Ask Lemmy

Want to learn about mining, beekeeping, chemistry, gardening, ecology, and off-planet habitats? Cody's Lab has got you covered.

Not Just Bikes

https://youtu.be/OQE_5MFCekg

Tales from a Canadian from Suburbia, Ontario who moved to the Netherlands. He talks about public transit and city planning.

They say falling into this rabbit hole is to take the "orange pill".

Most of my youtube subs are educational/informative in some way or another, so I'm gonna break it up by category a bit..

General

• Half as Interesting
• Wendover Productions
• Answer in Progress

Religion/Philosophy

• Religion for Breakfast
• Esoterica
• Bart D. Ehrman
• PhilosophyTube
• Wisecrack (though it's dead as of a month ago it still has tons of great content)
• Michael Burns (the guy who did Wisecrack, now has his own channel, though it's more politically-oriented)
• UsefulCharts (not exclusively religious content, but largely)
• SatansGuide (I keep hoping they'll make more videos like their original 2, but it's been a year...)

General Science:

• Veritasium
• Dr Ben Miles
• Kyle Hill
• Stand Up Maths
• Primer

Science Experimentation:

• Nile Red
• Thought Emporium
• Styropyro
• Tech Ingredients
• Alpha Phoenix
• Applied Science
• BPS.Space

Programming/AI:

• Sebastian Lague (his Coding Adventure series is super fun and informative)
• Emergent Garden
• Code Bullet

Engineering:

• Practical Engineering
• Real Engineering
• SuperfastMatt (guy builds crazy cars for fun, love his sense of humor)

History:

• History Matters (great short videos on historical topics)
• Miniminuteman/Milo Rossi (mostly archaeology and such)

Geography:

• Daniel Steiner
• Map Nerd
• Jay Foreman (Map Men is hilarious, and the rest of his stuff is pretty good too)

Garry's Economic

PBS Space Time

Kurzgesagt is my go to. I love the art and the style of narration

Crash Course! They have series on history, politics, games, psychology, philosophy, folk tales, and almost every host is very good.

Esoterica is great. It’s mostly about gnostic side of western religious history. Dr. Justin Sledge is doing awesome research on the relevant topics. I’m watching that to know more about to put religion in a historical context.

Folding ideas is pretty cool https://youtube.com/@foldingideas

Ordered randomly.

• RobWords — Lots of trivia about English as well as some other languages, some focusing on etymology, others on alphabet and so on..
• Tapakapa — Quick explainers, recently focusing on country flags (there should be a -logy word for flags knowledge, I don't remember) EDIT: vexillology, as a few people pointed out
• Carefree Wandering — Philosophy; Religion: specifically Daoism and Confucianism; Media theory; Identity "technolgies", specifically the concept of "profilicity"
• Unsolicited Advice — Philosophy explainers; more approachable and less academic than the previous one, I guess
• Ben Eater — 8-bit CPU made on breadboard fame, hands on explainer of computer architecture, networking, electronics and so on
• Patrick Boyle — On finance, mostly for entertainment purposes
• LegalEagle — In-depth analysis and discussion on American law and reporting on recent prominent legal cases
• TechAltar — "Analytical videos about tech companies"
• rewboss — A Brit living in Germany, with some videos on recent events, local history, cultural tidbits from a personal perspective
• PolyMatter — In depth analysis of almost random, yet important matters
• Computerphile — Like Numberphile, but with computer scientists instead
• Artem Kirsanov — Computational neuroscience explainers
• LowSpecGamer — History of (home) computing with focus on gaming; I am most impressed with the story/lore of 6502, 8080, Z80, ARM CPUs, how they came about etc.
• NativLang — Linguistics, going quite in-depth, yet remaining approachable for the rest of us
• Reducible — Computer science explainers with high quality animation, reminiscent of 3blue1brown
• Faultline — "Telling human stories through geography"
• Explaining Computers — Operating systems and computer hardware, SBCs review, explainers
• The Present Past — History
• Lawarch — Deep-dives in politics, history etc.
• fern — "Armchair documentaries, almost weekly"
• Acharya Prashant — Spirituality

Ooo just thought of another. Animagraffs — https://youtube.com/@animagraffs

Takes large scale things (Hoover Dam, locomotive, F1 car, etc) and breaks them down into their components in a long-scale video format (30+ minutes). It’s oddly soothing to watch.

I think the Steam Locomotive one is my favorite so far. https://youtu.be/Hszu80NJ438

I'm waiting got hbomberguy to come back.

I’m a big fan of Practical Engineering — https://youtube.com/@practicalengineeringchannel

Renaissance Periodization - working out, dieting, bodybuilding and steroids.

