Truly delightful

Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
- You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
  
  It's not simply the Gates money, but the pivot to pursuing grants by chasing clicks to the exclusion of all else.
  They've been Mr Beast-ified.
  
  Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it's all "vote with your wallet 🙂"
  
  It has been neoliberal biased for ages. For example this is a 2021 article calling out their neoliberal bias. https://aninjusticemag.com/the-inescapable-neoliberal-bias-behind-kurzgesagt-in-a-nutshell-215eb1e9b70f?gi=9574bf28f4a0
  But it has undoubtedly gotten a lot worse recently. That south korea video was abymaly blind and baked in unrealistic capitalist assumptions.
- They're doing the thing where they upload a video and then change the thumbnail and title of the video every few days which I've only seen done by all the low effort click bait channels. It's what finally got me to install the dearrow extension which swaps titles and videos of YouTube videos to be more informative and less click bait.
  
  I believe this is a YouTube feature that effectively runs A/B tests on your behalf. You give it multiple titles and thumbnails and it'll gauge engagement with each and then use the one that was most popular. I hate it.
  
  A lot of channels do this, you might've just not noticed.
- Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of "What is the purpose of dust? I guess we'll never know. Isn't the universe a mysterious place?"
- Yeah they’re kinda bullshit.
  
  SpaceTime and 3Blue1Brown are good science educators for the college level.
  Veritasium is good for the middle/high school level.
  Kurzgesagt is probably useful for an infant. Or like a smart dog. Maybe an Australian shepherd.
  Garbage channel.
  
  What exactly is bullshit?
- Ah, yes. Their "We found space whales on Nimbus!" video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled "What actual aliens might look like" was something I could excuse. I don't consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
  However, what I really hated was their ad for a "strange matter" vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the "buy now because they'll never come back" trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
- They seem to be trying to copy xkcd's video format with the fantasy tier what if questions answered seriously. Seems out of place to me, not sure what Gates Foundation gets out of fluff pieces like figuring out what banana rain would do to the planet while getting the terminal velocity of a banana wrong right off the bat too. What a shit video.
- I stopped watching them several years ago. I can't say it was a specific video or event, but I just started zoning out when trying to watch them. I don't do that much, I generally only watch, play, listen to and do things I can focus on. I've tried to watch some videos since then but I just lose interest after a minute or two. It's like they refined their style so much that it all became too "samey" and it feels like they're so scared of offending anyone that they end up saying nothing.
- A lot of their political and historical videos are propaganda
  
  Such as?
- Dang, I'm surprised to see how many folks are down on Kurtzgesakt in the comments here! Bummer!
  They might not be perfect, ya'll, but at least they encourage open thought and critical thinking! Better than a lot of other media can say these days! 🙂
  
  But they don't encourage open thought and critical thinking. They basically tell you what to think.
- It's not as good as it used to be, but I still find it comfortable to watch. I like the black hole and space stuff, like what terraforming a planet would look like, but yeah they definitely have some fluff videos. Unfortunately clickbait titles like THE WORLD MAY DIE is just YouTube 101, seems baked into every channel now. Very hard to find a channel that feels organic.
- It's honestly the fate of most edutainment videos.
  Eventually they run out of cool stuff to educate people on, so they pivot to hypotheticals.

How in the actual hell is technology connections not on that list and also why have I not seen it in any of the comments yet
- Through the magic of buying two of them, you have someone who agrees that it should be on the list.
  
  here to rep "through the magic of having a broken one...!"
- This list is basically the tippy toppy fresh snow that's fallen on the iceberg.
  Technology connection comes a little lower.
  
  Sam O'Nella was awesome, but his current release schedule leaves much to be desired.
- Top tier YouTube channel!!

Practical Engineering
- +Real Engineering +Technology Connections +EngineerGuy +Explosions&Fire +NurdRage +NileRed (more entertainment than education nowadays but his old videos are pretty information dense) +Chris Boden +MinutePhysics/MinuteEarth/MinuteFood +LegalEagle +Engineering Explained +Wendover Productions / Half as Interesting
  I got tons more but my legs are starting to fall asleep.
  
  +3blue1brown, if you need more pain.
  
  Technology connections is so good. I watched a video and wanted to share it but peoples response was always "I'm not fucking watching an hour video on how a dishwasher works" I say but thats the shorten version
  
  If you want to learn a bit about machining while also dealing with maximum dad humor: This Old Tony
  
  Wendover has gotten strange. Their Maldives video was just the same 10 minutes regurgitated over 30.
  
  The ones I know are good, I'll be back to check the rest..

