Politics / Baking: the future format of this channel?

all of my videos are pretty spontaneous
this one maybe a little bit more spontaneous than usual I've got a question that for me relates to the past president future of this channel I've been asked lately to comment on new political developments in Cambodia there have been some very traumatic very historically significant political developments in Cambodia lately I have been watching that I've been kind of walking around my apartment talking to my girlfriend about that I mean I've also been watching very dramatic political events unfolding in Iraq Iran Saudi Arabia Yemen there's been a lot going on that I personally do care about and try to follow and try to you know respond to within my personal relationships in life so I mean the question could be glossed as why am I not talking about the stuff of my youtube channel so when I first started my youtube channel it was not meant to be a vegan Channel when I first moved to Victoria BC Canada I really did imagine that my channel would have wide-ranging discussions of political history and current ongoing political problems especially in Asian politics and probably it was inevitable that I was going to talk about First Nations politics if I was living and working in Canada continuously which was my assumption when I moved to Victoria I was not planning to move straight back to Asia after that so that probably would have been about halfway between the format I currently have on YouTube and the format you see on shows like The Young Turks or there's a there's a spin-off project from The Young Turks called the Jimmy Dore show probably it would've been close to the Jimmy Dore sort show but I was really planning to have other students from political science from politics of Asia come in and sit at a round table with me and talk about what was going on especially in politics of Asia so that was me on well it's my area of past expertise and what I thought I'd be working on it was at that time it was researching and writing essays about politics of Asia and so on now weather is what I didn't happen was and it's a very very depressing element of universities in Canada I did not meet one person not one student at any level who had any interest in politics of Asia even though I was in an academic department dedicated to the politics of Asia in Canada I can remember you can in a 400 level course on philosophy of Plato and there isn't one person in the course who's interested in philosophy of Plato you can have a whole department dedicated to a topic and you don't meet a single person in that department who's actually interested in the topic this is quite common in Canada you can be in department of Korean Ojibwe languages at First Nations University and you can't find even one student who's interested in learning Cree and achieved way as languages you know this is a recurring feature of my life but yeah it was kind of I mean I can't say it's a shocking disappointment because it was kind of long slow but it was this this this you know bizarre element of my life in Victoria BC that there was absolutely nobody for me to talk to you about politics or specifically politics of Asia despite the fact that really was my major and what I was doing aside from my aside from my professors I did have a lot of conversations with with my professors and because I'm an older student you know obviously some of the professor's spoke to me as equals you know not all of them but some some of them were quite happy to sit down and have those kinds of casual conversation with me and to treat me more or like an equal rather than talk to me like I'm a 19 year old student because I'm a student but I'm not remotely 19 years old anymore anyway there was definitely time when that was what I thought my channel would be and become and there have been different times when I've looked at kind of going back to that format going back to that plan and now as I look ahead in the calendar I'm looking at going back to Canada I'm going back via France I'm going to see my daughter again then going back to France go back to France then going back from France to Canada there's the possibility that again this will become a bit more of a kind of news and politics show now at this moment and during this last year or year and a half in China I felt that wasn't an option for me for a variety of reasons one is just not having access to publications not having access to an academic library not having access to any of the major kind of magazines on on paper and you know obviously limited access to the Internet itself and too we did at at the time I arrived and conveying right around there was actually a crackdown on live streaming services in in China because in China we have some freedom of speech some I received a propaganda message on my my cell phone from the Chinese government reminding me of that not so long ago it said something in Chinese like enjoy the broadcasting privileges you have without overstepping the limits of those privileges in China we do have more freedom of speech than many other countries but there are limits and among the limits that was really explained to the public and and imposed a new there was a crackdown so we all got the message around town first got China was the idea that if you want to discuss the news on the Internet you must have a news broadcasters license so in the same way that you can't drive a car or that a driver's license in a country like Canada you are not allowed to discuss the news on the Internet not even in a live streaming format like not even in a spontaneous manner unless you have a news broadcasters license so there's a crackdown on live streaming services and obviously I mean using YouTube itself is completely blocked and banned and illegal in China to begin with so that was one consideration I would say that right now in Thailand you have less freedom of speech than China so it's not the case that I could be back and forth from Thailand or something and uploading there or running a second kind of news channel and the third thing is to remember I mean I often do say in a certain sense that I don't care about the number of views again I don't care about the level of success again that is true for most of these videos that are either about my life