I love learning strange things. The best assignment I ever had in the 5th grade was to do a project on anything we wanted. I chose the Bermuda Triangle. Later I would go on to write papers on The Donner Party for 8th grade English and the history of prisons in AP US History. The macabre and unexplained have always gotten the most attention from me.
There are many full length documentaries that cover such topics, but what about hours upon hours of short documentaries? These are three YouTube channels that I consider to be educational, though-provoking, and entertaining. These are channels for binge watching, binge learning, and binge having my mind blown.
Vsauce
Started in 2010 by Michael Stevens, Vsauce is a fast-paced web series that asks and answers life's peculiar questions. Michael manages to tie together biology, physics, psychology, sociology and history; going on a tangent, working from one topic to the next and amazingly coming back to the start. One of my favorite videos called,
Why Do We Wear Clothes?, starts with the definition of the word "embarrassed," then to the concepts of being "likable,
forgivable and trustworthy," modesty, selective breeding, feelings of
disgust, why are babies so inept, and brain size vs. body size. I won't spoil
the ending, but I will say that it does come back to answer why we wear
clothes -- in a really awesome way.
Michael is enthusiastic about the topics at hand, and it is infectious. He often adds links to his source videos within his own so you can go on another YouTube binge, learning more about the topic you're interested in. Vsauce may not always have a definitive answer, but they always ask questions you never thought of.
Collative Learning
If you like
The Shinning or Stanley Kubrick, Rob Ager is the guy to listen to. In his YouTube channel, Collative Learning, Ager meticulously analyses
The Shinning as well as
2001: A Space Odyssey,
A Clockwork Orange,
Eyes Wide Shut,
Pulp Fiction,
Hellraiser, and
The Thing to name a few. There are more such videos under his
personal channel. He also made a nine part documentary called
Hidden Cinema, discussing subliminal messages in films. I'm a fan of his eight part series on
The Shinning's Jack Torrance as an abusive father. He also delves into the confusing layout of the Overlook Hotel, the meaning behind the creepy twins, and something other than blood might be coming out of the elevators.
It beats the hell out of me why Rob Ager wasn't used in
Room 237. His theories are just as compelling ( if not more so) as the other Shinning theorists (and he can speak into a microphone). Ager is always reminding us that Kubrick never made any mistakes, so everything has an answer behind it.
Speaking of mistakes...
Cinema Sins
Cinema sins is one of my favorite places to enlighten myself on YouTube because I'm a hater. I love learning about other people's mistakes, especially movie directors, and
script girls. Produced by Chris Atkinson and Jeremy Scott, Cinema Sins takes all the questionable parts of a movie (5 to 10 min total) and hangs it out to dry. They pick out all the inconsistencies, terrible acting, cliches, plot holes, and impossible scenarios. Some may say pointing out the impossible scenarios in a film is a bit picky, because after all, it is just a movie. However, I say dig up all the dirt! I will devour it (even for movies I like). There is an excellent
interview by Digital Spy with Atkinson and Scott, discussing what it takes to put these together and how they manage to ever watch a movie for fun without tearing it apart. What I get out of the experience is not only a laugh or a snicker at others shortcomings. It's important to be critical and analytical; not to always be content with everything set down in front of you. Since these videos are meant to be funny-cynical not whiny-cynical, expect to laugh at movies you may have cried at.
I hope you enjoy these channels, and that they change your perspective on the world.
