Mixed Signals: Can YouTube debates bring America back together? with Jubilee’s Jason Y. Lee

Max Tani:
Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, where we’re tracking the wild changes in this new media age. I’m Max Tani, media editor here at Semafor, and with me as always is our editor-in-chief Ben Smith. How you doing, Ben?

Ben Smith:
I’m good. I’m down in DC today, so couldn’t be better.

Max Tani:
Well, this week I’m here in New York and we’re chatting with Jason Y. Lee, who’s the founder and CEO of Jubilee Media. Jubilee operates a just massive YouTube channel, which has become the producer of several hit debate and dating shows, primarily on YouTube. And we’re going to ask him about mastering the debate show format, whether he believes Jubilee is actually bringing together a divided America, and his attempts to get the company a presidential debate in 2028.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, I’m excited about this because in a very homogenous media universe, they’re doing something really different.

Max Tani:
Well, we’ll ask him what he’s doing different and get into all of that after the break.
So Ben, about a month ago I came to you and I asked you if you’d seen what to me was this kind of mind-boggling video, which was the political commentator Sam Seder debating surrounded by these 20 Gen Z conservatives.

Excerpts:
What’s the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don’t you think that’s better for Americans in general?
To be xenophobic, nationalism is better?
Yes, we should have a coherent culture. Everyone should be a part of the same culture.
Do you get to choose what the culture is?
We already have a dominant culture.
Look, I got to be honest with you, you and I have a fundamental disagreement. We will never see eye to eye on this.
Hi, I’m Sam Seder, host of the Majority Report, and today I am surrounded by 20 conservatives.

Max Tani:
This was a new format for me, but I realized after watching the video that I’d seen some clips of some similar shows, which turned out to all have been made by the same company, which is Jubilee, which is a totally massive YouTube channel. They’ve got 10 million subscribers, and they’ve really built that off the back of some just insane viral videos with crazy headlines and premises. We’ve got Dr. Mike versus 20 anti-vaxxers, we’ve got one conservative versus 25 LGBTQ-plus activists, we’ve got one atheist versus 25 Christians. On the show Middle Ground, they’ve got leftists versus liberals versus conservative versus MAGA, they’ve got 60 Republicans versus Democrats debate the 2024 election.
These videos are pretty wild. But while it was unfamiliar to me as someone who is an increasingly washed thirty-something who’s kind of getting up there, you actually had been more familiar with these guys. Who are Jubilee? How did you get to know them and why are we interested in them?

Ben Smith:
Yeah, before they were doing these interviews right with Seder, with Charlie Kirk, Pete Buttigieg in this wild format ... I met them first when I was at BuzzFeed and they were sort of a curious BuzzFeed knockoff. We were doing extremely goofy videos about Americans try Korean snacks and they were doing videos that kind of felt vaguely similar, but that were about Israelis trying out Palestinian ideas and vice versa, of taking the hottest button sociocultural issues and political issues and putting them into goofy YouTube formats.
And it really struck me and I got to spend a little time with the founder Jason Lee, who had this kind of interesting story, like a very classic, ambitious young meritocratic resume, was an intern for the Obama campaign, went to Wharton, became a consultant at Bain and Company. And then when he was at Bain, did a kind of goofy stunt, make a video to raise money for Haiti, and kind of got the bug of like can I do good works on the internet with YouTube and get a lot of attention. Feels like honestly a very like 2010 impulse, but has built something that I think is really totally unique and has flown mostly under the radar of people over 25, but is remarkable.

Max Tani:
Until now, right? It seems like they, with just within the last six months as people started to pay attention to the election, they turned out to be one of the big kind of breakout stars, at least in terms of going from something that your kids were maybe familiar with and maybe some of their friends to something that has reached the realm of mainstream adults who weren’t previously getting their information from YouTube. And they’ve had a tremendous amount of success. They’re booking bigger and bigger guests. They got a profile in the Atlantic. They’re now represented by UTA as of just a few months ago, the talent agency, which is going to try to blow them up.
But one of the reasons why I think both of us find them interesting, it is the idea, the central idea that they’ve come up with, the central thesis. They believe that by reinventing political ideological debate-style formats, that they can actually improve understanding and lead towards better political outcomes and a healthier political discourse in this country, which may be a little bit strange when you’re watching anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists debate with a doctor, but that’s their premise and that’s the thing that they say that they’re trying to reach. And obviously they’ve had at least success in attracting eyeballs.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, I’m excited to talk to Jason about whether what they’re doing is a solution to polarization or if it’s just another way to get eyeballs off polarization. I think that’s the big question. So let’s bring him on.
Thanks so much for doing this. It’s nice to see you again.

Jason Lee:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me guys.

Ben Smith:
And I was actually thinking back to when we first talked years ago. Because I first spotted Jubilee on YouTube when I was at BuzzFeed and thought, “Huh, here’s something that’s taking a lot of what BuzzFeed is playing with, but moving it into this kind of political, social, cultural space.” And actually when I first saw it, I thought, “Oh, this is a Christian BuzzFeed.”

