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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
- Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik
- Veritassium
- William Osmon
- Technology Connections
- LGR
- Bringus
- Macho Nacho Productions
- polymatt
Lockpickinglawyer. Fascinating to watch. The guy is so speedy at opening locks without a key.
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
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- 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
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.
Tom Scott (he’s back after a break)
John Michael Godier (science and astronomy)
Videogamedunkey
Any Austin (deep dives into minutea of video games)
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.
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
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.
