Casey Neistat: Why I Quit YouTube & What I'm Doing Now!

1. 0:00 – 3:23

   Intro

   1. CNCasey Neistat0:00

      It got scary. We had to move into a higher security building, and I didn't know what to do. That's when it got dark.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:08

      Casey Neistat.

   3. CNCasey Neistat0:09

      The godfather of YouTube. The king of vlogging.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:11

      One of the most prolific creators in history. Throughout your story, there's this objectively delusional persistence towards a goal.

   5. CNCasey Neistat0:20

      The word I've been using is patience, because patience is so unattractive. And I think you need to remove this idea of success being this romantic, beautiful thing. It's not. When I started my daily vlog, making a video a day 800 days in a row, it took eight years to go from zero to a couple hundred thousand subscribers, failing year in and year out. And now, $200,000 in debt. It's awful. You're a loser. But patience will smash into opportunity, and then it went to 10 million subscribers in, like, 18 months. So, in life, you can get whatever you want, but are you willing to do that for 20 years? If you're not, don't bother, man.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:56

      You sold the company, you built the channels, you've made a huge name for yourself. At that point...

   7. CNCasey Neistat1:01

      That's when it got hard. Because the only goal that anyone should have in life is one of happiness and fulfillment. And, like, this idea that you have to win to be happy could not be further from the truth. I had, by every definition, achieved success. But I wasn't running the marathon because I wanted to get across the finish line. I was running it because I loved the running. And the fame was insane. Like, we had to move to LA, and I didn't know what to do, until now.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:25

      Is this a new Casey? What can we expect?

   9. CNCasey Neistat1:28

      (laughs)

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

       Casey is a legend. He's a legend to so many people. He's one of the originals as it relates to creativity, content, video, and YouTube. And although most of us know Casey, what most of us don't know is the underdog story, the true, deep, uncovered motivations that drove him to become arguably one of the world's most famous, most acclaimed, most celebrated online creators ever. And it's a story that you'll relate to. It's a story of a completely normal dude that was down-and-out that had a very big indistinguishable passion. And the more interesting, maybe for me as someone that's watched Casey's journey from afar, is what he's doing now. For the first time ever, he talks about what his life is right now. Now that he's not uploading videos every day, now that he's a little bit further out of the spotlight. And Casey gives us this blueprint for how we can take that thing that we enjoy doing, that thing we consider a passion or a hobby, and drag it up the mountain and make it an incredibly lucrative job. How do we turn our passion into a career? And how do we become number one at the thing we do when everything, everything seems to be against us? That is the story of Casey Neistat, and that's the story you're gonna enjoy today. Before this episode starts, the one favor I'll ask, if you enjoy what we do here and you enjoy the guests that we bring, please join the Diary of a CEO journey by hitting the subscribe button. And if you do, I'll make you a deal. I'll do everything in my power to make this show bigger and better for you. Do we have a deal? Enjoy this episode.

2. 3:23 – 7:29

   The Early Years That Made You Who You Are Today

   1. SBSteven Bartlett3:23

      Casey, what do I need to know about your earliest years to understand the man that sits before me today? I almost think of people's lives like a set of dominoes that have fallen. What are those first dominoes that fell to create the man that sits here today?

   2. CNCasey Neistat3:39

      Oh, man. How much time you got?

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:42

      (laughs) Plenty.

   4. CNCasey Neistat3:43

      So, my whole childhood was just completely unsupervised. Like, there was no, "Did you do your homework tonight?" There was no, like, dinner at 6:00. It was like, "Be home before dark or you're gonna be in trouble." Trouble never being defined and, like, dark never being defined. And it was just kind of like a very loose, kind of fucked-up wandering childhood of exploration. You know, like, I was telling this story recently, but we, there were railroad tracks behind our house. And one of the things we used to do for fun, we were little kids, is we'd collect pennies and change and we'd lay them on the railroad tracks, and the train would go over them and flatten them. Very cool. But the train would vibrate the tracks as it approached, and the coins would fall off of it. So, the only way to, to address that is you'd put the coins on the train tracks when the train was really close. So, I, you know, I don't know. I was in grammar school, which is sixth grade. Like, how old are you then? I was like 10 years old. Just a little kid. And like, you know, train track, huge freight train coming and me putting nickels on the train tracks to try to get a flattened coin. That's kind of what my childhood was like.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:52

      As you look back, what is the power and the, the gift that that unsupervision gives you? 'Cause I resonate with that so much. I think the reason I became an entrepreneur is because I've, I've always said this. When I was 10 years old, my parents weren't there when I went to bed and they weren't there when I woke up. And being the youngest of four, it was like they had assumed I'd also been parented already, so they just, they, like, gave up or something. They just got busy. So, in that void of independence, I conducted a lot of experiments. And I almost hear that in what you're saying as well. That unsupervision allowed for exploration, that allowed for something.

   6. CNCasey Neistat5:25

      Yeah, I think it's, um, like, necessity is the mother of invention. And I think, you know, if you're 10 and your parents all of a sudden are absent, you're just forced to figure shit out. It's funny because, like, all I want to do as a parent now is protect my children from the hardships I had when I was little. But it is those hardships I had that made me who I am. And it is, like, this impossible dichotomy to address. It's impossible as a parent. Like, I constantly think I'm fucking up my kids. Like, we send them to a private school because we can. Like, if you can afford it, which we can-We're fortunate, like, why would I not send my kids to the best school? But in the back of my brain, I think what's best for them is to be in some New York City public school, figuring it out. Like, I think that's what's be- but I don't do that, um, because I had a terrible time at public school. I hated it. So I want to protect them from that, so I send them to a really fancy school that's lovely and warm and cozy. And like, am I helping them? I don't know. But no, I think that exactly what you were saying, like, eh, I had no choice but to figure it out when I was little. Like, I worked from, like, when I was super young, I figured out how to make a dollar. Like, I was a paper boy when I was really, really young, delivering newspapers. And I'd make, like, $30 a week, and then, you know, when I got to, um, s- eighth grade and I started smoking pot and I realized, like, the math behind weed sales. I was like, "Okay, there's like a, there's a 400%, a 4X return if you buy quarter ounces and you break them down and you sell them as dime bags. But if you buy a quarter pound and you sell them as eighths, you're looking at 1,600% return." I was like, "Okay, so how do I come up with $250 to buy the, to buy the QP? And then let me break that down, and then like," I haven't hit puberty yet. I'm a little kid. Like, these guys are gonna beat the shit out of me if I mess with the wrong people. So I need to befriend the guys that can protect me and, like, figure out that business. Um, all of that was because I had, like, I didn't have a choice.

3. 7:29 – 8:51

   Your Parents

   1. CNCasey Neistat7:29

   2. SBSteven Bartlett7:29

      Why were you unsupervised? Where were your parents?

   3. CNCasey Neistat7:32

      Um, this is what I mean when I say my parents were accidentally, um, great, and I do think they tried their best. You know, like, my dad worked a zillion hours a week. He had no choice. Um, I think we lived, like, a very middle class livelihood. You know, like, my parents had, like, nice cars. They had Volvos, but they always bought, like, five-year-old Volvos, n- never new cars. And like, we lived in a house that was, like, comfortable but, like, you know, there was never any food in our house. It was like, it was fine. We always made it by. Like, we'd go on vacation, but it was always, like, in the back of the station wagon and we'd go to, like, s- a town two hours away and stay in a shitty motel for two or three nights. But my dad worked all the time. And I only understood later that it was very, like, hand-to-mouth. You know, he was a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of guy. And my mother, you know, I don't h- I still don't understand my mom. I think sh- she was one of eight kids. My mother is the tail end of an aristocracy. So it's like, I always describe her side of the family as, like, all of the privilege and entitlement of an aristocrat with none of the money. (laughs) So, eh, I, you know, I don't... M- my mother was just always kind of an enigma and always kind of absent. Um, and I think that they were just, they tried the best they could 'em. And, and we were just kind of left wandering as kids.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett8:50

      And they divorced

4. 8:51 – 12:03

   Your Parents Divorce

   1. SBSteven Bartlett8:51

      at some point?

   2. CNCasey Neistat8:52

      Yeah, that's when things got really hard.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett8:54

      In what way?

   4. CNCasey Neistat8:55

      I think that childhood always felt like you were sort of hanging on by a thread. I was, like, one of four. My older brother, Van, was the firstborn. And he's such a, V- Van is such an incredible guy and he's so magnetic. And then there's my sister, who's the only girl. And then there's my little baby brother, Dean, who was the baby. And then I was just kind of this, like, a- accident that happened 13 months after my sister and two years before my bro- like, it was this... So it was like I, I was always the loudest and the squeakiest to get the most attention. And, uh, y- th- you know, that was... I kinda think that, like, characterized what my, the challenges was, were for me as a kid growing up. And then it just got, you know, the, the, the, the tumult of living in that house just kind of precipitated until my parents split up, which happened under very, like, auspicious, shitty, fucked-up circumstances, and kids being blamed when the kids shouldn't have been blamed. And, um, I say all that without faulting my parents. Again, I think they were trying their best. But looking back at it, it's like, "What the fuck, guys?"

