Is it just me or has Kurtzgesakt gotten really weird over the last couple years? Like, their videos seem like they want to be clickbait, but they’re really bad at it.
You can tell the Gates-bucks have really leaned them in a neo-liberal slant. It kind of sucks.
Kurzgesagt when its summarizing research papers is alright, but as soon as anything touches on a social or political issue it’s all “vote with your wallet 🙂”
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I believe this is a YouTube feature that effectively runs A/B tests on your behalf. You give it multiple titles and thumbnails and it’ll gauge engagement with each and then use the one that was most popular. I hate it.
Every other week I learn something about YouTube that makes me sad
Damn YouTube is such a shitty platform
A lot of channels do this, you might’ve just not noticed.
Their early videos were very well researched and put together. At a certain point, they became a lot of “What is the purpose of dust? I guess we’ll never know. Isn’t the universe a mysterious place?”
Ah, yes. Their “We found space whales on Nimbus!” video (about speculative Zoology of alien worlds), which was later titled “What actual aliens might look like” was something I could excuse. I don’t consider claiming the impossible click-bait, but seeing the controversy, it was best they changed it.
However, what I really hated was their ad for a “strange matter” vile/necklace (i forgor), not because they lied about it containing reality destroying elements, but because they did the “buy now because they’ll never come back” trick. I consider manipulative sales tactics to be a greater sin than clickbait.
They seem to be trying to copy xkcd’s video format with the fantasy tier what if questions answered seriously. Seems out of place to me, not sure what Gates Foundation gets out of fluff pieces like figuring out what banana rain would do to the planet while getting the terminal velocity of a banana wrong right off the bat too. What a shit video.
Yeah they’re kinda bullshit.
What exactly is bullshit?
If this is meant to be a tongue in cheek comment on their video titles, then you deserve a dramatic slow clap.
Their videos about the climate catastrophe are paid by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
A lot more than those. It’s usually the ones that say Big Pharma saved the world and will do it again or that things are great actually
SpaceTime and 3Blue1Brown are good science educators for the college level.
Veritasium is good for the middle/high school level.
Kurzgesagt is probably useful for an infant. Or like a smart dog. Maybe an Australian shepherd.
Garbage channel.
I stopped watching them several years ago. I can’t say it was a specific video or event, but I just started zoning out when trying to watch them. I don’t do that much, I generally only watch, play, listen to and do things I can focus on. I’ve tried to watch some videos since then but I just lose interest after a minute or two. It’s like they refined their style so much that it all became too “samey” and it feels like they’re so scared of offending anyone that they end up saying nothing.
Dang, I’m surprised to see how many folks are down on Kurtzgesakt in the comments here! Bummer!
They might not be perfect, ya’ll, but at least they encourage open thought and critical thinking! Better than a lot of other media can say these days! 🙂
But they don’t encourage open thought and critical thinking. They basically tell you what to think.
It’s not as good as it used to be, but I still find it comfortable to watch. I like the black hole and space stuff, like what terraforming a planet would look like, but yeah they definitely have some fluff videos. Unfortunately clickbait titles like THE WORLD MAY DIE is just YouTube 101, seems baked into every channel now. Very hard to find a channel that feels organic.
It’s honestly the fate of most edutainment videos.
Eventually they run out of cool stuff to educate people on, so they pivot to hypotheticals.
How in the actual hell is technology connections not on that list and also why have I not seen it in any of the comments yet
Through the magic of buying two of them, you have someone who agrees that it should be on the list.
here to rep “through the magic of having a broken one…!”
Through the magic of latent heat we have 4 likes for every unit of person
“Through the magic of heat pumps…”
This list is basically the tippy toppy fresh snow that’s fallen on the iceberg.
Technology connection comes a little lower.
Sam O’Nella was awesome, but his current release schedule leaves much to be desired.
Top tier YouTube channel!!
Anyone here like Folding Ideas? He’s done some good stuff about flat earthers, crypto bros, and such.
A bit more esoteric and in-depth than these 4 and much better
One of the greats! Also, if you like Folding Ideas, you’ll love Benn Jordan. The style is very similar. Also, Technology Connections.
You forgot Technology Connections
Bro I love learning about latent heat of vaporization
I stopped watching kurzgesagt after their copium video on global warming where we all hold hands and sing and magically reverse it.
Here’s an existential threat to humanity, and the various ways that it’s worse than you think. But don’t worry! Capitalism will save the day by inventing solutions to our problems which won’t necessitate any restructuring of our society or economy!
Thanks as always to our billionaire
ownersdonors!I wasn’t gone on their video on the cruelty of the slaughter industrial complex where they bent over backwards to avoid suggesting veganism as the obvious solution.
