51
votes
Favorite hobby / subculture YouTube channels?
I’m wondering what everyone’s favorite YouTube content creators are - I leave my history off and try to avoid YouTube’s recommendation engine, so it makes me hard to stumble naturally on interesting channels.
Please feel free to suggest anything - here are a sample of ones I like with a link or two to a good video from them
- ALFA music (music) https://youtu.be/cLQZyreoZcs?feature=shared
- anndj (music) https://youtu.be/D_XSSIymUZg?feature=shared
- bushradical (homestead stuff) https://youtu.be/UQv9EDpwfqQ?feature=shared
- Gabriel Varga (kickboxing) https://youtu.be/DfboF0CN7fM?feature=shared
- Go Magic (board game) https://youtu.be/hPlkEIrWaXU?feature=shared
- L1011 wide body (old games) https://youtu.be/SV6Lv-McqlY?feature=shared
- RM Transit https://youtu.be/YYVfmMTda0Y?feature=shared
- Scamboli reviews (anime reviews) https://youtu.be/n96aV2rmVGE?feature=shared
- Grappling Academy (bjj) https://youtu.be/v_WjtZVGzvE?feature=shared
- Grace Mandarin (learning Chinese) https://youtu.be/DMGO9CZE2vs?feature=shared
- make your pet (robotics) https://youtu.be/cWNikw-Jsr4?feature=shared
- Munson guitar (easy strum along) https://youtu.be/Ywb8lVYIxUI?feature=shared
- north of the border (clay stuff) https://youtu.be/INU9WD1nxMM?feature=shared
- tabi e (car camping) https://youtu.be/K4TbzyXUCtk?feature=shared
Some of my current absolute favourites:
Food:
Retro computing:
Science & Tech & Space & Stuff:
Music (sort of):
Puzzles:
Technology Connections and connextras is so good. I love deep dives into how stuff works.
I really enjoy Alvin Zhou's videos. They're so peaceful and his production values are really high. I think most of his recipes are too much for mere mortals, but I did indeed make the 100 hour brownies, which were pretty damned good. For regular cooking I follow Kenji Lopez-Alt and Chef John
Tasting history is great and I love Parthian Chicken! It's one of my favorite YouTube-inspired recipes, and something I make for dinner parties, mostly because it's delicious but also for the WTF factor. Plus the ingredients are pretty easy to find.
Cracking the Cryptic was a big part of my early lockdown experience. Very soothing and impressive.
Oh man I was heavily invested in Scott Manley's Kerbal Space Program videos for a solid two years. Something about hearing someone who actually understands orbital mechanics talk about the subject while playing a quirky (and sometimes broken) simulation game is very satisfying to me.
Edit: I don't think anybody has mentioned Horror Stories
Really neat content about horrible accidents, mass slayings, and the occasional inhumane medical experiment. What I enjoy most is his presentation style, it feels very neat and well-researched. It's my favorite YouTube rabbit-hole but he posts very infrequently.
So many good ones here. I love James Hoffman. I've basically binge-watched his entire back catalog at this point.
Also recommend for coffee: Morgan Eckroth and Lance Hedrick
As a lifer in the coffee industry I love James Hoffmann's content and his overall approach. What's your home roasting setup?
A cheap popcorn machine.
That's pretty much it! I think I paid 20 euros for it. I do use my phone as a timer, a sieve to cool the coffee beans down quickly, and I do the roasting under the ventilation of a kitchen hood, while wearing a mask.
Naturally, the results are not perfect. But they are surprisingly good. The challenge is that with a cheap popcorn machine, the heat is applied very quickly, so the time it takes for the roast to go from "light roast" to "burnt beans" is fairly short, about a minute or so. The roasts are also slightly different from one batch to another, as the method is fairly inconsistent, and I can only roast about 70-80 grams of beans at a time.
