One thing I've been watching lately is Battle For Dream Island. It's an elimination-centric gameshow-style animation series where twenty animate inanimate objects duke it out in contests to avoid getting voted off by the viewers and make it to the end, where, hopefully, they'll win a dream island resort. While it does start out rather childish (it was made by two kids after all), even the first season is decently-written with good characterization, and it gets better as the show goes on (although some of the latest episodes feel kinda lackluster). There are technically four seasons, but the second season sputtered out after ten episodes and the third only got one, so it's not as much to watch. It also inspired leagues and leagues of similar "object shows" that I haven't watched – maybe you can check them out.

No links, because I'm at work, but I'll try to remember channel names as accurately as possible.

First, seconding the rec for Alfabusa if you're at all into Warhammer 40k. I've also been enjoying the WarHams series of game casts, which involve several contributors to the TTS series playing a campaign set in the TTS universe, with all the nonsense and shenanigans that implies. The videos are long (~3 hours each), but they stay on task very well, so no time is wasted on off-topic rambling. It's a nice accompaniment to doing laundry or something like that. I recently remembered that I own grownup coloring books and colored pencils to use while listening, too.

On to my personal recs:

BigCatDerek, featuring the Walk Around the Compound webcast at CARE Rescue (the address for which I will always remember thanks to the musical jingle at the end of every cast), a big cat sanctuary in Texas. I like seeing the tigers and other cats, all of which are very well cared for, and I like listening to Derek ramble about nerdy things or current events or whatever pops into his head. It's just nice.

Three doctors, if you're curious about medical things and like watching Real X Reacting to Relevant Y:

• Mama Doctor Jones - obstetrician/gynecologist.
• Doctor Mike - family physician.
• Dr. Hope's Sick Notes - British GP (I think).

Bondi Vet, for medical things plus animals (though sadly it seems they aren't allowed to show surgical procedures anymore, thanks to YouTube deeming such things unfit for children). The main show is filmed in Australia and, in addition to the titular Bondi vet, also features Steve Irwin's spiritual successor. Vet on the Hill is in England (but features an Aussie vet).

Dominic Noble - Lost in Adaptation. Looks at and critiques book-to-movie adaptations. One of the most fair-minded critics on the Internet, IMO, but doesn't hesitate to rip into things that truly deserve it, like 50 Shades. Also he has a cat called Sir Terry (as in Pratchett) who sometimes features in outtakes. {= D

Hello Future Me - Writing tips and literary analysis of popular media such as The Lord of the Rings, Avatar: The Last Airbender, How to Train Your Dragon and much more. Good stuff.

Jill Bearup - movie and TV fight scene breakdowns by a stage combat performer. Also other stuff, but I haven't investigated further yet. She waffles on a little bit sometimes, but I like learning to look at things in new ways, and she helps me do that.

Passion of the Nerd - Episode guides for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and more recently Firefly, including synopsis and analysis. Whatever his personal flaws, Joss Whedon's works were inspiring and influential and worth studying (and at least he's not currently spewing transphobic rhetoric all over the place, unlike She Who Shall Not Be Named—and btw the next Fantastic Beasts can go jump in a lake).

Ahem. Where was I?

Randomly, pretty much any con video featuring John Barrowman or the main cast of Supernatural. These people never fail to entertain. And that, I think, is a fine note to end on.

~Neshomeh

So first up, if you like Tom Scott's normal style of videos (like me) then I'd recommend The Tim Traveller although he does do more railway related stuff than Tom, it's definitely very interesting tidbits of information about (mostly) Europe.

Secondly, Matt Gray has a second channel called Will It Soft Serve in which he has a Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine that he bought off E-bay and instead of putting in Ice Cream Mix he instead puts in other liquid-y stuff, it uploads weekly but is well worth a watch. Some of the things he has tried to Soft Serve include: Guacamole, Chicken Soup, Pesto and Tea (being British and all), did they Soft Serve? Well I'm not telling you that one.

Moving on, for those who like/are interested in Rocket League, I'm generally keeping up to date with Lethamyr's stuff, ex-pro (and ex-coach) turned content creator very good and funny videos all done at a really high level and some of the maps he's created/shown off have to be seen to be believed.

Finally if you're into shooting non-lethal things at other people (or just watching it) then I'd recommend watching Barker Paintball montage's never looked so good. Only thing is it might be NSFW, most rude bits are beeped out but some do make it in. Still very funny though.

