Sam Denby (born March 17, 1998) is an American

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influe ...

, best known for creating the

edutainment Educational entertainment (also referred to as edutainment) is media designed to educate through entertainment. The term was used as early as 1954 by Walt Disney. Most often it includes content intended to teach but has incidental entertainmen ...

YouTube channels Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, Extremities, and Jet Lag: The Game. Across all of Denby's channels, he has accumulated more than a billion views.

Career

Wendover Productions

Denby's YouTube channel Wendover Productions has over 3.7 million subscribers and more than 557 million total video views. His videos most commonly feature the topics of

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

, most notably those of

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot ...

, as well as

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, a ...

and

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

. The Wendover Productions video about

tourism in Iceland Tourism in Iceland has grown considerably in economic significance in the past 15 years. As of 2016, the tourism industry is estimated to contribute about 10 percent to the Icelandic GDP; the number of foreign visitors exceeded 2,000,000 for the ...

received significant attention from Iceland's national newspapers. Wendover Productions is based in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mo ...

Half as Interesting

In 2017, Denby created Half as Interesting, which as of January 20, 2022 has over 500 million total views. It's meant as a lighter,

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...

continuation of a Wendover Productions playlist series entitled ''That Wikipedia List'' (TWL) which drew inspiration from

unusual articles Of the over six million articles in the English Wikipedia there are some articles that Wikipedians have identified as being somewhat unusual. These articles are verifiable, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whims ...

''Extremities''

In June 2019, Denby created a scripted

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

called ''Extremities'' about the logistics of living in the world's most isolated populated locations. The show's format has since been modified into short documentaries exclusive to the streaming service

Nebula A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regio ...

with the same concept.

''Jet Lag: The Game''

Denby's YouTube channel ''Jet Lag: The Game'' hosts

game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...

s created by Denby and Half as Interesting's writers, Ben Doyle and Adam Chase. Inspired by ''

The Amazing Race ''The Amazing Race'' is an adventure reality game show franchise in which teams of two people race around the world in competition with other teams. The ''Race'' is split into legs, with teams tasked to deduce clues, navigate themselves in forei ...

'', the first game show hosted on the channel was a variant of

Connect Four Connect Four (also known as Connect 4, Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four, Captain's Mistress, Four in a Row, Drop Four, and Gravitrips in the Soviet Union) is a two-player connection board game, in which the players choose a color and then take tur ...

—described by ''Wired'' as "what might be the world’s largest Connect Four game ever constructed" — where the aim is to create a vertical or horizontal line of four American states. ''Jet Lag'''s second season, ''Circumnavigation'', was a race to

circumnavigate Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body (e.g. a planet or moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first recorded circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magel ...

the world in 100 hours, while the third, ''Tag EUR It'', is a game of tag played across

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

. The fourth season'', Battle 4 America,'' premiered on December 7, 2022 and ended on January 4, 2023, with the goal to claim the most American states in four days. The fifth season, ''Race to the End of the World'', is set in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

and premiered on March 1, 2023. All travel on the show is offset by a factor of 10 via

Gold Standard A gold standard is a Backed currency, monetary system in which the standard economics, economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the ...

carbon credits. As of January 11, 2023, the channel has over 405,000 subscribers and more than 18.69 million total video views.

Personal life

Denby was "born and raised" in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Denby stated he had been living in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

, Scotland for the past two years for university studies he was studying

international business International business refers to the trade of goods, services, technology, capital and/or knowledge across national borders and at a global or transnational scale. It involves cross-border transactions of goods and services between two or mor ...

. Denby stated he has lived in

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

somewhere near

Aspen Aspen is a common name for certain tree species; some, but not all, are classified by botanists in the section ''Populus'', of the ''Populus'' genus. Species These species are called aspens: *'' Populus adenopoda'' – Chinese aspen (Chin ...

References

Citations

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Denby, Sam Living people YouTube channels launched in 2010 American expatriates in Scotland People from Washington, D.C. Educational and science YouTubers 1998 births American YouTubers English-language YouTube channels