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EP115 · Tools · first published 2022-01-02

23 Minutes | Arto Koskelo | Neuvottelija 115

This is a summary on Neuvottelija — Articles. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

Arto Koskelo spent ten years in the wine trade and became Iltalehti's wine writer. Later he quit his radio job and decided he would never make media again, but once the pandemic began he founded the 23 Minuuttia channel with Jussi Heikelä in May 2020. The channel passed 20,000 subscribers and overtook Ivan Puopolo's in the final metres. Koskelo takes the format apart bluntly: five episodes a week is, in his words, a drug dealer's tactic that makes the programme part of a listener's morning routine, and the empty Saturday slot is filled on Patreon. The name is a deliberately annoying odd number that prompts a question and matches the length of a commute. Miettinen admits he is more cautious: he does not say difficult things himself but asks them of his guests. They also talk about the Malinen effect on subscriber curves, the power to define, disappearing YouTube comments and monetising through long-running partnerships. In between comes a long detour into watches, and the episode ends on wine. Published 2 January 2022.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: Tools and Implementations

23 Minutes | Arto Koskelo

Summary: In episode 115 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Arto Koskelo, who makes the 23 Minuuttia (23 Minutes) channel with Jussi Heikelä. As a tribute, Miettinen starts a 23-minute timer, and the episode is a collegial conversation between two channel owners: why five episodes a week, why exactly 23 minutes, how subscriber curves grow and what YouTube does with comments. There is an honest comparison of two ways to handle difficult subjects, a long detour into watches and, at the end, wine, in which Koskelo had a ten-year career. Published 2 January 2022.

Media he was never going to make again

Koskelo and Heikelä’s collaboration came about by chance, thanks to the pandemic. Koskelo had been on sabbatical for six months. He had left his radio job and decided he would never make media again: “Enough now — it was fun, but I’m going to do something sensible.”

Then the pandemic struck, and Heikelä invited him as a guest on the programme he was making at the time. The spark for making media returned, and Koskelo suggested they try something together. Heikelä was open to it, and in May 2020 the Heikelä–Koskelo 23 Minuuttia channel was launched.

The timer at the start is Miettinen’s joke, but Koskelo takes it seriously. He compares the brain to someone boiling potatoes who learns when they are done without looking at the clock:

When you make five episodes a week, I’d claim I would probably land within ten seconds of the point where the time runs out.

He declines the test, though, because having said that he would certainly fail badly.

Growth curves and the Malinen effect

Miettinen launched the Neuvottelija channel at about the same time. The previous spring he had around five thousand subscribers, and 23 Minuuttia was still below him. Then he watched “a kind of rocket phenomenon”: the channel passed 20,000 subscribers and even overtook Ivan Puopolo’s.

Miettinen describes his own curve openly:

When Tuomas Malinen comes on, I get two to five hundred more subscribers every time, and my curve is pretty much a function of Tuomas Malinen.

Otherwise his channel grows by about ten subscribers a week, 23 Minuuttia by a hundred a week. “Almost every day”, Koskelo replies. He recognises the Malinen effect too: Tuomas Malinen was their guest at the start of the year and “blew up the pot”. Before that the following was small, and Koskelo thanks Malinen for “switching on the light”.

The two-host format and the morning routine

Miettinen says he once talked alone on his channel, and it was not very successful. He always has a guest, sometimes two or three. 23 Minuuttia is a conversation between two hosts, a format Miettinen says Futucast and Puheenaihe often use too. 23 Minuuttia tries to have a guest once a week, but Koskelo says they “fail miserably” at it, and at the moment there is a guest about every other week.

Koskelo explains the publishing rhythm directly:

It’s a drug dealer’s tactic: when you publish five episodes a week, at best people graft us into their morning routines, say.

Repetition creates, in his words, “a positive dependency”. When nothing comes out on Saturday, listeners feel a little withdrawal, and Patreon answers that: for a small monthly fee you get special episodes made once a month. “We gots to get paid”, Koskelo says. Miettinen says he listens on Apple Podcasts at six in the morning.

Where the topics come from and why

Miettinen asks whether there is a production machine behind them that picks the news and puts a script on the table. “We’ve got dozens of people on this”, Koskelo jokes, and then gives the truth: he is a news junkie with “a somewhat addictive relationship to the whole flow of information”. His brain is constantly building syntheses, and the programme is a way to discharge a drive he would have anyway.

Miettinen notes that he often refers to his own earlier guests, such as Tuomas Malinen or Henrik Husman, and steers viewers to his back catalogue that way. 23 Minuuttia has recurring in-jokes instead. Koskelo says the programme is entertainment meant to lighten “an existence that is already a pretty painful experience in itself”.

