Watching YouTube vs. The Great Courses Plus

by James Wallace Harris, 8/1/24

For several years now, YouTube has been my favorite TV diversion. I could always find something to watch quickly, and the videos were usually short, so YouTube didn’t demand much. I was first hooked by channels about 8-bit computers, but quickly subscribed to channels about all my favorite subjects. If I showed interest in any topic, YouTube would offer me lots more along the same vein.

Recently I started reading The Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon, Volume 11 by Will and Ariel Durant and became fascinated by the French Revolution. I got on YouTube, searched on that topic, and found tons of videos to watch. There were short videos by amateur historians and professional documentaries like this old one from The History Channel.

However, it was of exceptionally low video quality, 240p, which is unpleasant to watch. But there were other videos, by what I assume are individual YouTubers, in higher resolution, and with particularly good production values, such as this one by Asha Logos.

Or here’s another one from History Weekly. I don’t know if this is a professional outfit, or another lone YouTuber, but it’s also of high quality.

These videos supplement my reading with added information and lots of visuals. However, I wonder about the validity of the information. Should I trust an amateur historian, or even history on The History Channel. The History Channel produces a lot of shows on flaky history, or even crap history.

I decided to subscribe to The Great Courses Plus and watch Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon which is taught by an actual history professor, Dr. Suzanne M. Desan from the University of Wisconsin who specializes in 18th century France. Dr. Desan covers the topic in forty-eight thirty-minute lectures. She has few visuals, so I’m mostly watching her lecture. It’s like a college course.

The Great Courses Plus is $20 a month ($15 if you pay quarterly, or $12.50 if you pay yearly). However, I decided to get it through Amazon Prime for $7.99 a month. Amazon Prime gets a smaller subset of all the courses at The Great Courses Plus, but it did have this one. I’ve found plenty of courses on Amazon Prime version, but I think I’ll eventually join the full version, since it has a lecture series on Voltaire, I want to see that’s not in the Amazon Prime collection.

Another way to get Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon is through Audible.com. It’s an audio only version of the lectures (24 hours and 47 minutes), but it does come with a .pdf textbook for the course. I don’t get the textbook through my Prime subscription, but I would if I subscribed directly to The Great Course Plus. The textbooks for The Great Courses tend to be concise summaries of the lecture that are easy to read and reference. They’re a wonderful way to look back on the details that I quickly forget.

I now find myself watching the Great Courses lectures rather than turning on YouTube. I tend to watch YouTube in idle moments, a kind of random grazing of odd information. Often I end up watching fun but useless stuff.

So, I’ve started switching to the lectures on the French Revolution. This is more satisfying. I don’t even have to watch a whole lecture, so it’s like YouTube, it can be very casual. However, it makes me feel more focused than when I’m watching YouTube. I’m not saying watching YouTube is bad, or that I’m going to give it up. But the Great Courses lectures offer a nice alternative. It feels like I’m getting back to my book. That I’m progressing towards something which is satisfying.

I also like switching between my book and lectures. The two histories reinforce each other, but they also focus on different details. I’m already anxious to read even more about the French Revolution, and The Enlightenment. And I want to read about Voltaire and Rousseau. I’ve already started with YouTube videos, but I crave lecture series and books to get more details.

I knew next to nothing about the French Revolution or Napoleon. And what I did know came from fiction by Dickens and Tolstoy, or from movies. Just knowing about The Terror gives a false sense of what happened.

I now see a synergy between history books, lectures, and YouTube videos.

I showed The Great Courses Plus to my friend Annie yesterday, and now she wants to watch a lecture series together. We watched movies and television shows together, but it’s gotten hard to find things to watch, at least things we both want to see. The lectures open a new avenue of something to do together.

My next goal is to learn to take notes. I feel like I’m learning something valuable, but I’m not sure how much I’ll remember. With the book, lectures, and videos I’ve been trying to remember certain details. I want this TV watching to be more than just idle time killing. My brain is getting flabby as I age, so I’m trying to exercise it.

I can’t find a sample video of Dr. Desan’s lecture, but here is a sample video with three other lecturers at The Great Courses Plus (previously named Wondrium).

I’m finding studying history to be a great escape from worrying about the real world. We’re living through some exciting history, but it’s also unnerving, and stressful. I find lots of comparisons with today’s politics in the French Revolution. That’s consoling in a way. However, things Trump is saying makes me worry about another version of The Terror.

JWH