YouTube: The Learning Machine
Can YouTube have a similar impact on education as the printing press did? Yes, and the explosion of sports footage on the platform helps to explain why.
Thanks for subscribing to SatPost.
Today, we’re talking about how YouTube is an incredible learning machine.
Also this week:
The best cold email ever?
Zillow Gone Wild, explained
…and them fire memes (including Dave & Buster’s)
The NBA playoffs began two weeks ago and I wanted to update an article I wrote in October 2022 about YouTube as a great learning tool.
The reason: basketball clips are a perfect example of how YouTube has taken visual learning to another level. Future generations may possibly view YouTube as revolutionary an educational tool as the printing press was for text-based and self-guided learning.
When I wrote the piece, two of the main people I highlighted (Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren) had yet to play a real NBA game. Another player, Joel Embiid, would go on to win his first NBA MVP. Wembanyama's team did not make the playoffs this year but he established himself as a generational talent. While Embiid's team (Philadelphia 76ers) was just eliminated from the playoffs, Holmgren's team (Oklahoma City Thunder) is the top seed in the Western Conference and continues to excel with major contributions from him.
In the past 1.5 years, there has also been an explosion of NBA player shows on YouTube. A recent addition is "Mind The Game", hosted by former NBA player J.J. Redick and LeBron James (who is still playing and widely considered the #2 player ever after Michael Jordan). Redick and James dig deep into the technical details of the game, and the show is freely available to watch by anyone with an internet connection.
Enjoy the article below, which has been updated with new examples of other athletes teaching themselves how to play a sport by watching YouTube.
***
Julius Yego is a Kenyan track athlete.
He won silver in the javelin event at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has been given the nickname “Mr. YouTube”.
Why? Because in Kenya — where most top athletes gravitate towards long-distance running — Yego went against his father's wishes and taught himself how to be a world-class javelin thrower… by watching YouTube highlights.
Literally.
Yego’s “mentor” was a collection of video clips from Norwegian track athlete Andreas Thorkildsen (YouTube smartly capitalized on Yego’s story by creating a “Congratulations, Julius Yego” video).
The training background is covered in one of my favorite articles in recent years: “The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer” by Samo Burja.
Burja argues that YouTube may have a historical impact similar to the printing press as it relates to learning.
Here is the money text:
“Yego’s rise was enabled by YouTube. Yet since its founding, popular consensus has been that the video service is making people dumber. Indeed, modern video media may shorten attention spans and distract from longer-form means of communication, such as written articles or books. But critically overlooked is its unlocking a form of mass-scale tacit knowledge transmission which is historically unprecedented, facilitating the preservation and spread of knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that can’t properly be transmitted via verbal or written instruction, like the ability to create great art or assess a startup. This tacit knowledge is a form of intellectual dark matter, pervading society in a million ways, some of them trivial, some of them vital. Examples include woodworking, metalworking, housekeeping, cooking, dancing, amateur public speaking, assembly line oversight, rapid problem-solving, and heart surgery.
Before video became available at scale, tacit knowledge had to be transmitted in person, so that the learner could closely observe the knowledge in action and learn in real time — skilled metalworking, for example, is impossible to teach from a textbook. Because of this intensely local nature, it presents a uniquely strong succession problem: if a master woodworker fails to transmit his tacit knowledge to the few apprentices in his shop, the knowledge is lost forever, even if he’s written books about it.”
YouTube changed the equation and Burja says its rise as a learning machine is a confluence of major tech trends over the past few decades: 1) widely available cameras of decent quality; 2) access to the internet everywhere; 3) search engines that can unearth niche topics; and 4) small screens (AKA smartphones) to consume the content.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Burja’s ideas while watching highlights from two young basketball players: Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama.
Holmgren is 7’1 and was drafted by the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. He missed his rookie season due to a foot injury, but this highlight (left) from his rookie pre-season showed an uncanny resemblance to an advanced shot perfected by Hall-of-Famer Dirk Nowitzki (right).
