Nuanced.
Where real conversations happen — with host Aaron Pete.
Nuanced.
203. J.J. McCullough: The Future of Politics & Independent Media
YouTuber J.J. McCullough discusses his path from TV pundit to 1M subscribers, independent vs. mainstream media, Canadian politics, anti-Americanism, Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre, and the future of political commentary on YouTube with host Aaron Pete.
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I'm JJ McCullough. I'm a professional YouTuber. Prime Minister Carney, I think, ran on the most nakedly anti-American platform You've built such a unique platform.
Aaron Pete:Can you tell us those early nascent stages of starting to find your own voice?
J. J. McCullough:I didn't really grow up with YouTube in the way that I think maybe some kids of your generation did.
Aaron Pete:This was going to be the podcast year and this was going to be the independent media year, but with all the constraints, it seemed like they were like let's just stick status quo.
J. J. McCullough:Obviously, Pierre has people in his caucus and in his base that like Trump and like America, and there is no Canadian Joe Rogan right Like there's just not a lot of venues to have these kind of interviews when you see an issue how do you go about figuring out the lens you want to bring to it?
Aaron Pete:JJ, thank you so much for being willing to join us and come all the way out. I'm so grateful to have you here. Would you mind first briefly introducing yourself?
J. J. McCullough:Yeah, so I'm JJ McCullough. I'm a professional YouTuber. I've been doing it for about 10 years. I make videos about culture, countries, Canada. Those are like my big three C's.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, yeah. So I'm curious you've built such a unique platform. Can you tell us those early nascent stages of starting to find your own voice?
J. J. McCullough:Yeah, so before I got into YouTube, I was sort of a TV pundit, a political commentator on television. I worked for CTV for many years. I worked for Sun News, which is a network that your younger viewers probably not even aware existed. But, yeah, it was this short-lived experiment and I was a part of that, and the sun shut down very abruptly, you know, because it was not making any money. They kind of had to pull the plug, and so I found myself very abruptly out of work and I, you know, I'm so I'm 41 and I didn't really grow up with YouTube in the way that I think maybe some kids of your generation did, but I was kind of dimly aware that this was a platform that had some future. So this was in 2015, and so I decided to give it a shot. I just went to the Best Buy and I bought a little camcorder and I'm like maybe I can make my own videos in my own apartment and just give this a try, and initially it was very experimental. I wanted to see if I could make like a video a week, and I was able to do it, and then so, basically, I just kept doing that for a very long time, and while I was doing that, you know I had other gigs that I was doing on the side. I was still doing a lot of writing, because that's my other form of political commentary that I've engaged in over the years is writing for newspapers and magazines and things. And so I was still doing that.
J. J. McCullough:And you know, just kind of gradually the channel grew. I kept sticking to that weekly schedule and the views sort of gradually began to accumulate. You know, I had a sort of long-term view of what I was doing. I wasn't expecting immediate success. Long-term view of what I was doing. I wasn't expecting immediate success and I guess I didn't need immediate success for financial reasons. But yeah, I just kind of endured. And then a couple of years ago it became basically my full-time job and I don't do anything else for money. Now it's all YouTube and as we film this, I'm right on the brink of hitting a million subs, or a million subscribers. Yeah, 999,000. Yeah, yeah. So it's an awkward moment that we're taping this. I'd love to be able to say I just passed a million subs. But you know, presumably that'll happen in the next couple of days.
Aaron Pete:Absolutely. Can you take us back, even maybe before that? What made you interested in politics and understanding world events, Like I? Really I was watching your Israel Hamas breakdown and kind of what was going on and I just I really appreciated that it wasn't kind of what we're hearing from almost all different kind of pundits. It's there's normal positions to take and you either adopt one or the other. You brought a really unique perspective to an important issue and just helped us understand why and I just want to go back to the very beginning what made you interested in politics and then starting to find your voice and share your perspective?
J. J. McCullough:Well, I remember when I was really young I guess I didn't ever think I was going to be interested in politics. I came to politics in a kind of like weird way because, like my first sort of great love in life has been like cartoons and drawing cartoons. I love to draw and initially I thought I was going to be a cartoonist and I was going to be involved in animation or making video games or something like that. And then I kind of found myself sort of seduced by political cartoons, just because I thought that they were just interesting. I liked the style. And then, in order to sort of understand what was going on in political cartoons, I started learning more about politics in order to become more literate and understand this kind of cartoon that I was sort of drawn to and just kind of almost a purely sort of aesthetic way.
