doing that day. But, like, in the early hours, it'd just be him BSing with his co hosts. But I was signed up to listen to him, so it didn't matter what the subject matter was. I was there for that. And I think that's the power that you have with quantity.
- [10:33]
David Pierce
So how do you think about that in your own work? Because I know a thing you've talked about before is sort of struggling with when this thing becomes about me. How much of me do I share with you? And how much do I sort of make this about me? All the time. And that starts to feel uncomfortable. But also, like, the thing that makes me itchy about what you just said is the part of me that goes, okay, well, now I can get to a point where actually, you're coming here to see me and not this good work that I've done, which is just like, as a reporter, feels weird, but also just like, makes it feel like I. I'm. I'm terrified that I'm going to start doing a bad job because there's no pressure because it's just sort of a hang we have every day. And I feel like running against that feels like a hard thing to do where it's like I could settle into this idea that I'm just here every day and that's going to be enough. And I think you see a lot of creators do that, that it truly is like quantity over quality in a very real way. I am desperate to avoid that trap.
- [11:35]
Casey Neistat
I don't subscribe to the quantity over quality perspective. Like I, you know, whatever. I posted a video every day for 800 days in a row. And every one of those videos was the best video I can make that day. And I'm proud of all the work.
- [11:47]
David Pierce
That's a good way of looking at it though.
- [11:48]
Casey Neistat
If I think it's good, then I did it. Like, if I don't think it's good, then it's garbage. So I don't think it's quality over quantity. But I do think it's like the weightiness of the subject matter versus. Versus the sort of more Len Fair subject matter.
- [12:05]
David Pierce
Yeah. Yeah. That idea of like, I'm just gonna make the best thing I can today actually feels very freeing because it's like, it's not. This is not required to be the best thing I've ever made in my entire life every single time. But it is required to be the best I could do this time. And I think there's. There's something nice about that. That's like I'm obligated to try my hardest. And like, this is what Jon Stewart always said about the Daily Show. I remember was like doing like the best thing about this is if we do a horrible job, there's another show tomorrow and it's gonna be fine. And the worst part is if we do an unbelievable job, there's another show tomorrow and we have to go do it again. There's something about that that I actually love as a constraint.
- [12:42]
Casey Neistat
Yeah, I just unplugging this book cause I just finished reading it, but oh,
- [12:46]
David Pierce
I've heard great things about this book.
- [12:47]
Casey Neistat
It's fantastic. But how constraints make us better. And I think about that a lot because my only the constraint when I was doing daily was it has to be every day no matter what. And that's like. It is an amazing constraint because there were some days when like I had nothing to create and there's no. I couldn't pull from anything, but I still had to make it. And that was a forcing agent that I think really moved me forward in My process. And I think when I think of a podcaster or a radio host, I think it can have that same forcing agent. But, David, we moved on from something that I didn't address. But I think you brought it up, and it's a really. It's really astute, which is like, how much of yourself do you give away? And I think there's two. I have two takes on. This one was me, which is, like, very quickly, because I had no understanding, as naive as that sounds. Like I really didn't appreciate what it meant to put so much of myself out there. You know, my first videos when I was doing the vlog was a couple hundred thousand views, but when that turned into millions of views, it had an impact on my real life. So, like, in my earliest episodes of vlogs, like, my little baby's in there because I was a dad. She was my whole life. And then, like, a few months later, like, my kids just don't show up anymore. I'll still talk about them. Reference. But, like, keep that out. And, like, it required me to sort of figure out how much of me I'm gonna put out, how much of me I'm not gonna put out. But ultimately, like, expanded pretty wide. Like, it really did capture the near totality of who I am in my life. So that's one version of it. Another version of it that I have just extraordinarily deep admiration for is like Marques Brownlee. Marques puts out several videos a week. He's got a, you know, podcast. He's second channels. He is. He floods the zone with his content without ever compromising his own integrity or the quality of the content. But moreover, he doesn't ever cross that line and feel like he needs to give more of himself away. I'm speaking only based on a viewer and a fan of his. I've never had this conversation with him, but he doesn't give much of himself away. But as someone who's been watching his content for a decade, what he's gotten really good at is how he frames whatever he's reviewing or whatever it is that he's talking about. And Marques is one of the few creators out there that I don't care what he's talking about. I still want to hear what he has to say. So he can be reviewing some phone I have no interest in or some camera that I'll never buy, but because it's him, I'm like, oh, I love that guy. Yeah, I'd love to spend 12 minutes with him where he's talking about this new microphone that I could care less about. So I think he's giving a different version of himself away, which is, it's his own focus and his own ability to sort of speak in a way that people want to receive without ever having to expand how much of himself he's giving away.