There’s a big difference in these clips, though. At the time, Holmgren was a 20-year old NBA newbie (he’s now 22). Meanwhile, the Nowitzki clip is from 2011, when the German basketball star was 33 years old and had spent decades perfecting the skill.
And Dirk didn’t have YouTube; he learned from a legendary German shooting coach named Holger Geschwinder, who used to do the most insane basketball drills to pass along his expertise (or “intellectual dark matter” as Burja calls it).
Nowitzki and Geschwinder was 1-on-1 hands on “transfer of tactile knowledge down to the next generation”. Not a very scalable model.
But, now, millions of youngsters can learn Holger’s techniques — and the finished Dirk product — from watching YouTube.
While Holmgren has been a stud, the 20-year Wembanyama had one of the greatest rookie seasons ever playing for the San Antonio Spurs and — if he stays healthy — may fulfil his potential as one of the best NBA prospects in history.
At 7’4 with an 8’0 wingspan, Wembanyama somehow towers over both Holgrem and Nowitzki…and has even more nimble guard-like skills:
Now, I couldn’t find either Holmgren or Wembanyama saying that they used YouTube to train. But I’d bet a lot of money that these two — while growing up — tapped into the explosion of basketball highlights and training videos on YouTube to level up their skills.
Wembayama’s trainer Tim Martin has a YouTube channel where he shows off-season basketball training work with top NBA clients (and converts some of the viewers to a basketball training platform called Tim Martin HQ).
One player who definitely used YouTube to level up his skill was Joel Embiid, the 7’0 star centre for the Philadelphia 76ers (who won the 2023 NBA MVP). Born in Cameroon, Embiid came to America as a 16-year old. He had size but no basketball skills. Here’s how he learned to play according to an essay Embiid wrote in The Players’ Tribune:
“So I’m chilling one night, and I go on YouTube, and I’m thinking I’m about to figure this shooting thing out. I go to the search box like….
HOW TO SHOOT 3 POINTERS. Nah.
HOW TO SHOOT GOOD FORM. Nah.
Then the light bulb went off, man. I typed in the magic words.
WHITE PEOPLE SHOOTING 3 POINTERS.
Listen, I know it’s a stereotype, but have you ever seen a normal, 30-year-old white guy shoot a three-pointer? That elbow is tucked, man. The knees are bent. The follow-through is perfect. Always. You know how in America, there’s always an older guy wearing like EVERLAST sweat-shorts at the court? That guy is always a problem. His J is always wet.”
“…I seriously got to the league by watching YouTube and living in the gym. There’s no other way to explain it.”
Aside from being one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, Embiid’s story is another salient example of “YouTube as a tactile learning machine”.
Yego’s YouTube training regimen was similarly a solo endeavour:
First time I was in YouTube is 2009, when I was now getting serious about training and I didn't have a coach. Nobody was there for me to see if I was doing well or not, so I went to the cybercafe.
I needed to go and see what these guys were doing...the kind of training they had, the kind of training they were doing in the gym.
During his early career in the late-1990s, Kobe Bryant was famously obsessive about watching VHS tapes of Michael Jordan. If Kobe was born 10 years later, he would have downloaded YouTube videos directly into his brain (side note: I mentioned Lebron’s YouTube show earlier and it is actually wild to see the calibre of knowledge being shared and how easy it is to access compared to Kobe’s era, when Jordan definitely wasn’t sharing his insights so freely).
Other athletes that did the “download YouTube into my brain” route include:
UFC Champ Jon Jones: Many MMA fighters go to Thailand to train in Muay Thai. As he explained in a a 2009 interview, Jones was able to develop his style by watching YouTube videos, “I came up with my style of striking just by being very open-minded and accepting knowledge from wherever I can find it. When I first started off with Team Bombsquad we didn’t have a striking coach, so I took it into my own hands to study footage on the computer, like YouTube videos and some of the guys would find different websites and just go out to Barnes and Nobles and purchase different Muay Thai books.”
