Depends on my mood, and some creators have come and go from my rotation, some random ones: Krystal Kyle and Friends (left leaning politics podcast) Warfronts (more medium form, but I think it’s a good balance) The Right Opinion (long form documentaries, generally around controversial internet figures) Jim Can’t Swim (JCS Criminal Psychology) Fredrick Knudsen (down the rabbit hole series) Karl Jobst (speed running documentaries essentially) Radking (Fallout lore stuff) SmoughTown (Elden Ring lore stuff) Ymfah (ridiculous video game challenges with humorous editing)

There’s tons more ofc

in addition to a lot of others already mentioned (there’s a lot of overlap)

History:

• Step Back History

culture/politics:

• Shanspeare
• FD Signifier

writing/education:

• Zoe Bee

media/ect:

• Tale Foundry (technically about writing fiction, but they also discuss media in general along with its themes, character archetypes, ect. it’s more interesting than it sounds)

• Pop Culture Detective

• Jacob Geller (mostly video games)

• My Little Thought Tree (also psychology)

• Broey Deschanel

I’ve recently caught up on About Oliver’s second season of Minecraft streams. He’s an astrophysicist who never played Minecraft before 2022 and documented his entire blind playthrough. No reading chat, no googling etc. He only knew that he could get to credits somehow, but didn’t even know how.

I highly recommend the entire playthrough, but there is a 6 hour Compilation of season 1 if you want to catch up to current day. Season 2 is about 40 episodes in, with about 4-5h per episode.

I really like my weekly hour long defense/economics powerpoint from Perun.

I love Technology Connections for an easy, interesting watch. He just explains how appliances work lol

Let me lead with this: I’m taking recommendations for spooky channels.

Okay, first of all, how the fuck has nobody mentioned Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t? [https://youtube.com/@crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt](Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t)

You get to hear the angriest man alive nerd out about plants.

Someone else mentioned Tasting History with Max Miller and I must second that recommendation, it’s a really good channel if you appreciate Cooking, History, and especially both.

For spooky stuff, I recommend Midnight Broadcast. They basically take 4chan/reddit creepypasta threads, clean it up a bit for the YouTube algo, feed it to an AI reader, and publish them as 20-30 minute videos. There’s also a now dead channel called “Chass” that did the same thing, mixed in a bit of its own lore, and also did a couple of specials like the Epic of MonkeyHumper (11/10 story, possibly the best creepypasta ever published, cannot recommend enough). Though, Chass kept a bit more of the raw 4chan elements than MB does, so be ye warned.

Overanalyzing Avatar does that good 20-min long videos where he just really goes maximum nerd on Avatar The Last Airbender and Korra. It’s passionate, funny, and interesting, and if you even kind of like the cartoons, I highly recommend giving him a try.

I’ll add some more if I think of them

A couple fun ones I haven’t seen mentioned:

Myron Cook - Think “the Bob Ross of Geology.” Basically he goes out, finds some rock formation, goes “Huh. Isn’t this cool? What do you think happened?” and walks you through everything dating back to like the formation of the planet. He’s like a teddy bear and his channel is wonderful and fascinating.

Dan Hurd - He’s a dorky gold prospector. He may have caused me to buy a gold panning set.

Haven’t seen Philosophy Tube on here yet.

High quality and engaging deep dives on various philosophy-related topics. Abigail, the face of the channel is an actor and playwright (and an academic) and that very much shines through.

Technology Connections

Black Dragon Tavern

Storytelling about Celtic, Gaelic, and Norse mythology, history, and lore.

I have been a fan of Kraut for a long time. He makes video essays on a lot of historical and political topics. He has made two massive three part series that total to nearly four hours about the histories of Mexico and Turkey. He makes some short form as well, like a point about american healthcare that americans don’t realize.

@Kraut_the_parrot

• hbomberguy
• Folding Ideas
• Harvard Math
• MIT OpenCourseWare

Ahoy @xboxahoy. Very well produced videos about gaming. A brief history of graphics, iconic arms, video game origins and more.

Buckin Billy Ray - interesting videos about cutting trees down and servicing chainsaws. A little bit unchained (excuse the pun) in a wholesome way as he seems to randomly intersperse his videos with positive affirmations like ‘be kind’ ‘love your friends’ which is kind of wholesome

Way out west - an older English guy living in the West of Ireland making things like a railway for transporting garlic

I did a thing - a hilariously unhinged aussie bloke

James Hoffman - for coffee. And hames joffman also

Karl Rock - travels around India/Pakistan exploring the places

Mike okay - travels to really off the beaten track places like Iraq.

Maximus ironthumper - many videos, the project kermit series is him rebuilding a land rover defender from scratch

Still it - distilling and making spirits

Peter Dibble has some great documentaries on historical curiosities around the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.

Technology Connections does deep dives into topics of technology, specific devices and appliances, and generally is very entertaining and informative.

RedLetterMedia for film critiques, so bad it’s good reviews, and comedy.

Defunctland does documentaries around theme parks.

Tasting History with Max Miller is a very educational historical food dishes show. Not super long form.

Matt Baume does great “LGBTQ+ in TV, historically” type of content. And wrote a book about it which is great too.

Stand-up Maths does great math content. Yeah, it’s math, but it’s fun. Bonus is he also wrote a great book relating to his content about engineering and maths mistakes in real life on large scales.

LGR- retro computer tech

Techmoan- retro audio tech