Very Fine Day #53: Jack Corbett
"The fruit kind of sucks in Ohio."
VERY FINE DAY features weekly interviews with writers, creators, reporters, and internet explorers. Learn more about the people who keep the internet humming – and check out previous editions here. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter, or just follow Brad. Subscribe now and never miss an edition.
“I’ve never taken an economics class. So I was largely an outsider, and I think that helped to inform it, because I was like: Wait, this is weird. And I just didn't see many people being like that: What the hell?”
The first time I saw one of Jack Corbett’s videos I knew he had it. I’m not sure how to explain that it to you, other than say it’s the certain kind of vibe a certain kind of person gives that tells you – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that they understand the internet. And it’s not an academic thing. It’s something born into people. Just like how plenty of artists could study for decades and polish themselves into serviceable – and even great – painters, that dude at the back of the class called Picasso could make something better than anything they’d ever created, all on an off day.
Which is to say that Jack gets the internet. And Jack is our guest for VERY FINE DAY #53. Jack – who is known to many as “The Planet Money TikTok Guy” – has made a name for himself creating unique, bizarre, fluid, and entertaining videos on TikTok for NPR’s Planet Money. And they all explain… economics and finance. Did Jack have a strong background in media? No. What about finance? Not particularly. What you’ll find throughout this conversation is that Jack benefits from having a natural ability – having it - and we’re all better off for it.
Things are going fine back here. Work is continuing to pick up. The VFD Instagram (follow it) continues to grow. Props to intern Regina for that one. I told Regina to make it something that is almost the antithesis of Instagram, and I believe they’re doing a great job.
World’s getting a little scary out. I’ll be honest. Try to focus on the positives around you, however small. Life can be cruel, but most of the time it evens out. You might never realise that though.
See you down the road.
VFD: You've done a few of these lately, right? It feels like it. Feels like I’m seeing you everywhere.
Jack Corbett: In interviews? Yeah, they're a handful. I feel like I really forget them because most of the time I just blackout out of stress. And then I don't remember anything that I talked about.
VFD: Okay, well, that's good. That's good for something like this, which is just verbatim and exists forever.
Jack Corbett: I know, yeah. And then I can go back to the transcripts and be like: That's - I didn't say that. Who said that?
VFD: What have you been up to then?
Jack Corbett: What, like, in professional life? In general? I don't know.
I'm trying to figure out what to do. I feel like all I do is TikTok. I bake a lot of bread. I bake six loaves of bread a week. I'm really getting into that. Not because I really love bread - although my recipe is fine. It's solid. Not really the best but I wrote it, so it's kind of quaint. It really helps me not be anxious. It's a simple routine, and I have to feed my sourdough twice a day. It's like: you put in a little bit of work and you get a little bit out. It's very calming, like a non-prescription anti-anxiety for me.
VFD: How'd you get into that? Just desperate to find something?
Jack Corbett: No, no, no. Actually, I started in college as a way to save money because each loaf costs, like, 88 cents and I just ate so much bread. Oh my god. I ate bread and the cheapest peanut butter you could find constantly. Just because… I don't even know why. I wasn't even pressed for budget. I think it was just saving up for guitars and pedals and amplifiers.
VFD: You’re a musician?
Jack Corbett: Yeah. Amateur - Amateurly, that’s the word, yeah.
VFD: Is that what you did at college?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, somewhat. I was in a couple of cover band. We played a lot of Weezer - real cool, real cool stuff.
VFD: Like college Rock?
Jack Corbett: Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
VFD: Where'd you go to college?
Jack Corbett: Ohio State University. 50,000 students, big football school. Not a lot in the arts programme.
VFD: Are you from Ohio?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, yeah. This is my state, I'm from Granville, Ohio. Which is a small town, cornfield area.
VFD: What is that like to grow up in? Is it just that everyone goes to church together, and high school football is big? Friday Night Lights, I guess, is where I'm going.
Jack Corbett: I haven't seen that show. But I think I didn't watch it because it seemed too close to home. It's very slow and also it's very small, so anytime you leave your house you're going to see someone you know, which… that's not that fun. When I first went to a city - when I first went to New York - I was like: Wow, no one here gives a shit about me. This is so cool. I can do anything.