or about the future of the vegan movement or about things I'm really passionate about what's like look you know like I really care about the future of the vegan movement I really care you know about sharing with you guys certain things about my personal life you know my relationship with my daughter or even my experience with the university things of that that I just do care about that I really had to unburden myself talking about how awful my experience university as we had a couple videos on that lately so there are some topics on which it's true I'm gonna make the same video whether a hundred people see it or 5000 people see it that would also be true of the Korean NGO boy stuff I've done a series of videos lately that have a very small number of viewers each but that's okay I accept that I know not that many people are interested in my perspective on First Nations politics creative way etc etc language politics its own Canada but I care about that enough that I'm gonna make that video even if a very small number people see it however on the other hand when you're looking at putting together the effort to do a kind of newsdesk Mormon I got this question asking me will I switch to a little bit more of a newsdesk format and talk about what's been going on lately North Korea what's going on lately and Mosul and Iraq perhaps but you know what's been going on obviously Cambodia's is a great example of something where my background adhesion studies in politics I know things about this I want to know more I'd enjoy doing the research and prep to put together a really high-quality informative video on that like I benefit from it but I'm also kind of burdened by how much I know from past research and I want to kind of share my perspective and Stoke up discussion you know what I'd love to do that but if I make videos of that kind if I put in that effort is it just gonna be you know for 100 people now the other reality is the main collaborator having these videos is my girlfriend Melissa and I do talk to her about that it's like well does she want to go through the process of researching according those videos than me you know where she's sitting down and talking with me at the camera you know chit-chatting about these things and again it may really be you know the latest developments in Saudi Arabian foreign policy and geopolitics very strange triangular alliance in the United States Saudi Arabia and Israel a lot of action on that topic just just these last few weeks a lot to say about that or maybe you know the United States and their war against Isis North Korea Cambodia all these issues that fermier with time or even current politics of Thailand so if I'm back you can't even take that on a as much work as that might be for me obviously would also be asking a lot of my girlfriend will be putting her in a position and you know in terms of the collaborators I was hoping for I was assuming I would do those kinds of videos with maybe someone who was getting a master's degree or PhD someone was a graduate student in Asian politics someone who's already dug into that Lane so it's an open question my girlfriend and I now assume that when we go back to Canada we're gonna enroll in college courses together in cuisine in learning how to bake vegan bread so this channel might start to take on some very very different types of content on the one hand when I'm back in Canada I'll have more freedom of speech I'll actually be able to talk about politics I'll be able to livestream about in court videos about the news what's been going on now whether that's politics of Asia politics within Canada firstly I could say a lot about both US and Canada of course I could start following and stuff respond to that stuff on the other hand it seems inevitable that we're gonna start making videos about baking about baking bread about baking cakes about vegan cuisine and cooking because that's part of what we're gonna do at their time it's possible be making videos that will reflect short-term jobs and job applications and credential ization and some of that stuff going on in my in my life but yeah for me it is still an open question right now I really haven't had the luxury to take on things like new political developments in Cambodia once I have that luxury again in Canada would I should I or could i it's really easy to look at what's going on to youtube right now and say look there's a big gap for talking about politics of Asia very very the past I did a survey to see what there was The Young Turks don't cover politics of Asia and they're very very few channels doing anything like that there's certainly a gap I think for talking about politics of Canada and indeed even First Nations politics specifically but I've built up my small audience of people who will line up to hear me give morality lectures really on the basis of vegan politics in pekin politics alone and you'd be looking at a really tough struggle to even reach 1000 viewers starting for them starting at if I take on that direction so I'm gonna have to look at what libraries I have access to and what positive difference I can make by taking on that kind of content and taking on that kind of format but this is something I think about I'm literate I'm in a situation right now where it's funny I mean like I say I share my life with people on YouTube but not even out of censorship the reality is I talk about and care about all these things in politics and political science and I mean really like I'm here in my apartment reading about them every day watching the news about them every day and talking to my girlfriend about them every day and it's really strange because that right now is completely absent from the side of my life you see here on YouTube here on YouTube you really only see me thinking and talking about politics and philosophy within the vegan movement not in the broader world not you know the question of kind of the political future of Canada not the political future of the continent of Asia you know obviously I have more engagement with some parts of Asia than others it being a huge and diverse continent can that change and for you guys is the audience would that even be a change for the better or would I end up just a leading the audience I've got and having to start from scratch big questions