(film reel clicks)
- I'm in Cyprus and I have to drive
on the left side of the road right now.
(man laughs) - Hold on (indistinct)
(intense electronic music)
- Two people- - Wait,
why are you guys leaving?
- [Man] Two people left the car.
- McDonald's ice cream machine is always broken.
- Welcome to the vlog dude, I'm vlogging today.
- What are you posting this on?
- It's called the youtube.com.
- Oh! - So it's like this,
like platform for like video cloud-based sharing
of high quality video content.
They even do HD.
- (indistinct) How would you share a cloud?
- So it's- well, it's like an HD thing.
- So it's like, TV or something?
- So McDonald's is being investigated by the FTC,
And I'm here in Cyprus making a documentary series
for the first time in a while.
(mid tempo lofi music begins)
And I want to show you some of it
and I just need to give you a bit of an update
on McDonald's and all the things happening right now.
(upbeat electronic music)
(car hits item in road)
Oh (beep)
- [Radio Announcer] Cyprus remains a,
or that could have set off a full scale war.. (indistinct)
(upbeat electronic music)
- I'm making like an announcement video,
- A little video for your YouTube channel
- Yeah, my little YouTube channel.
- I'm also vlogging.
- Are you?
- What's going on?
You're also vlogging things.
- Yes!
(upbeat music)
(indistinct)
- That's cool. Just bring your cat with us.
- These donkeys don't belong to anyone.
I'm going to jump off a cliff.
I got to vlog it for my video.
So today's video is not going to be an explainer.
I know you come to this channel to learn things.
You'll learn a little bit about the lawsuit
and the FTC investigation,
but today I want to give you just an update
and tell you a little bit more about the series I'm doing
before we get into that.
I want to thank today's sponsor who is Better Help.
I've said this before.
I'm a big believer in therapy.
I believe that therapy needs to be normalized and it needs
to be way more accessible and way more common for people.
I started doing therapy
with a licensed professional therapist almost two years ago,
and it has changed my life.
It is not a crisis line.
It is a place where you can go to find a good therapist.
Finding a good therapist is kind of hard,
especially when you only have the options in your city.
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It's super easy to sign up, within 48 hours
you could be talking to a professional.
I really believe in therapy
and believe that better help is doing a good job,
trying to make there be more accessible.
So there's link in my description
betterhelp.com/JohnnyHarris.
When click that link, it helps support this channel,
but it also gives you 10% off your first month,
a better help.
You can try it out and see if it works for you. Thank you.
Better help for supporting this channel and for supporting
the journalism I'm doing here in Cyprus.
Now let's get to the update
(high intensity techno music) (indistinct)
- First off.
McDonald's, holy smokes.
So I made this video about the ice cream machines.
Can I get an ice cream cone?
- Ice cream machine is broken, ice cream machine is broken.
And it sounds like there's a story behind that one.
Doesn't it?
- This was like back in the spring.
And I didn't think this video was going to give us a
30 minute video about ice cream machines
and suddenly there's like 8 million views
or something like people clearly wanted to learn about this.
It made a pretty big splash.
And then it turns out according to the wall street journal
who just reported on this,
the FTC is now investigating this issue,
the ice cream machine makers to see if there's something
weird going on. I think there's something weird going on.
At least that's what the evidence points to.
I don't know what weirdness is going on,
but something weird is going on
and it's not just a four-hour cleaning cycle.
So I'm going to keep my eye on this.
The wall street journal seems to be like really into
reporting on these ice cream machine makers, like me
and the wall street journal.
They're like in lockstep right now.
(laughs)
And,
and so I'm going to keep my eye on this reporting and see
what happens next.
Meanwhile, if you remember from the ice cream machine story,
there is that startup called Kytch.
That is the one that sort of got blackballed by McDonald's.
When they tried to invent a fix
for the ice cream machine makers,
they have filed the lawsuit
and they even got awarded a restraining order
because they have alleged
and have very good evidence for the fact that McDonald's
and Taylor and this whole cadre of ice cream machine people,
have gotten a hold of their technology
and are using it to basically make
the same thing for themselves, which is a big no-no.
