Ask Lemmy

Technology connections

Every frame a painting

Alt shift x

Dad how do I

Food wishes

Kurzgesagt In a nutshell

Primitive technology

Climate Town - Does a decent job explaining climate-related topics and still makes them interesting.
Jay Foreman - Very funny map trivia.
JerryRigEverything - A bit too much promotion on some stuff, but really comprehensive tear downs.
MIT OpenCourseWare - learn good.
Pop Culture Detective - Deconstructive pop culture tropes that make you think a lot.
SNES drunk - retrogaming (not just SNES) but well done, 0% additives just prime content.
stacksmashing - electronics trivia and hardcore reverse engineering.
The National Gallery - If you're into history, this is an excellent channel about art trivia. I'm not much into art and this is always top quality for me.
Tom Scott plus - Tom Scott does British telly stuff like playing board games or chasing people on the streets with an apple tag.
Voices of the Past - This is slow, exhaustive history for nerds. Worth it if you want to let the story wash all over you.
Vox - slightly left leaning great journalism, albeit sometimes too brief to explain complex topics.
Weird History - They get some stuff wrong, but it's still entertaining.
Project Farm - Wanna buy an angle grinder? Now you do.
Insider - Had a series of "How Real Is It?" videos that let professionals describe stuff seen in movies, and it is both entertaining and a learning experience.
Corridor - Some stuff of dubious quality but if you're interested in FX, it's good.
LegalEagle - Law is hard, but is law fun?
brian david gilbert - Existential horror camouflaged as comedy.
PBS Space Time - Good but hard space science.
BurtBot - Orcs with normal voices.
Joel Haver - Neat if you're into deadpan humor.
Taskmaster - Probably some of the best british television available in YT.

Bonus round:
Practical Engineering - How stuff is built but explained well enough that even I can understand it.

Plus, use FreeTube, not You Tube. Don't be a slave of their terrible algorythm and all the recommendations will turn out to be of your taste.

Technology Connections

Ben Eater. He’s been explaining the low level details of how computers work. Literally building a functioning computer from nothing but a cpu and a breadboard. Incredibly good explanations.

Laura Kampf

Simone Giertz

MKBHD

Tom Scott

Mark Rober

Climate Town

Jay Foremen (Map Men)

Daily Dose of Internet

Captain Disillusion

Casually Explained

Tom Scott

• MinutePhysics
• MinuteEarth
• AsapSCIENCE
• CGP Grey
• Company Man
• Every Frame a Painting (abandoned)
• Historia Civilis
• Mark Rober
• Now You See It
• Sam O'Nella Academy (semi abandoned, but so good)
• Smithsonian Channel
• Two Minute Papers

Definitely look up Kurzgesagt

Some More News - a disheveled and sarcastic anchor does a deep dive into a current topic

Contrapoints - an ex-philosopher does a really deep dive into a topic (sometimes a concept or a phenomenon, sometimes a particular person or event), with incredibly high production value and costumes. Unfortunately this means she only puts out 2 videos a year, but they're now usually 1-2 hours long.

Podcasts - some have YT channels, but often no video, so if you're looking for something to watch, this may not be helpful

Behind the Bastards - a deep dive (often 2+ hour+ episodes) into different historical or current terrible people

5-4 - a podcast about why the Supreme Court sucks

Maintenance Phase - two journalists talk about various health, diet, and wellness scams and misconceptions

If Books Could Kill (no YT channel) - Michael Hobbes from Maintenance Phase and Peter from 5-4 talk about "airport books"--bad pop science books

You're Wrong About - Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes (until late 2021) talk about pop culture misconceptions, everything from O.J. to the Satanic Panic to Iran-Contra and more.

Tom Scott, he has done a video every week for like 10 years. Sort of a science travel adventure nerd. His videos are generally short and interesting.

Veritasum - Science guy with some interesting topics

Donut Media - If you like cars, they do some interesting and funny things while not being complete asshats.

The Proper People - Abandoned places, nice videos and respectful exploration.

Cash Jordan - Gives tours of NYC apartments from tiny studio apartments up to multi-million dollar penthouses.

Geography Geek - A lot of interesting geography-related facts.

Knob Feel - Short and sweet reviews of various knobs.

Vice Grip Garage - If you are interested in how old cars are repaired and have lots of time, he has many ~1.5 hour videos of dragging old cars out of the bushes that haven't ran for 20 years, getting them mostly running, and driving them home.