Football Superstar Erling Haaland obviously had a leg up. He’s physically gifted and his dad played professionally. But he said he expanded his game by watching goal-scoring moves from Cristiano Ronaldo videos: “I always watched CR7 on Youtube for his movements in the box: he made 2-3 moves before attacking the space he wanted to be in....Cristiano is the most important inspiration for me."
NHL All-Star Auston Matthews drilled the same moves he watched from his favourite hockey players: “Growing up, Matthews would spend hours at Phoenix’s Ozzie Ice studying older and bigger players, learning to navigate around them in three-on-three tournaments. Brian would show him videos of Michael Jordan pulling up from the free throw line to help his son understand the power of a quick catch-and-shoot motion. After watching YouTube highlights of the Blackhawks’ Kane or former Red Wings star Pavel Datsyuk, Auston would grab his Rollerblades, dash into the street and drill the same moves until dark.”
Today, most top-tier athletes won’t take the solo YouTube learning route like Yego, Embiid or Jones. High-potential prospects are quickly funnelled into specialized training programs and youth leagues (the most-motivated of these athletes will probably supplement their formal training with the wealth of YouTube videos).
However, the availability of YouTube in underdeveloped markets is a godsend for ambitious athletes who can’t find in-person instruction.
Ultimately, if some of the world’s top athletes in their respective sports can find success with YouTube and very very dedicated practice, an opportunity exists in countless other “tacit knowledge” fields such as music, painting, coding, photography, filmmaking and various creative fields. Also, who can forget the glorious learnings for cooking, DIY construction, IKEA furniture, gardening and — my personal favourite — fixing the idiotic garburator one a month.
YouTube currently has 2B+ monthly active users and one Pew survey found that 51% of users are on the platform to figure out “how to do things they haven’t done before”. The platform has rolled out dedicated learning features — including interactive tools and pop-up quizzes — but there’s still so much opportunity ahead.
For those wondering about TikTok, I think YouTube has multiple advantages with or without a future TikTok ban. The Google-owned platform is the go-to destination for longer videos, has established mindshare for education and has superior search (it’s owned by Google, after all).
As for my favorite tacit knowledge video ever, it’s Gordon Ramsay cooking a Christmas Beef Wellington. I haven’t actually cooked one yet (I just love the video). But when I do, it’s going to be incredible and my family will most definitely start calling me Mr. YouTube.
***
UPDATE: A reader shared with me this link from Less Wrong that is collecting all of the best “tacit knowledge” videos for various subjects including machine learning, computer programming, game design, web development, research, studying, business communication and more.
Today’s SatPost is brought to you by Bearly.AI
Why are you seeing this ad?
Because I co-founded an AI-powered research app called Bearly AI. And I really like putting blue buttons in this email.
If you press this blue button below, you can save hours of work with AI-powered tools for reading (instant summaries), writing (Claude Opus 200K, GPT4 128K) and speech-to-text transcription tools (Scribe, Whisper).
It’s all available in one keyboard shortcut (and an iPhone app).
Use code BEARLY1 for a FREE month of the Pro Plan.
Links and Memes
The best cold email ever? Speaking of YouTube, a 19-year Harvard Econ student spent 2 years working on a short film and posted the 13-minute video on the platform. It went viral and now he is the youngest director to ever have a major film studio deal.
What happened? Darren Aronofsky — also a Harvard grad and the director behind Pi, Requiem For a Dream, Black Swan and The Whale among others — saw the film by Wesley Wang and sent him a cold email with the subject line “from aronofsky” and the text read “watched your film. can you drop out of harvard?”.
What an absolutely glorious e-mail. Next-level subject line. All lower-case text. Casually asks him to “drop out of harvard” and signs off with “dsa”. Just glorious.
Aronofsky’s production company helped Wang sell the project to TriStar Pictures and Wang will adapt it for the big screen. Here is a link to Wang’s film nothing, except everything. (which is titled in all lower-case letter and, upon further analysis, may be the reason that Aronofsky reached out).
