I’ve probably mentioned that sometimes I stream random things while coding etc, to keep the easily-bored parts of my mind occupied or something. For a long time I was streaming mysteries like Bones and Lie to Me, and I would get annoyed with them when they switched from self-contained mystery stories to long arcs about the personal and family problems of the characters (if I wanted soap opera, I would watch soap opera), and that segued over to police procedurals, which had both that problem and more or less toxic levels of copaganda and testosterone (looking at you, Jethro “Mary Sue” Gibbs). So I mostly stopped that.
I didn’t switch over to podcasts, because 90% of podcasts have (at least) two people on them, and they spend an annoying amount of time exchanging meaningless in-jokes and chuckling at each other. Which, even if I’m not really listening and only playing it for background, makes me switch them off.
So for reasons that I can’t recall, I started streaming some random long-form essay things on YouTube, probably based on my ongoing curiosity about the thought-processes of conspiracy theorists (so presentations and debunking of Q stuff, Flat Earth stuff, Sovereign Citizen stuff, Creationist stuff, MLM stuff, etc), and gradually I followed links and recommendations and stuff, and subscribed to some YouTubers and joined some Patreons and stuff, so I thought I’d list some of the stuff I’ve been watching. Let’s start with, like, my YouTube subscriptions in whatever order they appear in here, and see where that takes us.
Legal Eagle is cool; a smart and articulate actual lawyer talking about actual legal stuff, in an approachable but not especially dumbed-down way. Does both fun puff stuff like “A real lawyer reacts to TV shows with legal stuff in them”, and more serious stuff like analyzing impeachments and what international law means for people who invade countries.
Rachel Oates is a smart young woman with a fun UKish accent (not the last one we’ll see), who talks intelligently about her reactions and opinions on internet culture and all sorts of random stuff; I may have gotten to her via feminist or anti-creationist stuff. And she has a cute dog.
Münecat is another smart young woman with a fun UKish accent (see?), and a more thorough investigative and technical bent (as well as high production values and some rockin’ musical numbers). I probably got to her via anti-MLM stuff; amusingly, her most recent essay is about Crypto and NFT stuff, and she draws parallels between that and MLMs beyond the obvious stuff that I’d already noticed.
The Non-Alchemist (did I actually subscribe to them? I don’t remember doing that, but there they are on my Subscriptions page, so likely I did) is a smart guy with no particular accent (whaat?) who does atheist, and anti-anti-atheist, stuff. There are a Whole Lot of YouTube channels that do that, this is one that I got to and noted.
Paulogia is another one; that is, a smart guy with no particular accent who does atheist and anti-anti-atheist stuff; more specifically “A former Christian looking at the claims of current Christians,” which gives him an interesting perspective. He (like some of the other people on this list) spends what seems an inordinate amount of time responding to certain I guess Big On YouTube but otherwise unremarkable creationist figures like “Kent Hovid” and “Ken Ham” (who are apparently, and confusingly, different people), but I guess it’s good that someone is. He does other stuff, too, though, and has some interesting guests (some of whom I may have wandered over to and subscribed to also).
Emma Thorne is perhaps the first smart young woman with a fun UK accent that I subscribed to. She does atheist stuff and anti-MLM stuff (and other stuff), and was perhaps the conduit by which I got from watching the former things to watching the latter things. She has lots of plushies and action figures and so on, and is a Satanist who starts every episode with “Hallo, lovely people!”.
Geeky Faye Art is rather completely different from those I’ve mentioned so far. Smart young enby, apparently (as I just noticed) in the UK, but without an accent (or, presumably, with an American accent), but less about atheism or pyramid schemes and more about making really cool stuff using 3D printers and little Raspberry Pis and whatnot. Which is fascinating, and something that I’m much more likely to watch than do myself. Also I just really like their energy somehow, inchoately.
The Illuminaughtii is a cartoon lady with a pyramid for a head (and no / an American accent), and does really detailed and thoroughly-researched essays on all sorts of things, including corporations behaving badly, MLMs, frauds, crimes, and a whole bunch of more or less related stuff. Hours and hours of good listening.