J. J. McCullough:And then this was when I was sort of in my final year of high school, and then 9-11 happened that year when I was a senior in high school, and then that just kind of seemed to really raise the importance of politics in a very visible way. And then I'm just kind of like, okay, maybe politics is the most important thing, maybe it's not the cartoons that matter so much. Maybe it's like politics is sort of what really makes the world go around, and I also just kind of felt stimulated by it, like it felt like it was a realm of knowledge. That was just very interesting to me, learning about all the different governments of, you know, canada and the different provinces, and then the different countries of the world and their leaders, and how everybody interacts with each other and, and you know, and the degree to which sort of politics and political history sort of affects everything in our, in our modern world, and the degree to which that sort of knowledge is taken for granted.
J. J. McCullough:In order to be fully literate as a person, in order to understand, you know, movies and literature and all this other kind of stuff, you have to have this strong grounding and political knowledge. And I guess I've always been somebody that's also just been very drawn to the idea of accumulating knowledge, accumulating facts and details. And so, yeah, then I made a decision to sort of study politics in college, which I did, and that's what I got my degree in. And then, yeah, when I was in college, I was just, you know, continued to be interested in following current events and doing writing and all that sort of stuff. And then eventually I decided that I wanted to be a professional political commentator. I wanted to be somebody that wrote and went on TV and I was able to do that.
Aaron Pete:So what was the experience of going down that path? Because I imagine you want to understand an issue. You also want to add value to the conversation that's taking place and in a way that that sparks other people's interest and understanding of an issue. So how did you start to develop that approach? Because initially you're just reading and you're going, I'm just taking in so much facts.
Aaron Pete:But, then to figure out what you're going to say about those facts really, really matters, and it sounds like, with your writing and with your ability to be creative, you're taking unique perspectives and I'm just curious how did you end up kind of developing that fundamental understanding?
J. J. McCullough:So I mean sometimes I think that one of sort of the through lines that I've had in my life when I've been drawing or writing or going on television or making YouTube videos or doing interviews in this sort of context, is I do value sort of clarity of communication. I think that's why I was drawn to political cartoons as well, because, you know, political cartoons use the language of visual metaphor in order to explain things they used to at least. These days there's not as many of them, and the ones that exist are much more sort of stride into an ideological. But at one time it's like, you know, and people sort of rag on this kind of stuff, but you know, at one time, like okay, you, you represent the deficit as like a big hole, and then there's the donkey and the elephant and they're digging the hole right. It's like this kind of stuff is very cheesy to some people, but at the other hand, like it's a very effective way. It's sort of communicating an abstract concept like the deficit. You can break it down, but what is it equivalent to? Okay, like a deficit is like a hole. In a sense, You're digging yourself into it. Therefore, we can represent it visually that way and it kind of makes the concept more accessible to the reader.
J. J. McCullough:And you know, that was something that was compelling to me when I looked at sort of political writers that I liked. It was those who did not presume too much pre-existing knowledge that were able to sort of break down the fundamentals of the story in a way that was not condescending but was also not inaccessible. You know, I like that style of writing just in sort of terms of like. I like to read nonfiction books that are clearly written and just kind of have a clear sense of like what is the gist of this? You know, sort of cut out all of the flowery sort of pompous language and just kind of get to the facts of the situation. And that's kind of an attitude I try to bring to my videos as well.
J. J. McCullough:You brought up the Israel-Palestine video I made, you know, a couple of years ago and I felt like there's already so much people offering their hot takes on that conflict one way or another. But you know, most people don't have an interest in sort of making videos or commentary on that conflict. That sort of takes the kind of like the meta perspective. And the meta perspective in my opinion, is not like what is the entire history of this conflict? You know, which plenty of people made videos and essays on.
J. J. McCullough:But it's just like, why, of all things in the world, why does this conflict sort of fascinate us? So why does it get people into the streets in the way that so many other conflicts around the world don't? Why do people get so emotional about it? Why is there graffiti about it? You know, I was walking around my neighborhood this morning and you know people have like stickers on lampposts and stuff. It's like, what is it about that?
