I feel it’s time someone made a list of all the best educational YouTube channels. Not the top few, but as many as I can find. While there’s plenty of colleges and universities that post videos of their lectures online, no one can really be expected to take 1-2 hours out of their day to watch one dry speech on any given topic. So I’ve set out to find channels that are not only educational, but entertaining and reasonably digestible.

Some of these channels, I’m already subscribed to and thanks to the “featured channels” lists on each one, I’ve gotten my hands on many, many more. This list should be a constant work in progress and if I’ve missed any channels, feel free to let me know in the comments. I’ve loosely categorized each one based on their main focus, like “physics” or “technology” but there are quite a few that I would just call “multi” due to the fact that they have not one specified topic. There are also some I have just decided to label “HM” or “Honorable Mention” since their focus isn’t specifically education, though they sometimes spend time on it. Others are just very hard to label and you just have to check them out for yourselves to find out.

1Veritasium (physics)
Art Of the Problem (math)
Backstage Science (behind the scenes of scientific facilities)
Bad Astronomer (astronomy)
Bibledex (Christian Theology)
Big Think (multi/interviews)
Brusspup (optical illusions)
CGP Grey (multi)
CharlieissoCoolLike (HM)
CoolPsychologist (psychology)
Crashcourse (multi)
Damewse (Sagan Series)
Deep Sky Videos (astronomy)
Diginfonews (tech news)
Discovery News (multi)
FavScientist (scientists/biographies)
Houshold Hacker (how-to/multi)
Intelligent Channel (multi)
James Randi Foundation (scepticism)
KipKay (hacks/how-to)
Melody Sheep (music/multi)
Minute Physics (physics)
National Geographic (multi) (blocked in many countries, might not be worth listing)
Nova Online (multi)
Numberphile (math)
OMGfacts (multi)
Periodic Videos (chemistry)
PsycheTruth (health/psychology)
RationalResponse (scepticism)
SciShow (multi)
Sixty Symbols (physics & astronomy)
Smarter Every Day (multi)
Sourcefed (news/HM)
Spangler Science TV, Sick Science! & The Spangler Effect (multi) (excellent for kids)
TEDtalks (multi)
Test Tube (multi/network)
The Khan Academy (multi)
The King of Random (how-to)
The RSA Org (multi)
Truth or Fail (quiz)
Vi Hart (math)
VlogBrothers (HM)
Vsauce (multi)
Vsauce2 (multi) (one can never have enough Vsauce)
Words of the World (Language/etymology)
ZeFrank (HM)

After reading over the list I realized there’s an awful lot of text for something involving YouTube. So I decided to track down some videos to give an example of some of the channels I’ve mentioned. Enjoy: