Inspired by the opposite question posted recently, what YouTube creators have you watched for a long time and still find worth returning to? Alternatively, what are some new high quality channels you have been enjoying?
Tom Scott (he’s back after a break)
John Michael Godier (science and astronomy)
Videogamedunkey
Any Austin (deep dives into minutea of video games)
Dunkey is funny as hell.
Glad some people enjoy him. I never could get into Dunkeys type of humor.
Idk what happened but at some point Dunkey must became super annoying for me, used to like his videos.
Same, his videos just feel hollow now. Before, he was funny and there was always solid content put together. Now it just feels like pure empty high-nosed sarcasm. Every now and then he drops a good one, though.
I felt a sharp decline in quality after he got a kid. He started uploading videos a lot more often but each individual video wasn’t as good as previous videos of his. It’s a little sad but also understandable if it’s to pay the bills of a newborn
My kids put me on to Dunkey a few years ago. He’s great. I only discovered Any Austin recently, but love his work, too.
Any Austin!! Dang, I just watched his video about GTA SA. Good pick!
- Mathematics
- 3blue1brown
- Numberphile
- Mathologer
- Science
- PBS Space Time
- minutephysics
- Alpha Phoenix
- The Rest Is Science
- Technology
- Technology Connections
- Benn Jordan
- Internet of Bugs
- Video Games
- Any Austin
- Acerola
- Displaced Gamers
- Speedrunning
- Summoning Salt
- Bismuth
- pannenkoek2012
- Other random stuff
- Amelia Dimoldenberg (Chicken Shop Date)
- Ghoul City Online (Comedic reviews)
- Hazel Thayer (Leftist topics)
- In Deep Geek (Tolkien lore)
- udiprod (Algorithm animations)
what about pbs eons, space time is not my taste, because im not a physics/astronomy nerd.
Eons is awesome! I tried watching space time but it seemed too unpolished for my taste.
probably hard to talk about space/time, if they arnt well versed in those areas im guessing?
I love Mathologer but it’s not for casuals. Great stuff
Naw, Mathologer is fine, he starts out super basic and builds on it until it gets very complex.
If you’re not interested in the complex, you can just dip out when it gets too heavy.
- Mathematics
In alphabetical order for no good reason:
BeardMeatsFood - Competitive eater turned touring food challenge attempter. Wins more than he loses.
Dr Becky - Astrophysicist. Monthly space news updates.
Lock Picking Lawyer - Masterlock’s greatest foe. And a foe to many other terrible locks and safes too. Look out for the April Fools videos.
Numberphile - Brady Haran’s popular channel about mathematics
[Periodic Videos (https://www.youtube.com/@periodicvideos) - Chemistry videos by the same producer as Numberphile. He has a bunch of channels, but I’ll only list the two here.
Primitive Technology - No voice-over or talking head(s), chill vibes, primitive building techniques. The original. Be sure to turn on subtitles / closed captions!
Simone Giertz - Down-to-Earth Inventor and Entrepreneur. Formerly the Queen of Sh*tty Robots.
Simon Roper - Linguist with an interest in English
Weird Explorer - Reviews weird and wonderful fruits from all around the globe, many you’ve probably never heard of. Currently branching out into some home gardening videos, but still doing fruit.
Most of these have extensive back-catalogues that would take some considerable time to get through. Enyoy.
Primitive technology is genuinely fascinating to watch. And Simon Roper is fascinating to listen to.
If you like linguistics check out languagejones
I thought matter locks greatest enemy was McNally. “Today we’re going open a masterlock with a master lock”
In no particular order:
Dr. Becky (astronomy)
Josh Johnson (comedy)
New Venture Games (old man boardgaming)
Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ornithology)
Ant Lab (entomology)
Practical Engineering (engineering, mostly civil)
Numberphile (maths, as they say across the pond)
The Octopus Lady (marine biology)
Juniper Dev (young gun making games)
suckerpinch (software stuff)
Jenny Nicholson (media critic)
engineerguy (engineering)
Steve Mould (physics)
Dang, I gotta clean up my subscriptions. I tend to add people when I find one good video, then ignore them when I find they aren’t to my taste
+1 for suckerpinch. Truly the craziest of all.
I’m Grady and you just read this in my voice.
Jenny is such wholesome outrage.
I love critics who love the things they’re critiquing.
Yo, Bill Hammeck rocks, I actually got his book. A little dryer than the vids but still digging it so far.
And the Octopus Lady (Alien Oceans) is so entertaining she conquered my fear of weird insectoid marine life.
Gamers Nexus
He’s gotten just a little too edgy/ranty for me. Like, I appreciate the consumers’ rights stuff that he does, and I even agree with most of his talking points, but it was starting to feel like all he did was rant. I got enough stuff bringing me down in life these days that I just stopped feeling his stuff.
I feel like thats just a consequence of the industry being so shitty and messed up these days lol. Not much positive things to say haha
I suppose but I still like watching Hardware Unboxed and the occasional Jayz.