- [15:42]
David Pierce
I think about this on some simple levels, like, how much do I talk about my kids?
- [15:47]
Casey Neistat
Right.
- [15:48]
David Pierce
And like, should. Should our audience know a lot about what my kids are up to? And I think that line is sort of ever changing for me. Like, for a long time I didn't say their names on the show. And like, I've gotten more comfortable with that or like, so little things. But then there's like, at the beginning of a bunch of our episodes, for the longest time, there's always just been a little opener that's just like me on some stupid adventure. And it's just like two minutes of me talking about how annoying it is that there isn't a good bacon, egg and cheese in Washington D.C. and there's a portion of our audience that really likes that and is like, it's fun. It makes you guys feel human. I like being connected to you in that way. And then there's a portion of our audience that is like, shut up and talk about tech news. And it is sort of the eternal struggle. Right. What do you tell new creators these days? I know. I feel like you've become sort of the, like, Yoda of the creator space. You're in everybody's video where they're like, I'm going to YouTube. How do I do this? You just did this with our friend Joanna Stern not that long ago. Like, people who are coming to you trying to break into this space. I assume the biggest thing most people are trying to do is figure out in some way how do I become a thing. Right? How do I make people care about me as a person? What do you. What do you tell those people?
- [17:00]
Casey Neistat
First of all, I'm surprised that people still come to me for advice. It's because my advice is antiquated and I stand by it. But my general feeling now on YouTube is that, you know, first of all, I dislike. I admire it, but I dislike. It's not my thing. How most of, at least from my anecdotal experience, how most people approach the platform, which is primarily data driven retention rates, engagement, length of video games.
- [17:34]
David Pierce
It's a game to be won. All of these things are a game to be won now.
- [17:37]
Casey Neistat
And to me, that is so antithetical to the creative aspect, and whether it's me doing it daily or anything I've done in the media space, television, film, everything, it's always been creativity first. And why I champion YouTube historically and why I continue to champion YouTube is because there's no barriers to entries. The top of the funnel is so wide, you can quite literally introduce any version of creativity to this platform and do your thing without any obstructions. I spent a decade plus working in the formal media space, whereas you have executives and you have channel leads and you have all of these people that. All these filters, the people that select what gets into a film festival, distributors, all these filters between you, your creativity and your audience. And what's so amazing about YouTube is for the first time in media, in the history of media, it's reduced that to zero. Like, what you create and what you determine is what you want it to be is what exactly the audience will see. And that's like a romantic vision that I fully subscribed to back in the day. It's when I fully subscribed to today. And most conversations that I have start from a place that I could give, like, I could give not two shits about, which is about, you know, how do I maximize engagement? And, like, should I be making shorter stuff so more people will watch it? And it's just completely uninteresting to me. And I say that with full respect for, like, the soul crushing this, that is having a video that doesn't get views. And like, I understand the motivation of wanting to succeed on this platform with the metrics that it provides you, but that's where most conversations start, and those conversations end really quickly.
- [19:23]
David Pierce
Well, is it, is it maybe easy for you to say that as somebody with whatever, 12 million YouTube subscribers and like, what? I wonder. I mean, and I think it's. It's. If you were starting out now, even with you and all the. I think you also have a sort of unusual set of skills, and you came to this platform with an unusual set of, like, cinematography skills. If nothing else, my guess is you would have a much harder time breaking in now on a pure. I'm just gonna make good stuff and trust the platform than you did, you know, whatever however many years ago you did.
