What are some excellent YouTube channels you recommend?
What are some excellent YouTube channels you recommend?
Channel name
description of what it covers and why you watch it
DougDoug
He is bald at 2D Platformers and does funny coding stuff with his Chat and/or AI
Papa Meat
Hunter Hanckock (Meatcanyon). He can control fire and does lots of IRL Videos about strange/funny/gross Topics.
Ididathing
YouTube's worst Blacksmith makes dangerous Inventions, and videos about Australian Animals now and then.
RedLetterMedia, the only channel I've continued to watch through the years. Super hilarious movie reviewers.
GEOLOGY can be intriguing when much of it is set outdoors (in videos, no bug bites, no poison ivy) and being explained by a professor at a small college with a great love of the topic and a talent and desire to share it with a large audience. Yes, I'm talking Nick on the Rocks himself. Danger:He's often accompanied by other interesting geologists. It might be catching.
https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick/videos
If you're new to the topic or have children, then Nick also does short (under 10-minute) shows that are shown on PBS, which you'll find here:
CodeParade, he made a game called 4d golf. He does videos on fractals. Stuff in computer science and math in general. He also made a game called marbel marcher where the environments are 3D fractals. Link to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrv269YwJzuZL3dH5PCgxUw
City Nerd
Not Just Bikes
Oh the Urbanity
RMTransit
Rob Robinson
Urbanism + transport transition + housing, ...I like geography, cities, trains and environmentalism.
Cody'sLab
Geology, chemistry, Martian LARP in Utah, mining, ...I like ancient, low frequency, high effort, hobbyist YT channels. Will it charcoal?
Primitive Technology
Hobbyist, Bacterial Iron Age, Soothing. How many people can lite up a fire with two dry sticks and some dried moss in half a minute? Turn on the subtitles.
Practical Engineering
Civil Engineering, I like infrastructure + it being explained.
Earthling Ed
Veganism, I'm vegan.
The Post-Apocalyptic Inventor
Machine restauration, Anti-write off business, I like repairs and machine shop culture.
Untitled Burial
Witch House label, I like Witch House.
Pop Culture Detective
Extreme low frequency feminist video essaying, Clever person.
Kurzgesagt. If you have any interest in science, this is a must watch.
Second this
Chef Jean-Pierre, I just adore him
Short videos. Reminder that no lock is impenetrable. Also, April Fool's Day videos are very special.
Video essays. No longer in production, high-quality reviews of some cultural artifacts. He's moved his operation to Curiosity Stream. Made me realize it's worth it to pay creators directly for their work rather than having advertisers and platforms like YouTube. Now, if only I had money to pay these creators. Aye, there's the rub.
Expert film analysis. If it's not, it sure looks like it is.
Snarky educational. Fun! The best damn flag contest, best takedown of first-past the post voting, and best reflection on how to go forward after hitting YouTube fame. I still want to know if he and Roman Mars have talked flags.
Classic YouTube. 15 years ago, mans took a bunch of other YouTube videos and remixed them into each other, producing meta tracks.
Lockpicking Lawyer
Short videos. Reminder that no lock is impenetrable. Also, April Fool’s Day videos are very special.
I reply to this with McNallyOfficial. It's Lockpicking Lawyers unhinged mirror.
Ben Felix - Finance, investing etc. He's a professional working in the field, never suggests specific stocks or crypto and always refers to sources for his claims. Be very skeptical of all finance and economy suggestions.
Two Cents - Personal Finance (No suggestions for specific stocks or crypto)
Adam Something
Technology Connections
Tom Nicholas - Long form video essays
Polymatter
Geography Now to learn about the rest of the world!
[Map Men / Jay Foreman] (https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCbbQalJ4OaC0oQ0AqRaOJ9g) - fun, painstakingly produced educational videos about maps.
Yhara Zayd - Not too long media analysis. Especially of Horror and through BPoC lens.
Andrewism - discussions about Anarchism and organising from Trinidad.
