The Spirited Man is Van Neistat's monthly show about tools, craft, and using AI to live more analog. It's the culmination of a career early to every medium it touched: iPod's Dirty Secret (2003), an HBO series, a Werner Herzog collaboration, an SXSW premiere.
Latest Flagship
The Machine Dream Was Never Real: Long-Form Ep. 2. Van asks whether AI is freeing him or making him crazy. He builds a footage-crawler agent named Johnny 5, reads his AI manifesto, and borrows Adam Curtis to argue that the tech-utopian dream of self-balancing machines was never true. Full show notes →
How It Works
One 30-minute flagship drops each month. Inside it: a rotating kit of segments: The Build, A Thing We Love, Ranked List, Fast Mock, and more. Across the following weeks, each segment releases as its own standalone video. One show, many entry points.
All videos → | Things I love → | Books I reference → | Films that matter →
Essays
Best maker YouTubers → | AI and analog living → | Filmmaking YouTube → | YouTube for makers → | Watching YouTube differently →
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