Draft: expanded bio page. The short version still lives at /about.

Van Neistat

Van Neistat in his workshop

Van Neistat is a maker YouTuber, a filmmaker, and the creator of The Spirited Man. He has been early to every medium he has touched: a short film that crashed servers before YouTube existed, an HBO series before "creator" was a job title, a Werner Herzog collaboration before the art-film/YouTube crossover was a category. Today he publishes The Spirited Man YouTube channel, a monthly show about tools, craft, and the deliberate tension between technology and handwork.

Van works out of a workshop in Los Angeles. He builds things with his hands, fixes things instead of replacing them, and films the process with cameras he has modified himself, using gear he often fabricates in the same shop where the subject of the video is being made. The films are organized into recurring segments and long-running thematic threads, each one rooted in a specific object, repair, or idea about how to live with your hands on the work.

The Show

The Spirited Man is a monthly flagship video, typically 20 to 40 minutes long, supported by shorter segments released throughout the month. The show's working thesis is "using AI to live more analog." Van treats artificial intelligence not as a replacement for handwork but as a tool that can free up time and attention for the things that matter. A workshop project that would have been abandoned for a screen. A letter written by hand. An afternoon spent repairing a chair instead of ordering a new one.

Each monthly episode blends workshop projects, personal essays, and field footage into a single film. The shorter segments between flagships focus on specific formats: a build, a repair, a product recommendation, a ranked list, or a quick prototype. Together they form a library organized by both format and subject.

The show is funded directly by its audience through Patreon and by brand partnerships that fit the channel's editorial standards. Van does not take unsolicited product shipments. If a brand wants to work with The Spirited Man, they start with an email.

What Van Makes

Segments

Recurring formats, each with its own structure and editorial purpose.

  • The Build: workshop projects from concept to completion
  • A Fix: repairing broken things instead of replacing them
  • A Thing We Love: a single product, tool, or object that earns a recommendation
  • Ranked List: opinionated rankings of tools, gear, and methods
  • Fast Mock: rapid prototyping, rough models, proof-of-concept builds

Topics

The ideas that run through three years and hundreds of videos, organized into navigable threads.

  • Analog Living: using AI to live more analog; screens as servants, not masters
  • Tools & Craft: workshop philosophy, hand tools, the relationship between maker and material
  • The Fourth Turning: generational theory, crisis periods, what cycles of history mean for how we live now
  • Sobriety: recovery, discipline, the connection between sobriety and creative work
  • Fatherhood: parenting, risk, intergenerational debt, raising children in the current era

More

Filmography

Van Neistat was making and distributing films for years before YouTube launched. His first viral work circulated through email chains and crashed web servers in 2003. The career that followed spans cable television, art-house cinema, gallery exhibitions, and now a monthly YouTube show. A timeline of the work:

2023 – present
The Spirited Man. Monthly show about tools, craft, and using AI to live more analog. Published on the Van Neistat YouTube channel.
2015
A Space Program. Feature film, co-written with Tom Sachs. Premiered at SXSW. Nationwide theatrical release. A documentary about Sachs's full-scale recreation of the 1969 Moon landing, built entirely from plywood, foam core, and hot glue in Sachs's New York studio.
2014
Guggenheim Berlin. Exhibition at the Guggenheim, Berlin. Van's filmmaking shown as part of a larger installation exploring craft, space, and ritual.
2010
The Neistat Brothers. 8-episode HBO series. Personal filmmaking at broadcast scale. The brothers shot the entire series themselves, on handheld cameras, with no crew. HBO gave them a budget and almost no notes. The result looked nothing like anything else on cable at the time.
2009
Paradox Bullets. A collaboration with Werner Herzog. Van contributed to Herzog's exploration of paradoxes, contradictions, and the productive tension between opposites.
2003
iPod's Dirty Secret. A short film Van made against Apple, documenting Apple's refusal to replace or repair dead iPod batteries. The film went viral two years before YouTube existed, crashed Yahoo's servers, and forced Apple to introduce a battery replacement program. A three-minute film, shot for nothing, changed the warranty policy of what was then the most valuable consumer electronics company in the world.

Collaborators

Van tends to work with people who build things rather than people who comment on them. Tom Sachs has been the longest-running creative collaborator; their partnership produced A Space Program and years of shared studio work. Werner Herzog collaborated on Paradox Bullets. The Safdie brothers, Jack Conte (founder of Patreon), and Casey Neistat have all appeared in or contributed to various projects over the years. The common thread is a preference for people who make things over people who talk about making things.

Links

Contact

For press inquiries, partnership opportunities, and business: info@thespiritedman.com