Please recommend informative documentaries or educational videos that can be found on-line

December 8, 2007 3:19 PM

I like to learn stuff by watching videos. Please recommend informative documentaries or educational videos that can be found on-line.

Slight qualification: I'm aware of various aggregators and educational sites with loads of videos - I'm looking for recommendations of specific videos (or series of videos).

Examples: History of the Amen Break, Warriors of the French Foreign Legion, Connections, Computer Networks - The Heralds of Resource Sharing

posted by MetaMonkey to Education (15 answers total)

Frontline
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:27 PM on December 8, 2007

I'm a big fan of Adam Curtis.
Century of the Self, The Trap, and Power of Nightmares are all excellent, though probably more polemic than educational- not in a crazy conspiracy hack-job kinda way. But there's usually loads of interesting history involved. Century of the Self for instance goes into great detail about the life of Edward Bernays, who invented public relations in the early/mid parts of the 20th Century.
posted by PHINC at 3:48 PM on December 8, 2007

Connections is fascinating, but it oversimplifies things, makes some pretty sketchy assumptions, and ignores multiple causality.

OneBigTorrent hosts a lot of film and TV documentaries, plus educational series series from PBS, CBC, BBC, and private producers.
posted by HotPatatta at 4:48 PM on December 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think on a former thread someone mentioned that UCBerkeley offered a lot of things podcasts you could access at no charge.
posted by 45moore45 at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2007

A thread on JoeRogan.net has at least 10 documentaries that you can watch via google video.

here
posted by alexplainlater at 8:07 PM on December 8, 2007

The Ted Talks I saw were pretty interesting.
posted by arungoodboy at 8:17 PM on December 8, 2007

There's a BBC program called Horizon that has covered a wide range of subjects. Some of them are a little simplistic and sensationalist, but I've found the majority to be worthwhile.
posted by 999 at 8:23 PM on December 8, 2007

this looks neat: expert village.
posted by thinkingwoman at 8:26 PM on December 8, 2007

Best answer: There's an ongoing thread at Something Awful with some fantastic documentary and educational video suggestions.
posted by FissionChips at 8:36 PM on December 8, 2007

how stuff works... it's a show on the discovery channel but you can also watch it online.
posted by emmatwofour at 11:18 AM on December 9, 2007

http://www.5min.com a lot of cool educationally oriented videos. It's like wikipedia and youtube combined.
posted by lildice at 3:59 PM on December 9, 2007

The Teaching Company does DVD as well as audio format. Expensive, but your library may be able to help interlibrary loan them. Or you can check their sales wrack.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:12 PM on December 9, 2007

(Sorry, wrote in a hurry. Missed the On line and aggregator part, and specific recommendations. (Sounds like I barely read the question at all) Still, not knowing what interests you, thought you could at least peruse.)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:14 PM on December 9, 2007

TotalVid.com is subscription-based, but has a huge library or instructional videos, with everything from plumbing to kiteboarding.
posted by sonicbloom at 6:11 PM on December 9, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks for all the answers all, this will keep me going for a while!
posted by MetaMonkey at 10:30 AM on December 11, 2007