[HN Gopher] Science Communications on YouTube
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Science Communications on YouTube
Author : azhenley
Score : 30 points
Date : 2025-12-06 16:53 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.memphis.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.memphis.edu)
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Can't leave out Dr. Angela Collier:
| https://www.youtube.com/@acollierastro
|
| Hopefully author reads HN.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| She's very hit or miss in her quality IMO. Also, she's
| explicitly disclaimed the title of "science communicator", so
| she might not want to be on this list anyway. :)
|
| I kind of wish they hadn't included Veritasium either. He seems
| to have gone downhill.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I don't know to what extent it has directly impacted his
| quality, but it appears that Derek sold Veritasium to a
| private equity firm
|
| https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-
| majorit...
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Her content is mostly meta, vs science comm/teaching. I am
| really torn on her: Great communicator, funny, accomplished.
| Seems confident/smug?/conservative for a scientist. Something
| about her word choice and style feels more politician than
| learner/researcher. Not sure how to phrase this.
| mat_b wrote:
| No mention of PBS Space Time? That show is high quality.
| smokel wrote:
| Link for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime
| gnz11 wrote:
| PBS also did a recent live stream on the topic of science
| communication with some notable YouTubers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPKxk3s-8Yc
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Some people might take issue with the Veritasium recommendation.
| I think he's great though.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I was an avid viewer until he stepped in my area of expertise
| and leveraged technicalities, half-truths, and
| misrepresentation to really juice up the click-baityness and
| "wow!" factor.
|
| My interest in his videos plunged after that, and it seemed
| like he was re-alinging for consistent high views over straight
| hard factual education. Frankly I wish I could purge him from
| my feed at this point (youtube still recommends all his videos
| incessantly, despite me not watching one for at least a year
| now. On paper I am the ideal viewer though, so...)
| estimator7292 wrote:
| On your homepage, click the three dots next to a video and
| click "do not recommend channel"
|
| It's one of the very few things that actually work
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Do not recommend channel doesnt work. It only pauses
| recommendations for a few weeks. I've selected do not
| recommend on channels several times and they still sneak
| back in.
| dkdcio wrote:
| I highly recommend turning off watch history on YouTube.
| it stops recommending you videos entirely; just watch
| what you subscribe to
| quamserena wrote:
| He was bought out by private equity.[0] That's why the
| channel is different now.
|
| [0] https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-
| majorit...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Yeah, that would explain it.
| rramadass wrote:
| This explains why i have been finding his recent videos
| somewhat disjointed/disorganized and titles click-baity.
| The quality of the content has most certainly gone down.
| mmooss wrote:
| Who has time for videos? I know lots watch them, but wow -
| reading is so much more efficient. I can skip ahead - and skim -
| or revisit; I can annotate; I can save, transcribe (copy/paste),
| I read so much faster than even accelerated video can play ....
| and all so much more easily.
|
| By sticking to reading, am I missing out on content?
|
| Edit: Not a criticism of watching video, I'm wondering if I'm
| missing substantial things. If I didn't read, for example, I'd
| miss a lot that doesn't exist in video or audio. Same thing with
| podcasts.
| jonahrd wrote:
| I'm a much more auditory/visual learner, so these videos work
| really great for me. I'm glad that reading works for you!
| mmooss wrote:
| I'm not criticizing, sorry; just trying to understand.
|
| I find video more compelling, generally. Obviously video has
| more ways to communicate - graphically, empirically, etc.
| It's not that reading works more effectively, but far more
| efficiently.
| bane wrote:
| Let me turn your question around, what are the benefits of
| communicating science via video such that it's a very popular
| medium that people use to learn about science?
| mmooss wrote:
| I think video is much more compelling to people in many ways
| (similar to TV vs reading a book), including to me. Part of
| that is seeing a person talking to you with all the cues of
| expression, voice, etc. There's a lower cognitive threshhold
| for engaging.
|
| Video also has communication modes that text/print lacks:
| dynamic graphics and empirical video (showing the thing
| itself happening), audio, speech and expression (as described
| above).