   5. SBSteven Bartlett10:03

      I, I heard you s- say previously that your, you had to tell your father that your mother had been, had cheated on him.

   6. CNCasey Neistat10:09

      Yeah, I remember that vividly. Like, I can picture the table we were sitting at. I can remember his posture. I can remember his response to it. But yeah, you know, and my, my mother, you know, she's a, she's a, you know, she's a good woman. She has faults like all of us humans have faults, but I think she let those manifest in a way that were really dark at that time in her life. And it was apparent to me as a 14-year-old exactly what was going on, exactly what was going on. It was so fucking crystal clear.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett10:38

      As a 14-year-old?

   8. CNCasey Neistat10:39

      Yeah. Like, abundantly clear. And I never really understood my own father's perspective on that. But I understand that, his perspective now. It's like, you know, he's working a million hours a week to keep his head above water. And also, like, you don't wanna see that. You don't, like, the truth sucks, so just, like, put your head in the sand and ignore it is a very natural response to it. But I was, like, fighting with my mother at the time about, you know, all kinds of, the shit that a teenager fights with their parents about, getting in trouble at school and all of that. So I, I was mad at her. And I think I, you know, part of m- part of me addressing that was just sort of confronting my dad. Like, "What are you gonna do about this woman?"

   9. SBSteven Bartlett11:20

      At 14 years old, you knew your mother was cheating on your father?

   10. CNCasey Neistat11:22

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett11:23

       A- and you told him?

   12. CNCasey Neistat11:23

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett11:25

       H- how does one know that?

   14. CNCasey Neistat11:28

       I mean, it's, it, it was, m- th- it was super apparent. I mean, there were very, there was a handful of very specific-

   15. SBSteven Bartlett11:35

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CNCasey Neistat11:36

       ... s- situations that just made it a- abundantly clear. Um, and you know, I think that's why, like, you know, at the time, obviously fault my mom through and through. But looking back at it, it was, you know, it was probably something closer to, like, a cry for help or a cry for attention, or of just a way of her, you know, her letting the struggle she was facing in the totality of her life manifest. Like, this is the only way I can express it is by doing this kind of fucked up, awful thing.

5. 12:03 – 14:09

   Your Plan In The Early Years

   1. CNCasey Neistat12:03

   2. SBSteven Bartlett12:03

      As you step out of that chapter of your, your childhood, what are the-... fingerprints, the character fingerprints that are left on you that still are with you today. What did that chapter of your life, those first sort of 15 years change for you?

   3. CNCasey Neistat12:16

      Oh, I don't think anything has changed. Like, I don't think it's even fingerprints. It was so, like, acute the way that I had ... that I saw my future when I was that young. Like, I knew exactly my plan.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett12:27

      Really?

   5. CNCasey Neistat12:27

      And exactly my plan. And, and look, the specifics of how that plan was gonna come together were ambiguous at best. But like, I had... I knew exactly my plan. Like, New York City was always the plan. I remember it was like page 41 in my social studies book was a two-page spread of the New York City skyline. And I wouldn't let myself look at that page 'cause it would... I would have such an emotional response to it. Like, Tom Hanks in the movie Big. I would play that movie on repeat 'cause I was like, "That's me. Like, that's me. I'm gonna move to New York City and get to be the kid that I wish I could be. Like, that's me." To this day, like, that... I know every word of that movie. That movie is like a Bible for me. It is a roadmap for me. But, you know, like, I've, I've made 500 YouTube videos about this single idea. But like, the mission of my life, and this was defined then when I was a little kid, the sole mission of my life is to realize all the promises I made to myself as a kid. You know like when you're a little kid and you're like, "Someday I'm gonna be an astronaut." And like, your mom yells at you and it's like, "Well, someday I'm gonna have kids and I'm not gonna yell at them." Or like, you're fucking hungry and you're all out of mac and cheese and you're like, "Someday I'm gonna have a refrigerator that's always filled up with food." Like, whatever it is. You know, you have a boss that's an asshole and it's like, "Someday I'm not gonna have any boss." And like, all of those promises, like my promises could... You know, they could fill up a phone book. And my sole mission was always like, "No, I have to check every single one of these off." Um, the how was always gray, but the, the, the to-do it was always vivid. And there was never even a doubt that it was going to happen. Like, there was never an if, ever. There was nothing even close to that.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett14:01

      But life throws at you at that age things that you could never have predicted, and those things don't seem to have deterred your pursuit of that

6. 14:09 – 18:10

   Having A Child At 16 Years Old

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:09

      mission.

   2. CNCasey Neistat14:09

      No.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett14:09

      You have a child that's what, 16, 17 years old?

   4. CNCasey Neistat14:12

      Yeah. That was difficult. Yeah, so I moved out. Moved out is such a funny way of characterizing it. I say moved out and I picture like a moving truck pull up. I got in a fight with my mom at age 15 on a Monday night, um, school night, and she gave me this ultimatum. This is when she and my father were like, you know, really... They, they were splitting up and getting back together. It was like a really gnarly time in the family. But we got into this fight and I just remember thinking like... I was so mad at her at the time. I was like, "You can't tell me what to do." And she was like, "You need to do this, this and this or get out of this house." And I was like, "All right, I'm gonna go." And I just like left.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett14:46

      Where, where did you go?

   6. CNCasey Neistat14:47

      I like... That night I stayed at a friend's house down the street 'cause his parents were like weirdly religious, but also kind of absent and they were always like very warm to me. So I was like, "Hey, can I sleep here?" And he's like, "Yeah, sure." Then I slept at another friend's house and then...

   7. SBSteven Bartlett15:00

      So you ran away from home. (laughs)

   8. CNCasey Neistat15:01

      Yeah. So I say moved out, it wasn't like, uh, you know, put the couch over there and-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett15:05

      (laughs) Yeah.

   10. CNCasey Neistat15:06

       It was like I just took a backpack and it was as close to like a stick with a red handkerchief on the back. Um, but I eventually moved in with these two girls. They were great. They were super fun. Um, and, you know, they were like... Let's see, I was 15 and I think they were 17 or 18. And then, yeah, I started... You know, one of them, she and I kind of got close and then like immediately she was pregnant, and a year later we had... yeah, we had a kid. And that was challenging. But even so, like, I never... I remember one moment where like she started freaking out in the car 'cause she was like s- you know, eight months pregnant and she's like s- crying and just like, you know, dealing with it. And I pulled over and I was like, "What are you upset about?" And she was like, "What are we gonna do? We don't have any money. Like, you don't even have a job. Like, what are we gonna do?" And I was like, "It's gonna be f-... What do you mean what are we gonna do? It's gonna be fine. We're gonna have a kid. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be fine."

   11. SBSteven Bartlett16:01

       Were you not scared?

   12. CNCasey Neistat16:03

       Then? No. It just... Everything made sense. I was like, "Oh, this is great."

   13. SBSteven Bartlett16:06

       (laughs) There's a naivety to...

   14. CNCasey Neistat16:09

       It's beautiful.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett16:10

       (laughs)

   16. CNCasey Neistat16:10

       Now I'm scared. I always say that like... I had nothing to lose then. I had nothing. I had no- nothing. Like, I had... I had no reputation. You know, like my friends' parents all thought I was a fucking degenerate. They wouldn't let me hang out with my friends 'cause I was such a bad influence. So it wasn't like I had like a reputation. Nobody knew me. I had nothing. I had no money. I had no resources. I knew no one. And when you have nothing to lose, you're just like a... You're like a rat that's cornered and it was like, "All right, I'm gonna chew my way out of this one." Um, and now I'm like... I'm so scared of everything I do in life 'cause I'm like, "It's so good right now, I don't wanna fuck anything up."

   17. SBSteven Bartlett16:49

       (laughs)

   18. CNCasey Neistat16:49

       Take it really easy. Like, I'm really happy right now. Like, this... I wanna protect what I've got. But no, there was a naivety then that was just, uh... That was... It's hard for me to empathize with how like bright-eyed, bushy-tailed naive I was. I remember when like my son, Owen, when his mother... When she and I split up, um, you know, she dumped me 'cause I was just such a pain in the ass and God bless her for doing so. But I remember I was like... Then I was like, "Okay, I've got a plan. In five years, I'm gonna move to New York City and I'm gonna figure this out and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that."

   19. SBSteven Bartlett17:25

       What were you gonna do in New York?

