The weird little educational channels I actually watch when I’m supposed to be working
It’s 2:17 pm on a Wednesday. I have a progress note due for my grad class by 5, my fridge is still leaking a little under the crisper drawer that I’ve been ignoring for two weeks, and here I am, 20 minutes deep into a YouTube video about how 1950s textbook printers cut their lithograph stones. I never set out to curate a list of “must-watch educational content” or anything like that. I don’t even share most of these channels with my friends because they’ll just give me that blank look, the one that says you have way too much unstructured free time. But they stick, y’know? None of them are the fancy, polished courses I paid hundreds for back when I thought I needed to “upskill” every quarter. They’re just people talking about stuff they care about, and that’s enough for me.
First one that comes to mind is This Old Tony, the machinist channel out of Australia. I stumbled on him three years ago, when I tried to build a custom bookshelf for my tiny apartment and my cheap circular saw guide snapped halfway through cutting a 2×4. I went down a rabbit hole of how metal cutting tools are made, and ended up on his channel, and I’ve been hooked ever since. He swears just enough to feel real, keeps a chipped cat sticker on the side of his lathe, and if he messes up a cut halfway through a video, he doesn’t edit that part out. He just sighs, wipes the metal shavings off his apron, and says “well, that’s garbage, let’s start over.” Once he spent 25 minutes ranting about a $200 fancy brand tool that broke on the first use, and that rant taught me more about how manufacturing corners get cut than any introductory engineering textbook I slogged through in college. My cousin’s a professional mechanical engineer, and when I showed him one of Tony’s videos he snorted and said “that guy’s a total hobbyist hack, he cuts corners all the time.” I nodded and changed the subject, but I still watch every new upload. I don’t care if he’s credentialed. I care that he makes me understand how things work, even the messy parts.
Next up, this retired high school biology teacher on TikTok who goes by Teacher M. I wait in the curbside pickup line at my grocery store every Sunday morning, and it’s always 10 to 15 minutes, so I scroll his backlog when I’m sitting there. He posts one-minute videos about weird, obscure animal facts, usually standing in his living room in a faded flannel, with a chipped coffee mug that says “World’s Okayest Teacher” propped on the desk behind him. He doesn’t yell at you to like and follow, doesn’t do that jump cut every two seconds to keep your attention. Once he posted a video about how sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins, and I brought it up at brunch with my roommates that weekend, and everyone just stared at their pancakes for ten seconds before someone changed the subject to rent. I don’t mind. I never paid attention in high school bio anyway—I just crammed for tests and forgot everything a week later. But I can rattle off a dozen weird little facts from his videos that stick, because he’s just talking about something he thinks is cool, not quizzing me later. I accidentally liked a 2019 video of his about tapeworm parasites when I was scrolling at 2 am once, and I panicky checked three times to make sure TikTok wouldn’t push that activity to all my contacts. It’s fine, I think. No one’s said anything.
There’s also this street food channel I watch, called Cairo Food Walk, that’s just a local guy walking around different neighborhoods, buying whatever street food looks good, sitting on a curb, and talking about its history. The subtitles are a little wonky, half the time they translate things like “this ful is warm and filling” to “this bean food is happy good.” He always gives a bite of whatever he’s eating to the stray cat that hangs around his usual spot. I’ve learned more about how colonialism reshaped what ordinary people eat in Egypt from his 10-minute videos than I did from a whole semester of a college history elective on the Middle East. The thing is, I can’t even make most of the food he talks about. I don’t have a wood-fired clay oven in my studio apartment, I can’t find the specific fermented pickles he raves about at my local grocery store, and my tiny stove can barely boil pasta without smoking me out. But that doesn’t mean it’s not educational, right? I’m not learning to cook. I’m learning how people live, what matters to them, how food ties into family and neighborhood and history. That counts.
I used to feel weird about this, that I don’t consume the “right” kind of educational content. I bought that $200 coding course a few years ago everyone was raving about, watched the first three videos, and never opened it again. Last month, I had a job interview, and they asked me what I do to keep learning outside of work, and I panicked and said I read the Harvard Business Review, which is a total lie—I only open that when my boss sends it to me. I still feel a little bad about lying, but what was I supposed to say? I watch 40-year-old guys fix old vending machines in their garages?
Anyway, the lithograph video just ended. I should probably get back to that progress note. The next video in my queue is about how to re-glaze a 100-year-old window. I don’t even own any old windows. I’ll probably watch it after I hit submit, anyway. None of this is going to get me a promotion or fix my leaking fridge or anything. It’s just stuff I find interesting. That’s enough, I guess. Wait, the fridge just beeped. I should go check if it leaked all over the floor again. Maybe after that I’ll watch a video on how to replace the seal. Who knows. (Word count: 1182)
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