FRESH AIR

Why the ‘Future of Late-Night’ Is Ignoring Trump

Julian Shapiro-Barnum tells “Obsessed: The Podcast” how he’s shaking up the endangered genre.

Julian Shapiro-Barnum is creating a new kind of late-night show.

Outside Tonight, his new late-night-esque series, eschews certain genre conventions. The 27-year-old host forgoes a studio, opting instead to tape episodes in various outdoor locations in New York City. The show airs on YouTube instead of a major television network. And, perhaps most noteworthy, his conversations with guests often go without any mention of Trump.

“We weren’t avoiding Trump. I just didn’t want to talk about Donald Trump,” Shapiro-Barnum said on Obsessed: The Podcast. “It didn’t feel like the space to talk about that. But it’s also, like, there are other late-night shows who are doing that better and smarter. It didn’t feel like my arena.”

Shapiro-Barnum is known for the web series Recess Therapy, which he started in 2021 and features interviews with kids ages two through nine on city playgrounds. Many of his videos have gone viral, leading to collaborations with celebrities like Bill Murray, Dua Lipa, and Matt Damon.

As he kept developing the idea for Outside Tonight, it became clear that steering focus away from Trump and creating something with a political message weren’t mutually exclusive. The result became what Shapiro-Barnum himself has called “the future of late-night.”

“The show has always been a comedy show. But I think comedy is political,” Shapiro-Barnum said. “And I also think the bodies we choose to put in a show are political. And I think if you look at the stories we’re telling, the bits we’re doing, the types of people we’re populating Outside Tonight with—to me, that is a political statement.”

Shapiro-Barnum started conceptualizing the show when he was 20, when, in his words, “late-night was kicking and doing great.” Since then, network late-night shows from hosts like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have come under fire from the Trump administration. So he felt 2026 was the right time to try something more independent and internet-based. And he used Arsenio Hall’s hosting style as a loose model.

“His show was also like a party,” Shapiro-Barnum said of Hall, who rose to fame nearly four decades ago as an alternative to traditional hosts like Johnny Carson. “The show was a really good time. And I think with Outside Tonight, like I wanted it to feel a little bit like you could come on and have a really, really good time.”

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Shapiro-Barnum has said that Outside Tonight—and its innovative approach to a traditional format—are rescuing late-night from its uncertain future. And he means it.

“We are saving late-night,” he said. “And I did say that. And I stand by that.”

New episodes of Outside Tonight With Julian Shapiro-Barnum are available to stream on YouTube.

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

Obsessed: The Podcast

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