But it's fun. The biggest issue I suspect is the short time frame, as it seems to result in somewhat thinner flavour profiles than if the roasting process was able to run for longer. Now, there definitely are plenty of aromas in the coffee that I roast, and they drink fine black, in fact much better than anything I can buy in a supermarket, but there isn't the kind of depth to the flavour that you can get from the best artisan roasters with proper equipment. It's especially noticeable with lattes and cappuccinos, as the flavours of my home roasted beans get more lost when milk is introduced to the coffee.
And because it's such a short time window for the roast, and because of the inconsistencies introduced by the popcorn machine, it's difficult to target any specific level of acidity or bitterness, and especially sweetness, with this setup. Since both acidity and bitterness are basically a function of time, acidity decreasing the longer you roast while bitterness increases, I can still ballpark those two, but sweetness is trickier to manage, as it peaks somewhere in the middle of the roasting process, and I have no way of really knowing when that is. So, it's always a little bit of a surprise what comes out. But in a way, that's part of the fun.
I haven't stopped ordering roasted beans from local speciality shops, but roasting my own is a fun and relatively inexpensive hobby.
What do you do in the industry?
I was a barista for many years but now have been roasting for about 6 years professionally with years before that figuring out roasting at home.
Home roasting is a lot of fun and you can get really good results. I remember back in the day when I was roasting with a heat gun/bread machine combo. I had some green from the same lot as the most well-known roaster here in Portland OR US. Mine was just as good, if not better, than theirs. At that point I knew I was onto something. Now that I've been working on big machines with automation and all that I really miss the fully hands-on process only relying on your senses instead of sensors. I hope you keep on having fun roasting at home, and keep on trying out new coffees. It never gets old!
He hasn't posted anything in a couple years, but Kiwami Japan is weirdly mesmerizingly weird. His schtick is making knives (actually, the same shape knife every time) out of the most unexpected materials from cardboard to cucumbers. It's very ASMR-ish and no narration. There's nearly always some chemistry involved, and the resulting knife has to be able to actually cut things, typically a cucumber, so there's always a sharpening phase. It's slightly creepy with an occasional non sequitur that makes you laugh.
I absolutely love him-- he is a genius. Besides the premise of "making a knife out of crazy things", I really appreciate the quietness, camerawork, subtle humor, and if captions are turned on, you get the science lesson behind whatever he is doing and why he's doing it, and why it works. His equipment looks straight out of a lab, too-- he has a very interesting process. And yes, keep your eyes open for his ever-present tester, Cucumber, who can be sneaky and likes to hide in the darndest places.
The Barbie centrifuge always gets me.
Oh man, now I need to rewatch all his videos with captions! It's the magic chemistry that always impresses me most.
I've watched every single video he's made. His weird knife series is just mezmerizing.
Saw this thread before I went to bed last night and wondered how many of my favourites would be posted by morning. Looks like about half, so I'll throw out another vote for Technology Connections and James Hoffman (and Hames Joffman) without a link.
Wristwatch Revival - Servicing and repairing watches. I like to put these on sometimes while working. The vibe is super chill.
Summoning Salt - Documentary style histories of speed runs.
Lock Picking Lawyer - Learn to never trust Master Lock.
Just remembered that I forgot to add Northern Scavenger! I do a lot of multi-day canoe trips and these guys are an absolute inspiration. The video that got me into them was their 35 day trip across Labrador, but any of the long trips are worth a watch.
I follow Emma Cruises even though I don't really care about cruises.
I follow Swell Entertainment even though I don't care about events.
I follow Dr. Becky and I do care about astrophysics even though my level of understanding is fairly low in those subjects.
I follow Chad Chad even though I don't really care about internet meta.
Those are all good entertaining channels. If you look for them you may notice that they're all owned by cute young women. I assure you that is just an odd coincidence. Damn algorithm forcing me to watch beautiful smart women all day long...
Chad Chad is a lot of fun, especially if you don't really care about internet meta. Along similar lines, Kurtis Connor is also worth a look with a very similar vibe.
