The New Year's 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.

I've made this week's edition available to everyone to read, as I though it would be nice to give everyone a look into how the previous year's gone, and how the next one is planning out!

Welcome to 2025!

Welcome to the first edition of the Friday Update for 2025. And, well, to 2025 itself, I guess!

I hope all of you who have been celebrating various festivals and holidays over the past month or so have enjoyed them.

I had a very busy Christmas, with many, many family members around; but it was wonderful. We just finished a bit of a kitchen makeover, and so it was a wonderful opportunity to put it to the test. I’ve been making pizza and pasta and pies and a big ol’ Christmas roast.

And it’s always lovely to see so many family members in such quick succession. I think I’m becoming a big Christmashead in my old age…

Looking Back

2024 was a real rollercoaster for the YouTube channel!

We had a bunch of videos which didn’t quite perform as well as we hoped. Which, although I’m really proud of them as productions, always comes with a reasonable amount of stress as there are still salaries and bills to pay regardless of how well a video does. It’s also very easy to quickly catastrophise and assume no-one will ever watch any of my videos ever again!

That being said, peppered amongst those have been some of the most watched videos I’ve ever made. Vape-o-nomics: Why Everything is Addictive Now, How Britain Become a Poor Country, and Baby Bust: Why Conservatives are Obsessed with Birth Rates Now were real smash hits.

The second currently sits at over 2 million views, and the most recent already has more than 1.1 million after just a couple of weeks. What those numbers mean can often vary (the Vape-o-nomics video, for example, hasn’t got quite as many views as either of the others, but felt like it generated a bit more discussion online in the first few weeks, despite a smaller viewership). Nevertheless, it’s both commercially reassuring, and intellectually very rewarding to know people are engaging with the videos we’re working very hard to make!

Getting Better

I’ve long said that one of the things I really love about making videos is that I’ve never felt as though I’ve truly mastered it. There’s always new techniques and approaches and styles to play around with. And I find the idea that I can always (at least try!) to improve my craft really rewarding. I would hate to feel like I already know how to make the perfect video and to imply churn them out!

Myself and my amazing editor Georgia have added a few new stylistic twists to things this year. For one, we’ve been including a lot more interviews in videos. This is really great as it allows me to include a wider range of perspectives than simply quoting people, whilst giving everyone a rest from my voice! It’s also just been lovely to chat to so many interesting people!

In the last few videos, I feel we’ve finally started to crack shooting on-location too. This is something we began experimenting with towards the end of last year. Particularly in very “current affairs” or “documentary” videos, I was keen to break away from shooting indoors and, where feasible, to go to some of the locations we’re talking about.

Some of our attempts at that have looked better than others. But, I think we’re gradually starting to nail it! Our biggest takeaway has been to always get much more b roll (that is, shots of a location which aren’t the main shot) to use for transitions and for establishing the space. We always used to get a tiny bit, and often not enough to really use. But it really adds some nice polish to things.

Boomers

Of course, this was also the year of Boomers, my debut, feature-length… ahh, you’ve all heard the pitch by now! (Although, if you haven't, you can of course find out more here.)

Making Boomers was an amazing experience. I learned so much about every single part of the filmmaking process. I also got to do a bunch of travelling around the world which, whilst exhausting, was obviously a real privilege.

I got to work with an exceptional team who were extremely supportive and full of great ideas to push me and make the film the best it be. Again, we also got to speak with some incredible interviewees along the way as well.

It’s been really lovely to see people watching the film and responding to it. I’d love the opportunity to use all I’ve learned to make an even better film project in the future. But I’ve already got a super secret project lined up for the year ahead which might mean that could be a little while yet…

Looking Forward

So, yeah, I’ve got a massive super secret project which I can’t tell you about yet. Sorry. But I’m really excited about it and will let you all in on the secret as soon as I get the thumbs up to. (It will help me to make it even better by keeping it a secret for a bit, so I appreciate your patience!).

We’ve also got some great videos planned for the Nebula and YouTube channels. My focus for the beginning of the year is to really get myself and Georgia back in the flow of producing more regular videos, but without compromising on ambition and style.

All my travelling for Boomers made 2024 a really different year in that regard. But, super secret project aside, I’m back now with a laser focus on trying to make some of the best current affairs content on YouTube.

Current proposed projects include: Britain’s Unelected Politicians, The Rise of Testosterone Ads, a report on Palestinian solidarity protests, The Strange Death of Postmodernism, The War over Fake Meat.

I’m sure some of those will see the light, whilst others will get thrown aside for new and exciting projects as the events of the years proceed. But, if you like the sound of any of those things, I’d obviously love it if you’d stick around and keep supporting my work.

Your Support is Everything

With that, the final thing to say is a huge, huge thank you for all your support!

As the above recap highlights, making videos mostly for a platform like YouTube is veeeery tumultuous. The joy and ego-boost of very well-performing videos, such as December’s dive into birth rates!, are paired with somewhat scarier months in which we make videos we’re really proud of but which, for whatever reason, just don’t pop off in quite the same way.

Making the kind of ambitious videos we make is also pretty expensive. Bigger projects often involve travel and hotel stays. Even smaller shoots involve huge amount of research, writing and editing time, of which I always want to make sure everyone is well-compensated.

I don’t have the biggest of Patreon accounts, and so I’m really, really grateful to everyone who does dip their hand in their pocket each month and help us to smooth out some of the peaks and troughs of this wacky adventure.

Thanks as ever, and I’ll be back with more updates and some sneak peeks at the next video soon!

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