Educational YouTubers can be divided into explainers and storytellers. The best are always a good mix of both. Some topics lend themselves to description and explanation (eg physics, engineering, bicycle technology, military strategy) while others are better suited to storytelling (eg history, politics, bicycle racing, actual war). Whether a particular video works for you largely depends on whether you have a specific question you want answered. The more specific the question, the more a describer/ explainer fits the bill. Storytelling is much more fluid and, as far as I can tell, far more compelling for the vast majority of people.
Tadej Pogačar’s bicycle
Stage 11 finish at the 2024 Tour de France
I generally favour descriptions and explanations to the rambling path of a storyteller. That’s because few topics engage me enough to want to know more. I also appreciate that there will be a finite limit on what I will be able to understand. The topics that pique my interest all share an underlying clarity based on maths, science, logic or reason so a description of what it is and an explanation of why it happens works well. In other words, these topics are punctuated by points of fact or, at the very least, by an agreed theory or hypothesis. Don’t get me wrong, the vast library of storytelling can be educational and informative as well as enlightening and entertaining. But a meandering storyline can also be frustratingly slow to get to the point and utterly unsatisfying if it doesn’t deliver, or - even worse - when it weaves a narrative so tight that I’ve forgotten why I was there in the first place.
Two things surprise me. The first is that humans are particularly drawn to stories and storytellers for subjects that are best left to description and explanation. Theories and ideas that are fundamental to the hard sciences should be punctuated as such and made open to reimagination and redundancy but never to alternative forms of interpretation. An article on a breakthrough in nuclear fusion should avoid sensationalism. It should indicate the total energy input right beside the breakthrough in fusion output then proceed with why the story is relevant. The description of a concept in physics can be introduced to an audience with a question for which the answer is an illuminating insight into the topic. It should not begin by exposing ignorance in people minding their own business or simply passing by. The science and engineering of renewables, batteries, and electrification is enlightening when the topic is restricted to the technology but becomes unwieldy when politicians, geopolitics and business become entangled in its application and feasibility. The former is well suited to explainers, the latter to storytellers. In short, explainers are best placed to cover knowable topics by understanding (and reinforcing) what the audience already knows and delivering what the audience wants (or needs) to know. The ideal description/ explanation should be clear, concise and respectful.
Recognise that descriptions and explanations are not the real world. They are merely tools for understanding the world we live in.
The second is the exact converse: that humans are drawn to the focussed lens of describers when ideas and concepts are so fluid that the narrative is best left to storytellers. This results in confirmation bias and polarisation and is often blamed on social media - ie on particular groups of enraged, focussed describers. It is puzzling how some humans can be so certain of their position on topics like religion, political ideology and identity. These are delicate, powerful and engaging stories that don’t deserve the demotion to mere descriptors. Storytellers are those remarkable people that weave multifaceted tapestries that among many things probe belief systems and memories, draw links between past and present, investigate intent and circumstance, build bridges between the real and the imagined, and play into the ebb and flow of emotions. Moreover, what a reader brings into a story can fundamentally change at the end of the story and, again, at a second reading. That’s the reason why there are book clubs for stories and lessons and lectures in physics. I happen to believe that all people are created equal and if that is mandated by God then so be it. If not then the story I tell myself is that the well-being of all people carries equal value: your pain is equal to my pain, your joy equal to my joy. I have no proof for this. I also have no proof for God. In the real world there are people that are faster, smarter, and stronger than me. The story I tell myself makes me their equal. I am realistic enough to know that bullies often win and idealistic enough to wish that they didn’t win all the time. I want to believe that free will is an emergent property because I want to believe that I have a choice. Above all, I like to think I allow these narratives to gain complexity and evolve in their retelling.
I recognise that stories are not the real world. They are a reflections and conversations about the world we share.
I am not a fast reader. But that doesn’t matter.
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