J. J. McCullough:And in that video, hopefully, I broke it down right, Not in a way that was like overly opinionated, but just sort of saying like look, this is a conflict that fascinates and obsesses us. It has some very clearly identifiable factions that are interested in it and those factions are, in turn, interested in it for particular reasons that you know relate to, you know, history and culture and identity and all these sort of complex topics. So sometimes I think that that's kind of thing is what we need the most of. People get on my case because they wish I would make more opinionated videos.
J. J. McCullough:They're like well, JJ, just tell us what you think, and it's like I have no problem sharing my opinions on things, but I try to ask myself, like what is needed? What do people need? What kind of media do people need? What kind of media do young people especially need from somebody who's a bit older like me and has this platform, has this ability to reach a large audience, and I believe pretty strongly that what they need is tools to help them make them more culturally literate so that they can navigate a world that is so dense and complex in information and does take for granted a lot of pre-existing knowledge, that is so dense and complex in information and does take for granted a lot of pre-existing knowledge. Hopefully I can help present some of that knowledge in an easy, digestible, objective way that can make them feel a little bit more equipped to navigate this complex world.
Aaron Pete:That's exactly what I was so interested in interviewing you about is because your ability to look at a problem like that and then say what do people need, and have that creative element of like okay, what's missing from the conversation in a Canadian or a U like? We're not there and yet we're fascinated by a conflict going on thousands and thousands of kilometers away from us. What's public that? That is a unique characteristic I feel like you have. Where does that creativity come from? When you see an issue, how do you go about figuring out the lens you want to bring to?
J. J. McCullough:it. I guess it depends on the issue. I mean, I do like to try to come at it from the perspective of like, like what I said before, like cultural literacy. Like cultural literacy is basically like a concept that, like I said before, like in order to sort of navigate our complex world, there is knowledge that is taken for granted, right. It's like you kind of need the little, you know, the cheat guide, the Coles notes, whatever they used to call it right, just the kind of thing to sort of bring you up to speed so that you can sort of, at the very least, kind of like fake your way through a conversation on it or read an article in the newspaper and not be completely sort of caught off guard about what's being talked about.
J. J. McCullough:And so I do a lot of my videos. I try to come at it from that perspective. Like I think, like I have a kind of vision in my, in my mind. It's like, if I think of my typical viewer, or even it's maybe it's not my typical viewer, but somebody that I'm still making my content in mind this kind of like platonic ideal of a certain kind of viewer that I'm making it for it's, like you know, probably a younger guy who wants to know stuff about the world but is maybe a little intimidated by it and is tired of only getting information from very opinionated, very biased sources but, you know, still wants to be able to navigate and not be sort of seen as an idiot and not feel ignorant and helpless. And so it's just kind of like well, here's all the knowledge that the rest of us have already, here's the knowledge that we take for granted that an educated, literate person should have.
J. J. McCullough:And then can I present those bits of sort of taken for granted knowledge in a way that's sort of accessible and easily digestible, because it's clearly explained and is animated by a sense of conveying what matters and leaving out what doesn't, and I think that's something that a lot of people miss.
J. J. McCullough:In the same way, like, sort of like, if I'm drawing a picture of somebody, if I'm drawing like a cartoon of you, a caricature of you, right, I don't need to draw every single line of your face in order to capture the likeness. Like, there's a few sort of key things like your eyes and the way your facial features are proportioned and your hair and this kind of stuff, right, like you just get the few basic lines down and you have a likeness right. It's the same with when you're conveying information there's a lot that you have to leave aside, there's a lot that just doesn't matter. It might sort of feel flattering to you as a writer or creator to include so much detail, in the same way that an artist might believe he's made a better picture if he draws every single eyelash. But I tend to not think that. I think that knowing what to leave behind, knowing what to focus on, that is the essence of effective, useful communication.
Aaron Pete:One of my beliefs is that we are right now a really immature society and that we're struggling with complex ideas, and I think we're starting with individuals like yourself and the growth of independent media. We're starting to be able to have more complicated conversations and to understand both the facts but different perspectives that are relevant when we're understanding an issue. But we still like. Donald trump has always been a person that's interested me because I have so many people who are much older than me go like he's just a terrible like. One person I know was like I hope it rains on his birthday yeah and I was just like that.
Aaron Pete:This person has too much control over your life if you care about how his birthday goes like this is just. This is a crazy thing to hear from a grown adult when I would imagine a 13 year old might have that type of opinion of like screw that person. I want my friend to have a bad birthday.
