Multi-hour video essays recs?

[poesu]

I feel like I've watched most of the popular essays on the left-wing YouTube, and I'm bored. Recommend me something you liked on any topic. The requirement is only that it's at least 1 hour long.

Besides essays, maybe some investigations, retrospectives, and reviews.

[dogbrain]

i love kaz rowe's entire channel! they're a historian and a good chunk of their videos are over an hour long (particularly their biographical ones), they cover a wide range of historical topics and are very well researched

[Dan Q]

Basically anything by Real Time History is great, and many are 1hr+. I recently enjoyed First Year of WW2 1939-1940 (Nebula, YouTube), which is 3h37m long! Philosophy Tube is of course fantastic and has a handful of 1hr+ videos: the latest video, Britain Still Has Conversion Therapists. Here's Why. (Nebula, YouTube) is 2h5m.

What else have I enjoyed at that length lately? Three Dead Girls I Love by SarahZ (Nebula) weighs in at 2h30m. She's got several other 1hr+ videos but I've not watched many yet. Isaac Arthur re-assembles some of his sci-fi discussion/thought pieces into longer videos sometimes, like in The Terraforming Compendium: From Barren Rocks to Living Worlds (Nebula, YouTube). I've recently started watching Everyday Astronaut talk about space science, but not got far enough to recommend or not yet, but many of his videos are 1hr+. On a similar note, PBS Space Time is fantastic and, like Isaac Arthur, sometimes make compilations of their own videos that follow a theme: I enjoyed (re-)watching a series of them by watching Black Holes. Explained. For 1.5 Hours (YouTube) recently.

[Noah_S]

Oceanliner Designs has a bunch of long videos including a 5 hours and 40 minutes long compilation of Titanic history.

Paleo Analysis has this video about the earth before the dinosaurs that's almost 3 hours long.

[Dynaknights]

I enjoy Sir_Superhero's essays quite a bit. Granted, most of his videos are pretty short in terms of video essays, but he does have some pretty good ones that are at least an hour long: here's his video about Marvel's 2099 universe, and here's one about Marvel's cosmology.

NeverKnowsBest, Dungeon Chill, Majuular, and Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities are also worth checking out in my opinion. The first three are centered around video games (NeverKnowsBest covers video game history and retrospectives that are VERY lengthy [>5 hrs], Majuular and Dungeon Chill cover weird/obscure old games), while Tor's Cabinet is... about weird shit that's happened, for lack of better words. Most of Tor's videos are under an hour (~55 mins), but there are some lengthier videos that are still just bizarre, like this one about a cult.

[TheFrugalGamer]

NeverKnowsBest, Dungeon Chill, Majuular, and Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities are also worth checking out in my opinion. The first three are centered around video games (NeverKnowsBest covers video game history and retrospectives that are VERY lengthy [>5 hrs], Majuular and Dungeon Chill cover weird/obscure old games), while Tor's Cabinet is... about weird shit that's happened, for lack of better words. Most of Tor's videos are under an hour (~55 mins), but there are some lengthier videos that are still just bizarre, like this one about a cult.

These are some of my favorites as well. In addition, I'd also add Grimbeard, who also does video game-based content. Atrocity Guide is another really good channel that does deep dives into strange subjects. They only come out with about one video a year, but they're always well researched and super interesting.

If you're really really into videogaming, especially speedrunning, Pannenkoek2012 does ridiculously detailed videos about Super Mario 64, speed running, and one-button challenges. Another SM64 speedrunner, Bismuth, also has similar videos, and one about the A button challenge, The Complete History of the A Button Challenge is over 5 hours long!!!

[chantolove]

Seems like the day of going around recommending all my playlists haha. Best Of All Time here has a wide variety of lengths, the including factor is replayability- there's a Short in here, for chrissakes- but there's lots that are super long. A couple are 4 hours, and one is 6 hours. All sorts of view counts, too. My favorite is the opener, but it's only 26 minutes, so here's a couple:

The Twenty-One Billion Dollar Hole In Texas (BobbyBroccoli)

The Adventures of Tintin and the Shadows of Giants (BREADSWORD)

And a bonus one that isn't on the playlist, although you might have seen it:

MANTRACKS: a True Story of Fake Fossils (Folding Ideas)

Honestly, most of the best and most underrated ones from the playlist are between 20-50 minutes... you should give em a try. Maybe the amount of em will make up for the length? :P

As far as already suggested ones, I can third that Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities is quite good. The recent one on Guy Standing was great, as is the Beach Boys one.

[lakes]

This is more of a playlist than a single video essay, but since someone already mentioned BobbyBroccoli:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAB-wWbHL7VvVT1LbcOIkqkowoZry6Rfd

[poesu]

Thank you everyone for your recommendations!! I'll get to them asap! Finally I have a lot of interesting stuff to watch while drawing ^-^

Dungeon Chill

I love hiiimmmm

[Radioactive Calcium]

I'm probably going to watch a lot of these recommendations. Here are a couple more video essays that are similar that weren't listed yet.

The Lincoln Highway: Across America on the First Transcontinental Motor Route by Noah Caldwell-Gervais.

The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy by Jenny Nicholson

All of the videos from Dan Olson of Folding Ideas which I am assuming most people here have already seen. However there is a live panel that is not a video that some people might not have seen.

Folding Ideas Presents: Silkposting a Culture of Trolling | PAX East 2025 by PAX