Hi everyone,
I grew up in Bangladesh & completed my high school education in the national curriculum. As my fellow Bangladeshi students may know, the education system wasn’t the best. The strongest emphasis in classrooms & exams was on rote memorization. The syllabus for subjects was so big that there wasn’t any time for mastering, or even appreciating concepts. Survival required memorization.
The books were in black & white. Diagrams were bland & boring. And consequently, STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) education was a nightmare. I hated it & many of my peers shared my contempt for these subjects. I graduated high school with a desire to never study science again. I wanted to study in a business school in Bangladesh & stay as far away from STEM as possible. However, I ended up graduating with an Applied Math degree from Harvard. What changed?
While there are many things that played a part, my biggest inspirations came in the form of YouTube videos that reminded me how amazing STEM can be. I didn’t have much access to the internet from grade 7 - 12 (my military school didn’t allow personal electronics) so I only started watching these videos after I started undergrad. And I am so glad that I did.
These channels made me feel like a child who is curious, introduced me to STEM in a way my education system didn’t, understand concepts better, & appreciate how beautiful these things can be from time to time. Here are 5 channels (to get started) that helped me fall in love with STEM again (& inspire my content creation journey as well). They are all educational, extremely entertaining & very popular, and rightly so:
In Science: Veritasium
He is an amazing storyteller. Like his formal education, his videos combine physics, & broadly science, with film-making with an authenticity that I have come to love. He can make wildly entertaining videos on academic topics like Fourier transformations & ammonia synthesis. Here is an example.
In Tech: Marques Brownlee
He reviews trendy tech gadgets passionately & captures the attention to detail that goes into these products that a regular consumer like me might have mises. Makes you appreciate gadgets & technology much more. Here is how he designed his own line of sneakers.
In Engineering: Mark Rober
He is an engineering genius. He averages a video a month but they are all bangers & viral. Mark is a former NASA engineer turned YouTuber & will give the commencement address at MIT this year. From taking down $million call center scams & glitter-bombing porch package thieves to creating obstacle courses for squirrels, this man shows how beautiful, fun, & world-changing engineering can be. It doesn’t always have to be used for making ride-sharing apps.In Mathematics: 3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson is probably the best math teacher on the internet. Very few channels, if any, come close. I learned about calculus, linear algebra, cryptography, epidemic simulation & so much more from his videos while simultaneously being entertained & amazed. Here is him explaining how Bitcoin works, for those unsatisfied with the explanation of hundreds of crypto bros you may have come across in the past few years.
In general: Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell
They talk about a broad variety of scientific topics starting from the immune systems to outer space & aliens. Their animations are beautiful & extremely engaging. They brought colors to science my textbooks never had. They make you start asking inspired & curious questions that many stop asking as they grow older. Here is an example.
You probably know all of these channels because they are pretty big & famous. But if you haven’t already, check them out. If you watched them a long time ago, give them another try, even if it’s just one video. These channels became big for a reason. They are brilliant & still going strong. They might help you fall in love with STEM again or more importantly, reignite that curiosity you once loved about yourself.
Stay curious,
Seeam