I’ve been watching more “edutainment” programming in the past few years, for a variety of reasons. For a long time I ignored YouTube as a cesspool of shitty “influencers”, an algorithm notorious for promoting conspiracy hoaxes, and comments sections that made Twitter look nurturing by comparison. But there’s some good stuff there, and I’ve been catching up on some of it.

But YouTube is still YouTube. I hate how it interrupts science explainer videos mid-sentence with shitty ads for perfume, monster trucks, and Shark-Tank rejects. And it’s Google: one of the top 5 privacy-invading, Al-worshipping, toxic tech companies on the planet. But what else are you going to use?

NEBULA. It is isn’t a replacement for YouTube, but it’s an alternative to it, at least for the kinds of material I’m actually interested in. I’m not saying it’s all primo content, but… they do have standards, just like YouTube does not. It isn’t “WokeTube” but it’s clear that the folks running it have a generally progressive point of view, and are trying to deliver honest information and reasonable opinions, while being entertaining.

The business model is also more wholesome than YouTube’s: instead of sponsorship contracts that require presenters to interrupt themselves to cheerfully promote sometimes-shady services (in addition to YT interrupting them)… the creators own a share of the company, and get paid directly from subscription fees, scaled based on people watching their programs and signing up. That’s right: It’s majority-owned (with some outside investment) by the same people who are making the videos!

Yeah, I said “subscription fees”. If you pre-pay for a year, it’s $5/month, plus there are introductory discounts if you use a particular creator’s link. Totally worth it. A lot of this material is available on YT, but at the cost of ads, invasive tracking, and pervasive recommendations to watch garbage.

A few personal recommendations: Half as Interesting (brief sarcastic dives into odd topics), Legal Eagle (explanatory rants about current law issues), Not Just Bikes (urban planning), Real Life Lore (geopolitical analysis, including stuff YT won’t let him cover), Tale Foundry (lightly animated essays about storytelling), Jessie Gender (trans perspective on geek culture), and for simple lulz Jet Lag: The Game (Nebula creators chase each other around the world).