Title essentially. Youtube’s algorithm is hot garbage, so I can’t search for anything anymore without a ton of AI slop and rage bait. So, who do you go to for actual good long form videos? Exposes, scandals, behind the scenes, documentaries, film, travel, transit, who do you recommend I follow?
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Big recommendation for Nebula. It’s dirt cheap and has all this type of content ad-free, downloadable, play in background, etc
Epimetheus. High quality history videos on past and current civilizations. His hand drawn art is amazing too, he tries to stay very historically accurate. No theatrical narration, just a broad view of history. My favorite channel by far.
Dr Becky. Very very good science communication on astronomy and cosmology. She always sources the papers she mentions and excels at making you understand basic astrophysics. Best explanations of a very hard topic.
Angela Collier, another science communication more focused on physics and the epistemology of the field. I love her personal perspective on all the drama in physics (e.g. why Feinman is overhyped, why it’s still such a terribly sexist field etc.) though she makes it clear that it’s her channel and her opinions. Much more detailed explanations of physics but a little harder to understand.
City Nerd data driven showcase on why cars are bad for cities, usually in a top 10 of cities ranked by some metric of transportation.
Preface - I enjoy car stuff, so there’s more than a few car channels here:
- Legit Street Cars
- Deboss Garage
- David Freiburger (roadtrips)
- Louis Rossmann (when he does long stuff)
- DefunctLand
- Junkyard Dave
- Technology Connections (No-effort November is wonderful)
Contrapoints is one of the youtube GOATs for a reason. High production values, thought provoking content, and a level of thought and honesty that’s powerful. Her video that’s absolutely definitely about twilight and nothing else caused days of discussion with my wife.
Folding Ideas is a documentarian with a film background. He’s most famous for his videos about NFTs and meme stocks, but all his videos are excellent. “I don’t know James Rolfe” was a youtube filmmaker descending into madness attempting to understand another one.
Philosophy Tube is a woman who got pissed that the UK was raising tuitions so she committed to giving away the knowledge she got in her philosophy degree. Sometimes she plays with clickbait, but in a very self aware way. Her content is definitely meant to make you think
Hbomberguy is a man who made a 4 hour video about youtube plagiarism so popular the Onion referenced it. He’s largely a video game critic but does some deep dives into political topics like climate denial, flat earth, and antivax
Sarah Z is a older gen z media and fandom critic who largely leans towards Tumblr oriented topics. She consistently has good takes. I really liked her video on how the internet talks about narcissists that I watched over the weekend.
Strange Aeons is probably my suggestion people are least likely to like. She’s like if Sarah Z was a lot weirder. You want someone to explain the omegaverse or Snapewives or the other bizarre outlets of fandom in a wat that’s generally respectful to them? She’s got you. In particular I like how she’s respectful towards weirdness when it’s not harmful and that she treats trolls as the performance artists they can be.
Practical engineering is youtube for the sort of people who think bridges can be interesting. He’s a civil engineer with a fair bit of charisma talking about civil engineering.
Stuff made here is for when you want impractical engineering. He’s a dork who designs and builds weird shit for its own sake.
Defunctland, listen I’m not really into amusement parks that much, but this guy makes them fascinating to hear about.
Additional creators I forgot or left out:
Lady Emily is Sarah Z’s cowriter’s channel. It’s definitely weirder but in a direction completely different from the way strange aeons is. She doesn’t care to make her content have mainstream appeal and so it winds up being an autistic woman making videos about stuff she finds interesting.
Innuendo Studios is someone I intentionally left out for two reasons: a lot of his videos are short and they’re very political. But they aren’t low effort ragebait political, they’re analyses of modern right wing rhetorical tactics. I’m including him now purely because he’s one of my favorite youtubers
Münecat is a long form video essayist who started with anti-mlm content and has moved into other topics like internet gambling and debunking evo psych.
I’ll add more comments if I think of more
Crime pays botany doesn’t
the only thing i love more than that guy is that nobody in the comments can agree on what his name is
Haven’t seen it here yet, but it’s one of the greatest and most prolific YouTube channels about science fiction and the future… Science Fiction and Futurism With Isaac Arthur
Just FYI he’s got a bit of a speech impediment, but after like 2-3 episodes you don’t really hear it and the content is so fantastic. He’s a legit physicist and the President of the American National Space Society, so he’s very respected outside just creator circles.