I learnered about some interesting looking channels from this thread so I'll pay it forward and share some that I like.
2 and 20
Angela Collier
Bobby Broccoli
Climate Town
Computerphile
Defunctland
fern
Folding Ideas
JimmyTheGiant
KnowledgeHusk
Lextorias
Not Just Bikes
Odd Compass
Ordinary Things
PBS Space Time
slow start
Suibhne
Thought Slime
Tom Nicholas
- 3Blue1Brown?
  
  Yeah that's a great one! I intentionally didn't mention channels that I saw others had already listed.
- Angela Collier…I also have my fair share of physics classes under my belt due to my engineering degree and she makes me think of things in a way that none of my professors did.
  She’s brilliant.
  
  The "magnetic forces do no work" thing is maddening.
  The guy who is 'the guy' for that level of physics textbooks just happens to be determined to prove a non-quantum mechanics based explanation of magnetism so the book is written from that perspective without actually saying it. Of course.
- Unlearning economics is pretty good too
- You should probably note what they focus on so people know.

Kurgesatz was really good before they started the black mirror season, where every video is about how humanity can get killed by various things.
Never heard of the other ones but I'll give it a try.
And there's a PBS video for anything you can think about, sometimes they just don't surface properly with search.
- They're honest, direct, open, and willing to learn, I love kurzgesagt. The world sucks, but we shouldn't shy away from understanding why it sucks and how we can improve it
- I am big fan of their prepandemic work. But if you can get past their click bait videos, I think they still do good content.
  Science pieces spreading awareness about something are their best videos.
  https://youtu.be/m6KnVTYtSc0
  This recent video on fentanyl was very good.
  The south korea one, the vaping and weed ones. Very good at condensing complicated topic while still retaining pertinent information that's new and not patronizing.
  
  It was very pro heroin
  
  I just showed their Fentanyl video to my 13yo daughter over the weekend and it was incredibly effective as a parenting tool. We paused many times and discussed. But their presentation didn’t leave all that much for me to say.

Shout out to PBS Space Time
- I love watching Spacetime, but also feel like dum-dum-brain after watch. Me no think good enough to watch this show.
  
  I feel like the more you watch the more watchable it is cause you get more and more context
  
  Yeah I think it’s a quality channel but apparently there are just SO many people out there smarter than me that they are fine catering only to them. It sucks being left behind by a publicly funded channel :(
- PBS Eons is also pretty good, if you're into paleontology.
- That shit's my jam.
- For physics enthusiasts, I'd also suggest "floatheadphysics" for his depictions and sometimes cathartic presentation style. I love how he broke down special relativity in an easily understood way.
  Then I've also really been enjoying "For The Love of Physics" for his style of showing some of the math. His style is more of a classroom presentation, but in a way that reminds me of my most effective professors that made their lessons as easy to consume as mac and cheese.
  I'm inclined to hit some online courses someday, too, but, for now, these have been great for conceptual stuff and my curiosity vs. time balance.

Anyone here like Folding Ideas? He's done some good stuff about flat earthers, crypto bros, and such.
- A bit more esoteric and in-depth than these 4 and much better
- One of the greats! Also, if you like Folding Ideas, you'll love Benn Jordan. The style is very similar. Also, Technology Connections.

I stopped watching kurzgesagt after their copium video on global warming where we all hold hands and sing and magically reverse it.
- Here's an existential threat to humanity, and the various ways that it's worse than you think. But don't worry! Capitalism will save the day by inventing solutions to our problems which won't necessitate any restructuring of our society or economy!
  Thanks as always to our billionaire ~~owners~~ donors!
- I wasn't gone on their video on the cruelty of the slaughter industrial complex where they bent over backwards to avoid suggesting veganism as the obvious solution.

I'd like to submit
Steve Mould
SmarterEveryDay (Highly suggest this video of the James Webb Telescope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu97IiO_yDI )
Honorable mention (because 'retired') Tom Scott
And because it's a good channel Dad How Do I?
- I liked smarter every day but recently I have been kinda put off because of his fairly frequent military propaganda for USA's military.
  
  Been a while I didn't watch one of his videos, but I remember some US military stuff on there and I thought it was an interesting view from someone I think is smart but clearly doesn't share my political leanings.
  Trying to not be in an echo chamber and all.
  Important to note that I don't live in the US.
  
  Didn't he also make a video at some point heavily implying he believes in creationism?

