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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in addition to a lot of others already mentioned (there’s a lot of overlap)
History:
culture/politics:
writing/education:
media/ect:
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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)
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Jacob Geller (mostly video games)
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My Little Thought Tree (also psychology)
I was trying to see if someone else was going to mention F. D.
Shame for yours to be at the bottom; this is a good list of choices, in general. Excellent taste.
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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 No longer active, but if you haven’t seen it yet, lucky you, enjoy.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
Red letter media
I love Star Trek, but don’t want to watch the modern Alex kurtzman garbage, so they take the bullet for me.
I’m also not a movie guy, so watching their reviews/analysis while playing Minecraft is more entertaining than the movies they talk about.
Best of the worst is them watching B and direct to video movies that i wouldn’t otherwise know about.
Watch strange new worlds, Mike is rightfully dead inside after disco, but I genuinely like a majority of Strange New worlds, and generally align with Mike and Rich on most other Star Trek. I do think they praised season 3 of picard too much.
If you’re interested or curious about music theory (even if you don’t know much about it), I recommend Charles Cornell. Here’s one of him talking about Pure Imagination.
I watch a few different channels regularly. Here are a few of my favorites
Cecilia Blomdahl lives in the Arctic Circle/northern Norway and has lots of adventures and videos her day to day life in a really interesting way.
Also some Brits who have been renovating abandoned chateaus in France called Escape the Dream and a new one called Mucky Mansion are great escapism
Brain Pilot makes some good videos recapping a few shows i enjoy
I have a few classic youtubers I still watch from back in the day Safiya Nygard and Grace Helbig, for some beauty/crazy fashion/cooking stuff
If you want a sane political/comedy channel, Trae Crowder, the Liberal Redneck is fantastic. In that same vein, Some More News does fantastic deep dives in lots of political and social issues focused mostly on the US
Living big in a tiny house is really interesting seeing cool tiny homes around the world
Takis shelter is a channel from an amazing man who runs a sanctuary for animals in Crete and is a literal saint
Coffeezilla for crypto exposes
For history, I really like Premodernist. It’s just a history professor telling you history. It’s great because he’s a good storyteller and he actually knows the subject.
I love Technology Connections for an easy, interesting watch. He just explains how appliances work lol
My recommendation for travel would be ‘Bald and Bankrupt’, in particular I loved his whole Russian/Ex-Soviet Union series.
For documentaries, I do enjoy the ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ documentaries. They did a great one on Terry A. Davis a few years back
The soviet Union series was great, but anything I watched after that was boring to be honest.
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.
I like longer form sailing channels that avoid the more obvious place or lack basic sailing skills and are frankly dangerous. I don’t get to sail as much as I like so this is a good look and what I would rather be doing.
Maddison Boat Works their recent videos are of their epic tour of the Pacific Ocean, the road less travelled. Beautifully shot and narrated.
NBJS single-handed sailing in the North Sea, often in bad weather.
Alluring Arctic depending what time period you pick there is a wide range of mostly arctic sailing. They recently did the North West passage and are currently over wintering in Greenland.
Do yourself a favour and watch Ed Pratt Unicycle around the world. This is one of my favourite things on YouTube, watching him go from just a kid with a weird dream to a great filmmaker and experienced traveler in such an authentic way. Highly recommended
Vice grip garage.
Technology Connections
The video on pinball machines was absolutely incredible
This Old Tony: home machinist that fixes stuff and makes other stuff in his garage, but does everything very well thought out. Humorous and good editing.