Jason Lee:
That’s so funny you say that. First off, I should say that, Ben, you were one of the first folks from traditional or what I would call legacy media to reach out, so I would say you were pretty prescient. Maybe that’s obviously your skill set.

Ben Smith:
Flattery will get you everywhere, just anytime you want to say that.

Jason Lee:
But yes, I am Christian. But yeah, Jubilee Media is not a Christian entity. But it’s funny because I initially started something called Jubilee Project, which was a nonprofit 501(c)(3), which did have some Christian kind of background and motivation. So I think you can probably sense some of that just from myself.

Ben Smith:
But there’s something about the vibe of it. What was I actually seeing? Tell me what were you trying to do.

Jason Lee:
I think that beneath all of it, there’s this kind of belief that we want to create content that will make the world a better place. And as naive as that may sound, I think in the midst of what we feel like is some of the most divisive times, that actually human connection and really understanding folks and having dialogue and empathy is quite a good thing. And I think that’s not necessarily just a Christian value, it’s just a human value that you’re probably sensing through all of our content. Now at Jubilee we call it, our acronym for it is PUCHC. It’s provoke understanding, create human connection. It’s just an easy way for us to think about it. But we say all the time, we have to PUCHC every day.

Max Tani:
So Jason, I’m kind of curious, it does seem like the election maybe supercharged your audience or brought a lot of attention to it. But was there a moment where you realized that this was really starting to take off? Because you guys have been doing it for a while obviously.

Jason Lee:
Yeah. It’s funny because I started Jubilee Media in 2017. And I think if you were to ask most Gen Z or teenagers even five or six years ago, they’d be very, very familiar with Jubilee for a lot of other content. We did shows like Middle Ground or Odd One Out.

Ben Smith:
What was a big early hit? Just assume that our audience might not have heard of them all.

Jason Lee:
For example, we did a Middle Ground between flat-Earthers and what I would call round-Earthers for example. That was a-

Ben Smith:
Is that what we call them now?

Jason Lee:
That was a big one for example. We did another one that was one woman swiping 30 men in real life. And I think now it’s funny because now five or six years later, I think you see a lot of content like this on YouTube, but a lot of it’s originating from original formats that we created as Jubilee. So it’s interesting because now I think after the election in the fall, we’ve kind of maybe broken into a little bit more of political and mainstream media in a way that has been cool to see and to see a lot of folks of different ages and different kind of life stages really start to be exposed to Jubilee.

Ben Smith:
You also ran head first into a lot of the really ultra-polarizing topics that people in kind of the entertainment business widely, like nobody is like, “let’s have Palestinians and Israelis debate each other.” And I want to get to the flat-Earth thing in a minute, but I’m curious where that impulse came from and was there one of those that you did where you felt like, “Oh wow, this can work.”

Jason Lee:
Yeah, I think that we’ve come to a place where what we were noticing in media was that if you’re wearing a blue shirt and I’m wearing a red shirt, we just will not engage, and that I’m only going to find folks with the same color as myself and vice versa. That’s not a new idea, but it’s something that we just have seen more and more over time. And what we also believe with young people is that that’s not necessarily what they wanted, nor was it good for us just like as people. And that actually sometimes disagreement and interacting with folks who have a different point of view is actually quite good for us. And not only that, but we can actually agree to disagree or that we may actually find middle ground or we may actually find empathy in each other.
So what we have also seen is when you are face-to-face or up close with someone who you might deem as the other side or as the enemy or as someone that you may never agree with, that some really special things can happen actually in that space.

Ben Smith:
When you say that it sounds so great and warms my heart, but do you think that there’s a chance the Earth might be flat? Just personally, right? You do not?

Jason Lee:
I do not, no. I personally do not.

Ben Smith:
And I think that’s to some degree the critique of you guys, which you’ve seen. And that’s the most extreme version. Like, “Are you kidding me? You’re putting a flat-Earther out there as though this is a reasonable point of view?” That’s almost a caricature of the thing.

Jason Lee:
Yeah, and I think that the flat-Earther one is the one that we had to discuss quite a bit about where are the bounds by which we wouldn’t go and what are the topics that we would say, “Hey, this isn’t really worth even a conversation or a discussion.”
But one of the principles we talk about a lot at Jubilee is what is this idea of what we call radical empathy. Somehow in 2025, it’s empathetic, but it’s very radically empathetic to even listen to someone with a different point of view. But could we actually exercise the muscle? And again, I don’t think anyone really is watching that flat-Earther video and coming out and saying, “I’m a flat-Earther now.” In fact, we’ve seen the opposite happen.
But it is a really interesting thought exercise for us of can you empathize with an individual who actually does believe that the world is flat? And when you actually hear some of these stories, some of these stories are really interesting, really compelling, really heartbreaking. None of them made me believe that the Earth is flat, but I started to understand why some of these folks had this kind of position at this point.

Ben Smith:
Okay, wait, why? Help. I need help empathizing.