They're pretty okay for shallow understanding on a subject, but Wendover (not on the list), Economics Explained (not on the list), and CGP gray all get stuff pretty wrong once you get past shallow depth. I know because I'm a huge transit/urbanism nerd. If these channels haven't wronged you in some minor way, they just haven't talked about something you're a subject matter expert in yet. The point here isn't that they're bad, just understand that these are shallow explainers, the next step in from like a news article, Wikipedia, or a blog, and take them with a grain of salt.
My personal list is Kurzgesagt, XKCD explained, and The Action Lab.
- Wendover is pretty bad and finding out they take essentially bribes in the form of free stays and travel from an amusement park to say only nice things a little them after the park had an accident that killed a kid makes it so it's pretty obvious it's not about being good content for us but for the people making it. Likely tax write-offs and funny accounting all over their channels.
  They state that they aren't for education but entertainment and thus don't have a to cite sources either.
  Yeah they aren't a trustworthy source is my point.
- Do you have examples of CGP Grey getting things pretty wrong aside from his Solution to Traffic video which I indeed think holds up poorly.
  
  The Solution to Traffic video, like you mentioned, springs to mind, but so does the one based on Guns, Germs, and Steel
  
  Right? I'm surprised by this claim as when he found out he made a pretty minor error in his video on an abandoned missile silo, he made a whole other video to address it.
  
  That was actually the one I had in mind
- There's not really a way around this, and I think one of the explainer channels actually went into depth about it.
  They gave an example of how everyone learns that the earth is a sphere, but once you 'dig deeper' you find it's not actually a sphere because it's elongated at the equator (making it a spheroid.) You can then 'dig even deeper' and find that the earth isn't really a spheroid, it has mountains and all kinds of other inconsistencies that don't matter to most people but can make a difference to an expert.
  The real takeaway is that we should not consider ourselves experts, or even significantly more knowledgeable about a subject because we saw a video on one of these channels. They're for entertainment first.
  
  no Wendover the first time I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. There are more but this is the only one that stuck in my head because it was my wakeup call.
  When he got called out for it he said "Its fine and it does not make any difrence to the video, except it was the wrong car

Angela Collier completes a nice Venn diagram of (making me feel like I'm) learning stuff, righteous anger, and being a person with a face who isn't some new media production studio
https://youtube.com/@acollierastro
- Really appreciate her work - the educational stuff is good at putting things into a context and giving laypeople some mental coathooks to hang things off of, and I like how she emphasizes the video explainer format is a provider of jumping off points more than a source of real understanding.
  Her discussion of media and news is maybe not as relevant here but still pretty on point in my experience.
  
  "Her discussion of media and news is maybe not as relevant here but still pretty on point in my experience."
  I remember being surprised how much I enjoyed her video about Star Trek: Picard, given that it was a multiple hour long rant video — it's amazing how much difference it makes for someone to be engaging in good faith criticism

Like all pop-science I think they're really educational on topics I know nothing about. On topics I do know well, I think: well that's wrong and that's wrong.
- Seriously, Im really worried about the generations that are learning economics from CGP Grey who is not only not an expert but is frequently wrong.
  
  Wouldn't be any different from previous generations thinking they know something without having experience to back it up.
- PBS spacetime is a good one

Veritasium?
The Rest is History is always a good listen.
Historia Civilis and others like Kings and Generals etc are often good too.
- Don't like him for the ways he pushes bullshit, even if it technically might be correct under x y z assumptions that are utterly nonsense in real live. Last video I watched was with the interference and "light takes all paths" and the way to actually show it was complete nonsense. Yikes. At 600 nm you are not going to have any measurable amount going 10 cm somewhere else.
  
  Which one are you talking about, Veritasium?
- Oh I love the rest is history, they’re so good at keeping me interested in random history stories. Plus, in my country their ads don’t seem to work.

You forgot Technology Connections
- Bro I love learning about latent heat of vaporization

Nothing like turning on Sam O'Nella for some entertaining educational comedy for the kids only to hear "removed" over and over again

None of them on the fediverse :/

I’ll add Captain Disillusion to this thread

wheres wendover and reallifelore?

CGP Grey is a meh channel for a very long time now
- I thought the Tiffany video was pretty meh, but the followup video about how the Tiffany video got made was one of his best. He's clearly a thorough and passionate researcher. The way he refuses to settle for anything less than the primary source is both entertaining and vitally important in our modern information landscape.

What a weird bunch, to me these are 2 titans, 1 serial one-hit-wonder, and 1 guy whose humour is family guy cutaway gags.
- Id be interested to hear which are which. My guess are: Family Guy - Oversimplified Hit-Wonder - Grey Titans - Sam and Kurzgesagt

Kur is being shit recently with Bill gates
- It's been fairly neoliberal for awhile now, I can't remember which video it was but one of them really put a bad taste in my mouth. Whatever it was, imo it felt very apologist of capitalism. I unsubbed after that.
  
