More Interesting YouTube Channels

I watched a lot of YouTube during my unemployment, and I discovered a lot of cool YouTube channels. I love YouTube channels that are educational but entertaining, channels that fill the role abandoned by the History Channel. Two of my favorites are Vlogbrothers and Lazy Game Reviews, but there are a couple of the channels I’ve gotten into recently.

Kurz Gesagt

As you might have guessed from the name, Kurz Gezagt is based out of Germany. The name literally translates as “short said”, though they translate it to the more idiomatic English phrase “in a nutshell”. These videos take complex topics about things like science and politics, and boil them down to short, informative videos. There are certainly a lot of other YouTube series like this, but what makes Kurz Gesagt so awesome is the artwork. They use brightly colored animation, with lots of circles and rounded corners. I really like the aesthetic, especially the cute little birds they use throughout the videos, which are quite distinctive despite being made of simple circles and rectangles. If you like beautiful and informative graphics, you should definitely check out Kurz Gesagt.

VSauce

VSauce is actually a series of interesting YouTube channels about science, gaming and Internet culture. I like the original VSauce channel, Vsauce1 with Michael Stevens. On this channel, Stevens waxes poetic about science and philosophy, often covering a dozen different topics in each episode. He covers a broad range of topics in each video with the hope that each viewer will find something engaging. The way he flutters from one subject to another reminds me of the reruns of James Burke’s “Connections” I used to watch as a kid. Vsauce videos are informative and entertaining. I also like the background music, and I find it soothing to listen to while I’m painting.

Veritasium

The name Veritasium means “truth element”, using the Latin word “veritas” and the elemental suffix “-ium”. Made by an Australian-Canadian named Derek Muller, this channel is more grounded in hard science than Vsauce or Kurz Gesagt. Muller is a big believer in debunking common misconceptions about science. He does this by talking to people on the street. In one episode, he asks people to simulate this distance between the moon and the earth using a tennis ball and a basketball. Most people hold them at arm’s length, when in fact it’s more like a dozen meters. In my favorite episode, he sets out to debunk irrational fear of radiation by taking a Geiger counter to places like Hiroshima, Fukushima and even Chernobyl. It’s a pretty impressive demonstration, and while most episodes don’t take place in such notorious locales, it’s still worth a watch if you’re any kind of science nerd.

There are just a few of the interesting YouTube channels I’ve gotten into recently. What are you watching? Let me know in the comment section.