Jason Lee:
You have to watch some of these videos. But for example, there was a woman who was really incredible. She actually was a widow. She had lost her husband. And when her husband was on his deathbed, he was actually going through this kind of a lot of soul-searching, he was going through a lot of looking into videos, and became a full on flat-Earther. And I think one of the ways for her to best connect with him in that time was actually to watch these videos with him and share this kind of time. And once he had passed, I think that she feels like this is part of her way to connect with him.
Again, does that make me believe that the Earth is flat? Absolutely not. But do I understand or have some sort of empathy towards that experience? I’m like, “Yeah, I do.” And ultimately I think the question came back to is if all the content or if all the positions that we share on Jubilee were just to mirror what Jason believed, would this actually be beneficial to anyone in society or would we just be doing the same thing as everyone else?

Ben Smith:
You guys jumped into really American electoral politics last fall with Charlie Kirk, with Pete Buttigieg. Was there anything about that that felt different from the sort of social stuff you’d been doing or surprising or are all these conflicts kind of the same?

Jason Lee:
With that, we were really interested in exploring what we would call this premise of the mighty versus the many. And I think it’s very, very normal for us to see individuals who have kind of a platform and have these talking points and never really be held to account with anything that they say. And then you have a lot of the masses who often will critique but never have an opportunity to really confront. And that’s really the premise of why we’ve said we’re going to put Charlie Kirk or we’re going to put Pete Buttigieg or we’re going to put Ben Shapiro in the center and we’re going to surround them with 25 individuals, let’s see how that nets out.

Excerpts:
What I want voters like you to hear is anything but a vote for her works out to being a vote for him right now. Because this is a swing state and it could come down to a couple votes per precinct, and one of those might be you.
Everyone take a moment, cast your vote.
I wasn’t going to vote at all actually, but after hearing him, I’m pretty confident in my decision now.
Before, I was undecided. At the conclusion of this event, I did mark down.
I’m Pete Buttigieg, and today I’m surrounded by 25 undecided voters.

Jason Lee:
I don’t know if there was any new revelations. I think what we saw was that there are a lot of different examples of discourse, some that I thought were really great, some that I thought were not productive, frankly. And I think the juxtaposition of that is really, really interesting.

Ben Smith:
Any particular examples of either one?

Jason Lee:
I won’t call out any specifics necessarily, but I think what is interesting and really revealing is almost at the end of every episode of Surrounded that we filmed, what you would always find is that if the hero had time to stick around, they would stick around and there’d be like another hour of conversation. Often people would go grab a meal, go to the bar. So there’s this kind of interesting sentiment of like, “Oh, actually this conversation is enriching despite the fact that it’s very uncomfortable at times and difficult to have.”

Max Tani:
I can see over the course of an hour, and some of these go 90 minutes or something like that, that they are relatively civil. But I guess when you see some of the clips of these that are really, really short and kind of taken out of context, you see the reactions to those clips, which are people saying that these people are idiots and they are misinformed about one thing or the other thing, or watch this dude own Charlie Kirk type of thing. And that seems to me at least to have the opposite impact of when you watch these full long conversations. I’m curious, does that frustrate you? And what have you guys done to try to make it so that the way that people consume most of this content isn’t through the owns that are kind of these 30-second clips or whatnot?

Jason Lee:
Max, that’s a great point. And it’s so fascinating because what we’ve even seen is that people will take the exact same clip and two different sides will claim it with different editorial texts that says, “This person’s owning this person.” Or, “Look how terrible this individual is.” And frankly, I think you all know this is just part of what it means to be the man in the arena. We live in a digital kind of internet space, and once you’ve put content out there, people will clip it and will use it with their voice in mind. I think that’s just like the river is flowing one way, it’s very, very difficult to change the current.
But the way I think about is really I hope it’s an invitation for people to watch the actual content. As you’ve called out, most of this content is an hour and a half, often up to two hours long. And it’s great because when people are watching it on our platform, we’re seeing incredible watch times. People are watching for on average over 30 minutes and they’re really, really engaging. And for YouTube, this is incredible. There’s this kind of myth that young people, short attention spans, like can’t sit, listen, and it’s just simply not true from what we’re seeing. So yeah, I hope it’s an invitation, but certainly it happens.

Max Tani:
So you guys have talked about how you want to host a presidential debate in the next cycle. And part of my job after the election has been talking to a lot of people in the Democratic side who are trying to find their way in the wilderness, the digital wilderness, having been overshadowed by Republicans online in the last cycle. So it seems to me like talking to a lot of those folks, I think you guys probably have a pretty good shot, at least at maybe a Democratic primary debate. But have you already started thinking about how would this work? What would the Jubilee spin on this format be? And has there been interest already?

