Favorite YouTube Channels

[LiveOVErdrive]

In the past year or so I've gotten really into binge watching YouTube channels. I like to get familiar with a format and churn through their content in the background while I'm doing other stuff. Here are a few of my favorites:

Guga Foods / Sous Vide Everything
These are both channels featuring a Brazilian guy in Miami making various (mostly) meats in different ways. He does different experiments of different ways to prepare, cook, dry age, season, etc different meats, as well as just show different ways to cook different things. His production and cinematography is top notch, and he and his regular guests and assistants are charming and fun to watch / listen to.

LGR (Lazy Game Reviews)
This guy (whose name escapes me) plays and reviews old games, demos old tech, does video essays on tech history, and other similar things. Most of his videos focus on PC games, software, and hardware from his childhood in the 90s, which hits my own childhood nostalgia right on the head. Plus his voice is very nice to listen to.

Peter Brown
Peter Brown's channel is a craft channel with a big focus on lathe turning and epoxy resin casting. These topics are both overdone to death on YouTube but his video presentations are well done and his attitude is very charming. I always enjoy his videos even if he's making skmething that doesn't seem that interesting to me.

Lindsay Ellis
She mostly does video essays about film and media and they are generally top notch and very entertaining.

BigstackD
This channel is just the same thing over and over. The guy finds some scrap metal junk in a dumpster, melts it down, pours it into a mold, shows us his adorable dog, has a beer, and then adds it to his ever-growing stack of ingots and cast pieces. It is very repetitive. So why can't I stop watching?

There are a lot more I like, but this is enough to get us started I think. What channels do y'all like?

 

[ScottThunes1960]

 

[spudmunkey]

Gaming Hisrorian. Long-ish form documentaries about video game history. Well-researched, and seems like just a nice dude.

Captain Disillusion. Special effects artist, debunks (sort of) viral videos, etc, pretending to be someone from another world, hosting a "kids" show, but not really for kids (not that it isnt, but kids arent his target)

While I subscribe to a lot of woodworking channels, i have a soft spot for Steve Ramsey - Woodworking for Mere Mortals. I live with his low key sense of humor, he's into horror movies. Since shelter-in-place, he's done daily vlog style videos, that I still find entertaining even though it's different from his normal previous content.

Brass Against. A primarily "horns" (with drums, guitar and rotating vocalists) band doing covers of Tool, Rage Against the Machine, etc... check out their cover of Tool's "The Pot". Fuck, man...at 2:20 when she starts to get a little growl in her voice? Goosebumps. They dont upload super often.

DJ Cummerbund does really really well put-together mashups, and always manages to shoehorn a Randy Macho Man Savage "Oh yeah" into them. For first ones to check out, try "Bird Parade", "Don't Stop 'Til You Mash Enough".

Kurzgesagt is deep-dives into scientific, cultural, philosophical issues, using plain language and charming animation.

Wintegatan - Went viral with a "Marble Machine" music video a couple of years ago, and has since been slowly making a new high-performance version, Marble Machine X. It's now been 135 weekly videos documenting his progress, trying to recapture lightning, with a machine with more parts than some cars.

For some reason, I've been watching a lot of SciManDan and Professor Stick with their flat earth/conspiracy debunking. I dont know why.

 

[TedEH]

+1 for LGR and Kurzgesagt.

Stuff I'd add to the list:

Errant Signal: He talks about games, but it's not really reviews. More train-of-thought or essay type stuff.

Noclip: Very pro-looking game documentaries.

Anything with Tom Scott in it: He does a lot of "interesting thing you probably didn't know" kinds of videos. Also has done a bunch of gameshows. It's all good.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

Your mention of Tom Scott has reminded me of Technology Connections, who does very interesting essays about things that otherwise seem very uninteresting. Air conditioning, LED stoplights, chest freezers, standard US wiring.

 

[spudmunkey]

Your mention of Tom Scott has reminded me of Technology Connections, who does very interesting essays about things that otherwise seem very uninteresting. Air conditioning, LED stoplights, chest freezers, standard US wiring.

Good call on Technology Connections.

