Ask Lemmy

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.

One I haven't seen mentioned yet that I think needs more exposure is miniminuteman: https://m.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773/

He does a mix of long form archeology videos and short form pseudo-archeology debunking. Some of it should be dry content but his delivery bridges the gap every time. He has a side channel where he posts about his side projects like his solo motorcycle trips that's also interesting.

Peter Santanello

Dime Store Adventures

Moon

SomeOrdinaryGamers

SamONella

There's probably more, but these are the ones I recall

Jeff Gerstmann, video game journalist

Lindsay Nikole, paleontology pop sci

Gutsick Gibbon, prehistoric anthropology pop sci and some academic stuff

Spacetime and SEA, cosmology pop sci sometimes leaning more academic

Rifftrax/mst3k, comedians that add audio tracks over bad mostly public domain movies, there's a ton of them

Ben G Thomas, prehistoric biology pop sci

Sarcasmitron is a lesser known, but really good history youtuber, with a pragmatic but leftist analysis. A lot of his earlier work was focused on critiquing right wing YouTube, but more recently he had been focused on historical events rather than responding to a specific video.

Technology Connections

A Catholic socialist, a Jewish anarchist, and a Muslim communist walk into a bar, and they make a podcast about engineering disasters: Well There's Your Problem. It's great for that intersection of people for whom the phrase "crimes against TERFs aren't crimes" resonates and like listening to an engineer complain about low quality as-builts 2 hours into a 3 hour episode about 9/11

I was sold on the show when I found out that the episode about the Titanic was split into two parts, totaling around 5 and 1/2 hours. That's partially because they spend a lot of time bullshitting, and partially because they go really in-depth about how and why structures fail

I made this spreadsheet a while back for easy sharing. Some have been mentioned like F.D Signifier and HBomberGuy. Also like Mr. Beat for history, Nth Review for games, Astrum for space, and Maritime Horrors for... maritime horrors.

Not as long form as they usually max out around an hour. Good enough for walking dogs.

New Rock Stars.

Dark Net Diaries.

Star Talk.

Beyond Trust has a podcost interviewing tech people.

Bill simmons podcast. Mainly sports but a lot of just in general topics too. Famous guests athletes and not.

Steve Wallis is my comfort creator. Genuine dude from Canada who does loads of camping from simple in the woods stuff to hiding in a roundabout overnight. He's had a rough go these last few years as he lost his wife, mother, and best friend all within a year and a half. This is a man just enjoying what mother nature has to offer.

• Weird Fruit Explorer
• Tasting History

Brick immortar- probably the single most technical long form YT channel in the engineering disasters category

NNKH - fixing things that probably shouldn't be bothered with.

Green dot aviation - air disasters and near disasters

Pilot debrief - light aviation crash analysis

Andrew camarata - long, long form time lapse videos of running backhoes and dozers to cut roads and things, nice to relax to.

The great war - I watch on nebula but I think they are on YT too.

Hoog - explainers

Bald and bankrupt - I've heard mixed things about the guy as a person but his videos are entertaining, in the "travel to unusual places" genre

Integza - another one on nebula but I think also on YT. Building rocket engines with 3d printers, etc

Driving 4 answers - probably the single best automotive focused engineering channel

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.

Well There's Your Problem - Engineering disaster podcast, with slides! And the hosts vary from left, to very left.

JunkyardDigs/PoleBarnGarage - Two separate channels. Love them both for just fucking around with old cars/farm equipment/vintage snowmobiles

I am not normally a fan of long form videos unless I'm in the mood for it, but Philosophy Tube is my go to. Thanks to her, she (he before she transitioned) actually taught me what liberal really means, socially progressive but economically conservative.

Science and futurism with Isaac Arthur.

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

Bobby Fingers

Clay sculpting with humorous narration.

Watch 30 seconds to get the feel. One of the best.

Jenny Nickelson does.. nerd stuff? Highlights include:

"Church cinimatic universe" where she becomes a sommelier of art and walks you through a decade or so of some church in Canada's Easter plays, which are delightfully technical and imaginative while also being a beautiful form of cringe.

And a 4+ hour documentary/review/commentary on her visit to the short lived "star wars hotel"

I'm not big into star wars or Disneyworld/land wherever it was, but I watched that whole thing.

How long-form?

I absolutely love “More Kitboga”, videos where a fella calls scammers and uses a Roland VT3-3 voice transformer to improv. Video lengths range from a few hours to… I believe his record fucking with the same call center (like two or three specific people) is 54 hours. I put it on when I’m working from home. He is HILARIOUS. He and his team have whole fake websites, fake banks, and a fake Google Play store where he can redeem fake Google play cards into his account and it works as the actual play store would. People go insane when they see they “lost” thousands of dollars because an “old lady” redeemed the codes they wanted.

True crime: Explore With Us is a channel my partner recently found. Lots of FOIA’d videos and pictures that have never been seen before they made their videos. Very interesting.

Potholer54, does very good scientific debunking videos

PBS spacetime, physics that you'll understand for 60% yet it keeps being super interesting

Thunderf00t, does good debunking videos. Has a bit of an attitude but so far always is right on piint. already has been bashing musk since a decade ago

Drain Addict.

He's a weird plumber. From Australia. He unclogs drains. When he walks, he moves his arms like a player character in an FPS. He has a toy rat and crocodile that help him. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's a sound effect and what's a real sound.

It seems like it shouldn't work but somehow it does.

Trying not to put duplicates:

• ViceGripGrage - finds old shitty cars and gets them running and drives them home
• MightyCarMods - as the name suggests, building/fixing/modifying cars
• Savagegeese - very detailed car reviews, no bullshit
• B1M - talks about mega projects and there issues
• ItchyBoots - Badass motorcyclist that has traveled solo across the world
• shiey - Explores abandoned places, hops trains, insane lack of fear of heights
• The Proper People - also explores abandoned buildings
• Rick Beato - music producer that analyzes songs and talks about various music related topics

"Stuff made here" is an excellent channel about crazy fun engineering projects, such as a pool cuestick that always pockets the ball and so on.

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

Hoovies Garage for some car comedy. The guy buys dump cars that need repairs and he let the local mechanic fix them. He makes dumb choices for entertainment.

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.