Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

I have really appreciated this bodybuilding channel by Igor Opeshansky AKA Vitruvian Physique, who makes peer-reviewed research/evidence-guided fitness and training and nutrition videos. And also makes it very clear when the suggestions are anecdata. There is a lot of broscience and "tradition" based fitness and training suggestions when you try to find information. He is the first creator I found that takes a zero assumptions approach to fitness, breaking down his reasoning and evidence regardless of how "obvious" something is.

He also makes an effort to only promote science backed advice, in a video titled "the only 3 supplements you need", he lists creatine, protein, and pre-workouts (mostly the caffine). He's goes on to elaborate the positive and negatives each, and even goes on to say essentially that if your sleep is bad, no amount of creatine or protein is going to make a meaningful positive difference in your muscle growth. His channel is a great resource for bodybuilding and even if that's not your ultimate goal, it's a fantastic and realistic resource for fitness in general.

His videos really helped me avoid serious body dysmorphia. He has a great series on natty or not, where he describes who is likely taking steroids, what kind of physique is healthy to keep, and how common it is for people that show up on under fitness tags to be on steroids. This leads to a lot of struggles with body dysmorphia, especially at the age when kids become interested in fitness, and how it's struggling is not limited to any gender. There are similar creators like Jeff Nippard, Stephanie Buttermore but Virtuvian Physique is my favorite creator. I also really enjoy his humor. He has placed multiple times over many years at body building competitions and he has a BSc with a double major in Human Physiology and Economics from the University of Western Ontario.

https://www.youtube.com/@VitruvianPhysique/videos

I also really enjoy Adam Neely who exists in the music sphere on youtube, a educational music creator/composer. His approach to music is founded on jazz, he has a BA from Berklee in Jazz Composition, and a Master's in Jazz Comp from The Manhattan School of Music. He discusses music theory of more mainstream songs and trends in music. I really enjoyed his breakdown of the music theory of the song Castaways from the children's show Backyardigans, a bossa nova song inspired by Samba de Orfeu, and his deep dive into the the history of the song as well as the genre. The budget for the children's show was way more than I imagined, for one of the Rossini songs, they used 25 musicians and the show also had a dedicated choreographer, Beth Bogush to help create the dance/choreo seen in this animated kids show. Adam Neely breaks down the chrods and tempo and fun key change used for the song Castaways, with the song being in 2/2 time. The idea of a descending bass line being an analogy of a sinking ship they are singing about.

https://www.youtube.com/@AdamNeely/videos

Nahre Sol is also one of my favorite music creators. She is a respected composer [2] who makes content about different genres of music as well as how she processes them as a classically trained musician. She makes an effort to explain the more nuanced things in music but doesn't oversimplify the music or process in any way. It feels like a musician talking to other musicians while still being understandable without formal music theory training. She's been a guest host of NPR's Performance Today and I really enjoyed her videos PBS Digital's youtube series Sound Field. It was really interesting to watch how a classically trained composer approaches music in a relatively new genre like lofi hiphop, which in my opinion was created by the internet. She has a Bachelor's in Piano Performance from the Juilliard School.

https://www.youtube.com/@NahreSol/videos

Writing this list, I noticed I value educational content over anything else. In my opinion the ultimate mastery of a skill or craft can be judged based on how easily someone can teach it to a novice. I really enjoy watching a deep dive videos about something I'd incorrectly assume is very simple. There's something really charming about a passionate person sharing the hidden complexity of something. I also really enjoy all of their humor, which some would call sometimes "gen-z" sometimes "nerdy".

He's not wrong, though, that the Toyota Avalon is the most reliable car you can buy.

Another, more humorous, machining channel I like is This Old Tony.

https://youtube.com/@ThisOldTony

Malcolm Moore's channel has been an excellent resource for progressing my snowboarding ability.

https://youtube.com/@malcolmmoore