Aaron Pete:Like that seems, but we've. We've had such a relaxed society for so long because we haven't experienced the challenges of great famine like um, like the great depression, or a war like world war two, where we really knew who the chief villain was and we were able to understand that, that we we haven't had maybe as strong an understanding of challenging institutions while also being able to understand that that we haven't had maybe as strong an understanding of challenging institutions while also being able to trust institutions. Because right now it seems like there's a whole group of people who have no faith in institutions, there's a whole group of people who only trust institutions. That we haven't had a complicated understanding of much of these issues.
Aaron Pete:And I'm wondering how does independent media kind of factor into that from your perspective? Because I hear one side being like these people aren't doing fact checking, they're not being as professional, and we know that. We know that people like Joe Rogan aren't fact checking their guests, but then, at the same time, we also do need to just be able to hear from individuals like the president of Iran and understand what they're saying, even if you don't believe it, even if you think they're lying throughout. We need to be able to have that. So I'm just as we watch like corporate media start to fade away. What is the role of independent media, from your perspective, in addressing a lot of these complex political issues?
J. J. McCullough:Well, I mean, I think it has to be more than just giving hot takes based on somebody else's reporting, right? I mean, that's something that I find very exhausting is that there are a lot of these sort of opinion, you know, pundits, podcasters, influencers, who are very ignorant, and they're sort of almost wear their ignorance on their sleeve. It's like, oh, that's, isn't that charming, doesn't that make me seem like a relatable everyman? But then all of their takes are just informed by reporting that someone else is doing, right. So none of these people are actually doing on the ground reporting, none of them are going to these conflict zones or gathering facts or going to the White House press briefings or whatever. They're not informed by a pursuit of truth, they're just sort of informed by making a sort of content that's very dopaminergic, that's very sort of satisfying because it's entertaining, right, it plays into our desire to see sort of entertaining media that has some aspect of conflict, that has compelling characters, compelling personalities and that sort of thing. And I think that independent media has to be aware of that temptation to produce stuff that just only delights the audience in that very sort of superficial way, and I think that we have to be much more appreciative of the many, many things that you know corporate media or mainstream media or whatever you want to call it provides, which is that they are still doing the vast, vast, vast majority of the hard news reporting. That is, like you know, the kind of the essence, the mother's milk of punditry and all the rest of it. You can't have one without the other. And yet in independent media now, you just see nothing but scorn and derision heaped upon the mainstream medias if they offer nothing of redeeming, use or value at all.
J. J. McCullough:And I just see no sign that alternative media people are interested in actually replacing that which is best about the mainstream press. They only sort of conceptualize mainstream press based on this kind of like narrow criteria of ideological bias. So it's like because the mainstream media is biased in this way, or because you know their editorial page has an ax to grind, or because they don't sort of present every story perfectly in line with how I would like the facts of that story to be reported. Therefore they're just completely useless and we should toss them out altogether. And I'm just getting really sort of tired of seeing that narrative perpetuated, because then I think what happens and I think a lot about young people especially is.
J. J. McCullough:I think that young people are sort of fed a very steady diet of mainstream media sucks. Mainstream media sucks, don't listen to it, don't care, it's biased, it's terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then so, as a result, young people think that they're being informed by just listening to a few like dopey podcasts and you know, youtube channels and stuff like that, and I think that that just leads to, I don't know, an increasingly sort of ignorant society, you know, in which we're just not literate on the things that that matter most, and so, as a result, our ability to sort of conceptualize our place in the world and deal with the challenges that face the world whether it's problems in the Middle East or, you know, covid, or things to do with the economy or whatever, like, they're all just informed by just like ignorant, half informed opinions based on nothing other than, you know, the entertainment value of the of the shows and things that we're watching.
Aaron Pete:The other piece I wanted to get your understanding on, because I feel like I'm trying my best to walk this line and I imagine you've had to cross this as well is audience capture, and one of the challenges I see now is I don't want to avoid tough conversations, and so I'm having more tough conversations, like I had Candice Malcolm on from True North Media and we had a really good debate on Indian residential school denialism and what that means and what her book is about. And now I'm getting pushback from a lot of listeners saying I'm platforming too many right wing people and but I don't want to just hear one side of the story, and so I'm trying to make sure I walk that line and get an understanding of issues, while not picking one side or the other, but trying to go where I don't understand something.
