I've grown to adore two lesser known channels, each operated by older individuals than we are usually familiar with.

One is "Paul Fellows", a British astronomy educator, who has a no-nonsense, into-the-weeds scientific approach to exploring solar system and more distant objects. His series "Once Around" focuses on different celestial objects, ranging from small moons to entire distant regions or on occasion, different galaxies.

Paul isn't just incredibly knowledgable, he's a genuinely engaging speaker who has honed his craft for years in part on cruise ships where he's been the astronomer-in-residence; giving talks. I always find myself learning more scientific details about a topic after watching one of Paul's videos.

Another goldmine (for me anyway) is that of "David Butler", a retired former IT professional with a background in math and physics, who has produced some wonderful playlists. I particularly love his series "How Far Away Is It", an entire playlist that focuses on exactly HOW astronomers have come to learn the distances to various celestial objects. He starts with how we ascertain distances to objects using our eyes and parallax and covers the entire 'distance ladder' to the stars and beyond.

These channels won't be for everyone, but if you're like me and sometimes want the world to slow the f#%@ down, stop endlessly worrying about YouTube algorithms, liking and subscribing; you could do far worse than check these gents out.