You don't do that.
So this is still a developing thing,
but the fact is that, like,
I think I stepped into a can of worms that I didn't know was
going to be a big deal.
And I think the video that I made may have had some effect
on all of this, which is sort of a weird thing.
Wired also put out a really solid article on this,
that I'll link in the description
Overall, it feels good to be doing YouTube,
but also feel like I'm doing real journalism
and that it's been validated on a bigger scale.
Cool.
You know, I left Vox
and felt a little bit insecure about the fact
that like I'm leaving a journalistic institution.
Like, what does that mean for me
in my reputation as a storyteller and a journalist,
and part of me likes this freedom
and this ability to be more creative
and more personal and like be able to talk
to you like I'm doing right now.
But part of me also feels a sense of like,
I still want to be like in the journalism world,
which I guess gets to a second little update,
which is a video that I made with the New York times
last year, got nominated for an Emmy,
which is like, okay, that's cool.
The Emmy's are sort of like an old legacy thing,
like for like legacy TV,
but more and more they're they're updated and,
and recognizing work that is being done
now on this platform.
And that's kind of exciting.
I'm actually working on another piece
with the New York times right now
that we'll publish in the fall.
So keep an eye out for that.
Man. So many updates.
(cheerful music)
- Okay.
Cyprus, let me tell you about what I'm doing here in Cyprus,
Man, this is,
this is probably the most exciting thing I have to say,
where to start.
On my way over to Cyprus,
me, Izzy,
and the boys stopped by Sicily and have a sort of before
back to school vacation altogether,
first time I was able to practice my Italian though,
boil boys, the Italian incessantly, is not Italian,
it's literally a different language,
but even the Italian they speak is like, man, that was hard.
It was really hard, but boy is the food good.
(fill reel clicks)
Sicily is a very wild place.
And, and while there,
there was some very stressful stuff that came up.
There was like a bunch of EU announcements
about the borders being closed.
And we were up late talking to VCs
and founders about bright trip,
which is a huge thing in my life right now
that I'm just not going to go into,
but like bright trip is growing
and we're trying to raise a bunch of money.
And like,
it's actually really hard to do entrepreneurial things.
I've decided like it's actually like not easy to do it,
which is why like most people don't do it.
And I see now why people just sort of flake out
on it after a while,
because it's really hard and emotional
to try to build a startup, but it's happening.
It's working,
we're building bride trip
and it's turning into a pretty cool thing.
But anyway,
it was a wonderful time with the kids out on the road,
again, after many years of not being on the road.
And then is he in the boys,
flew back to Washington DC and I flew here.
(high energy music)
So this is probably why most of you clicked on this video.
Maybe you care about ice cream machine makers.
Maybe you care about my Emmy nomination,
but I'm pretty sure most of you care about like the
documentary explainer work that I do.
And the good news is that I'm doing it. I'm back.
I'm back on the road. I'm doing it.
- I'm back, baby.
- The past year. My life has been very strange.
Vox borders was canceled last year.
Sort of around this time
and that's when I really decided that
I needed to build this channel.
So I started making a bunch of videos,
tons and tons and tons of videos that you've been seen.
I've been in the office making videos,
but I need to tell you that my heart, my heart is here.
It's out here. It's me on the road, talking to people,
looking at complicated stuff, trying to understand it,
pouring over maps and documents
and looking at archive like that is where my heart is.
And I haven't been able to do that since,
since borders was canceled,
mainly because this channel wasn't big enough
to financially support that and COVID-19,
but both of those things have changed.
This channel has grown significantly.
Thanks to all of you being here
and COVID-19 is kind of going away.
- Bye-bye bye-bye bye-bye bye-bye
Hey, you live here in Pittsburgh.
- No, it's not.
Let's be honest. It's not going away.
Like we thought it was,
I thought it was so there was this one day,
Izzy and I were driving in Iceland.
The boys were asleep and we were thinking,
it was like two in the morning. It was like light outside.
