No matter how much you love your family, everyone needs a little downtime during the holidays. Add these video essays to your queue. Pull them out when you need a little break — pop in your earbuds and escape. We’re rounding out the year with videos about interest rates, online gambling, slipping on banana peels, and more. Thanks as always for coming along on this ride, and happy holidays.
“Making a Mess: a History of Megalopolis” by Be Kind Rewind
Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (the Godfather trilogy, 1979’s Apocalypse Now, etc.) released his long-gestating epic passion project Megalopolis this year, to… indifferent audiences and a generally derisive critical reception. How did we get here? How did decades of planning and more than $100 million in wine sales bring us the supremely odd, singular film that is Megalopolis? Be Kind Rewind, one of the best film history channels on YouTube, lays it all out.
“Oh baby, we’re talking interest rates” by Good Work
Dan Toomey assumes the persona of a serious man-on-the-street reporter for his very lighthearted videos about developments in the business world. Have you ever read about the Federal Reserve adjusting interest rates and wondered “Is this good?” or “How does this affect me?” or “What the fuck does that even mean?” Good Work has you covered. In less than 10 minutes, this parody newsmagazine segment is more informative than most real ones.
“The Online Gambling Epidemic” by Drew Gooden
The continual loosening of legislative restrictions around online gambling is one of the most alarming contemporary trends in American society. This video demonstrates how predatory gambling apps are, and how easy they can make it for an unwary user to hurl themselves into debt over the outcome of a football game without ever leaving their couch. Gooden does this by testing out an app himself, bringing the viewer along. As in many of his videos, his goofy sense of humor belies a sharp social critique.
“Do Grand Theft Auto V’s Power Lines Connect To Anything?” by Any Austin
Any Austin is a channel dedicated to scrutinizing the easily overlooked minor details of video game environmental design. Where do the rivers in a Zelda game flow to? How does the economy in a Mario town work? Here, as the title suggests, he follows the power lines in the expansive simulacrum city of Grand Theft Auto V to see where they lead. It’s a bit of background flavor to help the game feel more realistic, but how far does that realism go? This isn’t mere nitpicking; Austin is demonstrating the tricky balance games strike when building convincing worlds, how verisimilitude bumps up against technical limitations.
“The history of slipping on banana peels | Pretty Good, episode 14” by Secret Base
Do you think that slipping on a banana peel only happens in cartoons, hacky old comedies, and Mario Kart (1992–ongoing)? If so, not only are you wrong, but you’re more wrong than you can possibly imagine. Jon Bois, YouTube’s documentarian wizard of data, surveys every recorded instance of this pratfall occurring in real life. People have died. This video might become my new go-to example of how there’s no subject so mundane that it can’t make for interesting exploration.