   20. CNCasey Neistat17:26

       I don't know. I had some cockamamy plan. There's always a plan. Um, I don't know what the specifics were but I knew that like up until that point in my life I'd only ever worked in the back of restaurants, washing dishes or like being like a prep cook or just being like the low man on the totem pole who takes out the trash and scrubs out the garbage cans and like does all the shit work, mop. Um, it was the only job I'd ever done. My, my father sold used restaurant supplies, like if you needed a new oven or walk-in fridge, so he could always get me jobs in restaurants. And I remember like moving to New York City, my only plan was like, "I'm just not gonna work in a restaurant. That's my plan. I'm gonna do anything that's not work..." But I had this five-year plan to move to New York City and like six months later, I quit my job and moved to New

7. 18:10 – 22:12

   What Do Now Know About 'Brilliant Accidental' Decisions

   1. CNCasey Neistat18:10

      York.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett18:10

      When you look back at that sort of like 19-year-old kid that quits his job and moves to New York, so up until that point-What you now know, as a guy that's in their 40s, about the brilliant accidental decisions you were making at the time. Like, what are the brill- you know, like, the accidental brilliance that is probably objectively stupidity.

   3. CNCasey Neistat18:30

      (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett18:30

      Like, that's a stupid decision. But in hindsight, you go, "I was a genius." (laughs)

   5. CNCasey Neistat18:34

      You know, it's, I never would say in hindsight I was a genius. I was just be, it was raw stupidity and fearlessness. But it's like all those stupid fucking quotes that everybody posts on Instagram that, like, I hate about, like, you know, "You only live once. Follow your dreams. Pursue this." Like, fuck you. Fuck every one of you. Um, I hate that shit. I hate inspo porn, even though I'm very guilty of, uh, f- fanning the flames of inspo porn. But, like, there's so much truth to all of that. And the reason why I hate that shit is, like, if you have to be told that, it's too late. If you're gonna learn that from an Instagram post, it means fucking nothing to you. It's just masturbation. Like, it's, it's doing nothing for anyone. People just put it up there to feel good about themselves. But all of it is true. And what I mean by that is, like, I could never do at age 42 what I could do at age 19, which is just say, "Fuck it. I've got a 10th grade education, no high school diploma, no work experience, no life experience, and a two-year-old. What's the best thing I can do right now? I know, let me move to the most expensive challenging city in the world with no plan." If I hadn't done it then, I d- I don't, I don't know that you could ever do that. And I think that, like, when I say those cheesy quotes are true, it's like, you kind of have an obligation in, in life that if you feel something that is so powerful to you, like, follow through with that. And I'm not naive to that now. I wasn't naive to it then. But I think now I can articulate it, which is, like, this idea of privilege. If you're, like, born in the United States of America, if you, like, get to sit at a table and do this, like... And I wasn't a rich kid, and like, yeah, I was, like, on welfare and got free diapers and milk from the state. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to feed my child, and, like, I worked 60 hours a week in a kitchen making eight bucks an hour. I think I got $7.25 an hour was my starting, um, salary. And like, I, that was like, I'm like the l- luckiest person in the world to get to do that. Are you crazy? Like, do you know what some kid in South Sudan would do for that opportunity?

   6. SBSteven Bartlett20:41

      (laughs)

   7. CNCasey Neistat20:41

      And I just walked into it. I'm, like, a healthy guy. I've got two legs that work, and like, like, I have a brai- like, I've, like, I'm the lucky... I won the lotto on life. So, like, if you start life with this winning lotto ticket and it's like, "Oh, a little hiccup. Accidentally had a baby when I was a fucking teenager." It's like, "Oh, no big deal." Like, "No, we'll just push through this. This is gonna be great." And it's like, "I wanna live in New York City." It's like, "Let's go for it. Let's do it."

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:05

      The privilege there sounds like a privilege of mindset. Uh, there's objective privilege, I guess, from being i-

   9. CNCasey Neistat21:10

      Yeah. Like, I push back, and when people say that, my response is like, "Fuck you."

   10. SBSteven Bartlett21:14

       (laughs)

   11. CNCasey Neistat21:14

       "Privilege of mindset." No, that's an objective privilege. Name one time in the history of humanity, like, what, the Sumerians invented the written word 5,000 years ago. Name one time when people had the kind of opportunity that, like, people like us born in the West have. Like, th- that has never existed before. Never. Ever. Maybe it was a little bit easier for our parents. You know what I mean?

   12. SBSteven Bartlett21:37

       Yeah.

   13. CNCasey Neistat21:37

       Like, maybe, like, post-war USA was, like, a little bit easier than it is now, or maybe now is a little bit harder than it was for me 20 years ago. But, like, still, give me a fucking break. Like, this life is like, it's, it's... The hardships we face now are so menial compared to what they were 100 years ago. Objectively. 200 years ago. You ever see that thing that went viral and it was like the reasons why people died in London in the year 1892?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett22:03

       (laughs)

   15. CNCasey Neistat22:03

       And, like, the fourth most popular cause of death was teeth.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett22:07

       (laughs)

   17. CNCasey Neistat22:08

       Or, like, it was like, it was 60% of the population are dying 'cause their teeth are fucked up.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett22:11

       (laughs)

   19. CNCasey Neistat22:11

       Like,

8. 22:12 – 25:02

   Why Don't People Make The Leap Into The Changes They Want?

   1. CNCasey Neistat22:12

      we have it pretty easy. But-

   2. SBSteven Bartlett22:14

      Why, why don't people? So, th- th- there's gonna be another guy right now that's, like, washing pots in the back room at the seafood restaurant on the $7 an hour. And he might be listening to this right now. And he hears you say that. But why, why don't people take action beyond that point and take the big bet when they've n- objectively potentially nothing to lose?

   3. CNCasey Neistat22:33

      Well, what's that line from... Is it Caddyshack or Fletch when he's like, "The world needs ditch diggers too"? That's a very cynical take on it. But I think a very practical take is, like, not everybody wants it. And I think that's okay. I think that's a wonderful thing. I never understood that. I think, like, in life you can get whatever you want. But you can't want whatever you want. If you don't want it, there's no creating that.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett22:56

      But do you s- think sometimes people want to want it but they don't really want it?

   5. CNCasey Neistat22:59

      Yeah. Of course. Of course. And I think that's okay. Like, if you really fucking wanted it, you wouldn't need this, like, inspirational podcast to make you make that decision. You'd already be fucking doing it. Um, and that's not to be defeatist. It just means that, like, the only goal that anyone should have in life is one of happiness and fulfillment. And, like, this idea that you have to win to be happy could not be further from the truth. Like, why do we hear about rock stars and famous actors and these people that we see as sort of, like, the, the absolute apex of success in our industry? Why are they all fucking killing themselves and dying of alcoholism and, like, all that darkness happening at the highest level? It's like, 'cause that doesn't equal happiness. Like, what is happiness for you? And an example I like to point to is, like, my best friend in the whole world. We grew up together, like. Um, I, like, ran away from home. I stayed with him for a little while. Like, we've been together since we were kids. You know, like, when I moved to New York, he stayed in the hometown. And like, when I quit my job washing dishes, I gave him that job. He literally took over that job. And now, you know, here we are 25 years later. He still lives in that town. Um, you know, he still has a, a job very similar to what he had 25 years ago. He's got three amazing kids. He lives, like, a very, what I would say is, like, very classic archetypal middle class American life. And like, I look at him and I'm like, "That is the embodiment..."... of, like, happiness and fulfillment. He has this amazing relationship with his amazing wife. He has these three brilliant little kids that he gets to, you know, make sure he ge- they get to school every single day. He's got, like, a cute dog that he goes on runs with. He has this amazing life. And no part of that life was being like, "Fuck this. I wanna, like, live on the moon someday. I need to run away from all this." Like, his l- his focus in life was something completely different. And I think that I didn't under- I, I struggled to appreciate that when I was younger. But now I see, like, so much to that. And that's why I think, like, adjusting the pie in the sky as just one of happiness and fulfillment, and defining those, it is up to

9. 25:02 – 28:42

   The Gift Of Failure

   1. CNCasey Neistat25:02

      you.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett25:02

      Bronnie Ware. I, I

   3. NANarrator25:03

      Yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett25:03

      ... meant ... Was talking about her the other day. Um, she's that, I think it's called palliative care nurse in Australia-

   5. CNCasey Neistat25:08

      Mm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett25:08

      ... who interviewed people with one day left to live. And she asked them what their biggest regret in their life was. Number one regret of their dying was, "Not living a life true to myself."

   7. CNCasey Neistat25:16

      Mm.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett25:17

      And for those people, those that do have this aspiration to start that business or, I don't know, become a ballet dancer in Europe or whatever, that are held back by potentially some form of fear, you know. Is there, is there anything that one can offer them to get them just to take that, that first initial step? Which seems to be the hardest, like, getting off the couch or getting out of, quitting their job.

   9. CNCasey Neistat25:42

      (sighs)

   10. SBSteven Bartlett25:42

       That you, you might offer to your children if they came to you.

   11. CNCasey Neistat25:44

       Yeah. I mean, I, I just think that failure is, um ... I think failure is, like, the greatest gift. I think failure is like, it hurts so bad. But failure is like, is a part of life. And if you're not willing to accept that, like, failure is part of it, you've gotta keep failing. Um, Anvil, the story of Anvil. You know this?

   12. SBSteven Bartlett26:04

       Yeah.