J. J. McCullough:And you feel like you're more informed now of like what animates somebody like Candace Owens or not.
Aaron Pete:Candace Owens, candace Malcolm yes, I do, and I think what it showed me was at least there was good faith of her asking, like I've never lived on a reserve Can you tell me about what's going on there? I've never been in a chief and council meeting Like there was a willingness to receive information and she was honest. That, like this, isn't something I'm like immersed in, but her point was well taken. And again, I've interviewed multiple chiefs who feel very uncomfortable, admitting the fact that Tecumloops has not removed bodies, They've not shown bones of children, and so that's not to say that they have to.
Aaron Pete:But you made a really bold claim and now people are asking for the evidence and it's making you uncomfortable. So we have to have a complicated conversation, and the reason that I was willing to participate in that was because my fear is that individuals like Dallas Brody are starting to be animated by the fact that there's not evidence and there's a growing group of people who are like I'm sick and tired of hearing about First Nations issues and I'm alive to the fact that that group can grow and our time of reconciliation can come to a close if we're not responsible with having people respect and understand the issues we're facing, and so that's why I was willing to engage with that. But I'm just mindful of trying to figure out how I don't get captured by one side or the other side of the argument and I'm just curious how you digest that. I'm sure there's issues where, as you said, some of your audience wants you to take a position or say something.
J. J. McCullough:How do you navigate that? It's hard, I mean. I guess on some level you have to be willing to make sacrifices, right, and, you know, animated by a desire to bring useful information to the audience, not just entertaining. Dopamine hits all the time, right. But you know at the same time, right, it's like it's in the same way, what sells better. You know Coca-Cola, or you know nutritious, you know health drinks or whatever, right, like people want what they want, and that's fine. You kind of have to resign yourself to. You might never be as successful as the most entertaining product out there, right, and that's fine. But it's a challenge though, because I think the problem is that sometimes people try to walk that line a little too delicately and then they wind up producing something that has no audience at all, because it starts to feel, you know, kind of overly timid and overly calculated and overly sort of moderated and that kind of stuff.
J. J. McCullough:And because you know, like I guess, one thing that I say a lot is, I try to be objective in my content, right, I am biased, as anybody is, in the sense that I have opinions and I have preferences and all of that, and I could, I have the capacity to make very biased content because I'm clever enough to know how to do such a thing. But at the same time, I like to think that because I have biases, because I have strong opinions, I also have the capacity to put to knowingly put those biases aside and try to create content that is objective, to knowingly put those biases aside and try to create content that is objective. And I think that that's a very challenging thing, because biased people can often like, if you're biased because you're sort of biased in a clever way, as opposed to being biased like unknowingly because you're just ignorant, but if you're biased in a clever way, you have a sort of sense where it's like I have a sort of propagandistic kind of power. I can mold my impressionable audience to think like I think right of power. I can mold my impressionable audience to think like I think right. And I think it requires a lot of humility to turn off that side of your brain to sort of say like I'm going to choose not to use those powers that I have and I'm instead going to try to serve some larger goal that is bigger than just the ideological objective or the partisan objective that I might like to see, which is to believe that there is some sort of net positive to be gained from a public that is just more informed and just has a greater command of facts. And you know, it doesn't even have to sort of put your own ideological goals aside completely, because if you believe that your position has the facts on your side, then why not just present the facts as they are right? Like I have my feelings on the Israel-Palestine thing, but I also have a sort of sense that you know the facts of the conflict, in terms of the conflict as it manifests in a sort of like cultural way in 21st century Canada, not in the you know the war zone itself. Like if you just kind of describe those situations, you know people can decide for themselves what side is they find is more persuasive. You know, I don't try to lead people to one conclusion, but you know, I think that when you present the facts objectively maybe one side does look more sympathetic to the other. But you know, people might that might just be my own biases talking and when I present the facts objectively some people might reach a different conclusion than I did. But yeah, you just you kind of have to, I suppose, just have faith that. You know, I don't know.
J. J. McCullough:Objectivity is important and objectivity requires a bit of humility, and it's just. It's strange to me that people are so insecure that they can't just tell the truth. Right, and that's the other thing I do try to strive for. As well as long with objectivity is, like you know, just be truthful.
