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The Open Syllabus: 55 YouTube Channels, Eight Tracks, Five Hours a Week

A curated, budgeted curriculum built entirely from free YouTube channels. Eight tracks, 55 channels, and a flow diagram showing where the hours actually go.

The best university on earth has no course catalogue.

YouTube holds more good teaching than any campus I have ever set foot in, and absolutely no way to find it. Most lists of channels worth watching, including Deepak Mehta’s, the one that sent me down this path, are indexes. This is my attempt at something else: not a list, a curriculum, with a time budget attached and an argument about what each track actually buys you.

Everything below is free. Nothing below is sponsored. Every channel is one I have watched enough of to defend.

Where 300 minutes goes

Five hours a week is roughly what a commute plus two evenings gets you. Hover a track to trace it. Click one to jump to its channels.

the week you have eight tracks what it buys you 300 minutes 5 hrs / week First principles 55 min How things get built 45 min Money and markets 50 min The long past 40 min Systems and cities 30 min Craft and criticism 30 min Mind and meaning 25 min The lecture hall 25 min Explain it to someone else Read a filing without flinching See the system behind the surface Make better things Change your mind on purpose
55 channels, eight tracks

First principles

55 minutes a week, 10 channels

The stuff underneath everything else. These are the channels that make a concept feel obvious in retrospect, which is the only real test of an explanation.

3Blue1Brown Grant Sanderson
Mathematics animated so precisely that the visual is the proof. Sanderson wrote his own animation engine, Manim, to do it.
start withEssence of linear algebra, all 16 chapters
Veritasium Derek Muller
Starts with what you are confident about, then dismantles it on camera. Muller's PhD was literally on why physics videos fail to teach.
start withThe Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies
Kurzgesagt Philipp Dettmer's Munich studio
Ten minutes of motion design per big question, with a public sources document behind every video. One or two uploads a month, and it shows.
start withThe Fermi Paradox, parts one and two
Steve Mould Steve Mould
Takes one small physical oddity and refuses to let go until the mechanism is exposed. The chain fountain has a named effect because of him.
start withThe Chain Fountain
Numberphile Brady Haran with working mathematicians
A camera, brown paper, and a mathematician who cannot hide their delight. The format has not changed in fifteen years because it works.
start withGraham's Number
PBS Space Time Matt O'Dowd
The most demanding physics channel that still counts as popular science. O'Dowd is an actual astrophysicist and does not round the maths off.
start withThe black hole series, in order
MinutePhysics Henry Reich
Hand drawn, fast, and ruthlessly edited. Reich's special relativity series is the clearest introduction to spacetime diagrams anywhere.
start withSpecial Relativity, chapter one
Applied Science Ben Krasnow
A garage that contains a scanning electron microscope Krasnow built himself. Science as fabrication rather than explanation.
start withHomemade scanning electron microscope
SciShow Hank Green's team
Several uploads a week across every discipline. Best used as a current awareness feed rather than a course.
start withAnything from this month
Mathologer Burkard Polster
Full proofs, delivered with visible glee, for results most channels only gesture at. Longer and harder than 3Blue1Brown, deliberately.
start withVisualising Ramanujan's sum

How things get built

45 minutes a week, 8 channels

Infrastructure, silicon, machines, and the reasons they fail. This track changes how a bridge, a dishwasher, or a fab looks to you permanently.

Practical Engineering Grady Hillhouse
A licensed civil engineer explaining dams, grids, and sewers with backyard scale models. The best public infrastructure teaching on the internet.
start withWhy dams fail
Real Engineering Brian McManus
Aerospace and materials, told through a single design decision and the constraint that forced it.
start withThe insane engineering of the A-10 Warthog
Technology Connections Alec Watson
Forty minutes on your dishwasher, and you will finish it convinced you were using the machine wrong. Which you were.
start withThe heat pump explainer
Branch Education Branch Education
3D animation that walks you down to the transistor level of the device in your hand. Nothing else visualises chips this well.
start withHow a smartphone works, inside out
Asianometry Jon Y
Semiconductor history and industrial policy, researched like a trade journal and delivered flat. Essential if you hold any tech exposure.
start withThe history of ASML and EUV lithography
Stuff Made Here Shane Wighton
Robotics and machining disguised as jokes. The engineering under the punchline is genuinely advanced.
start withThe basketball hoop that never misses
Mustard Mustard
Aviation and vehicle projects that almost happened, told as tight fifteen minute documentaries with beautiful CG.
start withThe Convair XFY Pogo
Smarter Every Day Destin Sandlin
An engineer with a high speed camera and an unusual willingness to be the subject of his own experiment.
start withThe Backwards Brain Bicycle

Money and markets

50 minutes a week, 6 channels

The track I use professionally. Finance YouTube is 95 percent noise, so this is deliberately short: teaching, company history, and evidence, with no price targets.