Dr Mike Isratel is a Dr of exercise science and doesnt chat shit. They make their money pretty transparently, and give honest to god research backed information. Lots of information that can be extracted from Beginners to Advanced and he loves a good dick joke enough for all of his content to feel fun.

FYI, if you love long-format videos, be sure to share on c/mealtimevideos

Going alphabetically and leaving out ones that I think are a bit too niche.

12tone: Videos about music theory and song analysis https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUtqcDkzw7bisadh6AOx5w

Atomic Shrimp: Very broad channel with topics as diverse as nature, cookery and scam avoidance. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSl5Uxu2LyaoAoMMGp6oTJA

CGPGrey: Gone downhill in recent years but his old stuff is still there. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2C_jShtL725hvbm1arSV9w

Design Theory: Recently discovered this channel, videos about product design. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdgUN8rX3SEb9L7FDub3I6A

Dr Geoff Lindsey: Linguistics videos focusing on the English language. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtFuCBKQTItHCwfHRP9LIjQ

Driver61: Videos on the technical aspects of motor racing; I'm not a huge motor racing fan but I find it interesting. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtbLA0YM6EpwUQhFUyPQU9Q

Geoff Marshall: Videos on UK railways and public transport, OK a bit niche but I like Geoff and his enthusiasm. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd18OhMfRmjMjzSHP7Zrzmw

Jay Foreman: Comedy education videos on a variety of topics, largely UK-centric but not always. Uploads rarely but it's always worth the wait. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbbQalJ4OaC0oQ0AqRaOJ9g

Kurzgesagt: I think needs no introduction. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q

Langfocus: Linguistics videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNhX3WQEkraW3VHPyup8jkQ

Numberphile: Videos on mathematics that I think strikes the right balance of being accessible without dumbing down. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A

Simon Roper: Mostly videos on the history of the English language. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChnRk6mxWsSOGElm8phdSxw

Tasting History with Max Miller: History told through recreating historic dishes. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsaGKqPZnGp_7N80hcHySGQ

The Aesthetic City: Ideas and opinions on archetecture and city planning. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX4ppwcUldlxpuiRGoT1INQ

The Tim Traveller: Quirky travel videos about interesting places around Europe, quite nerdy, off-the-beaten-path type stuff. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LVhJH_9cT2XKp0VAfsKOQ

Tom Scott: One of my most enduring favourite YouTubers, no longer active but there's plenty there. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBa659QWEk1AI4Tg--mrJ2A

Veritasium: Very good long-form science videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA

Wendover Productions (and sister channel Half as Interesting): I guess mainly videos about infrastructure and logistics and stuff. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9RM-iSvTu1uPJb8X5yp3EQ

sage the bad naturalist ❤️

Posy

CGPGrey

I have many faves, but for this list I offer Science Fiction With Damien Walter and Merlin.

Damien is an English writer living in Bali and talking to himself and us about scifi writers and philosophies. He has.....a delivery style.

Merlin is relatively new; a mesmerizing voice and afro discussing literature and philosophy.

https://youtube.com/@damienwalter

https://youtube.com/@merlinmeek

SEIDS is awesome if you're a Logic Pro user. She knows ALL the tips and tricks

https://youtube.com/@seids_

Tale Foundry is great commentary on literature and culture given by a robot with a very milquetoast delivery

https://youtube.com/@thetalefoundry

If you're into an academic study of the occult or comparative religion, I like Esoterica by Doctor Justin Sledge (he's the guy from the tumblr alchemy meme about making a Paracellcian era anti-depressant)

Historia Civilis—excellent history videos. Primarily their story of the fall of the Roman Republic, which does a shockingly good job of making you feel emotions for a little coloured square with the channel's iconic simple animation style. Good if you're interested in the intricacies of the politics and culture of the time.

Extra History—shorter historical overviews of a much wider range of topics than the above. Quite transparent about their process with their "Lies" episodes at the end of each series, where they explain any errors that slipped through, as well as aspects they left out for the sake of keeping the story focused within the time they had.

ReligionForBreakfast—a scholarly, secular take on religion and religious practice. I think the first thing I saw was their series on American Civil Religion, which is the idea that Americans' attitude towards their country and its processes is similar to religion belief and practice.

UsefulCharts—history and religion, told through charts. The ones that interest me the most are the ones that touch on the creator's PhD in religious studies, such as about the historicity of various aspects of the bible, and on his actual thesis topic on the Psychology of Atheism.

