BU Alum Julian Shapiro-Barnum Takes Late-Night Outdoors
The creator of Recess Therapy has launched a new variety show, Outside Tonight, filmed entirely on the streets of New York
Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21) says his new show, Outside Tonight, has the energy and spontaneity of internet culture while embracing the variety-show format that inspired it. Photo by Devin Kasparian
BU Alum Julian Shapiro-Barnum Takes Late-Night Outdoors
The creator of Recess Therapy has launched a new variety show, Outside Tonight, filmed entirely on the streets of New York
Long before the celebrity interviews, musical guests, and crowds gathering on New York sidewalks, Julian Shapiro-Barnum had little more than a folding card table and a question.
During the height of the pandemic, Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21), fascinated by conversations with strangers, carried the table onto a city sidewalk, set out a few chairs, and invited passersby to sit down and talk for a YouTube show he called How Are You Doing Right Now? Most people kept walking. Some stopped. The conversations were awkward, funny, and deeply human.
“I almost didn’t go back to school because I liked doing it so much,” Shapiro-Barnum recalls.
Not long after, he created Recess Therapy, the series that launched his career. Millions of viewers fell in love with his joyful, often surprisingly profound conversations with children. The series won him widespread recognition, along with shout-outs on Forbes‘ 30 Under 30 list in 2023 and the TIME100 Creators 2026 list.
But Shapiro-Barnum couldn’t shake an idea sparked by How Are You Doing Right Now? He started to bring it to life six years ago, and, in June, his new show, Outside Tonight, debuted on YouTube. The seven-episode late-night variety show, filmed entirely on the streets of New York, blends celebrity interviews, comedy, games, and live music with the unpredictability of public spaces. “It’s definitely different” than Recess Therapy, he says. “It’s my first project as an adult that’s with adults. But it’s spiritually connected and carries a lot of the same ethos.”
Guests have included Emmy-winning actor John Slattery, the indie pop band Beach Bunny, and comedian and actor Benito Skinner.
Although the timing coincides with major changes inv late-night television, Shapiro-Barnum says the show’s debut wasn’t driven by industry trends. It simply took time to develop his vision.
And, he says, it isn’t an attempt to reinvent late-night television. Instead, it’s his answer to what late night might look like for an audience raised online.
“I very much see the internet as this exploded version of a late-night show,” he says. While traditional late-night television brings interviews, comedy, games, and music together under one roof, he says, online those pieces have splintered into countless standalone formats.
“I wanted to sew all those pieces back together,” he says.
In the video above, watch the latest episode of Outside Tonight, “Is New York the Best City Ever?”
The result is a show that keeps the energy and spontaneity of internet culture while embracing the variety-show format that inspired it.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “I’m just trying to make my own version of the wheel that I would want to play with.”
Whether interviewing children in neighborhood parks or celebrities on bustling city streets, Shapiro-Barnum believes humor helps people reveal parts of themselves they might otherwise keep hidden.
“I’m always trying to get people to come out of their shell,” he says. “I like to connect through play and being silly.”
Much of his willingness to experiment, he says, was cultivated during his years at BU’s College of Fine Arts.
While many classmates focused exclusively on acting, Shapiro-Barnum spent his time creating his own videos, posting sketches online, and testing new ideas. “I had a journal, and my theory was that if I wrote in it every day, eventually I’d write something that was good and worth keeping,” he says.
He credits longtime acting professor Michael Hammond with encouraging him to pursue his own creative path. “Even when people didn’t understand why I was putting so much energy into my own work, he did,” Shapiro-Barnum says.
Now, his new show is getting coverage in media outliers like the New York Times, CNN, and the Boston Globe. The highest-rated of the episodes has garnered more than 316,000 viewers to date. And Shapiro-Barnum hopes viewers will recognize that the intention of his work is always to “connect with the public and with real people,” and “talk to strangers and be goofy as hell!”