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?
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.
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.
Jeff Geerling
He came up in the other thread about youtubers people stopped following, so you may want to check that out.
Thanks for the heads up. I knew he was a devout Catholic, but I never had the experience that he was pushing any agenda–as in he tends to just stick to technical content. I don’t mind watching people with different opinions than mine, but “cure the gay” is very problematic. I would be sad, since I really like his content. I will have to read up some more on this.
Along similar lines: another channel I have been watching is Smarter Every Day, where the host, Destin, is fairly open about his faith. That may put some people off, but overall I have found his content overall interesting and I don’t feel like he’s preaching to me, but others may be more sensitive to that. He’s currently pushing his own grill scrubber product pretty hard, which I find off-putting, but I see what he’s trying to do. I’m giving him a chance to get back to more interesting engineering stuff.
To address the others: yes, I know there are some potentially controversial entries, like Veritasium and Kurzgesagt. I have Veritasium “on probation” due to the change, but so far the new hosts have done a pretty decent job. Kurzgesagt is one I kind of leave for a long time and then come back every so often, because they have something interesting and their content is presented well. Totally understand if people choose to give them a skip.
Gamers Nexus
He’s gotten just a little too edgy/ranty for me. Like, I appreciate the consumers’ rights stuff that he does, and I even agree with most of his talking points, but it was starting to feel like all he did was rant. I got enough stuff bringing me down in life these days that I just stopped feeling his stuff.
I feel like thats just a consequence of the industry being so shitty and messed up these days lol. Not much positive things to say haha
I suppose but I still like watching Hardware Unboxed and the occasional Jayz.
His rants exist because no one can afford the hardware anymore and he’s doing excellent journalism in explaining why we can’t (in a much more exacting and capable of bringing lawsuits way). Some of the best journalism I’ve seen in years, flat out.
I’ll just quote myself from above:
I appreciate the consumers’ rights stuff that he does, and I even agree with most of his talking points, but it was starting to feel like all he did was rant. I got enough stuff bringing me down in life these days that I just stopped feeling his stuff.
I feel like Jayz can be ranty too, but he’s got a little better attitude about things. And Hardware Unboxed reports on stuff as well, but doesn’t feel as ranty to me. Again, just for me personally, his vibe brings me down too much and I got a lot going on, y’know? I can only control what I can control, and all that.
Veritasium. They still make great videos, I would argue better ones, and if private equity can take the hint to do it like that we’d be in good shape.
Wendover Productions
fern
Ahoy
Rowan J Coleman
Slidebean
Gamers Nexus
