Let’s take a look at the weird, sometimes wonderful, world of YouTube

First, the wonderful.

I got rid of cable TV about 15 years ago. At first, I tried 3 or 4 sites like Hulu, Apple TV, Pluto TV and others, but found that I was paying almost the same amount for those as I was cable. Then, I stumbled upon YouTube. I’d heard of it of course, but hadn’t spent much time on it. Today, YouTube is the only site I watch on a daily basis. I’ve built up a substantial number of subscriptions (free ones) to “channels” that cover my interests. And I’ve found numerous channels that I watch on a daily basis.

The first channel I want to talk about is Alveus Sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary and virtual education center. About seven years ago, I was flitting around looking for something to watch, and stumbled upon a young lady (Maya Higa) with a giant hawk on her arm. I stopped to see what was going on, and I’ve been watching her at least twice a week since then. She was rehabilitating the hawk and was explaining what that entailed on her stream. She was funny, knowledgeable and has a great love of animals. I was hooked.

A few months after I found her, she bought 10 acres of land in Austin, Texas, and created Alveus Sanctuary, a non-profit animal sanctuary. She and a few of her cohorts set about rehabbing the buildings on the site. She started out with a baby emu and some chickens, and today has everything from chickens to marmosets (little monkeys), wolf dogs and foxes, and everything is run from donations from her subscribers and other YouTubers. I can’t stress enough just how far this sanctuary has come in the past six years. They now own 40+ acres, have started building a large area for birds of prey, and are planning for a species research and recovery center called ARRI, to create conservation breeding programs to help save endangered species, and employ over 20 people. While you can’t visit the sanctuary in person, they have 24-hour livestreams of the animals, live streams where other YouTubers come to see the sanctuary and their subscribers can see what Alveus is all about and donate if they so choose.

I can’t state enough that this is a non-profit organization whose majority of funding comes from her subscribers and merchandise sales (which has reached into the millions at this point). This gives you a small idea just how much people love Maya and what she is doing for conservation.

Maya has been all over the world teaching and learning about animals that are endangered or struggling, and meeting the people that spend their lives protecting and helping these animals survive, all online on her channel.

If you love animals and don’t know how you can help, start by watching the Alveus Sanctuary channel. You can watch people that love animals care for them, learn about why the species is struggling or how they affect our planet, and become a part of the solutions to save some of these species.

It’s truly been a remarkable journey watching Maya and her sanctuary grow so much in the past six years.

The second person I want to talk about is Simon Whistler, an English ex-pat now living in the Czech Republic. I found him about the same time as Maya. He has, I think, 10 channels at this point. They range from weird factoid pieces to covering wars around the world.

Two of my favorites are the Casual Criminalist, where they do a deep dive into some of the worst people and crimes in history and Warfronts, where they cover all of the conflicts around the world (there are lots to cover). Simon owns all the channels and employs a large amount of some of the best writers I’ve had the pleasure of “hearing,” as Simon will read most of the scripts for the first time as he’s recording (except for the news-oriented channels).

Simon is witty, affable, self-effacing and with that British accent he’s a hoot to listen to and watch. I tend to use his Warfronts and Homefronts channels to get a deeper dive into what’s actually happening around the world. I highly recommend checking out some of his channels.

These are just two of the many channels I’ve found on YouTube that genuinely are useful and entertaining to watch. This week, I’ve been watching world leaders speak at the UN General Assembly. Not going to lie. It’s been eye opening seeing all these leaders of countries talking about how bad things are around the world. People should seriously be worried at where humanity is headed.

I can watch free highlight videos from just about any sport in the world without having to deal with commercials (highly suggest spending the $15 a month for YouTube Premium) and you can find channels on just about any subject you might be interested in: music, sports, movies, fashion, PC gaming, technology, etc. If someone has an interest for something, you can bet it’s on YouTube.

While that is the good part of YouTube, there are things that happen on YouTube that, quite frankly, just leave me scratching my head. In the next article, I’ll tell you about some of the things on YouTube that I just can’t wrap my head around. Until then, happy watching!

Tim Marlow lives in Storm Lake.