Polyphonic - Interesting video essays about various music and musical artists.

@ecoboy if you're into some educational vids on semi-serious but delivered in a humorous way,
ClimateTown is right there (https://youtube.com/@ClimateTown)

Sort of in the same vein is NotJustBikes, who has really great insight on subpar American infrastructure compared to other developed countries.
(https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes)

EngineeringExplained with some cool insights on the intersection of nature and engineering (https://youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel)

Video essay/ Documentaries

Hbomberguy

SarahZ

CGP Grey

Ahoy

Wendover

Daily news

Philip DeFranco

Technology Connections is a fun one, Alec explains all sorts of everyday gadgets, and sometimes some old gadgets.

Watch Wes Work follows an auto/truck/tractor mechanic up north, he does a great job of explaining the why and how of his diagnostics.

The History Guy is another one of my favorites, especially his episode on transistors.

Adam Something - Mostly about civil engineering and public transportation, but also a ton of commentary on the right wing from a European leftist perspective.

Ladyknightthebrave - Film theory and criticism.

King Arthur Baking - Just solid baking videos.

Tasting History with Max Miller - Cooking show about historical foods with brief dives into the dish's history.

Oversimplified - Short animated videos on history.

F.D. Signifier - Black leftist takes on society, politics, and pop culture.

Lindsay Ellis - Now retired from YouTube due to harassment, but excellent film theory and criticism, originated the current film theory video format.

Chinese Cooking Demystified - Chinese cooking videos that focus on how it's actually done in China.

All Gas No Brakes/Channel 5 - Modern gonzo documentary news.

Breadsword - Film theory and criticism.

Contrapoints - Leftist trans commentary on philosophy, political theory, pop culture, and basically everything.

Luetin09 - Incredibly deep dives into Warhammer 40,000 lore.

I dunno what kind of channels you wanted.

Just wanted to say that steve1989mreinfo is posting again!

Kurzgesagt - science and futurism in colorful cartoon format

LockPickingLawyer - actual lawyer that lockpicks with a calm and explanatory voice, giving tips and suggestions both to lockpickers and locksmiths

McNallyOfficial - sarcastic, zero crap given, jaded version of LPL

Townsends - fun and educational 17th century learning through reenactment

JeremyJahns - always reliable movie reviews in my opinion

Sir Swag - news without the BS.

Tasting History - learning history through delicious step by step, historically accurate recipes

Skill Tree - LARP and cosplay DIY projects and tips

OverlySarcasticProductions - adorable cartoon history from Blue, and adorable cartoon mythology from Red.

there's a community for that, https://lemmy.world/c/youtubepitch

PBS Spacetime (Physics)

Money & Macro (Economics)

Patrick Boyle (Finance)

Perun (Military Analysis)

Veritasium (Physics)

3Blue1Brown (Mathematics)

Asianometry (Semiconductors and Geopolitics)

Engineerguy (Engineering)

RealLifeLore (Geopolitics)

Polymatter (China)

Tantacrul (Music)

Mustard (Aircraft and Trains)

Biolayne (Fitness)

Numberphile, Computerphile, PBS Spacetime, PBS Infinite Series (sad they stopped), Standup Maths, 3Blue1Brown

Check out this video from Practical Engineering, a channel about teaching us about our constructed world, when it works and when it fails. https://youtu.be/jxNM4DGBRMU

LEMMiNO is extremely good. His older content is neat but his newer stuff is highly polished 30 min-1 hour ish long documentaries on miscellaneous mysteries like Jack the ripper or DB Cooper

Has anyone mentioned Knowing Better yet? Guy makes fantastic videos explaining a wide variety of topics. Some of his latest ones have been very in depth analyses about periods on American history, though he has covered many more subject as well. Highly suggested if you like long form content.

Another channel that I love is Captain Dissilussion. A guy dressed as a superhero breaks down the special effects behind hoaxes and viral videos, usually with a lesson in the end. Great channel even if you don't know anything about special effects, you can learn a lot about how effects are done, how to spot them and then be surprised when the guy flexes his own (better) version of the effects at the end.

bigclivedotcom

ElectroBOOM

LockpickingLawyer

PBS Space Time and Stand-up Maths are two of my favourites.