  They did a recent south korea video which was super neolib biased.

Also:
LockPickingLawyer
How To Cook That
Captain Disillusion
Pilot Debreif
Stand-Up Maths
- It's a mix of interesting and meh to me, but if Stand-up Maths got your interest, you might want to take a look at Numberphile as well.
  
  I actually converted from Numberphile to Stand-Up Maths as it's a bit lighter on the maths whilst still being Quite Interesting (tm). Both good channels though!

If you wanna learn from the best chef in the world:
You Suck At Cooking! Yeah, you totally suck!
Or Preppy Kitchen if we're being serious
Legal stuff:
Meidas Touch and Legal Eagle
Retro video and music devices:
Techmoan and VWestlife
Also: Tom Scott. Or at least his backlog because he retired.
And a very important one! - Science stuff: Potholer54 I can't believe he doesn't have millions of subs. It actually kind of makes me sad.
- I turn to preppy kitchen first for all my need to make something for company needs
  
  You mean company as in guests or are you the designated baker at your firm?
- One more for potholer54. He's one of the oldies, right up there with DarkMatter2525.(probably my favorite), Professor Dave Explains, Myles Power and Martymer 81. Oh, and in this vein there's a (relatively) new kid on the block: Forrest Valkai aka Renegade Science Teacher.

If anyone likes music theory, Adam Neely, Nahre Sol, Charles Cornel, and Open Studio Jazz are all amazing.
I really would love to hear what a non musician thinks about them too. I bet maths heads would love it.
- This is really good too https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0hqbUdLzffDmyuAgjjuIkdk8LAwAuiMM

I'm more of a Real Engineering and Mustard kinda guy
- Replace Real Engineering with Practical Engineering for me
  
  Love me some grady

I’ll throw Dr Becky (Smethurst) and Numberphile into the mix

2019 Kurzgesagt: "I guess we will fact check, if that's important to you."

Im suprised nobody here mentioned extra history

Me: “Sam O… haha cute name. I’ve never heard of it. I’ll see if they have a YT channel. Oh they do! What?! I’m already subscribed??!”
I wish YT actually respected subscriptions. Here I am subscribed to someone and I’ve so thoroughly forgotten it that their name doesn’t even ring a bell.
- He doesn't really put out videos very often and also took multi year hiatus recently.
  
  it's quite funny that he said 'going to college, be back in 4 years' then ACTUALLY stopped posting for 4 years then came back like nothing happened and made a joke about a Scooby do movie.
  like thats so insanely based I wouldn't believe it actually happened except that it fits his character so well. Like took a nap through all of covid then starts singing a song about animals feet.
  also he made a channel about crossword puzzles lol
  https://youtube.com/@samonellacrosswords
- wat? How do you get from being forgetful about your own stuff to youtube not respecting subscriptions? (whatever that even means lol)
  
  I use YT daily, heavily.
  It’s pretty well known that their feed is optimized for engagement above all else. They will show you videos they think you’ll like and NOT show you a new video from a channel you’re subscribed to.
  It’s called an “algorithm.”
  It’s so extreme at times that you can even not know that you’re subscribed to a channel, because you never see them.
  This is what I mean by not respecting subscriptions. There’s no stronger explicit signal I can give YT when I want to see more of a creator. But they ignore that and decide for me what I’ll like.
  
  The implication is that Youtube so rarely presents them the content they are subscribed to that they have forgotten about the channel entirely.

vsauce. no, you haven't watched all of his videos. also i think his previously exclusive series is available now.
- I love the content he covers, but his presentation style makes it impossible for me to watch. It's just too overly dramatic, and hyperactive for my tastes.
  
  what? that sounds nothing like how I'd describe his work. is this about his shorts or regular videos?

No love for Veritasium?
- Ever since Tom Nicholas' video criticising Veritasium's channel, and then how Veritasium handled the criticism after in the comment section... I haven't really watched any of Veritasium's video anymore.
  https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc
  
  From reading the comments, it would seem that Tom really knows how to cherry pick his talking points. Which is about all i got from seeing his other videos too.
  Veritasium really looks like the sympathetic one in that exchange. I mean. Tom really made a whole video trying very hard to smear someone that brings a net positive to the world. I dont find that the criticism warranted a 50 minute video over essentially nothing.
  