J. J. McCullough:Don't leave important things off to the side because, like, if you can handle knowing those things and they don't sort of steer you into a different direction, then clearly your audience is probably mature enough to handle the complicated facts that are uncomfortable. You know, you gave a good example right where you're talking about you. You know the, the indigenous residential schools and that I'm sure it's an issue that you feel strongly about and a lot of people in your community do as well, and it's like, but you can handle that. There's nuance to it, right, like it's not, it's not a completely simple topic. There are complicated and uncomfortable details about that, uh, on the side of of indigenous rights activists, and I think that they have to be able to own up to those and not just try to hide them or massage them or get overly indignant and offended at people like Candace Malcolm who bring them up.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Just out of curiosity and this is the last one on just YouTube and independent media, I'm just curious what is the thing you enjoy most about a YouTube channel? Because a lot of people see the video and they watch it. They don't realize the work that goes into the description and the thumbnail and how you promote it and all of those things. What do you enjoy most about some of those behind the scenes efforts?
J. J. McCullough:That's a good question. I've been doing it so long and it is starting to feel like a little, a little stressful sometimes Cause it. I mean it is, it's my job, and so it feels like like work. It's something I get out of bed in the morning and it's like, ok, I got to spend all day doing this, so I mean it's the best job I've ever had. But at the same time, you know, work is work. So I like writing the best. I like coming up with ideas. That's probably like the most satisfying part is like when I feel like I have an idea. And then there's this sort of like initial phase where, like, the idea is very stimulating.
J. J. McCullough:I like that I can do drawings for my videos. I mean that's a way I can still enjoy this. One part of my life that has otherwise been kind of cast by the wayside is I can do illustrations for my own videos, and that can be a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, and I still like writing. I mean like that's why YouTube has been such a good job for me, because it combines many, many just different lifelong passions. Right, like I like to learn, I like to write.
J. J. McCullough:I like to do visual kind of stuff.
J. J. McCullough:Right, I like to be on camera, I like to make content that other people can enjoy and consume.
J. J. McCullough:So it's it's really like if and a lot of other YouTubers like my YouTuber buddies they have talented music.
J. J. McCullough:I have no talent at music, but a lot of YouTubers do have a sort of a hidden skill at making songs or or you're composing music and all that and so like that's something that they get to exercise as well. So it's the sheer sort of multimedia dimension of it, cause I do it all myself and actually a lot of YouTubers have, like this cast of thousands that helps them edit the video, that does the music and does the graphics and all that. But I do it all myself and and I actually find it strange that some people would not want to do it all themselves, right, I mean, it's obviously very time consuming and, like I said, it becomes a bit of a slog sometimes. But, on the other hand, like I would never want to give up all of these kind of stimulating and sort of creative and visual and kind of hands on aspects of making something, as opposed to just doing like one very small part, which I do think would become pretty soul crushing after a while.
Aaron Pete:Right, we had an election recently. What are your big takeaways from the 2025 election?
J. J. McCullough:That's a good question. There's a lot of things to take away from it. I guess I mean one thing is that I mean anti-Americanism is still, I think, sort of the default position of many Canadians. It's a very powerful, very animating force in contemporary Canadian culture and politics, particularly among older Canadians, and that is, I think, one of the biggest differences between American political culture and Canadian political culture, is just how strong a sort of like progressive boomer anti-Americanism is as a sort of force in Canadian politics.
J. J. McCullough:And Prime Minister Carney, I think, ran on the most nakedly anti-American platform that I have witnessed in my lifetime. And again, like you know to be objective about this, obviously it's because Donald Trump is terrible and belligerent and you know all the rest of it, but it's also because Donald Trump personifies like an anxiety that pre-exists in Canadian culture and Canadian society is that there are a lot of you know, especially older progressive voters, voters who traditionally vote liberal, who do kind of hate and fear America and liberal governments. I think Prime Minister Trudeau was good in the sense that he chose not to kind of like activate that anxiety. I mean, perhaps you could argue there wasn't really any reason for him to do it because Trump behaved differently in the first term than he has in the second term, but Carney was in many ways given the perfect foil in order to activate this kind of like latent anxiety and passion and sense of patriotism that exists in sort of like the middle aged, middle class of this country and get them to vote. And so he, you know, was able to activate that and rise to where he is now.
J. J. McCullough:And Pierre Polyev, as the head of the conservatives, which is the more sort of pro-American faction of this country, head of the conservatives, which is the more sort of pro-American faction of this country.
