Stuff for your Eyes - January '26

We're starting this month thinking about food. Not Food. food. Yep, the thing I spend most of my days planning or dreaming up deliveries from past go-tos. One such iconic go-to is Brick Lane's Beigel Bake, beautifully captured in this short docco by Sam Youkilis and served up by internet purveyors of video craft, NOWNESS.

Moving on from food, let's check back in with the OG bad robot creator...

It's equal measure cathartic and painful watching long-time-inventor-creator Simone Geirtz have a near breakdown whilst making a Rollercoaster necklace. Super refreshing to see creative people fail, even when you really want them to succeed, and share just how damned frustrating the whole process can be...

BUT THEN, Simone only goes and turns it around for herself and for us with this enjoyable little nugget, as she creates a Kaleidoscopic lamp. Turns out, doing creative things appears quite the... rollercoaster. Clever emotional switcheroo in consecutive vids.

Record scratch to a whole new topic and he's back! Post posting seriously impressive marathon numbers in 2025 (a sub3h in Berlin) Harry Styles' Aperture is what I think is at decent hat-tip to Fatboy Slim's ever-so-famous Weapon of Choice. His new winter anthem results in unexpected dance-based delight.

Following enjoying Harry's latest vid, my algorithm changed (perhaps for ever) and down we fell of a rabbit hole made of exciting dance videos....

Ricky Ubeda's It's Not That Serious was first up on watch next and it's maddddddd good. This dance film is equal nods to Childish Gambino's This is America and Jungle's Back on 74 in their ensemble warehouse setting & dynamic camera work.

Continuing the music video recon, but shifting from dynamic dancers to dynamic marionettes...

The latest drop from Man At Sea’s sees his string-steered double roam the hills of the snow-laden Stroud valleys, bringing us some winterised pathetic fallacy. Man's on a hot streak ahead of the album coming later this year.

And bringing up the rear on this musical interlude with less dance, more improv - the boys from Wolves are back with a new make-a-song-in-60-mins video (following Shrek last time out) and bee warned, this one is so damned catchy.

Podcast episode of the month is Trevor Noah and John Oliver's lonnngggg form episode where they deep dive on their Daily Show origin stories. This might bump past the 2 hour mark, but man is this such a fun way to spend a couple of dark and rainy hours, especially if you enjoy listening to other people rant in exactly the same way as you do as to how TRULY BAD FOR THE WORLD FIFA is.

Travelling in Syria looks just as heartbreaking as it does beautiful... This part one of two from serial-traveller Flora Gonning is a neat insight into both the practical realities of travelling around a country that's lost so many iconic and historic tourist hot-spots, but its people remain incredibly welcoming and its millennia of human history no less fascinating.

And to end this dalliance in a place you really didn't expect, here's a cowabanger from Director/Animator John Likens' [passion?] project - an apparent re-imagining of TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the non-millennials amongst you). If you aren't excited by this near 2mins of action, then you're simply not eating enough pizza and wondering if in the end of days we'll need protection in our sewer-based lives by radioactive teens... The footage is genuinely exciting, and more than deserves a slice of your time, dude.

Inside Youtube

This month on the first Inside Youtube feature - Colin and Samir ('The Oprah of Youtube') reflect on 2025. After years of graft saw success stifled by creative fear. Instead January '25 brought the Palisades fire where they both lost their homes (along with 7000 other families). Interesting retrospective from having, and choosing to start again, and choosing to take more risks especially following a crisis.