I'll second a couple of other things that people have mentioned, like SmarterEveryDay and CGP Grey.
Hmm. What would I consistently watch new material on?
General-audience military history. It's not especially flashy, and you'll see typos and such, but it consistently shows maps, which is somewhere that I think a lot of military history stuff falls over. And the guy has read the material for the stuff he covers, at least the stuff that I'm reasonably familiar with. There are much larger military history channels out there, and much blingier ones, but I'd rate this well for actually helping someone accurately understand the material covered. He does a good job of highlighting what I think decent books on the subject matter consider the important, salient bits. I'd say that he's probably reading -- and understanding -- the major recommended books on a battle prior to doing a video on it. I'd recommend his videos on battles over any commercial documentaries that I've seen.
There are other military history channels that I do watch, but I think that of them, that's probably the one I'd recommend being worthwhile as a watch the most.
Drachinifel -- does naval history, especially gun-era stuff and British stuff -- but while Drachinifel is pretty prolific, I wouldn't rank his output as highly; he's basically taking some high-level stuff from a quick read and putting it in video format. He's not doing all that much reading per video. But he's got a lot of stuff.
The Operations Room also favors maps, but I feel like they tend to pull more of their material from personal accounts from individuals than I'd like.
Kings And Generals has covered a lot of different conflicts, is flashier, also puts stuff on maps, but I've definitely seen stuff on there that I'd call erroneous. I'd watch something from them due to the scope of their material, but take it with a grain of salt.
Hmm.
I don't really follow channels much, repeatedly intentionally come back to anyone. Like, to have a Web analogy, there are websites out there that I like, but very few to which I'd subscribe to an RSS feed, because even for places that have good content, I rarely want to watch a high proportion of anything that they've done.
I can't think of anyone that does software that I'd recommend watching (or, honestly, in general, video for that). I haven't been all that blown away by video for international affairs stuff, not to the point that I'd explicitly recommend someone.
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theslowmoguys does a lot of well-filmed very slow motion stuff. I wouldn't go back to see something just because they've put it out, but they've got some of the better slow-motion footage of different things that I've seen. Fun watch.
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Oh, forgottenweapons. This is pretty well-known in the firearms world, so it's probably not a huge surprise to people who are interested in firearms. It originally focused on unusual firearms mechanisms, but I think that they've done a video on darn near every firearm out there now, so it's kind of a nice place to get a video overview from an informed person of most firearms, short bit history, highlights unusual mechanisms of the thing. I definitely would not go out and try to watch through this whole thing unless you are some kind of absolutely rabid firearms mechanism person, but it consistently has good-quality, informed material. There's a [email protected] community on the Threadiverse.
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PerunAU is also probably pretty well-known. Guy in defense economics, good for a level-headed, high-level look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Shows a series of Powerpoint slides. If he comes out with a new video, I'd watch it; he generally doesn't waste viewer time, and insofar as my knowledge extends, the information he puts out is pretty solid. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the validity of his opinions, but he's pretty good at explicitly stating that something is or is not his opinion. There's been a lot of people making a lot of videos on the conflict, and I think that he's one of the more-worthwhile people to pay attention to.
I feel kinda bad to heavily list military- or weapons- related stuff, as I certainly watch plenty of other stuff on YouTube, but honestly, while I watch other material, most of the cases where I think I'd watch new material from a particular individual falls into those categories. Like, there are channels spanning a wide range of things, that have put out great content, that I think is interesting, but they also put out a whole lot of other stuff that I'm not interested in. I might recommend a particular video, but not the whole channel.
EDIT:
- primitivetechnology9550. Guy goes out into the woods with nothing but his shorts and just using what's available, constructs a "technology tree", starting with something like a stone axe and moving up to iron production and increasingly-sophisticated structures. Pretty well-known, but I've enjoyed every video I've ever seen on there.
For that last one, don't forget to turn on the subtitles!
I wonder if CGP Grey will ever upload a non-flag based video again. Not to say I don't love the flag content, I just hope everything's going okay with him.