They are a corporate shill, I forget who talked about. I should go find it
I’d like to submit
SmarterEveryDay (Highly suggest this video of the James Webb Telescope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu97IiO_yDI )
Honorable mention (because ‘retired’) Tom Scott
And because it’s a good channel Dad How Do I?
I liked smarter every day but recently I have been kinda put off because of his fairly frequent military propaganda for USA’s military.
Been a while I didn’t watch one of his videos, but I remember some US military stuff on there and I thought it was an interesting view from someone I think is smart but clearly doesn’t share my political leanings.
Trying to not be in an echo chamber and all.
Important to note that I don’t live in the US.
That’s fair.
But it’s not mainly his views that put me of (just kinda) it’s the paid and unpaid sponsorships with the military. It’s so obviously a recruitment strategy that it’s painful to watch.
I don’t live in the USA either.
He lives in Huntsville, Alabama. 95% of his neighbors are defense contractors. It isn’t sponsorships, it’s “this guy lives 40 feet away from me and does something interesting for a living”
The description in multiple of the videos advertises navy or airforce recruitment. And in the non paid videos, why do you think he was given access, time, and permission to post the videos? For recruitment obviously.
Not exactly a new tactic. Same thing for Top Gun and probably a bunch of other movies. Part recruitment, part public relations to improve their image.
But the military does have some neat tech that most people won’t ever see. Like his series in the submarine, there was a lot of really cool.
Absolutely and that puts me off. Especially when they push out multiple ads across multiple youtubers at roughly the same time, like they did at one time with smartereveryday
Didn’t he also make a video at some point heavily implying he believes in creationism?
The end of ever video includes the name of a bible verse, Destin is not exactly hiding the fact that he’s christian lol
I can’t see the parent of this comment (defederated or blocked, idk), but it’s possible SmarterEveryDay believes in creationism as I believe he’s Christian. That said, I watch his channel religiously (har har) and as far as I can remember he hasn’t spread any creationist propaganda.
The worst thing he’s done is make videos supporting the US Coast Guard. They’re still interesting and informative, but it’s still military propaganda in some sense. It’s fairly tame though.
There are probably other edutainment creators to worry about more than him.
I learnered about some interesting looking channels from this thread so I’ll pay it forward and share some that I like.
2 and 20
Angela Collier
Bobby Broccoli
Climate Town
Computerphile
Defunctland
fern
Folding Ideas
JimmyTheGiant
KnowledgeHusk
Lextorias
Not Just Bikes
Odd Compass
Ordinary Things
PBS Space Time
slow start
Suibhne
Thought Slime
Tom Nicholas
3Blue1Brown?
Yeah that’s a great one! I intentionally didn’t mention channels that I saw others had already listed.
Unlearning economics is pretty good too
Angela Collier…I also have my fair share of physics classes under my belt due to my engineering degree and she makes me think of things in a way that none of my professors did.
She’s brilliant.
The “magnetic forces do no work” thing is maddening.
The guy who is ‘the guy’ for that level of physics textbooks just happens to be determined to prove a non-quantum mechanics based explanation of magnetism so the book is written from that perspective without actually saying it. Of course.
You should probably note what they focus on so people know.
They’re pretty okay for shallow understanding on a subject, but Wendover (not on the list), Economics Explained (not on the list), and CGP gray all get stuff pretty wrong once you get past shallow depth. I know because I’m a huge transit/urbanism nerd. If these channels haven’t wronged you in some minor way, they just haven’t talked about something you’re a subject matter expert in yet. The point here isn’t that they’re bad, just understand that these are shallow explainers, the next step in from like a news article, Wikipedia, or a blog, and take them with a grain of salt.
My personal list is Kurzgesagt, XKCD explained, and The Action Lab.
Wendover is pretty bad and finding out they take essentially bribes in the form of free stays and travel from an amusement park to say only nice things a little them after the park had an accident that killed a kid makes it so it’s pretty obvious it’s not about being good content for us but for the people making it. Likely tax write-offs and funny accounting all over their channels.
They state that they aren’t for education but entertainment and thus don’t have a to cite sources either.
Yeah they aren’t a trustworthy source is my point.Do you have examples of CGP Grey getting things pretty wrong aside from his Solution to Traffic video which I indeed think holds up poorly.
The Solution to Traffic video, like you mentioned, springs to mind, but so does the one based on Guns, Germs, and Steel
Right? I’m surprised by this claim as when he found out he made a pretty minor error in his video on an abandoned missile silo, he made a whole other video to address it.
That was actually the one I had in mind
There’s not really a way around this, and I think one of the explainer channels actually went into depth about it.
They gave an example of how everyone learns that the earth is a sphere, but once you ‘dig deeper’ you find it’s not actually a sphere because it’s elongated at the equator (making it a spheroid.) You can then ‘dig even deeper’ and find that the earth isn’t really a spheroid, it has mountains and all kinds of other inconsistencies that don’t matter to most people but can make a difference to an expert.