His rants exist because no one can afford the hardware anymore and he’s doing excellent journalism in explaining why we can’t (in a much more exacting and capable of bringing lawsuits way). Some of the best journalism I’ve seen in years, flat out.
I’ll just quote myself from above:
I appreciate the consumers’ rights stuff that he does, and I even agree with most of his talking points, but it was starting to feel like all he did was rant. I got enough stuff bringing me down in life these days that I just stopped feeling his stuff.
I feel like Jayz can be ranty too, but he’s got a little better attitude about things. And Hardware Unboxed reports on stuff as well, but doesn’t feel as ranty to me. Again, just for me personally, his vibe brings me down too much and I got a lot going on, y’know? I can only control what I can control, and all that.
I can appreciate that. It’s too easy to get burnt out on shitty news. Sometimes we just want to escape. I admit, sometimes I will let a new episode for several days until I feel I can handle it. But I eventually force myself to watch awful news like I’m in A Clockwork Orange
Primitive Technology: One guy, wearing only a pair of shorts, no music, no narration, just bird and forest sounds, as he creates shelters and items from the forest around him using prehistoric technology.
He started by building various types of shelters, then got into making pottery, bricks, and roof tiles, using clay from a nearby stream.
Currently, he’s working on fire technology, creating hotter and hotter fires first to fire his clay objects to make them durable, and then to smelt iton.
Where does he get the metal? He harvested “iron bacteria” from the creek, and dried it fired it, and collected the tiny iron “prills”. When he had enough, he went through a series of experiments to make his fire hot enough to melt the prills, and forge it into a tiny, rough, triangular knife.
Today, there are lots of copycats, mostly building elaborate shelters, but this guy is the OG. I mostly watch musical and political content, but Primitive Technology is the only channel I watch as soon as a new video drops. When the apocalypse arrives, I’ll be ready.
Edit: Ever see someone start a fire by spinning a stick between his palms? This guy does it in almost every episode.
For Primitive Technology don’t forget to turn on CC as he leaves a bunch of notes there! (You might already know this but others following suggestion might not)
Most of my favourites have already been mentioned but here’s a few that I haven’t seen:
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Chris Spargo - Documentarian ‘Answering life’s little questions’ (in his own words)
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HowTown - Well researched, slick documentaries on science and sociology
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Useful charts - Family trees and history combined with some nuanced religious history
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Map Men - Somehow both an incredible geography channel and very funny skit show
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ToldInStone - Regular and endlessly fascinating ancient history content
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Captain Disillusionment - A one man special effects genius makes funny deep dives and debunks on special effects topics
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Nile Red - Chemistry wiz kid makes alcohol from toilet paper - The closest thing to a modern alchemist I can imagine
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Joel haver - Inventor the rotoscoped paint cartoon, funny, creatively driven and refuses to sell out
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Patrick Boyle - Educated, nuanced and cuttingly dry humoured takes on popular economics issues
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Steve Mould - High quality science demos and explanations with an engaging and humble host
I will second Map Men. Extremely well sourced and entertaining.
Jay’s brother Beardyman is a really unique musical artist I highly recommend
NileRed made alcohol from air a few days ago.
Just watched it! It’s amazing how much effort he goes to. Makes me appreciate how complex and expensive carbon capture and sequestration at any kind of scale must be.
He makes chemistry look so cool, casual and interesting.
Though there are numerous other channels on YT (but I tend to forget nearly all of the names)
Some of them:- Advanced Tinkering
- Chemical Force
- (Forgot the other ones. Please don’t hurt me)
What I love about this video is not that he pulled it off (more or less), but that it helps illustrate just how hard it is to use atmospheric carbon for just about anything.
- Captain Disillusionment - A one man special effects genius makes funny deep dives and debunks on special effects topics
think you meant Captain Disillusion
True 😅, but I can’t help but think he would approve of the mistake.
Love How town. They’re a fairly new channel but great content.
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styropyro, pretty interesting videos although i don’t understand most of the science stuff he talks about tbh
He basically builds bombs with electricity. I think he’s really irresponsible and hope he doesn’t encourage less knowledgeable people to try to copy him.
yeah that’s true. tbh i don’t think there’s anyone attempting to copy that though (looks too Not Safe For Life)
I sure hope people don’t copy him, but arguably he’s also experimenting with cheap designs for high-power switches and safety, and seems to know what he’s doing. Not sure if he’ll actually end up contributing anything meaningful to science, or if it’ll forever just be entertainment, but it’s better than a lot of things that money gets pumped into either way.
Never mind the lasers. He knows what he’s doing but his viewers don’t.
Folding Ideas’ - long form deep dive videos into various topics. His video about NFTs is particularly good.
that video is goated
I’m more moved by “I don’t know James Rolfe” and “Flat Earth” nowadays
Internet Today - ever since the Machinima days
RedLetterMedia
Blame Society (Beer and Boardgames and Welcome To The Basement)
Jimmy Broadbent - Following him going from being a ‘degenerate simracer’ in a shed to racing IRL has been inspiring
Loading Ready Run - from way back when they were on The Escapist, and then to Penny Arcade and now their own channel.
