Some videos for your holiday break

Small creators on YouTube with no budget are frequently better than NFLX with infinite funds

Happy end of year to all subscribers, thank you for being a part of this community and reading my thoughts this year. I appreciate the 1,000s of emails and comments you’ve shared with me, too. In case you didn’t know you can reply to any story from a Substack writer and share thoughts, they go directly to our inbox.

If you find value in what I do, I’d love for you to encourage a friend to join us next year, even on the free tier, you’ll still get all stories. I do this as a labor of love although greatly appreciate the financial support from many of you.

Anyway, you might find yourself with some time at the end of the year or while traveling. I thought I’d share a few cool YouTube videos that might help provoke thoughts for the new year. These are in no particular order, with the only commonality being I watched them and found them to be insightful and worth the time.

1. Fascinating unedited interview with David Foster Wallace, one of the greatest thinkers of the modern age to die before his time. Imagine how great his podcasts would be if he were still here today.

2. There’s a big discussion on beaurocracy and how we’ve become strangled by the state and overly complex regulatory burden. My friend Rudyard Lynch goes in detail asking the question if this is killing civilization.

3. A bit ago, Duke University published a lecture from Jonathan Haidt on the two incompatible values in American universities. It’s such a great talk, and in hindsight predicted the decline of many of our prestigious institutions. Worth the time, it explains a lot about the world.

4. Fun thought experiment on ‘the machine’ (maybe you can guess where it goes, I won’t spoiler it for you).

5. On the ‘Marvelization of Cinema’, and how the movie industry now produces content not cinema. Big media now mostly produces paint-by-numbers works to appeal to averages, the industry stopped taking chances years ago (we’ve written on this many times). Applies to many creative sectors.

6. I’ve really enjoyed the work done by Konstantin Kisin over the last year to try to bring sanity to the political discourse, here’s a great interview with him and author James Lindsay who has done a lot of work to call out the extremes on both the far left and far right.

7. Poker’s greatest tournament run, fun recently retold story of Chris Moneymaker in the 2003 WSOP championship is an enjoyable tale for all, whether you play poker or not.

8. Great video breaking down Fight Club & Nietzsche, there’s probably 1,000s of vlogs analyzing this but I’d say this is still my favorite.

9. Not an architect but been casual observer of ‘liminal spaces’ for some time. It’s fascinating on a number of dimensions and there isn't enough analysis on them. This video is the best on it I've come across, some slight melodramatics but an enjoyable watch.

10. Really interesting video (and adventure) Johnny Harris took to Saudi Arabia to explore the megacity being built in the desert (the scale of this project is incredible).

11. And a final one, on how hurry sickness is infuriating our culture (I wrote on this in the plague of over-optimization, but it’s such a great video I want to share it again for those who missed it).

YouTube is an infinite library of ideas, directly from individuals not committees or organizations, and so you get genuine thoughts vs work watered down for an average audience. I would say my time there broadly makes me smarter, while time on other streaming networks just serves as passive entertainment. Of course, it’s all in how you use it. At the very least hopefully I introduced you to some new channels you can enjoy today.

I hope you have an excellent end of year with friends and family and can reset for 2025. Look forward to sharing new ideas with you next year.