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Not counting music, I assume - I have a gazilion artists I love if anyone's interested.
As for actual Content with a capital C:
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PhilosophyTube Extremely interesting, well-researched and entertaining presentation of a wide range of philosophical and sociopolitical topics. From the UK.
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Shaun Ditto, though with a different angle and a Northern accent.
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Contrapoints Ditto, but American and quite a bit more... theatrical. Quite a strong focus on gender and transgender issues; check out her video on J. K. Rowling for one of the best treatments of the topic.
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Dr. Geoff Lindsey - Linguistics and phonology stuff, deep dives into pronunciation, fascinating as fuck.
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Middle Eats Really damn good middle-eastern cooking channel, no-nonsense presentation.
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Brian Lagerstrom - Baking / cooking - good recipes, sensible treatment.
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J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats fame - damn good cook, nice guy.
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Tom Bates Creator of Nigel and Marmalade. Dumb, stoopid, awesome.
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Adam Millard - The Architect of Games - video essays on gaming
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Noodle - very funny animated video essays on gaming
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Ice Cream Sandwich - stoopid funny little cartoons about dumb shit.
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Jaiden Animations Animated little essays about stuff, she must be protected at all costs. See for instance Things about Relationships I wish someone told me about.
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Tom Scott has finished up his Things You Might Not Know series, but there's like a decade of them and they're amazing. Little investigative videos on everything from programming to wasp farming. You need to watch all of them.
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Taylor Tries Videos on juggling. I have the hugest talent-crush.
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Give us a rough idea of what you like.
The whole “Today I Found Out” universe of channels.
Teaches you history, keeps you current on current events (Warfronts is particularly good for geopolitics as it relates to wars going on). Places takes you through interesting places all around the world. Mega projects is like the old Mega project show on the history channel. Astro graphics takes you into space. Brain Blaze is a huge silly tangent.
mapreadingcompany - navigation plus funny wierd facts
explainingcomputers - explains computers
paulsellers - hand tool woodworking
robwords - english language
citynerd - deadpan humour and sarcasm about cities
astonishingglasgow - local hisory about places in Glasgow
Claire__ Saffitz x Dessert Person
Baker/ pastry chef that makes all sorts of tasty treats. Content is largely educational giving you tips and tricks on what she's doing and why so you can replicate her recipe more easily.
Binging with Babish
Started out as one dude recreating food from films and shows and has expanded to having a dedicated anime food creator, doing fun food mashups for sports things, redoing episodes that he messed up on, and still doing food from films and shows.
Claire Saffitz is great.
History of the Universe is exactly what it sounds like. Amazing channel!
ScienceClic English is based on the German channel original, and covers in depth science topics, narrated by a truly stellar individual.
PBS Space Time is simply stunning science coverage that’ll melt your brain.
RedLetterMedia
Movie reviewers that like all sorts of movies. Great production quality.
It's not the same after Rich Evans passed away from diabetes
Those hack frauds?
The very same.
I'm a big fan of Emily the Engineer. She's a similar chaotic energy as early Michael Reeves but less directly focused on "offensive ideas" or "things to hurt your friends". The creativity behind both the projects and the videos is top notch.
Brick Technology makes cool mechanisms out of Lego to solve some simple problems
They're a group of 4 people who play games together, but aren't the super energetic and annoying type of content creators. You know the type I'm talking about. Plus, Stumpt usually seems to play a lot more indie games or every once in a long while anymore they may go back to m!neceraft for a mod pack.
