{"id":19475,"date":"2023-03-06T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=19475"},"modified":"2026-02-27T23:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T23:13:12","slug":"youtuber-carter-stacy-24-is-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/03\/youtuber-carter-stacy-24-is-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTuber Carter Stacy ’24 is “Interesting”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Kane ’26<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer after his sophomore year in high school, Carter Stacy \u201924 (Los Olivos, Calif.) started becoming interested in history and geography. As a small passion project, he began uploading videos about topics that interested him to his 125 subscribers on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, his channel, aptly named That Is <\/em>Interesting<\/em>, has some 155,000 subscribers and counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my senior year of high school, the channel blew up within a week or two,\u201d he says. \u201cThe video that took off was called \u201880 percent of Americans live east of this line.\u2019 I literally had drawn a line on a nighttime satellite image of the US to create this very visually stark, obvious thumbnail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His once-small passion project became a nearly overnight success, and soon Stacy found himself scrambling to upload more videos to keep the momentum going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c This summer, I thought about what it would look like if I were to work on the channel full time,\u201d he says. \u201cI made a bunch of videos and was really able to boost my viewership significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of his most successful videos are part of his \u201cUS Explained\u201d series. Stacy picks a single US state and makes a 35- to 45-minute mini-documentary on it, including its geographical, cultural,
and historical features. He attributes the growth of his channel and popularity of the \u201cUS Explained\u201d videos to the new audience members drawn when they see their state reflected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI try to engage the audience in the process a lot because it\u2019s very helpful for me,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m working on a \u2018US Explained\u2019 video, I\u2019ll put out a call for submissions of things to include, like local quirks and things I wouldn\u2019t know, especially if I hadn\u2019t been there. I\u2019ll get hundreds of responses from people sharing with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stacy studied abroad fall semester in Cape Town, South Africa, and continued to upload videos he made before leaving. While at Macalester, he took Regional Geography of US and Canada with Professor Laura Smith \u201994, a course that took particular interest in water in the western US. He has used some of the knowledge from that course to inform videos on water and settlement in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked to build a big audience and I can teach them things in a way that\u2019s interesting and engaging for them,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I\u2019m really proud of.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The junior’s YouTube channel “That Is Interesting” has over 155,000 subscribers and counting.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":19609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-life","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t