Loading...I don’t usually feature a channel right after I feature a video from that very same channel, but The Nerdwriter blew me away so much when I discovered it for the first time earlier this week that I decided to abandon my self-imposed conventions and showcase it anyway. That’s my favorite aspect of YouTube; no matter how many channels you subscribe to, in my case 95, you’ll always find new channels that surprise and astound you. And The Nerdwriter fits that description exactly, as when I saw their videos I was surprised that I hadn’t run across them before. The Nerdwriter (or Nerdwriter1, their official YouTube channel name) is an educational channel that makes videos on culture, art, philosophy, psychology, the social sciences, and more. From analyses of popular movies such as Inside Out (above) and Interstellar to what are essentially video essays on topics ranging from architecture to Black Friday, The Nerdwriter’s videos are always interesting, as well as having a captivatingly clean and polished aesthetic to its animation and narration. It’s hard to explain what it is about their videos that draw you in and take you on a journey throughout whatever topic the certain video is on, but it happens every time and sets The Nerdwriter apart from other educational channels.
Evan Puschak, the creator behind The Nerdwriter, is the face and voice of the channel, his videos alternating between completely animation based and a mix between animation and talking to the camera. The animation and the narration mesh together perfectly in every video to accompany his insightful commentary on society and culture. His videos are exactly the opposite of what you’d expect out of a video on YouTube: eloquent, thought-provoking, and extremely well made. (although as are a majority of the videos I feature on this website) The best way you can get a good sense of what I mean is by simply watching one of his videos, like the one above.
Titled “Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive“, the video explores the fascinating correlations between the psychological model of our emotions to the model given in the recent Pixar animated feature film Inside Out. In case you haven’t seen the movie, Inside Out is about 5 personified emotions that live your mind and control your actions and thoughts: Fear, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and the ringleader, Joy. These characters go on a journey through the mind when the human they are inhabiting, a young girl named Riley, moves across the country and tries to acclimate to the new city and environment. Evan uses the plotline and general ideas (Spoiler alert!) to examine another model of emotion by a psychologist named Paul Ekman. Altogether, the video tells an interesting story about the inner-workings of your mind, using Inside Out as a platform to tell that story and talk about more profound ideas about how our brain works.
Altogether, The Nerdwriter is a great channel for intellectual people who love to learn, think, and become more knowledgeable in many different fields and studies. The channel’s objective is to “cultivate worldview”, a term Evan has came up with as the objective for the channel. In his words, “Worldview is a particular philosophy of life. It suggests a commitment to the well-rounded individual, to the intellectual life. At The Nerdwriter, we follow the advice of Voltaire and “cultivate our gardens.” Although the channel was originally started to just promote Evan’s book through vlogs, the channel has grown to much more than that, educating, informing, and entertaining hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.