If you'd like another one for that fine collection, look up Cleo Abram
I highly recommend the "History of the Universe" youtube channel if you're into physics/astrophysics.
"The History Of" is the best set of channels on youtube I'd say. Have been watching religiously for years now
Atomic Shrimp - gentle paced videos about weird stuff in cans, foraging, budget food challenges and scammers
Africa Everyday - a former scammer that befriended Atomic Shrimp and sometimes collaborates on recipes with him, makes videos about his life in Nigeria
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't - "a low-brow, crass approach to plant ecology & evolution"
Drew Gooden - comedic commentary on YouTube/ internet/ pop culture
Gavin Webber - cheerful cheesemaking for curd nerds!
GeoWizard - walks all over the land, fascinating challenges like walking across Norway in a straight line, plays a lot of Geoguessr
Henry Phillips - comedy in painfully sad cookery
Honest Tries - a guy tries infamously terrible recipes in earnest
Jay Foreman - silly and educational videos about maps and the places on them
Luke Towan - amazing scale models and dioramas
Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games - the director of several Kirby games and Super Smash Bros. reflects on the principles of good games design/ gamedev
OneShortEye - classic PC game speedrunning history
Ordinary Sausage - sausages
Scott Rea - good, proper butchery
TierZoo - if the world was an MMORPG, what would the best character build in nature be?
TwoSetViolin - two professional violinists having fun
Soft White Underbelly - interesting and often sad interviews with people who have lived remarkable lives.
Ziang's Food Workshop - mum and son duo making British Chinese takeaway favourites
Masaru - a fisherman who catches, processes and eats all kinds of different fish. Has had pretty bad poisoning from it at least a couple of times but still forges ahead
I'm a big fan of Crime Pays but Botany doesn't
Out of all the channels I could be subscribing to and throwing some patreon cash towards, CPBBD is the only one who really deserves it. The man is pretty much cataloging the remaining plantlife we haven't made go extinct yet and making it interesting and engaging.
Angela Collier is a physicist who talks about a variety of science-related content, mostly but not all physics.
I haven't subscribed to her, but I was going to recommend her still. Good quality, personable, and admits to what isn't her area of expertise.
A lot of the same ones I watch have been brought up like Tasting History, Sci Show, Summoning Salt etc. so I'll add a few that don't seem to have been mentioned.
Townsends - Channel about 17th/18th century living, mostly centered around cooking but he covers how people lived off the land, where and how they lived and what they got up to on a day to day basis, really interesting and John seems to be a very nice man.
HCBailly - Classic old school YouTube JRPG Let's Player. He just does what he does best and hasn't really changed much in the 12+ years he's been doing it. Plays through JRPG's like an absolute expert while confirming background on the games systems, player and enemy stats, development, secrets and all topped off with pretty rubbish humour. He's like a comfort YouTuber for me now, can just stick his playthroughs on in the background.
A Film in 3 Minutes - A great little channel that puts out very short video essays/reviews on films that don't run longer than 3 minutes. The channel has very few subscribers but I've been following him for a while now and have picked up on a ton of films that I hadn't watched before that are firm favourites now.
The Why Files - I'm enjoying this channel less than I did and haven't watched it in a few months but I'll get into that. It's a channel that explores topics surrounding UFOs, cryptids, conspiracy theories etc and then looks at the evidence surrounding the case and debunks them where possible. It's got a very Art Bell, theatre of the mind style presentation and AJ is a fantastic host alongside his sidekick and foil, Hecklefish, who almost plays an at times hilarious devil on the shoulder style character. However, more recently, his videos have gotten lazier and the debunking hasn't really been happening, he tends to just leave the videos on a "make up your own mind" note which doesn't do it for me, the debunking was always the best part if the videos for me as a way of grounding the videos in reality after hearing some crazy, out of this world story about Templars, the Ark of the Covenant, Bigfoot and extraterrestrials from Zeta Reticuli. Great outro theme though!
Been watching Townsend's for years- he's the guy that introduced me to Joe Pera.