   13. CNCasey Neistat26:04

       I made a whole video about this. So I made a YouTube video about this. Um, and then the leads ... The, there's a movie called Anvil. I think it's called The Story of Anvil or something like that. Anvil was this, like, big hair rock band in the '80s. And they opened for, like, Def Leppard, you know, like 50,000 people kind of thing. But they never headlined, they never broke through. They were the, always the opening act. They were always like the bridesmaid, never the bride. And the movie opens showing these huge concerts in the '80s, and Anvil just rocking out. And then it cuts, and it shows the lead singer. And he lives in Canada, and he drives a little van, and he delivers food to old people making minimum wage. Like, barely able to keep his head above water. And he performs still in his leather outfits as, like, this middle-aged 50-year-old guy to, like, six people. And they'll be just drinking beer, and he's there giving it his all. And the movie is about how relentless this guy ... Like, he's just not will- ... He borrows money from his sister to record an album. Nobody buys it. Can't pay her back. She's got kids and shit. Like, it is the most devastating story you've ever seen. Because he's unwilling to give up that dream. Like, he just wouldn't let it go. This is his whole life. And then this documentary (laughs) comes out, and it's fucking fantastic. And because of the documentary, Anvil blows up.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett27:20

       (laughs)

   15. CNCasey Neistat27:21

       And all of a sudden, he is that superstar. Like, on tour, selling out arenas in Japan and shit. Like, he did it. Had he given up at any point in time, the, the documentary wouldn't have been interesting or just been-

   16. SBSteven Bartlett27:34

       (laughs)

   17. CNCasey Neistat27:34

       ... another person who threw in the towel. But they made this ... Like, a filmmaker saw this story and was like, "That's crazy. I need to tell that story." And it yielded that success. Had he not been willing to take on 40 years of failure, 30 years of failure, um, he would've never found success. And I think that's the most extreme version of that. The reason why I was interrupting myself is because I made that YouTube video about ... That's basically the story I just told you.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett27:59

       (laughs)

   19. CNCasey Neistat27:59

       And, like, the director reached out and was like, "Whatever the guy's name, the lead singer of Anvil," he's like, "Dude, he loved your YouTube video." And I was like, "Yes!" (laughs)

   20. SBSteven Bartlett28:07

       (laughs)

   21. CNCasey Neistat28:07

       I was, like, starstruck. You know what I mean?

   22. SBSteven Bartlett28:09

       Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   23. CNCasey Neistat28:10

       Um, but I think failure is overrated. I think failure, people are so scared of failure. And I think the fear of failure is that it's the fear of what other people are gonna think about you. Um-

   24. SBSteven Bartlett28:20

       Persistence. That's what I heard through that story as well. Just this almost ob- ... Objectively delusional persistence towards a goal. And I, I don't know if those words are correct, because in that situation, I, I question whether Anvil's success was ever really making it or the journey itself was the success. But in your story, I see the same level of, like, persistence that

10. 28:42 – 31:56

    The Role Of Persistence & Patience In Your Story

    1. SBSteven Bartlett28:42

       a bystander would go, "That guy's crazy." Because, uh, there was, uh, various stats I saw about how long it took you to get to various success milestones. Even when you started daily vlogging, I think it took you five years to get to, like, 400,000 subscribers.

    2. CNCasey Neistat28:56

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett28:56

       Throughout your story, there's this, there's this persistence where I go, "This guy would have carried on doing this because he wasn't doing this for any particular milestone." What role does persistence play?

    4. CNCasey Neistat29:08

       It's funny, as persistence is such a ... It's a more accurate word. But the word I've been using lately is patience, because I think it's so much less sexy.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett29:17

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CNCasey Neistat29:17

       I think persistence is, like ...

    7. SBSteven Bartlett29:19

       Grr.

    8. CNCasey Neistat29:19

       Like, under the picture of the, like, little kitten hanging off the branch, it's like, "Persistence."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett29:23

       (laughs)

    10. CNCasey Neistat29:24

        You know what I mean? W- we'll never say patience. Patience is so unattractive. And when people say to me, like, "What's the one piece of advice you'd give to an aspiring creator or ..." And you know, "Persistence."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett29:35

        Wow.

    12. CNCasey Neistat29:35

        Like, persistence above every ... Because, like, if you're not willing to give up, if you're willing to stick with it for ... You will find success. Or you'll die trying, in which case, fuck it. Like, whatever. You know, you're not gonna be that person in the palliative care saying, "I wish I had, hadn't given up." 'Cause you didn't give up, you just kept going. You're gonna be that person that's like, "I've got one day left. I can still pull this shit off." But patience is a really unsexy way of saying it. And I think you need to remove the sexiness. You need to remove the sensationalism that has, that ha- that, uh, inspiration has b- been perverted with, is this idea of, like, it's this romantic, beautiful thing. It's not. It's fucking awful. Like, failing year in and year out and having everybody roll their eyes at you, and like-You know, whether you're a musician who's performing at the mall and no one's paying attention to you, or you're that YouTuber who uploads and you get zero views. Like, it's fucking awful. It's embarrassing. You're a loser. And I get to talk to, to MrBeast, Jimmy, and it's like, his war stories from when he started YouTube and he was using his, like, mom's busted Compaq computer with a built-in webcam, making these videos that no one watched. They're all deleted and scrubbed from the internet now. They're terrible. And just, like, him going to school the next day and it's like, two of his friends from school saw 'em and both acknowledged how terrible they were. Like, that kind of, like, being told you're s- that's, that's failure. Being told you suck over and over and over and over. And then seeing how much you suck be quantified-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett31:11

        (laughs)

    14. CNCasey Neistat31:11

        ... by a lack of views or no one showing up to your concert, or no one laughing at your jokes 'cause you're a standup comedian, or no one showing up to your restaurant 'cause you're a chef. Like, that sucks. Starting an online store and no one buys your fucking T-shirts. That sucks. Failure sucks. So, like, combine that with patience. Like, that suck? Are you willing to do that for 20 years? If you're not, don't fucking bother, man. Don't bother. And that's why I like the, the plainness of the word patience, is 'cause it's, it- that is what it is. There's nothing... Persistence. Persistence is like, "Ah, you're at mile 22. Persist, man. You'll get across the finish line in four short miles." That's beautiful and fun and hardcore.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett31:55

        That patience

11. 31:56 – 40:47

    Where Does Your Patience Come From?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett31:56

       that you and MrBeast have both shown, and many others, where does it come from? Because objectively, any p- any sane person, if everyone's telling them they're a loser and they suck, and their parents are saying, "You better go get a real job," anyone (laughs) who's acting in line with their ins- their apparent incentives in that moment would quit.

    2. CNCasey Neistat32:13

       I, I, I think very simply, it comes for, for me, and I think probably for Jimmy too. We've talked about it. He and I have talked about it. But there was no plan B. There was no other option. You know, like I'd- I had no backup plan. There was nothing else I could do. It wasn't like I had a college education and there was, like, a job in an ad agency waiting for me where I could just say, "Fuck it," and go make 80K a year and get a nicer apartment and relax and have a nice go of it. It was like, "If this doesn't work, I'm back in the kitchen making 7.25 an hour." Like, you know, getting money from the state so I can pay for, like, groceries on a fucking WIC. I was on WIC, Women, Infants and Children. It was a card. You'd swipe it, and you would pay for your diapers and milk, and that's it. If you tried to buy, like, a Nintendo with it, it wouldn't work. Like, that, I remember that. That was the fallback. That was the alternative. Um, every single turn, that was the alternative. Like, I moved to New York City, and I was here for three months. I had a three-month sublet that my brother's ex-girlfriend paid for. She was like, "I'll loan you the money." And I was like, "Cool." It was her parents' credit card that paid for it. And it was like 1,800 bucks. 600 bucks a month, 400 bucks a month for three months, and I shared it. In any event, that lease was up. I had nowhere to live in New York, and I was like, "Fuck, what do I do now?" And I moved in with some- this, this guy who was like, "Hey man, I need extra money. If you wanna sleep on my couch, my dad pays my rent. So you could sleep on my couch and just give me, like, 300 bucks a month, and that way the money goes to me." And I was like, "Deal." And I slept on his couch for exactly 11 nights from September 1st to September 11th, 2001.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett33:50

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CNCasey Neistat33:50

       And then the morning of September 11th, the entire apartment blew up with me in it, and him in it. And I remember, like, later that day, like, getting on the phone with my dad, and, like, the towers are still on fire. And my dad being like, "I think it's time for you to come, come home now. Come back." And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "What, what are you talking... What do you mean? Why would I come back?" And he was like, "Terrorists blew up your apartment. You have no job. You have no prospects. You have no money, and now you have nowhere to sleep." I'm like, "Pfft. I'll f- I'll figure that out. I'll be fine. Later, dad." Um, like, that's that. That's patience. That's delusional patience. But you asked why, like, what fuels that patie- well, the plan B was literally moving back to Southeastern Connecticut and getting a job in a restaurant.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett34:40

       I read a study once about this whole idea of plan A thinking. And they take a group of people and they tell them to do a puzzle. And in, and in exchange for doing the puzzle, um, correctly, they'll get a, a snack. So they take two groups and they say, "Okay, do this puzzle. If you do it correctly, you'll get a snack." Then they take another group and they say, "Do the same puzzle. If you do it correctly, you'll get a snack." But then they say to the group, "You can also get the same snack just down the hall in the vending machine." And in the second group where they're given a plan B to get the snack, motivation level- d- levels drop. They spend less time trying to do the puzzle. Um, and their performance towards doing the puzzle plummets as well. Just by being aware that they can get the same reward down the s- down the hall, performance drops. And if there was ever a case for this psychology, and th- they've done this multiple times in multiple studies, but it is pretty solid evidence that even the presence of a plan B can reduce motivation towards your plan A.

