2025 Favorites

Dec 21, 2025

Hi all,

I’ve gathered my favorite media and memories of the year. My absolute highlights are marked in bold and with a star.

YouTube

🌟 Chris Young - a former 3 star Michelin chef who now makes a smart thermometer, and my favorite food/cooking YouTube videos to advertise it. The production value is insane and the topics lean into chemistry and physics
Sharks Aren’t Fish - by Hank Green
Cleo Abrams - an awesome science channel with a ton of access to ongoing research
Howtown - two video journalists who used to work at Vox. I particularly like their ‘research showdowns’ (aka debates) which are structured well - I learn a lot from them!
Extranet Shaquille - is the alt channel of a cooking YouTuber where he posts monologues on all sorts of topics. I love his pros and narration!

🌟 Gear, Articles of Interest - the most interesting podcast series I’ve listened to in a looong time, talks about military clothing, outdoor clothing, how they are linked, and how clothing represents both from 1900-today. Grapples with the role of the US military and how it is portrayed (with clothing) to the US public.
Sarah Paine - full series on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast. I didn’t know much about ‘grand strategy’ or how the military education system worked, but her talks about it are interesting. She’s a great storyteller!
Maintaining Human Intelligence in the AI Era | David Krakauer (President of the Santa Fe Institute) on The Generalist.
Dialectic - overall my favorite podcast right now, constantly getting my reading cinematic universe to talk for 2-3 hours! Ordered favorites from this year alone:
- Tamara Winter - Tacit Trust & Caring Curiosity
- Linus Lee - Engineering for Aliveness
- Henrik Karlsson - Cultivating a Life that Fits
- Nadia Asparouhova - Ideas That Infect
- Geoffrey Litt - Software You Can Shape

🌟 The Rehearsal S2 - one of my favorite bits of TV ever... Nathan is crazy I love him
One Battle After Another
Haven’t seen yet, but excited about Marty Supreme & Zootopia 2

🌟 Jack Whitten’s life-spanning exhibition at the MoMA
🌟 The Glass House and Grace Farms in New Canaan, CT. Do the extended tour at the Glass House!
1014 events - went to crazy dinner at the German Consulate General New York
Will’s *Who Made This?!* art-making fundraiser for local charities
A Walk Through the Universe at the Hayden Planetarium
Carnegie Hall Symphonies
The re-opened Breuer - although it was pretty disappointing imo... they kinda wasted the potential with the way they staged things
Fort Greene Orchestra