Jason Lee:
There has, yeah. You’d be surprised and I think that people realize where the puck is going and want to skate there, obviously for their own benefit or for their own political interests, but also because there’s such a recognition of what a powerful role that digital played in this past election.
It’s something I’ve spoken to Neil about at YouTube and it’s something that we’re really, really eager to do. And the reason is because when you watch the viewership or even the roles that the previous presidential debates played in 2024, frankly Gen Z and young people were not watching, participating, and really digesting that content. And the reason I would say that is because it felt very rote. It felt like there was nothing new necessarily being presented. Sure, both sides are going to get a chance to talk, but really it felt like this is a script that’s very, very carefully rehearsed, no new information. We’re going to go back and forth. And even there’s a bias from whoever the producer is on how they’re going to moderate it, et cetera, et cetera.
And when we think about what would a great Jubilee or digital first debate look like, I think there’s a necessity that has to be authentic. There’s a necessity that we don’t actually know what individuals are going to say, and that does offer a lot of trepidation for a lot of political figures.
I think 2024 was really interesting because we actually were having conversations with both political parties about having whether it’s their candidates or other folks, representatives on our platform. And one critique that we actually have heard a lot about Jubilee is why are you featuring so many Republican pundits or so many big Republican voices, but not as many Democratic voices. And it’s something that frustrates me because I agree.
And the reason was that when we were going out into these spaces, we found such an appetite from the right to say, “Absolutely, no questions asked, I’ll be there. When do you want me to be there? I’ll travel to you.” Et cetera. And then when we were speaking with folks on the left, there was a huge hesitation. And this is a generalization, but by and large there was a, “Hmm, I don’t know if we want to do that. Can you give us all the questions in advance? Can we carefully edit it?” And it was such a different initial paradigm by which we were talking with them. But I think since the election, we’ve seen and we’re starting to see a lot of differences, which I really welcome and we’re hoping that both sides will participate.

Ben Smith:
Any Democrats in particular you feel like get it?

Jason Lee:
I thought Pete did an outstanding job. Pete was so lovely to work with. His team were so lovely to work with. And I think unfortunately there was a lot that was left on the cutting room floor. And I think part of that was not because of his team, but because he was still part of the administration at the time.

Ben Smith:
Wait, do you mean that part of the deal was he could edit things out?

Jason Lee:
No, that we had to, just from a legal reason, that we had to kind of check out with his team, with folks in the administration actually. So not Pete necessarily.

Ben Smith:
But after it was shot.

Jason Lee:
Exactly.

Ben Smith:
So you gave them some kind of editorial control actually.

Jason Lee:
We gave some input, yeah.

Ben Smith:
Did you do that with all of them?

Jason Lee:
No, that’s not the case for all of them, yeah. And actually in the future, I don’t think that we would do that. We just found it to be really-

Ben Smith:
Just so hard to get these people on, right? That’s crazy.

Jason Lee:
It was very, very difficult. But I think the most ironic thing is the things that folks are most interested in cutting typically are the things that often would do the best for them.

Ben Smith:
Like what? These guys are out of power, you can tell us now. And also, all those correspondents you had with them are public documents.

Jason Lee:
Sure. This is what I’ll say is I think that Pete is really, really skilled and adept at encountering difficult questions and facing adversity and responding with empathy and kindness in a very, very Jubilee way. But it was those very encounters that often the folks higher up that would say, “Oh, we really can’t feature this question.” Or, “We can’t feature this kind of back and forth.” And I think it’s like a lesson maybe for the next election. Whereas we did not face very much of that at all on the other side.

Max Tani:
Yeah. I have one follow up to something that you said earlier. You said that if it’s going to be in the digital realm, that any debate or major political event that you guys might do has to be authentic. Can you expand on that a little bit? What do you mean by that?

Jason Lee:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that viewers can really perceive when something is real and raw and authentic or not. And when we allow for space, opportunity to be surprised by humans, by what someone might say, by an interaction, I think that that’s really, really special. I don’t think that a lot of legacy media creates environments like that or spaces like that where people are, one, willing to participate or that they actually see a glimpse of that.
But it’s ironic, particularly in the political space, because I think those are the very moments that actually voters and young people gravitate towards and want to see. This was a common critique of Hillary Clinton, for example. Brilliant, very, very smart. Post-election, all these really, really humanizing moments with her. But why is it during the election and during these debates that we really didn’t get a sense for who she was? And you can say that about a lot of different politicians and individuals on both sides. But I think it’s a disservice to us and our country, frankly, of us not being able to see real authentic experiences with these leaders. And that’s something that we really, really want to welcome and we think will just help the country.

Ben Smith:
I’m curious where you draw the lines. I wonder, are there big guests you’ve said no to? There are obviously big Gen Z internet figures, I guess Andrew Tate springs to mind, who I’m sure you can have empathy for anybody and I’m sure you could have him on, have conversations about having empathy for him, I suppose. Are there things beyond the pale? Are there people you say no to?

Jason Lee:
Absolutely, yeah. We have what we would call a harm clause where if ... Maybe the best metaphor is we’ve got a table that’s set for everyone. Everyone has a seat at the table. But if you’re going to be at the table and you start to throw forks at other individuals or you’re going to flip over the table, then you’re no longer welcome. So by harm clause, I mean if you’re advocating for deliberate harm towards other individuals or there’s risk of actual physical harm in person, that’s something that we won’t entertain or even discuss.

