Login | February 03, 2025
YouTubers worth a watch Part 2
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: February 3, 2025
Now I’m not much of a TV person, but during these cold winter months when it gets dark before 6 p.m. and I’m in bed by 9 p.m., I typically chill on the couch to watch the tube for a couple hours each evening.
And rather than suffer network television brain rot I defer to the fascinating world of YouTube, where every now and then I happen upon a site that warrants my continued viewership.
So a couple of years ago I offered ALN readers several YouTube channels that I’d watch on an occasional basis (YouTubers worth a watch, April 24, 2023). And well, I’m going to continue that trend and offer up some of the channels that have caught my attention over the dark winter evenings of 2024/2025.
They range from food, to health & fitness, to bike racing to…well…what my girlfriend refers to as “I can’t believe you’re watching this ^%$#.”
So here we go.
On the food front I give you Spain On A Fork.
So here at the Pete’s World homestead we're always hunting for YouTube channels that can provide us with healthy, delicious and easy recipes to prepare, and this channel checks off all those boxes.
Albert Bevia, a self-taught cook who was born in Valencia, Spain and raised in southern California, is the host.
Now since we’ve been trying to vary our weekly diet with several meatless meals, Spain On A Fork immediately caught our attention.
It offers a wide selection of meatless dishes that still provide plenty of protein - via beans and lentils - while at the same time still remain sumptuous and comforting. Many of the recipes we’ve tried are delicious soups and stews.
In the health & fitness arena let me suggest Peter Attia, a Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and NIH-trained physician who is an expert in the science of longevity.
Attia possesses a vast and near encyclopedic medical knowledge-base, yet is able to easily translate extremely complex biological principles and processes into understandable dialogue.
And he’s definitely a person who walks the talk with respect to his participation in exercise and healthy lifestyle practices.
Attia’s videos range from exercise recommendations to dietary suggestions to discussions on how to lower one’s risk for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
He challenges the way our current healthcare system deals with disease, believing that we should focus more on extending our healthspans via preventative medicine as opposed to focusing on prolonging our lifespans via the treatment of diseases once we get them.
For cycling, I’m suggesting World Cup European Cyclocross racing via the Flo Bikes and UCI Channels.
Now if you’ve never watched Euro-style cyclocross, then you’ve been missing out on some really exciting bicycle racing - even if you’re not a cyclist.
Cyclocross consists of short, 40-minute to one-hour races that take place during the fall and winter seasons.
They’re a bit of road cycling, mountain biking and steeple chasing all thrown into one basket as the riders compete on tight, hilly and twisting earthen courses that are oftentimes choked with snow, sand and mud.
I have to admit that the the worse the weather and course conditions the more I enjoy these fast paced races.
And on the ridiculous front, I’m offering a channel that typically forces my girlfriend to exit the living room.
I’m talking about the Hobo Shoestring Channel, a channel that features the now deceased Mark Nichols (he passed away in April 2024), a train-hopping hobo who chronicled his later year’s adventures across nearly a decade’s worth of YouTube videos.
I happened upon Mr. Nichols as a consequence of my pulling up videos of a guy who rides a “rail bicycle” on abandoned rail lines.
The YouTube algorithm subsequently inundated me with everything associated with trains…and boom…there I was one day clicking on a Shoestring hobo video. And probably because of my wanderlust personality I became immersed in the carefree lifestyle of this mild-mannered, scruffy old hobo.
Turns out Shoestring had been hopping freight trains since 1989, amassing over 2,700,000 miles of rail travel across 49 states, eight Canadian provinces and 14 Mexican states.
In his videos he explains virtually every facet of a rail hopping hobo’s life. And this good-old-boy's knowledge of the US railroading system continues to astonish me.
So right up front, I’m going to plead guilty to enjoying Hobo Shoestring’s videos.
There you are, four YouTube channels to explore on these cold winter evenings.