These short videos are packed with an extremely wide variety of excellent information, and the personality delivering them paces himself well and enjoys his work. Deadly poisons, lethal diseases, Martian habitability, and many other topics have all made it into his broadcasts. Occasionally his topics might make some blush, but his frank delivery in these cases is refreshing.
Needless to say, I enjoy his show.
Sure he's not exactly precisely perfectly right sometimes (according to my microbiologist wife, who loves the show); however, to (rather terribly) paraphrase Zombie Feynman, "[By teaching people to value basic scientific knowledge and application, SciShow] is doing more to drag humanity out of the unscientific darkness than a thousand lessons in rigor."
I am also quite proud of the currency of his videos. He generally comments on research that is very recent while also going back in time to research the history of his topics quite well.
If you haven't watched any, go watch one now.
No, really. I'm about to make a whiny little point, and the awesomeness of his work ought to be appreciated before reading my comment on one of his videos (NASA Needs You).
Back? Well, here goes:
-- begin misanthropy --
If you are going to venture into the political realm, please do so completely responsibly. Government economics is a fascinating field, with opinions all over the board. I would be happy, I think, to see a shift in our budgetary priorities towards science and away from pork. I am also of the opinion that we can't spend more than we have, so if everything gets cut then science probably should too, though perhaps by a smaller proportion. (According to our dear President, this was actually the case when budgets actually decreased.) "OMG, the NIH will be cut by $1 billion!!!1!" is entirely insufficient in this case, when what appears to be the 2013 budget is $30 billion. One Billion is a scary number, as my wife, several students, and an experienced professor would be going to China to do oncology work this summer on a measly $100,000 (that's its own story), but the sheer scale of the NIH's work shouldn't be so blithely understated.
Oh, and "These budget cuts cannot be reversed"? Really? Sure these budget cuts won't as per their designs, but do you really think the NIH, NIST, NSF, or DoE budget is a monotonic sequence?
-- end misanthropy --
That said, I'm happy to hear that NASA got $200 million more than they asked for this coming year. I would love to hear about the NIH's budget increasing too; PubMed is an awesome resource whose growth I am proud to say my tax dollars support.
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