Nova

P.S Almost forgot, watch marbles race: it might sound silly and like something no one would ever do, but it's brilliant and fun and they even got Formula E in on the act during lockdown. Watch it!

Bingeing With Babish, a cooking show with a pretty simplistic style run by a guy with an incredibly mellow and soothing voice. He's not a trained chef and includes mistakes he makes on camera so the audience can see what not to do and learn from his mess-ups.

He does a lot of dishes from movies and television, like the imaginary pie from Hook or the famous Krabby Patty from Spongebob. The dish gets made twice: Once in a way that Babish tries to make as accurate to the original as possible, and once where he tries to improve on stuff that is too gross to eat—like Rachel's meat trifle from Friends.

It's really easy to follow and I've actually stolen some of his recipes to make for friends myself! But also when I want something nice to listen to while I drift off, I put on a playlist of his videos and just let him talk me to sleep, a bit like a cook version of Bob Ross.

I've really gotten into restoration and DIY channels during the quarantine, so my recs will mostly tend towards that.

Baumgartner Restoration is easily one of my all-time favorite channels: videos from a fine art conservator who regularly works on incredibly old and beautiful paintings, and narrates the restoration process in a chill, accessible way. Also, the comment section really amuses me - the usual Youtube comment section is on par with an on-fire garbage can, but his fans usually squee about him using Belgian linen for the tacking edges and sweeping the scraped-off dust towards the camera, which he does pretty often. He also has ASMR versions of a lot of his videos, and sometimes I like to mute the video completely and put on my favorite music. You wouldn't believe how soothing it is to watch someone wash off decades of dust and grit from a painting, especially with some good music on.

宝創るちゃんねるATENALES is a restoration channel dedicated to repairing old kitchenware, paper lanterns, railway lights and basically anything you can think of, usually so old and rusty that you'd believe them beyond repair. Again, it's an incredibly soothing sight.

Hanabira工房 isn't a restoration channel, but it's one of the most wholesome things I've ever found on Youtube. They're a miniature and diorama builder who creates incredibly intricate and absolutely adorable miniature dollhouses and dioramas that look 100% like the real thing, except really, really tiny. You wouldn't believe the amount of work that goes into something like this, but they make it look effortless and so very heartwarming to watch, with soothing music and gorgeous image quality.

Brows Held High, on the other hand, is a video essay/review channel whose main focus is art house cinema. It's exactly as delightfully pretentious as that sounds, but Kyle Kallgren, the host, is a very thoughtful and insightful analyst who also happens to be incredibly funny. I really miss his older, more comedic material, but the reformed Brows Held High balances out deep analysis and funny commentary very well, and offers some really interesting perspectives on things like Shakespeare adaptations and controversial cinema. It's a real treat for any cinema nerd.

Probably my best Youtube rec is for a show called Dimension 20. It's similar to Critical Role in concept, what with recording D&D sessions, but D20 features actors and improv artists as well as some truly impressive battlemaps and minis. In addition, D20 episodes clock in around two hours rather than Critical Role's customary three.

Up on YouTube for free are two seasons of D20, the first season of Fantasy High and the sidequest Escape From The Bloodkeep. Right now, the channel is in the process of adding an additional season, The Unsleeping City, for which they are releasing a new episode for free every week. Most of the content is avaliable on Dropout, another streeaming platform, but the stuff that is avaliable for free on Youtube is top notch.

Fantasy high was the first ever season of Dimension 20, and it's sort of a high school/suburban fantasy with both hilarious and hearbreaking moments.

Escape From The Bloodkeep was the first sidequest from D20 (for context, a "sidequest" is an arc that does not feature the main cast) and is a little shorter than Fantasy High. It took me a while to watch this one fully, but the cast is great and the characters are quite lovable, even while being the top generals and counselors for basically Sauron (they did have to change the names to keep from copyright issues, but the vibes are very much there).

I'm happy to discuss D20 further with anybody, and I highly reccomend it to everyone! (although there are sometimes NSFW concepts and language, it is a wonderful channel)

Oh look, an opportunity to talk about things I like that I haven't been able to talk about a lot! I'll try and refrain from repeating channels other people have recced, but know I'm a fan of STRANGE AEONS as well.

Overly Sarcastic Productions has two content creators, Red and Blue, and a myriad of series from discussion of tropes in writing to recaps of myths from all over the world to history, all incredibly funny and informative. Also there's shitpost videos sometimes. 10/10 highly recommend, learning has never been so fun.

ColeyDoesThings has an incredibly humorous long-running series that very accurately encapsulates fandoms, as well as videos specifically about fanfiction that exist to call you out :D.

Bernadette Banner. Sometimes you just want to sit down and watch incredibly well shot videos about a polite but sassy woman hand sewing everything sewing historical clothes. There's a running joke in her comments section that people who the algorithm has no business recommending her videos to end up finding them and they staying enraptured.

Binging with Babish is excellent for learning about cooking and getting recipes, but the main series that made him popular is recreating foods from media. Especially the weird ones. Also he's known for taking zero shortcuts - at one point he got an actual pizza oven for a video.

Terrible Writing Advice is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a channel with hilarious parody videos about writing advice, which in all honestly are just as good as actual videos about writing advice since they outline what to avoid, not just what to do. Also there's been a longstanding meta-plot at the end of his videos and I need to catch up on that.

Dominic Noble, formerly known as The Dom (rebranded for obvious reasons), is a review channel and is most well known for the series where he compares books to their movie adaptations, and very specifically his reviews of 50 Shades. He's also in the middle of a series on Twilight.

chuggaaconroy is a let's player who as of now has forty-four comprehensive 100% guides for various Nintendo games, plus one he's just started on, as well as thirty-four co-lab LPs on a secondary channel called TheRunawayGuys (disclaimer: while Chugga's channel is generally family-friendly, plus-or-minus accidental or purposeful, though usually not overbearing, innuendos, TRG do not shy away from swearing last I checked). He's incredibly cheerful and genuine in his love for the games he plays, and his videos have a reputation for being incredibly high quality. Also, he's known for his over-the-top reactions and frankly ridiculous luck. Chugga was the first youtuber I'd started following way back when and even now, while not every LP of his catches and holds my attention (though that could be a me thing), those that do are a joy from start to finish even if I never even touch the game he's playing.

That's all for now, but I'm sure I haven't remembered every channel I'd want to rec. If I do, I guess I'll add more.

Todd in the Shadows - pop music critic, also does retrospectives on albums that were such colossal failures they ended careers and one-hit wonders, talking silhouette

STRANGE AEONS - commentator, does Tumblr deep dives, proud mother of Thursday the long Furby

Pyrocynical - commentator, occasionally reviews stuff, will probably have "So guys we did it" engraved on his tombstone

The Spiffing Brit - gamer, has never met a game he can't exploit, powered by tea

ShaelinWrites - writer, talks about aspects of writing I haven't ever really heard anyone else bring up, very chill and approachable

Storied, produced by PBS has two series I enjoy. "It's Lit!" discusses various topics relating to literature, reading and the history of books. "Monstrum" examines the legends of various mythological and folkloric monsters, and looks for the historical and social reasons they developed into what we know today. (The latter series often has violent imagery due to monsters being monsters, and is not safe for FourMoons more often than not.)

Thinklings Books is a small speculative fiction publisher. Aside from plugging their published novels, there's a series on their channel where one of their founders talks about writing, and sometimes shares short stories as examples of what she's teaching. (She also happens to be . . . either Agent Jeanlily or Agent Twain, I forget which one, but definitely a former Boarder!)

TierZoo examines the physical and behavioral traits of animals through the lens of "What if nature was a complex MMO role-playing game?" It definitely suffers a bit from using overly "Melvin" language, but it's still an interesting way to think about why species have the traits they do, and what practical survival benefits they glean from those traits. (This series uses a lot of footage of animals hunting, so also largely not safe for FourMoons.)

—doctorlit, becoming a YouTube addict due to his work schedule

Game Theory and its sister channels Film Theory, Food Theory , and GTLive have sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole lately (though I’ve known about them for much longer). For anybody who doesn’t know, the first three are channels with videos theorizing about the science (and in the case of the first two, possible hidden lore) of games and films. GTLive (which usually isn’t live anymore, but is still updated) is a channel where MatPat (the guy behind Game Theory) and his wife Stephanie play various video games. They’re pretty amusing to watch and the theories are well studied, so I’d check them out if I somehow didn’t already know about them.

I've been deep-diving through the Shakespeare videos on Overly Sarcastic Productions lately. They also have a bunch of history stuff - mostly pre-modern era and vaguely centered around Italy and Europe, although they do branch out sometimes. Very funny, and the literature side has a long series of "trope talks" that are exactly what they sound like - common tropes in literature, how they work, and how they don't.

I also recommend Accented Cinema for a movie analysis channel that focuses on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean movies. The about page says "foreign cinema", which is true, but those three countries are the ones I've noticed as the big focus.