|
| With all that, I find it quite frustrating to see it consume
| so much time that could be spent reading and processing
| several things. How do others on HN - intellectually curious
| and serious, often busy - reconcile that?
|
| Though my question is really, am I missing things by not
| watching video - things I won't realistically get through
| print? I mean high-quality things - I want the equivelant of
| a paper, review paper, or book by a professional in the
| field.
| quamserena wrote:
| 3blue1brown has great math visualizations. I find the top 10%
| of YouTube videos are worth the time over reading, and the
| bottom 90% are comparable or slower. Those are also nice though
| because you can put them on while doing other stuff, like
| eating or doing the laundry.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I
| understand."
|
| -Confucius [1]
|
| For certain concepts such as Linear Algebra, for instance books
| allow me to "do" and understand. Which is why I read more than
| I watch videos.
|
| 1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2826962/
| griffzhowl wrote:
| It's similar to the benefits of attending lectures (or watching
| them on yt): there are more informal asides and intuition-
| pumps, and maybe more detailed explanations of intermediate
| steps in calculations than you usually get in books.
|
| And for videos specifically, it can obviously help
| understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations
| mmooss wrote:
| A good point. Personally, I've never liked attending lectures
| except for the chance to ask questions. If I must 'attend', I
| prefer afterward at 2x.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| It's not science communication, but I don't know where to find
| anything quite like Perun's content in written form. It's
| military/economics issues, often pretty granular, at just the
| right level of detail for an interested layman.
| rf15 wrote:
| Who has time for reading? Audio content at least allows you to
| absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with
| other things: cleaning, driving, etc.
|
| Besides, teaching videos and also books often share a common
| weakness: low information density. Youtubers and Authors both
| like to talk so damn much without saying anything. Give me a
| good story or documentation catalogue any day, but stop mixing
| the two.
| mmooss wrote:
| > teaching videos and also books often share a common
| weakness: low information density
|
| Here we agree, but for books I don't need to read the low-
| density material. Review articles, for example, are
| fantastic. Scholarly books can be overwhelming due to density
| x size.
|
| > Audio content at least allows you to absorb information
| while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things:
| cleaning, driving, etc.
|
| Not with high-density content, IME.
| legitster wrote:
| I can watch/listen to videos while doing many other menial
| tasks pretty effectively (laundry, cleaning, washing, etc).
|
| Also, some of the videos are pretty dang entertaining.
| II2II wrote:
| I find videos are a convenient way to get an overview of
| something I'm interested in, yet not so deeply invested in that
| I want to learn it in depth. In other words, I can do the
| chores and learn a bit more about the world in the process. In
| that respect, I would say that reading is much less efficient.
|
| If it is something I am interested in learning in depth, then I
| would agree that books are usually more efficient.
|
| Well, with a caveat.
|
| Some people appear to record themselves as they pursue their
| hobbies, then post it to YouTube. (Sometime's it's organic.
| Sometimes it's partially planned out.) In those cases it is a
| bit like a very one-sided mentorship. The host will either
| realize they're doing something that they would never write
| about, whether it is in a script or a blog or a book, then
| discuss it. Other times they don't make note of what they're
| doing, for the same reason they wouldn't write about it, but
| you see it because they are doing it. Written communication can
| be lossy.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| For more in-depth physics, combining mathematical detail with
| excellent visualizations, the best channels I've found are
|
| Richard Behiel, Physics Explained, Dr Jorge Diaz
|
| For mathematics, I really appreciate the simpl but effective
| format of Richard Borcherds (Fields medalist)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@richarde.borcherds7998
| zkmon wrote:
| No 3B1B?
| xvilka wrote:
| List is incomplete without some other high quality channels
| already mentioned in other threads, but also Anton Petrov[1]'s
| channel, Sixty Symbols[2], Science Clic[3] and Artem Kirsanov[4].
| Animalogic[5] certainly worth mentioning. And absolutely stunning
| Journey to Microcosmos[6].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@whatdamath
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/@sixtysymbols
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/@ScienceClicEN
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR2uRTQ53V_egXKFflMMaaw
|
| [5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwg6_F2hDHYrqbNSGjmar4w
|
| [6] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g
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