You may recognize Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara as the ghoul boys who helped grow the Buzzfeed Unsolved YouTube channel into an immensely popular true-crime destination. Now the duo (along with fellow Buzzfeed vet Steven Lim) are running their own video production studio, Watcher, where they indulge their oddest inclinations for an audience of millions.
In addition to hunting haunts in “Ghost Files,” Madej and Bergara pal around with puppets on “Puppet History,” visit hidden gems in “Weird Wonderful World,” and rank their perfect picks in “Top 5 Beatdown.” In just three years, Watcher has released over a dozen stellar series, and they’re just getting started.
Today they teased a new show, “Mystery Files,” which will see the two besties explaining their most “unusual, unexplained, and unhinged” internet deep dives to each other. So we asked them both to dig into their own internet history to dish on their recent video dives.
1. “RMS Titanic Real Time Sinking Remastered”
Mashable: You guys really hit my sweet spot with the videos you picked! The Titanic and Disneyland.
Bergara: I think I know what Titanic video you’re talking about. I’ve watched it.
Madej: I’ve talked about it before. It’s back in my mind because they announced they’re re-releasing the movie in theaters.
I did not peg you two for true Titanic fans.
M: I mean, the movie is incredible.
You mean that unironically?
M: The romance is a little cheesy and James Cameron is not the most talented when it comes to writing human emotions, but the spectacle of that movie is just unrivaled.
B: I think it’s an excellent film, full stop.
I agree, but I still can’t tell if you’re joking.
M & B: No, we’re serious.
Me, too! It was one of my favorite movies as a teen. I was just home for Christmas and forgot I have a Collector’s Edition DVD. I was hardcore.
B: Does it fold out into a boat?
No, it’s very boring. Just a photo of Rose on one disc and Jack on another.
M: And when you close it do they kiss?
Oh my god, I’m not sure.
B: That’s a missed opportunity, it could have been so many different things… like a smokestack. The iceberg!
M: The floating door.
I’m loving this Titanic super fan meet up. Ryan, you’ve watched the video through once? Twice?
B: I’ve watched it one time all the way through. I think you’d have to be a borderline psychopath to watch it all the way through multiple times. It’s a three-and-a half-hour video. But it is haunting to watch in real time. I love the the audio snippets they put in, like the captain’s voice. And of course the obvious haunting quality of all the screams [smiles].
M: I think the channel first uploaded this because they were trying to raise money for a Titanic video game they were developing. The neat thing that they do in it, and I think it’s because the developers are so intimately aware of the timeline, is throughout the video they have little factoids that pop up like “at this point they put this lifeboat down.”
B: You do get the feeling of how long it actually took or, I guess, how quickly it took for it to fully go down. You put yourself into the situation with each new factoid going, “OK maybe that’s not so bad, it’s still floating” then you’re like, “Well, that one’s kind of bad” and then suddenly it’s “oh, we’re going to fucking die.”
M: It goes belly up so quickly at the end, it’s unnerving. Ryan says this would be in very poor taste, but I’ve always wanted to have a party where we dress up as people on the Titanic, and we project the video and start out like “oh yay!” you know, and the night just proceeds. [Ryan puts head in his hands].
B: He wanted to do a pool party.
M: I don’t know that I ever said that, that’s a bit sick.
B: Oh yeah, I’m the one that’s sick. Who would you go as?
M: Probably Molly Brown
B: You’d throw a party where people died and you’d be the only one that lives!?
M: Sure, yeah.
B: I’d go as the violinist. I don’t know if it’s factually accurate, if they actually played until the end, but the movie dialogue is really fun stuff. I’m a Chargers fan — and now these are two really weird worlds colliding — but we’re not very good usually, and when I know we’re about to get eliminated, [my friends and I] will all say “It’s been a pleasure playing with you gentlemen,” and then we’ll drink our sorrows away and watch our team lose.
