good morning John it was October 26th
2007 and you were explaining the
political situation in Nepal while
eating toilet paper
nobody has Maoist rebels anymore and it
set the tone for decade-plus of us doing
explain e type videos on this channel
Brazil absolutely Israel and Palestine
yeah we got that Syria since it started
existing hundred percent let's do it
twice also why not take on stuff in our
own country mass incarceration net
neutrality Benghazi tax plans this has
been a thing for the whole life of our
channel some of our most successful
content people like it were pretty good
at it but we have kind of stopped doing
it and I started to wonder why that
happened it wasn't a thing we didn't
talk about it it just stopped now you
couldn't say that your recent video
about textbooks was an explainer you
could say my recent video about
copyright was but here's why I think
those aren't explainers because they
don't have the word explained in them
and they are clearly our perspective the
word explained to me says this is going
to be my honest-to-god best effort
attempt to actually explain this thing
not to just tell the story that works
best for me because that's the thing
about explainers if you are tasked with
giving somebody the whole story of this
thing up until now there is a huge
amount of information you have to pick
from you are only going to pick some of
it and there is going to be a strong
urge to pick the bits that tell the best
story for you it is the ultimate
opportunity to shape a narrative and the
story that's gonna be most compelling
it's probably gonna be one that meshes
well with your values and your biases
and also those of your audience it's an
extremely easy thing to do badly and
also have people not notice how badly
you did I am NOT saying explainers are
bad honestly I'm a little bit proud of
whatever role we had in the rise of this
format because I think it's really
important this is an age when we are
asked to have a lot of opinions about a
lot of things and I think that
explanatory journalism can help a lot
with that because I do not know how to
feel about today's brigs at news unless
I have some kind of refresher on the
last five years of briggsie but this
channel is very clearly
personal perspective stuff like I can
hit myself with a book it's completely
it's time quick by Kurt Vonnegut do I
say Kurt I'm not doing that take again
pick up a lot more clear in the last
couple years that we as a society and a
world have a really hard time telling
the difference between journalism and
opinion and I don't want to be part of
blurring the line between those two
things the other thing is that people
started to do explainers really well
like better than we could with editorial
control with expert interviews and
highly trained journalists who've spent
their whole lives working on them not
just Tuesday and actually some of our
later explainers we started to do the
same things introducing those same
controls and standards it turns out
though that that's really hard and takes
a lot of time it's almost as if we as a
society need highly trained people who
are dedicated only to the task of
explaining reality to us but worryingly
it seems like what people want is headed
in the other direction we don't want
complicated editorial structures we want
individuals who we feel like we can
trust because like they just mesh with
us on a values level and they're very
charismatic trusting a source based on
charisma rather than like rigor is bad
it's bad and looking back over the last
couple years and why we stopped doing so
many explainers maybe it's because we
started to feel like we were part of
that I do think that we're good at them
though I do miss them but like I think
that if we do them again we have to be
very careful about what we're doing and
how to present it so I guess it's a lot
of stuff but like down at the foundation
of it it's that I don't know that I
trust myself to conjure the level of
objectivity that I think the word
explained implies so I think that's the
thing John I'll see you on Tuesday