Some more great YouTube channels
└ posted on Saturday, 25 March 2023, by Novil
After my first post about great YouTube channels, I have some additional suggestions today:
- Ahoy produces animated documentaries about video games. While I’m not so interested in his numerous videos about video game weapons, his video about the first video game is one of the best documentaries ever produced!
- If you like Ceave Gaming’s Super Mario videos, you can also check out the channels of Nathaniel Bandy and Nicobbq.
- Marcel Vos takes RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 to its limit. The videos are even great entertainment if you’re not interested in the game at the slightest, like me. At least don’t miss his magnum opus: The Universe Coaster.
- History Matters is a channel featuring short animated documentaries about historical topics. They’re funny, yet informative and very neutral in tone.
- TheZlorf reposted HD versions of the great Flash animations by Cerberus (Tirrel).
- Tom Scott is a “professional tourist” and presents interesting locations and their history in all corners of the world, such as Why California’s musical road sounds terrible and The most dangerous stretch of water in the world.
- Veritasium produces science documentaries about popular and more obscure topics with outstanding production values and decent scientific rigor, such as Math’s fundamental flaw and Why no one has measured the speed of light.
Veritasium is not a reputable source: many of his videos are clickbait and misleading at best, plainly wrong and bold faced lies at worst. At least one was just a thinly veiled marketing ad. Sadly, all the mistakes are intertwined with things that are actually correct and is often convincing enough for people that are not already expert in the field and use YouTube as their only source of scientific information.
If you want scientific channels, follow the ones of ACTUAL scientist, and be suspicious of the ones that cover a wide range of disparately different topics. Here some
https://youtube.com/@scottmanley astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration, with the occasional KSP gameplay
https://youtube.com/@standupmaths curious mathematical problems and theorems
https://youtube.com/@HuygensOptics Light, optics and lens crafting
https://youtube.com/@TwoMinutePapers AI and light transfer simulation
https://youtube.com/@AlphaPhoenixChannel Physics experiments
https://youtube.com/@AppliedScience Insanely advanced physics, done in his garage. This man is amazing
https://youtube.com/@NileRed chemistry
I liked most of Ahoy’s “first video game” video a lot, but, as I said on that site a year ago:
I feel the author erred in not realizing one critical component of a video game: it must REQUIRE video.
Perhaps a different way of saying that is that it must have motion of some sort.
If we look at Naughts and Crosses (OXO), or Christopher Strachey’s Draughts, both could be implemented via paper output (e.g., printing the board after each move). Those two computer games did not require a video display the way Pong, Spacewar, Computer Space, etc., did. And that’s a critical distinction.
@ Beregorn:
Also on the science front, the collection of Brady Heron / Nottingham University channels: Sixty Symbols (Physics), Numberphile (Mathematics), Computerphile (Computer Science), Periodic Videos (Chemistry), Words of the World (Etymology).