2. “Inside Aaron Paul’s Rustic Riverside Home In Idaho”
B: Look, I’m sad that I had to pick one perfect Architectural Digest video and this makes it seem like I am just obsessed with Aaron Paul. I will say that this is one of my favorites in the series, but I generally just love looking at these celebrity houses. It’s the perfect amount of escapism. I just love seeing how people lives their lives.
Aaron Paul’s house is insane. It’s this giant cabin in Idaho with a dedicated gambling room, sauna and a spa, a log shed — it’s pretty sick to have a log shed [Shane laughs]— a massive fireplace. I don’t know why celebrity home tours bring me so much relaxation and joy. There’s this element of all the sudden you’re sitting on this ivory tower judging everybody like, “Well, I don’t know about that [choice].”
My favorite part is when celebrities talk about art. It’s so insufferable. They’ll say words like, “This piece right here really speaks to me” [or] “I saw this when I was in Italy walking around this museum, and I just had to have it.” None of the stories are profound. But they have to whip up some anecdote to justify the ridiculous price tag of the art they have.
My wife [Mari] and I always joke that if one day our home is featured on Architectural Digest, we’re going to treat our art with the same kind of reverence they do, as if it’s in the Getty or something. We really love the movie Dumb and Dumber, and there’s that one shot where the giant dog van is flying over a hill, and I want to get a frame of that, blow it up, and hang it alongside frames from other stupid movies. And just force the AD crew to sit there and listen to us talk about them. If that makes it into AD, you heard it here first! And it was Mari’s idea.
M: My favorite AD moment is… Ryan, are you aware of Dakota Johnson’s limes?
B: I am, yeah.
M: That’s the thing is that AD comes over to your house and set dresses it. They’ll put a bowl of limes out.
As an AD connoisseur, what are some other AD best-ofs?
B: I really dig Kendall Jenner’s house. The design and the flow… the whole thing was surprisingly calming and comfy, which is not something I would expect from someone in the Kardashian family. I expect very modern, sleek, cold. She had a painting room, that was sick.
I like the ones that look like they are actually meant to be lived in, not one that looks like an interior designer came in to do it all. I recently watched one and, I won’t say her name, but her house literally looks like the Getty.
Are you not saying her name because her name is Emma Chamberlain?
B: [Laughs] No! Her house was fun and homey. But there was somebody whose house was very modern. I’m not into talking trash, but I didn’t like the house.
It’s hard when I reach the end of this particular series, because I have to wait for the next one, and I’m very frustrated by having to wait for so long. And now I get it when people scream at me on the street, “Where’s Ghost Files!? Why isn’t it here!?” They have no idea what it takes to make the series just like I have no idea what it’s like to have the AD camera crew come into my home. I probably wouldn’t clean at all. I won’t even put the shoot in my calendar, I’ll just add an unnamed time block. When they show up at my door I’ll open it wearing whatever I have on that day. But it’ll probably never happen.
Not with that attitude it won’t!
B: That’s actually how I approach everything in life. You can ask Shane; almost everything that we’ve ever accomplished there’s been some point in history before that where I’ve said, “This probably is not going to happen,” and Shane tends to be more positive.
[Shane squints at the ceiling in thought.]
B: I would describe him as indifferently optimistic. I tend to be pessimistic, Steven is very optimistic, and Shane is pretty optimistic.
M: I think I’m more optimistic than Steven.
B: Jesus Christ, OK! You’re the most optimistic guy I know.
M: Thank you.
3. “Miami Boat Ramps”
Shane, what’s up with the boats?
M: I’m trying to remember how I happened upon this channel. I’m not a boater, I’ve never driven a boat, and I’ve never been to Miami. But Miami’s boat ramps… I guess I didn’t realize there was so much humanity down there.
This person camps out at the boat docks or, excuse me, boat ramps, and he must go out every day to film and then compile the day’s happenings and slap some color commentary on it. It’s just a fascinating channel. The drama is pretty pitiful. Sometimes there’ll be a party boat, sometimes it’ll be someone who’s really blasting in a no wake zone, but you see people get angry at each other, there are fights, boat sinking.
