The random educational channels I actually watch instead of letting them collect dust in my subscriptions
I cleaned out my YouTube subscription list yesterday, well, tried to anyway. Got about 10 minutes in, gave up, because I realized out of the 187 channels I’ve subscribed to that claim to be “educational,” only four of them are ones I actually click on when I’m scrolling mindlessly after dinner. The rest are leftover from 2020, when I thought I’d emerge from lockdown fluent in Spanish and with a working knowledge of day trading. They just sit there, their new videos popping up in my feed, making me feel vaguely guilty, like I’m flunking some self-improvement course I never actually enrolled in.
So I figured I’d write down the ones I actually love, no fancy clickbait, no “best channels to change your life” garbage. Just the stuff that actually sticks, for me anyway.
First one is The Excellent Adventures of Goat and Son, which is just a dad and his son doing plumbing and home repair out of a small town in Ohio. I found them last year, right after I bought my crummy 1950s bungalow, when I had a mysterious leak behind the shower tile that my local plumber quoted me $800 to fix. I’d never done any plumbing before, but $800 felt insane for what looked like a simple gasket issue, so I went searching. Most home repair channels are so polished it’s creepy, you know? The host has perfect hair, everything goes right on the first try, no mess, no swearing when a bolt won’t budge after 20 minutes of wiggling. Goat (that’s the dad’s nickname) drops f-bombs when he accidentally nicks a pipe with a chisel, his son teases him for forgetting his tape measure at the truck half the time, they’ll stop mid-job to argue about what they’re getting for lunch after. I tried to fix my leak following one of their videos, got the cold and hot pipes backwards when I reconnected them, flooded half my bathroom floor, had to mop it up at 10pm while eating cold fried rice I’d ordered earlier. I still fixed it in the end, though, and it only cost me $45 in parts. I still watch them even when I don’t have anything broken. I’ll put a video on while I’m folding laundry or loading the dishwasher, just listening to them bicker. I’ve learned more about how old houses work from them than the 3-hour home inspection I paid $400 for. That’s way better than any textbook, if you ask me.
Second is Tasting History with Max Miller. I know he’s gotten pretty big now, but I still watch him, so he counts. The thing is, I can barely cook. Half the stuff he makes requires special equipment I don’t have, or ingredients I can’t find at my tiny local grocery store 20 minutes out of town. I’ve only ever actually made one thing from his channel, a medieval cheese fondue I did for game night with my friends two years ago. I put way too much white wine in it, it tasted like sour grape cardboard, and everyone lied and said it was great so I wouldn’t feel bad. We still make fun of me for it. But I watch him anyway, because it’s not really about cooking, right? It’s about the history behind the food that no one ever tells you. Last winter I had a really bad flu, I was curled up on the couch for three days, and I binged a bunch of his old episodes. I learned that pretzels were originally invented by medieval monks as a reward for kids who memorized their prayers, that the twist shape is supposed to look like arms crossed over the chest in prayer. I’d eaten pretzels my whole life and never had any idea that. The next day I dragged myself to the gas station to get Gatorade and bought a soft pretzel, and I ate it sitting in my car in the parking lot thinking about that stupid little fact. It made a really crummy day feel a little less crummy. I don’t need to cook the food to learn something that sticks, you know?
Third is LegalEagle, the law channel run by a real practicing defense attorney. I found him when I got a speeding ticket two years ago, I was convinced I could fight it, so I watched like 10 of his videos about how to handle traffic court. In the end I chickened out, paid the fine, because I was too scared to stand in front of a judge and argue over $150. But I still watch his videos. I usually watch them when I’m on the treadmill at the gym, because his voice is really steady and it makes the 30 minutes go by faster. A couple months ago, the retired guy who runs next to me on the treadmill glanced at my screen and asked if I was studying for the bar exam. I just nodded, I didn’t have the energy to explain that I was just watching a breakdown of the Johnny Depp defamation trial for fun. That was awkward, but whatever. Anyway, I actually did learn something really useful from him last year. I was signing my new lease, and I remembered a video he did about common garbage clauses that landlords sneak into contracts, and sure enough, there was one that said I’d have to pay the landlord’s legal fees if I had to move out early for any reason. I asked him to take it out, and he did, saved me potentially thousands if I ever had to move unexpectedly for a job. I didn’t expect that from watching a channel that mostly breaks down celebrity lawsuits, but there you go.
I used to feel bad that I don’t watch all those “productive” educational channels I subscribed to. That I’m not learning something that’s going to get me a raise or a new career. But lately I’ve been thinking that the best educational content is just the stuff you actually want to watch, right? It doesn’t have to be useful, not all the time. Last night I watched a Goat and Son video about how to fix a wonky farm fence gate. I don’t even have a farm fence gate. I just liked listening to them talk through the problem, joke about how the previous owner used way too many nails that were all rusted through. That’s enough for me. I don’t need a certificate or a new skill to get something out of learning. Sometimes it’s just nice to learn a new thing, even if it never changes your life at all.
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