    6. CNCasey Neistat35:32

       Completely. Completely. I mean, like, I wish knew that study 'cause that's such a beautiful, beautiful illustration of what it is, and also what it means to have a, a knife at your back.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett35:44

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CNCasey Neistat35:45

       Like, I remember the thing I used to say back then. When I first started to find success, eh, uh, I would always be like, "My life is like I'm running from a pack of starving wolves."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett35:56

       (laughs)

    10. CNCasey Neistat35:56

        "If I slow down at all, I will be eaten alive. Like, I have one choice, and it's to keep going as fast as I can or I'll be torn to pieces." And that's what it felt like, and I loved that. Like, that sounds so, like, negative and dark, but like, I loved that. It was such, like, a motivation. And I pitied the friends. Like, I remember I first moved to New York City, my first summer here.I don't know how, but I, like, fell in with this, like, clique of... Because I thought the girls were pretty. But, like, these rich kids. And I would go out with them, and I just remember, like, the way they would pick up the tab. And they're my age. We're only 19, 20 years old, and they're picking up, like, you know, hundreds of dollar bar tabs. And, like, always had taxis. Like, a taxi to me was like, you know, it's like a private jet. Like, they were... Like, they had all this money, and I would always kind of look at them with this kind of, like, jealousy and, like... It was less of a jealousy and more just fantasize. Like, imagine if I was the same age I am now, but I had a credit card with an unlimited amount of money. Like, I went to her apartment. She lives on, like, the 26th floor. She has a two bedroom apartment, and she lives alone. I'm sharing a 200 square foot studio with strangers I met on Craigslist. We have to wait in line to use the bathroom in the morning. And I fantasize about what that would be like. And then seeing, as they got older and as I got older, them sort of... The sort of wandering and not sure where they wanna go in life and all of that. Whereas for me, it was such a, you know, there was such a defined path 'cause I didn't have any of those luxuries or any of those benefits that I now look at, back at that as, like, being virtuous.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett37:32

        So, how do you do that for your kids?

    12. CNCasey Neistat37:33

        Well, that's the million dollar question 'cause it's like I never want my kids to feel the, that bullshit that I had to feel. Like, the shame of, like, always hiding in the bathroom when the bill came.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett37:45

        (laughs)

    14. CNCasey Neistat37:45

        I, like I would always, uh, you know, like, I would always do something. I wasn't just like a total take. But like, I had just, you know, like, I always kind of felt like a scumbag 'cause I was never able to contribute the way that other people were, and, like, that's a really shameful thing. And, like, I can remember so many times, like, when I would meet a young lady-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett38:03

        (laughs)

    16. CNCasey Neistat38:03

        ... and she'd be like, "Can we go back to your place?" And the excuses that I would come up with 'cause I, like, lived in an SRO for a while. I lived in a halfway house-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett38:11

        Which-

    18. CNCasey Neistat38:11

        ... that I bribed my way into.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett38:12

        A halfway house, for anyone that doesn't know, in Europe is a-

    20. CNCasey Neistat38:15

        It's where you get outta jail-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett38:17

        Ah.

    22. CNCasey Neistat38:17

        ... and you're not allowed to live normally yet in, in the public.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett38:21

        Right.

    24. CNCasey Neistat38:21

        So, they put you into a building where they can monitor you.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett38:25

        How did you get in there?

    26. CNCasey Neistat38:26

        I bribed the guy at the door. Um, there was, like, a guy behind glass.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett38:31

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CNCasey Neistat38:31

        With like, a little slot. And you would have to s- check in and check out. And I went there, and I was like, "Hey, do you have any open rooms?" And he was like, "No, get outta here." And I came back with a carton of cigarettes with $100 bill in it, and I was like, "I need a room." And he was like, "All right." He was like, "531 is yours. Write your name there." And he was like, "It's $450 a month, cash," or whatever it was.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett38:51

        Interestingly, when you tell that story of being in a halfway house, uh, and having no money and all these things, o- objectively, someone look, looks at that situation and goes, "Aw, man. I feel so sorry for you," like-

    30. CNCasey Neistat38:59

        I was so psyched.
12. 40:47 – 44:10

    What Was It That Got You Into Video?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett40:47

    2. CNCasey Neistat40:47

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett40:47

       ... at this time?

    4. CNCasey Neistat40:48

       Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett40:48

       What was it... D- do you ever think about the psychological reasons why you were so drawn to video and storytelling generally?

    6. CNCasey Neistat40:55

       I don't know. I- I have an answer to that, but I don't know if this is the... Why I was drawn to it, or maybe I've just said this so many times, it's become my default response. But I definitely felt like I never had a voice, you know? I think it's because I was, like, that third out of four kids, or, like, I, I never did well in school. I was always in trouble, so teachers never listened to me. I was always in trouble and getting in fights and stuff, so my friends' parents never liked me. Um, and I just felt like I, I was never heard. And then I started to make videos. I was able to kind of articulate my thoughts or an idea in the form of a video, and people would respond to that. So, I think that was part of it. But I don't know, I think I also just liked it. Like, there's something about it that felt so fun. And there was something in the end that you would have that was like this finished, done thing.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett41:44

       Did you like movies?

    8. CNCasey Neistat41:47

       Yeah, but I was never, like, a cinephile as a kid. You know, like, I had my favorites. You know, like, I loved the movie Big. And I do remember in seventh grade, we got to do, um, this program where you could, like, choose a profession, and then you got to go do that job. And, like, there's a... Pfizer Pharmaceutical had, like, its headquarters-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett42:07

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CNCasey Neistat42:07

        ... in nearby town. It's like, a lot of the kids went there to be chemists or scientists, and they got to go spend like two hours at Pfizer. There's a submarine military base. A lot of kids got to go onto the base and see what it's like to be in the Navy. Um, and mine was I wanna work at a video rental store.... because I want to get paid to sit and watch movies all day. And they're like, "All right, I guess we could organize that for you." (laughs) And I remember going there, and it was, like, this kid. And he was like, "Yeah, I work the day shift. Nobody ever comes by." And I was like, "What do we do?" And he's like, "We have to put away those movies." It took like three minutes. And I was like, "Now what do we do?" And he's like, "Just wait for customers."

    11. SBSteven Bartlett42:40

        (laughs)

    12. CNCasey Neistat42:40

        So we just sat there and watched TV for, like, eight hours. I was like, "This is a job I could get into."

    13. SBSteven Bartlett42:45

        (laughs)

    14. CNCasey Neistat42:45

        But I don't think it was like the, you know, like, the Quentin Tarantino, where he worked in a video store and studied film. I never had that.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett42:52

        Do you think that's part of the reason you were successful at it, though? Because-

    16. CNCasey Neistat42:55

        (laughs)

    17. SBSteven Bartlett42:55

        ... your style has always been so clearly original in so many ways. That's how it feels. It feels like you are, in fact, someone that didn't go to movie school, and that's why people resonate with it.

    18. CNCasey Neistat43:06

        Yeah, I m- I, I, I always say that, like, my filmmaking style is because I was never taught the right way to do it, so I was forced to find my own way to do it. And I think that kind of thinking is, at the same time as sort of, like, consumer-grade video creation became this ubiquitous thing with computers and editing software and cameras, for the first time ever in the history of humanity. You could, like the early 2000s, you could buy, like, a DV, digital video camera, and you could buy a computer and plug it in, and you could edit your own videos. So my aspiration to make videos and this machine that let you do it, those happened at the exact same time. And because of that, I was forced to create my own style. Like, my hard drive was 10 gigabytes, so I could edit, like, I think it was, like, 12 or 16 minutes of video before the hard drive was full. So no, I made really short videos, and that's why. 'Cause, like, I didn't have a choice. It had to be a short video. Um, but I do think, yeah, like, the lack of formal education in that capacity forced me to be a different kind of filmmaker, or approach it differently anyway.

13. 44:10 – 54:02

    How Do We Create Originality?

    1. CNCasey Neistat44:10

    2. SBSteven Bartlett44:10

       Do you look back, uh, uh... I'm so compelled by originality as, like, a subject and the power of originality. Because when you, when a couple of people in society or the world or business or creativity or movies take the risk of being original, the issue is they draw in a, and that originality is resonant, they draw in a big audience who then look up to them and almost confuse their admiration for that person with their aspirations for themselves and go, "I will create like Casey," and that is the way to be successful. It's a very logical deduction, but it seem, but it's clearly flawed because there can be no other Casey.