And since you said "informative", I'll add some that I probably wouldn't have included solely under the "educational" category. Not Just Bikes, CityNerd, Radical Planning, Oh the Urbanity!, among others. Urbanist channels across a range of the political spectrum (from Oh the Urbanity which are relatively libertarian, to Radical Planning which is quite marxist). But all of them deal with the problems inherent to the way cities are designed especially in the anglosphere (and among that, especially in America) and how car-centric design creates miserable places while also being economically ruinous.

The Engineering Mindset - Greatly simplifies electrical systems. Want to know how grounding actually works?

bigclivedotcom - “The trashiest electronic channel on YouTube. We test and use affordable electronic soldering equipment and tools to build, teardown, modify (and sometimes destroy) random electronic stuff.”

engineerguy - Bill Hammack explores the world of engineering

Explaining Computers - Just like it sounds

Expedition Bible - The archeological evidence supporting the Bible. Some mind blowing stuff.

minutephysics - Simply put: cool physics and other sweet science.

Mark Rober - Think like and engineer

SmarterEveryDay - Exploring the word using science

Steve Mould - Videos about science

Tasting History with Max Miller - The history behind food dishes and then an attempt at making them

Teach The Table - Board game rules simplified

Teaching Tech - Teaching 3D Printing/CNC

Technology Connections - How do the things in our world work?

toldinstone - Greek and Roman history from a PhD. Super interesting.

Veritasium - Videos about science education, and other interesting things

Townsends - Exploring 18th century lifestyle. Super calming.

쿠킹하루 Cooking Haru :) - Easy and Simple Cooking with a super cute stop animation look/feel.

But Why? - Exploring the universe and biology

• Steve Mould
• Ze Frank
• synthet
• LEMMiNO

Let me know if you are also interested in German-speaking ones

These two off the top of my head:

• 3Blue1Brown - Higher mathematics with nice animations.
• EEVblog - Various EE-related stuff.
• Edit: Also, Ben Eater - Computer engineering.

Not sure about favourite, but:

Clint's Reptiles (zoology, not just reptiles) is nice! Not sure how I feel about the reaction content, but he does stuff like animals-as-pets reviews, animal phylogeny videos (evolutionary trees) and some other videos that might be more interesting/understandable to watch.

Cleo Abram (various science and tech stuff) is fun, though I mostly see/watch the shorts. Similar with NileRed (chemistry), but his videos can be pretty long, haha

There's also an official animated series of xkcd's "What If?"! The videos aren't long, but they're fun.

I like Oversimplified and Extra History, both are quite entertaining and I think they are both putting in great effort to make their content accurate.

I used to really enjoy CGPGrey but after too many flags and other things, I kinda just stopped watching that.

Kurzgesagt is a bit of hit or miss for me, I love their space and science-y weird questions but the more political stuff feels sometimes a tad iffy.

That's mu personal take anyway and I know many might disagree. If anyone could provide the links that would be great I hate to use the YouTube app and in the web-Browser it's a a bit of a pain.

Oh, I have several!

Calum - https://youtube.com/@calumraasay - Learn about obscure topics like the US land trains, the helicopter campervan, the container and more.

Clabretro - https://youtube.com/@clabretro - A lovely man doing early 2000s homelabbing

Failure to Launch - https://youtube.com/@failuretolaunchpodcast - Space history failures and unusual events, combined with crass humor, yes please.

Paper Will - https://youtube.com/@paperwill - a tiny channel, making huge videos about entertainment made by cults, or entertainment in North Korea (5 hours long)

Peter Dibbie - https://youtube.com/@peterdibble - obscure history videos with a focus on the pacific north west part if the US, he has an excellent video on when the US hosted high speed trains trials from Sweden and Germany.

Retro Bytes - https://youtube.com/@retrobytesuk - A channel by an enthusiastic guy from the UK talking about technical computer history

I have more, but they are more mainstream...

Engineer Guy

Bill Hammack clearly explains many inventions.

Crash Course is my fave along with their other channels like SciShow

miniminuteman and Archaeology with Flint Dibble are both excellent archeology channels. They fight misinformation put out by grifters like Graham Hancock and share really interesting actual archaeology.

Esoterica is a fascinating channel which explores the less well-known aspects of religion and philosophy from an academic perspective.

Sebastian Lague makes very cool programming videos. He does coding adventures where he sets out to build something from scratch (e.g. in his latest video, he made a software rasteriser), going through the basics of how it works and explaining the challenges involved. The thing that sets his videos apart from coding tutorials and videos that explain how things work conceptually is that they follow his journey as he is learning himself. He doesn't exactly go in 'blind' (he is a very skilled programmer and has a good idea of what he needs to do), but he also doesn't immediately have the optimal answer he copied from someone else or prepared in advance.