Hey, We’re Colin and Samir, YouTube creators and podcasters that break down the latest news in the creator economy from a creator's perspective. We have a long history building communities and brands through digital content. New episodes of The Colin and Samir show go live every Monday on Spotify and YouTube.com/ColinandSamir.

The Colin and Samir Show

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, breaks down Instagram’s move into long form, horizontal video (“features”) and TV. We ask what changed since he last told us long form wasn’t a priority, and how creators will get discovered and paid. Then we get tactical on sends per reach, carousels and underused features, before digging into AI and the future of social media.
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Why Instagram Changed Its Mind on Long Form Video

This week we brought our team in to rank celebrity YouTube channels in a head to head bracket to figure out who's actually cracked the code.
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Why Most Celebrity YouTube Channels Fail (And The Ones That Don't)

Today on The Colin & Samir Show we sit down with Kate Tolo, the genius behind Bryan Johnson. Most people know Bryan from his quest to solve aging, but Kate is his co-founder, girlfriend, and the creative mind who took him from 2000 followers to over 10 million, a Netflix documentary, and a $60 million fundraising round. She walks us through her 11 rules for virality, backed up by the real emails, tweets, and thumbnails she's used to build the brand. It's a rare look at the actual playbook behind one of the internet's most viral personal brands.



Check out Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/colinandsamir
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11 Marketing Rules every Creator needs to know: Kate Tolo

Let's talk about the recent YouTube updates

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Inside YouTube's New View Count, Monetization Rules, and Netflix Fight

Today on The Colin & Samir Show we sit down with Paddy Galloway, the YouTube strategist behind over 10 billion views for channels like Red Bull, Jesser and the Philadelphia Eagles. Paddy comes back every year with fresh data, and this time he brought graphs on what he calls the great device shift, the move of YouTube viewership from phones to TV screens. We get into how that shift is reshaping the YouTube homepage, what actually counts as a lot of views in 2026, the difference between formats and shows, and what's working right now for creators. We also talk about how AI is already showing up on YouTube and why editorial curation might be coming back as upload volume keeps climbing.
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The New Rules of YouTube (2027)

In this episode of The Colin & Samir show we overanalyze one of MrBeast's highest viewed videos ever, a Russian dance TikTok that initially confused us. The video sparked a much larger discussion about views on the internet today and what creators should care about. 
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The Viral Russian MrBeast TikTok & The True Value of Views

Four words got Hank Green accused of using AI, and the backlash hasn't stopped. We brought five voices into the room to argue about where the line actually is , thumbnails, outlines, dubbing, research, plus the generational divide nobody's naming, and three principles we landed on for creators using AI.


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The Cancellation of Hank Green & Why Gen Z Hates Ai

"Companies are bought, not sold." That's the mindset John Coogan and Jordi Hays say got them a nine-figure acquisition from OpenAI, without ever trying to sell.



Recorded live at Press Publish LA, this is our second sit-down with the TBPN guys, but the first since the deal went public. Two years ago they were building a daily live show from scratch. Now they've sold it to OpenAI for nine figures, and they're breaking down exactly how they got there.

We get into:


  Why they chose to nichemaxx in a world full of view-maximizers



  The importance of having a “golden retriever” mindset



  Why they never tried to sell the company, and how that gave them leverage



  What their role at OpenAI actually is




It's a candid look at how staying disciplined about who you're serving can be worth more than chasing scale.
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9 Lessons From TBPN's $100M+ Exit

Creator ad spend is hitting thirty-nine billion dollars in 2026, and traditional video reads are no longer the standard. In this episode, we break down our new partnership with Lexus and we outline the four ways creators are making money with brands today:



As distribution for brand reach.  

As talent for native likeness.  

As directors and creatives using platform expertise.  

As consultants bridging the gap between major corporations and internet culture.  



Lastly we review some of our favorite creator ads on YouTube with our story produce Conor. 
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4 Ways Creators are Making Money in 2026

Traditional networks are no longer just looking to creators for marketing—they want premium, long-term IP. Today we explore how independent comedy powerhouse YMH Studios scaled past traditional gatekeepers and why Fox Entertainment just signed a major multi-project slate with them.

What you’ll get in this episode:


  The Deal Breakdown: Inside the co-ownership structure of the brand-new Fox and YMH slate.



  The Creator-CEO Blueprint: How Tom Segura built an arena-selling infrastructure entirely direct-to-consumer.



  The Scale Formula: Why protecting creative momentum and building your own distribution engine is the ultimate leverage in media today.




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