The real takeaway is that we should not consider ourselves experts, or even significantly more knowledgeable about a subject because we saw a video on one of these channels. They’re for entertainment first.
no Wendover the first time I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. There are more but this is the only one that stuck in my head because it was my wakeup call.
When he got called out for it he said "Its fine and it does not make any difrence to the video, except it was the wrong car
I noticed he used the wrong care when talking about EVs, Volt instead of Bolt, and constantly could not get Kansas Town tames correctly. […]
When he got called out for it he said "Its fine and it does not make any difrence to the video, except it was the wrong car
Do you really disagree? Those two names rhyme and b and v sound extremely similar. Does getting that minor of an error warrant a retraction in your mind? If it does, you should retract your comment because you have typos in it. I personally don’t believe they make any difference, but since you do you should retract.
It wasn’t that he SAID it wrong, it waz that about half the information provided was about the wrong car. He got places wrong, and agian not the only one, but the final straw.
Also please note, if this was a post anywhere outside of a forum, that was ment to reach a mass audience I get my shit proof read, maybe he should do the same
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I love watching Spacetime, but also feel like dum-dum-brain after watch. Me no think good enough to watch this show.
Yeah I think it’s a quality channel but apparently there are just SO many people out there smarter than me that they are fine catering only to them. It sucks being left behind by a publicly funded channel :(
I’m actually thankful. It’s good to know a little about the bleeding edge of science, and there presumably are people who really do understand it. The fact that I don’t, means that there are smart, passionate people out there doing the work. Not every show needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.
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They’re definitely building on each other, but they’re definitely ELIApplyingForMyDocotrate degree.
PBS Eons is also pretty good, if you’re into paleontology.
That shit’s my jam.
For physics enthusiasts, I’d also suggest “floatheadphysics” for his depictions and sometimes cathartic presentation style. I love how he broke down special relativity in an easily understood way.
Then I’ve also really been enjoying “For The Love of Physics” for his style of showing some of the math. His style is more of a classroom presentation, but in a way that reminds me of my most effective professors that made their lessons as easy to consume as mac and cheese.
I’m inclined to hit some online courses someday, too, but, for now, these have been great for conceptual stuff and my curiosity vs. time balance.
Kurgesatz was really good before they started the black mirror season, where every video is about how humanity can get killed by various things.
Never heard of the other ones but I’ll give it a try.
And there’s a PBS video for anything you can think about, sometimes they just don’t surface properly with search.
They’re honest, direct, open, and willing to learn, I love kurzgesagt. The world sucks, but we shouldn’t shy away from understanding why it sucks and how we can improve it
I am big fan of their prepandemic work. But if you can get past their click bait videos, I think they still do good content.
Science pieces spreading awareness about something are their best videos.
This recent video on fentanyl was very good.
The south korea one, the vaping and weed ones. Very good at condensing complicated topic while still retaining pertinent information that’s new and not patronizing.
It was very pro heroin
For real though! What a weird watch 😂
Only if you didn’t pay attention.
I just showed their Fentanyl video to my 13yo daughter over the weekend and it was incredibly effective as a parenting tool. We paused many times and discussed. But their presentation didn’t leave all that much for me to say.
Like all pop-science I think they’re really educational on topics I know nothing about. On topics I do know well, I think: well that’s wrong and that’s wrong.
Seriously, Im really worried about the generations that are learning economics from CGP Grey who is not only not an expert but is frequently wrong.
Wouldn’t be any different from previous generations thinking they know something without having experience to back it up.
PBS spacetime is a good one
CGP Grey is a meh channel for a very long time now
I thought the Tiffany video was pretty meh, but the followup video about how the Tiffany video got made was one of his best. He’s clearly a thorough and passionate researcher. The way he refuses to settle for anything less than the primary source is both entertaining and vitally important in our modern information landscape.
2019 Kurzgesagt: “I guess we will fact check, if that’s important to you.”
I’d add 3blue1brown (3b1b) to that mix! Also xkcd’s What If, Minute Physics, and maybe VSauce
Me: “Sam O… haha cute name. I’ve never heard of it. I’ll see if they have a YT channel. Oh they do! What?! I’m already subscribed??!”
I wish YT actually respected subscriptions. Here I am subscribed to someone and I’ve so thoroughly forgotten it that their name doesn’t even ring a bell.
He doesn’t really put out videos very often and also took multi year hiatus recently.
it’s quite funny that he said ‘going to college, be back in 4 years’ then ACTUALLY stopped posting for 4 years then came back like nothing happened and made a joke about a Scooby do movie.
like thats so insanely based I wouldn’t believe it actually happened except that it fits his character so well. Like took a nap through all of covid then starts singing a song about animals feet.
also he made a channel about crossword puzzles lol
https://youtube.com/@samonellacrosswords