    3. CNCasey Neistat44:47

       It was tremendously flawed. It's what I fucking hate about YouTube. Um, I call this, like, the, the MrBeastification of YouTube. And I have to be very careful here. Jimmy's a genius. What MrBeast has done on YouTube is brilliant, and it's because of his brilliance. So if... This is not to take away from him at all. I think he is incredible, what he's done. And he has no control over the fact that millions of people are trying to copy him. But the fact that millions of people are trying to emulate what he's doing, that is the MrBeastification of the platform that I hate. Because Jimmy's always been very honest. His goal has never been, like... Ask me my goal, and now, in the most sort of intellectual of terms, I'll look back at it, and I'll be like, "Video, for me, has always been a way of, um, a refined self-expression, for me to take my thoughts and force them into this sort of articulate six, eight-minute compartmentalized little video and share it with the world." Like, that's been my motivation. Jimmy's, from day one, has just had been finding success. He was a kid who had no money. He had no resource. He had no friends. He had nothing. And he's like, "This is a tool I can use to take me to the highest plains of, of business and all of that." Jimmy is just as passionate about his chocolate company, Feastables, as he is about his, his video creation company, you know, MrBeast Enterprise. He's just as passionate about his philanthropy, um, being successful and helping as many people as possible, as he is about making a video about what it means to live in a million-dollar house. Like, his passion is about that winning. So for him, it's beautiful. But in the most reductive sense, when people look at that, they're like, "Okay, that's what it means to be a YouTuber. All that matters is views." And I put next to no value on that. None. Again, this isn't a takeaway from Jimmy 'cause what he's done is incredible. But when people aspire just to get that view count up, to me, it's a race to the bottom. I fucking hate it. I hate it. And I do think it's because of people not knowing what to do, so they look to see, "Well, who's successful? That's how I'm successful. Let me be that." And it will never work. It will never work. Um, it requires sort of an introspection of like, "Now, why do I wanna do this? What is true to me?" And then you go and do that. And maybe you'll find success and maybe you won't, but at least it'll be true.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett47:06

       Why does truth end up mattering more in that case than views? So if there's one path here and I can get a million subscribers by just doing a Jimmy, uh, or Casey knockoff channel, or there's this other path, which I go, "Ugh, there's no blueprint here, and it's never been done before, and I don't think anyone's gonna like this stuff, and it's probably not gonna pay my bills," why, wh- what's the case for pursuing the latter, the true path?

    5. CNCasey Neistat47:29

       I, I think that truth lasts, truth matters. Like, there is a direct... There's, uh, no correlation, rather, between the movies that have won Best Picture, you know, the Academy Award for Best Picture over the last 80 years and the highest-grossing movies. Those two things have been the same, like, three times, four times. Like, one of them, I think, was Gone with the Wind. Meaning that the movies that, that, the movies that the world determines are the most quality, most important, greatest films, the greatest contribution to culture and humanity are almost never the same movies that make the most money. Transformers 9 was a really cool movie. I don't fucking remember what happened. I think there was a dinosaur in it. But, like, you see a movie that affects you, you see a movie that, that matters to you. You see, uh, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, this documentary by Werner Herzog, you see the Anvil story, and you're thinking about it. I haven't seen the Anvil story in five years. I think about that movie every day. That lasts, so that matters.And me, as a 42-year-old grown adult, like, I know in life, that's what matters. There always, there was always gonna be junk food. There'll always be an appetite for it. There'll always be an appetite for fucking reality TV and bullshit, and you know, like whatever pop stars are popular this week and will disappear next week. But the musicians that like, change you, the ones that write that song that like, uh, makes you cry, like, you'll never forget that. So for me, like if, if you, if you wanna be an artist or you say you wanna be an artist, how could there be any other goal but that? And just to bring this full circle, I think the magic of MrBeast, of Jimmy in particular, I don't think he's ever wanted to be an artist. And that honesty is why I have so much respect for him. He's a, he's a, he's an empire builder, and that's what he's wanted to do, and he's done that through video creation. But, um, again, not, neither here nor there, not to digress. For me, it's like great work matters. And it does. It changes people. Changes me. Look at the work that like Spike Jonze did. Not his Oscar award-winning movies, but like, I look at his little weirdo music videos that I used to watch when I was a kid, and I watched those music videos over and over. What's Up Fatlip, the music video that he made with Fatlip, who was like the, kind of a popular hip hop artist who didn't have any money, and he was like, "I got this new song, Spike, but I don't have any money to make the video." So they went out and they're like, put Fatlip in a clown costume and they filmed it on a VHS camera. It's like one of the, my favorite music videos ever. But I saw that and I was like, "I can be a filmmaker." Now, if he had made a video just trying to get the most views or whatever it was, instead of just him and his friend Fatlip trying to make something great, it might not have done that for me. And that changed my world. So like, if you're gonna share your fucking inspirational quotes on an Instagram, then step up. Like, make the thing that could change the world. Make the thing that could affect someone. Don't just gimme Mickey Mouse bullshit that's gonna get views.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett50:32

       I, I look at both you and Jimmy as pioneers, but for very different reasons, and seemingly for, with very different motivations. You strike me as someone that was really inspired by the art form and the storytelling side of like the, the creative production process, and Jimmy took this, it seems like he took this other approach where it was much more about what the data was telling him to make.

    7. CNCasey Neistat50:54

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett50:54

       Both of them created originality, though.

    9. CNCasey Neistat50:57

       Completely.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett50:57

        You know?

    11. CNCasey Neistat50:58

        Completely. I think Jimmy is, in the history of... I think Jimmy is the most important YouTuber in the history of YouTube. And I think that arguably, I think he's one of the most important people in the history of entertainment, full stop. I don't know that anyone has built an empire that reaches as many people as what he's doing. I think like there will be case studies taught about him at Harvard. Um, I think what he, he is a true pioneer in every sense of the word.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett51:29

        Do you care about the views?

    13. CNCasey Neistat51:32

        No, but that's easy to say. I'm like, you know, I don't worry about paying rent anymore, and like, I don't, usually don't check the prices at restaurants before I order dinner, so it's easy for me to say. Um, obviously like it's, it's, uh, there was a time when that really mattered to me and was super, super important to me. But I've grown up and I've, you know, a level of financial security, which is super real. So it's, it's less about that and more about doing good work.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett52:00

        If one of your kids came to you and they said, "Dad, I, I wanna be a YouTuber," and, uh, what- what would be the, what would be your response to just that first surface-level question?

    15. CNCasey Neistat52:09

        I mean, it's happened. Little Francine-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett52:11

        Oh, really?

    17. CNCasey Neistat52:11

        ... is like, she's so good too, but Candice always gets, not mad, but she's always like, "Take it easy, Casey," 'cause I have a tendency to over-intellectualize it. But I'm like, "Franny, you can make whatever you want, um, but you're not allowed to share it." And she's like, "Why? I wanna get subscribers and views." And I'm like, "Well, if you make it, like I wanna, I just wanna make sure you're making it for you, 'cause you wanna make something, not because you're looking for that..." I don't know words I use with her, but like that validation. I don't know that she would know that word, but... And that's when Candice is like, "Take it easy, Casey. She's eight." (laughs) And I'm like, "Okay, all right, just do your thing, kiddo." But, um, yeah, I think like the concern-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett52:54

        What is the concern?

    19. CNCasey Neistat52:55

        ... is why? Like if she wants to do it 'cause she wants to be an artist, fuck yes, I will drop everything to help you on this mission. If you wanna do it 'cause your little girlfriend at school did it and she got 35 likes and you wanna get more likes than her, then like, pump the brakes, kid. Like, that's, you know, like that's-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett53:14

        What if she says, "I wanna be bigger than MrBeast"?

    21. CNCasey Neistat53:16

        The same thing. Then, you know, it's like, why? Like why? Why do you wanna do that? You know, and also, like, uh, fame is a very weird, very strange thing. Um, and I think that what, the most strange thing about fame is it- it's not what you think. Like there are people who have achieved and felt some degree of fame, and there are people who haven't. And if you're in the haven't camp, there's no way to understand the have camp. There's no way. There's no way. And, um, having been over here, you know, like w- to see someone aspire for that is like, you know, I, like no way.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett54:01

        What's the

14. 54:02 – 57:14

    Warning For Anyone Wanting To Get Famous

    1. SBSteven Bartlett54:02

       warning?

    2. CNCasey Neistat54:04

       The warning is just like if, if, if fame is a byproduct of what you're doing, then it is what it is. But if fame is the f- endgame, then you're just like one of those fucking reality stars with the fucked up faces 'cause you've had so much plastic surgery and like, what are you doing? What are you offering the world? Like, why are you here? Like you're giv- you're, you're benefiting the world no way whatsoever. You're elevating the world zero. This is pure like narcissism. This is just, just, just for some weird ego journey that you're on.Um, again, this is one of those moments where my wife will be like, "Back off, Casey."