VFD: I feel like that's actually quite strange, in America, to go to college so close to where you grew up, right? Did you not have ambitions like: I gotta get out of here?!
Jack Corbett: Oh, I totally did. They just didn't accept me. I got scholarships because it was in state, so it was basically free. So I had to do that. But I had to do it because no one else accepted me. I don't think my essays were very good. I think, looking back, it's very cringe worthy. But that's good. That's fine. It's kind of fun to cringe.
VFD: You've grown.
Jack Corbett: Yeah.
VFD: What did you write about? Do you remember at all?
Jack Corbett: Oh, I can't remember.
VFD: That's probably a good thing. You’ve blocked it.
Jack Corbett: Yeah.
VFD: So at college, you weren’t doing music, right? You weren't studying music. You were doing media or something similar?
Jack Corbett: I went into college thinking I would be an engineer, but then I was like: it just seems so boring.
VFD: Really? Shocking!
Jack Corbett: Yeah, and it was too much work. So then I just became undecided, and then by my junior year I was like, Oh crap, I eventually have to graduate. And then I just saw the path of least resistance: the fewest classes I would need to take would be a film theory degree. And so that's what I did! That's how I got it. I'll throw everything into this.
VFD: Did you like movies? Were you at all interested?
Jack Corbett: I mean, I mostly just took it because one of my friends was really into it. And so I was like - I don't know, What else am I gonna do? And then I didn't like the film theory part of it because you don't actually make videos. The only way you could actually make videos is if you went into the art department and took these weird, insane experimental film classes, which were very dogmatic and they met at night. It's like: you watch really, really crazy stuff. There was a 30 minute part of one class where we just all watched this movie called The Flicker by Tony Conrad, which is just black and white strobe lights going on, off, on, off, and it was an entire academic class, just sitting there staring at this. I don't hate on the movie because it's actually cool, I'm glad it happened, because you start to hallucinate after a while and your body is not used to that. It's very interesting. That’s the kind of stuff that I would make.
VFD: With what you do now on TikTok, it feels like it has that kind of vibe. I don't know if you've pitched to NPR to make a 60 second strobe effect - or if you have done already - where you mutter about economics underneath it.
Jack Corbett: That's a really smart idea. I'm very curious because you basically couldn't take this major if you had any kind of visual epilepsy. You just could not. You could not take any of these classes because every single video involved rapid fire strobes. I don’t include strobes on TikTok for that reason, because that’s obviously bad. But if that weren’t a thing I would be strobing all the time.
VFD: Did you find that you were a natura? Did you get out of it like: Alright, I'm making movies! This is my thing now!
Jack Corbett: I remember I had taken a bunch of other art classes and I was always really interested in thos. Drawing and Photoshop and all that kind of stuff. But I don't know, they were not like easy. Video seemed really hard. Video seemed like I had no idea how to do it. And so that's why I liked it. And I eventually became solid at it in college. It took a while because the professor was very dogmatic - Nothing could be funny, nothing could be narrative, nothing could be digestible - It all had to be very harsh. I became good at that.
VFD: I feel like the professor might read this and be like, Wow, okay.
Jack Corbett: I don't think so, hahaha.
VFD: So when you left - when you graduated I should say - Was it movies? What was the plan?
Jack Corbett: In college I ended up making this one short experimental documentary kind of thing. And that’s the main reason why I got accepted as an intern at NPR. I really kind of started to like documentary a lot towards the end of college, not that I was doing it a lot. We just had a lot of cool classes about it. And so I thought I would do film film. I applied to probably every single internship.
I just randomly hit up every single production company in Germany and Denmark also. I would call them, and I learned enough German to say like, Hey, do you speak English? Do you guys have any jobs? I don't even know, there's no reason why they would do that. It just seemed like that was the way, because every single production assistant job was full. I was just too embarrassed to ask. I didn't think there were any openings. So then I just applied to every internship and NPR accepted it.
VFD: Right. That's good, I guess.
Jack Corbett: Yeah!
VFD” You’d just throw every dart at the board, right? And then one of them stuck.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, honestly, the best one too, which is weird. It was very confusing. It was a bunch of the ones that I just kind of didn't want at all, they didn't want me so it was fine. It all kind of worked out.