I find myself now watching a lot of videos of human hosts, where the camera is sort of observing things. I love it, it scratches an itch and is sort of a comfort thing. During the peak of the quarantine, I would watch a lot of walking tours. All of my friends and I would sync [the same video]. So we’d say like, “Let’s go to Oslo tonight!” and then you know slowly people get tired and fall asleep and log off. There are some good ones of Japan; they have a lot of festivals there so [the video would] be of a whole crowd of people walking through the street as fireworks are going off in the distance. It’s really beautiful.
4. “LeBron Unreal Birthday Game”
B: When I was picking videos, I tried to put as little thought as possible, by which I mean… I am sure I could have found some YouTube videos that make me seem cultured and interesting. But I was like, “I’m just gonna go with channels I consistently watch all the time: Architectural Digest and House of Highlights,” which I just realized are sort of punny.
Anyways, I watch House of Highlights like the typical bro dude sports guy every night before I fall to sleep. To get myself relaxed I’ll watch who had good games that day or highlights of Lebron or Kevan Durant. I like watching people be great. Lebron for instance, the guy is doing crazy things at 38 years old, been in the league 20 years. No one is putting up the numbers he’s putting up at this age, with his mileage.
I’m a Kobe guy, I’ve always been a Kobe guy, but watching Lebron right now is pretty crazy. By the end of the year — and he might have already — he will pass Kareem Abdul Jabar for most points scored in the NBA. He’s on a tear right now.
The way you talk about basketball is the way I talk to a stranger about K-pop.
B: [Laughs] The thing about basketball is that I’ve played it my whole life, and I have an appreciation for how amazing these guys are, the things they’re doing. And someone like LeBron, or any NBA player, is doing things that, even if I dedicated every moment of my life to it, I would never be able to do.
5. “Something’s Wrong with Worf”
M: This channel takes scenes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which must have a pretty robust outtakes archive, and edits a small snippet from the outtake into the overall scene. It’s really good. There’ll be something serious happening and in the middle someone will do something weird, and then it’ll keep going as it was before. They look like they have a lot of fun on set.
Anyways, it’s worth a watch. You don’t really have to be a fan of Star Trek to enjoy it. I’m not too steeped in Next Generation, I watched a lot of Voyager growing up, and I started Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during the pandemic. I just love outtakes, man. I’m sure Ryan will be with me on this, but at the end of the year when they have like “2022 news bloopers” compilations [on YouTube], I watch them all.
B: Same, Mari and I will just sit down on the couch and binge them.
My favorite is “I wanted donuts.”
B: I don’t that know that one but I love learning about a new news blooper to add to the rolodex. Have you seen “woman struck by lightning speaks?” Basically, this lady was struck by lightning, and they talk about how she shocked everyone when she survived. It shows her trying to walk and then cuts to a clip of her in a hospital bed about to speak, and the clip glitches and she goes “adadadada” and the news anchor tries so hard to keep it together. “Mr. Wacky” is also very funny, Shane, you can explain.
M: I think it was in San Diego, a few years ago. They were having an inflatable fair with blown-up playgrounds and obstacle courses, and the reporter on scene is this older, really jovial fella who’s really trying to make the piece fun but every question he asks and turn of phrase he uses is at odds with his whole aim. Like at the top of the segment he is talking back to the studio and he’s like, “Is inflation in our world a good thing or a bad thing?” and the guy in the studio is like, “What!?” He asks the crowd insane questions like, “What kind of fun do you hope to have here today?” He tries to get everyone to chant.
What happened to this man? Is he still employed?