    3. SBSteven Bartlett54:43

       (laughs)

    4. CNCasey Neistat54:43

       "She's eight. Let her finish her mac and cheese." I wouldn't say that to the kid. But, like, yeah, if she says, "I wanna be bigger than MrBeast," like, then, yeah, I get nervous.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett54:52

       What if she s- e- she says, "Okay, I wanna do ... I wanna make YouTube videos 'cause I love creating videos. But I would like some advice, Dad, on how to be a successful YouTuber"?

    6. CNCasey Neistat55:00

       Y- yeah. You should see her. She has a whole channel that is stop frame animations of her stuffed animals.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett55:05

       Right.

    8. CNCasey Neistat55:05

       She's not allowed to have her voice in it or her hands in it. And you're not allowed to identify that it's in our apartment.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett55:09

       Okay.

    10. CNCasey Neistat55:09

        But she makes those. And they're fucking great, and they're funny, and they're really good. So that, like ... Yeah, we support, we support her so much. We buy her the equipment. We help her make it. We're part of the audience. We have, like, a family iMessage thread that we distribute the videos on. Um, she even has her own Instagram handle that has zero followers. Candice and I don't follow it. We pass the phone around to watch her Instagram because we don't want her to even associate one like with why she's doing it, even if that like is from us.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett55:42

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CNCasey Neistat55:42

        My sister texted and was like, "Hey, you, you sent me a screen capture of Francine's TikTok," or whatever. "Can you send me her account?" We're like, "No."

    13. SBSteven Bartlett55:53

        This is clearly coming from ex- your experiences, right?

    14. CNCasey Neistat55:55

        Yeah. Protect them as long as you can, man. Keep the kids-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett55:58

        But you p-

    16. CNCasey Neistat55:58

        ... so far away from that.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett56:00

        Keep them far away from views and likes?

    18. CNCasey Neistat56:02

        Yeah. Uh, for ... From seeking validation.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett56:04

        Did you ever fall prey to that?

    20. CNCasey Neistat56:07

        Uh, did I ever fall prey to that? Y- y- uh, yeah, but I'm, I'm different because I'm ... I was old. Like, I was literally your age that you are right now sitting across from me before I had an Instagram account. Think about how much more you know-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett56:24

        (laughs)

    22. CNCasey Neistat56:24

        ... than an eight-year-old.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett56:26

        Yeah.

    24. CNCasey Neistat56:26

        Like, for an eight-year-old to ... That's the world that she's growing up with is a really scary place. Like, social media, we're seeing how much it fucks kids up. We're seeing the mental health crisis. We're seeing how it's manifesting. We're seeing eating disorders because of Instagram. We're seeing, like, all of these social issues because of social media. And I think wanting to protect your kids from that is sort of a universal thing, not just someone who has lived in that space. Um, you know, I think I've ... I have had a unique experience with it because I was ... I had achieved some level of success outside of social media, in the world of regular old media. Um, and then it was on social media that I found real success. Uh, but I was able to do that with that kind of hindsight and with that kind of clarity of being an adult, being pursuing this career for 15 years before.

15. 57:14 – 59:21

    Finding Your Success

    1. CNCasey Neistat57:14

    2. SBSteven Bartlett57:14

       On social media you found real success?

    3. CNCasey Neistat57:16

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett57:17

       Was that due to your daily vlog, predominantly? Is that the ... Was that the real catalyst moment in terms of growth?

    5. CNCasey Neistat57:23

       Yeah. Uh, 100%. You know, like, I, I ... Van and I, my brother, Van, and I had a television show on HBO, um, that we sold to HBO in 2008. And that television show was exactly my daily vlog, full stop.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett57:36

       Only eight episodes or something, wasn't it?

    7. CNCasey Neistat57:37

       Eight episodes.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett57:37

       Yeah.

    9. CNCasey Neistat57:38

       22 minutes, 22 to 24 minute episodes. But if you watch that Daily show, it looks like an early version of my vlog. It's identical. It's the same exact shit. But that was before YouTube was really a thing. YouTube was invented in 2000, or launched in 2006. And it was really just a place for watching, like, basketball highlight reels, and, like, Charlie Bit My Finger. So, you know, we put that show on HBO. Very highly reviewed, but nobody watched it. It was on at midnight on Friday nights. Like, it, it wasn't a breakout success. Um, and then Van moved to California, so I was kind of on my own. And I was like, "I just wanna do that." So I, I tried to sell it to MTV, and they didn't get it. They were like, "We know this is great." Like, I showed it to someone there, and they brought me in, and I met with the heads of MTV, and, like, met with some really powerful people. And they were like, "This is unlike anything we've ever seen. This is fantastic. But we're not sure this works on TV." I was like, "Okay, cool." And then, yeah, and then I put it on YouTube.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett58:36

        How did that go?

    11. CNCasey Neistat58:38

        We ... You know, you talked about the numbers before. Like, so before my daily vlog, I was considered, like, a successful YouTuber, like, a celebrated YouTuber. I had f- ... I think it was 280,000 subscribers. It had taken me almost a decade to get there. I started my YouTube channel in 2007 maybe, and by 2014, 2015, I had a hund- 280,000 subscribers, had a couple movies that went truly viral that had, like, five, 10 million views. Um, all of my movies did more than, like, 50, 60,000 views, which was amazing. Uh, and people liked my videos. Like, uh, The New York Times saw my YouTube videos, and they're like, "Make videos for us." I was doing that back then. So I, by all definition, very successful on YouTube.

16. 59:21 – 1:03:59

    Starting Your Daily Vlog

    1. CNCasey Neistat59:21

       But then I started my daily vlog. And it took, whatever that was, eight years to go from zero to couple hundred thousand subscribers. And my daily vlog went from couple hundred thousand subscribers to 10 million subscribers in, like, 18 months. It was a kind of, like, explosion that I had never felt in any other capacity in my, my career, my life.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett59:43

       What's the lesson that you take away from that about consistency or compounding or, you know ...

    3. CNCasey Neistat59:48

       Y- yeah. Uh, that's the thing. Patience. I wasn't really doing anything different. I mean, certainly I was working much harder to create a video every day. Um, it was hard work. But really, it was just like, I had this square peg, and I tried to knock it through thousands of, uh, round holes for 15 years. And, like, sometimes I was able to jam it through, and sometimes it would kind of fall through, and I wasn't able to duplicate it. And then all of a sudden, like, the moon's aligned. Like, the fucking planets aligned. Pluto was lined up. The sun-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:21

       (laughs)

    5. CNCasey Neistat1:00:21

       The sun shined through like Raiders of the Lost Ark. The light came through. The city illuminated. And, like, 2015, YouTube was just becoming something more. It was the first generation that grew up on YouTube. Like, it had been around for f- you know, s- nine years, and people n- had a relationship with this platform.... and no one was doing anything of any significant production quality. And I had 15 years of experience in making short videos, and I brought all of that to YouTube. And then just the episodic aspect of it. So it was like, you know, make one video of me running around New York City, hanging around with my wife, having lunch, doing something else. And then the video's over, and it's like, "Oh, who's this funny-looking guy in New York?" Whatever. Do that seven days in a row, and you're like, "Oh, this is kind of fun. I get to hang out with this guy." Do it 300 days in a row, and it's like I've become part of your life. And that just snowballs. Like it snowballs in every way. It snowballs a- algorithmically, and that's what those, that quantitative explosion was. It snowballs financially 'cause you get paid whatever, call it a 10th of a cent per view. And that doesn't mean much if you're getting 10 views. But if you're getting 100 million views, the money starts to become subst- substantive. Um, brands, the kinds of companies you always wanted to work with, maybe one out of every 100 creative directors at an agency has seen your videos, but all of a sudden you go from getting 100,000 a month to 100 million a month, and now every creative director has seen your videos. They're like, "We want to work with that guy." And it just, it just was, you know, it just, it happened so quick and was so explosive and so exciting and so fun.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:58

       Sounds like that was your anvil moment in some respects, like that you'd put in 15 years of work and then your craft and patience had met opportunity in a way. And people might look at those moments and go, "Oh, that was, you know, that's luck," because, you know, you just ... But what is the rebuttal to that? What's the like-

    7. CNCasey Neistat1:02:14

       Yeah. They're right. It was luck.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:16

       Yeah. But-

    9. CNCasey Neistat1:02:16

       But like luck is, what is it? Luck is where opp- preparation meets opportunity. I'd just been preparing myself for that moment for 15 years, you know? And then the opportunity opened up and I was right there. And the truth is, like most of us see opportunity just flies by us all day, every day. We're not ready for it. Um, I was seeking it for that long, and you know, there's so- some other circumstances too. My friend Max pointed this out to me when he and I were having a meeting last week, which was like when I launched that YouTube channel, um, the y- the daily vlog rather, when I launched that in 2015. I had had a show on HBO that they bought for $2 million. I had had movies that I produced, two of them in the Cannes Film Festival. I won the Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, which was like the Academy Awards for indie films. Like I had a ch- I worked for New York Times. I made movies for Nike. I had by every ... I had worked for myself at that point in time for 12 years in my own studio. I had by every definition achieved success. But at the exact time I launched that YouTube channel, I was $200,000 in debt. Meaning I was more broke then than when I was on welfare getting checks for my kid because I was so deep in debt. Because, you know, the, the year preceding that, I was invited to MIT, um, as a fellow and as a high school dropout, it was like no greater honor than to get to go to one of the most prestigious academic institutions on the planet and be invited there. Um, and I remember going there being like, "Whatever I do on the other side of this is gonna be different from what I'm doing now." And what I was doing then was making TV commercials and doing fun stuff

17. 1:03:59 – 1:07:53

    Launching A Tech Company

    1. CNCasey Neistat1:03:59

       like that. I had a good career.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:00

       Around that time you read this book.