DIY/WOODWORKING

https://www.youtube.com/@craftedworkshop

https://www.youtube.com/@DIYPerks

https://www.youtube.com/@Fixthisbuildthat

https://www.youtube.com/@frankmakes

https://www.youtube.com/@Iliketomakestuff

https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelAlm

https://www.youtube.com/@modustrial

https://www.youtube.com/@nickzammeti

https://www.youtube.com/@PaskMakes

RETRO TECH, COMPUTERS, & GAMING

https://www.youtube.com/@ashens

https://www.youtube.com/@GamingHistorian

https://www.youtube.com/@GenXGrownUp

https://www.youtube.com/@LGR

https://www.youtube.com/@Nostalgianerd

https://www.youtube.com/@RMCRetro

https://www.youtube.com/@Techmoan

https://www.youtube.com/@The8BitGuy

https://www.youtube.com/@DavidXNewton

D&D & TTRPG STUFF

https://www.youtube.com/@BlackMagicCraftOfficial

https://www.youtube.com/@ColColonCleaner](Col Colon Cleaner)

https://www.youtube.com/@criticalrole

https://www.youtube.com/@dimension20show

https://www.youtube.com/@DnDShorts

https://www.youtube.com/@DungeonDudes

https://www.youtube.com/@dungeonlootarmory

https://www.youtube.com/@GinnyDi

https://www.youtube.com/@marisharaygun

https://www.youtube.com/@WallyDM

https://www.youtube.com/@zeebashew

FOOD & COOKING

https://www.youtube.com/@BDylanHollis

https://www.youtube.com/@babishculinaryuniverse

https://www.youtube.com/@BrianLagerstrom

https://www.youtube.com/@howtodrink

https://www.youtube.com/@JoshuaWeissman

OTHER STUFF

https://www.youtube.com/@BrightSunFilms

https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerClan

https://www.youtube.com/@CuriosityIncorporated

https://www.youtube.com/@GeoffCastellucci

https://www.youtube.com/@kylehill

https://www.youtube.com/@NFTI

https://www.youtube.com/@TheEasterEggHunter

https://www.youtube.com/@Thevoiceplay

(I’ll edit this post continually to add more channels detail. Kind of busy at the moment)

Warlockracy

Mandalore Gaming

Civvie11

Tim Cain

Minisodes

Olden Demon

Bedtime Stories

Beware The Qu

Alt Shift X

Historia Civilis

Forgotten Weapons

Paper Skies

ConeOfArc

RedLetterMedia

Bobby Broccoli

Sam O’Nella

Two Minutes Papers

Smartereveryday is incredible educational content, and he's been making them for years.

Haven't seen anyone mention Posy. The guy made an entire video on mouse cursors, it's great.

James Hoffmann - for anything about making great coffee at home

The Food Theorists - Interesting content about food, especially in their older videos

Doctor Mike - entertaining but useful medical information

My subscriptions:

• Cathode Ray Dude (placed him on top, because he deserves it. Loads of tech stuff that goes really into the nuts and bolts of it all)
• Practical Engineering
• Lazerpig (not for everyone, but check out the WW1 tank videos to see if it suits you)
• Jay Foreman / MapMen
• Tom Scott
• Kurzgesagt
• Lemmino
• Lord Hardthrasher (kind of similar to lazerpig)

Atomic Shrimp - He's got a huge variety of content. Scam baiting, cooking, his weird stuff in a can series, nature stuff. Absolutely lovely fellow.

EthosLab. He is my favourite YouTuber, and has been for over 10 years now. He's super chill, and his Minecraft videos always make me happy. Sure, other channels may have more content or more entertainment value, but when it comes to sheer vibes, Etho is unmatched.

Dr. Becky - really informative and interesting astronomy news and info

Michael Reeves - Hilariously ridiculous projects usually involving code and technology of some kind

Kyle Hill - Love his Half-Life Histories series, even if he is a bit clickbait

Shiey (urbex, train hopping exploring)

Steve Wallis (stealth camping)

Nerd of the Rings (LOTR lore)

Anton Petrov (science mainly astrophysics)

Megaprojects and any of Simon Whistlers channels

those are just some of the bigger ones I follow heaps of smaller niche channels too

Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik https://www.youtube.com/@commentiquette

Incognito Mode https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Q7XEy86Q7T-3kNpNjYgwA

UpIsNotJump https://www.youtube.com/@UpIsNotJump

Depends on the genre you prefer, but I'll try to cover a lot of bases for anyone who might be interested. I'll break it up into 2 comments cause it's not letting me post so I might have hit the character limit lol.

