Why I’m looking to YouTube for a well rounded education

YouTube is an great resource for learning on the cheap. Videos are a great format for delivering normally dry and nuanced information from a book in a concise and captivating way to Internet learners. If you don’t want to pay 50K a year to learn history, philosophy, economics, foreign policy, or psychology at a university, then consider YouTube a free alternative.

Here are some of my favorite channels for learning something new everyday:

Science and Engineering

Kurzgesagt, which means “in a nutshell” in German, is a channel that makes high quality, animated explainer videos. This channel is especially good at converting heavy technical information into voiceover cartoons that are both accurate and easy to understand for anyone. Their videos are around 5 minutes. Go ahead and learn how a computer works, how the Internet works, how nuclear power works, what is light, and how your immune system responds to an infection.

Humanities Studies

CrashCourse is another channel that consistently delivers high quality videos designed to teach you things. While Kurzgesagt offers a video here and there about a topic, CrashCourse offers numerous collections of videos on a chosen concentration like Psychology, Philosophy, Anatomy & Physiology, World History, and Literature. Each collection consists about 50 videos and each video is about 10 minutes long, consisting of a lecturer talking to the camera, with some cutaway cartoons for illustration and some occasional sound effect. What I value most about CrashCourse is that it’s not simply a place to get information. The lecturers provide arguments and their own perspectives to encourage viewer to think critically about the information presented to them.

Foreign Policy

China Uncensored is a channel specializing in reporting news from China with a heavy focus on human rights issues and government corruption in China. As the second largest economy and world’s largest standing army, China is becoming a major world power that still treats their citizens like people in a third world country. I watch China Uncensored for a quick laugh while seeking to be educated about global news. Each video is about 3 minutes and filled with sarcasm. Did you know Medium, along with YouTube and Facebook are all banned in China and you could be sent to jail for criticizing the Chinese government online? Did you know the Chinese government supports intellectual property theft of foreign products to boost its knockoff industry? Besides reporting on these light-hearted, arguably “funny” news, Chris Chappell, The host of China Uncensored, has been reporting heavy topics like organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese communist regime since 2012.

Economics

The business of life from VICE News is a talk show that offers “a fresh perspective on the most important issues of our time as told through the facts, figures, dollars and cents that shape our world.” Issues explored include the changing US workforce, and why the middle class is disappearing, and why college is so expensive. Each show is joined by a panelist of experts in the area of discussion and an audience who can interject anytime to make a point or ask a question. You can learn quite a few things about economic trends that affect your everyday life from this show. The most valuable thing is the open discussion format and the statistics presented during the show that helps to direct the conversation.

Math

MyWhyU is a non-profit educational organization that makes animated educational videos about math. I first discovered this channel when I was learning topology and found their wonderful animated series on topology by professor Von Schmohawk. Then I was addicted to the pre-algebra series, which introduces basic concepts in arithmetic such as counting and numerical symbolism by following the story on how the Coco Loco Islander used math to solve everyday problems. These videos are entertaining as hell and can be enjoyed by both children and adults alike. If you are an adult and never liked math or “got math” when you were in school, I guarantee you that watching these videos will make things all clear. It might even make you love math or appreciate it for all its beauty and power.

Social Science and Political Philosophy

RSAnimate visualizes talks on policies, social science, philosophy, and macroeconomics by simultaneously illustrating the talking points right in front of your eyes to enhance understanding of what the speaker is saying. I can’t think of any better, more interactive content delivery mechanism than what RSAnimate offers.

Wireless Philosophy is another channel that offers similar knowledge visualization. Talks are delivered by university philosophy professors, and interestingly illustrated to make you ponder about things like whether it’s morally permissible to kill pigs for food or can you kill someone who does not exist yet, which has real world implications such as deciding whether to be a vegetarian or whether an abortion is harmful.

Business and Entrepreneurship

Book Video Club is a channel that summarizes books written on business and entrepreneurship. If you are trying to build a startup right now like I am, you probably don’t have a lot of free time to read those important books, such as Guy Kawasaki’s the Art of The Start 2.0 and Eric Ries’s Lean Startup, that everyone told you that you must read to be a successful entrepreneur. With Book Video Club, there is no excuse. Important ideas from those books are read out while being illustrated in front of you in 5 minutes and less.