Ahoy.
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.
I wasn’t gone on their video on the cruelty of the slaughter industrial complex where they bent over backwards to avoid suggesting veganism as the obvious solution.
They are a corporate shill, I forget who talked about. I should go find 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!
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
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
Thanks :)
Two from a Polish channel (but in English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGfBV4I8DQI
Thanks, that’s really informative
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 miss Mike Rugnetta’s PBS Idea Channel so much, and it absolutely would have belonged on this list, imo.
How in the actual hell is technology connections not on that list and also why have I not seen it in any of the comments yet
Through the magic of buying two of them, you have someone who agrees that it should be on the list.
here to rep “through the magic of having a broken one…!”
Through the magic of latent heat we have 4 likes for every unit of person
Top tier YouTube channel!!
This list is basically the tippy toppy fresh snow that’s fallen on the iceberg.
Technology connection comes a little lower.
Sam O’Nella was awesome, but his current release schedule leaves much to be desired.
Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
It has been neoliberal biased for ages. For example this is a 2021 article calling out their neoliberal bias. https://aninjusticemag.com/the-inescapable-neoliberal-bias-behind-kurzgesagt-in-a-nutshell-215eb1e9b70f?gi=9574bf28f4a0
But it has undoubtedly gotten a lot worse recently. That south korea video was abymaly blind and baked in unrealistic capitalist assumptions.
It’s not simply the Gates money, but the pivot to pursuing grants by chasing clicks to the exclusion of all else.
They’ve been Mr Beast-ified.
Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it’s all “vote with your wallet 🙂”
Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of “What is the purpose of dust? I guess we’ll never know. Isn’t the universe a mysterious place?”
They’re doing the thing where they upload a video and then change the thumbnail and title of the video every few days which I’ve only seen done by all the low effort click bait channels. It’s what finally got me to install the dearrow extension which swaps titles and videos of YouTube videos to be more informative and less click bait.
A lot of channels do this, you might’ve just not noticed.
Ah, yes. Their “We found space whales on Nimbus!” video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled “What actual aliens might look like” was something I could excuse. I don’t consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
However, what I really hated was their ad for a “strange matter” vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the “buy now because they’ll never come back” trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
They seem to be trying to copy xkcd’s video format with the fantasy tier what if questions answered seriously. Seems out of place to me, not sure what Gates Foundation gets out of fluff pieces like figuring out what banana rain would do to the planet while getting the terminal velocity of a banana wrong right off the bat too. What a shit video.
I stopped watching them several years ago. I can’t say it was a specific video or event, but I just started zoning out when trying to watch them. I don’t do that much, I generally only watch, play, listen to and do things I can focus on. I’ve tried to watch some videos since then but I just lose interest after a minute or two. It’s like they refined their style so much that it all became too “samey” and it feels like they’re so scared of offending anyone that they end up saying nothing.
It’s not as good as it used to be, but I still find it comfortable to watch. I like the black hole and space stuff, like what terraforming a planet would look like, but yeah they definitely have some fluff videos. Unfortunately clickbait titles like THE WORLD MAY DIE is just YouTube 101, seems baked into every channel now. Very hard to find a channel that feels organic.
A lot of their political and historical videos are propaganda
Such as?
Not going to give them views, but find any modern history video especially if it’s from a designated enemy nation by the US State Dept
Oh you were talking about oversimplified… I thought you meant kurzegesagt and was very confused. They don’t do any history, well with a focus on it at least.
Dang, I’m surprised to see how many folks are down on Kurtzgesakt in the comments here! Bummer!
They might not be perfect, ya’ll, but at least they encourage open thought and critical thinking! Better than a lot of other media can say these days! 🙂
But they don’t encourage open thought and critical thinking. They basically tell you what to think.
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.
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
Shout out to PBS Space Time
For physics enthusiasts, I’d also suggest “floatheadphysics” for his depictions and sometimes cathartic presentation style. I love how he broke down special relativity in an easily understood way.
Then I’ve also really been enjoying “For The Love of Physics” for his style of showing some of the math. His style is more of a classroom presentation, but in a way that reminds me of my most effective professors that made their lessons as easy to consume as mac and cheese.
I’m inclined to hit some online courses someday, too, but, for now, these have been great for conceptual stuff and my curiosity vs. time balance.
I love watching Spacetime, but also feel like dum-dum-brain after watch. Me no think good enough to watch this show.
Yeah I think it’s a quality channel but apparently there are just SO many people out there smarter than me that they are fine catering only to them. It sucks being left behind by a publicly funded channel :(
I feel like the more you watch the more watchable it is cause you get more and more context
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?
Neither the main tab nor subscriptions really gives me what I want. The main tab is good - I do discover good things there. I’m not one of those people who says “just give me my subscriptions in chronological order.” Because that actually sucks, and that’s kinda what you get on the subscription tab.
I want a smart algorithm, I just want it to pay more respect to my subscriptions and show more of them more often. “Home” gives you some but not enough.
Not possible afaik. Your request is a bit specific.
I know YT music has something like that where you can tweak mixes to listen more diverse things or mainly what you already know, but yea it might be cool to have that as well on YT.
Their algorithm is still super good
It is, until you realize wow I haven’t seen that subscribed channel in a frickin year
Been there so many times before so I get it haha
Do you not check the subscriptions tab and just hope “the algorithm” keeps feeding people you like?
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.
The implication is that Youtube so rarely presents them the content they are subscribed to that they have forgotten about the channel entirely.
2019 Kurzgesagt: “I guess we will fact check, if that’s important to you.”
Kurgesatz was really good before they started the black mirror season, where every video is about how humanity can get killed by various things.
Never heard of the other ones but I’ll give it a try.
And there’s a PBS video for anything you can think about, sometimes they just don’t surface properly with search.
They’re honest, direct, open, and willing to learn, I love kurzgesagt. The world sucks, but we shouldn’t shy away from understanding why it sucks and how we can improve it
I am big fan of their prepandemic work. But if you can get past their click bait videos, I think they still do good content.
Science pieces spreading awareness about something are their best videos.
This recent video on fentanyl was very good.
The south korea one, the vaping and weed ones. Very good at condensing complicated topic while still retaining pertinent information that’s new and not patronizing.
I just showed their Fentanyl video to my 13yo daughter over the weekend and it was incredibly effective as a parenting tool. We paused many times and discussed. But their presentation didn’t leave all that much for me to say.
It was very pro heroin
Only if you didn’t pay attention.
For real though! What a weird watch 😂
In a way it was a breath of fresh a air to hear the high honestly described in a way that makes it understandable why people would want to do it again, but also how it will never, ever be as good as the first time, and will ruin your life.
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?
