It's an opinion show

I was listening to the Ezra Klein podcast the other day and I think he read out one of the credits as "Executive Producer of Opinion Shows". That's a thing, I thought, maybe I'll do an opinion show.

Probably the most satisfying bits of writing I've done in my life have the columns. I wrote a weekly column for an advertising trade magazine called Campaign for about 5 years. And there was a period where for about three or four years, where I wrote a monthly column for Wired Magazine in the UK.

And I used to really enjoy it. I really likeed the craft skill of knowing how to do it and I'd like to try and reproduce that for myself with making videos.

So my version of a column, for the video age, is an Opinion Show.

There are three reasons why I like them:

There's the craft skill of turning up every week and delivering something. I think that's good for you. It's certainly good for me to have that deadline discipline, that solid, enforced discipline.

And so for instance, I'm going to decide that these all have to be no more than 5 minutes long.

There's a second thing - it makes you make an argument.

If you've got some thoughts wandering around in your head, it's very easy to leave them there, just kind of aimless, meandering.

You sort of have these thoughts, but you haven't worked out really what you think. You haven't made an argument. And writing it down in something like a column makes you make an argument. And I enjoyed that. It meant I thought about things properly.

Writing a weekly column meant I paid attention to the world in a different way.

I used to write my columns on a Sunday evening. And then, immediately, on Monday morning I'd be looking again for content for the next thing

Broadly; three things you can bundle together to make a story. Three things that share a pattern, or two things and then an opposing thing. Stories or anecdotes or or facts or something.

I would spend the week with my antenna up, my ears and eyes open, trying to find those things. And it just made you pay attention to the world with a different quality which I enjoyed

And thinking about this for the past few weeks has done the same thing. My note-taking has changed, it's more focused and coherent, which which I enjoy.

Can you tell this is based on a transcript of the video I made? I suspect you can.