Ask HN: YouTube Channels for the Intellectually Curious

Not Just Bikes. The Dutch solved a lot of urban problems that most other countries still haven. This is a guy from Canada living in Holland, talking about urbanism, mobility and all the rest.

> I don't know what to tell you if you believe Thunderf00t's "debunking" is more valuable than your own viewing of any given channel.

I wasn't very inclined to view Matt Ferrel's videos much in the first place. I was too leery of the way they were presented to consider it worth my time to investigate further. I was wondering if I was missing out, but never decided to really try to find out first-hand as it just wasn't worth it to me.

It was at that point that I saw Thunderf00t's video, and I decided to see what his take was. As you note, I'm a bit wary of Thunderf00t as well. I don't watch his videos often and when I do I ensure to remain a little more actively critical. Based on what I saw there, I didn't feel inclined to further wonder if I was missing anything by avoiding Ferel's videos.

I'm sure that video, and the follow up, were probably some of the weakest from Ferel. However, it was less the actual content and rather the approach that didn't fit what I'd want to watch. Uncritical readings of pie-in-the-sky press releases isn't my thing, and the follow-up in particular made it clear that that was not where Ferel thought the problem was.

> Regarding Veritasium, that is an even weaker argument IMO. If we're going to try to pillory everyone trying to make a living off communicating STEM topics I'm not sure who we'll have left in the space.

Making a living is one thing. But that isn't my problem. I wouldn't recommend avoiding his channel if it was just a matter of him running ads and/or doing some ad-reads.

> I'd love to see examples of him outright lying or misleading his audience if you have it, because that would certainly change my mind on recommending his channel to people.

The largest straw for me was probably the one on self-driving cars with Waymo. For an in-depth look, Tom Nicholas did a pretty good job[1] covering it from what I recall. In particular the comments on that video from Veritasium really shook my trust, IIRC.

Around the same time I also took issue with several of his other videos. The one that I recall now was about some kind of DNA testing company. It was another one where the company both sponsored the video and provided exclusive access. There my issue was largely with how he soft-balled the interviews and even outside of them didn't bring up what I felt were the most pertinent - and well-known - arguments against such companies in general, as well as (again, IIRC) that specific companies actions. These ones weren't, as far as I know, as extreme as the Waymo one. But they - and the lack of any sort of response from Veritasium when many people brought the issue up - were enough to already have me teetering on the edge when the Waymo one nailed the coffin shut.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc

This thread has been amazing for filling in gaps. Thanks for your list!

OT, but I sorely wish there was a way to whitelist channels or playlists in the youtube app and have it show only this content. better yet, be able to subscribe to a curated list of channels and playlists. Id love to give my kids free reign to watch any of this stuff, but there is far too much other stuff that gets pushed on them too fast.

It would be quite possible to compile a list of these creators.

I'd also suggest that Nebula has quite a few creators in the STEM space, though not nearly enough to make it the one-stop-shop you're looking for.