Good recommendations for documentaries that can be watched on YouTube?

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q6Fzbgs_Lg

Aaron created RSS, and was an early developer of Reddit. A visionary of accessible information and information technology.

Since his death, the direction the internet has gone has been in ways that he would very much be taking issue with.

The BBC made an excellent documentary on pig butchering scams:

https://pi.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=bW4wYV0V-5s

I knew someone who was a victim of one of these scams from 2019 - 2023

Edit: Sorry, you specifically said youtube. Cringe Link O'Chest moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4wYV0V-5s

And I also commented twice. Ugh, what a train wreck.

PBS is pretty much constantly putting out high quality documentaries https://youtube.com/@frontline

I liked their videos on Uvalde, North Korea, and 20 Days in Mariupol

Any of Dan Olson's videos will fit the bill, probably.

Here's two of his best, in my opinion.

https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?si=7FQYM2aeJ4ZziAjl

https://youtu.be/JTfhYyTuT44?si=5kiOP6UfO2xl4rwt

Radiohead - Meeting People is Easy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhblCCLXh3g

The World's End: The Making Of 'Day Of The Dead' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKTl51U8HVk

Brian Deer's 2004 documentary "MMR: What they didn't tell you"
It's an investigation on basically the father of Anti-vax sentiment/misinformation, uploaded to YouTube by Brian himself.

https://youtu.be/7UbL8opM6TM

DW Documentary https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39zufHfsuGgpLviKh297Q

https://youtu.be/BkUMZS-ZegM?si=9ZxwwX4ksiadZ1u_

The Century of the Self, a multi-part series on the Genesis of contemporary US Public Relations and propaganda, politics and the godfather of it all, Edward Bernays.

Watched it once 20 years ago and still think of it in reference to many broken business, government and political approaches.

Link to part 1 below from bot.

I am honestly very disappointed by documentaries in general. Rarely do I find them informative enough or not biased. They are generally made for the masses who know 0 (or even less than that?) about a subject.

If your goal is education, I suggest a book or a course. Now, for motivation and just "time wasters", they are fine.

The one documentary I watched and enjoyed was alphaGo. It was nice feeling the stress of the match and seeing how they handled it, the setups and whatnot.

I Think We're Alone Now

But it's not a "narrator" style documentary.

Everything from the chanel -> History Time. Pete Kelly is an awesome story teller and works really hard on making in depth historical documentaries, some three hours long.

The only videos that YouTube manages to convince me to watch are by clickspring. So satisfying to watch metal being machined, and much to learn too.

The Fog of War w robert mcnamara. A fascinating and honest telling of the vietnam war from one of its main architects. In it, the guy basically admins to committing war crimes. Not big on history/war documentaries, but this is one that really made an impact on me and changed the way I see the world. Not depressing or gory, at least I didn't think it was.

I LOVE this one

https://piped.video/channel/UCDyC_8GOQfcgt5dEgVyDTzg

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyC_8GOQfcgt5dEgVyDTzg

I really liked "small brained american" travelling from Ireland to Japan (on a motorcycle). It starts slow and kind of boring in the UK but the later parts are so good. Less commentary, just showing life. He is visiting "dangerous" countries like Ukraine, Iraq and Myanmar, but focussing on the normal people's everyday lifes, while being a "small brained american".

The whole playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfY1ilUy0PimHk3jKFuX01G7tXlj0dGPf&si=5Obpko3wMZZKlJQS

PBS NOVA is great. That playlist has 20 documentaries on it about a range of topics, most just under an hour long, one that is just under two hours long.

The Volunteers. It's an documentary about the war in syria. It's brutal and heartbreaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ1290087Yk

The Death of Yugoslavia

Veratasium is cool, but they are a little bit more YouTuber-y than PBS

Human

Citizenfour documentary on edward snowden. Great if you're interested in or curious about privacy/spying/technology. Not great if you aren't.

I appreciate you. Thank you

Try this, it's great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu4_AVG1Wk

This one is kinda like a documentary. The Marcus House channel spends most of its time documenting the latest developments in the design, construction, and testing of the SpaceX Starship.

It’s a really interesting show. To make it into a “single documentary” one could watch every episode. But that documentary would be super fucking long.

House talks about various little design problems and solutions. There’s sort of a spy briefing feel to it, in a subtle way, because SpaceX doesn’t share all the informaron about what’s going on, so he speculates about what certain observed things means. They’ve got drones and pod-mounted cameras watching the place in Texas where they’re building out the facility. The facility is really interesting too. They’re basically building a factory to mass produce the biggest rocket ever.

If you think Musk is a tech bro asshole narcissist baby I literally don’t care. Just go watch something else. Incidentally zero of the show is about Musk but you can’t mention anything even related to Elon Musk without a chorus of hate so can we please just skip it this time? It’s a cool show about engineering and construction.