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

melodysheep - quality animations about universe, earth

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

I don’t watch YouTube to often but I used to like to watch some content from Yes Theory.

My partner watches a few others though, I see her watching Smosh, which sometimes is good, she always watches good mythical stuff, but I am not as much of a fan of them.

I think I avoid YouTube mostly, but if Yes Theory fits your question, I like their underlying message (it started off as a saying Yes to life and taking chances and believing that people were inherently good and try to get communities and the world to come together it seems) and I was actually afraid to say it because I figured someone would come out and tell me how they are actually terrible people somehow. Hopefully not. (Fingers crossed)

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

For educative scientific YT channels I’d recommend Veritasium, The Action Lab and NileRed to name a few. They produce top quality scientific videos about really interesting phenomenas and experiments. And the best part is they make the concepts simple to understand without the need of a degree or smth lol

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.

Because I manually download videos to watch on the bus or train (thanks Grayjay & NewPipe), most of my subscriptions are for long-form content:

Retro Tech: Techmoan, Technology Connections, Posy, Janus Cycle, CRD, Ben Eater, DiodeGoneWild, pannenkoek2012, videolabguy, Adrian’s Digital Basement,The Science Elf, previously LGR and 8-Bit Guy/Keys

Science: Kuvina Saydaki, BobbyBroccoli, Numberphile, Computerphile, carykh

Tech News & Discussion (not always long-form): Louis Rossmann, Mental Outlaw, Brodie Robertson, SomeOrdinaryGamers, Asianometry, Atomic Shrimp, previously Thunderf00t

Urbanism: Not Just Bikes, Adam Something, Alan Fisher, Tramly, BritMonkey

D&D Story Narration: CritCrab, Puffin Forest

Bold channels are most underrated imo

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

Technology Connections

Black Dragon Tavern

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