SNES Drunk is another retro video game channel. Almost all of his videos are just him trying out an old game (not just SNES) to see if it still holds up and is still worth playing. No video of him, no long introductions. They re just a few minutes long, and always end with, "...and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day". No Merch, no begging to "ring the bell".

i also really like Adam Savage's Tested channel, but almost exclusively just for Adam's from-the-shop videos. i don't care about their potcast, or their stuff about VR/AR. Just give me 10-20 minutes of Adam's infectious energy talking about something he's excited about, and I'm set. He's got "one day builds", some longer term projects, and then sometimes just "hey, this is a really cool tool that either a) you should have, or b) nobody should need but it's super interesting and was the exact thing I needed and never knew existed until I saw it in a toolbox from someone in (insert name of unrelated industry/trade/hobby here)."

Sometimes when I'm working, I'll put on some of Crimson Guitars videos where Ben builts a guitar over many many weeks. They'd be incredibly boring to watch if that's all I was doing, so I can put them on, there's no loud music, and when he talks, he's not yelling, so it's easy to work, and just pop my head up every so often.

Lately, I've been watching a bunch of Ethan Chlebowski. He's got a cooking channel. A fair bit of his content is taking recipies from Adam Ragusea, Food Wishes, Sam the Cooking Guy, etc, and tries to improve on them.

I need to find a good, frequently-uploading tool news and review channel that isn't hosted by absolute idiotic dumbasses, like Tools in Action or VCG Construction are. Concord Carpenter is an OK one I guess, but they don'y upload enough or cover new tool releases, etc.

 

[Noisy Humbucker]

jangbricks

 

[TedEH]

I didn't expect to get much into it, but have been enjoying some of Joe Rogan's podcasts on youtube on in the background while working lately.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

I watch a ton of stuff but most of it is gear or gaming related, so I won't leave those here.
Lately I've been super into engineering/meme channels like William Osman, Hacksmith, Stuff Made Here ( he does super cool stuff like a self correcting golf club), Michael Reeves.
I've also been super into knifemaking channels like Green Beetle and Alec Steele/Blackbeard knives

For food channels I quite enjoy Joshua Weissman, Sam the Cooking Guy and of course J Kenji Alt Lopez.

 

[sleewell]

ozzy man is hilarious.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

I have been really into Binging with Babish and How To Drink lately. Both very entertaining and perfectly good for playing in the background while doing other stuff.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Cocktail Chemistry is great too. I've been playing around with making cocktail pods

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

Cocktail Chemistry is great too. I've been playing around with making cocktail pods

Oh I think I saw that episode the other day. That would be a fun party trick.

 

[Randy]

Was gonna make a new thread but remembered this one already exists. What your favorite non-music YouTube channels? I caught myself binging this one last week.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

I like Chords of Orion. He's the Bob Ross of ambient guitar. I have learned a ton from him/

This guy fills me with such joy. His HANL rendition is incredible. I especially love that he shoots arrows during the "arrowheads, arrowheads..." part I sent this to my friend as soon as I found it and all he said back was, "how high are you?"

edit: his dancing during the crimson king interludes had me literally clapping lmao this is so precious

 

[Church2224]

The Act Man and Gmanlives. Best Gaming Review Channels

 

[Bodes]

I jave no luck how I stumbled onto the following:

1. Lock picking lawyer - I couldn't even care less about picking a lock, but here I am watching this bloke.

2. Blocked drain Korea - seriously something so lethargic about watching people cleaning out filthy, grease-blocked drains.

3. Post10 - dude clears out culverts and flooded streets.

4. Jimmy Rees - very clever take on the things Aussies do and say.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

Epic Gardening and Hoocho are my current faves, the former for watching soil gardening and the latter for hydroponic gardening experiments.

Also a huge fan of 3x3 Custom Tamar. Fantastic woodworker with really great videos. Rex Krueger is great for hand-tool woodworking. Bourbon Moth Woodworking is fun to watch too, though I'm generally less interested in the projects he does.

Bill McClintock does really great mashups. I like to put on his massive Playlist while I work.

And of course I love LGR for 90s PC gaming nostalgia, Pushing up Roses for 90s gaming and TV nostalgia, and 8 Bit Guy for 80s computing nostalgia and info.

Then there's Technology Connections. This guy makes the most mundane things so interesting. Chest freezers, toasters, heat pumps, can openers.... The list goes on, and they're great.

Adam Ragusea is my favorite food YouTuber by far. He's a journalist by training so he is great at researching dishes, ingredients, and cooking concepts and providing a lot of background on the dishes he cooks. He often interviews experts as part of his videos. They're great. I've made a lot of his stuff and it's usually great. He teaches you WHY a recipe is how it is, which makes it really easy to modify it to your own tastes and needs.