Beautiful.
And we were talking as Izzy was talking about like, well,
what do you miss about, about, you know, Vox?
And I said, well, I miss my colleagues.
I've missed like hanging out with people that I,
that inspire me.
And then I said, I miss being out on the road.
And she's like, dude, go like go out on the road.
Like, like you can do that now on your channel.
And it just hit me. And I was like,
I knew at some point I was going to do it,
but like now's the time.
So then the question was,
what story do I tell? What place do I go?
And Cyprus has been on my mind since 2014.
I studied peace and conflict resolution
in my master's degree.
And I took an entire course about conflict resolution
and mediation and Cyprus.
The conflict here in Cyprus was the subject of that course.
In fact, that course,
in addition to my experience in Tijuana
and so many other experiences like that
are what woke me up to my obsession
and interest in divisions and lines and maps.
So we spent a couple of months just diving deep into Cyprus.
And then we came here.
I came here with Jack, my assistant producer,
and this guy, Corey pop.
I've never traveled with a real camera person before.
So to have Corey pop, who is a DP that worked on explained
and is just incredibly good at what he does
to have him with me to help tell this
story was a really special moment.
So for the past 10 days, we've been on the road,
traversing this entire island,
talking to military, going on military vessels,
going into buffer zones, talking to the UN.
It has been a deep dive in reporting on Cyprus.
And I am so excited to share these stories with you.
And while I was here, I met up with these guys.
I invited Thomas and Nathaniel to come with me to Cyprus
because mainly,
because I just wanted to hang out with my friends.
Like these are friends of mine that
I've made on the internet that I talk to often, but like,
don't get to hang out with very often.
It's like an overall, it was just a good time to reflect
and to bond and to have some like social interaction
for the first time in a really long time.
- Give this guy a spritz?
- No.
(laughs)
(indistinct)
- And now they're gone and I am still here
reporting in Cyprus.
The stories that you're going to see me tell
in this new series, which is called by the way, uncharted,
that's the name of the series.
The stories you're going to see me tell
are going to feel like me.
They're going to feel like videos
I've always made,
After all, I can't change that.
It's sort of comes from my curiosity,
that comes from my voice,
but they're going to feel different.
They're going to feel more intentional.
They're going to feel more visually rich.
They're going to feel more human.
I hope, talk to a lot more people than I've ever talked to.
I was able to focus on the interviews because I had a camera
person, you know, Corey was there shooting.
And so I wasn't there fiddling with audio and, and,
and getting the frame, right.
It was actually like just focused on the conversations
and hopefully there'll be just better reported,
more sensitive, more clear,
more informative than anything I've ever done.
I've grown up as a storyteller
and over the past year and a half.
And I'm really excited to share this story with you.
A story that has been on my mind since,
since I sat in that classroom in grad school.
And I was like, someday, I will tell this story.
And I've been working with my composer, Tom Fox,
who has created an entire custom score for Cyprus.
It's like synth and orchestral and minimal,
but also like very intense and emotional.
You're listening to a little bit of it right now.
(intense music)
So I probably shouldn't be giving away all the juicy stuff
of this series, but I just can't help it.
There's too much good stuff.
So let me just give you a little nugget of what
I've been seeing over the past 10 days..
Or the past several decades.
This has just been no man's land.
(intense music)
There was commerce, there was an economy,
there was trade.
This place was thriving, and then it just collapsed
(intense music)
So that's it. That's my update, everyone.
It feels really good to be back on the road.
I am exhausted.
My brain is still in this like middle ground where I'm still
trying to like, make the stories like come together.
There's still so much reconciling
I have to do in the script, but I feel good.
I feel good to be here back in my natural habitat
on the road, telling stories, talking to people,
traversing a new place and trying to understand it and
trying to translate it to a bigger audience,
so that you can catch a glimpse of what's happening here
and the emotions and the people and the politics at stake.
That is my goal.
That is the update. Thank you all for being here.
And I will see you very soon as I kick off uncharted.
(intense music)