Somehow the golden age of YouTube seems to have faded, with fan favorites like Ryan Higa and Jenna Marbles having grown out of their followers and podcasts becoming our generation’s new favorite pastime. However, there are still active channels which are worth following, especially when you don’t want to commit to a 40-minute episode or take a chance on a Netflix Original.

Comedy: CollegeHumor

This channel was actually started at Wake Forest by alumnus Ricky Van Veen in 1999 with his friend Josh Abramson. One of their recent comedy videos is, “This Monster Doesn’t Clean Her Inbox,” if you needed further proof that one of the founders went to Wake Forest. Go Deacs, delete that email! In addition to comedy videos, they have a few edu-comedy series as well, including “Um, Actually” in which nerds argue about things and “Adam Ruins Everything,” which inspired a full-blown television series on TruTV. Plus, it seems that they keep around their actors and actresses for a lot longer than BuzzFeed, with familiar faces sticking around for years.

Food: Epicurious

Here, you can get videos that teach you how to cook while simultaneously making you feel better about your lack of cooking skills. In many of their videos, they have four levels of people making a dish from “Amateur” to “Food Scientist.” This way, you can choose who to identify with depending on whether you’re feeling more “grilled cheese” or “toasted Wisconsin cheddar on crispy, flattened gluten squares.” They also have videos where “experts” test foods, and you realize that there is such a thing as a vinegar expert, a salt expert and a tea expert. I would highly recommend “50 People Try to Slice a Pepper” for a confidence boost. 

Educational: Life Noggin

Finally, a cure to all of the questions you ask yourself in the shower, in the middle of the night and on hour 10 of your cross-country roadtrip. What would happen if you only ever drank milk? If you only ever drank coffee? What if you didn’t sleep for a week? (cough finals cough). What if the sun were green? On this channel, they dive into the science behind all the strange questions you could possibly think of in short, animated videos, giving you enough material to convince your friends that you’re a genius who’s really thought these things through.

Travel: Vagabrothers

If you want to travel but you’re not sure where to go, what to do and whether you can afford it, start watching the Vagabrothers channel. Brothers Alex and Marco have a whole host of playlists on their channel, including “Urban Exploration,” “Outdoor Adventure,” “Cultural Discovery” and “Food & Drink.” They have traveled across the globe to give viewers a taste of what each trip could look like or to brag about how they literally travel for a living. You can even categorize their videos by continent or watch multiple-episode series about their road trips across California and Ireland. If you didn’t go abroad, watching enough of these videos might give you that “once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing” experience you’ll bring up in every conversation for the rest of your life.