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?
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 - 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.
If you like linguistics check out languagejones
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.
- Mathematics
- 3blue1brown
- Numberphile
- Mathologer
- Science
- PBS Space Time
- minutephysics
- Alpha Phoenix
- Technology
- Technology Connections
- Benn Jordan
- Video Games
- Any Austin
- Acerola
- Displaced Gamers
- Speedrunning
- Summoning Salt
- Bismuth
- pannenkoek2012
- Other random stuff
- Ghoul City Online (Comedic reviews)
- Hazel Thayer (Leftist topics)
- In Deep Geek (Tolkien lore)
- udiprod (Algorithm animations)
- Mathematics
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
Jenny is such wholesome outrage.
I love critics who love the things they’re critiquing.
For me, hopescolling (doomscrolling but looking for any reason to have hope) is a full time job regarding the political situation in the US. To that end, my regular resources are:
Ashley B: Ashley discuses US history, mostly black history, but not always, covering other issues such as J. Edgar Hoover, the scandals of past presidents, and black culture. She doesn’t hold back regarding the brutal details of slave history and post-bellum racial violence, and those videos can be tough to listen to.
Belle of the Ranch: The successor to Beau of the Fifth Column, Belle discusses particulars of current issues, explaining details of the economy, of the US war on Iran, and Trump telling on himself in his social media posts. While left leaning, answers a lot of comments from MAGA.
Climate Town Rollie Williams is a very watchable climatologist who covers issues of climate and government gone wrong, such as why Americans eat so much cheese, how the US doesn’t drive cars anymore (we drive Non-Passenger Work Vehicles, aka SUVs) and how the methane industry (natural gas) is the climate-killing dark horse.
Heather Cox Richardson: Richardson is a professor of American History at Boston college and does a lot of videos discussing current events and how they rhyme with past events in US history, which can be reassuring that we might actually get through this. I listen to her Letters From An American daily.
How Business Worked aka How History Works: This is the sister project to How Money Works (below). Which discusses history with a business slant. Recent topics of interest (to me) include No one wants to work anymore is a recurring theme and The Powell Memorandum and The myth of Hitler fixing the German economy. HBW is slightly longer form than HMW.
How Money Works: A (former?) finance bro talks about business and economic issues, breaking them down so that I (not a money guy) can understand them. Recent videos that are particularly edifying include why big tech now is hiring back its layoffs and how entrenched money is in US politics.
Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie: Jamelle Bouie is a NYT columnist who reads a lot of books, knows a lot about US government and has good insights into the thought processes of MAGA figures.
Copied from my previous answer on the topic.
Ancient Americas is the best pre-columbian history youtuber. I always watch his videos.
Here are some others I usually watch.
Stefan Milo for anthropology
Dig. for ancient near east topics
PBS spacetime for physics videos
Whats going on with Shipping for updates on the shipping industry
Technology Connections and LaurieWired for random tech stuff
Grant Harting to watch a pharmacist eat random pills
Road Guy Rob for road engineering information
Canned Fish Files to watch a man eat sardines
ESOTERICA for information on history, magic and religious practices.
Crime Pays But Botany Doesnt for botany tours of predominantly the American southwest
Asianometry for random history and tech history videos
Andy Wards Ancient Pottery for learning about historic ceramic practices
Patrick Kelly for healthcare and medical history
Hi, I’m the one that asked the opposite question that Op linked to :p
He doesnt make many videos anymore, though theres always a cchance for a random burst of uploads, I think his actual film making hobby has taken more importance, which is understandable, but that is made up for every christmas when he and nerdcubed do some crazy advent calendar thing for 24/25 days leading up to christmas. Which is a yearly christmas ritual for me, to watch all the old ones, and the new one, every year.
Cutting Edge Engineering Australia.
An Australian machinist that does repairs for heavy digging/mining equipment. Rebuilding hydraulic cylinders, repairing smashed frames, manufacturing new to spec parts (for a fraction of what they’d cost from the manufacturer), plus he also has videos on making new shop tools, and a long running series about totally rebuilding a truck crane… Which kinda lost its urgency and importance with a new ceiling crane they got installed, but are still gonna work on it and finish it.
Used to post one video every friday, but their shop has gotten busier and busier and they made an announcement a few months back that they were going to a every other week release schedule, which makes me sad because watching him was my friday morning ritual, but I’m not upset about it because his business is doing gangbusters and i’m not so self centered as to expect him to sacrifice business that pays $$$$$$ to keep making videos that bring in a fraction of a fraction of that.
A lot of them, but if I’m going to pick a top 10:
Urbanism: About Here, Not Just Bikes, Adam Something
Video Essays: Big Joel
Intercultural life: Chinese Cooking Demystified, Uyen Ninh, The Korean Vegan
True Crime: Matt Orchard- Crime and Society
Health: Viva Longevity!
Recipes: Rainbow Plant Life
New find shout out: Animagraffs, very cool video on the construction of the Hoover Dam
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
- 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.
so long as you love with your heart and use your brain for everything else
NileRed made alcohol from air a few days ago.
He makes chemistry look so cool, casual and interesting.
Edit: I should have started that I hated chemistry in college.
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I’d say that the only channel I come back to time and time again is probably technology connections. Just the right amount of snarkiness and information.
Lockpickinglawyer. Fascinating to watch. The guy is so speedy at opening locks without a key.
Wheezywaiter
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.
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.
Blondihacks. Genuinely some of the best machining videos for a small hobbyist I have seen, I look forward to every weekly episode. My dream is one day to recreate a small fraction of her things.
In addition to lots of other channels already mentioned, there are:
- The Elephant Graveyard
- Bobby Fingers
- Folding Ideas
- Thought Slime
- Technology Connections
- Nutrition Facts
- Viva Longetivity
- Not Just Bikes
- Climate Town