What Blogs, Podcasts, YouTube Channels Am I Following?
Last updated: 2024-02-13
There are a ton of people doing facinating work and writing about it. Here is a big list of the personal blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels I’ve appreciated reading and listening to the most (in no particular order).
Since there’s a lot of them, I’ve broken it into several sections:
This list is also available as an OPML. If you want to get these blogs and podcasts in your RSS feed, you can download and import it into your reader.
Tech
There are some great tech blogs out there. Here are some of the best:
- Chris Siebenmann
- Salvatore Sanfilippo creator of Redis
- David Crawshaw for discussion on Go and SQLite
- Joseph Gentle for discussing the modern web, electron, CRDT’s
- Brett Cannon for great Python-related posts
- Martin Kleppmann for local-first software, CRDT’s, automerge
- Martin Sustrik for networking (ØMQ, NNG) and concurrency (libdill, libmill)
- Drew Devault for open source, simply built software, sourcehut
- Charles Leifer for database-related things in Python
- Jessie Frazelle for docker, especially her dockerized desktop apps
- Brandur Leach for discussion of databases
- Michał Górny for his perspective on Python, recently the cryptography/rust controversy
- Julia Evans for great devops-related content
- Solene in general, but especially for OpenBSD-related content
- Thorsten Ball for his great intro books on writing compilers & interpreters
- Rus Cox co-creator of Go
- Ben Hoyt for writing on Go and other software
- Micah Lerner for content on distributed systems
- Max Justiz for finding RCE in popular things (apt, gVisor, and more)
- Bob Nystrom for Wren and his book Crafting Interpreters
- Colin Percival runs Tarsnap, blogs on BSD, security, and AWS
- Andrew Kelly (on Vimeo or his blog) creator of the Zig programming language
- Ariadne Conill contributor to Alpine Linux & other FOSS projects
- Justine Tunney created the APE cross-platform executible format, cosmopolitan libc, and llamafile
- Adam Gordon Bell hosts the CoRecursive Podcast
- Michael Stapelberg creator of i3wm, now doing interesting stuff with Go
- Markus Winand: SQL evangelist, creator of modern-sql.com and use-the-index-luke.com
I also want to mention a couple organizations posting interesting things:
- 100 Rabbits (aka. Rek & Devine) for local-first, portable software
- Low Tech Magazine for radical simplicity, sustainable tech
- No Tech Magazine for when low tech was still too much tech
- CMU Database Group for lectures & courses on database internals
I am also listening to some great tech podcasts:
- The Software Freedom Conservancy’s Free as in Freedom for discussing FOSS enforcement
- Changelog’s Go Time for all things Go-related
- Software Engineering Radio and Heroku’s
Code[ish]
for a broad view of industry topics - Oxide Computer’s On the Metal is off the air now (replaced by Oxide and Friends), but the archive is a great source of interviews on computing history, dealing with hardware
General Interest
First, there’s longform interview podcasts. These are great because they bring on fascinating guests in tons of different disciplines. Beware though, the guests ranges from mainstream to total crackpot.
- The Lex Friedman Podcast: tech, science, and everything else
- Michael Malice’s YOUR WELCOME: anarchist discussions with people that basically no-one else will
- Eric Weinstein’s The Portal (inactive since 2020): philosophy, tech, science, physics, and society
Then, there’s everything else. Most of these are YouTube channels that cover random topics that I found interesting and didn’t fit into any of the other categories here. Here again, the quality ranges from fairly surface level to insanely detailed and interesting.
- PolyMatter: slickly produced intros to various topics in economics, business, and politics
- WendoverProductions: well produced video essays on everything logistics
- Fern: video essays on business, politics, and more
- Hoog: video essays on urban planning & design
- American History Tellers: dramatized history, usually as a 4-part series
- Fall of Civilizations: deep dives on ancient civilizations
- Geography Now: quirky intro videos for every country on earth (finishing every country in 2024!)
- Coffeezilla: exposing scams (very satisfying), mostly in crypto
- Practical Engineering: in depth explainers on infrastructure, civil engineering, and construction
- RealLifeLore: video essays on geography, economics, and society
- CompanyMan: overviews of the history of various businesses (mostly in retail)
- ModernMBA: detailed video essay’s on various businesses
- Wally Wallington: built stonehenge in his backyard single-handed using hand tools and leverage
- Primative Technology: amazing tutorials on ancient technology (turn on captions!)
- How to Make Everything: making things from scratch and explaining how
Health & Food
On health & wellness, there’s some great podcasts out there:
- Dr. Peter Attia’s The Drive: extremely in-depth discussion of medical topics
- Dr. Andrew Huberman’s Huberman Lab: interviews and discussion on health & wellness
- Rich Roll Podcast: longform interviews with experts on fitness & health
- Dr. Michael Gregor’s NutritionFacts.org (blog & YouTube): quick reviews of the latest nutrition research
And for food and cooking, blogs and recipe videos are a dime a dozen. But these are some really standout channels on cooking and food:
- Food Wishes: the best explanations of cooking methods and tricks I’ve heard
- Kenji Lopez-Alt: casually explaining the science of cooking
- James Hoffmann: in search of the best coffee humanly possible
- Whole Foods Plant Based Cooking Show: for the best vegan recipes
- Tasting History: re-creating historical recipes and diving into the people and culture that ate them
- OTR Food & History: great in-depth videos about South East Asian history and cuisine
Art & Culture
- TV & Movies
- AltShiftX: absurdly in-depth analysis of Game of Thrones, the Expanse, and more
- Thomas Flight: analysis of film by highlighting something a movie does well
- Lessons from the Screenplay: also explores film by analyzing a movie and what it does well
- Like Stories of Old: more video essays on various themes in film
- Visual Art:
- David Bull: woodblock printmaker
- Video Games & Board Games:
- GameMaker’s Toolkit: great discussion of video game design
- StoryModeOn: analysis of great video games
- Shut Up & Sit Down (aka. SUSD): the best & most fun board game review channel on YouTube
- Before You Play: board game reviews & playthroughs
- BoardGameGeek (on YouTube): reviews & playthroughs from the definative forum for board gaming
- Music:
- Music: detailed videos on how music works
- TwoSetViolin: wacky violin videos
- Other:
- DearModern: quick feng sui videos
- City of the Rails: a narrative exploration of hobo culture
- Diss & Tell: remembering pop culture’s biggest celebrity feuds
Defense
- Conflicted: by far the most in-depth podcast on the Middle East & Islamic extremism
- Perun: hour-long presentation-style deep dives into various defense topics
- William Spaniel: Mr. “Lines on Maps” himself
- Caspian Report: well produced (albiet somewhat overdramatic) video essays
- War on the Rocks: interviews with various defense experts