My weird little lineup of educational channels that aren’t for “getting ahead” or anything
Last night I was folding the week’s socks, sitting cross-legged on my couch, YouTube open on my laptop, and the algorithm kept serving me those 10-minute productivity clips that yell about how to double your income in 30 days. I kept scrolling past them, and got to thinking I should write down the channels I actually watch—the ones that teach me stuff, that don’t want anything from me, that don’t feel like homework.
First up is Town That Never Was, a YouTube channel run by a quiet guy from northern England with a bad back who hikes around abandoned canals and lost industrial villages. I took a 200-level British history class in college, skipped half the lectures, crammed the midterm on energy drink and toast, forgot every date and name by the final. But from this guy’s videos, I know exactly how cotton mill workers lived along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, why the canals got abandoned as soon as trains got popular, how dozens of tiny mill villages got bulldozed after the mills closed and no one even bothers to put up a plaque for them anymore. Last January I had a week off work with a brutal cold, couldn’t really go anywhere, so I spent three days pulling up old 1950s Ordnance Survey maps online and drawing my own map of a 10-mile stretch of canal that’s been completely grown over since 1962. My roommate came home from work, saw me spread out on the floor with pencil and paper, asked if I was writing a book or training for a thru-hike. I got embarrassed and mumbled that I was just killing time, which was true, but I didn’t admit I cared that much. The map’s still taped to the back of my closet, I don’t even look at it, but I learned more about how ordinary people lived back then that week than I did in that whole semester of college.
Next is This Old Tony, another YouTube channel about machining. Full disclosure: I don’t do any machining. I don’t own a mill, I don’t have a workshop, I can barely change a lightbulb without texting my neighbor to come help. But every Sunday morning, after I walk my dog, I make a bowl of Cheerios and sit down to watch his latest video. He’s a retired machinist from California, rants about bad imported tools, tells rambling stories about working in factory shops back in the 80s. I’ve learned all kinds of random useful stuff that no textbook ever bothered to tell me: that the whole “they don’t make ’em like they used to” thing is mostly marketing—back in the day, companies just overbuilt tools to beat each other in ads, not because all modern manufacturing is garbage. I learned you don’t need to spend $200 on a fancy tape measure, a $12 one from the hardware store is just as accurate for anything a normal person would ever do. Last summer I went to a friend’s BBQ, got into an argument with a guy who was bragging about his $500 hammer, and I pulled up a 7-year-old Tony video to prove my point that a $15 hammer works just as well. Everyone just stood there holding their half-eaten hot dogs, staring at me, and I realized I’d turned into that insufferable guy who won’t drop a random argument. I still stand by it, though.
I work from home now, so I take 10-minute breaks after every meeting to scroll TikTok, and I’ve got two educational accounts there that are my go-to. One is a retired high school biology teacher named Jim who posts one-minute videos about weird animal reproduction. I took Bio 101 my first year of college, I remember nothing about evolution from the textbook, but I’ll never forget that male redback spiders actually want the female to eat them after mating because it gives their babies more nutrients, or that some species of frog fertilize eggs inside the female’s stomach and then she pukes up the fully formed baby frogs. Last time my mom visited, she was looking over my shoulder while I was scrolling, saw a thumbnail that said “why this fish eats its own eggs” and asked if I was watching weird porn. I had to scroll through three videos to prove it’s just biology, which was super awkward. The other one is a guy who breaks down Latin roots in common English words. I worked at a coffee shop for two years between jobs, and during the dead 2pm shifts when no one came in, I’d just scroll his videos. I didn’t need to know this for anything, but now I can’t stop myself from telling people that “sincere” comes from sine cera, Latin for “without wax” — back in the day, sculptors would fill cracks in marble with wax to hide flaws, so a sincere work was one without any tricks. I annoy everyone with that fact at dinner, but I think it’s cool.
I used to feel guilty for this, y’know? Everyone talks about educational content like it’s supposed to be for improving yourself, for getting a new skill, for advancing your career. All the big popular channels have that vibe, like if you’re not learning something that makes you money, you’re wasting your time. I even tried watching one of those super popular coding channels a while back when I was bored, just to see what the hype was, and I fell asleep halfway through the first video. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just I don’t care about coding right now, so why force it?
Last night I stayed up an hour later than I should have watching a guy test 15 different brands of deck screws. I don’t have a deck. I don’t even have a backyard. When I turned off the light, I thought about how people say we don’t learn anything after we leave school, how all we do is scroll mindless content. But I learned last night that coated screws hold up better in pressure-treated wood than uncoated ones. It’s not going to get me a promotion, it’s not going to change my life. But it’s something I didn’t know yesterday. That’s enough, I think. I don’t need my education to be for anything. It just has to be interesting. (Word count: 1172)
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