- [19:57]
Casey Neistat
I think you're understating that. I think if I did exactly what I did today, exactly what I did a decade ago today, I wouldn't see 10% the response that I had a decade ago.
- [20:07]
David Pierce
I think that's right. And I think that's the part that makes me sad, is I Think. I think there is a long time where YouTube was the thing that you were describing. And the. The cynical part of me believes that that part of YouTube and of social media in general might just be dead.
- [20:21]
Casey Neistat
Well, I hope you're wrong. I think the numbers validate your take on it, but I hope you're wrong, because that's pretty crushing. That means that we're heading towards a world that's nothing but algorithmically motivated slope. But, like, I watched whatever Charlize Theron's new rock climbing action movie is on Netflix the other night, and that's algorithmically created slop, like, completely unwatchable. And I do feel like there's an extraordinary trend towards that. But I'm also like, I am a romantic, and I do believe in the outliers, and I think that, like, you know, Christopher Nolan can exist in a world where he surfs above that, and Quentin Tarantino does too. And I think that it might be getting harder and harder to succeed with that. But I still think it comes down to a matter of motivation, because that opportunity still exists. And to defend myself in the. It's easy for me to say because I've got 10 million subscribers. I think back to my earliest days of making videos, and my line has always been, you make a living so you can make videos. You don't make videos so you can make a living. And, you know, like, I was making $12 an hour as a dishwasher, and when I was not working, you know, 60 hours a week in a sweaty seafood restaurant kitchen, I was at home on my iMac TV, the one that you can see right behind me right here.
- [21:53]
David Pierce
Nice.
- [21:53]
Casey Neistat
Like, editing an iMovie 1.0, making little videos and how I shared them. My version of YouTube 25 years ago was I would export to a VHS tape. I would get into my 1989 Ford Taurus, and I would drive to people's house, sit them on the couch, put it in, click play, watch them as they watched it, take it out, and then drive to my next friend's house. So, like, my view count then was somewhere between, like, two and six, right?
- [22:22]
David Pierce
Six is a huge hit. You're. You're a viral sensation.
- [22:24]
Casey Neistat
Six is viral. Six is viral. But, like, you know, and, like, Ipod's Dirty secret, the first video I ever had that really popped off, like, I built a splash page for that. So, you know, like, I've always. I've always. It is easy for me to say now because I have a big channel and I'm diving off a very tall diving board. But it is. I've been consistent with this through the, you know, 28 years of being a filmmaker, which is that it's always been about creativity and creative expression. And I still believe like you put enough stuff out there, if it's good, your audience will find it. And it might be six people or 10 people and it might be a million people.
- [23:03]
Skylar Diggins
I keep seeing celebrities posts me in the 90s versus now while the person staring at me in the mirror is definitely not the same person that could pull off boot cut jeans. Time creeps up on us so slowly you don't see it until suddenly you do. Same thing goes for your bills. A dollar here, an uptick there. It's a slow burn until one day you realize the price you're paying now is way higher than when you sign. But AT T Mobile customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and ATT over the past five years. And with T Mobile on their experience plans, you get a five year price guarantee so you know exactly what your plan price will be for the next five years. So at least that's one thing that won't change over time. I can't guarantee you'll still look good with frosted tips, but T Mobile can give you a clear guarantee on your wireless plan.
- [23:52]
David Pierce
Lower bills based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3.21 to Q4 25 compared to average AT&T and Verizon bills. Comparison excludes discounts, credits and optional charges. Charges price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply.
- [24:02]
Maria Sharapova
CT mobile.com hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough Podcast. Each episode I sit down with high achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today.
- [24:20]
David Pierce
I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world. It is non stop.
- [24:29]
Maria Sharapova
Check out pretty tough new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.
- [24:41]
Ben Shapiro
In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built the Daily Wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses and documentaries and lectures about the founders, the genders, the the Gospels. He peddled polos, hats, candles provided a home for deplatformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that. The Daily Wire even has kids programming a judgmental puppet named Zoodles. Zoodles who share Shapiro's load bearing eyebrows. This year, though, the empire showed signs of collapse. The Daily Wire's YouTube videos are down from millions of views to the low five figures. Web traffic is plummeting, and recently Shapiro laid off 13% of his employees. Asked by the Washington Post what had happened, Shapiro accused other conservatives of click whoring by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill, and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kids still got it on Today explained. The fall of Ben Shapiro Today explained drops every weekday afternoon.
