Documentaries

[Teeth]

As I am too susceptible to getting addicted to TV series and wasting way too much time on them, I would like to substitute TV series with documentaries. I am pretty sure we've had a topic like this before, but I can't find it.

I was wondering if anybody can recommend any documentaries or documentary series which deal with more technical or scientific subjects? I am not so much interested in cultural phenomena shit like most VICE  things and not so interested in pseudo-drama like the Discovery Channel these days.

I am looking for documentaries that will broaden and or deepen my general knowledge. For example, documentaries about how appliances work, about physics, about economy, about the human body, about space, about chemistry. I don't mind if its very educational or a bit dry.

[ecorcheur_brokar]

If you like it dry, you dirty intellectual whore, you should take online course on coursera, edx, etc. There's tons of very intersting topics that you can master perfectly with those.

I had found a site repertoring documentaries in streaming, I will post it later when I'm at home.

[Vibe]

As I am too susceptible to getting addicted to TV series and wasting way too much time on them, I would like to substitute TV series with documentaries. I am pretty sure we've had a topic like this before, but I can't find it.

I was wondering if anybody can recommend any documentaries or documentary series which deal with more technical or scientific subjects? I am not so much interested in cultural phenomena shit like most VICE  things and not so interested in pseudo-drama like the Discovery Channel these days.

I am looking for documentaries that will broaden and or deepen my general knowledge. For example, documentaries about how appliances work, about physics, about economy, about the human body, about space, about chemistry. I don't mind if its very educational or a bit dry.

I was surprised what a hard time finding good documentaries online I had, people seem to like the dumbed down versions of documentaries. More graphics, less juice, if you know what I mean. Either that or really basic stuff that you mostly learned in school already.

Anyway, I'm kinda crazy about cosmos so most of the documentaries I saw recently pertain to that or other related physics branches. Anyway:

BBC Atom series by professor Jim Al-Khalili - about how atoms work in general, the history of it all, and some subatomic/quantum mechanics as well
BBC Wonders of the Solar System by professor Brian Cox - it has a bit more of that 'commercial' feel, but it's great. I knew a lot of stuff that is mentioned in it before, but still enough new knowledge to make it worth it
BBC Wonders of the Universe by professor Brian Cox - same as above
TTC - The Life and Death of Stars by professor Keivan G. Stassun - still watching this one and I think it's great. Feel much more like a university course than an actual documentary.
(to add, a lot of my learning was done by reading articles and books, sometimes you don't really have good documentaries for specific, more complex stuff - due to them not being worth being made for general public, I guess)

I'm pretty sure I'll grab more documentaries from TTC, as I like how the one I mentioned is done. They seem to have a lot of different stuff.

I guess I can also suggest watching TED videos, but there's a lot of random topics there, so you might have to filter some before you find something good.

[[ptx]]

Posting for maybe watching something later. Probably not.

[Torost]

Amazing docu about the greatest movie never made. The Spice must flow!

Robert Strange McNamara life and work. Economics, Cold War, Vietnam, Politics. Great portraitdocu. 11 Lessons for understanding the world.

[Teeth]

If you like it dry, you dirty intellectual whore, you should take online course on coursera, edx, etc. There's tons of very intersting topics that you can master perfectly with those.

I was not aware of the existence of sites like these and I will have a glance at the courses they offer. Still, I am studying stuff on my own already and I need something to passively watch during meals and such, so documentaries are the perfect format.

(click to show/hide)

I was surprised what a hard time finding good documentaries online I had, people seem to like the dumbed down versions of documentaries. More graphics, less juice, if you know what I mean. Either that or really basic stuff that you mostly learned in school already.

Anyway, I'm kinda crazy about cosmos so most of the documentaries I saw recently pertain to that or other related physics branches. Anyway:

BBC Atom series by professor Jim Al-Khalili - about how atoms work in general, the history of it all, and some subatomic/quantum mechanics as well
BBC Wonders of the Solar System by professor Brian Cox - it has a bit more of that 'commercial' feel, but it's great. I knew a lot of stuff that is mentioned in it before, but still enough new knowledge to make it worth it
BBC Wonders of the Universe by professor Brian Cox - same as above
TTC - The Life and Death of Stars by professor Keivan G. Stassun - still watching this one and I think it's great. Feel much more like a university course than an actual documentary.
(to add, a lot of my learning was done by reading articles and books, sometimes you don't really have good documentaries for specific, more complex stuff - due to them not being worth being made for general public, I guess)

I'm pretty sure I'll grab more documentaries from TTC, as I like how the one I mentioned is done. They seem to have a lot of different stuff.