Townsends is the most chill dude you could ever meet, used to see him all the time at rev-war reenactments before I moved on to a different hobby. He's a legend and was always engaging and informative.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant but here it is.
Girl With the Dogs - A dog groomer who occasionally grooms cats too. Her videos are both informative and relaxing, and the dogs are so cute.
Mortismal Gaming - A video game reviwer who mostly focuses on RPGs and reviews them after 100%. He's very chill, and doesn't use a point system. Both are important pluses for me.
robinswords - Medieval sword and armor nerd I watch for his shorts.
Jacob Geller and Leadhead - Narrative analyses of popular media. Geller has a broader scrope, as Leadhead focuses on video games, but both provide interesting narrative examinations.
Ghostcharm - Lore examinations of video game characters. Has series like Villainpedia, where he examines the lore of infamous villains.
I have a lot more video game content creators I follow, some of whom I like very much, but they are more on the humor (e.g. sovietwomble) or more traditional (e.g. Iron Pineapple) side of things, and I tried to focus on the more unorthodox content type here. Also, unless curbed a little bit, I feel like video game channels would flood this topic lol.
You and I have a lot of the same interests! Here are some of my favorites I regularly tune in to:
Travel
Science
Music
Making
The following ones are just really interesting to me and its cool to watch them... well, make stuff.
Software
Foreign Language
Bushcraft - All of these people kick ass and I love watching them do cool stuff in the woods.
Learning
Fitness kind of but not really
just so everybody knows, bald and bankrupt is/was a sex tourist and has credible accusations of lots of dodgy stuff against him
Oh geez. Didn't know that. Unsubscribed.
Couple of my recent favorites:
The crafsman - super relaxing toy making videos. High quality production and all round just nice.
World war 2 - the most in depth history of ww2. Weekly episodes.
Cool worlds - great scientific videos about space by a space doctor/scientist. Whatever they are.
Straybob - fantastic travel videos. Most slow travel kinda stuff but he truly understands what travel is and I like that.
Really liking some of these recommendations. Here's two I haven't seen yet:
NileRed is a chemistry YouTuber. He does stuff like turning plastic gloves into grape soda and making plasma with grapes in a microwave.
Peter Santanello Just a really good interviewer who goes into places a lot of people would rather forget (e.g. housing projects in Chicago and rundown former coal mining towns in West Virginia) and interviews people in a way that lets them tell their stories for their own stories' sake instead of someone else's narrative.
Wow! Loved the old game stuff
As far as I can tell, she's left YouTube now, but Jenny Nicholson is great and seems to be just me if I was a girl. The things she talks about are very similar to what I was doing at the same points in my life, just sometimes a different side of it. I find it weird how similar we are.
De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina is a Mexican abuela showing you how to make her food.
Climate Town is funny man talking about climate-related issues (not exclusively climate science).
Jun Yoshizuki, (main channel) is essentially a Japanese man who appears to live in an anime where he makes fun foods for himself and his wife (they have a separate YouTube channel that is more popular), and, more importantly, for his cats, who accompany him on bike rides through the Japanese countryside.
Peer Jan Rind is a rural/tribal Pakistani man with his own channel. Interesting to see a completely different part of the world.
Captain Disillusion makes videos often debunking CGI fakes. He also talks about how things are done and has a unique style.
jan Misali does mostly linguistics, but also some misc nerd stuff like rythym games or base-12 counting
ACollierAstro does good videos about astrophysics, but can be broader
Dan McClellan does interesting stuff about Academic biblical study, fun to watch him debunk biblical literalists and those who claim historicity where it doesn't exist (also does data over dogma podcast)
Alex O'connor does philosophy videos, often related to atheism but not always (also has a podcast)
Another Roof,numberphile,mathologer all do good in-depth maths content
Jenny Draper does interesting videos about british (mostly london) history
Some have already been mentioned, but I'm going to mention them again because they deserve to be amplified:
EDIT: How could I forget these??
