Yesterday’s State Of The Union Compared To Past Addresses, Apostle Islands Sled Dog Race, How Youtube Is Changing The World

Featured in this Show

• Comparing The State Of The Union To Past Addresses

  Download

  President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address this week. Join us for a conversation about how this speech compares to those of past presidents and consider what makes a successful speech.

• Sled Dog Race To Take Place This Weekend

  Download

  The 23rd Annual Apostle Islands Sled Dog Race takes place this weekend, February 3-4, in Bayfield, Wisconsin. We learn about what it takes to be a participant and what we should know as spectators with our guest.

• YouTube Executive Looks Back At Last 13 Years

  In 2010, a man saw a double rainbow stretch across the mountains near Yosemite National Park. He took out a camera and began filming his elated reaction.

  “What does it mean?” he yells into the camera.

  He uploaded the video to YouTube under the username Yosemitebear62. It went viral.

  “I think that feeling, that joy that he’s feeling in that moment, it’s very infectious,” said Kevin Allocca, head of culture and trends at YouTube. “And even though the video’s almost eight years old at this point … he had something that he felt he wanted the world to see.”

  To Allocca, that video is what YouTube is all about. It’s silly, a little unconventional, but it’s also a sign that it only takes one person to impact culture through technology.

  Allocca makes that argument in a new book, “Videocracy: How YouTube Is Changing the World … with Double Rainbows, Singing Foxes, and Other Trends We Can’t Stop Watching.”

  “I think that YouTube is this true reflection of so many aspects of the things we care about, the things we’re passionate about,” he said. “Video has always been something that’s driven by passion, by interests, by community, and we see that in the things that people watch.”

  Back in YouTube’s early days in February 2005, watching videos on the internet was clunky. There wasn’t a uniform online video player, and users often had to download files and special software to watch a video.

  YouTube made it easier to upload and share clips. And it took off.

  “I don’t think anybody really knew what it could or should be,” Allocca said. “There was just this idea that people were interested in finding ways to express themselves.”

  Thirteen years in, the site has changed. Today, some YouTubers make millions as “professional vloggers.” Last year, the site had 1.5 billion users each month, and it says users watch a billion hours of video each day.

  With all this content comes controversy.

  Last year, YouTube cut ties with one of its most famous vloggers after he made anti-semitic comments. In November, Buzzfeed reporter Charlie Warzel pointed out dozens of videos depicting children in disturbing and abusive situations.

  And, most recently, YouTube dropped 22-year-old star Logan Paul after he posted a video showing a body after an apparent suicide.

  Some believed YouTube was to blame for the disturbing material.

  “Of course YouTube is absolutely complicit in these kinds of things, in the sense that their entire economic model, their entire model for revenue creation is created fundamentally on people like Logan Paul,” UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts told Wired, which reported that YouTube takes 45 percent of advertising revenue from Paul’s videos.

  Allocca said more than 400 hours of video are uploaded each minute. He said ethical complications are a natural part of that kind of variety.

  “When you have something that’s such a sort of diverse reflection of society, you inherit all the complexity that comes with that reflection of society,” he said. “There’ve always been people who used shock to gather our attention.”

• The Power Of YouTube, And How The Site Is Changing The World

  Download

  What started as a small video streaming service in 2005, YouTube now averages about one-billion active users every month, and is ranked as the second-most popular website in the world. It’s also redefining the world of entertainment, and is impacting our lives in many other ways. Our guest helps to make sense of it all, from cat videos to double rainbows, and everything in between…and talks about what YouTube tells us about ourselves, our society, and the future of communication.