Science Communications on YouTube

https://blogs.memphis.edu/awindsor/2025/02/25/science-communication-on-youtube/

by azhenley • 8 months ago

39 63 8 months ago

blogs.memphis.edu

vinceguidry2• 7 months ago

Can't leave out Dr. Angela Collier: https://www.youtube.com/@acollierastro

Hopefully author reads HN.

andrewflnr8• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

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__alchemist2• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

No mention of PBS Space Time? That show is high quality.

smokel• 7 months ago

Link for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime

gnz11• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

Some people might take issue with the Veritasium recommendation. I think he's great though.

Workaccount22• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

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

quamserena2• 7 months ago

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...

xvilka2• 7 months ago

What particular area, if I may ask?

mmooss9• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

I'm a much more auditory/visual learner, so these videos work really great for me. I'm glad that reading works for you!

mmooss9• 7 months ago

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.

bane2• 7 months ago

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?

mmooss9• 7 months ago

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.

quamserena2• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

“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/

jocaal• 7 months ago

Funnily enough, linear algebra is a good example of how doing doesn't lead to understanding. Just calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors don't give you the geometric view of what is happening. Also talk to some engineering students who learned how to do matrix multiplication, but can't tell you what a vector is (it is not just something with magnitude and direction).

griffzhowl5• 7 months ago

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

mmooss9• 7 months ago

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.

MangoToupe2• 7 months ago

Lectures have the added benefit of not relying on video, though. You can consume them when doing chores, driving, etc.

andrewflnr8• 7 months ago

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.

mmooss9• 7 months ago

There are endless military and economic publications, from nonsense to easy overviews to serious research. What does Perun produce? Do you have an example?

(I can suggest some if you are interested and give me a better idea.)

rf15• 7 months ago

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.

mmooss9• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

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• 7 months ago

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.

mmooss9• 7 months ago

Written communication can be lossy.

That's a great insight.

jraines• 7 months ago

They are good summaries. They’ve essentially replaced low- to mid- depth magaize articles, and some of the high depending on the topic

griffzhowl5• 7 months ago

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

panopoly• 7 months ago

Richard Behiel

Behiel is to 3Blue1Brown as a popular children's cartoon is to its late sequel series that aged up with its audience.

Excellent work.

I especially like his more recent trend of going line by line through famous papers. EPR and Bell's Inequality to date.

griffzhowl5• 7 months ago

Yeah, those are huge... I haven't got round to them yet. I liked the one on electromagnetism as a gauge theory

zkmon• 7 months ago

No 3B1B?

xvilka2• 7 months ago

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

ngruhn• 7 months ago

ScienceClic has extremely good animations. And it's run by some guy in his early 20s. He knows the physics, he can create these amazing animations and he comes up with genuinely novel metaphors and perspectives.

andrewflnr8• 7 months ago

I want to hijack this comment to plug AlphaPhoenix (https://youtube.com/@alphaphoenixchannel), who is responsible for by far the best explanations of electricity that I've encountered in any format. For instance, this one that clarifies what happens when you try to send electricity on an open circuit, and (IIRC this is the right one) what impedance mismatch is actually about: https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw

squeral• 7 months ago

I found it strange that StarTalk hadn't been mentioned yet. Neil deGrasse Tyson is my favourite science communicator.

thinkyfish• 7 months ago

An who can forget Lord Nice!

predkambrij• 7 months ago

I recommend "YouTube Summary with ChatGPT & Claude" extension, which makes it easy to copy transcription. Paste it in Deepseek or your favourite LLM with prompt "summarize in 1 paragraph" and then you can run TTS and you get idea about of the video in 10 seconds. You can ask followup questions, or to format it differently or get the reason to actually watch it in full.

Science Communications on YouTube

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