***
Zillow Gone Wild, explained: The Washington Post has a great profile on the guy behind the viral social account Zillow Gone Wild. At the start of COVID, former BuzzFeed writer Samir Mezrahi started posting the most absurd Zillow listings he could find.
I think every reader here can relate to the voyeurism of seeing the prices for strangers’ homes (you probably looked at one this morning). Mezrahi’s posts frequently went viral and now he has over 4m followers across Reddit, X and Instagram. And he just scored an HGTV show based around the concept.
Mezrahi’s process is definitely not rocket science. But as someone that appreciates putting dumb viral things on the internet, I loved reading the excerpts about Mezrahi’s instincts for virality that he honed at BuzzFeed:
“Throughout it all, Mezrahi’s recipe has remained mostly unchanged: Find the zaniest homes on the market — castle-themed mansions with full drawbridges, for example — then blast them out to the internet with a bit of pithy commentary, and watch the clicks, likes and shares pile up.”
“Though the process is highly subjective, Mezrahi follows some general guidelines when picking the houses that ultimately get featured on Zillow Gone Wild. For a luxury listing to make it into a “Mansion Monday” post, for instance, “it can’t just be a mansion, it has to be a mansion-plus.” One of his most viral picks in recent memory fell into this category — a $20 million Arizona spread with a slew of amenities: a go-kart track, a 6,000-square foot “man cave,” a golf simulator, home theater, dance studio and video gaming area. It racked up more than 24 million views, mostly within the first 24 hours”
“It’s what you say you would do if you’re rich,” Mezrahi says. “When you’re a kid you would say you want all these things … they went through with it and did it all.”
“Another genre that tends to hit is what Mezrahi dubs, “you never know what’s going on inside a home.” These posts are reserved for listings with ordinary-looking exteriors that conceal, say, an extreme enthusiasm for Barbiecore, a pirate ship-themed DJ booth or a 4,400-square-foot replica of an old western town.
Zillow Gone Wild is now so popular that Mezrahi gets bombarded with insane listings and curates the best ones. Real estate agents who have their listings featured lose their sh*t due to the exposure and subsequent inbound interest. One realtor said of getting a viral post, “It was like somebody turned a switch on... for a realtor, that's the kind of stuff we live for.”
***
Restauranteur Danny Meyer with tips on the Invest Like The Best podcast. Meyer is behind some of the top restaurants in New York including Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café. He also did Shake Shack, which I freakin’ love (give me that Shackburger with Crinkle Cut fries and extra Shack Sauce). To give each of the 300+ Shake Shack locations in America some personality, Meyer uses the 80/20 rule:
In addition to the 80% of the items that are consistent at every Shake Shack, 20% of the items are customized.
And by doing that in every city we go to, even a close city like in New Haven. When Shake Shack first opened in New Haven next door to Yale, the walls were made from recycled bleacher seats from the original Yale Bowl. The special hotdog was named after the Yale mascot and a special recipe went with it. It's that 80/20, 80% consistent, 20% all about you, showing an interest in you, which makes you feel like ‘this is my Shake Shack. I now belong here.’”
…and them fire X/Twitter posts:
For the uninitiated, Dave & Buster's is a social venue that has a bunch of arcade games, some food and booze. Think Chuck E. Cheese but with less alliteration in the name. Last week, Dave & Buster's —which is valued at $2B and has a very solid stock ticker name ($PLAY) — announced that 18+ members of its loyalty app can now place small wagers ($5) on the arcade games such as Skee-Ball and Mini-Hoops.
Another example of what my friend Howard Lindzon calls the Degen Economy.
I taught myself how to swim by watching the swimtofly youtube channel. Went from terrified in the water to swimming laps in front crawl and breastroke in one summer.
love the “download YouTube into my brain” concept for sports. Also interested in seeing this. play into entrepreneurs/businesses as well in the future.