I think that I really do push myself and I needed to prove to myself because it's a scary thing to say this brand new thing that I know nothing about

I'm going to put all my eggs in this basket as opposed to doing what my sister didn't every other person have ever seen succeed

I'm not going to follow that path and I'm going to do this brand new thing. That's really scary

Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan and today I'm wondering about fame, influence, and whether it's possible to even live an authentic life when your job puts you in front of millions of people every day.

My guest is YouTuber, comedian, and author of Be a Triangle, how I went from being lost to getting my life in shape. Lily Singh. She's amazing, so join us. We'll be right back.

Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan. There are a lot of ways to make a point and art takes many forms. So if you find a creative person with a strong perspective, she'll find any means necessary to share it.

Lily Singh is a 33 year old Canadian who has been making YouTube videos since 2010, the collection of which recently passed three billion views. Her messages include don't be a bully, stop judging each other, and curiously be a triangle.

To the 14 million fans of her generation, she is a lifeline and a foundational voice. For the rest of us, she's an education in American culture, circa 2022. Here's my conversation, originally recorded from my PBS show, Tell Me More, with comedian, maker, entrepreneur, and sometimes disobedient daughter of Malvindar and Sukvindar. Lily Singh.

So your kid in Toronto, your parents are Punjabi, they came over in their 20s, and you're a very modern kid. You go to college. And instead of coming out to do a regular job, like people of my generation might.

You said you're going to start making videos. Did you have some sense that you were going to make a whole lot of them for a whole lot of people? Or was it like I'm going to make one?

I literally thought I was going to make one. I didn't even think I would post that one to be honest. I discovered YouTube. I vividly remember one of my friends came up to me in university and said, there's this website called YouTube and you post videos and I was like, it sounds dumb.

It sounds dumb. I don't get the point of it. And so for so long, I ignored until finally one day it came across me probably on MSN Messenger or whatever the kids were using that day. And I was like, this is really cool.

Someone is in their house just speaking their mind to camera and no one's telling them what to do. And so I thought I'm going to make a video, didn't know how to shoot, didn't know how to edit, didn't know anything about the process.

Didn't even think I would post it. It was a spoken word piece. That was very bad.

Uh-huh. So the first one is not the second, third, fourth, fifth video is.

Did you take it down?

Those are all equally as bad. So don't worry. The entertainment value is still there. And I posted this video thinking, oh, that was fun, I guess.

And then I think like 70 people watched it. And I thought, I don't know 70 people. So now I'm famous.

But I fell in love with just this process of learning how to do this and being able to say things with no one kind of gatekeeping what I would say.

Then I posted a second, third, fourth video and it snowballed into me saving up for a camera and teaching myself how to edit and into for years I did two videos a week.

And you're like, you're like a thousand. I have a thousand videos now. Yeah.

Were you a theater kid?

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