Ask Lemmy

Wheezywaiter

Tom Scott (he's back after a break)

John Michael Godier (science and astronomy)

Videogamedunkey

Any Austin (deep dives into minutea of video games)

• 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)

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.

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

Gamers Nexus

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.

Folding Ideas' - long form deep dive videos into various topics. His video about NFTs is particularly good.

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned but here's a few that I haven't seen:

• Chris Spargo - Documentarian 'Answering life's little questions' (in his own words)

• HowTown - Well researched, slick documentaries on science and sociology

• Useful charts - Family trees and history combined with some nuanced religious history

• Map Men - Somehow both an incredible geography channel and very funny skit show

• ToldInStone - Regular and endlessly fascinating ancient history content

• Captain Disillusionment - A one man special effects genius makes funny deep dives and debunks on special effects topics

• Nile Red - Chemistry wiz kid makes alcohol from toilet paper - The closest thing to a modern alchemist I can imagine

• Joel haver - Inventor the rotoscoped paint cartoon, funny, creatively driven and refuses to sell out

• Patrick Boyle - Educated, nuanced and cuttingly dry humoured takes on popular economics issues

• Steve Mould - High quality science demos and explanations with an engaging and humble host

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.

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

styropyro, pretty interesting videos although i don't understand most of the science stuff he talks about tbh

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.

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.

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

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

Man, people here have a very different sense of "A long time" on YouTube. I was hesitating to include TimeGhost because I've only watched them for about eight years.

For stuff I've been watching for less long, the creators that come to mind are:

Timeghost - they do history documentaries, focusing on chronological "real time" content, such as their current series, the Korean War Week-by-Week

LEMMiNO - does deep-dives into supposed mysteries. His older stuff isn't great, but shifted towards higher-quality long-form content about 8 years ago, and he does a good job on them.

AHOY - does documentaries on the history of games, and adjacent tech and culture. Not usually super deep, but well written, produced and animated.

Desync - makes stupid gaming videos, usually abusing bugs or just being silly. Doesn't post often, but on the rare occasion he does, it'll be well produced and funny.

For stuff more at the age I was thinking of originally, 10+ years:

John and Hank Green - cover a whole range of topics, although nowadays, it tends to be a mix of advocacy, science, philosophy, and just sillyness.

The Yogscast - Just a plain old gaming channel, albeit with unusually frequent and higher production quality videos. Nothing extraordinary, but consistently good and fun, despite the fact that they've been making videos for nearly 20 years.

Tom Scott - short video essays, explainers and documentaries on a variety of topics. Primarily, videos on different interesting places.

TomSka - The ASDF Movie guy. That said, just as good or better are his other skits, and now even his long-form content and videos essays.

Tom Scott

Casually Explained

Tier Zoo

PBS Spacetime, MandaloreGaming, RedLetterMedia, Jenny Nicholson, Middle Nation, SpaceIce.

✌️

Lockpickinglawyer. Fascinating to watch. The guy is so speedy at opening locks without a key.

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

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.

A few of my goats I haven't seen mentioned:

• Noah Caldwell-Gervais - absolute pinnacle of long-form gaming content. Amazing writing, and in depth critique which justifies it's run length.
• House of Tabula - cinephile shit. Many hot takes and elitism so not for everyone but I really appreciate what they do.
• Chinese Cooking Demystified - one of the best cooking channels period but especially if you like Chinese food. Authentic recipes, deep-dives, technique focused.
• Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't - misanthropic foul-mouthed botanist travels the world describing plants and ecosystems.

Mars Guy. He's a geology lecturer who releases a new video every Sunday detailing what's been happening with the rovers on Mars that week. Very chill and always good learning.

Highlight of my Sunday morning.

Tech Moan

Red Letter Media. Obviously I found them through their Star Wars prequel joke reviews, but they've just turned out to be a really solid and enjoyable semi-comedic film review channel. You get a sense of their particular interests and biases, some they share, some they don't and that helps understand their perspective on films they review so you have an idea of if you'd like them. Plus their other series like Re;View and Best of the Worst show me discussions on movies I probably wouldn't have ever watched otherwise.

I also just love how low-key they are as far as the YT influencer BS that's become the norm on the platform. No sponsorships. They never ask you to "Like and subscribe and leave a comment and hit that bell!". They have a Patreon but they don't even advertise it in their videos, let alone dedicate a portion of the video to a stream of internet names that donated. The thumbnails and titles aren't really clickbait. Their video descriptions are actually descriptions of the video instead of a bunch of links to their socials and sponsors. They don't act overly hype or angry or anything. They just act like what they are: Shlubs. They occasionally get B-list celebrities as guests and rather than plaster their name and whatever projects they're working on all over the fucking video for clickbait, they just don't even really acknowledge they're celebrities. They're just some dudes who happened to stop by to hang out and be on the shows. With most of them you wouldn't even know they were celebrities if you didn't already know them. I had to look up a few of them, which is hard when they don't even use their full names.

I watch pretty much all of their Half in the Bag and Re;View shows and the occasional miscellaneous video they make. I don't watch Best of the Worst that often, but I have enjoyed it when I have watched it.

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.

Drew Gooden. I've always loved him, but his anti-capitalist renaissance has been very enjoyable to watch

SomeOrdinaryGAmers. I find his switch to awareness about current issues regarding privacy is really good. It's easy to get lost in our busy lives.

I would also say that Clabretro and Cathode Ray Dude are really cool. Been watching them for years at this point.

The Tim Traveller - Travel vlogs of interesting places

Wes Cecil - Philosophy professor with loads of complete lectures

Nerdwriter - Movie and culture analysis

Hello future me

Slow mo guys

I'll add my own recommendations as well!

• Mike Okay (travel)
• Any Austin (niche gaming deep dives)
• Inheritance Machining and This Old Tony (machining)
• Pask Makes (woodworking, metalworking)
• Tested (particularly Adam Savage's One Day Builds series)
• Quips&Guac (MTG)
• Pete Complete and Ambiguous Amphibian(gaming challenge and long form roleplay series)

Off the top of my head, I love Sam O Nella and Casually Explained

Democracy Now, Majority Report (RIP Michael Brooks), This Old Tony

• Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik
• Veritassium
• William Osmon
• Technology Connections
• LGR
• Bringus
• Macho Nacho Productions
• polymatt

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.

AntsCanada
Formerly a channel about ants keeping is now posting weekly updates on his vivariums (basically big themed micro ecosystems.

Very engaging and good storytelling about how he created big interconnected tanks with a >3500L volume (6 tanks each connected to each other.

Hi, I'm the one that asked the opposite question that Op linked to :p

Ashens.

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.