I guess I can also suggest watching TED videos, but there's a lot of random topics there, so you might have to filter some before you find something good.

Yeah, whenever I searched for documentaries I ended up being pretty disappointed. These BBC series look pretty good though, cheers. Something irks me about TED talks though, the few that I watched were just too sensational and too try-hard "inspiring", or something like that.

(click to show/hide)

Robert Strange McNamara life and work. Economics, Cold War, Vietnam, Politics. Great portraitdocu. 11 Lessons for understanding the world.

I think I watched some of this at some point, if nothing else it is at least an interesting viewport into US decision making, will probably watch. Thanks.

[AntiBlitz]

I'm sure tv varies especially from what is shown in Europe, but we have a science channel/history channel that constantly play the tv shows "How it's made" and "Modern Marvels" which are both pretty good for learning the most random goddamn things like how rubber bands are made, or how they manufacture airplanes.  "worlds strangest" is also pretty good.

These links just show you the shows, i don't think you'll actually find anything of value on these sites, but it can at least give you an idea of the shows and if you'll like them.
http://www.sciencechannel.com/videos/
http://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels

After re-reading your initial post, im not sure these are necessarily "deep" by any means lol, but they do give a bit of entertainment while you osmosis the random facts.

[Paul]

I am looking for documentaries that will broaden and or deepen my general knowledge. For example, documentaries about how appliances work, about physics, about economy, about the human body, about space, about chemistry. I don't mind if its very educational or a bit dry.

If I estimate your intellectual power level correctly then the "Sendung mit der Maus" might be right for you.

[Teeth]

I'm sure tv varies especially from what is shown in Europe, but we have a science channel/history channel that constantly play the tv shows "How it's made" and "Modern Marvels" which are both pretty good for learning the most random goddamn things like how rubber bands are made, or how they manufacture airplanes.  "worlds strangest" is also pretty good.

These links just show you the shows, i don't think you'll actually find anything of value on these sites, but it can at least give you an idea of the shows and if you'll like them.
http://www.sciencechannel.com/videos/
http://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels

After re-reading your initial post, im not sure these are necessarily "deep" by any means lol, but they do give a bit of entertainment while you osmosis the random facts.

No, these do fit into what I am looking for, these are the kind of shows we used to have on the Discovery Channel here, before it all turned into pseudo-drama series. These kinds of shows are easy to digest, yet informative enough to always learn at least something. If it really is very basic, I can always watch them at like 1.5 speed and breeze through the information quickly.

If I estimate your intellectual power level correctly then the "Sendung mit der Maus" might be right for you.

Doesn't hurt to reach

[Paul]

Here a useful online tutorial how to get internet.

[Kafein]

Get into the Computerphile/Numberphile/Vsauce/Veritasium/whatever corner of Youtube if you haven't already. Those videos are often too short, scratch the surface and contain too much noise but at least they provide some introduction to topics that are legitimately interesting/challenging.

[Grumbs]

I liked this documentary:

I found it on Netflix. You can probably fine a bunch of similar stuff there

[Utrakil]

I found this pretty interesting.

(click to show/hide)

It is a MIT lecture about poker economics.
Even if you are not interested in the game it is amazing how this guy explains how future markets (and ideas of modern economy) are based on and evolved from poker.

[Angantyr]

Searching for 'lectures' will get you a lot further than 'documentaries' on various video sites, if you're looking for something serious. It's virtually all I watch unless I have guests, and you can usually avoid the worst 'edutainment' types of videos.

But of course there's always http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/.

[WITCHCRAFT]

It sounds to me like most "made for TV" documentaries are going to be a little light for your preference? Even ones that cover the hard sciences like physics/chem/bio stuff are made easy to digest on purpose.

If I'm right about those guesses, then boy do I have a cool thing for you. Check your local library for The Great Courses. Or steal them from the internet. Or buy them. I don't care. It's basically a semester length set of lectures on DVD for any subject you can think of.

I prefer reading to watching TV when I have lazy time, but I have gone through a couple of these and they're good stuff. I think everyone here would like The Crusades (covered over 2 "courses"). Unless you're a post-grad in history and then it's babymode stuff for you.

edit: man I just went through the history courses on their website and I think I'm gonna have to borrow more of these from the library. Vikings! Gnosticism! Barbarian Empires of the Steppes! Late Antiquity!!!