Acquired Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Three to four hour company histories, researched to a depth that embarrasses most business journalism. The TSMC and Nvidia episodes are references I still go back to.
start withTSMC, then Nvidia parts one to three
Aswath Damodaran NYU Stern
His entire valuation, corporate finance, and investment philosophy courses, uploaded free. The valuation playlist is a full graduate class.
start withValuation, session one
Patrick Boyle Patrick Boyle
A former hedge fund manager who now teaches at King's College London, dismantling financial nonsense with a very dry face.
start withAnything on the current blow-up
Ben Felix Ben Felix
Portfolio decisions argued from the academic literature, with citations on screen. The antidote to finance content designed to make you trade.
start withFactor investing, and why you probably should not stock pick
The Plain Bagel Richard Coffin
A CFA charterholder explaining instruments and scams at the level a smart beginner actually needs.
start withHow options work
Money and Macro Joeri Schasfoort
Macroeconomics from a working economist, with the models drawn out rather than asserted.
start withHow money is actually created

The long past

40 minutes a week, 6 channels

History that treats you as an adult. The best of these do what a good lecturer does: give you the shape of a century before the dates.

Historia Civilis Historia Civilis
Roman politics rendered as coloured squares moving on a map, which sounds absurd and is the most gripping history on the platform.
start withThe Fall of the Roman Republic, in order
Fall of Civilizations Paul Cooper
Two hour meditations on societies that ended, narrated with real literary control. Cooper reads the primary sources aloud and lets them land.
start withThe Bronze Age Collapse
Kings and Generals Kings and Generals
Animated military history covering campaigns that Anglophone history usually skips entirely, including a deep Mongol and Ottoman catalogue.
start withThe Mongol Invasions series
OverSimplified OverSimplified
Cartoon history that is funnier than it has any right to be and quietly accurate about causes. The gateway drug for anyone you are trying to convert.
start withWorld War One
The Great War Jesse Alexander, after Indy Neidell
The channel that covered 1914 to 1918 week by week, a century to the day behind, and then kept going into the aftermath.
start withThe week by week archive, starting July 1914
Tasting History Max Miller
Cooks a genuinely ancient recipe, then spends half the video on the world that ate it. Social history through the kitchen.
start withRoman garum

Systems and cities

30 minutes a week, 5 channels

Why the built world is arranged the way it is: borders, logistics, zoning, transit. The track that makes ordinary streets legible.

CGP Grey CGP Grey
Political and geographic systems compressed to their logic. Few channels explain why institutions behave the way they do this economically.
start withThe Rules for Rulers
Not Just Bikes Jason Slaughter
A Canadian in Amsterdam explaining, with visible irritation, why North American streets feel the way they do. Opinionated by design.
start withStroads
Johnny Harris Johnny Harris
Maps and borders as reported journalism. Strong on the visual argument, so watch with your own scepticism switched on.
start withThe border series
Wendover Productions Sam Denby
Logistics, aviation economics, and supply chains. The best answer on YouTube to why anything costs what it costs to move.
start withHow airlines price seats
City Beautiful Dave Amos
An actual urban planning academic on parking minimums, zoning, and density, without the culture war framing.
start withThe high cost of free parking

Craft and criticism

30 minutes a week, 7 channels

How made things work on you. Film, music, and argument, taken apart by people who can also make the thing they are criticising.

