LIVE: Casey Neistat Unfiltered on Modern YouTube

0:01All right. So earlier this month, we hosted our first ever Press Publish NYC, a gathering of 400 plus creators in New York City. and it was powered by Microsoft Copilot. Now, one of the coolest parts about the partnership with Copilot is that Copilot was the official note taker of the event. So for everyone sitting there, listening to all the speakers, they didn't have to take notes because Copilot recapped and summarized everything and gave everyone there the biggest takeaways. If you weren't at Press Publish NYC, you can still get access to all of these takeaways from all of the sessions. You just go to thepublishpress.com and you can read them.

0:36Thanks again to Microsoft Copilot for powering Press Publish NYC. The focus has shifted away from the creativity part of creator and shifted towards the economy part. You don't have to fit in a lane. There's a million lanes. And if your lane doesn't exist, just go ahead and start it. If you're in it because you want to make money, you want to get the views, like, fuck you, I don't care about you. So we've been wanting to make this episode ever since we started this channel. And the fact that we got to do it in front of our audience live at Press Publish NYC and surprise everyone in the room with Casey Neistat, That was kind of a dream come true.

1:09When it comes to our career as creators, there is no one more influential than Casey Neistat. So in this conversation, we talk to Casey about his perspective on what is now called the creator economy. We also talk about what he considers to be his all-time greatest episode of the vlog and what made it so great. We also talk about his perspective on the world of Hollywood getting involved with creators like Mr. Beast. And lastly, we touch on the first time we ever met Casey, which was one of the most awkward and cringeworthy encounters of our lives. We've thought about it pretty much every single day since it happened.

1:46And we finally got to talk it out live on stage, which is actually kind of like just this nice cathartic experience. Felt like closure. Now, Press Publish NYC was made possible by a few sponsors who really saw our vision before we put on this event. And one of those is a longtime partner of ours, Adobe. They're also the sponsor of this episode. I'll tell you more about that later in the conversation.

2:17um casey where have you been you know before we get into that i have a question is the reason why i was a surprise announcement because you didn't think i was going to show up absolutely 100 yeah the break would have been longer it was going to be a surprise to us whether you showed up okay It was mostly surprised us. That is a real thing, yes. Yeah. I'm not great. I was super on time. I'm not great with scheduling. I couldn't be happier to be here. Great to see you all. Okay, back to my question. Okay. What have you been up to? I have no idea. Where have the years gone? How deep you are? Should we just right here?

3:01You guys vote on how deep we are. How deep. How deep. Really deep. Very deep. All right. Okay. This is a deep, meaningful therapy session here. Because I was just having this conversation with a friend yesterday. I think I made a movie about this, which we could just watch instead of me having to explain. But, you know, when my son was born, when I was a kid, we had like no money. It was a really tough go of it. And I fantasized about what I would do when I had kids again later in life. And I painted this like portrait of what that would be. and then by hard work and all that shit mostly luck i like got that i achieved like that thing right when my daughters were born like i had just sold beam i had like the youtube thing like all this shit happened and i found myself in this position that i had these two little girls and then i got really spooked because of youtube fame and i was like you know like fuck this let me just go away and hang on my kids for a while and that was like seven years ago and it's like a really amazing awesome special thing but it's also like really indulgent and i think i might be like you know when your dad catches you smoking in the basement he makes you smoke the entire carton of cigarettes i think i've like i might need to get back to work soon because I'm starting to lose the story a little bit.

4:27So you smoked the entire carton of cigarettes. It's been fucking fantastic. Of relaxation. Of taking a break. Of being a dad. Yeah. Of like spending time with kids. Like, I don't know, I'm 44 and my dad's 73 and he just retired. And I was like, you know, five years ago, I looked at my life and I was like, I'm in a position to not retire, but to like take a piece of life that most people don't get the opportunity to do until much later. Let me just take a cash advance on that and do it right now. And that's what it's been. It's been great. And I think I'm the luckiest human being in the world to have had that opportunity.

5:03Yeah. I want to ask you about your perspective on the creator economy now. Because when I was watching you during the daily vlogs, to me, you were the heart and center of the creator economy. You were the proudest of creators. You were putting them in your vlogs, amplifying them. You were proud of the format of this new version of media. And I think that was inspiring to Samir and I, and it was inspiring to a lot of people. And then, like you said, you kind of stepped away. And the creator economy has sort of run, and it's gone in a direction. I'd be curious, outside, you know, having not posted as much frequently, not being in it as much, what's your perspective, both the good and the bad, of where we're at now?

5:45Well, I resent your usage of the term creator economy to begin with. I have always been good at business and I've always like it's always been a major priority of mine. But I always had a real distinction between creator and economy. And, you know, I was doing the Daily Show and I was like, anytime I saw someone interesting, no matter how big of a creator, how small of a creator they were, I wanted them to like come on my channel so I could tell the world about them because they're awesome. But it was never the economy part. So I have a take on that, but it was less informed then because then it was like I couldn't have been more excited about the creative aspect of YouTube.

6:23And maybe to give like an abbreviated, I feel like I've told this story a million times in my life. But, you know, like I started working in sort of mainstream movies in Hollywood and like I produced the Safdie brothers first two movies. And I had a show on HBO and I worked directing traditional TV commercials. I did that whole thing and it fucking sucked. And then I found YouTube. And I was like, this is a place where there's no distance between the work that I want to make in the audience. It's the most virtuous, amazing thing ever. And I got really excited, but purely from like a creativity perspective.

6:55And I feel like that's what I was trying to do with my daily vlog. The creators are excited by. That's why I get excited about them. And I feel like in the last decade, like 2015, 2025, I feel like the priority, the focus has shifted away from the creativity part of creator and shifted towards the economy part of creator. And it breaks my fucking heart. It makes me so sad. I understand it. And I celebrate those who are able to make money, make a living off of it. it's an incredible success because that's really hard to do but there's a there's a difference between like art not to easily be pretentious but like the art of it and then the economy of it and i feel like there's been a lot of surrendering of the art of it and zeroing in on the you know the business of it but i think that's like the inherent nature of publishing video to a platform like youtube where it's almost like a video game both like your bank account and your youtube channel are numbers on a screen that go up or down, right?

8:00And I would assume, like you said, you got spooked by fate. I would also assume, and you tell me, if there's like a little bit of a, there's obviously a drug to the numbers going up on the screen. So I guess to the creators in the room and to like the creators on YouTube, what is the cautionary tale or what is the caution of that drug from your experience of the numbers going up and down on the screen? I don't know. I mean, I'm pretty hard-lined about it. You know what, let me just give a little bit more context. It's not unique what I just described to YouTube. Like, I think a really good example of that is, like, cinema in the 1970s was, for me, like, peak cinema.

8:43Because the studios didn't know what a successful movie was. They were just making all kinds of movies, like Harold and Maude. And these, like, movies that could never be made today. And some of the greatest cinema in history was made. And some of them were really financially successful. 50 years ago and now we have netflix which has all of the data netflix is the mr beast of of cinema and they like what do people want to see they want action they want this stuff and they're just putting out like it's shit so this is not unique to youtube it is just like this is what happens to art when they're when you have access to the data behind it so i don't i don't fault creators for that i don't fault the industry this is just this is a very natural thing right i just have always fallen the thing that gets me excited that i'm passionate about is always the creative and the business lives in a different different world now what was your question i think that was kind of the question i don't think it was i think i just asked you what you've been up to that's it no no no you asked a specific question i said let me give you context i just the cautionary so the card like how do you how do you i see i rationalize like because like even for me you know when i first got into this i was like i want to be a filmmaker but what what naturally happens is you search for validation and validation in our world comes from views and money and you're trying to navigate yourself as an artist or as a creative and immediately these people are paying you for something and you're like i guess that's the thing i should do or these people are watching something i guess that's the thing i should do and then when that dips you're like oh i guess that's the thing i shouldn't do right and like you're trying to navigate yourself and i'm just curious like if you if you've experienced that feeling of course and like I have a hardline take on it that I'm reluctant to really represent because I am successful.