Part 1

If you like let's plays, I think Letsgameitout is one of the most consistently entertaining channels. His videos are a good length, not so long that they drag out, but not so short that they feel like they're done too soon, and he uploads frequently enough to not feel like it takes ages for a new video to come out, but not so frequently that it feels like he sacrifices quality.

If you like games but not the format of most let's plays, or just like general humour and don't mind most videos being game related, then DougDoug is hilarious. He streams on twitch but edits the streams down for YouTube. Seeing him interact with his twitch chat is really entertaining, and his shenanigans involving AI are also great as well. A good entry video for his content is probably the pajama Sam video he made recently where he tries to get chatgpt to beat pajama Sam, and the ai gets more and more unhinged as the video goes on. But it is one of his longer videos so you can also try any of his other videos. Another good one would be the one where he gets two halves of his twitch chat to compete against each other in GTAV using chat controls a la twitch plays pokemon. There's also GameChamp3000, who does a lot of gaming challenges, but she doesn't upload as often sadly. But her videos are very high quality and the lengths she goes to in order to get around a road block can be pretty crazy.

If you like diy or humorous educational stuff, then electroboom is a very entertaining channel and also very informative when it comes to electricity and engineering. He's the guy who made the diy electric guitar. Basically he's an electrician who does projects where he tries to make something from scratch, and along the way he shows all the wrong ways you can do something by doing them himself and then getting hurt by it slapstick style. He's shown how he fakes a lot of the stunts to assure his audience that he's not putting himself in danger (though he has also confessed to some real near misses like the Jacob's ladder incident), but he's good at making it look really convincing which somehow adds to the humour. He's also good at telling jokes on top of the slapstick. Similar channels like his include William Osman, Michael Reeves, and I did a thing. But of the 4 of them Electroboom and I did a Thing upload the most consistently I think, though shout out to Michael Reeves for being the most insane of the 4 lol.

If you like just regular educational channels, then I've heard veritasium is good, and there's also Mark Rober though he's not just education, he also does some fun experiments and even dabble in dealing with scammers. There might be some controversy from when he made a video about autism because I heard he was promoting an autism advocacy group that was possibly tied to autism speaks (which is largely hated by the autistic community), but I'm not super informed on that and idk if he addressed it. His video about it was positive towards autistic people since his son is autistic though, so if that's a sticking point for you then you can always look into it and draw your own conclusions. It's not usually a topic of his videos though so if it's not a deal breaker then you can just watch any of his other videos and ignore that one.

If you like drama and video essays then TRO aka The Right Opinion is probably one of my favourite channels for that type of content, because he's really good at portraying every side fairly without coming across as obnoxiously neutral. He's also good at covering topics in a way that feels thorough without dragging on for too long.

To add a few I haven't seen mentioned yet:

• jon bois
• knowing better
• folding ideas
• Todd in the shadows
• I did a thing
• legal eagle
• internet historian

And a few more which I think are great but YMMV depending on your particular interests:

• city planner plays
• historia civilis
• junkyard digs
• tech ingredients
• Scott Manley
• BobbyBroccoli
• summoning salt

tl;dr: if you only pick up one name from all these comments, let it be jon bois. He's made some of the most compelling content I've ever seen, especially the "pretty good" series. Money back guarantee, you will not be disappointed.

tl;dr for real: jon bois, climate town, electroboom.

If you like artists and nonsense comedy to distract you from reality, I highly recommend Drawfee

Content Warning: M (Millennials)

The Present Past (History)

Cody’s Lab (Science)

NileRed (Chemistry)

Finematics (Cryptocurrency)

The Hated One (Privacy)

RealLifeLore (Geography & Recent History)

Tom Nicholas (Sociology & Philosophy)

PhilosophyTube (Philosophy)

ISHITANI FURNITURE

Abroad in Japan

Girlfriend Reviews

Jeremy Fielding

Kai W

Matthias Wandel

Periodic Videos

Primitive Technology

Veritasium

I follow some Canadian van dwellers. I like Foresty Forest best. He just goes around Canada and sometimes the USA climbing mountains with his dog, and living in his van.

His videos are chill.