Every Frame a Painting Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos
The original run, 28 videos made between 2014 and 2016, invented the modern video essay. Still the highest hit rate of anything in this list.
start withAkira Kurosawa: Composing Movement
Nerdwriter1 Evan Puschak
One artwork, one idea, six minutes. Puschak is at his best on a single painting or a single shot.
start withHow Donald Trump Answers a Question
Adam Neely Adam Neely
A working bassist with a Manhattan School of Music background, doing music theory that takes non-Western traditions seriously.
start withThe Girl from Ipanema is a far weirder song than you thought
Lessons from the Screenplay Michael Tucker
Reads the actual script against the finished scene. The clearest teaching on structure and character available for free.
start withWhiplash, and the drive for greatness
Jacob Geller Jacob Geller
Essays that start in a video game and end somewhere in architecture, art history, or grief. The most genuinely literary channel here.
start withWho's Afraid of Modern Art?
Folding Ideas Dan Olson
Long form media criticism with a forensic streak. Line Goes Up is the two hour crypto essay that moved public opinion.
start withLine Goes Up
LEMMiNO LEMMiNO
Two or three documentaries a year, scored and edited by one person to a standard broadcast television rarely reaches.
start withThe Dyatlov Pass Case

Mind and meaning

25 minutes a week, 5 channels

Philosophy and religion handled as subjects rather than as team sports. Useful precisely because the questions do not resolve.

Academy of Ideas Academy of Ideas
Short introductions to Nietzsche, Jung, Dostoevsky, and the existentialists. Openly a point of view, so read alongside it.
start withIntroduction to Carl Jung
Let's Talk Religion Filip Holm
Deep, careful hours on Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and mysticism from someone with the academic training to do it properly.
start withWhat is Sufism?
ReligionForBreakfast Andrew Henry
A religious studies PhD applying the academic method to traditions people usually only argue about.
start withWho wrote the Gospels?
Sisyphus 55 Sisyphus 55
Absurdism, meaning, and mortality, delivered plainly and without a self help ending.
start withCamus and the absurd
Exurb1a Exurb1a
Consciousness and time as fiction rather than lecture. Uneven, occasionally extraordinary, entirely its own thing.
start with27

The lecture hall

25 minutes a week, 8 channels

Full courses, uploaded by the institutions themselves. Slower and less charming than everything above, and the only part of this list that is structurally identical to paid tuition.

MIT OpenCourseWare MIT
Complete lecture series with problem sets. Gilbert Strang's 18.06 is the single most valuable free course on the internet.
start with18.06 Linear Algebra, Gilbert Strang
Yale Courses Yale University
Full semesters from Yale's open courses project, filmed in the room. Robert Shiller's Financial Markets lectures were recorded here before his Nobel.
start withFinancial Markets, Robert Shiller
Stanford Online Stanford University
Machine learning, medicine, and entrepreneurship lectures, including the Andrew Ng material that started the modern MOOC.
start withCS229 Machine Learning
CS50 David Malan, Harvard
Harvard's introduction to computer science, staged like a theatre production. The most infectious teaching in programming.
start withCS50 lecture zero
Khan Academy Salman Khan
The original, still the best repair kit for a gap in your maths from fifteen years ago. Start where you are actually shaky, not where you think you are.
start withWhichever topic you quietly skipped
Gresham College Gresham College, London
Free public lectures given in London since 1597 and uploaded in full. Genuinely unmatched depth per minute.
start withAny professor of astronomy lecture
CrashCourse John and Hank Green
Forty plus courses across the sciences and humanities, built as proper sequences. Best used to survey a field before committing.
start withAstronomy, with Phil Plait
TED-Ed TED-Ed
Five minute animated lessons written by teachers. The right length for a subject you are only mildly curious about.
start withAny riddle, then any history lesson

How to actually use this

Pick two tracks, not eight. The failure mode of a list like this is treating it as a queue. Take one track you need for work and one you have no business studying, and ignore the other six until those two feel boring.

Watch one thing twice. Grant Sanderson’s linear algebra series repays a second pass more than nine new videos repay a first. Repetition is the whole difference between entertainment and a course.

Write down the disagreement. The moment you think a video is wrong is the only moment you are learning rather than absorbing. Note it, then go find the primary source. Half my blog posts started as an argument with a YouTuber.

Let the algorithm off the leash carefully. Subscribe, then watch from the subscription feed rather than the home page. The recommendation engine is optimised for your attention, not your education, and it is very good at its job.

Curated by C M Nafi. Channel links last checked October 10, 2026. Suggestions welcome.

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