Edutainment means shows that blend an entertaining story with educational material. For example, The Magic School Bus tells stories while also teaching about science.
There are educational shows for adults, they’re usually called documentaries. But any that blend educational material with fiction? I guess an argument can be made that biographical films fall into this category but they usually take creative liberties and aren’t fully historically accurate. An argument can also be made for medical dramas and legal dramas, but I’m not sure how accurate the medical and legal information in them is. Of course, The Magic School Bus also takes creative liberties and has inaccurate science, but there’s always a segment at the end explaining where they took creative liberties.
How I Met Your Mother kind of had the vibe of a kids show that teaches moral lessons, but for adults. Edit for clarity: the reason I bring this up is I consider “moral of the week” a genre closely related to edutainment but not quite the same thing
Edit: now that I’m thinking about it, I guess Jeopardy and other trivia based game shows could qualify as edutainment. They’re not fictional, but they do blend entertainment and education
Only podcasts, unfortunately 😭😭 sorry.
If HIMYM counts, then check out The Good Place.
There’s plenty of educational stuff on YouTube that isn’t just tutorials. Veritasium is good. Primative technology (turn on subtitles).
Veritasium is awful. So much misinformation, holier-than-though attitude, and disguised advertising. They are just pre-AI slop: Stuff that sounds correct presented in a convincing way.
Several of the topics that they have covered are topics that I majored in (physics, math, materials). Other than some possible oversimplifications of highly technical topics, I haven’t found any errors in the information that they’ve presented.
I can’t verify their information in all fields, but in about 10 % of their content, I haven’t seen any issues that are really worth complaining about.
I am aware that some people disagree with some of their interpretations or presentation style, but other creators (e.g. Matt Parker, 3blue1brown) have covered the same topics or extended on Veritasium’s original videos and haven’t corrected anything presented in the original video.
I disagree with the characterization that they are a source of misinformation or slop. However, I’m always interested in learning more, so if you have other content creators that you would recommend I’d be happy to have those recommendations.
There was a scandal where they made a sponsored video without telling people, and may have selectively edited, but I might be misremembering.
Wasnt that the waymo video?
I’ve seen The Good Place. It’s awesome. And come to think of it, it is educational in that it teaches a bit about moral philosophy
I love historical fiction in any form. The best stuff is about a historical event. I absolutely love the musical play Suffs, it’s about the suffragist fight from 1913 to 1920 and follows women’s rights leaders Alice Paul, Inez Milholland, Doris Stevens, Ruza Wenclawska, and Lucy Burns. There’s also a B plot about Ida B. Wells and Mary Terrell
Sounds pretty good
If you’re able to, you should absolutely watch the play too! It’s an hour longer than the album
I know it’s not exactly what you’re after but kurzgesagt gives me major magic school bus vibes.
Just looked it up. Looks pretty cool
See it more as entertainment, they often get the details wrong. PBS Space Time is much better, but of course also further removed from the entertainment part.
Little bird guys are fun! I think they give a good surface level overview of topics, they condense information into a very digestible piece of media, but additional reading from other sources is better if you need a full understanding. They make great work, and I think they help a lot to make science more accessible to people!
Some shows on YouTube fit as well, last week tonight comes to mind
If you’re looking for a medical drama that health care workers seem to find an acceptable representation of their work, take a look at The Pitt. Apparently they put a lot of effort into being as accurate as possible.
Overall I think your definition of edutainment as requiring a narrative is overly restrictive, I think we could call narrative-less science shows like this edutainment, despite lacking narrative:
All that said, the specific combination of scientific accuracy, narrative and for-adults does seem to be a rarer combination of traits. I cannot think of very many at all, and those I can do tend to fudge some of the accuracy here and there for dramatic appeal.
Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe my criteria of it having fictional elements was a bit overly restrictive. Some edutainment shows for kids are more documentary-like. Like Bill Nye the Science Guy. As I was thinking about this just now, I thought of The Crocodile Hunter, which I remember being like Kratt’s Creatures but I think Crocodile Hunter was more made for adults.
Once you lift the narrative requirement, the number of hits balloons into the millions. I would personally draw the line between education and edutainment on the issue of thoroughness. Education needs to be fairly thorough, while edutainment can skip all the boring (but necessary for full understanding) parts and exclusively handle the fun ideas-based stuff, usually with some oversimplification here and there just to keep things moving in an entertaining way.
I would describe Kings & Generals on youtube as a solid example of good quality military history edutainment.
