Bill Wurtz’s history of the entire world, i guess and its predecessor history of japan. They both blur the line of “documentary” a little, but are very good, and his music (beyond those videos) is also great.

Most any of Qxir’s or Plainly Difficult’s videos.

I could probably go on, but my nerd is showing maybe a little too much, and I watch way too much youtube.

Hbomberguy’s entire channel is a goldmine. It’s hard to pick just one so instead here’s three, in decreasing order of silliness

• ROBLOX_OOF.mp3
• Pathologic is Genius, And Here’s Why
• Vaccines and Autism: A Measured Response

All of them are about 2 hours long each

Aside from that, Cathode Ray Dude’s recent The Unholy Saga of Phoenix Hyperspace is quite good, though it’s a really computer nerd-y topic.

And finally, if we’re allowing conference talks, literally anything Deviant Ollam has his name attached to tends to be really good, though he does tend to repeat stuff between his talks. Here is four that’s different enough from each other:

• From the Pit to the Penthouse
• I’ll Let Myself In
• Through the Eyes of a Thief
• This key is your key, this key is my key

Shoutout to Lemmino! I love his video about Jack the Ripper.

Not full documentaries, but Tom Scott on YouTube does great little 5-10 minute explainers.

https://youtube.com/@TomScottGo

Edit - added YouTube channel

I created a playlist of the recommendations here and thought I might as well share: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9W-RMmS6ewK9p8OtJEKXtClpXEibXEIU

I also added this video on the Boeing 737 Max from MegaProjects, and a couple on a subject near and dear to my heart: Boy Bands of the 90s:

When Corden Met Barlow and The Boy Band Con.

Defunctland’s Disney’s Fastpass: A Complicated History is a fantastic dive into the logistics of managing a giant crowd over several years, from approaching it as an engineering problem all the way to exploiting the system for profit. It’s such a fascinating problem to me, and it’s presented in an engaging and fun way. The rest of the channel is fantastic too!

I’ll also recommend Fascinating Horror - these aren’t fictional horror stories, these are real disasters told in an incredibly detailed but highly respectful way. They don’t just explain the disaster and why/how it happened, but also the regulations that came afterwards to make sure these would never happen again. They’re all high quality, but if you want a starting point the Nutty Butty Caves will give you a good idea what the channel is about.

Hey, I think this can be interesting to some of you

There is a Non-profit organisation based in Swiss, that aims to evaluate the quality of Youtube videos, and generates global recommendations from that: tournesol.app

Currently, there is about 25000 videos included (~50% are in French, ~40% in English, 10% other) at the top of English recommendations we can find Kurzgesagt, Science4All, John Oliver LastWeekTonight

If you like to give your opinion, please come by !

This works like that:

• Paste the link to two youtube videos, one on the left, the other on the right
• Move cursors from left (meaning you prefer the left video) to right (if you prefer the right one instead)
• Confirm to update the global recommendations

Pros: The recommendation algorithm used, 100% Open sourced and developed by universities, said to be mathematically safe against a number of risks (strategic voting, bots attacks…) and “more representative to public opinion than commonly used polling methods”

Cons: The current low number of users (recommendations are pretty biased towards living healthly and reducing carbon footprint, for the moment, not a lot of entertainment yet)

Note that I’m not affiliated not part of the associative, I’m only a user of Tournesol, comparing videos from time to time to improve global rankings

The Polybius documentary by Ahoy. https://youtu.be/_7X6Yeydgyg

Thanks for sharing these! I’ve only seen 1 and 5, so I’ve got something to watch this weekend!

Road Guy Rob talks about how highway engineering works in a fun, highly animated way:

Here’s one about a bike lane disaster – where the city screwed up and undid it after a week:

https://youtu.be/zeynqnirofE

Philosophical Analysis of Dark Souls - The Gemsbok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpf3KQBIoCY

I think it might be the best analysis video about a game anywhere on the internet.

Anything by CGPGrey but specifically Humans Need Not Apply

I really enjoyed this video by Freya Holmér talking about Splines. Awesome resource for game devs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds

Jaws vs the Lyon 25 - The biggest stairset ever attempted by a skateboarder!

I keep watching this little short every once in a while: The Missile Knows Where It Is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ

If you can get past the weird framing device, the Plinkett reviews of the Star Wars prequels are an excellent deep dive into the issues with those films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D

Jenny Nicholson’s videos are great, but her documentary on “The Last Bronycon” is special, as the realization dawns on you while watching that she has more connection to Brony culture than you might have guessed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc