UsefulCharts

About UsefulCharts

UsefulCharts is an educational media company founded by Matt Baker, a Canadian educator, historian, and graphic designer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Baker holds a PhD in education and has built UsefulCharts into a distinctive brand known for its visually striking wall charts and timeline posters covering history, genealogy, and religion. His YouTube channel grew organically from his chart-making business, as he began producing videos to explain and contextualize the products he was selling. It has since evolved into a substantial educational channel in its own right, with a following drawn to Baker's clear, research-grounded, and visually oriented approach to complex historical topics.

His work has appeared in BBC Focus magazine and on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website. In 2023 he published Timeline of the Bible through Simon and Schuster, a book distilling years of research on the chronological framework of the biblical narrative into accessible visual form.

Content and Distinctive Approach

The UsefulCharts channel covers a broad range of historical and religious topics, but its engagement with biblical content is particularly substantial. Baker has produced major series on the historical Jesus, biblical genealogies, the authorship of the Bible's books, the Apocrypha and Deuterocanon, Bible translations, and the Talmud. He approaches these topics from a secular academic standpoint, drawing on mainstream historical scholarship without either devotional deference to tradition or ideological hostility toward religion.

What distinguishes Baker's presentation is his investment in visual clarity. He constructs charts, timelines, and family trees in real time or presents pre-built visualizations that allow viewers to see at a glance relationships and sequences that prose explanations struggle to communicate. His charts of the biblical family tree, tracing major figures from Adam through to the New Testament period, became some of his most watched videos. Similarly, his English Bible translations family tree offered a memorable visual guide to how the major translations relate to one another.

Baker's personal background adds an unusual perspective: he grew up in a sect later identified as British Israelism, and his video debunking that movement draws on personal experience as well as scholarship. He has been candid about his own non-religious identity while maintaining a consistently respectful and intellectually honest tone toward religious subjects and communities.

Approach to the Bible

Baker approaches the Bible as a historical document produced within specific ancient contexts. He presents the findings of biblical criticism, including source theory, questions of authorship and dating, and the historical reliability of various narratives, without sensationalism and with appropriate acknowledgment of scholarly disagreement. His video series on the historical Jesus is a good example: he presents the major evidence for Jesus's existence and historical profile with characteristic visual clarity, noting where scholars agree and where genuine uncertainty remains.

He does not read the Bible devotionally, but he treats it and those who hold it sacred with evident respect. His goal is to illuminate rather than to debunk, and viewers from across the spectrum of religious belief generally find his presentations accurate and fair.

Notable Series

Among the most widely viewed content on the UsefulCharts channel is the Historical Jesus series, the Introduction to the Bible series, the Who Wrote the Bible series covering both the Torah and the Prophets, and a series on who wrote the Apocrypha. His video on what the Talmud actually says, produced in direct response to online misinformation, is another standout example of his approach: careful, sourced, and non-polemical. The channel also produces content on broader history topics beyond the biblical period.

Theological Positioning

UsefulCharts operates from a secular academic perspective. Baker does not advocate for any religious position, and his analysis of biblical texts follows the methods of mainstream historical-critical scholarship rather than confessional theology. He is explicit about his own non-religious identity but does not present his content from a standpoint of anti-religious advocacy. This makes the channel accessible and credible to viewers from religious and non-religious backgrounds alike.

Target Audience

The channel is well suited to students, educators, general readers with intellectual curiosity about the Bible and its history, and those who prefer visual learning formats. It is particularly valuable for viewers who want an accurate, non-partisan introduction to questions of biblical authorship, chronology, and the historical context of Scripture. The combination of academic rigor, visual clarity, and accessible delivery makes UsefulCharts one of the more distinctive educational channels dealing with biblical and religious history on YouTube.