First and foremost, Welcome to the DC Show! If you didn't know, the DC Show is named after me, Daniel Connolly! At its core, the DC Show is simply the videos and podcasts that I produce. I happen to be interested in Urban Geography and American History, so most of the content on the DC Show follows those themes.
The DC Show got its start in early 2014, when I decided that I wanted to start recording podcasts. All it took to get started was a free copy of software called Audacity and a Windows laptop.
I didn’t think I’d have any audience, but I still was motivated to record a few episodes. Of course, I posted them on the social media du jour, which for my high school was Twitter.
Before long, I found that my show had gained a niche audience within my high school. My episodes focused mostly on musings about what was going on in my life at the time, and people thought it was entertaining enough to tune in. These podcasts typically got 100-400 views, most of which were my classmates.
After a year-long hiatus, I rebooted the show in 2016, my senior year of high school. This time I incorporated a camera and guests into the mix, creating a primitive talk show atmosphere. My friends and I would get together at the public library and make what we considered to be comedy. Most of it is so bad that it's been made private on YouTube. Once again, I was producing content mostly to entertain my schoolmates.
I got pretty busy in college, and I lost my captive high-school audience. The DC Show was put on pause for four years as I studied computer science. In the back of my mind, I always wanted to get the ball rolling again, but I was focused on other things. It took the Covid-19 pandemic for me to finally find the time and motivation required to start the channel. This time, I’d focus on more serious topics.
My first major video during this third iteration of the DC Show was simply me talking about Albany, NY over Google Maps. I picked this subject because I knew I could say a lot without any preparation. I’m not claiming that the video was any good, but it did start racking up views. To date, this spontaneous video has 35,000 of them.
The success of the Albany video gave me the motivation to continue on with the theme of Upstate New York cities. I started learning how to use Premiere Pro and After Effects, and I started writing scripts and doing research. In 2020, I churned out videos about Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo. The end of 2020 really was the peak of this era of the DC Show - I started gaining subscribers in numbers which dwarfed the previous iterations of the show. My Schenectady video gained serious traction in 2021, and I felt like I really was learning how to be successful in the YouTube business. I collaborated with my friends and cousin on videos, and I started making some history documentaries as well.
It was around this time when I was connected to the Albany Riverfront Collaborative by my friend Derek Baranski. They’re an advocacy group focused on reimagining Interstate 787, which notoriously cuts off downtown Albany from the Hudson River. In a collaboration spearheaded by Architect and advocate Scott Townsend, Derek and I interviewed 10 people to create a documentary that won an award at the Better Cities Film Festival. The video was published in the Times Union, Albany’s local newspaper. I’m still very proud of the work I did on this video, and I hope to do more advocacy work using video in the future.
I moved to San Francisco in late 2021, and though I produced a few more videos over the next couple of years, my drive and determination to grow the DC Show waned. I attribute this to starting a challenging software engineering job and acclimating to the challenges of independent adult life. Whatever the case was, I lost focus and my video output dropped to the point where I put nothing out for almost two years.
In 2026, I realized that I needed to start focusing on what really mattered to me in this world. I felt I needed to start living life with a purpose rather than just letting life happen to me. Slowly but surely, I began to formulate a plan to restart the DC Show. To me, this show encapsulates everything I’m most passionate about. I love evangelizing cities that don’t get enough love. I see so much value in them, and I want others to feel the same joy that I do learning about them. I love learning about history - how our country is what it is today, why things are the way they are.
I’ve started off with a video on Queens, NY. I don’t really know why I gravitated towards that topic specifically, but it was a lot of fun to make that video. It was also a lot of work. As I continue to build this show and this brand, I’m thinking about how to balance volume with quality. There’s a lot to learn, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m going to continue to up the quality of what I produce, and I hope that you’ll be around for the ride.