Sam Denby
| Sam Denby | ||||||||||
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| Born | March 17, 1998[‡ 1][‡ 2] Washington, D.C., U.S. | |||||||||
| Nationality | American | |||||||||
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| Years active | 2015–present | |||||||||
| Genre | Educational entertainment | |||||||||
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Last updated: March 26, 2023 | ||||||||||
Sam Denby (born March 17, 1998) is an American YouTuber, best known for creating the edutainment 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 and nearly 7 million subscribers.
Career
Wendover Productions
Created in 2010, Denby's primary channel is Wendover Productions. As of May 14, 2023,[update] that channel has over 4.05 million subscribers and more than 603 million total video views.[1] His videos most commonly feature the topics of logistics, most notably those of aviation, as well as geography, economics,[2] and military. The Wendover Productions video about tourism in Iceland received significant attention from Iceland's national newspapers.[3] Wendover Productions is based in Aspen, Colorado.[4]
Extremities
In June 2019, Denby created a scripted podcast called Extremities about the logistics of living in the world's most isolated and populated locations.[5] The show's format has since been modified into short documentaries exclusive to the streaming service Nebula with the same concept.
Jet Lag: The Game
"It is a brutally exhausting show to film. Imagine a bad travel day where you end up waiting between flights on connections and going in and out of airports all day."[6]
Sam Denby
Denby's YouTube channel Jet Lag: The Game hosts game shows created by Denby and Half as Interesting's writers, Ben Doyle and Adam Chase.[6] Inspired by The Amazing Race, the first game show hosted on the channel was a variant of Connect Four—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.[6] Jet Lag's second season, Circumnavigation, was a race to circumnavigate the world in 100 hours,[6] while the third, Tag EUR It, is a game of tag played across Western Europe.[‡ 3] The fourth season, Battle 4 America, had the goal to claim the most American states in four days. The fifth season, Race to the End of the World, is a board game-like race set in New Zealand, and premiered on March 1, 2023. In April 2023, Denby revealed that the sixth season, set in Japan, would be called Jet Lag: Japan.[7]
All travel on the show is offset by a factor of 10 via Gold Standard carbon credits.[8] As of May 14, 2023, the channel has over 446,000 subscribers and more than 25 million total video views.[‡ 4]
| Season | Title | Episodes | Originally released | Teams | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | |||||
| Pilot | Crime Spree | 3 | February 16, 2022 (Nebula) | March 16, 2022 (Nebula) | Sam Denby (+ cameraman JT as judge) vs. Adam Chase & Ben Doyle | |
| 1 | Connect 4 | 3 | May 25, 2022 (Nebula) May 25, 2022 (Youtube) | June 1, 2022 (Nebula) June 8, 2022 (Youtube) | Sam & Brian McManus from Real Engineering vs. Adam & Ben | |
| 2 | Circumnavigate | 5 | June 29, 2022 (Nebula) July 6, 2022 (Youtube) | July 27, 2022 (Nebula) August 3, 2022 (Youtube) | Sam & Joseph Pisenti from RealLifeLore vs. Adam & Ben | |
| 3 | Tag across Europe | 7 | September 7, 2022 (Nebula) September 14, 2022 (Youtube) | October 19, 2022 (Nebula) October 26, 2022 (Youtube) | Sam vs. Adam vs. Ben | |
| 4 | Battle 4 America | 5 | December 7, 2022 (Nebula) December 14, 2022 (Youtube) | January 4, 2023 (Nebula) January 11, 2023 (Youtube) | Sam & Brian vs. Adam & Ben | |
| 5 | Race to the end of the world | 8 | March 1, 2023 (Nebula) March 8, 2023 (Youtube) | April 19, 2023 (Nebula) April 26, 2023 (Youtube) | Sam & Toby Hendy from Tibees vs. Adam & Ben | |
| 6 | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | Sam, Scotty Allen from Strange Parts, Adam, Ben | |
Personal life
Denby was "born and raised" in Washington, D.C..[‡ 5] In 2018, Denby stated he had been living in Edinburgh, Scotland for the past two years for university studies [‡ 6]: 1:32 As of April 2018,[update] he was studying international business.[‡ 7] Denby stated he has lived in Colorado as of 2020,[update] somewhere near Aspen.[‡ 8][‡ 9]
References
Citations
- ^ "Wendover Productions - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved May 14, 2023.
- ^ Dudley, David (August 19, 2020). "Bad Trains, Explained". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
- ^ Hafstað, Vala (June 7, 2019). "Iceland's Tourism Explosion Explained". Iceland Monitor. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
- ^ Reynolds, Jacqueline. "Film takes a deep dive into river issues". Aspen Daily News. Retrieved September 21, 2022.
- ^ Scott, Richard (July 5, 2019). "'Extremities': taking you to the world's most isolated places" (Audio). Radio New Zealand. The Podcast Hour. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- ^ a b c d Anderson, Pearse. "This Travel Game Takes Connect Four to the Extreme". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
- ^ "Tweet from Sam Denby on April 23, 2023". Twitter. Retrieved April 23, 2023.
- ^ Griffiths, James (September 16, 2022). "Are travel-centric reality shows like The Amazing Race worth their carbon footprint?". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
Primary sources
In the text these references are preceded by a double dagger (‡):
- ^ >"We have no idea why he's using the ruler - 1. The chase begins". Nebula TV. February 16, 2022.
for DOB, see timestamp 1:00
- ^ >"Crime Spree: The World's Most Illegal Game Show". Nebula TV. Half as Interesting.
- ^ "We Played a 72 Hour Game of Tag Across Europe". Jet Lag: The Game. YouTube. Retrieved September 21, 2022.
- ^ >"Jet Lag: The Game - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved May 14, 2023.
- ^ "We Raced To Visit The Most US States In 100 Hours". YouTube. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
- ^ Denby, Sam (March 27, 2018). A Moderately Successful Face Reveal (Video). Sam from Wendover. Event occurs at 1:25. Retrieved April 6, 2018 – via YouTube.
- ^ Denby, Sam (March 27, 2018). "Economics has too much math. I study International Business". Reddit. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
- ^ "Life update: I've moved to Colorado Pictured: Skiing, a week ago". Instagram. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 19, 2020.
- ^ "In case you didn't know, I'm a #influencer". TikTok. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
Further reading
- Bowler, Jacinta (May 11, 2018). "There's a Road in The US That Illustrates America's Weird Relationship With The Metric System". ScienceAlert. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- Denby, Sam (June 22, 2017). "Five myths about air travel". Washington Post. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- Dudley, David (August 19, 2016). "Here Are All the Reasons Trains in the U.S. Are So Terrible". CityLab. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- Morrison, Geoffrey (April 30, 2017). "Why Airlines Charge Crazy Fees". Forbes. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
- Plush, Hazel (May 23, 2016). "Revealed: What airlines really spend your money on". The Telegraph. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
- "Exploring the Super-Fast Logistics of Delivering Blood By Drones". Interesting Engineering. February 3, 2019.