Ben Smith:
That’s like the most Gen Z thing you’ve said yet. But also kind of an easy out, like you had Israelis and Palestinians and I think probably each believes that many of the policies that they advocate would be incredibly dangerous. In a way, I don’t know, I feel like that’s a very hazy way to talk about it. I just wonder if you could be more specific. Do you have very anti-trans voices on? Do you have very-

Jason Lee:
We have had folks who anti-trans. Something we talk about or think about a lot is this idea of what does safety really mean and what is overprotection or too much safety-ism versus what is real safety. And I think there’s this myth that ideas, debates, discussions that make us uncomfortable or sometimes challenge us are unsafe. And I’m careful to say that because I know that individuals can feel that way. And we think it’s really important and we talk to everyone who’s going to be part of our videos that they understand what we’re going to do and that they know kind of eyes wide open. But I think what we’re trying to welcome is this idea that actually disagreement and discomfort can and should be good for us. And actually, it’s kind of seen in the data. I think Jonathan Haidt writes a lot about this, this idea of that anxious generation.

Ben Smith:
Now you’re talking like a Boomer. All right, here we go, Jonathan Haidt.

Jason Lee:
Coddling of the American mind, et cetera. But linking a lot of the current anxiety, depression, mental health issues from young people from perhaps a fragility or an over-sheltering.

Ben Smith:
Totally. And what about Andrew Tate, who I brought up? Would you have him on?

Jason Lee:
I don’t think we would at this time. And I think the reason is because there still needs to be what I would discuss as where’s the productive land forward that we’re going to move towards, and I’m not sure that we could find that.

Ben Smith:
That makes total sense. Well, I think we’re fascinated with you guys as a cultural phenomenon and also as a media business. And when we come back from the break, we want to talk a bit about that.
When I think about the kind of innovations that you’ve had or sort of how you’ve broken through, in some sense what you guys did is innovate with format. And we’re in a world where if you look at television, it’s like a screen with two boxes, an idiot in each box yelling at each other. If you look at podcasts, it’s just idiots in boxes yelling at each other, or occasionally having very thoughtful long form conversations. But it’s just really often couple of people in boxes talking to each other, as we are doing right now. And there’s actually very little format innovation happening right now. And I’m curious, I don’t know, how you think about format?

Jason Lee:
Totally, yeah. It was something that I thought about quite a bit when I was launching Jubilee Media in 2017. Because by and large, a lot of folks, when you think about creators or YouTubers or even brands, so much of it has a face. This is going to be, whatever, The Megyn Kelly Show, or this is going to be The Piers Morgan Show, or this is going to be The Anderson Cooper 360. And when you look at the Jubilee platform, no one knows who I am. There’s really rarely one individual who is the face and the voice of it. So at the onset, it actually makes starting a media company way more difficult, as you probably know.

Ben Smith:
BuzzFeed was all about formats, but then got kind of swallowed by stars in a way.

Jason Lee:
By stars and faces, exactly. And the reason why I wanted to build a company this way was because I knew that, one, if it was all dependent on me, there’s a lot of key man risk and there’s a lot of pressure and it’s very, very difficult. And also that there would be a limiting factor of the topics, the point of view, even the empathy platform that we want to have because then people would be much more interested in what I believed versus what Jubilee stood for. So that was very, very intentional.
But yeah, I think actually creating formats is quite a difficult endeavor because what we’re trying to do is out of thin air, and some of these are iterations of other things we’ve made, or no idea is original, but out of thin air, how do you create a show or a format that theoretically can have 10 episodes or 1,000 episodes? That is really the business that we’re in. And every show has its own kind of runway, but we’ve got Middle Ground, we’ve got Versus One, we’ve got Spectrum, we’ve got Surrounded, and these are all things that we’ve kind of originally developed at Jubilee.

Ben Smith:
Are all of them about, in some sense, representing the internet in physical space?

Jason Lee:
You’re onto a really important insight that we discuss a lot is this idea of visual mechanic. If you watch any of our shows, unlike a podcast, or unlike maybe just an interview, there should be a visual mechanism that necessitates you to watch the show. There’s folks coming forward or backwards, there’s lines that people are dispersing towards, there’s people in the circle. So much so that if I were to watch it on mute, I don’t know exactly what’s being said, but I understand this premise. There’s seven people in the box and slowly people are being eliminated. So this is one of dozens of different ingredients that we try to teach and often don’t share, but we’re sharing with y’all part of how we create a format.

Max Tani:
Wait, but that’s crazy. So when did you come across that? I haven’t worked in television, I imagine some of this conceptually obviously comes from that. But I’m curious, when did you start to work on integrating literal shapes that might help people understand the broader concepts into the formatting?

Jason Lee:
Max, the way I describe it is it’s like surfing. If you surf at the same spot for long enough, you start to understand the wave, and the different pockets, and the ways that you have to move in that space. And it’s really difficult for someone else who’s never been there, who hasn’t been in the water to understand it. But if you spend enough time with us in the water at Jubilee, you start to notice the things that we know.

Max Tani:
Are you a surfer?

Jason Lee:
Yeah, I’m a casual surfer. I’m really not good, so I shouldn’t be using these surfing metaphors.

Ben Smith:
Oh my God, I got to pull you back from these ultra chill California metaphors though.

Max Tani:
It’s an East Coast media show.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, exactly. So how’s business?

Jason Lee:
Business is great.

