Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I don’t remember exactly what rabbit trail led me there, but at some point I ended up watching a video about a guy named Brent who bought an abandoned mining town in California. What really hooked me was the price: this entire 300‑acre town and a massive network of mines cost about the same as my single house on 1/6 of an acre. Imagine how different my life would be if we traded our house for something like this!

I didn’t want to spoil the story by jumping around, so I went all the way back to the beginning of his channel and watched roughly six years of videos. It was fascinating to fast‑forward through his adventure and see how both he and the town evolved over time. The journey has some huge highs and lows, but each individual video is a window into whatever challenge or project he was tackling at the time. It’s a mix of huge projects and small challenges as well as huge highs and deep lows.

This had such an impact on me that I ended up reading his book (minor spoiler: he writes a book) and I also got a copy of the Cerro Gordo book from the Images of America series. Reading a couple books might not seem that wild, but there’s more. We had already planned a summer road trip down to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon with other stops along the way. After getting Elijah hooked on the videos too and getting permission from Tyla, we adjusted our route so that we are planning to visit Cerro Gordo in August!

I realize that there are a million different YouTube holes you can get sucked down, but I have found this one particularly fun and interesting. You can check it out for yourself here: Ghost Town Living – YouTube. If watching the entire back catalog seems like a bit much, look for his annual summary videos like A Year Living In An Abandoned Ghost Town, Two Years Living In An Abandoned Ghost Town!, etc.

Happy Tax Day!

As I do most years on this day, I encourage you to view your tax form and look at line 16 of Form 1040. This is how much money you paid the federal government in 2025. I’m not trying to sway your political viewpoint one way or another, but I do feel that most people don’t understand how much tax they actually paid (versus the refund they get).

To take it one step further, visit MyTaxReceipt.org. This site will show you where your dollars were spent. Can you predict the top three in order?

It’s time for another “Best of YouTube” post!

The first video I have for you is from an amazing musician named Jean Batiste. This was the first of his videos that I watched and it sent me down a rabbit hole of exploring his music and even his Netflix documentary.

The Veritasium channel has a lot of great science content, but I especially enjoyed this video about the physics of throwing a football.

And finally, I have 5 years of videos for you to watch from the channel Ghost Town Living. In 2020, this guy bought an old abandoned mining town and he has been exploring the mines and bringing it back to life. I started with the first video and I’ve been watching them all in order, but if that’s too much for you, start with this recap of his first year and see if it hooks you:

Our family loves the Lego Masters TV shows. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a reality show that features about 8-ish teams that compete each week to build according to a theme. A judge picks the winners and losers and sometimes people get eliminated. The concept isn’t rocket science but the execution of it can be great.

Multiple countries have their own versions of it. The US version is ok, but honestly, if you’re just getting started, I recommend going through the Australia version. The host, Hamish Blake, is fantastic, and the judge, Brickman, has tons of knowledge and insight. I think the contestants in these shows are better as well.

If you really want to start with the cream of the crop, watch Season 5 which is a competition of some of the best teams from previous seasons. You’ll miss a bit not having their back story, but the quality of the builds is unbelievable. The only downside to starting here is that I don’t think any season from any country lives up to this one.

The Australia episodes are a bit difficult for us to watch in the US but we’ve been able to find them on Tubi for free with ads. I avoid ads whenever humanly possible, so the fact that we watch this show even with ads says a lot.

I loved Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” back in the early 2000s. It was a unique combination of cooking and science. Some of the things I learned on that show are still drilled into my brain like “Avoid single use kitchen gadgets.”

So you can imagine my excitement when I saw that he’s bringing it back on YouTube! The first episode went live on November 22 and he’s releasing weekly episodes.

There were a couple other sequel/spinoff series so while I hope this one will last for a long time, I’m here for whatever we get!

Wildfire season is winding down so this is probably the worst time of the year to make this post, but consider downloading the Watch Duty app or at least bookmarking the website. If you’re following information about a fire, this is one of the best ways that I know of to get accurate and up to date information. The fire team posts updates that are directly reflected in the app and you can even watch videos of their briefings for the bigger fires. This app is a great way to keep up with fire growth, evacuation notices, and road closures.

Technically I live in a suburb, but it sure feels like “the city” to me. I grew up in a much more rural area, but how much different is it really? Check out https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/ which shows you how many people live within a spot on the map.

Using a 3 km (1.8 mile) radius, the place I grew up has 1200 people in it. I’m sure that’s dramatically higher than it was back then, but let’s just use that number. My current house has 44,000 people in that same space.

This site is a fun tool to keep in the bag, especially on those evenings when it’s super noisy in my neighborhood and I start clicking around wondering what it would be like to live somewhere else.

P.S. Context for the graphic chosen for this post: Poem: Daniel Boone by Arthur Guiterman

We’re inundated with quotes and when the volume is high, they flight right by. But everyone once in a while one will stick and I’ll remember it throughout the week. I had been making a list of some quotes that popped up recently but then the one that stuck is the first one listed below. I don’t know which quotes are original to the linked source material, but the links are provided in case you want to dive in for more.

• Making It Podcast episode 482
  • “Respond, don’t react.”
• Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project, via Recommendo #460
  • Write down the travel items you forgot to pack while you’re still traveling.
  • Sometimes in life, even though it’s not your fault, it’s still your problem.
  • You are not obligated to have a strong opinion about everything.
  • Never organize anything you should discard.
  • If an item is especially precious or valuable to you, never set it down anyplace that you wouldn’t want it to be overnight.
• More quotes via Recommendo #461
  • Thousands of people don’t like what I do. Fortunately, millions do. — James Patterson
  • Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. — André Gid
  • The illiterate of the 21st century will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. —Alvin Toffler