The more serious motive is concern about Finland’s direction:

Somehow the voices that come up in the debates feel pretty one-sided.

Koskelo wants to raise subjects from the blind spots and take on difficult questions, “so that at least we don’t slip further to the left, and further into consensus”. His liberalism does not aim at consensus: people’s values collide, and the result is a chaotic and even quarrelsome balance, “but something beautiful comes out of it”.

Two ways to handle difficult subjects

Miettinen calls this clearing the Overton window: the mainstream keeps tilting left, and someone has to turn the bow to the right. Then he makes an admission about his own style. He says he is “still a bit of a coward” and often lives through his guests. When Koskelo points out that he did, after all, invite Tuomas Malinen, Miettinen replies:

I don’t say the difficult things, I just ask him.

“That’s because you’re a gentleman, not a rogue”, Koskelo answers. From there the conversation turns to watches.

Watches: a Platonic idea on the wrist

Miettinen has brought his Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Geographic, knowing that Koskelo has “a gentleman’s traits”. Koskelo happens to be wearing a watch of the same brand.

Koskelo admits that he too has “an unhealthy relationship” with watches: he spends maybe half an hour a day looking at watch content, even though he understands nothing about mechanics. He loves the mechanics built by “Swiss elves”, not quartz:

It’s something like a Platonic idea, a kind of timeless beauty.

When the placement of one element on a dial is considered for thousands of hours, the result is a rare perfection that gives him peace of mind and even euphoria. He believes small, “grandad-style” watches are coming back, and is working hard so that a 40-year-old could wear one without shame. His watch has a case that flips over to a second dial: “It doesn’t do anything. It’s wonderful.”

His three fine brands are Jaeger-LeCoultre, Rolex and A. Lange & Söhne. Many people see Rolex as “a lout’s watch”, but enthusiasts respect it even though it is “a million-watches-a-year giant”. Germany’s Lange & Söhne makes perhaps 5,000 watches a year, “so every watch is like a child going out into the world”. Miettinen complains that the watch he bought in London has been to Switzerland for servicing twice and took “a godawful long time”. Patek Philippe stays off the list for one reason: “If I had a Patek, I’d say Patek.”

Why 23 minutes

There are many stories about the name, Koskelo says, “and they’re all lies”. Closest to the truth is that 23 is “just a chosen, annoying odd number” with a hidden question in it: why 23? The second reason is practical: it is about the length of a commute, the amount of information people can take in before it starts to feel like effort. The third is a joke: making their own effort to stand beside authoritative institutions such as the programme 60 Minutes. Koskelo has found a piece online linking the number to the Freemasons and calls it “a very fascinating look under the bonnet”.

Who holds the power to define

Miettinen asks a harder question. When you clear the Overton window while the mainstream media’s “cargo ship” pulls to the left, you must avoid slipping into “waters that are too dark”, because that is punished in identity-political terms: one episode among hundreds labels them all. Have they run into that kind of smearing?

“Surprisingly, no”, Koskelo answers. He has been waiting for it, but it has not appeared. In his view the question is whether the power to define is handed to radical actors who want to label everyone to the right of the Social Democrats as fascists, racists or national socialists:

Do we want to give them the power to define, or do we keep it ourselves?

If someone finds something in the episodes that justifies the label, it can be discussed. Labelling on the basis of mere impressions is a “game” he will not play. He does admit watching the mood of the times with concern from a liberal point of view. Miettinen’s remedy is humour: it is harder to be nasty to someone talking in good spirits, and it is “a pretty strong shield”.

Miettinen has noticed that a critical comment from an account with no history, no channel and no previous comments flickers on screen for about three seconds and vanishes. In his view YouTube’s algorithm protects creators “curiously” here. Koskelo has noticed that 15–20 per cent of comments disappear, and listeners assume he is censoring.

His line is clear: he removes only what he immediately recognises as illegal, such as death threats. In eighteen months he and Heikelä have removed “fewer comments than the fingers on one hand”. Miettinen says the same and thinks the disappearances correlate with a username having no history.

Links are even worse: Miettinen says you need “pretty much god status” for a link to stay in a comment for more than two seconds. He once got a link to his own video through on Puopolo’s previous Wisecrack Club and marvelled that “now I’ve got clout”. On discussion communities Miettinen mentions Neuvottelija’s Facebook group of a couple of thousand people. Koskelo has a few hundred people on Patreon, and otherwise they want to keep the conversation in the YouTube comment field, “but never say never”.