    3. CNCasey Neistat1:04:03

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:04

       What was, um, what was so inspiring or perspective shifting about that book, Hatching Twitter?

    5. CNCasey Neistat1:04:12

       It wasn't around that time. So I-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:13

       All right.

    7. CNCasey Neistat1:04:13

       ... went to MIT as a fellow.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:15

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CNCasey Neistat1:04:16

       I worked out of the MIT Media Lab, and my lab group was called the Social Computing Group.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:21

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CNCasey Neistat1:04:22

        And it was, you know, eight or 10 technologists, one artist who was a painter, and then me. And I'd nev- and to this day, I don't know what I was doing there. I'm incredibly close to the professor. I talk to him all the time. He's since left there and he is a mentor of mine, somebody I speak to regularly. I still don't know what I was doing there. So mostly I just observed. Like I was given no assignment. I just observed. And I didn't have any friends. I was living in Boston. My w- pregnant wife was alone in New York City hating me 'cause I abandoned her. And I read this book. And all I knew is that when I was there, I wanted to figure out what to do next. And the magic of Hatching Twitter, by the way, Nick Bilton has since become a good friend-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:05

        (laughs)

    13. CNCasey Neistat1:05:05

        ... but the magic of this amazing book is it reveals the madness that was a technology startup, like the chaos. Like, you know, these guys are all very smart, all the guys that started Twitter. But like, I don't think they're smarter than me. Like I think that like there's like, you have like regular people and like smart people and then like these geniuses that you just can't relate to. And I think that like I live somewhere between like regular and close to smart, but not fully smart. And I think these guys were like, they're just smart, persistent people that wanted to do something. I was like, "I can do what they did. I can do that." And when I left MIT I was like, "I'm going to start a technology company." And I didn't know what that meant, but it just sounded like a great idea.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:53

        (laughs)

    15. CNCasey Neistat1:05:53

        Um, but the whole time I was at MIT I wasn't making any money, so I was living off my credit cards and off my debt. My business had a revolving line of credit at Chase Bank that was maxed out. And then I started this company, which was basically just meeting with people, telling them I wanted to start a company. And yeah. And so s- six months later I was $200,000 in debt. I couldn't afford my half of rent that I owed to my wife who was pregnant. Um, and that's when I started a daily vlog and started a technology company. And it made sense.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:24

        (laughs)

    17. CNCasey Neistat1:06:26

        But the reason why I give that long preface about like I found all this success is it was like I found all that success. I knew there was a snack down the hall if I didn't wanna do the puzzle, and I was like, "Fuck that. Let me burn it to the ground."

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:38

        (laughs)

    19. CNCasey Neistat1:06:38

        Like let me go $200,000 in debt and do something that I have no idea. I've never written a line of code in my life. Let me start a technology com- let me start a software development company.... I've still never written a line of code in my life, but let me do that. That's a good pursuit for me. Um, and that's what I did. And I don't know, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:56

        What were you thinking?

    21. CNCasey Neistat1:06:57

        I don't know. It felt like a great idea. It also, like-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:02

        How old were you at this point? You were, what, 30?

    23. CNCasey Neistat1:07:04

        35.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:04

        35?

    25. CNCasey Neistat1:07:05

        Yeah. And I also, like, those guys were such superstars to me, like Mark Zuckerberg, like that, in The Social Network, the movie.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:11

        Ah, yeah.

    27. CNCasey Neistat1:07:11

        The Social Network, that scene that juxtaposes him just sitting in his dorm room writing code with all the cool kids getting on that bus, going to the party with all the hot girls. And he's just, I was like, "I wanna be that guy." And also, like, I didn't think of anything more explosive. It was like, I was still, you know, I'd had financial success, but like, the two million bucks from the HBO thing didn't make me a millionaire. It's like, cut it in half from taxes, you're at a million, pay back our investor, you have $400,000 left over, there's two of us, give half that to Van, that's $200,000. And then three years goes by and it's like, you're making like middle class income for three years, you know, we're not rich. And I was like, "I wanna be rich, like I wanna be a billionaire. Let me start a tech company, that's how I'll get there."

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:52

        Unqualified.

18. 1:07:53 – 1:15:50

    You Were "Unqualified" To Do All Of These Things...What Does That Mean

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:53

    2. CNCasey Neistat1:07:53

       Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:53

       I mean, when I look through your story, I see someone who was seemingly unqualified to pursue the things that he pursued over and over again. You weren't qualified to get into movies.

    4. CNCasey Neistat1:08:02

       No, no.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:02

       There was no formal education by any objective standards.

    6. CNCasey Neistat1:08:06

       No. No.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:06

       You weren't qualified to be starting a tech company. Um...

    8. CNCasey Neistat1:08:09

       What was I thinking?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:10

       What is unqualified and like, 'cause I think most people would say, "Well, I- I'm not a tech entrepreneur." They would like self-label and then disqualify themselves from doing that. And I think in most people's lives, they're actually spending more time disqualifying themselves psychologically, but you seem to be taking the opposite approach, which is you seem to be qualifying yourself for things (laughs) that you're objectively unqualified to be pursuing.

    10. CNCasey Neistat1:08:31

        I- I had this conversation with Candace, my wife, last night, because it was like, what do we do with these little girls, our daughters, to show them they can do anything? And if they were boys, I knew what to do. If they were boys, force them to work with their hands. Like it's one of my regrets with my son. My son is 25 now and he's a superstar, he's fantastic, but you know, he's, he loved academia and I- I indulged him in that. And I wish I had been more forceful in encouraging him to learn to work with his hands.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:05

        Why?

    12. CNCasey Neistat1:09:06

        Because I think you learn something about life by learning how to build and do things. There's this great South Park special that's on TV right now, and like, the handymen who like fix your broken toilet become the billionaires, and all the intellects are standing outside of Home Depot like holding up signs that are like, "I'm a, I'm a biologist, please hire me. Like, uh, we'll trade for..." Because it's like, and they're sitting around, they're like, "I wish I'd just learned to work with my hands. Why didn't anybody tell me?" And I think what they're saying with that, or what I feel, what I was able to deduce from that is it's just like there are universal aspects of life and humanity and the world that you learn from working with your hands. And like this rule of mine which is that if you don't know what you wanna do in life, do something you hate. And through that process, you'll figure out what it is that you love. Like I learned that I wanted to be a filmmaker by scrubbing out chowder pots in that fucking seafood restaurant in Connecticut, 40, 50 hours a week, just hating it. 90 degrees back there in the summer, stinks, scrubbing that pot, hated it. And so, a lot of time thinking about what do I wish I was doing. So for like kids, it's like, yeah, no, no, no, you don't get to go to college. Instead, I'm sending you to this school where you're gonna learn how to rebuild diesel engines. Enjoy it. I don't know that I can do that to my little blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughters. (laughs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:32

        (laughs)

    14. CNCasey Neistat1:10:32

        Um, so you asked me about what it means to be unqualified. I don't know, but I think like, you know, when my bicycle was broken at home when I was a little kid, like I didn't have the tool to fix it. I first had to build the tool that I could then fix my bike with. Like, I wasn't qualified, but I had to find that qualification. And in everything that I did, it was the same kind of thing. So why wouldn't I think that I'm qualified to do anything?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:57

        Is part of that, as I hear you say that and thinking about this idea of doing stuff with your hands, is part of that because like the, what it teaches you, and I was thinking about your bike example there, is that when something is broken or when there is a challenge, you're learning, you learn at that very young age that Casey can solve that problem himself. And that lesson of I can close the gap between what I want and where I am is like an overarching superpower for the rest of your life, where the- it's, you know, the gap, the gap between where you are and where you wanna be, the gap between Casey being a guy that's, you know, making videos to the tech entrepreneur. You learned very early on in your life that Casey can close the gap. And a lot of people never learn that. They think, "Oh, I'm unqualified to close the gap," or, "I don't have the skills to close the gap, or the money," or, "I'm scrubbing pots in a back room, I can't close the gap." But that's evidence, and evidence comes from, you know, closing the gap a couple of times with a bike, and...

Episode duration: 1:46:21