VFD: What did you start doing there?
Jack Corbett: It was the music video internship.
VFD: It's very MTV.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, do you know the Tiny Desk Concerts? Filming those and editing those was most of what I did for a while.
VFD: That's pretty cool.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, it was so cool.
VFD: Did you meet any -
Jack Corbett: I met a few people. I remember I shook Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie’s hand.
VFD: That is pretty cool.
Jack Corbett: I still remember it because I knew my hand was really clammy. And I felt really bad but he put his hand out to shake, and I'm like, Alright, I'm gonna do it.
VFD: I don't know how I'd react to Phil - that's the kind of interaction where I'd be like: You know, every time I listen to you, I'm incredibly depressed. How you doin?
Jack Corbett: It was a rainy, very sombre day. I think everyone became pretty sad after that Tiny Desk. It was good, though. So that's what I did for a while. And also there's this show called Jazz Night in America that I would also help out on, which is just about jazz. They make videos about jazz and stuff.
VFD: And then - how did it become what it is now? How did you suddenly start explaining economics on an app that - when you started doing it - I feel like TikTok’s always been on a crescendo, but you started in 2020? Maybe even 2019?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, it was 2020. It was like May. I made the first video in April of 2020.
VFD: So that was kind of before the wave, feels like..
Jack Corbett: Yeah, an ex-girlfriend's younger brother had kind of gone TikTok famous. And that was the only thing I knew about TikTok at that time.
I thought it wasn't good. At the end of my internship, they were asking a bunch of interns questions. They're like: What should we do? And they're like: Do you think this is cool? And they're like: Should we be on TikTok? And every other intern was like: Yeah, have you seen the Washington Post’s TikTok? We should totally do this! And I was the one who's like: We shouldn't do this guys…
VFD: And they put you in charge!
Jack Corbett: Yeah, it evolved out of a pre-existing Planet Money Shorts series, which is kind of like Drunk History-esque, but with Planet Money episodes. And when the pandemic happened those became hard to make. Everyone was figuring out how to make videos differently, because we're all in our houses. And luckily for me - unluckily for my social life - I spent a lot of my college in my basement just making videos, totally alone, because that's the way I roll. That's the way I feel most comfortable is when I'm totally alone. So I was ready for that.
And then there was this story about the stock market circuit breakers and I was like: That's crazy, why do they have that? If the S&P 500 goes down 7% everyone just has to chill out for 15 minutes?? That’s the funniest concept. I still love it. And my friend at the time, who did make TikToks for Planet Money early on, we were talking about what kind of videos we want to make or what kind of videos we want to see in this early pandemic, and they said I just want to see concentric circles and like really chill, you kno? Slow motion. And so that was part of the seed for how to make a chill out video for the stock market circuit breaker. It was originally three minutes and horizontal but then it bounced around to a few people and then I was told to make it one minute and vertical. And that's when I knew…
VFD: That’s when you knew - This is where this is going. TikTok. Hope you're ready.
Jack Corbett: Yeah.
VFD: How was your approach to, I guess, that subject matter? You did film and then didn’t you say engineering at the start? I'm not hearing finance anywhere.
Jack Corbett: No, finance was an antagonist in my life. Seeing as both my parents experienced bankruptcy and the business practices were messed up. I don't know. The 2008 financial crisis! I was like: Why would anyone want anything to do with finance? I really liked math, just because it was cool, because there was one right answer and that was very satisfying for me. That was the closest I got. I’ve never taken an economics class. So I was largely an outsider, and I think that helped to inform it, because I was like: Wait, this is weird. And I just didn't see many people being like that: What the hell?
VFD: Is that your approach to finding what to make stuff about? Are you just on, I don't know, Bloomberg, every day and you’re like: What the fuck is this? What is this?
Jack Corbett: If I can find something like that, that's just totally irrational, then yes. And people behaving weird: I’m like Yeah! The video makes itself. I'm psyched when that happens. But yeah, I pretty much just read a bunch of business articles.
