I've had a lot of thoughts lately and I need to get them out of my head. Learning seems to me to be a human need — so embrace it, don't outsource learning to AI. AI can be a useful tool, don't get me wrong, and I use it every day at work. It's really good at summarizing information if you have quality sources to point it at, but even then I often find I have to double check it — I can't just trust AI to get it right the first try. It really starts to trip up when you get into more nuanced corners of knowledge where there's not a lot of good source material.

Humans will always need to remain curious, to learn, and to come to understanding, and to get there you really have to experience things and learn from your mistakes. You can accelerate learning with AI in some cases, or benefit from a mentor who helps you learn from their experience so you don't have to make all the mistakes yourself. Learning ultimately is partly a social activity — you have to talk with people so you can learn from their experience too.

I've been thinking a lot about YouTube and how it's changed since we started publishing videos regularly every week in 2013 — 13 years now. Back then, the DSLR video revolution was in full swing — for the first time people could make cinematic-looking videos with sub-$2,000 cameras, but to make them sound great they needed a microphone and audio recorder separate from the camera, and the affordable options at the time weren't great — noisy, clunky, or plasticky. There weren't many good lavalier microphones under $200, and boom microphones were either expensive or noisy. So affordable gear was a huge limitation for indie video makers, and there was a ton of room for learning and for channels reviewing gear and talking about how to get the best results with affordable equipment.

Fast forward to today, 2026: gear is much less of a barrier. There are a ton of great recorders and microphones available at reasonable prices. Running a video production gear review channel in 2026 is less and less tenable, especially if you're trying to maintain independence from manufacturers and sponsors. Gear has sort of plateaued when it comes to field recorders, microphones, and cameras, and a lot of popular YouTube channels have stopped posting new content in this space.

So what do we do with this channel going forward? Honestly, I don't really know. Education videos never seem to perform as well — people still have an obsession with new products and learning about the newest thing. But a lot of people also don't need new gear anymore; a lot of people have realized what they already have — a Zoom F6 and a Rode NTG5, say — is good enough, and they're not going to get a lot of benefit from upgrading to the latest microphone or recorder. Despite all of that, I'm planning to stay curious and keep learning, and I hope you do too. We're not shutting this channel down, so don't take any weird ideas away — just keep stopping by and let's keep learning together. Get out there and make some great sound. Talk to you again soon.