If I were to die or disappear tonight and my youtube history was investigated then I would probably be judged as a lunatic. Lots of ancient alien and free energy junk in there. Of course I've only spent a few minutes on most of those videos unless they managed to be entertaining despite not knowing basic history or physical laws.

I'm looking for videos about the leading edge of science and technology, or entertaining serious videos about crackpot ideas because I like to relax too.

I've had one wish since my early teens when I discovered science and technology, to one day make my own contribution, I am now 50 and not getting younger and that wish is still unfulfilled. There are things I should have done differently when I made that wish but I did not, in this universe, travel back in time to set myself straight.

In other words I'm looking for inspiration. I know I will not be the next Newton, Maxwell or Einstein. But I do aspire to be in the same orbit as Faraday or Zuse.

But I don't want those name to set limits to people's contributions, do post links to history, pure physic and mathematics videos. If I don't find inspiration then maybe someone else will.

The Yale Courses channel has, well, video tapings of actual courses at Yale University. History, physics, literature, biology, psychology, economics... lots of stuff on there.
http://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses

Mm. I like ZeFrank's "True Facts...", a series that uses humor while explaining the features that makes various animals unique. It has adult humor however, so not something to show to the young.


True Facts about the Octopus


If you like science mixed in with your music, Melody Sheep creates music videos that uses samples from various scientists, creating lyrics based on the message that they are trying to convey.

Monsters of the Cosmos (Melody Sheep, Black Holes


The Science Foundation has all 13 episodes of Carl Sagan's Cosmos on Youtube. The predecessor and benchmark by which Neil Tyson's Cosmos is judged.

Carl Sagan's Cosmos


Qualia Soup explains various topics, like natural selection, why irreducible complexity is incorrect, burden of proof, open mindedness, and superstition.

Qualia Soup's Evolution

This is not a video, but a book. It was written by Kevin Kelly and is called Out Of Control. The book deals with many kinds of complex systems (beehives, anthills, artificial and natural ecosystems, AI, ALife, economy, corporations, robots, online multiplayer games, etc.) and examines the properties common to all such systems. Major themes in the book are evolution, recursion, emergent behavior through rising complexity, applying biological principles to mechanical entities, and how complex systems of any kind adapt to change.

The book has been a tremendous inspiration for me over the years. I have read it many many times. I am reading it again at the moment.

The first thing it inspired me to do was to "steal" it. I put steal in quotation marks because the author has in fact made the book freely available online. However, when I found it, it was only available as HTML on the auhor's home page. I read it there first, several chapters of it, and while I absolutely loved the book, I hated the format. So, inspired by the book's treatment of recursion, I wrote a recursive script which read through the index page, loaded each chapter, stripped the HTML and weaved the whole book into one big XML file. Subsequently, I used XSLT to format it back into HTML, which I then imported into an eBook reader so I could read the book on my phone without being online. The book is now also available as a PDF, and also exists in an abridged "remixed" version, which removes a few chapters which never really fit in with the rest of the book. I haven't read this version though, so I don't know how good it is. Of course, the original book is also available as an actual physical book which is not free. I have the hardcover edition on my bookshelf. Even though the content itself is free and I already had an excellent eBook version of it, I needed (wanted) to have this book physically in my library, and it was certainly worth the money, so I bought it.

Every time I have read this book, I have gotten an urge to begin experimenting with evolving artificial intelligence. Over the years I have given much thought to how exactly I would go about it. Finally, when I started reading it again a while ago, I decided to actually do something about it. Right now, I'm coding a program which will (hopefully) let me play around with teaching virtual creatures simple tasks, by applying selection pressures to a population whose genes mutate slightly between generations.

Phew, I didn't intend to write that much. Anyway, I urge you to have a look at the book. As I mentioned, it's freely available from the author's homepage, which you can find here: http://kk.org/books/out-of-control.php

Does Taofledermaus count? He's basically a guy that likes to fuck around with guns and ammo and stuff, but he does do various makeshift experiments with chemicals (like mercury)

3D Bullets
Mercury + Sponge

I really like this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/about
It's funny and informative.

If you like all things electronics, EEVBlog is awesome, the guy talks about all sorts of cool electronic and gadget things and does tear-downs of unusual stuff (how many people can say they have actually taken apart a TV transmitter formerly used to transmit TV to millions of people? This guy can)

A channel that I enjoy is DNews. They post 1-3 videos a day and offer fun, interesting science/technology news stories in nice, little, bite-size chunks. Check them out and see if it's what you're looking for.

For maths I like Numberphile
http://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile

(also check Brady's other Nottingham University channels on the side there like Sixty Symbols and Periodic videos)

and Vi Hart, of course!
http://www.youtube.com/user/Vihart

This video on biomimetics is really cool. :)

Biomimetics : Documentary on the Motion Technology of the Natural World

I really like that channel! Discovered it a few months ago and it's very good. I haven't checked it for days, but this reminded me of it.

Well, it appears that he hasn't uploaded a new video. Maybe he's planning something big, or is just busy.

Just stumbled across a video where Neil Tyson talks about the science and videogames. Nifty!

StarTalk: Neil Degrasse Tyson - The Science of Video Games

I like minute physics
Oh, and not a channel, but best interview evah Stephen Colbert interviews Neil Degrasse Tyson at Kimberly Acadermy watch here