Ben Smith:
What will your revenue be this year?

Jason Lee:
Yeah, we don’t share specifics, but we can share we’ll do a solid eight-figure. It’s interesting because I think the content that we make, we make a lot of different type of content. We do dating shows. We do what we would call more entertaining, hide the broccoli, and then we do some more overt, difficult conversation shows. Very, very different appetites from different brand partners. It’s quite difficult for us to get actually strong brand partners for some of the more political stuff because they say, “Hey, we’re really afraid of this.” And we’re like, “Don’t worry, the water is safe. We know how to navigate it.” But still, there’s a hesitation.
But meanwhile, that is what attracts a lot of audiences. A lot of our investors are really interested in this space, a lot of people who want to ... Because this is where we are at the forefront of culture and dictating the way that people think about things, the way that people even consume or even discuss these things with other people. So we think it’s really important.

Ben Smith:
Honestly, that lesson that you just said, the New York Times is also increasingly making its money from games, cooking, not from hard news. The advertisers being afraid of hard news, it’s a really difficult problem in something that everybody in our business obsesses about all the time. But the better business though then is it’s brand partnerships, it’s not just YouTube advertising.

Jason Lee:
Brand partnerships is a huge part of our business in addition to the platform, like the AdSense. But I’ve always been a long believer that media is great and we can grow a really, really great media business. But what gets venture scale is what’s down funnel from that. And that’s not a new or original idea.

Ben Smith:
Wait, that was too many words. What gets venture scale is what’s down funnel? Help. What do you mean?

Jason Lee:
Yeah, so for example, similar to New York Times, you’ve got the puzzles, the games my wife plays literally every day. But for example, we’re building technology now. We’re building a mobile app. And I can make it pretty easy or clear, which is we make content every week for the dating space. We’re getting tens of millions, hundreds of millions of views a month in the dating space. So we know that these people love dating, they’re very, very captive. What is down funnel from them? We’re building that experiential and also a dating app where now they can participate.

Ben Smith:
What is it? It’s funny because dating apps, I don’t know if there’s a chapter of Jonathan Haidt’s book about dating apps, but when you talk to people about the sort of soulless digital life, dating apps are kind of front of mind. How do you Jubilee-ize that?

Jason Lee:
Great question. When we talk about the MPS score for dating apps, it’s the worst of any industry in the economy, meaning that people are the most disgruntled with dating apps. And yet it’s still billions of dollars. And the reason is because the majority of the dating apps are owned by one entity and they’re making good business and there’s no reason to change the formula that makes money but doesn’t necessarily optimize for love or matching.
There’s also a problem, which is there’s a huge cold-start problem. No one wants to go to a club that’s empty. No one wants to go to a dating app and be the only one there. So that sucks. And one of the advantages that we have is that we have millions of people who are in the space already.
And the way that we want to tackle dating differently is we’ve actually built, essentially it’s a self-assessment. It’s like a Myers-Briggs or an Enneagram. But we work with a social scientist PhD who helped us build what we call Loveprint. So you’ll take a whole dating assessment, you get one of 16 different archetypes, and we can actually use that data to then inform you, hey Ben, we’ve got a great match for you based on compatibility, all these other things.
So a little more introspective, I call it you need the self-gym on the first floor that you kind of think about yourself, think about what kind of partner you want before you go to the second floor and you’re going to be sparring. So I think that that’s really, really important in our philosophy.

Max Tani:
What does that look like though in the political or the ideological space? Because it seems to me like your audience, obviously you have a pretty big audience when it comes to producing the dating content, but you have probably, I would imagine, a bigger audience of people who are interested in the political discussions and the debates about big issues. What does the dating app analog look like on that side?

Jason Lee:
And again, our North Star is PUCHC. We want to provoke understanding and create human connection. So if we can do that in every arena, that’s where we’re aiming. But Max, imagine now instead of us thinking about political space, and it’s like we have two different color shirts and we can choose one or the other, the truth is that if we’re both wearing blue shirts on a thousand different issues, we’re not going to agree. But there’s not that many tools or ability for us to really self-reflect on the political space or the political compass. So now imagine one day, if we not only had a dating app, but you had a Jubilee kind of universal profile where you could actually do a political self-assessment. And you can say, “Hey, actually Ben, I thought you and I were both red-shirters. What’s going on here on this topic? Oh, interesting. I’m way more similar to Max here.”
A lot more difficult of a proposition obviously, because people initially are very, very averse to even getting into political space, and that’s why we started with love. But I think across all the content we do, again, that’s when I say top of the funnel, it’s really viewership, but what everyone really wants is participation. Everyone loves watching our content because they’re kind of thinking about what would they say in that scenario, how do I think. Oh, wait, what would my friends say?
And a good example of that is a phenomenon that we’ve been noticing since the start of Jubilee is we have had hundreds of Jubilee clubs sprout out in high schools and colleges around the country. And we get emails every week and people say, “Hey, can we start Jubilee Club?” And we say, “Sure, what does that mean?” And they say, “Well, we meet every Friday and we’ll watch one of your videos and then we’ll do the debate ourselves. And then we’re going to split up into whatever Vax, anti-vax. Or we’re going to split up into TERF, anti-TERF and we’re going to do the conversation.” We’re like, “That’s exactly the premise that we want to instill into folks of how do you exercise empathy in your own life.” So we’re really proud of that because I think that just speaks to the strength of our vision, but also the strength of the formats that people want to participate.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, that is very lovely, but also does sort of raise the question I’m sure for your investors of where’s the licensing revenue from the Jubilee Club in Topeka?

