A New Era! | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

So! After a couple of week’s silence whilst I was on paternity leave, I’m now back at work! And everything’s a little bit different...

I’ve not quite managed to shift back into a normal schedule yet; but that was always likely to be the case.

A lot of my writing is currently being done in the midnight hours accompanied by a little person. Sometimes sleeping, sometimes babbling away and sometimes pulling me away for a bottle of milk or to have a sing song!

Nevertheless, with some of the uncertainty of when my leave would be out of the way (and our latest video on How the Far Right Took Over Britain released!), my team and I have been able to begin making some big plans for the future.

There are a few core parts to this:

Firstly: more short form. I’ve done a bit of short form video on and off in the past. It’s something I’ve always really enjoyed, but have never quite been able to find time for amid working on long form videos.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that TikTok etc. is here to stay, and that being present on such platforms can help us to reach people who might be interested in the topics we cover, but who might not regularly watch YouTube videos.

Keep an eye out on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels for a mixture of repurposed clips from the main channel and specially-made, new bits and bobs.

Secondly: interviews. We’re currently working hard to try and launch an interview series.

I really, really enjoy conducting interviews. It’s a really humbling experience to have the chance to listen to experts talk about their chosen topics, and to quiz folks either with power, or who’re looking to challenge it, on their plans for the future.

I’m also aware that, as things stand, our production timelines for any given project are pretty long. This means we often fail to respond to evolving stories in the news or the discourse until things have moved on. Our hope is that an interview series would allow us to react a little quicker and be able to cover big topics in news ways.

My goal with the series is to see how we can push a little bit beyond the standard quickly-made podcast format and make something which feels really premium and in-depth. There’s still a lot to be planned though!

I’d love to hear who you’d be interested in us trying to speak with!

Thirdly: More of the videos you’re used to from us; hopefully on a slightly more consistent schedule. Or goal has always been to put out one video every month, and we’ve generally fallen to closer to one every six weeks over the past year. My goal is to get us back on track there so that we can cover more vital and important topics!

There’s some great stuff in the works at the moment. All very varied, and yet all I think deeply interesting. And I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!