I’d add 3blue1brown (3b1b) to that mix! Also xkcd’s What If, Minute Physics, and maybe VSauce
I miss Mike Rugnetta’s PBS Idea Channel so much, and it absolutely would have belonged on this list, imo.
Sam O’Nella, the most chaotic of the four no doubt
Kurzgesagt is cancer
Why?
Lots of missinformation
Do you have resource to support these claims? Like another video or detailed post? I’m willing to learn more about this and I’ve already added a few videos to watch criticizing kurzgesagt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI&t=3 Kurzgesagt and the climate greenwashing
Two from a Polish channel (but in English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGfBV4I8DQI
I don’t watch them since I can’t stand the obvious simplistically vomited neolib garbage but you can check out where they get their money.
I want to add NighthawkInLight and Thought Emporium.
You forgot Technology Connections
Bro I love learning about latent heat of vaporization
People in this thread who dislike CGP Grey because of one bad traffic video.
Doesn’t he also have a video that’s throating the idea of the British monarchy cuz the tourism?
Anyone here like Folding Ideas? He’s done some good stuff about flat earthers, crypto bros, and such.
One of the greats! Also, if you like Folding Ideas, you’ll love Benn Jordan. The style is very similar. Also, Technology Connections.
A bit more esoteric and in-depth than these 4 and much better
I stopped watching kurzgesagt after their copium video on global warming where we all hold hands and sing and magically reverse it.
Here’s an existential threat to humanity, and the various ways that it’s worse than you think. But don’t worry! Capitalism will save the day by inventing solutions to our problems which won’t necessitate any restructuring of our society or economy!
Thanks as always to our billionaire
ownersdonors!
Me: “Sam O… haha cute name. I’ve never heard of it. I’ll see if they have a YT channel. Oh they do! What?! I’m already subscribed??!”
I wish YT actually respected subscriptions. Here I am subscribed to someone and I’ve so thoroughly forgotten it that their name doesn’t even ring a bell.
He doesn’t really put out videos very often and also took multi year hiatus recently.
it’s quite funny that he said ‘going to college, be back in 4 years’ then ACTUALLY stopped posting for 4 years then came back like nothing happened and made a joke about a Scooby do movie.
like thats so insanely based I wouldn’t believe it actually happened except that it fits his character so well. Like took a nap through all of covid then starts singing a song about animals feet.
also he made a channel about crossword puzzles lol
https://youtube.com/@samonellacrosswords
wat? How do you get from being forgetful about your own stuff to youtube not respecting subscriptions? (whatever that even means lol)
I use YT daily, heavily.
It’s pretty well known that their feed is optimized for engagement above all else. They will show you videos they think you’ll like and NOT show you a new video from a channel you’re subscribed to.
It’s called an “algorithm.”
It’s so extreme at times that you can even not know that you’re subscribed to a channel, because you never see them.
This is what I mean by not respecting subscriptions. There’s no stronger explicit signal I can give YT when I want to see more of a creator. But they ignore that and decide for me what I’ll like.
Isn’t that what the “subscriptions” tab is for?
You can turn it off you know. I’ve been using YouTube like that for a while and have had no issues with missing videos from subscribed channels.
Do you not check the subscriptions tab and just hope “the algorithm” keeps feeding people you like?
The implication is that Youtube so rarely presents them the content they are subscribed to that they have forgotten about the channel entirely.
I’d like to submit
SmarterEveryDay (Highly suggest this video of the James Webb Telescope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu97IiO_yDI )
Honorable mention (because ‘retired’) Tom Scott
And because it’s a good channel Dad How Do I?
I liked smarter every day but recently I have been kinda put off because of his fairly frequent military propaganda for USA’s military.
Didn’t he also make a video at some point heavily implying he believes in creationism?
The end of ever video includes the name of a bible verse, Destin is not exactly hiding the fact that he’s christian lol
I can’t see the parent of this comment (defederated or blocked, idk), but it’s possible SmarterEveryDay believes in creationism as I believe he’s Christian. That said, I watch his channel religiously (har har) and as far as I can remember he hasn’t spread any creationist propaganda.
The worst thing he’s done is make videos supporting the US Coast Guard. They’re still interesting and informative, but it’s still military propaganda in some sense. It’s fairly tame though.
There are probably other edutainment creators to worry about more than him.
Been a while I didn’t watch one of his videos, but I remember some US military stuff on there and I thought it was an interesting view from someone I think is smart but clearly doesn’t share my political leanings.