- [25:43]
Teffy
Hey, girl, it's Teffy. This week on Teffy Talks, we're talking Kendall and Jacob, reality TV villain Spencer Pratt running for mayor, and a look inside the Cannes Film Festival. Mind you, I bought the majority of my crystals from Pratt Daddy crystals. Incredible quality. But I never thought he'd be running for mayor. And it does pain me to say the words Pratt Daddy. If you're not already following the show, find us everywhere at Taffy Talks. Subscribe on YouTube and all the podcast platforms and Instagram and TikTok so you can share with your other work bestie.
- [26:11]
David Pierce
See ya. You've been posting more recently. You've, you've sort of brought back some of the vlog style. There's a real, like, the Internet is healing thing going on in the comments of all of these videos having, like, about nothing. Casey and I stop vlogs back. It's great. Has it felt different? Like, does it. Have you been thinking about it differently? Are you approaching it differently? Are you doing anything differently in 2026 than you were in the sort of first 800 days of vlogging?
- [26:46]
Casey Neistat
No, I mean, what it was, was like, I made a movie about procrastination. It's called Navigating the Matrix. And it's a movie. It's like seven minutes long. And it's just about, like, why we procrastinate or why I procrastinate. And somebody called it out in the comments because they noticed even though I wear the same shirt every day, somebody noticed that my shirt was slightly different in one of the shots. And the reality is that six or eight minute video about procrastination took me nine months to make.
- [27:14]
David Pierce
Wow.
- [27:15]
Casey Neistat
Nine months of procrastinating to get through this video. And I just was like, what was it that enabled me to make a video every day? And I realized it was the constraints. It was the fact that, like, I decided in the morning a video is going to be made by the end of the day. That video would have to be made. And my passion is mostly in the process. Like when it comes to the subject matter, there's subject matter everywhere. And sometimes I have really big ideas. Like that video about procrastination. It was like a very vivid, lucid idea for me and I was like, I can make a movie, but sometimes it's just interesting stuff. Like I ran into a couple this morning, like on my skateboard ride to work and they were like in a wedding gown in tuxedo and they like screamed my name. And I was like, did you guys just get married? And they're like, we're on our way right now. And I was like, that's a video.
- [28:01]
David Pierce
Yep.
- [28:02]
Casey Neistat
And like, so the process is what I love. So by putting a constraint in, which is like, you know, I post once or twice a week now, but it's like if I start in the morning, it has to be. I have to be done shooting by the end of the night. And it's a really, really pleasing constraint.
- [28:17]
David Pierce
Why not? In addition to like, you can take these things and I think you can make them in a way that still feels sort of creative and pure. Why not then do the like ruthless growth hacking bit on the other side of it? You're like, I've made a thing that I'm very proud of and now I'm going to pay an army of strangers to clip it and promote it for me so that I can get 100 million views on TikTok. Like, is it possible to sort of have your cake and eat it too that way?
- [28:43]
Casey Neistat
I don't know. But the short answer is I've tried very half heartedly. Okay. But like, I've sought out the person. This like unicorn or leprechaun, like a person you hear about a lot but you're not sure actually exists. And how I framed it to several very smart, capable people was like, I cannot have my process be affected at all. And what my process is is a total disregard for engagement. Or like in the first 10 seconds you have to hook them and then it has to be like, I refuse to consider any of that stuff. I hate it. I just want to make my video that I think is good and then that's it. And then put it out there. And what I want to do with you, Mr. Leprechaun, is give you that asset, that video, and you figure out the best thumbnail, the best title, the best. I mean, are tags still a thing? I don't know. You figure out how to chop that down or re edit it so it works In a vertical form. And I've put like a medium amount of effort into it with a couple of people and it's never, it has never been one fruitful or two like yielded something that I think is even worthy of putting out there. And I think it speaks to the nature of the content. Like I know how to sort of say something that works, that makes sense for me in a six to eight or ten minute format. I don't really know how to do it in a 20 or 30 second or 90 second format. And I think, like, have you really
- [30:13]
David Pierce
tried, did you ever really like go hard at. I want to be the short form vertical video guy. Never?
- [30:18]
Casey Neistat
No.
- [30:19]
David Pierce
Just didn't feel right to you?
- [30:22]
Casey Neistat
No. Because I don't like that, that kind of engagement. As a consumer, as a consumer of content. I think that this is language I made up. But it's like there's lean forward consumption and lean back consumption. And I refer to lean forward consumption as sort of a passive consumption. Like I have some time to fill, so I'm filling it with this. Whatever it is. Lean back is when there's a deliberate decision made to engage with this content. So like obviously streaming content or popping in a dvd if anyone does it anymore, like that's lean back. But I also think like YouTube minus YouTube shorts is still that. Like I'm a big like history guy and every day when I like get my lunch here in the office, I like play a YouTube video that might only be six minutes long, but it's very much so lean back. Like I'm choosing to watch this video and I click play and I watch it and I'm engaged with it. And I know what I take from that. When I'm done with that video, I'm left thinking about it, thinking about the subject matter or how it was made or whether it was interesting and it gives me value versus lean forward passive consumption. Like you look at someone who spends three hours a day scrolling Instagram Reels or on TikTok and you say, what was the best thing you saw today? You will get nothing but a blank stare back a hundred percent, like none of it registered.
- [31:48]
David Pierce
It's why I love the word scrolling, by the way, because it is it to me. It's a perfect. The thing you're doing, the fundamental activity is the scrolling. It's actually, it's not about any of the videos. It is about the activity of scrolling. You don't call it watching you scroll TikTok. Like to me that. That has always been so clarifying for me. That it's like, I watch TV and I scroll TikTok, and I think YouTube exists somewhere in the middle. I think YouTube kind of wants to be all things to all people on that front, but it is more of a watch platform to most people and at least at its best than it
- [32:22]
Casey Neistat
is a scroll platform, especially with its growth on television. But also, there's just a little part of me, like, I think I can make a good minute and a half long video. I've made some, like, TikToks that I think are really great. I'm proud of them. But I. It hurts me a little bit to know it's being consumed where, like, someone won't finish the video. Whatever. A scroll is a few milliseconds before, and at some point in time, they're onto the next.
- [32:49]
David Pierce
I think you're. I think you're onto something. Um, all right, before I let you go here, I want you to give me some very practical advice, which is
- [32:54]
Casey Neistat
like, lay it on me.
- [32:55]
David Pierce
How to structure days, right? I'm. I'm torn in this moment as we. We set up to make a daily thing. It's important to me that we do the best we can every day. I want to. I want to, like, try our hardest, but we have to make a thing every day. And I'm torn between wanting to, like, ruthlessly structure every moment of my life in order to make sure all of these things get done in a sane way, versus all of my actual creative instincts, which are just to completely reinvent the wheel every single time and try something new and weird and different, which makes everything vastly harder on everybody, but is sometimes more fun. So, as somebody who did this day in and day out for many, many, many, many, many days. Help what. How should I run my days to make this thing work?
- [33:37]
Casey Neistat
You asked me before about creators coming to me for advice. My least favorite thing is when a creator comes to me for advice, but they have everything figured out on paper, and they're like, this is the content I'm going to make. This is the structure. This is the flow. Here's. And it's like, one, if you figure it out, what are you asking me for? And two, why not just do that? And there's no, like, they haven't just done it because it's completely theoretical, and there's no affordance there for being dynamic, which is what I think this world of new media that we live in necessitates. Like, you really have to be dynamic. And daily gives you a unique opportunity to embrace that kind of Dynamicism.
- [34:16]
David Pierce
Were you a person who was like, I do my video from, you know, X hour to X hour and that's when I get it done. Or you were just like, let chaos reign. I trust that I will get it done when it is needed to get it done.