Hello fellow Stumpt fan! Huge plus one to Stumpt
Bigtime
is an awesome newer car and motorcycle channel, they split off from donut to go do their own creative stuff after donut go bought by a big soulless media company
Fortnine
is an amazing motorcycle youtube channel with absurd production quality and directing often worthy of full length documentaries
Berm peak
is a super well produced mountain biking and bikes channel
Lab Muffin Beauty Science
If you're into science based skincare I absolutely adore her, she has a chemistry PhD and a specialization in cosmetic chemistry. She spends a lot of time debunking baseless skincare marketing which I don't really need since everything I know about skincare I learned from her and various other science focused youtubers, but I absolutely adore her informative videos that are guides to various aspects of skincare, or an exploration of how to competently interpret research
Adam savage's Tested
channel is a lot of fun if you like maker content, he's just as energetic and charismatic of a character as he was back on Mythbusters
Hybrid calisthenics
is a wonderful exercise fitness and wellness channel where the guy running it is just an earnest, kind, compassionate human being who offers advice that meets people where they are and helps them progress, regardless of their current ability level. He went viral a while back for a video talking about how you can do exercise at any level, even if you've literally never done a pushup in your life, where he demonstrates modified versions of bodyweight exercises that make them more accessible, or even more difficult so that people can work their way up to their goals from any starting point. People fell in love with his personality and attitude of compassion.
My absolute favorites for cooking are:
Adam Ragusea
does an amazing job of making recipes realistic and approachable for home cooking, and his background as a journalist results in incredibly high quality research videos that are unbelievably informative
internet shaquille
unprotentious while focusing on technique, has a fantastic delivery style, it's hard to describe exactly what makes him special, but the videos are phenomenal and he often gives great life advice
J Kenji Lopez alt
the goat. Super knowledgable, especially regarding the science of cooking, and is a well respected name in recipe development. His videos are him with a gopro camera strapped to his head while he prepares the food and talks about it's origin, how he likes to make it, etc. Its like having an expert demonstrate for you in their home kitchen while casually chatting about all the knowledge they have to share about a given recipe
Chinese cooking demystified
the absolute best source for traditional chineese cooking, and food history lessons to boot. I love their delivery style, and their videos always give a ton of historical and cultural context and are a joy to watch)
Lemme know if you'd like more food youtubers, these are my absolute faves though, and all offer very different perspectives on food (sometimes disagreeing with eachother) while usually teaching at least as much about technique, how to approach cooking, and their own personal philosophy when developing recipes as they do the specific recipe itself.
Brian David Gilbert
makes a wide range of bizarre nonsense and I adore him. Comedy sketches, horror short film kinda stuff, incomprehensible fever-dreams, a guide to the united states health insurance mess that somehow manages to be as funny as it is depressing, goofy music, unironically wonderfull music, recipies. He used to make polygon's unhinged video series called unraveled, his personal channel is even better and even more unhinged
Andy Cooks - amazing chef, easy to follow recipes (he uses metric first), but also a nice, down to earth, no-nonsense guy.
The ones that I get excited to see new videos from are, in no particular order:
She's a biologist and does videos on prehistoric animals and time periods, that we know of. Entertaining videos and it turns out we studied under some of the same people.
Dr. Collier is a theoretical physicist who covers a wide arc a physics topics, and who did a pretty impressive review of Picard.
Very indepth and well researched videos about science and tech scandals and controversies
Is an Oxford Astrophysicist who covers a lot of findings about JWT and will point out upcoming things in the night sky
Brew
*Delves into all kids of weird circumstances and medical mysteries. Morbid and informative.
Zoe
*Up-to-date exercise and nutrition science. I've seriously learned a lot.
Imperfect Paintings
Shows you how to try different types of abstract art. Has been a huge inspiration in getting me to paint and experiment with art.
Bobby Fingers
Irreverent movie prop maker who builds diorama's with a dressing of Irish humour.
Primitive Technology
Makes houses, tools etc, starting from just his hands and natural resources. No knife. No axe. No rope. No tarps. No dialogue.
Kraut
Does videos on history and culture. Helped me understand why Russian culture is the way it is. In-depth, informative and interesting.
Primitive Technology
Makes houses, tools etc, starting from just his hands and natural resources. No knife. No axe. No rope. No tarps. No dialogue.
Make sure you turn on the captions for that one.
