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
ownersdonors!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.
They are a corporate shill, I forget who talked about. I should go find it
I’d like to submit
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.
That’s fair.
But it’s not mainly his views that put me of (just kinda) it’s the paid and unpaid sponsorships with the military. It’s so obviously a recruitment strategy that it’s painful to watch.
I don’t live in the USA either.
He lives in Huntsville, Alabama. 95% of his neighbors are defense contractors. It isn’t sponsorships, it’s “this guy lives 40 feet away from me and does something interesting for a living”
The description in multiple of the videos advertises navy or airforce recruitment. And in the non paid videos, why do you think he was given access, time, and permission to post the videos? For recruitment obviously.
Not exactly a new tactic. Same thing for Top Gun and probably a bunch of other movies. Part recruitment, part public relations to improve their image.
But the military does have some neat tech that most people won’t ever see. Like his series in the submarine, there was a lot of really cool.
Absolutely and that puts me off. Especially when they push out multiple ads across multiple youtubers at roughly the same time, like they did at one time with smartereveryday
Didn’t he also make a video at some point heavily implying he believes in creationism?
The end of ever video includes the name of a bible verse, Destin is not exactly hiding the fact that he’s christian lol
I can’t see the parent of this comment (defederated or blocked, idk), but it’s possible SmarterEveryDay believes in creationism as I believe he’s Christian. That said, I watch his channel religiously (har har) and as far as I can remember he hasn’t spread any creationist propaganda.
The worst thing he’s done is make videos supporting the US Coast Guard. They’re still interesting and informative, but it’s still military propaganda in some sense. It’s fairly tame though.
There are probably other edutainment creators to worry about more than him.
You forgot Technology Connections
Bro I love learning about latent heat of vaporization
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
I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. […]
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
Do you really disagree? Those two names rhyme and b and v sound extremely similar. Does getting that minor of an error warrant a retraction in your mind? If it does, you should retract your comment because you have typos in it. I personally don’t believe they make any difference, but since you do you should retract.
It wasn’t that he SAID it wrong, it waz that about half the information provided was about the wrong car. He got places wrong, and agian not the only one, but the final straw.
Also please note, if this was a post anywhere outside of a forum, that was ment to reach a mass audience I get my shit proof read, maybe he should do the same
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.
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 :(
I’m actually thankful. It’s good to know a little about the bleeding edge of science, and there presumably are people who really do understand it. The fact that I don’t, means that there are smart, passionate people out there doing the work. Not every show needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I feel like the more you watch the more watchable it is cause you get more and more context
They’re definitely building on each other, but they’re definitely ELIApplyingForMyDocotrate degree.
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.
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
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.
I’ll add Captain Disillusion to this thread
2019 Kurzgesagt: “I guess we will fact check, if that’s important to you.”
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 ™. Both good channels though!
Nice! Now that you said that, I actually ran into Stand-Up Maths after a few Numberphile videos, as well, so I totally get it.
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.
Do you not check the subscriptions tab and just hope “the algorithm” keeps feeding people you like?
Isn’t that what the “subscriptions” tab is for?
Neither the main tab nor subscriptions really gives me what I want. The main tab is good - I do discover good things there. I’m not one of those people who says “just give me my subscriptions in chronological order.” Because that actually sucks, and that’s kinda what you get on the subscription tab.
I want a smart algorithm, I just want it to pay more respect to my subscriptions and show more of them more often. “Home” gives you some but not enough.
Not possible afaik. Your request is a bit specific.
I know YT music has something like that where you can tweak mixes to listen more diverse things or mainly what you already know, but yea it might be cool to have that as well on YT.
Their algorithm is still super good
It is, until you realize wow I haven’t seen that subscribed channel in a frickin year
Been there so many times before so I get it haha
You can turn it off you know. I’ve been using YouTube like that for a while and have had no issues with missing videos from subscribed channels.
The implication is that Youtube so rarely presents them the content they are subscribed to that they have forgotten about the channel entirely.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Nah yeah guests, reading that post again it was like I am an aneurysm
Sam O’Nella, the most chaotic of the four no doubt
