Edit: Thank you for your responses! I’ll be sure to upvote and check out everyone’s annswers even if I don’t reply to each one individually.
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
(there should be a -logy word for flags knowledge, I don’t remember)
I’m a big fan of Practical Engineering — https://youtube.com/@practicalengineeringchannel
I’m Grady, and you just read this in my voice.
I totally did.
I second this. His teaching style is perfect.
If you haven’t, I recommend checking out his book, too! Takes the video explanation style he has and turns it into text format and it works really well. My kids are fascinated by it. Maybe a future engineer in the making!
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
Geoff Lindsay is great
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.
Religion for breakfast is so much better than I’d expected when I first saw his channel pop up
Yeah, I’m always rather sceptical and have my guard way up when I come across a creator talking about religion. If it hadn’t been for the greater trust I automatically have in a creator being added to Nebula (which is where I first came across this channel), I don’t know if I would have started watching it. But I certainly don’t regret it.
Since you mention a few Urbanism channels, I’ll add a couple more that I like:
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
Not Just Bikes
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”.
- Steve Mould
- Ze Frank
- synthet
- LEMMiNO
Let me know if you are also interested in German-speaking ones
PBS Space Time
Best channel on YouTube.
Folding ideas is pretty cool https://youtube.com/@foldingideas
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’ve decided I don’t like his pet review videos and these days I just skip them, but I’m a huge fan of Clint’s phylogeny videos! And even though he’s obviously a Mormon (he’s never explicitly said it, but he’s open about being a Christian, and he’s based in Utah, so…), his videos debunking some of the worst of conservative Christian anti-science bullshit are great too.
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…
Thank you! Appreciate the links and descriptions you provided :)
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.
Engineer Guy
Bill Hammack clearly explains many inventions.
The backlog is fantastic! Great explanations and examples of manufacturing and design choices.
And all videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY).
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.
