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
This article was originally published in BU Today on August 6, 2026. By Kallejhay Terrelonge (COM’27)
EXCERPT
Long before the celebrity interviews, musical guests, and crowds gathering on New York sidewalks, Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21) had little more than a folding card table and a question. During the height of the pandemic, Shapiro-Barnum, 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.”
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Much of his willingness to experiment, he says, was cultivated during his years at BU 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.
BOSTON GLOBE FEATURE
Late-night is on the decline, but this BU grad thinks he has a YouTube hit with Outside Tonight
Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21), best known for his hit digital series Recess Therapy, thinks the genre can live on in the digital world. He’s the host of Outside Tonight, a nine-episode late-night comedy series that can be viewed on YouTube, the digital video behemoth that is backing the show.