I have to mention Spirit Of The Law for Age of Empires II content (yes, the old PC game from 1999).
I stumbled upon this channel as I recently picked up Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on Steam during the Steam Spring Sale, and he's an excellent creator. Entertaining even if you don't play the game, and leans more into breaking down mechanics, explaining the math behind things, as well as plenty of goofy and funny videos about the game.
This interview with him is really interesting too — essentially he was a high school math teacher for a while, making AoE2 videos in his spare time. His channel grew to over 300K subs, which is pretty cool for an old computer game from 1999.
A lot of great stuff here. I would like to add Vagrant Holiday even though they haven't posted anything in a while. It's an interesting way to travel the world.
Looking Glass Universe - Educational channel about quantum mechanics
NightHawkInLight - Fun scientific experiments
Andrew Lam - Some guy who was apparently really into dash cams, but now makes videos about the engineering behind everyday things like car tires, or road barriers.
Itchy Boots - Bike travel vlogger currently traveling through Africa
BeardMeatsFood - Competitive eater
Explosions&Fire - Makes stuff go boom or burn baby burn. Fun Aussie does some chemistry. Kinda like Nile Red crossed with an eccentric chemistry professor.
Hoser - Canadian talks macroeconomics and global development stories in a very entertaining and educational way (not just talking head). Think Countryballs with more rigorous analysis and musings.
Oh man, I’ve found some great channels that really clicked with me in the past few years.
TronicsFix - I’ve recently become interested in making electronics repairs into a hobby. Here he’ll walk you through his logic and provides explanations or thoughts when a repair works or doesn’t.
TimberW0lf Studios - Production values are through the roof in this series of videos. The ones that got me hooked are The Edit of Evangelion, an ongoing series breaking down Neon Genesis Evangelion and describing the themes throughout the series. I’ve learned quite a lot about how shoot composition affects your understanding of characters through placement, coloring, and why those elevator scenes are actually important!
12tone - This creator has an amazing depth and breadth of music theory knowledge and showcases it by breaking down famous songs to explain how the function, and what makes them noteworthy. A personal favorite of mine are the two videos describing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (Bonus video on that song’s key)
Thank you! I've already started enjoying all of this content
Andrew Huang - Videos about DAWs, plugins/VSTs, music production/creation, how to be creative and think outside the box, etc.
Many of my other favorites have already been mentioned here.
I'm a fan of MichaelMJD - lots of tech videos that run down what-ifs, history, and other nerdy stuff.
Another classic is danooct1 - showcases payloads, the history of viruses, goes surface-level for hacking, etc.
In no particular order:
suckerpinch - A computer scientist who does ridiculously over-complicated rube goldberg computer things, with the occasional funny irl rube goldberg machine for funsies.
Steve1989MREInfo - taste-tests and reviews MREs. Including old ones. I think the oldest MRE reviewed on the channel is from the american civil war, followed by one from the second boer war
Sean Munger - video essays of varying length, by an actual historian. The amway video was super interesting, it's actually pretty wild how Amyway like directly influenced the modern MLM/pyramid scheme/commercial cult sphere (and it's still around which????? absurd), and how intricately it intertwined with the fundamentalist evangelical xtian sphere.
emma in the moment - Crafting drama. Like an internet drama channel, but with a lot more yarn. Turns out, "stitch and bitch" doesn't just refer to getting together with your friends to work on projects and complain about your life.
EphiTV - Reviews/makes weird mods for random games. Videos are usually short, but i find them incredibly interesting. I think the first video from this channel i saw was about an iron lung mod, which was technically less of a mod and more of "hacking the actual game engine to do the thing"
Honorable mention, because it's not really a hobby/subculture?? but Flaw Peacock - Longform video essays that feel like a cross between excited infodumping and sitting in a class with your favorite teacher. I've watched (for predictable background noise) the Faith videos an embarassing number of times, especially considering i have never and will never play that game lol.