M: Oh yeah, I think he’s pretty beloved down there. The whole piece is beautiful. Finally, he introduces a guy dressed up as an inflatable Mr. Wacky. And he saves the whole thing. The reporter asks him, “Do you think the people here will turn into inflatables today?” and Mr. Wacky says “I don’t know, do they want to be inflatables?” I still reference the video almost weekly.
It’s so funny that you two and I are on the same internet watching the same goofy things, but not quite.
B: I love this kind of conversation because whenever Shane and I travel for Ghost Files and have a new crew member, we’ll talk about our favorite news clips and the crew member will always have another news clip we have not heard of. So I become a rolling snowball, gathering more and more news clips.
You should do a Top 5 Beatdown for news clips.
B: That’s an amazing idea. I would watch the shit out of that. I gotta look into that, talk to our legal team.
6. “Disney’s FastPass: A Complicated History”
I’m a huge Defunctland stan.
B: I love Defunctland. I’ve actually met him. I was shocked when I heard his voice, he just sounds like that. I was legitimately starstruck. He does amazing content that’s cinematic quality. For anyone that doesn’t know, his channel breaks down the history of defunct attractions. It’s really a nice dose of nostalgia. And of course every Disney fan is kind of a snob in a way where we’ll have heavy opinions about what is wrong with certain rides.
I want to say even if you’re not a theme park freak, you’ll still enjoy this video because it’s so well made, but I can’t say for sure. It breaks down how Disney thought of the FastPass, why it’s flawed, how they’ve changed it. That doesn’t sound like an investigative piece of journalism, but it is.
Are you a Disney snob?
B: Oh yeah, a “passholder” is what we call ourselves. I have an annual pass.
I like to think I’m a cool Disney adult. I’m not one of those Disney adults.
B: I don’t think that’s possible, but I live in that hope as well. I am also totally fine being [called] like, “You’re a Disney adult, you’re a big nerd.” Whatever dude! I’m gonna hop on Space Mountain, then I’m gonna hop on Indiana Jones and grab a corndog on the way over because that’s the right thing to do. And you’re going to go there and stand in hour-long lines, and I’m not because I know how to game the system. And I’m fine with that. If you’re going to call me a nerd, I’ll wear that badge proudly.
I’ve lived in LA my whole life, and I went to Chapman University where I could ride my bike to Disneyland, so I would go all the time between classes. I would study there sometimes, sit on Main Street and do my homework. There was one year where I went 155 times according to my pass, which is insane.
You would go to a cafe on Main Street and study?
B: Yeah, or sit on the benches and people watch. Sometimes I would go and not even get on a ride.
That sounds so nice.
B: It’s so nice. I have two friends who are just as deeply crazy as me, and we made a podcast during the pandemic where we discuss, like, top five Disneyland restaurants, top five rides, top five sounds. We always talk about how we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel because we’ve already watched all of Defunctland, Yesterworld, Theme Park History [videos on YouTube]. I also like those ambient videos of people walking through theme parks. I watched those all the time during the height of the pandemic just to get me through. And now I’m watching roller coaster nerd stuff.
I get that because I watched POV ride throughs of the rides during the pandemic. Have you seen the POV of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Shanghai Disney? It’s incredible.
B: No, no that’s one of the rules. I don’t watch POVs of rides I haven’t been on yet because it’ll ruin the experience for me and I know Shanghai Disney has next-level animatronics. Like, I’ve watched so many walk through videos that it’s not that fun when you know the route they’re going to go. So there’s this channel Document Disney that I watch and it’s for that specific niche of sad person and they will walk a different route every video.
[Mashable and Bergara discuss Disneyland podcasts and lore for seven minutes.]
Sorry Shane.
[Madej shrugs]
B: OK, this is the last thing I’ll say about Disney, which is that I think there is a brand of Disney adult that truly loves going to the park to have a good time, and then there’s another type where it’s their personality and they get upset about people talking badly about the parks. I am not that. People who watch our channel, they don’t go “oh, that guy is obsessed with Disneyland.” There’s Disney adult lite and Disney adult scary, and I’m lite.