Jason Lee:
What I tell my investors is we’re going to change the world, but if we’re successful in changing the world, it’s not only going to make the world a better place but you’re going to make a lot of money. Don’t worry.

Ben Smith:
I interviewed Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix a couple weeks ago and asked him about YouTube. And his slightly sneering response was, “Oh, YouTube’s great. It’s a great farm league for people who get to learn how to make content so that they can then actually monetize it on Netflix.” And obviously the folks at YouTube hotly dispute that and note how much advertising money they pay out. But I’m curious what you think of that. Do you want to start doing a bunch of premium production or what’s the-

Jason Lee:
It’s funny because even as you say that, we are more and more being reached out to by legacy media or by streamers or by these Hollywood producers who are saying, “Whoa, what is happening here? How do we get a piece of this?” And what I truly believe is that we’ve seen the golden age of movies, we’ve seen the golden age of television, and we actually still have yet to see the golden age of digital or YouTube. I think that the best creators, I think that the most interesting raw storytellers are all on digital, not just on YouTube, but on digital. And that if Netflix is not careful, that YouTube will come and eat their lunch. We know that so many more people are watching YouTube on television for us than even on mobile. So I’m sure Neil has a lot of opinions.

Ben Smith:
So people are watching you on the big screen.

Jason Lee:
Exactly. Exactly. And they’re watching for a long time. And Jubilee is agnostic to platform, to be honest. The great thing about Jubilee is that we’ve made content and it’ll do well on Tik-Tok, it’ll do well on Snapchat, it’ll do well on X. It’ll do well on any platform, and we’ve got ideas for what we want to do for a Netflix for example. But I think those lines are becoming very, very hazy, actually.

Ben Smith:
That’s a huge theme of this year I think, the blurring of all of that.

Jason Lee:
And also if you’re a creator and you had two choices, one was that I have an idea and I can make something for not that much money but see it out in the world in three weeks and get 3 million views, or I can spend 18 months making content with a larger budget but still a lot of it doesn’t go into my pocket, it may go out onto the platform but no one necessarily watches it, what would you rather choose? If we’re actually in the space of affecting culture, where can you do that most? And I’m not saying one is clearly the answer.

Ben Smith:
Sorry, Ted. No interest in the overall deal.

Jason Lee:
Yeah. Hey, Ted, we’d love to talk to you because we’ve got ideas for how you can also skate faster to the puck, frankly.

Max Tani:
Well, and you guys recently announced that you’re partnering with UTA, the talent agency. Is that part of why you paired up with UTA is to kind of take advantage of those opportunities and that kind of incoming? What’s the goal of that partnership? Or is it to bring UTA talent into Jubilee programming, videos? What’s the goal of that partnership?

Jason Lee:
I think all of the above actually. What we’ve been really lucky about is you can kind of tell what the agency is thinking based on who they bring into the room. And when we were having our meetings with UTA and other agencies, so many different individuals were in the room. You’ve got the individual from film and TV, you’ve got the individual from podcasts, you’ve got the individual from technology and from merchandise. And really the way that we should be thinking about the business is in this very, very diversified 360 way. So all of the above. Meanwhile, there’s certainly a risk of boiling the ocean and trying to do too much.

Ben Smith:
We’re obviously living in this just really unbelievably divided moment, this very kind of dark politics. And also the sort of news ecosystem right now is just absolutely full of garbage. Like yesterday, I think something like $2.5 trillion dollars worth of stock traded off a fake tweet. I think ever since I’ve first met you, you seem like a very optimistic guy. Have we hit the bottom here?

Jason Lee:
I do think that we’re seeing a swing back. And depending on where you are sitting, that angle looks different. And swing back from what? But I do think that several things are happening. One is I think that we’re becoming much more aware of the effect of social media on society, not just for young people, but for all of us, and how do we stay in the space in the right way and participate in the right way. I think we’re also starting to understand and recognize that maybe the echo chambers or the ways that we’ve thought about content are not always beneficial to us. And we’ve been surprised by some of the implications of that, the outcome of the election. Also, who are the other individuals who have so much influence that I’ve never even heard about? And I’m also seeing that every platform is converging.
So there’s all these kinds of macro-trends that I think that we’re seeing. And I think ultimately what I do believe is that young people in particular is that there is a willingness and an appetite to lean into what I would call radical empathy. And that’s one of the reasons why Jubilee has been successful. And whether you know Jubilee’s name or not, you’ve seen our content and there’s a reason why it does resonate with you, hopefully not just in that kind of short-form clipped moment, Max, but also in the long-form moment. But yeah, I’m a true believer that we can provoke understanding, create human connection, and that Jubilee will be at the forefront of that.