North of the Border
His name is Adam and he likes to make tiny nerdy things. He makes dioramas of nerdy stuff, sometimes normal, some times with too many teeth, fingers, and/or toes.
Heres a bunch of random shit that i like. It's not in a particular order but i did attempt to sort them by related concepts.
Stuff Made Here - Engineering projects
SmarterEveryDay - Engineering deep-dives
Practical Engineering - Civil engineering stuff explained
Steve Mould - Engineering concepts
Kyle Hill - Science communicator
PBS Spacetime - Space stuff explained
Answer in Progress - Channel looking for answers to questions?
Disrupt - Dark software explanations
Driving 4 Answers - Automobile/engine theory/explanations
Integza - Amateur rocket enthusiast/projects
Major Hardware - PC fan concept testing and misc
SuperfastMatt - Car and other projects
Vice Grip Garage - Man rescues garbage classic cars
2Stroke Stuffing - Man tries to build two stroke land speed bike
RCTestFlight - RC projects (mostly boats/planes)
Beau Miles - Aussie who runs and stuff and random stuff
VC Adventures - Vegan Cyclist bro
Rapha Films - Pro cycling team adventures
This Old Tony - Hobby machinist
Drawfee Show - Artists doing themed art challenges
Adam Neely - Jazz bassist theory/explanations
Exurbia - Uhhhhh... Story creator/philosophy enthusiast?
Gbay99 - LoL documentaries
Any Austin - Video game investigations, kinda?
Let's Game It Out - Gaming entertainment
TomatoAnus - Speedruns explained
Joov - Skyrim challenges
EdgeOmega - Skyrim challenges
Rekrap1 - Minecraft content
Rekrap2 - Minecraft content
Evbo - Minecraft films
Ogmoe - Minecraft manhunt god
BayAreaBuggs - GTAV RP
JANTSUU - GTAV vehicle testingThis is just a sample. There is much more good shit out there that i like.
You'd probably like ProjectFarm and HyperspacePirate.
I've never heard of HyperspacePirate! I'll check it out, thanks!
Throwing BPS.Space on here, more rockets fun and genuinely good engineering fail and fail again until you succeed rocket madness.
Oh yeah, big fan of BPS space. I cant wait for the next build.
Garand Thumb. Excellent humor, badass historical guns, and new badass guns, too. For example he dresses up as John Wick and has a rep from the company that made the custom guns for the movie bring in the guns, and they shoot them. Seeing a 12ga magazine fed shotgun shoot ~15 rounds in like 2 seconds is terrifying and awesome.
Aspiring film maker who flies paramotors
Several:
BobbyBroccoli - Good videos about science scandals.
Brick Experiment Channel - Guy in Finland making awesome Lego builds
Calum - Fantastic videos about really cool stuff like, shipping cintainers, land trains, WWII rescue buoys, flying homes and more.
Clabretro - Interesting videos about setting up a retro lab with cool enterprise computer gear.
Code Bullet - Chaotic programming with a focus on making AI playing games.
James Channel - A channel by a video games collector, the first video he uploaded a year ago about making a portable Super Nintendo, he uses a lot of duct tape and hot glue. He has also built a working NES game that can play other NES games.
Jet Lag: The Game - The team behind Wendover Productions plays games where the world is the game board, they have played tag across Europe, the have played Hide and Seek throughout Switzerland, they have played connect four with US states and more.
Our Own Devices - A lovely man talks about things, highly recommended.
Paper Will - Have you ever wondered about how North Korea entertains their citizens? This channel has a five and half hour long video about it. What about cults? What kind of entertainment do they produce? There is an hour long video about that.
Peter Dibble - A channel focusing on the Pacific North West of the US, but has awesome videos about barcodes, the 90s US high speed train campaign, a buss riding the sky, America's christmas monorails, Lego's cousin Modulex, and more.
RetroBytes - Highly nerdy content, excellent videos about topics like: CPU architectures, Unix workstations, Networks, the History of Computer Graphics.