10:28I have made money. I have financial. I've done all these things, so it's easy for me to say. But that hardline thing is like... Now, before Casey answers that question, I want to talk about the two biggest factors in us starting our YouTube journey. One was watching Casey Neistat's vlogs. And the second was downloading Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe has been a part of our creator journey literally since day one. I designed our logo in Adobe Illustrator. All of our graphics are done in After Effects. And every single episode of this show has been edited in Premiere Pro. It felt really surreal to have Adobe be a sponsor of Press Publish NYC and to be a sponsor of this episode.

11:03Because if you're a creator like us, then Adobe has probably been a huge part of your life and is probably a big part of your day to day. At Press Publish NYC, we partnered with Adobe to host a session all about the future of storytelling. And during that session, Jared from Adobe announced that Premiere is now going to be on mobile. Now, everyone in the room, including us, got early access to Premiere on mobile. And after testing it, it's not like a stripped down version of Premiere. Premiere mobile has everything from multi-track editing to 4K HDR support, motion effects, and even background removal.

11:33And you can do all of this on your iPhone. You also have AI-powered tools like enhanced speech to clean up your audio, generative sound effects, and the ability to create original assets with Adobe's generative AI. Now, if you're like me and you need to like sit at a computer to edit, you can actually start a project on mobile and then move it over to desktop and finish it in Premiere Pro. That's really cool. That's. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. Did I already say that? I think you said that. Because that's cool. Because it's cool. So thanks so much to Adobe for supporting our careers and supporting our vision with Press Publish NYC.

12:04So click the link in the description and you can try Adobe Premiere Mobile. It is completely free. All right. Now back to our conversation with Casey Neistat. That hard line thing is like, if you're in it because you want to make money, you want to get the views, like, fuck you, I don't care about you. Like, there's a place for you, and you might be able to find success in that world, but I don't care. Get someone else to talk about that, because I don't give a shit about that. That is so uninteresting for me. Like, none of that excites me. The creators that excite me are people who make something because they love making it.

12:34And there's often a connection between people who make stuff because they love making it and success. It's usually not as successful as the people who are just there to win. A great example of this is the Academy Awards are like 80 or 90 years old. They used to know the exact number. Yeah, 90-something years old. And in the history of the Academy Awards, the amount of movies that were the highest-grossing movie of the year that also won Best Picture, it's happened like twice. Like Return of the King and I can't remember the other one. Which means the movies that artistically were the most celebrated were 97 % of the time not the ones that made the most money.

13:10And I love the movies that were most celebrated. Like, I love good art and good creativity. So your question about, like, what's the cautionary tale? I think it's like, be honest with yourself about why you're getting into it. The reason why I'm such a huge fan of Jimmy Donaldson, like I'm the biggest Mr. Beast fan, is because of the clarity of his purpose. I've known Jimmy since he started on YouTube, and when we met before he was Mr. Beast, He never said to me, like, how can I be a great filmmaker? I want to tell the best stories. I want to make art. He never said that to me. He came in and he was like, I want the most fucking views.

13:47And I was like, I like your focus, man. I like your focus. And I was like, I don't know, bro. I don't know. Try this. Get 10 people to stand in a red circle. I'm just kidding. That was not my idea. But that's what I respect about Jimmy. Because Jimmy has never claimed to be anything but exactly what he is. And he's succeeded in that world beyond anyone that's come before him. And I have tremendous admiration for that. It's the conflation. It's when people, you know, they say they want to be art. They say they care about the creativity, but all that matters to them is that blue line. I don't have, I don't know what to say.

14:27I don't have, what's the app called where you see your stats? YouTube Studio. I don't have that app. That's so healthy. Yeah, it's a good decision. It's made my life so much better. But again, it's really easy for me to say. It's really fucking easy for me to say. Do you have any rules for yourself around how you commercialize your art? Because when I look back pre-vlog with you, one of my favorite series ever was your Mercedes CLA project series, where you made four separate videos about making an ad for Mercedes. And that inspired Samir and I a lot. And whenever we would get the opportunity to work with a brand very early on, we would just say, like, we'll make you a four-part series, two-part series.