VFD: Do you feel like you're equipped now in a financial knowledge sense? Like you weren’t before. Are you happy about that? I feel like I'm kind of projecting. I feel like I'd be like: Well, I hate that I know all this shit.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, no, I'm definitely considering all the things that were pushed out of my brain by learning about “asymmetric information” and “fractional reserve banking.” I feel equipped, I feel proficient, I feel like I don't have to look up as many words in Investopedia nowadays. So that's cool. I'm okay with it.
I mean, I don't know how much it has helped my personal life. I'm not a whiz at stock market trading. I still make very poor investment decisions, like my car gets like 12 miles per gallon. Why would I do that? In California gas is 16 bucks! Fucking… I don't know… it's so expensive. I don't have good financial practices. I think I’ve inherited that from my parents. Just hoping not to go bankrupt. That would suck.
VFD: Yeah. Shout out to your parents. Thanks for that.
Jack Corbett: Oh, yeah, shoutout.
VFD: Wait so go back a little bit - did you move to California for the internship?
Jack Corbett: No, no, the internship at Tiny Desk headquarters was in DC. NPR headquarters is in DC. And so I moved there right after college. So, when the pandemic started I was living in this place that I didn't intend to live at for very long. It was pretty much a commune, a month to month kind of thing. And it was the cheapest rent you could find.
VFD: Was it like an apartment block or are we talking, like, a farm?
Jack Corbett: No, no, no, it was like a row house that was covered in - it's very bizarre - on the inside you walk in and every single inch of the walls are covered by posters, like film posters, and most of them are actually Barack and Michelle Obama. And there's a giant poster on the outside of the building that's like Thank you Barack and Michelle Obama. It's just a very normal house, but it's split up into 15 different rooms. There's one kitchen, there's bright red carpet, the landlord is this dude named Ron who lives in the basement who just really likes The Grateful Dead.
VFD: Oh, okay, I’m putting it together.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, and it was just a ton of misfits, everyone had really good stories because they were all over the place. So that - when I was in that tiny little cube of an apartment, or just a room with - it was very small - That's where I made the first 50 TikToks or something.
VFD: Oh, wow.
Jack Corbett: I was pretty much trapped. Because that was the part of the pandemic where it was like Don't go outside, you're going to die. And so yeah, it was just - it was a trip. It was a trip.
VFD: How did you find that place?
Jack Corbett: It was just a friend of a friend. I was like, dying, it was the day before my lease was up at this other place that I had gotten. And I was just like: I don't know where I’m going to live. Because I was a temp and I didn't know how long I was going to be at NPR. I think my contract was only for a month or two. I'm not gonna stay here for a while, was my first reaction. And then I was there for eight months.
VFD: It feels kind of counterintuitive to what you were saying before, where you'd like to be in the basement alone.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, the kitchen was constantly full. It sucked. I only cooked meals at 2AM when no one would be around. There were security cameras everywhere too. There was a little bit of everything going on. Everyone had a mini fridge and their name on it in one cabinet.
VFD: Would people know this house, like DC locals?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, I think so. We called it The Obama House. And I'm pretty sure most of the people I encountered who were in Mount Pleasant - That's the neighbourhood, Mount Pleasant - DC folks will know it. The Obama House. I guarantee it's still there.
VFD: And then how'd you get to California?
Jack Corbett: I tried living in New York for a couple months. And I was like: This sucks. And then I moved back to Ohio and I lived with my dad for a little bit.
But that was like: This makes me feel like I'm 15 years old, this is probably not for the best. I'd been to California a little bit earlier, and I was really obsessed with how good the fruit was. And it just felt like very fresh air - not Fresh Air with Terry Gross - but fresh air like whooo. The fruit’s great here, that's why I moved here.
VFD: Isn’t Ohio like that, isn't Ohio like… a lot of air?
Jack Corbett: The fruit kind of sucks in Ohio. The fruit sucks - We have good corn. But yeah, there's fresh air. Although there's a lot of pollution in Ohio - One of our rivers caught on fire because they just throw stuff in that river. Very cool. Very cool stuff.
VFD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What's your setup currently? You’ve got a green screen curtain. And then what - I'm assuming you don't use your phone to shoot.
Jack Corbett: I use my phone, I use my phone.
