Make my TV time not feel like such a waste
February 24, 2019 4:41 PM   Subscribe

Mostly looking for something educational to put on TV as background noise. Kinda like a coursera lecture but not focused on microdegrees and not having homework.

I have the TV on for background noise a lot. I have it on when I'm stretching, cleaning the apartment and lifting the weights. Mostly I listen to sitcoms but I'd love to listen to something more educational so I get something productive out of it. I'm thinking like a high quality history or sociology lecture.

I've tried Coursera, but its tough to use on a Roku and I don't really want to get nagged to do homework. I'm thinking of something like The Great Courses Plus. But I'm scared those might just be scams, but would be happy to be proved wrong. I'd also consider documentaries but most of the ones on Amazon Prime/Hulu seem to have a political axe to grind or are low quality.

Any suggestions?
posted by earlsofsandwich to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (20 answers total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
Honestly - I love anything David Attenborough. Might get distracted by watching the epicness on screen tho ;)

Very natural history/animal based
posted by PistachioRoux at 4:50 PM on February 24, 2019 [4 favorites]


Seconding David Attenborough.

Ken Burns. His series on the USA's national parks is on Amazon Prime right now, I believe, and some of his stuff is also on Kanopy, which might be available to you via your local library system.
posted by the primroses were over at 5:01 PM on February 24, 2019 [3 favorites]


James Burke??

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0121708/
posted by Freedomboy at 5:01 PM on February 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


CuriosityStream requires a subscription but it's cheap and has a lot of the sort of quiet documentaries I associate with 90s-era Discovery Channel.

I'm assuming you're in the US? Nature and Nova from PBS would both fit the bill and are mostly free.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:02 PM on February 24, 2019 [5 favorites]


PBS has two Roku channels: one completely free and Passport (with a deeper library) for members. Plenty of history and nature documentaries.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 5:03 PM on February 24, 2019


Deutsche Welle English's DocFilm series is prolific, excellent, and varied. Click on the “All Documentaries in our Media Center” link to browse through everything. There's a DW Documentary Youtube channel too, if that's easier to get on the Roku, but it seems to have a small fraction of all content available for free on dw.com. (Still quite a bit, though.)

The Financial Times Youtube channel has good stuff too, though mostly much shorter pieces whereas DW puts out ½-hr to full hour programming.
posted by XMLicious at 5:11 PM on February 24, 2019 [3 favorites]


CrashCourse or any of the PBS Digital shows on YouTube!

The Idea Channel is also good but no longer updating.
posted by divabat at 5:14 PM on February 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


I've been looking for content like this, and a channel on Youtube I've found is Life Where I'm From. It's about life in Japan. Educational, lightweight and interesting!
posted by starlybri at 5:40 PM on February 24, 2019


Not a TV program, but a podcast previously featured on the Blue. The Memory Palace. Currently on episode #137.

I'm also a big fan of Vice on HBO - you don't have to like everything, but you will learn something. You can go back to 2013.

If you want to get all kinds of 'skilled' in something that you can't learn it by listening to it, and you likely need to watch it, but realistically you need to do it... I really enjoy the Youtube channel Essential Craftsman - where a master woodworker? framer? construction foreman? handyman? aw hell... the guy is just... one of a kind.

The mother of all instruction though for me though has been Caltech's youtube channel. I did a shitton of learning machine learning and NLP back about 6 (aw crap - 8) years ago... reviewed a ton on sorting algorithms, kept up with some fun data science trends, and made sure that I had knowledge necessary to keep myself relevant.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:57 PM on February 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


The Great Courses Plus

I subscribed to the Great Courses channel on Amazon Prime for a while. My impression was mostly favorable. I think that the packaging makes them seem more like a scam than they are; their attempts to cultivate a learnéd image can be a bit cheesy and transparent. But the ones I watched seemed more or less decent, somewhere between a college lecture and a Ken Burns documentary. I did pass over some because they seemed a bit stupid, but, for example, I watched a really interesting one on the Black Death.

If you have Amazon Prime, that's a low-risk way to check them out.

I don't know what "The Great Courses Plus" is, so I can't speak to that.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:38 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


The Royal Institution has a bunch of science-y lectures on many things for open to the general public audiences. They've been doing those lectures since like the 1800's or some such.

NHK WORLD-JAPAN has YouTube, an app, and is on the air/cable in places. I've left this on in the background for many years for a 10 or 30 minute world news at the top of the hour and then some culturally interesting programs in-between. On the plus, the live stuff repeats the schedule every 3 or 4 hours or so. Therefore you can pay attention to half of something and get distracted and catch the other half later on. The programs are actually quite varied in content.

I did The Great Courses Plus (for free) when they first came out and it wasn't horrible but it sorta reminded me of visiting the library and say picking up the 12 episode lecture from somewhere on Buddhism or Intro to Latin. I wasn't too impressed at least in those early days.

The Mechanical Universe from Caltech c.1985 is a really good basic introduction to Physics/Calculus also intended for a general audience. It was a Caltech, The Corporation for Community College Televistion, and The Annenberg/CPB Project.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:39 PM on February 24, 2019


I’ve been doing background noise foreign language podcasts, so if there’s a language you’d like to refresh yourself on or learn the basics of, maybe there’s similar tv content?
posted by OrangeVelour at 7:27 PM on February 24, 2019


richard a. muller's 26-lecture "physics for future presidents" was pretty great. i don't recall any homework.
posted by 20 year lurk at 7:38 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


I haven't watched the Great Courses videos, but the audio version is available as part of an audible.com subscription (so they're $12ish for a long course rather than whatever the company charges on their own) and they can be EXCELLENT light-ish edutainment without requiring coursework and without the usual hemming and hawing/discussion of assignments and quizzes that a real classroom lecture recording contains.
posted by twoplussix at 7:49 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Drunk History - but it is funnier if you watch it as the actors are lip syncing to the drunk narrators.
Adam Ruins Everything
Schoolhouse Rock if you can find it
Horrible Histories (BBC) is available on Amazon and maybe Hulu
posted by soelo at 8:58 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Abom79 is as good an entry tunnel to the endless YouTube maker rabbit warren as any.
posted by flabdablet at 9:08 PM on February 24, 2019


There's a pbs show called "ARTiculate" with Jim Cotter that profiles people in the arts. Coffers voice is asmr worthy and the interviews are good. There's clips on the shows website articulateshow.org
posted by WeekendJen at 5:33 AM on February 25, 2019


Not TV per se, but if you can stream YouTube I love love love love Crash Course. They're engaging, educational, and super fun.
posted by anastasiav at 6:56 AM on February 25, 2019


I’ve never been able to make formal lectures in the background work for me, they require too much focus. However, I’ve had a lot of success putting conference-style talks on: they tend to be educational but not as demanding of focused attention as a classroom lecture.

TED talks get made fun of deservedly for their glibness and uniform style, but they make good semi-educational background noise. :) Many conferences are also recording their talks and putting them on YouTube, though this is typically more true of industry conferences than academic ones.
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 7:47 AM on February 25, 2019


C Span 3 airs American History TV on the weekends. You can stream it as well.
posted by Hop123 at 10:58 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


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