- [34:29]
Casey Neistat
I mean, the ambition was always like, you know, it starts in the morning, it's done late afternoon, so I can start editing it that night. But like, there's a number I remember some one specifically where I was like trapped in meetings all day and I ran around and I filmed all this stuff. And I got back to my house and it was like 8 o' clock at night and it was dark. And I still feel this way, but I hate it when it's dark because it just limits what you can do. It limits the visual appeal. Like, it's really hard, like to be out in the real world if it's dark. It's limited. But when I sat down, I imported it, what little footage I had, but I was pretty sure it was enough to tell a whole story. None of my audio worked.
- [35:02]
David Pierce
Oh, no.
- [35:03]
Casey Neistat
And I was like, is this a montage? Like, what am I doing here? And grabbed my camera and my microphone and went up to the roof of my apartment building and I recorded like a monologue into the microphone and I had like my laptop open so I sort of like watching the edit and. And I made the video work and I thought it was a good video at the end of that. So that was one of those unique days where like the wife and kids are sound asleep and I'm up on the roof of my building at 11:30 at night with like a shirt on and pajama bottoms and slippers, trying to figure out how to make this thing work. So again, like, this is what we were just talking about, which is like, this was the dynamic nature. Like I had no rules that said I couldn't do that. But obviously my ambition was to approach it in a more practical. Like, let's treat this as like a 9 to 5.
- [35:53]
David Pierce
Yeah, I like it. I think that is both. There's something about that that is both incredibly sort of fun and inspiring and also exhausting and terrifying. And I feel like it should be sitting. Sitting right in the middle of those two things. Feels like the constant goal of the daily poster of any kind.
- [36:11]
Casey Neistat
You just wait, David, till your internal monologue becomes you. Podcasting. Oh, God, it's gonna happen, man. If you succeed, it's gonna happen. There'll be no turning it off.
- [36:22]
David Pierce
How can I do this for the Podcast is already a thing. I spend way too much of my time thinking in my head.
- [36:27]
Casey Neistat
Dude, get a notebook. Write it all down. You need as much subject matter. Like, your whole world is a juicy orange, and you're about to squeeze that thing, and really quickly, you're gonna be like, there's nothing left. Where else can I get subject matter from?
- [36:39]
David Pierce
Yeah, it's gonna. It's gonna get wild out here. Um, all right, Kasey, thank you so much. I, I, we're gonna need to check in at some point when my brain has fully melted out of my head, and you're gonna have to. You're gonna have to put the pieces of me back together. But I appreciate all the help.
- [36:51]
Casey Neistat
I'll be right here.
- [36:54]
David Pierce
Thanks, buddy.
- [36:55]
Casey Neistat
All right, David.
- [36:56]
David Pierce
All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to Kasey for being here, and thank you, as always, for watching and listening. Like I said at the top, this is new to us. We are figuring out what we want this show to be. We're gonna be around a lot more. We're gonna be moving a lot faster. We're gonna be doing lots of new things, and I want to know all of your thoughts and all of your ideas and all of your feedback. This. This only works because we get to do it with you. So Please send us email vergecasthe verge.com Call the Vergecast hotline, 866-verge1 One stop Nilay on the street and tell him your ideas about podcasts. I want to hear anything and everything about how we can make this show exactly the thing that you want it to be. We're having a blast. It's been super fun just getting to figure out what this thing is, and you're gonna see us experiment a lot, and I'm very excited about it. Also, the best thing you can do to support all of this, and, frankly, make your own experience of consuming it better, is subscribe to the Verge theverge.com subscribe it gets you ad free versions of all of our podcasts, including this one, plus our exclusive subscriber newsletters, all of our coverage, and lots more. Go, subscribe. Promise is worth it. We also have new merch, by the way, I don't know if I mentioned this yet. We have new merch for all of our shows, including the vergecast at the Verge store with a deal for Verge subscribers. I cannot recommend it enough. You're going to start to see some of this stuff appear in my shot here, and I'm pretty excited about it. Anyway, the Verge cast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. This episode was produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk and Aaron Locasio. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.