For those interested, I've compiled playlists of the music used in my videos. These artists do some stellar work and deserve some attention in their own right. The playlists can be accessed here: youtube.com/@peterdibble/playlists
Heads up! The new documentary is finally dropping this Friday.
In 1997, Seattle voters approved a monorail transit system to be built across the city. Beginning as a cab driver's dream and growing into a major civic project, this was on track to become one of the largest systems of its kind in the world. But shortly before breaking ground in 2005, the project collapsed in on itself. This documentary tells the story of how Seattle ended up in this unusual position, and why the city's dream never got off the ground.
Many of you have asked me for a long time to give some more attention to Washington State (and Seattle specifically), and this story has been a great opportunity to do that. Fans of my longer videos will also be pleased to know that this is my longest one yet. See y'all on Friday!
Alrighty, let's get into some channel updates...
After the release of my last video back in October, I quietly stepped back and took the rest of 2023 off from YouTube. This was my first substantial break since starting the channel over 3 years ago, so it was really overdue. (And apparently I'm a trendsetter, because the topic of burnout became a big conversation on YouTube sometime around the new year.) Anyway, since January I've eased myself back into this work as time allows.
My next documentary is about 75% done. It has taken months of work to get through the very dense research and video script, but just in the last few days I've finally moved on to the video editing stage. This is the fun part of the process where the whole thing really comes together. This video will be one of my longest to date — right around the hour mark, give or take. Once this thing is near finished, I will share a little information about the video topic and will have a better idea of when it will be releasing. At this point I'm guessing sometime around mid-April. Stay tuned!
Last night I had the honor of giving a local history presentation at the Lake Theater in Lake Oswego, Oregon! If you're familiar with my video on the abandoned Coalca Landing park, this was an "extended cut" of that story where I got to discuss a lot of details that weren't included in the video. We had a great time and I appreciate the Lake Oswego Public Library and Lake Theater & Cafe for hosting me.
In other news — It's been a long time since I've given a proper channel update, so tomorrow I'll elaborate on how things have been going and what's coming next.
Today marks 3 years since the beginning of this channel, and I'd like to thank everyone who has shown their support in that time. A new documentary has been in the works for months now and it's pretty far along in production. I'll give another update when we're approaching the release, but I appreciate y'all for sticking around during the long gaps of time that are required to produce these videos.
Hi, everyone. What duration/length for a documentary video are you most likely (or most excited) to watch? There are no wrong answers. Feel free to elaborate in the comments if you'd like. Thanks!
Y'all ready for a new documentary this Friday?
Happy June, everyone! The new big video is finally coming out later this month. I still need to record the narration, perform some final cleanup work and send it through peer review, but we're getting close. In the meantime, some of you might be interested in my friend's channel, @FrenchHistory. Unlike me he is an actual academic historian, and runs a successful podcast that explores French history topics. More recently he's been adapting some of these for YouTube, with a great recent example being "What happened to the French Communist Party?" which you can check out here: https://youtu.be/X1duOqTJOBQ
Hi everyone, quick update. There's been substantial progress on the next two documentaries. One of these, an Oregon history video, was originally planned to come out sometime around now. However due to some scheduling conflicts this project has been pushed back into the late summer. The other one, a railroad history video, has remained on pace for a June release, so that will be the next one to come out. This means the current gap between videos will be a bit longer than I wanted, but things are progressing regardless. I'll reveal more information as we get closer to the next release.
Time for some channel updates:
The Modulex/LEGO video has gone over quite well. It was always going to be a gamble to wander outside of my normal topics, but the risk seems to have paid off. Thanks to everyone who gave it a watch! My long-time viewers know that I tend to jump around between topics (perhaps to an annoying degree), but the rest of the videos planned for this year are more in line with what you'd normally expect from this channel.
On that note, many of you will be happy to know that we're returning to Oregon history with the next video. I'm reading a few books for this one, so the research is moving slow but steady. This will come out sometime in the spring. After that will be another railroad history video which is planned to come out in the summer.
As a reminder, I'm intentionally spreading out the videos this year to give myself more time to produce each one. At this point I'm focusing on topics that can fill 30–60 minutes of runtime, so naturally each project is pretty time-consuming to put together. I appreciate y'all's patience in the meantime.
Obscure history from the Pacific Northwest and beyond.