Trying to not be in an echo chamber and all.
Important to note that I don’t live in the US.
That’s fair.
But it’s not mainly his views that put me of (just kinda) it’s the paid and unpaid sponsorships with the military. It’s so obviously a recruitment strategy that it’s painful to watch.
I don’t live in the USA either.
He lives in Huntsville, Alabama. 95% of his neighbors are defense contractors. It isn’t sponsorships, it’s “this guy lives 40 feet away from me and does something interesting for a living”
The description in multiple of the videos advertises navy or airforce recruitment. And in the non paid videos, why do you think he was given access, time, and permission to post the videos? For recruitment obviously.
Not exactly a new tactic. Same thing for Top Gun and probably a bunch of other movies. Part recruitment, part public relations to improve their image.
But the military does have some neat tech that most people won’t ever see. Like his series in the submarine, there was a lot of really cool.
Absolutely and that puts me off. Especially when they push out multiple ads across multiple youtubers at roughly the same time, like they did at one time with smartereveryday
My problem with threads like this is that I only have 24 hours a day, and I’ve accumulated a critical mass of content creators to the point where I cannot keep up.
Which of these awesome people do I ignore?! What information do I leave behind!? How am I supposed to get anything useful done with my life?!?
Also, check out Chris Boden if you want to see something cool!
Chris Boden, my beloved…
2019 Kurzgesagt: “I guess we will fact check, if that’s important to you.”
CGP Grey is a meh channel for a very long time now
I thought the Tiffany video was pretty meh, but the followup video about how the Tiffany video got made was one of his best. He’s clearly a thorough and passionate researcher. The way he refuses to settle for anything less than the primary source is both entertaining and vitally important in our modern information landscape.
They’re pretty okay for shallow understanding on a subject, but Wendover (not on the list), Economics Explained (not on the list), and CGP gray all get stuff pretty wrong once you get past shallow depth. I know because I’m a huge transit/urbanism nerd. If these channels haven’t wronged you in some minor way, they just haven’t talked about something you’re a subject matter expert in yet. The point here isn’t that they’re bad, just understand that these are shallow explainers, the next step in from like a news article, Wikipedia, or a blog, and take them with a grain of salt.
My personal list is Kurzgesagt, XKCD explained, and The Action Lab.
Wendover is pretty bad and finding out they take essentially bribes in the form of free stays and travel from an amusement park to say only nice things a little them after the park had an accident that killed a kid makes it so it’s pretty obvious it’s not about being good content for us but for the people making it. Likely tax write-offs and funny accounting all over their channels.
They state that they aren’t for education but entertainment and thus don’t have a to cite sources either.
Yeah they aren’t a trustworthy source is my point.Do you have examples of CGP Grey getting things pretty wrong aside from his Solution to Traffic video which I indeed think holds up poorly.
The Solution to Traffic video, like you mentioned, springs to mind, but so does the one based on Guns, Germs, and Steel
Right? I’m surprised by this claim as when he found out he made a pretty minor error in his video on an abandoned missile silo, he made a whole other video to address it.
That was actually the one I had in mind
There’s not really a way around this, and I think one of the explainer channels actually went into depth about it.
They gave an example of how everyone learns that the earth is a sphere, but once you ‘dig deeper’ you find it’s not actually a sphere because it’s elongated at the equator (making it a spheroid.) You can then ‘dig even deeper’ and find that the earth isn’t really a spheroid, it has mountains and all kinds of other inconsistencies that don’t matter to most people but can make a difference to an expert.
The real takeaway is that we should not consider ourselves experts, or even significantly more knowledgeable about a subject because we saw a video on one of these channels. They’re for entertainment first.
no Wendover the first time I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. There are more but this is the only one that stuck in my head because it was my wakeup call.
When he got called out for it he said "Its fine and it does not make any difrence to the video, except it was the wrong car
I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. […]
When he got called out for it he said "Its fine and it does not make any difrence to the video, except it was the wrong car
Do you really disagree? Those two names rhyme and b and v sound extremely similar. Does getting that minor of an error warrant a retraction in your mind? If it does, you should retract your comment because you have typos in it. I personally don’t believe they make any difference, but since you do you should retract.
It wasn’t that he SAID it wrong, it waz that about half the information provided was about the wrong car. He got places wrong, and agian not the only one, but the final straw.
Also please note, if this was a post anywhere outside of a forum, that was ment to reach a mass audience I get my shit proof read, maybe he should do the same