7. “Beautiful Tornadoes”
M: This is a channel I found recently, and growing up in Illinois I think I’m just morbidly fascinated with tornadoes. As far as natural disasters go, they’re the most terrifying to me, personally. I’ve been in a couple small earthquakes out here [in Los Angeles], and I can imagine a big one can be pretty terrifying. There’s something about tornadoes, they look biblical and monstrous in a way that an earthquake does not. Like, you can see it in the distance, and it could move toward you, and there’s something about that that is very unnerving to me. I’ve always loved watching tornado videos but only recently did I run across ones that are really HD. And now they have drones.
B: How does that work, how do the drones not get pulled in?
M: You can get pretty close to them. I think the people that operate them are clued in to how close they can get without losing their beautiful drones. This channel, in particular, is a guy who has a very poetic approach — he scores all of his own videos. He has a guitar, and he’ll punch in on a tornado for a while and play these haunting [songs], almost like Gustavo Santaolalla, the guy who did the soundtrack for The Last of Us video game.
I don’t know what he does in the off season, but in the summer and spring time he’s out there. I don’t know how they track them, but the sheer number of tornadoes he’s been able to hunt down is impressive.
I was watching this video with captions on and whoever does them calls tornadoes “burritos.” So the caption will read, like, “The town of Lockett [was] impacted by a large rain-wrapped EF-3 burrito” or light dust “revealed this distant weak burrito” or “you might be amazed at the wind turbines strength… while taking direct hits from this burrito.”
B: Shane, did you see there was a tornado warning in LA?
M: No! I feel like there’s a warning for even the slightest funnel, but I’m actually gonna look this up, get an eye on that burrito.
You don’t find wildfires scarier than tornadoes?
M: I know that wildfires spread quickly and can really take people by surprise, and if you’re in a remote location it’s hard to get out because the smoke is so thick. Tornadoes, though, are so quick, come out of nowhere, and you can’t anticipate where they’re going to go. It’s interesting to watch the videos, too, because there are different kinds of them. Also, I’m very excited for the Twister sequel.
B: Oh shit, there’s a Twister sequel? Is Helen Hunt in it?
M: Yeah, they’re working in it and probably. But there’s this kind of tornado called “drill bit tornadoes” and the funnel is so concentrated that you can see it tearing a hole in the ground as it goes. It’s creepy. They’re so scary to me. A lot of the times they don’t cause a lot of damage, but when they do it’s staggering, and it’ll kill a lot of people. Because If it goes through the center of a town, it’s chaos.
B: Was the first tornado you saw on film the Wizard of Oz? And did you love that scene and wear out the tape on your VHS rewinding that shit as a little kid, nose to the screen?
[Both laugh]
M: I don’t know that I was fascinated by them when I was younger, I was scared of them. We would have a tornado warning, and we didn’t have a basement so we’d have to go to the center of the house and board up the windows. We had a few close calls.
B: That’s even weirder that you like them, then. Because I like Michael Myers, but if he was a real dude living in my neighborhood, I wouldn’t like the Halloween films so much. The fact that you had tornadoes around you all the time and then became obsessed with them is a window into your psyche, which is a weird place.
M: Well, you know, I want to understand them.
B: I guess that’s true. I hunt ghosts, and I’m terrified of them.
M: Yeah, see! What about that.
B: Shane, was it hard for you to narrow your list down for this interview? There were so many videos I had trouble picking between.
M: Yes! We should just turn this into a regular interview. We’re perfect for it because whenever we travel on long road trips, it becomes a rotating carousel of “what about this video?”
B: We all have our own little subsets, I love watching collection videos on YouTube. I like when people take your through their collection of whatever it is. Especially sneaker and watch collections. It could be the strangest things, like gnomes. I just like watching people be really passionate about things they’ve collected over their lifetime. It relaxes me.
M: Like I said, we’re happy to do a round two. We have a lot to cover.
