John Papola

Born into an Italian family in Philadelphia,[2] Papola attended Penn State University from 1995 to 1999, receiving a BA in Cinematography and Film/Video Production.[3]

Papola was a director and designer in MTV's Animation Series Development from 1999 to 2001. He started at MTV as a production assistant in the commercials division, then became an animator until finally a show developer and director of series pilots. At MTV he directed the animated series pilot The Mall Show.[1][3]

He was a director and producer at Nickelodeon from 2001 to 2003. He directed, produced and edited show promotions, commercials and longer-form industry projects. These include the Jimmy Neutron product campaign, the Nickelodeon 2003 Upfront and The Kid’s Bill of Rights pro-social campaign. He also co-created, co-wrote and directed Robo Ralph, a story-driven interstitial series.[1][3]

Papola worked as senior director and producer at Nicktoons Network from 2003 to 2004. In this position he helped develop the re-launch of the network's on-air branding and directed and edited the Cyber-ID campaign which he co-developed and co-produced with Jeremy Fernsler.

Papola was creative director of Spike TV from June 2004 to April 2011. In this position, he oversaw promotional campaigns and special projects. His Look Closer cross-media campaign for the 2010 Video Game Awards went viral, as did his Back to the Future campaign for the Scream Awards, featuring Michael J. Fox. The latter was featured on Entertainment Tonight and was viewed more than 2.5 million times over the course of 3 days.[1]

At Spike TV, he ran advertising campaigns for Unilever’s Axe, Burger King, Geico, Campbells, T-Mobile, Boston Beer, Snickers, Jeep and many more clients. He also conceived of the pro-social initiative True Dads in Uniform, an effort in partnership with the USO to maintain connections between U.S. troops overseas and their families back home.[1]

Papola produced and directed The World Cyber Games series of long-form documentary specials about the world of competitive professional video gaming.[1]

At IMDb.com, he is listed as being on the “creative group” behind the 2010 Spike TV VGA Video Game Awards, the 2010 Scream Awards, and the 2009 Spike TV VGA Video Game Awards. He is also listed as director and producer of two episodes of the 2007 TV series Game Head: “World Cyber Games: Grand Final” and “World Cyber Games USA National Final.” He is also named as editorial department member on the episode “World Cyber Games: Grand Final” and as editor and camera operator of the episode “World Cyber Games USA National Final.”[4]

Papola is a co-founder of Emergent Order, a “content development, production and post-production company” that specializes in “short-format creative storytelling and brand creative from commercials to music videos to digital shorts destined for screens large and small.” It seeks “to work with great brands, develop original content and tell stories about the amazing, emerging world around us.” Papola is president and creative director with Michele Roi as executive producer, Joshua Meyers as vice president, and Lisa Versaci as a producer. Papola, Meyers, and Versaci are all co-founders of the firm.[1]

Papola, a longtime resident of the greater New York City region, moved in 2011 from Vernon, N.J, to the Austin, Texas, area, where he established the headquarters of Emergent Order. He has served as the president and creative director of Emergent Order since April 2011.[3]

Papola has described Emergent Order as “a visual content development and production company focused on bringing complex and important ideas to life in entertaining, playful, and irreverent ways.” The company was “launched...essentially on the viral success/impact” of the rap videos that he and Russell D. Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University, had made about the differences between the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich A. Hayek. Papola explained the success of those videos by saying that he and Roberts “seemed to be the first people to bring classical liberal ideas to life in a way that was entertaining, scholarly, and uncompromising while remaining even-handed.” The viral success of the videos, Papola has said, “seemed like an entrepreneurial opportunity that had to be pursued.”

His view is that in a highly partisan society, “there is a need for playful and thoughtful content that tackle[s] important subjects. Emergent Order exists to fill that void and to be a global leader in idea-driven content creation.”[2]

Papola is a libertarian and an admirer of Hayek and Austrian economics. Asked when he had become a libertarian, he said that in 2006, when he had a long daily commute into New York City, he “started listening to audio books,” first US history, then such books as John Stossel’s Give Me a Break, which “started to open my eyes to a different approach to politics, one that was neither 'left' nor 'right.'” Then he ran into interviews with Russ Roberts on EconTalk, which he called “basically the greatest collection of economic discourse ever produced in history.” When he decided to put his media skills to work explaining “the 'Austrian' perspective,” he phoned Roberts to suggest a collaboration.[2]

He has described himself as “a filmmaker and entrepreneur with a passion for economics” who “finds inquiring into how nations become wealthy absolutely exhilarating.” He admires the insights of John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Adam Smith, which he feels “have largely been lost today,” when the “economic mainstream” is “disconnected from reality,” making this “a dark age of economic understanding.”[6] It was Henry Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson that introduced Papola to Hayek and the Austrian school.[15]

In a December 2012 essay written in connection with the video “Deck the Halls with Macro Follies,” Papola took on the idea, “first popularly asserted by Thomas Malthus,” and later resurrected by Keynes, that “savings, the opposite of consumption, is bad for growth.” He noted that “Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say and Friedrich Hayek viewed savings as the vital lifeblood of economic growth,” for “savings aren’t simply taken out of the economic system, but become the source of capital that entrepreneurs use to create new goods and increase productivity,” and it is the latter that “is the key to a wealthier world.”[16]

Papola has called Keynes “our modern Macro Santa,” for “today’s Keynesian economists believe that when we’re in an economic rut, government spending transforms into a magical debt-financed multiplier sack, able to create a limitless bounty of goodies.”[17]

Papola won the Gold Promax Award for his "True Dads" Pro-social campaign; the Silver Broadcast Design Award for Art Direction and Design of "Nicktoons Scribblesonic ID"; and the Gold Broadcast Design Award for the "Jimmy Neutron Rocket Race" integrated promotion.[3]

He also won the Gold Promax and Broadcast Design Awards for the Jimmy Neutron “Gotta Blast” campaign, which he wrote, produced, edited and directed. He has also been awarded a Silver Broadcast Design Award in the highly competitive “Image Promotion” category for a series of live-action/CGI spots entitled the “Cyber IDs” for the Nicktoons Network re-launch.[1]

At the 3rd annual Sammies Awards in 2010, which are sponsored by the Sam Adams Alliance and recognize “exceptional citizen leaders working for a freer society,” Papola and Russ Roberts won the $3,000 Video Award for their video “Fear the Boom and Bust.”[7]

Papola's wife is Lisa Versaci, who is also a co-founder of Emergent Order.[3]

• Roberts, Russ (May 2, 2011). "Papola on the Keynes Hayek Rap Videos". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.
• Appearances on C-SPAN