Ben Smith:
Well, I always feel better after talking to you, Jason, so thank you for joining us.

Jason Lee:
Together we can. Yeah, thank you.

Max Tani:
Thank you so much, Jason.

Ben Smith:
So I am so glad we got to do that because I’ve always thought this is a really interesting guy doing something very unusual and interesting, and more people ought to be thinking about what he’s doing. But did you buy, I think the core question that I always wonder about Jubilee is this question of are they, as they say, helping to solve polarization or are they feeding it? What did you leave thinking?

Max Tani:
I left thinking that I understand the argument that they’re making, that basically these are conversations that people are having and they’re big and they’re influencing our politics, and we’re not improving dialogue by keeping these out of the public eye. The safety question that he was kind of referencing or alluding to, we’re actually not necessarily making people more safe by not having these conversations.
And so, look, some of the people who they have on their videos are really quite dim in my view. They’re not informed, they’re crazy. They would not be allowed on CNN or even Fox News. They have wild, completely uninformed ideas. But I do think that they represent points of view that are out there and the Jubilee videos attempt to actually really engage with them. You see this in the video that they had recently of the doctor taking on the 20 vaccine skeptics.

Excerpts:
Hello.
Hello. How are you?
Doing fantastic. Excited to talk about health.
I just had a baby, seven months old. And my baby, I was like, “No, I’m not getting any vaccines.” The doctors came in, they made me feel like a very bad mother for not doing that. I was very pressured.
Well, first of all, congratulations on the birth of a seven-month-old. The fact that anyone made you feel bad in the healthcare system I feel like is a failure on us in the healthcare system, so I’m sorry that happened to you.

Max Tani:
And the doctor kind of stays very, very calm throughout the entire video and kind of calmly starts to take apart the arguments. So I can kind of see it. There is a tone of calmness in these argumentative shows that is slightly different than I’m going to yell at you cable news. I don’t know, what do you think, Ben? Do you buy it or no? You seem skeptical.

Ben Smith:
No, actually, I do buy it. I think there’s something, they’re sort of modeling a kind of civil conversation where Twitter models just a sort of moronic insult fest. And I think that’s nice. You do lack obviously radical empathy for dim people, Max, which you need to work on.

Max Tani:
I don’t lack empathy for them. I just think that they’re just, I don’t know if I want to watch a lot of YouTube videos, hours of them.

Ben Smith:
But yeah, there’s something. Honestly, I guess in some sense, for me the test is like when you watch one of those videos, do you feel better or worse. And I actually think you feel better, the fundamental vibe. And I think you get it from Jason personally. You do wind up thinking, “You know what? This guy, this is a good-hearted person.” This is a good-hearted project in a way that you don’t totally see a lot of. I do think it’s the sort of way in which you hear someone who’s like he may be a millennial, but he’s so Gen Z in his sort of value set and the way he’s talking, wrestling with these questions around free speech, but not sneering at these ideas of safety and harm, which may be to us Gen X type sound pretty ridiculous, but trying to sort of frame them in a way that is much closer to a free speech perspective was really interesting.

Max Tani:
Yeah. No, absolutely. He’s a great salesperson for it because he is calm, he’s heard the criticisms. He’s very used to them.

Ben Smith:
One final thing before we go, how crazy that Pete, A, I guess that’s the entertainment business and they can do what they want, but that they gave the White House the right to censor parts of the video. And then that, of course, the White House took out the best parts or whoever was in charge of Pete’s image making. I do think that insight into what ails the Democratic Party, not totally new, but just so painful.

Max Tani:
Absolutely. I will say, well, there’s one thing that I think may have played into that, although I don’t know. Obviously the top line is, and he obviously he learns the lesson, that’s the reason why so many other news organizations don’t allow big public figures or CEOs to kind of have any sort of editorial control, which is it’s a very slippery slope and you lose a lot of the really good stuff that you want. But I wonder how much of that was this idea of Pete was supposed to be there in his personal capacity as a spokesperson for the Harris campaign and not supposed to be there in his capacity as transportation secretary. I wonder if that was what they used.

Ben Smith:
Democrats love rules.

Max Tani:
Yes, that is true that the Republicans seem to have a few less ... They feel a little bit more comfortable with maybe violations of the Hatch Act, which I believe that is.

Ben Smith:
Pete Hegseth will be more relaxed about this stuff when they get him on Jubilee. Well, I’m glad I got to introduce you to Jason. That was fun, Max.

Max Tani:
Yeah, it was great. I need to go surfing with him.

Ben Smith:
Oh, God.

Max Tani:
Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you for listening to Mixed Signals from Semafor Media. Our show is produced by Sheena Ozaki, with special thanks to Max Toomey, Britta Galanis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zirn, and Tori Kuhr. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is the former members of the Biden White House who did not censor or cut or have any editorial control over this interview.

Ben Smith:
Only the current White House press shop has his oversight over our podcast, and so we really are grateful to Stephen Chung and Carolyn Levitt for letting this stuff get through. Anyway, if you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to review us.

Max Tani:
And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semafor’s media newsletter out every Sunday night.