Inside Games - another from Machinima.
Ah, love Jimmer. So happy how his life has turned out
I really enjoy Welcome to the Basement, but man do I still miss Craig.
Jimmy Broadbent
Still remember the streams from the shed. It’s crazy what he’s built since then. I don’t watch him a lot nowadays, but the 23 hours for charity races are always nice 🦀🦀🦀🦀
Cody’s Lab. A lot of channels do cool shit for their youtube channel, and it feels like Cody has a youtube channel for the cool shit he’s already doing. Like, vacuuming out a chicken coop. Check out how he does it without dirtying the filter on his shop vac. Or an infinite pickle jar. With a couple design modifications, that could legit be a marketable product.
Also Know Art. I can’t even imagine the effort it takes to make the 3d models he uses to explain things, but damn if I don’t know a hell of a lot more about telescoping mechanisms and drills and buttons and phones and staplers and saws and like a million other things because of their amazing channel
In no particular order:
- The Rest Is Science (podcast)
- Technology Connections/Connextras
- Jeff Geerling / Level 2 Jeff – Edit: see replies below
- Techmoan
- Gamers Nexus / GNCA
- LGR
- Switch and Click
- The Linux Experiment
- Tasting History with Max Miller
- Ben Eater (breadboard computers)
- Stuff Made Here (engineering)
- Up and Atom (science)
- Simon d’Entremont (photography)
- Words Unravelled and Rob’s Words (English language)
- Kurzgesagt – Edit: see replies below
- Veritasium – Edit: see replies below
- Tom Scott (the returned)
- Asianometry (tech history)
- Clabretro (retro networking and server hardware)
Edit: A few bonus channels that may be of interest but didn’t all fit the criteria for me:
- Action Retro - doing silly stuff with old computers - more recent discovery for me
- Dr Geoff Lindsey - Linguistics - I only watch occasionally - can be a bit heavy on the linguistic science for an amateur like me.
- Lftkryo - Linus Åkesson - an absolute wizard coding on the C64
- RetroBytes - computer history. Most of his content is mainly him just talking, so I can just listen while I’m doing something else
- Tech Tangents - more of a recently discovered channel for me. Vintage hardware. Underrated channel.
- Serial Port and Parallel port - vintage computers and networking. Brings back memories from my days working for an ISP.
- Honorary mention to Veronica Explains. She keeps things pretty basic so I don’t get a lot out of her videos, but I like her stance on open source and not selling out. She posts everything on Peertube as well.
Veritasium is majority owned by private equity now, fyi. I just found out myself the other day.
So is Kurzgesagt. Can’t bring myself to watch PE channels. But the rest of this list is fire, happy to see Asianometry and Words Unravelled get shout outs
deleted by creator
Jeff Geerling
He came up in the other thread about youtubers people stopped following, so you may want to check that out.
Thanks for the heads up. I knew he was a devout Catholic, but I never had the experience that he was pushing any agenda–as in he tends to just stick to technical content. I don’t mind watching people with different opinions than mine, but “cure the gay” is very problematic. I would be sad, since I really like his content. I will have to read up some more on this.
Along similar lines: another channel I have been watching is Smarter Every Day, where the host, Destin, is fairly open about his faith. That may put some people off, but overall I have found his content overall interesting and I don’t feel like he’s preaching to me, but others may be more sensitive to that. He’s currently pushing his own grill scrubber product pretty hard, which I find off-putting, but I see what he’s trying to do. I’m giving him a chance to get back to more interesting engineering stuff.
To address the others: yes, I know there are some potentially controversial entries, like Veritasium and Kurzgesagt. I have Veritasium “on probation” due to the change, but so far the new hosts have done a pretty decent job. Kurzgesagt is one I kind of leave for a long time and then come back every so often, because they have something interesting and their content is presented well. Totally understand if people choose to give them a skip.
Red Letter Media - the guys are still just as cynical and witty as ever. Maybe even better as they’ve gotten older. I’ve got random episodes of Best of the Worst on in the background pretty often.
Thank you!! On my home instance, too, that’s awesome.
Been watching RLM for 17 years and that sounds insane to say.
Love those guys. The recent What Are Next For Star Trek video is great.
The food fight was so wholesome, lol.
They really are masters of physical comedy. Watching Rich trash the set is always hilarious.
The Majority Report with Sam Seder - politics and humor
Crash Course - general learning
Just Have a Think - climate tech news
Astrum - cosmology and astrophysics learning
Some More News - politics and humor
Zeteo with Mehdi Hasan - politics
Josh Johnson - comedy
I was getting into Astrum, then noticed he uses a lot of AI images for Astrum Earth :(
Ah I did not notice that, I often listen primarily to the streams, man that’s disappointing.
My man! Sam Seder, Emma Vigeland, Brandon Sutton, Cody Johnston, Katy Stoll, so funny and great politics. RIP Michael Brooks
Tom Scott
Casually Explained
Tier Zoo
