Something unusual is happening on YouTube.

Between the product reviews and entertainment channels, a different category of content has quietly built massive audiences: educational documentaries that use mystery as their primary teaching mechanism.

Veritasium has 20 million subscribers. LEMMiNO has 5.8 million. These aren't cooking tutorials or productivity hacks. They're hour-long investigations into the Dyatlov Pass incident, the physics of falling slinkies, and unsolved mathematical puzzles.

And people are watching—not because they're being persuaded, but because they're curious.

This isn't accidental. It's the application of cognitive science to video storytelling at scale. And it reveals something fundamental about how understanding actually works.

Here's the blunt truth: up to 70% of software features go unused. Not because they're poorly designed, but because developers never learn how to use them effectively. The problem isn't your product—it's how you're teaching people to use it.

Educational video content isn't just a nice-to-have. It's become the critical differentiator between products that gain rapid adoption and those that stagnate. This case study examines why video works, backed by cognitive science and real adoption metrics.

Most companies treat video as a marketing channel.

They produce launch videos, feature demos, customer testimonials—content designed to persuade, not educate. When adoption stalls, they make more videos. More polished production. More calls-to-action.

But adoption rarely fails because customers aren't convinced. It fails because customers aren't clear.