VFD: You do? To shoot everything? And then to edit… Premiere?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, yeah. I had a green screen - For the first, I don't know, eight months, it was a green and yellow bedsheet, just because it was slightly cheaper. And I duct taped it to the wall because there was zero room in my apartment. Every green screen stand you can find can't go flush to the wall, and it had to be flush to the wall. Because I was like - this doesn't translate to a transcript well - but I was taking up the smallest possible space.
VFD: I know what you mean. The way you stand in the videos. I thought that was a stylistic thing.
Jack Corbett: Well, you know, it became one. I simultaneously had to be - because there wasn't much room to put my phone back - So I had to crouch to just stay in the frame. I'm kind of tall. So it became a challenge and I just tried to fit, and it ended up looking like, I don't know, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. That's the setup, pretty much the dream setup.
VFD: But has NPR ever been like, Hey, you want some - now that you've got heaps of followers and everything seems to be doing well - would you like a professional green screen? Would you like any equipment at all? Or do you look after it?
Jack Corbett: They bought the green screen and they bought a tripod. I guarantee I could have - but it became very masochistic and also it was just painful. It was painful for me to set everything up and slap the duct tape on the wall. It was hard, and so it became so hard just to set it up that I was like, Oh, man, the script better be good. If I'm gonna go through all the work of - the nightmare of - setting it up, it better be good.
VFD: Yeah, right. Do you script and then someone approves and then you just go nuts?
Jack Corbett: Yeah, yeah. I used to mostly base them off existing Planet Money episodes. We script them, and then I have to get it approved by Planet Money, by my viz editor. And then I make the video and then they get approved by my viz editor and Planet Money and then I post things.
VFD: How long does it usually take you to make one?
Jack Corbett: Back then I would make three a week, but I don't know how I did that. I don't know, I was still figuring it out. Now it takes me a while. I try and make them very dense. I average out roughly one a week, which is kind of slow for TikTok, but it seems to be working fine.
VFD: I think you’ve earned the right to do that. That’s exactly the trick, right.
Jack Corbett: I appreciate that. Thanks.
VFD: Well, I think that's the truth. And I think TikTok is like that in a lot of ways. Did you see how, this week or last week, they were like Oh, a video is going to be 10 minutes now. I can guarantee you that the only people that are going to have successful 10 minute videos are the people that had successful one minute videos. It's going to be rare that we'll see people start and be like: I'm gonna start by making 10 minute videos.
Jack Corbett: Yeah, the 10 minute video thing feels very stressful because I feel like I have to do it. When the three minute thing came out it was like, Alright, I’ve got to make one epic long TikTok and now it's our most viewed TikTok, which is very frustrating because now it's like Oh, God, I gotta make another one?.
I don't think I could make a 10 minute long TikTok. Maybe I could, I don't know. I feel like not enough economic concepts are that big. I feel like at three minutes you can kind of do anything. At one minute you can if you're working real fast.
VFD: I think the 10 minute thing is just for advertisements. If I had to be cynical about it, they're gonna bring in advertisements in the middle of your videos and stuff. But we love TikTok! We love what it does to us.
Jack Corbett: I do love TikTok. I feel like it's mostly going to be YouTube videos that get ported over to TikTok. That's most of what I've seen of the three minute videos, it's obviously not a TikTok. You have huge black bars across the bottom and the top.
VFD: Every app eventually becomes a YouTube compilation. That'll be the way we head, which is fun! I look forward to it.
I don't want to be like do you want to leave NPR or do other things but also - do you want to do other things?
Jack Corbett: It's a good question. I don't know. I've never really operated by having a five year plan or that kind of stuff. I just do whatever seems cool in the next two weeks and, outside of that, it's like: Cool, I don’t know.
I'd like to make longer form, documentary stuff. I'd like to make more serious stuff. But also some kind of weird dada docu-series seems like fun. It seems cool to have a season where you can have a time on and a time off to plan it versus always one minute videos once a week. But I don't have any plans, until I have a good idea for something. Then I’ll do that right away. But right now I only ever have TikTok ideas.
VFD: Well cool man, I know we don’t have heaps of time. But thanks for talking.
Jack Corbett: Of course.