J. J. McCullough:Obviously, Pierre has people in his caucus and in his base that like Trump and like America and so being anti-American in a way that's probably necessary did not come naturally to him, and I think that that was really, in many ways, the big sort of story of the election.
J. J. McCullough:It was not an election about policy, it was an election about fear, and fear of the other and fear of this force, the US, that Canada has always gained its sort of sense of identity in opposition to and yeah, as long as sort of Trump is on the scene and as long as Trump is has these sort of mad ideas of, you know, tariffs and trade relationships.
J. J. McCullough:As long as Trump has these sort of mad ideas of tariffs and trade relationships, as long as he continues to have that kind of stuff, I think that the Liberal Party seems like it's going to be in a pretty good position, because the hope on Pierre's side was that the Liberal Party had become so unpopular that Trump's stuff was going to take a sort of second you know spot to. You know dealing with the economy and all the rest of it, and that was clearly not the case. Even a man as popular as Pierre Polyev, the most popular and successful conservative leader in like 30 years, wasn't enough right. The appeal to anti-Americanism, the fear of America, the fear of American conquest and takeover and like grotesque Republican style politics coming to Canada, that is ultimately a much, much stronger force than anything else.
Aaron Pete:Interesting. The piece that I had a huge criticism on in regards to the election was the length of the election period. 36 days is not a lot of time for people to get educated on a new leader, on understanding all of these dynamics. Two platforms came out like 10 days before the election day. I wasn't a fan of that. But then we also saw a step back from independent media and I had made a prediction in 2025, in January, that this was going to be the podcast year and this was going to be the independent media year that we were going to see, because in BC I had the opportunity to interview David Eby and all of the other provincial leaders and they had really stepped into that world and I thought we were going to see the same federally, but with all the constraints, it seemed like they were like let's just stick status quo, let's hold to our guns, and I noticed you had made comments about that. Can you just reflect on the importance of hearing from our politicians in different ways during the election?
J. J. McCullough:Yeah, can you just reflect on the importance of hearing from our politicians in different ways during the election? Yeah, I mean, I had had this whole sort of dream worked out where it's like I was going to get Pierre and I was going to get Jagmeet and I was going to get maybe even Prime Minister Carney himself go on my show, and like I had a whole set set up and like I really thought I was going to be able to do that because I had a good relationship with Pierre. I'd had him on my channel once before, a much shorter interview, but I thought we could do a substantial sort of sit down Because, again, like we all sort of consume the same conventional wisdom. After Trump got back in right, it was like, oh, it's because he went on Joe Rogan and the Milk Boys and all these other things, and like clearly the world has changed and new media is where it's at and any politician that doesn't, you know, go on 100 podcasts is going to be left in the dust. Right, it's such a direct line to the voters. But Canadian politics is just different. Like Canadian politics is just incredibly risk averse. Like the hierarchies that run the Canadian political parties are terrified of being in any situation where everything is not 100% under their control. So it's like Pierre did a couple of interviews and so did Carney and maybe even Jagmeet did. I didn't really notice it. So it's like Pierre did a couple of interviews and so did Carney and maybe even Jagmeet did. I didn't really notice it, but it's like if they did, it was like with the safest of safe, most partisan or most like innocuous, politically ignorant people possible, because the last thing they wanted was any difficult conversations, any difficult questions, anything that was get them off their talking points for even one second right. And that just was very depressing to me, because Canadian politics already suffers from.
J. J. McCullough:I think and this is, I think, a growing problem with Canadian politics is that it just doesn't seem relevant or coherent or accessible to a lot of people, a lot of young people especially. They don't get a sense that these politicians are people that kind of really understand their problems or understand the country as it actually exists, that they're sort of off in their little Ottawa bubble. And I think that rougher, more unscripted conversations with people that are curious about things that maybe the mainstream sort of Canadian political discourse doesn't center on enough would have been very useful and yet they chose not to do that. But you know, I mean what do I know? I mean, you know both Pierre and Carney did as well as any liberal or conservative leader have done in decades. So maybe the Canadian people don't actually care that much about this.
J. J. McCullough:Maybe this is a fixation that people like you and me, who actually run these shows and want to get you know things that bathe ourselves in glory and attention Like. I don't know, and that's always something that we have to think about as well is to what extent are conversations about the media being driven by the media, who are obviously not an objective observer of media?
Aaron Pete:you know trends and the cultural trends that the media relates to, so I guess I would just bet that we're not moving in the right direction in terms of our spending, in terms of our housing crisis in terms of our health care.