  I've seen him double down on being very wrong more than once. I find it hard to take him seriously knowing how very wrong he can be without wavering conviction.
  If he's wrong when talking about the topics I do know about, what should I assume about his knowledge of topics I'm less familiar on?
- His stuff might be a bit too deep for the normies

Also veritasium, 3blue1brown, practical engineering, adam savage kinda too
- Feels warranted to also drop a mention of Physics Girl.
  She's been going through hell for the past couple of years but she finally seems to be getting better.
- You'd enjoy Tech Ingredients too I bet

University course lectures are still the best and you can find tons of them in YouTube in their entirety.
- Anything by Robert Sapolsky ftw! Really enjoy his delivery style.

Kraut
Varitasium
OBF
Astrum
miniminuteman
Wendover Productions
Hankschannel
Practical engineering
NileRed, NileBlue
Fern
Hoog
Plainly Difficult
NEO
Versed
ColdFusion
~~Thoughty2~~
DamiLee
Facts in Motion
Barely Sociable
Mark Rober
Deep Dive
Edit: Also know you can watch videos without ads AND without sponsor parts (using sponsor block) on desktop and android with grayjay.app
- I've lost trust in veritasium. I don't remember the specifics right now but every video he makes I have to take with caution
  
  In the beginning it was very nice, but somehow the guy became repulsive somehow. I used to watch every video but lately I skip many. But since the older videos were interesting, I added it to the list. I also used to like Mark Rober but his videos I really dislike for a while now. It's so over the top "look at me, I'm an engineer, I'm going to do extreme shit and be super popular for kids" instead of "I'm going to teach you something super interesting".
  
  they did some self-driving car propaganda a while ago iirc. their latest videos have been mostly pretty focused physics and math history though, so they've generally been pretty okay imo. but any time they mention anything that can be sold i become a lot more suspicious
- Isn't thoughty2 an insane right winger?
  
  I googled it and apparently there's been some commotion about him and his views. Especially about a video about why people are so easily offended, one I haven't seen myself. I'm only on YouTube and Lemmy, I completely missed everything else on other platforms.
  The videos I've seen had no political content so I never noticed anything, but it's good to know as it might have influence on the information and nuance he provides. So thank you for pointing out his bias.
- Branch Education. Rare videos, but so good!

My problem with threads like this is that I only have 24 hours a day, and I've accumulated a critical mass of content creators to the point where I cannot keep up.
Which of these awesome people do I ignore?! What information do I leave behind!? How am I supposed to get anything useful done with my life?!?
Also, check out Chris Boden if you want to see something cool!
- Chris Boden, my beloved...

I don't see Blue Jay. 😔

Vsauce

My four horsemen:
Uri Tuchman
Hyperspace pirate
Hand tool rescue
Apetor
- Man, I am still sad about apetor. What a horrible way to go.
- May he rest in peace
- Based on that list, you may be interested in This Old Tony, Jeremy Makes Things, Rainfall Projects, and Tyler Bell.
  
  I don't know the last two, I'll check them out thanks!

History Matters is my personal favorite

Hmmmm... I prefer cold fusion and astrum.

Sam O'Nella, the most chaotic of the four no doubt

that's just dipping your toes in the shore of the bast ocean that is yt educational content.

I love threads like this where we collectively come together and share our YouTube subs and we all grow stronger every time we find a new one to add to our list

Also for graphics programming and game development, I will add:
Sebastian Lague
Acerola

Kurzgesagt is cancer
- Why?
  
  Lots of missinformation

Anyone know a good channel for film a vfx? I like Corridor Crew but they're a bit too noisy for me.
- Captain Disillusion
- decoded
- Kinda sorta Ian Hubert. He does "lazy tutorials" which are like 1 to 5 minute speed runs of different VFX tricks. There's not really enough detail to recreate what he's doing unless you're already pretty proficient, but it's cool to watch and get the creative juices flowing.

I'd add 3blue1brown (3b1b) to that mix! Also xkcd's What If, Minute Physics, and maybe VSauce

I've got to throw The Budget Museum out there since it's not listed.
- link for the curious (@TheBudgetMuseum)

Missing my personal favorite. https://m.youtube.com/@Physicsduck

Anton Petrov
- Its Never 'aliens'

CGP Grey is a Tesla shill
- I don’t think it’s on purpose. He got his before the vasy majority knew what a shithead Musk is.
  
  So the only thing determining whether tesla is good or bad in your eyes is the ceo?
  They never provided competitive value to customers, even when Musk was taking the left for a ride.

People in this thread who dislike CGP Grey because of one bad traffic video.
- Doesn’t he also have a video that’s throating the idea of the British monarchy cuz the tourism?

Professor Dave if you wanna watch someone get absolutely demolished.

hey kids
- Greetings children

Ahoy.