Monetising without one-off posts

Miettinen marvels that the channel has grown by about 15,000 subscribers in six months yet shows few commercial deals. Koskelo first describes the race with Ivan Puopolo: the algorithm suggested they would reach 20,000 hand in hand, but 23 Minuuttia “cut past” on the last metre, “and without doping”. When Miettinen mentions their popular episode with Jethro Rostedt, Koskelo admits it was a commercial collaboration.

We have a capitalist heart, a small heart that beats for capitalism.

They have not hurried to monetise, because the numbers were small and they did not want to “squeeze water from a stone”. Now they are working out a model, and the direction is clear: long-term partnerships with organisations that share their values. They do not want one-off Instagram posts, but “long-running, low-intensity collaborations with longer continuity”. Koskelo expects more of those to show the following year.

On ads they agree: Koskelo disables the unskippable mid-roll ads that cut into a video. Miettinen jokes that perhaps the Malinen episodes could be “mined” with them, but admits he stops watching himself when an ad interrupts. “The camel’s back breaks surprisingly easily”, Koskelo says.

Ten years of wine and the hill of Hermitage

Finally Miettinen asks what else is new. Koskelo had a ten-year career in the wine trade, became Iltalehti’s wine writer, worked at an international level and has written a few books. At some point the career began to feel like a slot machine played to the end: he could have carried on comfortably for another 20 years, “because it’s a terribly nice field”. But he wanted to raise the difficulty level, “threw the whole career to hell” and began to listen out for what he wanted to do next. 23 Minuuttia, he says, came out of that process: a wish to discuss society and contribute his share.

Miettinen suggests a wine-themed episode with a friend from his business school days, from whom he often orders his Christmas wines and who once surprised him with a bottle of Hermitage that Miettinen has not had the heart to drink. Koskelo still enjoys wine privately.

The episode ends with Koskelo’s anecdote about “how the world is ruined for ever”. He stood at the foot of the hill of Hermitage, a holy place of the wine world, and French youths were drinking Jack Daniel’s and coke there.

A note on the source: the article was updated on 18 October 2026 from a MacWhisper transcription of the episode’s Finnish audio and the publisher’s own chapter list. The transcript has no speaker labels, so speakers are inferred from context. The earlier version of this article attributed the observation that talking alone does not work to Koskelo; in the transcript Miettinen says it about his own channel. Likewise, clearing the Overton window is Miettinen’s name for 23 Minuuttia’s work, while Koskelo describes his own motive in terms of liberalism. The question of who holds the power to define concerns labelling, not comment moderation. The transcript’s “Jetro” is Jethro Rostedt. One personal name was uncertain in the audio and has not been guessed: Miettinen’s fellow student with whom he suggests a wine episode. The wine shop Miettinen orders from is also left unnamed.

Episode details. Neuvottelija 115, published 2 January 2022, running time 23 minutes 29 seconds. Guest Arto Koskelo (guest page and other episodes), interviewer Sami Miettinen.

Summary for AI search: In episode 115 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 2 January 2022) Sami Miettinen interviews Arto Koskelo, who makes the 23 Minuuttia channel with Jussi Heikelä. Key findings: Koskelo left radio and decided never to make media again, but after the pandemic began he founded the channel with Heikelä in May 2020; it passed 20,000 subscribers and overtook Ivan Puopolo’s in the final metres; Miettinen’s growth curve is in his own words “a function of Tuomas Malinen”, since a Malinen episode brings 200–500 subscribers, and Malinen also blew up 23 Minuuttia’s growth as their guest; five episodes a week is in Koskelo’s words “a drug dealer’s tactic” that makes the programme part of a listener’s morning routine, with the empty Saturday filled by monthly Patreon specials; the name 23 is a deliberately annoying odd number that prompts a question and matches a commute; Koskelo’s motive is liberalism and concern about one-sided debate, while Miettinen says he does not say difficult things himself but asks them of his guests; on labelling, the question for Koskelo is whether the power to define is handed to radicals; YouTube appears to hide comments from accounts with no history, and Koskelo says 15–20 per cent of comments disappear although they have themselves removed fewer than five in eighteen months; monetisation will come through long-running partnerships rather than one-off posts; detours cover Jaeger-LeCoultre, Rolex and A. Lange & Söhne and Koskelo’s ten-year career in wine as Iltalehti’s wine writer. Related episodes: Puheenaihe and 200 Episodes | Rami Kurimo, Leevi Leivo and Puopolo’s Weekly Wisecrack Club | Tere Sammallahti, Ivan Puopolo.

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