15:11Like, we'll make a whole thing about this. We'll make a whole show. And then that kind of shifted now. People don't even really want that. They just want you to kind of, like, talk about it and integrate it. But I'd be curious how you look at, like, how do you commercialize it and still keep to your taste? Did you just say you got in trouble for that? I had so much trouble for that. I just can't talk about it. You can't talk about it? But I did. In the end, there was supposed to be a seven-figure ad buy behind the Mercedes campaign. And in the end, they're like, you can publish it. And they killed the entire ad buy because of internal politics and stuff.

15:44We left on good terms. Okay, parenthetical to that. This was not why things went south of the Mercedes deal. But the CLA they gave me was a pre-production one that was meant to be pushed onto the floor of the New York City auto show. They didn't have a finished one. This thing was put together by hand, had no suspension. like the door gaps really wide and stuff and they like loaned it to me on the back of a flatbed truck and i brought it out to the bonneville salt flats and was doing 360s at 90 miles an hour during rehearsal and we totaled it oh really and we had to put it on the back of the truck and cover it all mercedes like cover it do not let anyone photograph it that was my bad um and they were chill about that mercedes was they were incredible to work with there was just some political shit at the end that made that go south which was a real bummer um but your question about how do I navigate it, I think it's challenging.

16:33You know, I will say one thing that's awesome and virtuous and that all the creators in this room get the benefit from is that when I made the Mercedes campaign, it was 2012, or when Max and I made Make It Count for, Max, he's over there, when Max Joseph and I made Make It Count for Nike, before we got to do those sorts of campaigns, you had to first convince the client, you had to convince Nike, you had to convince Mercedes that this was a good idea, that anyone on YouTube might give a shit about their car, their sneakers, or their light-up wristband. And that was the hardest part. And now that is just understood.

17:09Like my agent said to me, YouTube is the most important platform on television. Like there's no doubting the role that all of you play in the economy of advertising and marketing. And that's an incredible thing. Like to have seen that happen is a really amazing thing. For me, it's tough because I still do need to make some living. I need income. And the value, even though I don't post as much and I probably don't get as many views, the value of reach just keeps going up. So even though my relevance as I spend four months in the summer playing with my kids in the sand goes down, the value of YouTube reach continues to go up.

17:49So I still get really meaningful opportunities. and it's challenging for me because I don't put out a lot of work. So if I'm doing something with a brand, I want to make sure there's really good alignment. And every time I've done deals with brands that just want like a standard ad read, I've never really landed the plane. Like it's always felt kind of fucked. I think there's something super honest about doing a brand read, like pause and like this video is sponsored by, I think that's a totally cool transaction. When I see creators do that, I want to high five the screen because I'm proud of them for getting that brand deal.

18:20they did it they got paid like that's a validation creatively it's really challenging yeah and right now brands value almost always brands value the reach more than the creativity when max and i did nike there was no reach they only valued the creativity mercedes only valued the creativity and that's really i remember the first time i got a brand deal my agent called me and it was a significant dollar deal and i was like what's the creative and she was like no they just want you to do a 30 second read. And I was like, they want me to do what now? She's like, they just want you to, and I was like, my feelings were so hurt.

18:54I was like, they only like me for my followers. And she's like, they literally only like you because of your followers. Take the money. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause that's kind of a format that was borrowed from the radio. You know what I mean? Like it's like in the middle of the program and you break and you say who the sponsor is. Um, but on that note, like YouTube has been the most watched app on connected TVs for the past six months, which is honestly insane. That like more than Disney, more than Netflix, more than Hulu. So in this world where like we're all competing on the same screen now, what do you find interesting?