Good points
The Pitt is on my list to watch
If you haven’t yet watched Cosmos with Carl Sagan as the host, you should consider watching it. It’s borderline not what you asked for because it doesn’t really have fiction, however Carl was so incredibly good at storytelling and making incredibly complex Science understandable through his awesome narrative abilities, I’d recommend it if you hadn’t already seen it.
Some other mentions -
Chernobyl - HBO drama of the disaster, but the last episode goes into extreme detail of the actual event and why things happened the way they did. Fascinating
MythBusters - I’m sure you have likely seen this but it’s entertaining and you learn a lot. Lots of jokes and personality.
Forged in Fire - show where blacksmith/bladesmith contestants compete to make forged blades using varied metals, and then the judges put those finished blades through grueling tests, to ultimately crown a single smith as the winner each episode. I’m not anywhere close to this profession, yet it taught me a TON about blacksmithing and bladesmithing, and if I had an acreage with a big shop, I’d definitely be doing it as a hobby. So cool to see the things they create.
Those sound interesting. I have seen Mythbusters. That was a fun show
Adam Savage has a cool one season show called “Savage Builds” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10233836/)
Technically almost everything is educational in some way, if you’re willing to engage with it in the right way. Like you said, period dramas and historical dramas are often a great way of learning about (some aspects of) history. The problem is you need to be able to sort out the fictional elements from the non-fictional elements and without at least a little bit of background that becomes challenging. Some methods that might be useful is cross-referencing by watching multiple shows about the same topic from different sources. If both shows include the same element, there’s a good chance it’s based on some real historical evidence. But you also have to understand that evidence is not proof, and there’s a lot of disagreement in science and understanding, and that’s good and natural. Not everything is going to match up exactly. You have to do your own research and actually study real sources and do your own experiments. This is why edutainment starts to become of limited value.
The problem with growing up is that you’re getting to a higher level of education and understanding, and that comes with caveats. No longer can you just rely on simplistic expositions of “this is absolutely how it works” and you start to get into a lot of “seems” and “maybes”. There’s a lot of stuff we just don’t know with absolute confidence and as we have learned from the historical documentary Star Wars, only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Most things at the adult level are not explicitly going to teach you things (because they effectively can’t) as much as they are going to motivate you to research further, experiment yourself, or become interested in things you might not otherwise find interesting.
With that said, there is tons of educational and entertaining content out there. Sometimes stuff that seems stupid is actually very educational. Sometimes stuff that seems boring and educational can be entertaining as hell. If you want a bunch of Youtube channels to help point your recommendation algorithm in the right direction, try some of these channels (in no particular order or topic consistency):
- Hydraulic Press Channel
- Technology Connections / Technology Connextras
- Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t
- styropyro
- NileRed / NileBlue
- Xyla Foxlin
- Chris Spargo
- Wilson Forest Lands
- James Condon
- FarmCraft101
- Tom Scott
Honorable mention for bugfishhhh’s insane and comedic hour-long video on the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England which came out of nowhere but I’m here for it.
All good points. I feel like I learned a little about history from Downton Abbey, but it must be taken with a grain of salt. You can’t assume the information in it is accurate, you have to check other sources
I would add:
- Veritasium
- Half as Interesting
- Kurzgesagt
- 70 Sekunden wiki (in German)
- Periodic Videos, Computerphile and other channels of the university of Nottingham
- EngineerGuy
- HistoryGraph
- History Matters
- The fat electrician (despite the name, also history)
- Johnny Harris
- Kyle Hill
- Smarter Every Day
- Physics Girl
- Steve Mould
- B1M
- Backyard Scientist
- Wendover
Yeah, I spend a lot of time on YouTube…
- Astrum
- John Michael Godier
- LGR
- 8 Bit Guy
- Kosmo
- SEA
- Nation Squid
- Kings and Generals
- History of the Earth
- Storied
- SciShow
- MinuteEarth
- Simple History
- toldinstone
- Moth Light Media
- PBS Terra
- Branch Education
- Linfamy
- NORTH 02
- Animal Origins
- Knowledgia
- Dreksler Astral
- Primitive Technology
- Ze Frank
- Fire of Learning
- Trey the Explainer
- Cool Worlds
- Cogito
- Invicta
- Historia Civilis
- History Scope
Kurzgesagt is half the time propaganda.
I mean they sucked Gates’ dick so hard it turned blue.
And 50% of Veritasium is presenting a false statement, then going at it with faux-discovery and acted wonder. That channel makes people dumber.
Many of them have biases and problems, suboptimal funding, but are entertaining and educative. Don’t switch your brain off, check the sources and enjoy the content.