Mostly history documentaries below:
- Fall of Civilization (takes forever to upload stuff, but it’s always superb quality)
- Kings and Generals (wars, historic battles and the context surrounding them)
- Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (several videos show the very likely migrations of different peoples in ancient times)
- Ancient Americas (north, central and south americas)
- Real Time History (most videos are ~27 minutes, but the Franco Prussian war is a whopping 6 hours and worth it)
This Old Tony - if you like tools, machines, and clever dad jokes. He’s the best.
I actively avoid shorts so most of what I watch is long form.
- Technology Connections - A guy needing out about household tech
- Unlearning Economics - a trained economist turned public edutainer who kept learning after Econ 101, unlike others who shall remain nameless
- Behind the Bastards - Chummy laughter about the worst people ever
- RPG with DBJ - RPG talk with a focus on creativity and exploring the opportunities afforded by the space of ‘limited only by your imagination’
- We’re in Hell - A guy looking at pieces of media and the ideology infused into them by culture
- Gresham College - lectures on widely ranging topics, presented by professors but targetting the layperson
- The Morbid Zoo - A cool gal doing analysis of movies, usually horror, but sometimes others, with an eye toward ideology and culture (Hellraiser, Smile, Twilight, PotC, etc.)
- Folding Ideas - More film analysis, but with a tack toward various criticisms
- Doctor Who - the old series are all on the tubes now. Not educational, but fun.
Behind the Bastards is fucking great! If you like their stuff, you might also enjoy “Respect The Dead (A Podcast Where We Don’t).” It’s a kind of queer younger sibling to BTB and a whole lot of fun, but they only cover people who are for sure dead.
Technology Connections
It might be worth adding that some people might find him (and similar long form content) verbose if they are not into the topics. I watch probably most of his episodes, but some people in my life don’t vibe with those. The same people did not appreciate the 7 color e-ink display I had been tinkering around with until I made it display a dog pic, so it’s also about how the topic relates to what you already like.
Did you see his latest video about algorithms? Best video so far this year imo
Yes, I figured that might have been part the trigger for the thread.
Mr Sunday Movies/The Weekly Planet
Time Team Official
Cutting Edge Engineering
Steve Wallis - Calm Canadian dude that does stealth camping, he’ll just camp behind a McDonald’s billboard and is very chill about it
On the same note I really like GIFGAS. Bit of the same, just with train hopping across Europe. YouTube is apparently removing some of his videos though, but all should be on his Patreon.
I fuck with Steve . Solid dude living the dream I always had as a kid on a road trip: " I could build a fort and camp in the middle of that traffic circle and nobody would ever know I was there"
Steve is awesome. Another favorite of mine is Kent Survival. I’ve tried more than one of Andy’s camp meals, and he’s the reason I bring a cast iron dutch oven with me now.
techieSMS, an Indian tech guy who has made all kinds of excellent walk-thru videos about DIY home automation, coding and related subjects.
Along with Technology Connections, Philosophy Tube, and Primitive Technology, here are my “must watch” subs
Climate Town - Excellent videos about climate change and environmental impact that are insightful and funny
Contrapoints - Well written and meticulous deconstructions of philosophical concepts in media, pop culture and society with a dry wit
Every Frame a Painting - Amazing content on film-making. No longer active, but if you haven’t seen it yet, lucky you, enjoy.
Pop Culture Detective - Interesting meta analyses of popular tropes in pop culture
Because I’m into historical clothing and fashion, Bernadette Banner and Abby Cox both do great videos on costuming, history and creating cool stuff
Love climate town. I hate that someone needs to waste their time disproving lies from the oil, gas, politicians and the like, but it does give me hope in the future that there are people like that out there.
Every Frame a Painting came back to life one year ago! He uploaded some new videos :)
Yes! It was such a pleasant surprise on my feed. Unfortunately they said they won’t be continuing because of Youtube’s enforcement policies around copyrighted material so those videos were meant to be a limited series.
Well … My go-to is still Hbomberguy. Eben if I don’t know/care about the topic I know every vid of bis will be interesting and worth the time investment. The jokes are really funny (even on rewatches) and I’ve learned a lot. I watch old Hbomb videos to Fall asleep to almost every night.
Main issue: there’s one video every 1-2 years … However if you’ve never seen one you’ll have the back log to get through.
I especially love his dismantling of Paul Joseph Watson’s video about soy boys.