(I am finding as I go through this that I haven’t actually subscribed to some of these people, and have just been relying on I guess The Algorithm to tell me about new stuff they do; so I’m fixing that as we go along.)
The Lady of the Library (for whom I seem to have a “user” link rather than a “channel” link? I don’t understand YouTube) is a smart young woman apparently named Cinzia, with the (what?) plummiest imaginable accent; a pleasure to listen to. She talks about a bunch of interesting historical and academic subjects, often around Ancient Greece and Rome; I think I got to her because of one episode where she responds to someone who claims that the Roman Empire never existed (this is apparently a thing!). According to an Instagram post she struggles with low self-esteem, which just goes to show; if this person can have low self-esteem, anyone can!
Jenny Nicholson is a smart young woman with (no particular accent, and) a marvelous sense of comedic timing. She is / has been very into various fandoms, like Star Wars, Disney Parks, and My Little Pony, and talks humorously and with sharp self-awareness about it all. She reviews movies with a really impressive amount of critical acumen, and also did one episode about how she traveled to another state with some friends to pick up a huge plush Borg (edit: Porg (lol)) that she’d bought on ebay or something. Whether she’s doing that, reviewing a Major Motion Picture, or doing a reading of a really terrible piece of fanfic, she brings the same (surely there’s a word for it that I don’t know) deadpan perfectly-timed sense of humor to it, and I love all of her stuff. I joined her Patreon when I’d watched basically all of her public stuff from the last several years on YouTube.
Heh, there are more of these than I’d realized!
Lindsay Ellis is apparently a huge Twitter and YouTube celeb, who might or might not currently be on hiatus / offline, and who has been cancelled and the subject of much drama. She’s also smart and interesting and funny, if a bit (what?) jaded or something.
Strange Aeons is a smart young woman who seems like she should have a UK accent (what?) but doesn’t. She has an excellent modified Furby which is like three feet long, and talks about Tumblr culture, lesbian culture, her Sphynx Cat, and lots of other stuff. Always fun to watch.
Genetically Modified Skeptic is another atheist who used to be a Christian, even an Evangelical, and smartly covers various topics in atheism and Christian apologetics, and sometimes appears with other folks on this list.
Ask a Mortician is a smart deep-voiced woman who (wait for it) is a mortician, and talks about all sorts of interesting death-adjacent topics, like the faking of spirit photographs, historical vampire panics, whether it’s legal to mummify your cult leader, and so on. Excellent sense of humor, interesting topics, easy to listen to.
Jordan Herrod is a smart young woman and PhD student in machine learning, who talks about various AI-adjacent and PhD-adjacent topics. I got to her when I was first learning all about generative transformers and all (GPT3 etc). Some of what she says is very specific to people wanting to get degrees in machine learning (and I’m sure it’s very useful to them!) but most of it is more generally-interesting AI and learning stuff.
Samaneri Jayasāra – Wisdom of the Masters is a person with a silky voice and a perhaps Australian accent, not afraid of a profound pause, evocatively reading various writings in various wisdom traditions, including Buddhism and including Zen. I don’t think they say any words of their own, they just read the writings over calm and soothing background music. Excellent for depth.
And if I’m going to widen the list to include things that aren’t people doing long-form essays, I should add Karima Hoisan, who makes Second Life and Opensim machinima (which, I proudly but shyly admit, sometimes have my Second Life name in the credits for some scripting that I helped with). So much virtual world art is for whatever reason of the “broken dolls in a wasteland” school, but these aren’t; they are celebrations and depictions of basically everything human, often beautiful often funny often profound. She worked extensively with Natascha Randt, who we sadly lost recently.
(What happens to YouTube channels when the owners die? Has this started to be an issue yet? One might expect it’s been long enough…)
I could continue to other non-essay channels that I subscribe to, and get into like Susan Werner and Pomplamoose [sic], but that would become a whole nother post, like “Music I Listen To”, and I suppose maybe someday I’ll do that; but not today!
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