Aaron Pete:So it's clear, like to me I have a lot of confidence in both of us that we are good faith actors that I was more like I wanted those interviews just as much as I'm sure you did, but I would have been more than happy if you had have gotten it and I was never heard from again and I shut this whole thing down because I knew that I like consuming interviews like the one you were describing, and I saw pierre pauliev go on candace malcolm's show and I felt like that was very like, I'm sure, for her and his base. That was very gratifying to me. It was like of course you're gonna ask that question, of course you're gonna ask that question, like of course there's not gonna be any deviation from the talking points that you want to hear.
J. J. McCullough:And so I was disappointed by that I will say, though, as well, that there is also a problem that there's just not a lot in canada like shows, like there is no canadian uh joe rogan, right, like there's just not a lot of uh uh like venues to have these kind of interviews, which I think, is that's why I thought I would be sitting pretty, because, like, I'm the most popular like independent canadian commentary channel on youtube, right, and so I thought that you know, as being the canada guy, that it would be logical that they would go on my show, but you know, clearly, they they didn't, and there isn't. There's just, there's just not a lot of sort of spaces, I guess, from like a purely sort of strategic perspective. Like they didn't go just on Joe Rogan just because Joe Rogan is, like you know, unvarnished and an everyman who asks the questions that the average Joe wants to hear. It's also because you know he has a huge audience where you can take it for granted that millions of people will watch, and a lot of these sort of smaller YouTube channels or what, or even me, right Like it's you can't necessarily take it for granted that that would get more eyeballs than just, you know posting something on Twitter or Instagram or something, right.
Aaron Pete:Right. Can you tell people how they can follow along with your work?
J. J. McCullough:Uh yeah, if you just type JJ McCullough into YouTube or because I'm such a big shot now you can just type in JJ Canada and it'll usually pop up McCullough into YouTube. Or because I'm such a big shot now, you can just type in JJ Canada and it'll usually pop up McCullough is hard to spell, so if people just type JJ Canada, they'll probably see me on YouTube.
Aaron Pete:Perfect, and what can they expect in the coming months?
J. J. McCullough:In the coming months I don't know. I'm actually because I'm now just passing a million subscribers and I've been doing it for 10 years I'm starting to just kind of like think a little bit more about the kind of videos I want to make. Do I want to keep making a weekly video? Like I tend to make like a weekly 20 minute video, and I've been doing that for a long time. But now I'm starting to get a little jealous of these creators that take a little bit more time but make much longer videos. You know, it might take three weeks to make like an hour long video, and so in the coming year I'm thinking a lot about that right, like I have some ambitious ideas of videos I want to make that are like an hour or maybe even two hours, and just really get deep into a topic that I care a lot about, which is often cultural history. That's the kind of stuff I like the most. Maybe some like political kind of explainer sort of things, some contentious topics. Maybe I'll do like I did with the Israel-Palestine thing, I don't know, but I'm definitely. I'm trying to motivate myself to be a little bit more experimental and creative, because when you've been doing anything for 10 years.
J. J. McCullough:It's easy to get sort of stagnant and complacent, and you see that a lot on YouTube. There's channels that have been going on for a very long time, and then they start to fall off because the content gets repetitive and overly familiar. And, much like the politicians, people become very risk averse, right, like they're not willing to put their neck out and try something new and deal with the possibility that it might fail or it might flop. So instead they try to go with the sure thing, but the converse of that is that the sure thing can sometimes get boring and unexciting, right. There's a reason why, you know, television shows don't tend to last for 10 years. People get sick of them and they get canceled. So you have to have that same kind of spirit. If I'm going to be doing this for, you know, however, another 10 years, it's probably going to have to have some sense of life in it.
Aaron Pete:So Well, I appreciate you for being willing to come out. I am a huge admirer of your work and your decision to remain nuanced, to take different perspectives, to try and break things down for people, because I think you're right, that is what people need. During the last election provincially that's the feedback I got was like I just want to listen to somebody explain their thoughts. I can decide for myself if they're right, wrong, left, right, whatever I want. And you're doing a lot of that work and it's just. It's an honor to have someone like yourself be able to come on the show, because there's a lot of work that went into where you are today and you're sharing that opportunity with me today. So thank you so much.
J. J. McCullough:Thank you so much for having me. It was awesome, perfect. Thank you.
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