Woah how did you get my list of YouTube subs?!?
Bugfish’s channel is incredible. The Lord Of The Rings analysis alone is peak Youtube. Underrated channel.
Someone mentioned in a lower level reply, but Startrek and the Orville are great for political / social commentary.
I think a fair amount of sitcoms have some element of educating on social norms. Seinfeld and Its Always Sunny maybe require more prior knowledge about subject matters, but covering things like abortion, immigration, racism, etc.
Mythbusters and similar are pretty good about being “adult” science shows.
Maybe documentaries don’t really count as “entertainment” the way you’re looking for, but Planet Earth is a great series.
All good points. I think most fictional shows try to have social commentary on some level but I’m not sure I’d quite consider them edutainment. I dunno, it is hard to define
There’s an anime called Dr. Stone that mildly touches on this. People are frozen in stone for thousands of years and when they begin to break out, a scientist shows them how to identify and use resources to replicate our modern tools
To add to the anime recs, there’s a whole sub genre of “Cute girls do the author’s special interest” that can be a fun way to incidentally learn some stuff you’d never have thought to interact with otherwise.
The one that comes to mind at the moment is “Ruri Rocks” which is about geology.
I enjoy it thoroughly, but it is still in all senses a kids show though.
Sounds interesting
I feel like travel and food dhows fit this nicely. Very entertaining, bit also very educational about other areas, cultures, histories, foods, traditions, etc.
I haven’t watched too much content like this, but “Anthony Borodin’s Parts Unknown” really got me hooked for a while, he did a great job with that show. And I feel like we need more knowledge and understanding about other cultures, now more than ever.
Good point
There are some more current-affairs-y shows that use comedy to make deep dives into difficult-to-understand issues more palatable. I think Comedy Central and HBO both have some.
Good examples. Though not necessarily fictional, they combine comedy and education. As I said in another comment, I enjoy CNN’s Have I Got News For You, which is based on a British show
It used to be exclusively what was on Discovery, History and TLC. Even when it was The Hitler Channel, at least they were still educating people on actual history.
Now they’re all crammed full of bullshit “reality” TV or pseudoscientific garbage. Ancient Aliens is what qualifies as adult edutainment now. Real history mixed with absolute marlarkay.
As fof “moral of the week” for adults, I immediately thought of Moral Orel from Adult Swim. But it’s not on the air anymore.
Not familiar with Moral Orel. Yeah Ancient Aliens is the worst. Their whole argument fir Ancient aliens is they think ancient humans were too stupid to do anything
Moral Orel is great. It’s a parody of Davey and Goliath but it’s dark and kinda fucked up. If you don’t know what Davey & Goliath was: Old claymation show about a boy and his dog that taught Christian values to children.
There are some problems with Kurzgesagt who were mentioned in another comment. Although xkcd’s “What If?” can be a fun way to kill a few minutes in a similar-ish vein.
Something I’ve quickly come to embrace after watching this Zoe Bee video about Peterson “University” is the concept of “friction”, namely that your brain will trick you into thinking you’re learning a lot when there’s little friction (e.g. a lecture, an infographic, etc.) and vice-versa when there’s a lot of friction (e.g. solving problems on your own, having to teach others, etc.). She remarks that there needs to be friction for learning to happen (albeit that it is not sufficient for learning) and that people are consistently terrible at self-evaluating what they’ve learned because of this inverted thinking.
I think 3Blue1Brown can achieve this edutainment ideal, for example, but I firmly believe that unless you already know the subject, those “pause and ponder” opportunities aren’t just a formality.
It’s on the lower–medium end of “friction”, but I genuinely think undergraduate-level history textbooks (where you don’t need to know a ton going in, unlike e.g. a STEM textbook where you could be lost) can be a great form of edutainment on their own. I’ve been reading “A Concise History of Korea” (2nd ed., 2016) by Michael J. Seth. It concisely (read: ~500 fairly dense pages, but hey, it’s an entire-ass country dating to at least 676 as a cohesive nation) covers the history of Korea that we know of from ancient times until 2015. The prose is engaging and understandable but not flowery, the end of every chapter has primary source material you can read, there are tons of interesting one-off stories (especially as it pertains to folklore), and to me, the coherence of the reality – the running threads throughout – are more interesting than fiction.
What I just said sounds absurd, but please, if your library has one of these and you have spare time for entertainment, spare it a thought the next time you’re picking out a book (or generally looking for something to do).
Very interesting
10 watch Look Around You
20 goto 10Thanks, ants.
I used to fall asleep to that show.