19:25Like, what do you think is interesting today? What are you interested in for yourself? Like what's capturing your attention on the screens? I can't remember his name. I'll look it up so I can say his name. Mark Felton. he's my favorite youtuber what does he make mark felton productions he's like some middle-aged older british dude who's really not good at making youtube videos and he puts out like two videos a week and i've watched him blow up what's he talking about he picks out hyper esoteric um aspects of world war ii he's a historian so they're perfectly history do you know mark felton productions are you fucking crazy i've never met someone who knows mark felton product this is the room to meet and like it has this intro and it's like he's like hello today on mark felton productions we will discuss the handgun that changed the face of war from september 4 to september 19th 1941 and it's 12 minutes i'm like fascinated and he's like two million subscribers that's amazing his videos are all evergreen and for me it's like it's indicative of the fact that like i'm interested in something very narrow yeah and there's this guy and if five years ago or ten years ago when like creators were like young handsome people sitting on your pretty people sitting on the edge of their beds saying hey guys the idea that this adult historian was going to be able to find an audience like this on YouTube is preposterous and he's wildly successful so like that's what excites me about the platform it's it that was it niches niches rich like these really narrow subjects are now connecting with their audiences and when the audience went from being YouTube, this weird platform to being the world.

21:10Your narrow thing will reach its whole audience. I think we've seen that the most recently at like conferences, like a VidCon where back in the day when there was like the height of beam, when you would run through VidCon, it was like madness. When Logan ran through the fountain, right? There was like clarity on, these are the celebrities of the platform. These are the most, like the biggest creators on the platform. You go to VidCon now, you meet someone, they're like, oh, I'm a big fan. and you're like, oh, cool. Like, what do you do? And you look them up, they have 19 million followers on TikTok.

21:37And there's a fragmentation of fame now, right? Where it's kind of like, everybody's a creator. Everybody has a thing. Everybody has an audience in some way, shape, or form. This is a really interesting new phenomenon in this. Like, probably in this room, there's people with like 10 million subscribers, right? You have Jordan Matter back there. He's got 30 million subscribers. Like, you're gonna look through this room and be like, wow, everybody at this point has an audience, which is fascinating. how many subscribers does nusir have you know this fucking guy messire he thinks that he's special you show up at my talk and you're looking at your fucking phone back there okay it's good to see you look great um i think it's incredible yeah i used to take issue with it because like when i was getting started on youtube youtube handpicked who the creators were remember They put them on billboards and stuff.

22:28And it felt then that YouTube really wanted to take a role in defining what it meant to be a creator. And then PewDiePie fucked the whole thing. He destroyed the whole thing. And I don't know this because I never spoke to them at a leadership level about this. But what it seems like from afar is they made a deliberate decision to step back from that. Like, let's not pick who the winners are. Let's not pick who defines this platform. Let's just make it the generic platform. And I remember when I felt that pullback in the late 2010s, I was almost disappointed. So I was like, oh, they don't care about creativity anymore.

23:04And what came out of that, and this is largely Neil's leadership, and I think it's an incredible thing, is it just sort of leveled the playing field. Because so long as they from the top are saying this is what creativity is or this is what it means to be a creator, it means everyone who's not that sees the platform as not for them. But by making it this thing, you have this guy in England who makes weird videos about World War II shit, and he's wildly successful. And it means like it becomes this thing where like there's a million lanes. You don't have to fit in a lane. There's a million lanes.

23:38And if your lane doesn't exist, just go ahead and start it. That's cool. And I think it's a really virtuous, wonderful, wonderful thing. Yeah. do you do you feel like seeing that youtube now and video creation is is a place where you can be extremely niche and you can find your crowd you can find your people you can be validated by it do you feel like if you were to really dig into youtube again you would see yourself digging into a niche like you're a big runner you'd be running a lot or do you feel like you there's something inside of you where if you are to create and put effort into something the goal is for as many people to see it i know you don't care about views but you're like you're someone who comes from a background of like major impact i like met with a running app yesterday and they're like wanted to work with me they're awesome but i was like i don't know that i have anything else to say about running yeah i think i'm out um but no for me it's it's we were just having this conversation about like i this is true from hbo shows is true for the videos that i was making in you know 1999 on my iMac when I lived in a trailer park the things when I see things that are interesting especially things from my own life that are interesting I want to share that interestingness and that is at the core of my whole creative approach it's why like you know going all the way around the world figuratively when it comes to being a filmmaker standing on the stage at the Cannes Film Festival you know like there's a point in my life where I feel like I could have gone in any direction.

25:08I could have stayed with television. I could have stayed as a commercial director. I could have been a big Hollywood filmmaker, but I just returned to this little thing. And, you know, like I'm an old man now and I've got financial security and I've got the confidence that comes with being old. And I like, I look in the mirror and say, what's the one thing I want to do if I could do anything in the world? And it's like, I just want to sit alone and like make whatever interesting thing seems funny to me. The movie I've been working on for the last 10 days is that my baby daughter taped up in the shower, facing the shower, it's on the glass on the outside.

25:42It's just a list of eight things that you have to do in the shower. Number one is sing. Number two is eat the water. Number three is spit it out. Number four is have a disco. Number five is make a potion. Number six is get the potion in your eyes because you're dumb. She wrote it. I didn't write that. Number seven is blow bubbles. Don't remember what number eight. I've been reading that every day And I was like, I have to make that video. I've destroyed four Sony a seven S three cameras because filming in a shower is impossible. But like that is fascinating to me. And I'm like, I want to make this movie.

26:20And there's nothing that I've done in my career, including standing on the stage at the cam film festival that gets me excited the way that little idea does. So let's unpack that. Cause that, that idea, you see something, is it just that it's so like wonderful and wonderfully human that it's like almost, or like, because how do you discern like this one is enough for me to work on a video? This one's just kind of cool. I'll share it with a friend. Like, I feel like I have a million ideas during the day and to invest the time into making a video, especially with the scarcity that you're making them.

26:48What's like the, I don't know that I intellectualize it quite on that level, but I will say like the threshold is much higher now, like the beauty of doing the daily blog. And I feel like of the 800 episodes 750 were about this idea is like i was there's a forcing agent so like i go to get a smoothie i'm like how do i make this interesting enough to warrant a video and that was an incredible creative exercise because you had to find it wasn't when interesting this strikes me it was when i i had to find it i was always on the search if i came here today i'd be like oh fuck do i make a scene out of this and that's a really good creative exercise and i'm on the other side of that now so it's always just sort of looking around but like i stared at that thing every day and i'm like this is funny i can do something with this and the irony of it is all the camera gear that i've soaked and doesn't don't work and i've flooded my apartment bathroom and i only that whole scene is going to be about nine seconds of like a five minute video because i made that video i was like this isn't a movie what was i thinking and then i have to figure out the movie And it's like the process is the reward.

27:56So I guess it's just like whatever is motivating enough to pick up the camera and get started, that kind of initiates the process. I think one of my favorite videos of yours that I always reference when it comes to turning something in, like really understanding how storytelling works, is when you had to rescue the drone. Do you remember that video? Yeah, it's called my all-time. My all-time greatest. Because that was my all-time greatest movie ever. because i looked at i don't know if you changed the title at some point but i remember seeing that of like my all-time greatest and i was like this is actually turning a situation that you got into into like an incredible story structure of problem solution triumph this like harman story circle this is the greatest threat narrative ever i remember editing that in my apartment and we had a baby and it was like one in the morning i finished it i'm like jumping in the chair i was like candace you gotta see this and she watched it and she's like you lost your fucking drone community nothing happens here and she's completely right this is such a nothing video yeah but it was like finding the dramatic tension right of like a truly like that scene in like argo when they finally like escaped tehran and like the plane's taking off and they're like we're now serving alcohol we're over international waters and it's this moment of like they did it in elation like i felt like i achieved that in a video about nothing like so it was purely about that idea of finding this story structure, even though the subject matter was about something that was like not even incidental.

29:22It was such a nothing. There was no substance to it whatsoever. I want to ask you about working with other people because we're about to speak with Max and Cleo. I know you've worked a lot with Max. Historically, you've said that you're not good at managing people, but there are people that you collaborate with. I'm wondering, what does it take for you to collaborate with someone? It's not just that I don't like managing people. I don't work well with others, period. Like when I moved back to New York from Los Angeles, my only goal was to have no employees. And in my office, like I mop the floors every week.